China And Democrats Mock Trump For Taking COVID Anti Virals, Pelosi Calls Him Morbidly Obese
China And Democrats Mock Trump For Taking COVID Anti Virals, Pelosi Calls Him Morbidly Obese. This may be the most absurd news cycle ever and I almost refuse to write anything in protest but whateverTrump's doctor gave him advice, thats itIn response the collective forces of the culture war left decided they were all doctors and to pile on to the president insulting him for being fat. Nancy pelosi called him morbidly obese prompting the hashtag #PresidentplumpIts funny but just incredibly stupidFox News' Neil Cavuto piled on as well with unsound advice to not take medication that can only be prescribed. Don't get your medical advice from the president, the speaker of the house, your TV opinion people, or me.Ask your doctor.
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I often find it funny that Democrats and the Chinese Communist Party share the same talking points when it comes to American politics.
But I think it's for obvious reasons.
There's no real conspiracy.
Some people would point to the Democrats and argue they're working for them or something.
No, no.
It's just they both hate Trump.
But I'll tell you what.
When you hate Trump so much, you start agreeing with the Chinese Communist Party, you need to self-reflect on what you're doing.
If you work in the media and you find yourself parroting the opinions of the Chinese Communist Party, slow down, take a good long look in the mirror.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the stupidest news cycle we've ever faced.
A story about Donald Trump taking an already approved medication for an off-label use and the media goes nuts.
What Nancy Pelosi called Trump morbidly obese.
Now we've got a nationwide trend, President Plump.
Others are accusing Trump of lying, saying he's not actually taking this medication.
OK, let me slow down.
The other day, Trump said he was taking hydroxychloroquine with zinc and an initial dose of azithromycin.
This as a preventative measure.
Trump is notoriously germaphobic, so I'm not surprised he said this, nor do I care.
So why is it that all of a sudden we have story after story claiming it's dangerous, you'll die.
This is the most ridiculous non-controversy ever.
If Trump wants to take medication prescribed by his doctor, fine.
Here's what happens.
Neil Cavuto of Fox News comes out and says, no, wait, stop, don't do this, it'll kill you, it'll kill you.
What?
You're not a doctor.
Okay, and calm down.
Even the New York Times says it's relatively safe.
We'll go through this.
And we're going to drag Fox News' Neil Cavuto over this one.
But let me just say first and foremost, If you are prescribed medication, follow the instructions of your doctor.
That's it.
If you're curious about medication, if you think you may be sick, if there's anything wrong with you at any point, for any reason, talk to your doctor.
Do not listen to the TV people.
Do not listen to the president.
Listen to your doctor.
You can get a second opinion as well.
That's totally normal.
You talk to your doctor.
He says, here's what I think.
You say, okay, I'm going to go for a second opinion.
That's normal.
If the president says something, that's great.
Not a doctor.
If the Fox News personality says something, that's great.
Not a doctor.
Joe Scarborough of MSNBC says Donald Trump isn't really even taking it.
Aw, you know what, man?
This is how insane the news cycle has become.
That you're actually getting pundits, the Democrats and their media allies saying, oh no, it's so dangerous, and even Fox News agrees.
And you're getting the CNN people waving their arms in the air and screeching over the stupidest non-story.
So my friends, we are going to walk through a bit of information about hydroxychloroquine.
I'm going to show you a little bit of what people are saying, but let's break this down and ultimately make fun of the media.
And this time, we're going to get Fox News involved as well.
The story from the Daily Mail.
China mocks Donald Trump as governing by witchcraft after revelation he is taking hydroxychloroquine.
As White House press secretary says, he was just being transparent and is forced to tell people not to take it without a prescription.
Forced!
Trump said he talked to his doctor about it.
The doctor said, if you want it, we'll get it for you.
No one's, no one's, Kate, this is so dumb.
The media, look, you get it.
No matter what Trump does or says, it is always the opposite.
Even when it's a story as stupid as this.
But let's talk about it anyway!
Before we get started, head over to TimCast.com if you'd like to support my work.
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I'm going to be talking about the truth about hydroxychloroquine, this medication, what it means.
It's not sensational.
There's not a lot going on, to be honest.
It's just a fake drummed up news cycle by people who want to be mad at the president for whatever reason.
If you just want to watch, hit the subscribe button, hit the like button, hit the notification bell.
Let's read first what's happening with China mucking Donald Trump.
China lashes out at Donald Trump Tuesday, claiming the US president is using witchcraft to lead during the coronavirus pandemic after he admitted to taking hydroxychloroquine to prevent contracting the disease.
Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of China's Communist Party official publication, Global Times, blamed Trump for the high number of US deaths from coronavirus, claiming the White House would be burned down by the public if it were China.
No, it wouldn't.
Come on.
President Trump is leading the US's struggle against pandemic with witchcraft, and as a result, more than 90,000 people have died, Who wrote Tuesday, in a now-deleted tweet.
Ooh, deleted.
If it were in China, the White House would have been burned down by angry people.
The editor of the governing publication is close with Chinese leadership, whose comments came after Trump said Monday that he takes unproven anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a preventative measure.
Well, full stop.
He said initial dose of azithromycin, Z-Pak, along with zinc.
It's very, very different.
I'm going to show you the studies.
The studies are actually promising, but we're going to read through this.
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Tuesday morning that the president shared his personal health information because he wants to be transparent with Americans.
The president just wanted to be transparent about his personal health decision that he made in consultation with his doctor.
McEnany told Fox & Friends, adding, others should only take the malaria drug if they are prescribed by their doctors.
It's just that simple.
Now, of course, Nancy Pelosi was asked about it, and she couldn't help but throw in a dig at the president, which is inaccurate and a little bit dangerous.
Okay, first of all, if Donald Trump wants to say that he's going to take something, fine.
You know, he wants to be transparent, fine.
Nancy Pelosi was asked about it, and she said, someone in tro—do they have a quote?
As far as the president is concerned, he's our president, and I would rather he not be taking something that has not been approved by the scientists, especially in his age group and in his, shall we say, weight group, morbidly obese.
They say.
Pelosi said during an interview with CNN on Monday night.
So I think it's not a good idea.
Welcome to the psychotic American political news cycle.
Because following these comments, we got the glorious trend at number two, President Plump.
Actually, no, I think it might be number one.
T-Mobile Tuesdays, for some reason, is number one, followed by President Plump.
First of all, I find it funny, President Plump.
It's funny.
It's not that funny.
It's a chuckle.
And I think it was funny that Nancy Pelosi called Trump morbidly obese.
He's not, but Trump is obese.
CBS actually said she was clearly trying to make a dig at the president to get him angry.
But let me just stop right now and say, OK, this is this is a problem we're facing.
Nancy Pelosi has asked about this and she wants it to be a fight.
It doesn't need to be a fight.
OK, let's try this.
You ask me.
Donald Trump is taking hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and Z-Pak.
I'm sorry, and zinc.
Azithromycin and Z-Pak.
And my response is, well, you know, whatever his doctor tells him, you know, he should be doing.
I hope he's just taking the advice of his doctor.
That's it.
End of story.
Instead of what she says, that it's not approved by the scientists.
Okay, let me stop you there.
It is.
There was an emergency FDA thing.
The FDA warned against it.
There's a bit of back and forth, but all that really matters is that hydroxychloroquine was approved for use a long time ago for a variety of ailments.
I believe arthritis, lupus, and it's an anti-malarial.
It is approved and considered to be relatively safe.
Do not take any medications without talking to your doctor.
So everything else at this point is moot, but I have this story from the New York Times.
Here's what they say.
Is hydroxychloroquine approved by the Food and Drug Administration?
Yes, but for malaria, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis, not for COVID-19.
For decades, doctors have been legally allowed to prescribe it for any condition they think it might help, a practice called off-label use.
But the FDA issued a safety warning on April 24th for hydroxychloroquine, which it said could
cause dangerous abnormalities in heart rhythm in coronavirus patients.
The drug should be used only in clinical trials or hospitals where patients can be closely
monitored for heart problems.
In late March, the FDA, it's from the New York Times, by the way, the FDA granted emergency
approval to allow hospitals to use hydroxychloroquine from the national stockpile to treat patients
who would not otherwise qualify for a clinical trial.
Under the approval, patients and their families will receive information about the drug, and hospitals have to track information about the patients who receive the drug, including their health condition and serious side effects.
But the FDA authorization for emergency use is not equivalent to meeting federal requirements, including scientific evidence through trials.
That would deem hydroxychloroquine a proven treatment against the virus.
Because of hoarding and high demand, some states like New York have ordered pharmacists to fill prescriptions only for FDA-approved uses of the drug or for people participating in clinical trials.
Prescriptions for the drug have surged since Mr. Trump began promoting it.
Now, the New York Times says, is hydroxychloroquine being given to coronavirus patients now?
Yes!
Early on in the epidemic, many hospitals began giving it to patients because there was no proven treatment.
And they hoped it would help.
Clinical trials with control groups have begun across the world.
A national trial began on April 2nd in the United States.
It has planned to enroll 510 patients and 44 medical centers.
Researchers say those studies are essential to find out whether the drug works against the coronavirus.
If it does not, time and money can be redirected to other potential treatments.
Is there any danger in taking hydroxychloroquine?
The Times says, like every drug, it can have side effects.
It is not safe for people who have abnormalities in their heart rhythms, eye problems involving the retina, or liver or kidney disease.
Other possible side effects include nausea, diarrhea, mood changes, and skin rashes.
The leaders of three professional societies in cardiology warned on April 8th in the journal Circulation that hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin could each cause dangerous disruptions in heart rhythm, and they wrote, Here we go.
Overall, it is considered relatively safe for people who do not have underlying illnesses that the drug is known to worsen.
But it is not known whether hydroxychloroquine is safe for severely ill COVID-19 patients who may have organ damage from the virus.
There you go.
It is relatively safe.
So all the stories coming out, Nancy Pelosi saying he shouldn't be taking it, what do you mean he shouldn't be taking it?
You're not a doctor, he's the doctor.
I bring you now to Fox News and the sheer stupidity of the snooze cycle.
Actually, let me do this first.
Let me give a quick shout out to Joe Scarborough.
Scarborough says, let me assure you, Trump isn't taking hydroxychloroquine.
It's a distraction.
Oh, shut up.
I watched the interview.
It was like a press conference where Trump said he was taking it.
It was an off-the-cuff remark.
He said, yeah, I talked to my doctor.
I said, you know, what do you think?
And the doctor said, if you want it, I can get it for you.
And then I got it, and that's it.
Trump said he took an initial dose of Zpec.
He's like, because you don't need to keep taking it.
Sounds like he did talk to his doctor.
This is nuts.
Well, I bring you now to, quote, This Will Kill You.
Fox's Neil Cavuto at center of Trump's hydroxychloroquine madness.
Aw, you know what, man?
Two shockers in a row Monday afternoon.
President Trump declared to reporters at the White House that he has been taking hydroxychloroquine for a week and a half as a purported preventative against COVID-19.
Moments later, he received a stern warning on the dangers of that much-discussed possible treatment for the novel coronavirus, and that warning came from none other than Fox News.
That was stunning, said Cavuto, reacting to the remarks.
The President of the United States, just to acknowledge that he's taking a hydroxychloroquine, a drug that was meant really to treat malaria and lupus.
The President is insistent that it has enormous benefits for patients either trying to prevent or already have COVID-19.
The fact of the matter is though, when the president said, what have you got to lose, a number of studies, those are certainly vulnerable, those are certainly vulnerable in the population, have one thing to lose, their lives.
In his own remarks, Trump was Trump, quote, because I think it's good, said the president when asked why he's taking it.
I've heard a lot of good stories, and if it's not good, I'll tell you right, you know, I'm not going to get hurt by it.
In his discussion to the dangers, Cavuto noted, if you are in a risky population here and you are taking this as a preventative treatment to ward off the virus, or in a worst case scenario, you are dealing with the virus and you are in this vulnerable population, it will kill you.
I cannot stress enough.
This will kill you.
So again, Whatever benefits the President says this has, and certainly it is had for those suffering from malaria dealing with lupus, this is a leap that should not be taken casually by those watching at home or assuming, well, the President of the United States says it's okay.
Even the FDA was very cautious about this unless in a clinical trial safely and deliberately watched.
I only make this not to make a political point here, but a life and death point.
Be very, very careful.
A brushback to the president on Fox News.
How long till Trump started tweeting?
Not long.
Someone said that apparently Cavuto didn't see the studies in France or otherwise.
Trump responded, Fox News is no longer the same.
We miss the great Roger Ailes.
You have more anti-Trump people by far than ever before.
Look for a new outlet.
OK.
Cavuto should not be telling people or scaring people in any way.
The New York Times, the CDC, they say it's relatively safe.
The only thing you need to know from me is to ignore my opinion on whether anyone should or shouldn't be taking it, and Cavuto's, and anybody else other than your doctor.
I don't care if the president says he's taking it and he thinks it's safe.
Ask your doctor.
I don't care if Cavuto says, oh no, it will kill you.
Ask your doctor.
Now, what's disconcerting here is that if Donald Trump comes out and says he's taking it at the advice of his doctor, and some people go to their doctors because you need a prescription to get it anyway, and the doctor prescribes it, well, it's on the doctor, not on Trump.
Now, if someone is prescribed this treatment, the combo pack, the azithromycin, the hydroxychloroquine and zinc, and Cavuto says, stop, no, oh, no, it will kill you, and they stop taking it, Now that's messed up.
And that's the problem with media.
I don't know why Cavuto would say something like that.
He's not a doctor, he shouldn't be saying this.
But I bring you now to the CDC.
Fact sheets, brochures, and posters.
This is from the cdc.gov website.
We can come down in the context of malaria, mind you.
We have this image right here.
And let me pull it open.
It's a graph.
It says medicines for the prevention of malaria.
They say hydroxychloroquine.
What are the potential side effects?
They say hydroxychloroquine is a relatively well-tolerated medicine.
The most common adverse reactions reported are stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, and headache.
These side effects can often be lessened by taking hydroxychloroquine with food.
It could also cause itching for some people.
All medicines have side effects.
Minor side effects such as nausea, occasional vomiting, or diarrhea usually do not require stopping the anti-malarial drug.
If you cannot tolerate your anti-malarial drug, see your healthcare provider, blah blah blah.
The reason I'm reading this is just to highlight, even on the CDC's website, You are not going, you know, take advice from the doctor, not from me.
But it stands to reason that for a very long time we've known about this medication.
It is not all that dangerous.
You do need a doctor to make sure you're taking your medication correctly.
But for the most part, if Trump is taking it as his doctor said so, well, it's fine.
But it's more than fine.
Look at this.
This story is from just a week ago.
Triple drug combo of anti-malaria pill, hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc improved coronavirus patients' chances of being discharged and cut death risk by almost 50% study finds.
Researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine looked at 932 coronavirus patients hospitalized between March 2nd and April 5th.
It's one study.
It doesn't prove this is perfect.
It's just one study.
But you will see tons of people try and pull out studies.
They'll say the FDA said this.
And then you'll see these actual studies saying the opposite.
The one thing you need to realize, yes, there are studies saying it doesn't work.
Yes, there have been instances where people were prescribed this and it went bad.
It's hard to know for sure until the data comes in.
But anybody telling you it's awful, keep in mind what their political persuasion is.
This is the challenge.
People who hate Trump will be like, oh no, it's dangerous, it's dangerous.
That's why people are mad at Neil Cavutover at Fox News.
Because he shouldn't be freaking out like this.
We really don't know for the most part.
We know some people have praised it.
There was a survey of doctors saying this was their go-to treatment.
And now we have another study from just last week saying the combo works.
It's not just about taking hydroxychloroquine.
It's about the combination.
That's important.
Of course, that won't stop the anti-Trump media sensationalists for going off the deep end.
We'll get into the drama in a second, but let me show you this story first.
From April 7th, Trump has a distant financial link to a pharma giant that makes the drug he's been pushing to fight COVID-19, but it's probably worth less than $1,000.
You see, last month, early last month, they all started saying Trump owned a stake in the company that made the drug.
The way they framed it made it sound like Trump was trying to profit.
And that's the story that many activists ran.
Because they don't care about telling you the truth.
They don't care about informing you so you know exactly what's going on and why it's happening.
They want to shock you, freak you out, and give you confirmation bias.
I do find it funny.
So I tweeted about Neil Cavuto, and I said, you know, the clip that's going viral, it's a short clip.
The quote I read from him was about a 45-second clip.
I certainly hope that in the context of that conversation, the first or last thing he said about that was, consult your doctor before making any decisions.
Period.
If he didn't, that could scare people into not taking something they were prescribed.
And it's funny, the criticism I get is that I'm so much a Trump defender that I even have to go against Fox News.
Are you kidding?
Trump barely did anything.
What am I defending?
That his doctor prescribed a medication?
That's ridiculous.
I don't care whose doctor it is.
Now, going against Fox News, yes, doesn't that prove that I'm willing to call out anybody if they do something I disagree with or think is wrong?
There's no winning.
There's absolutely no winning.
I don't care if Trump is taking medication that his doctor prescribed.
And I also think Trump is a germaphobe, and I think Trump is obese.
I don't care that Nancy Pelosi called him morbidly obese, although I think she's factually wrong on that.
He's not.
He is obese.
And I don't care that President Plump is trending.
I actually find it kind of funny.
The problem, however, with President Plump, is this really what I have to talk about today?
Yes.
Oh, I love it.
Don't you?
Don't you love it so much?
I was going through the news and I'm like, I do have a bunch more important stories to talk about, but typically this, my main channel, the one you're watching right now, this is just one segment I do out of like 3 hours and 40 minutes every single day.
You get about 20 minutes just on this one channel.
Because what I try to do for this channel is typically like the big stories that are drumming up the most, you know, political hubbub or whatever.
So often, it's about something, you know, much more... a bigger story.
This was arguably the number two trend in the nation.
It's what people were talking about, and it's what needs clarity.
Some people might actually need this medication.
It might actually help them.
We don't know for sure, but that's why you should talk to your doctor.
If you're gonna get Democrats coming out or CNN coming out saying, don't do it, it's dangerous, or even Fox News, that's horrifying.
I bring you now to the drama.
Now, I'm not doing this intentionally.
I did a segment earlier ragging on Oliver Darcy, but he's the one who's getting the high-profile ratio of 3,000 replies to retweets because he's ragging on Fox over Showing both sides?
And I want to explain to you why this is dangerous.
Oliver says, he's a CNN media reporter, Fox can't get its story straight.
While one host zings Trump for taking hydroxychloroquine, Cavuto, another host encourages its use.
While one medical contributor calls it highly irresponsible, another says it's reasonable.
What are viewers to believe?
Whatever their doctor tells them.
Thank you.
Next.
Janice Dean of Fox News says, I see both sides of the story.
Isn't that crazy that there's two sides as long as it's explained properly?
All drugs can be dangerous if not used properly.
I understand Neil's take and I understand the other side that it can be beneficial.
Oliver's response.
The FDA has cautioned against its use outside a hospital setting or clinical trial and stated the drug has not been shown to be safe and effective for treating or prevented COVID-19.
Not sure we need to both sides this one or mock media for pointing it out like Laura did.
Mock media for pointing it out.
out.
Janis Dean says, thanks, Dr. Oliver.
Thanks, Dr. Oliver.
I'm also on a drug that could cause death.
I don't go around telling people to go on it.
And at the same time, I'm under a doctor's care.
The president is under a doctor's care while he's on it.
So then what's the problem?
Oh, never mind.
You don't see both sides.
It's actually simple.
CNN's staff will always go after Trump no matter what he does, whether it's reasonable or not.
You want to know what's reasonable?
Your doctor saying, this is an okay medication.
If you want it, we can get it for you.
Do you know what's not reasonable?
Being a reporter coming on, acting like you're outraged because a doctor said someone could take a medication.
It makes no sense to be angry about this.
Oliver responded.
So then why did Fox's senior managing editor of Health & News call the move highly irresponsible?
Well, because people have opinions, I suppose.
Janice says, And the last... I don't know what this is.
We found out from the president's doctor last night that he thinks it's okay for him to be on it.
I'm okay with that.
If he was just taking it with no doctor's revision, then yeah, it's a problem.
You keep doing you, Dr. Oliver.
And the last, I don't know what this is, I'm gonna read it anyway.
No argument with Trump on hydroxychloroquine, but doctor worship is what got us here in the first place.
Doctors are serving the people and not the other way around.
Doctors are not gods.
They can err.
And we as responsible people with a functioning brain must think for ourselves.
It's actually a really good point.
The main point...
I should say, to elaborate on that point, Fauci said in a viral video not to wear masks.
He later said to wear masks.
Fauci said at one point it wasn't gonna be bad.
Fauci was not always correct.
And that's okay, and I respect that.
I sit back and I say he's the expert, I'll take his advice.
Things change.
Hindsight is 20-20.
We all made mistakes.
I'm totally cool with that.
It's entirely possible that the FDA comes back and says, you know what, we were wrong about this.
Lo and behold, from CNBC, FDA appears to soften stance on hydroxychloroquine after Trump says he takes the malaria drug.
Or maybe it's just because we've known for a long time it's not that dangerous, and if your doctor agrees you can take it, you can!
And if your doctor says don't, you shouldn't!
Is it really that hard?
No, everybody wants to be angry about something.
I tell you now, the way they're framing this story is it certainly seems like the FDA was ordered to, or it's like a conspiracy.
The US FDA said Tuesday that taking hydroxychloroquine is ultimately a choice between patients and their healthcare providers, appearing to soften its earlier advisory against taking the anti-malaria drug outside of a hospital.
The decision to take any drug is ultimately a decision between a patient and their doctor.
Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are already FDA approved for treating malaria, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis, and off-label use.
The only thing I don't want you to ignore from me is when I say, ask your doctor, he knows better.
Now, of course, the main takeaway I wanted to bring here was just that...
Like always, the situation is not cut and dry or black and white.
There's always something going on in the middle.
There's always people trying to claim they know everything.
And there's always people who are trying to make it controversial that Donald Trump said this.
So I ask all of you to do one thing.
If your talking points align with communist China, please reflect upon what you are saying, because that seems weird.
Now, like, to be fair, China is pretty adversarial with the U.S.
They're not completely wrong on literally everything.
There have been studies that come out of China, okay, and there's data we want from them.
But what I'm trying to say is not a dig at necessarily just China, though I think China's to blame for most of this.
It's that this is an adversarial country.
If you find yourself aligning with their opinions, ask yourself why.
I'm not saying you're wrong.
And I'm not saying, you know, that China is only ever going to say things bad about Trump.
I just think that they don't like Trump for a lot of reasons.
We are engaging in conflict.
The same is true for Russia.
If you find yourself in alignment with Russian propaganda, stop and ask yourself why.
These are fair questions to ask.
It doesn't mean you're wrong.
It doesn't mean China is wrong.
It doesn't mean that Russia is wrong.
It just means pay attention to the adversaries who are propping up hate and rage in this country.
Because it might not actually be about the drug or the culture war.
It might be an effort to sow division between both sides.
As we learned from the Russia investigation, as limited as their efforts really were, overhyped a lot by the media, They were trying to prop up both factions of the culture war, both parent factions, the left and the right, to get each other.
They were supporting protests on both sides.
So when it comes to what Communist China is saying, it's not the end-all be-all.
I'm just saying, I just find it so weird that it happens so often.
Okay, I get it.
You don't like Trump.
My concern is that you're just saying things because you don't like Trump.
And if you do that, you are going to be wrong all of the time.
Trump is wrong often.
A lot, actually.
But if you just oppose everything he says, then you're gonna be wrong all the time, too.
It's just so stupid.
What a waste of our time.
And for some reason, this video is still a little bit longer than average.
I'll leave it there.
Stick around.
Next segment's coming up at 6 p.m.
YouTube.com slash TimCastNews, and I'll see you all there.
In a follow-up to my main segment over at TimCast.net, check it out if you haven't already, I talked about the stupid news cycle that we're in and the stupid politics that we get because apparently it's what we deserve.
You know what?
It's a drama day.
For whatever reason, today is all about the drama.
See, I wake up and there's stupid drama, Fox News, CNN, so I get into this thing with the dude on Twitter, and then we have this other Lefty activists, journalists trying to drag me, and I'm like, what's with the drama?
And then all of a sudden you get Nancy Pelosi calling Donald Trump morbidly obese, China saying that Trump rules by witchcraft.
You know what?
This is the politics we deserve.
Trump has fired back.
Nancy Pelosi is a sick woman with lots of mental problems.
I love it.
You know, it's a love-hate thing.
I long for the days where, you know, when I was younger, I was under the impression that politics, I was a kid, I was so stupid, was gonna be like, you know, two people passionately arguing their cause, saying, no, listen here, if we tax too much, we stifle business.
unidentified
No, you don't understand, these bigger businesses are exploiting the system, they must pay their fair share.
I'm like, hmm, these are really interesting points to be made.
Now it's just, you're fat, the president is plump, he's an orange Cheeto dictator.
Joe Biden had the absolute worst insult.
President Tweety, are you kidding me?
He calls you Sleepy Joe, Creepy Joe, Creepy Uncle Joe.
Well, I don't know if Trump calls him Creepy Uncle Joe, but he calls him Sleepy Joe Biden.
Everyone else calls him Creepy and Hansy and all that stuff.
And the best you could muster is Tweety?
Come on.
Nancy Pelosi had, it was actually a really good dig at Trump because the delivery was actually spot on.
I don't know if you saw it, but she said, you know, she was asked about Trump taking hydroxychloroquine.
And we'll read some of this and I got another, you know, I'll show you some more.
The choices for Biden's VP.
It's just, we're in some kind of satirical Clown show or whatever.
But anyway, Nancy Pelosi was asked and she said, you know, I don't think he can do what he wants, but I'm worried about, you know, someone who, you know, in his age group and his, well, weight group, morbidly obese.
It's funny.
I think it's very, very funny.
It was excellent delivery from Nancy Pelosi, who, mind you, could be easily torn apart In much worse ways, okay?
If she wants to rag on Trump, and that's clearly what she was trying to do by calling him morbidly obese.
Trump is not morbidly obese.
Trump is just obese.
Trump should lose weight.
I think it was funny nonetheless, and I think President Plump is still kind of funny.
But Nancy Pelosi, hey man, glass houses, stones, you know, pots, kettles, black, you know, the whole thing.
Nancy is... I'm not gonna play the game.
People are throwing a lot of... Okay, I'll do it.
In response to what she said about Trump, people are now calling her an alcoholic, making fun of her teeth and her inability to speak, and they're calling her, like, the mummy politician or whatever, so it's like...
This is what we get, I guess.
Let's read apparently what Donald Trump said.
Donald Trump slams Nancy Pelosi as sick after she called him morbidly obese and claims research
warning hydroxy is dangerous is a Trump enemy statement as he doubles down on taking it
to prevent coronavirus.
He blasted Speaker Nancy Pelosi as a sick woman with a lot of mental problems after
she called him morbidly obese and he claimed academic research showing the dangers of hydroxychloroquine
was done by his enemies.
Quote, Pelosi is a sick woman.
She got a lot of problems, a lot of mental problems, President Trump said during a visit to Capitol Hill where he had lunch with Senate Republicans.
Pelosi said the morbidly obese president was putting his health at risk with his daily dose of hydroxychloroquine in an interview with CNN Monday night.
Who cares?
I love it, man.
Listen, this is the politics that we've earned in the reality TV era.
And they like to blame Trump for it and say that, you know, Trump is the one doing this.
It's his fault.
Actually, I'll throw it to Family Guy.
There's an old episode from a couple years ago I was watching recently where they actually meet Trump.
And of course, you know, Seth MacFarlane is a lefty dude.
So, you have Trump as this very obese, like morbidly obese, with tiny hands and, you know, an orange painted face.
And he gets into a fight with Peter Griffin.
This is actually a really good point.
I think Seth MacFarlane's defense is poor.
It is a cartoon show.
I don't know if it's supposed to be serious or not.
But Peter Griffin says something about Donald Trump being, like, awful and why can't he just be normal and stuff.
And then Trump, in the show, his response was, but what about you?
You're Peter Griffin.
And Peter says, who am I?
You know, I'm nobody.
And Trump says, no, you're Peter Griffin from Family Guy.
All of these young people who they heard their first gay, Jewish or black joke from you.
And then Peter's response, which I believe is like Seth trying to defend himself, is, yeah, but people can turn me off.
You, you're on like all the time.
I appreciated the argument, the back and forth.
But the reality is Trump wouldn't be possible without someone like Seth MacFarlane and without Matt Stone and Trey Parker or South Park.
It wouldn't be possible without Bill Maher or Jon Stewart.
Trump is the product of the culture.
Everything led up to this moment.
All of the edgy jokes, the ironic, you know, Nazism, whatever you want to call it, it was all people growing up watching you guys, these liberal pundits and journalists, not journalists, I'm sorry, comedians, people like Seth MacFarlane, making these jokes, which created the environment for this, you know, this raucous internet humor, mockery, insults, and then along comes Donald Trump.
And Donald Trump says it like it is.
And I don't know if he's actually saying it like it is.
A lot of people say that's what he's doing, right?
What I mean to say is, Donald Trump just kinda has, he has no filter.
He just says stuff.
And people often drag him for it, and a lot of people love him for it.
This was the perfect person to embody all of the anger of the people who are tired of the media, who had been doing the same thing to them.
Combine this with cancel culture, which is the natural conclusion to what the left had been doing.
The bleeding heart liberal character, the liberal douche.
That's what Brian Griffin kind of is him, if you watch Family Guy.
You have the mockery of the right, the insults, the derision, the offensive jokes, but you also have the social justice, the we're doing good, we are helping everybody.
And the natural conclusion to these two things is edgy free speech comedy and insane social justice.
This is what we've created.
Then Donald Trump comes around and he starts talking in a way that speaks to the people who like the edgy shock humor.
They thought it was funny.
Trump's an entertainer.
He's a funny guy.
He really is.
You can't deny it.
Anybody claiming Trump isn't funny is lying.
He really is.
He's even self-deprecating.
The dude knows how to make a joke.
But he also has no filter.
So because of Trump and the way he talks, everyone else gets mad and says Trump is doing it when he's not.
Trump is a symptom of what's happening, not the cause of it.
He embodies the anger of the people who are tired of the elites of the establishment mocking them, looking down on them, spitting on them, and making fun of them on TV.
So then these people, these establishment people, respond in kind.
CNN's Jim Acosta becomes a reality TV host.
That's the way we're going to make it, right?
You get a bunch of people on YouTube doing the same thing, and then you get Nancy Pelosi calling him morbidly obese, and then you get a whole bunch of people saying, well, if you say it, I'll say it.
Then we saw some people, some people were tweeting and making fun of Stacey Abrams.
And I saw another tweet from someone saying, why are you dragging her into this?
If Pelosi wants to make fun of Trump, don't fire off at somebody else, make fun of Nancy Pelosi, or don't make fun of anybody at all for their appearance or looks.
I can't tell you what to do.
I can't tell you what your morals should be.
This is a story from the National Review, Biden's most ridiculous Veep prospect.
I mean, look, I bring her in now because Abrams is, in my opinion, another example of the absurdity of modern politics.
I don't mean this as anything necessarily personal.
Well, I don't know how to describe this criticism, but she wore a cape.
Okay?
She wore a cape.
She did an interview, they took a picture of her, she was standing shrouded in mist, backlit, wearing a cape.
What is happening?
You know what, man?
I don't even know what we're supposed to be fighting for at this point.
Because, look, the Republicans have some core issues, liberty, free speech, things like that.
The Democrats argue for the same things while doing the opposite.
I don't even know what the Democrats want to do.
Do they want immigration or no immigration?
Do they want free healthcare or public health?
Like, what are they campaigning for?
What are they advocating for?
They seem to be just doing the exact same thing Trump does.
It's like there's no actual politics anymore.
This is why I think, you know, politics has long been a popularity contest, right?
Who's cooler?
Who's funnier?
That's why Trump beat Hillary Clinton, and very, very, like, by thin margins, mind you.
Now, he won the Electoral College by a decent amount, but in some states by only thousands of votes.
Trump was more popular.
He was funnier.
A lot of people don't like him, but he was a funny guy.
He's a famous celebrity, and Hillary Clinton was detested by a lot of people.
Maybe Joe Biden will win this time around?
I really don't think so.
But I think what we're seeing here, with the insults, yeah, we are going to have a popularity contest, and it's not even going to be a question about it.
I mean, people used to say it was a popularity contest, you know, figuratively.
They were saying it half-jokingly.
Now it's like, it's straight up.
Like, what policies is anyone putting forward?
Trump's going to come up for 2020 and be like, we're going to make this country great, and we're going to deal with China and stuff.
And it's going to be like, okay, there's some semblance of policy.
But what comes in 2024?
If the political rhetoric we have right now is basically like, Trump's fat, Pelosi's old, Stacey Abrams wore a cape, and all this nonsense, then what do you think's gonna happen?
It's really gonna devolve into like, don't vote for that guy, did you see the shoes he was wearing?
What a loser!
What a horse face!
And people are gonna laugh, and they're gonna love it, and they're gonna say, yeah, you tell him!
Right now, politics has almost nothing to do with policy.
That's why people are saying, you know, I'm conservative, but conservatives know I'm not.
Because policy-wise, I'm not.
And that's why I was willing to support someone like Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard for their policies.
But where were they in the culture war?
Yang and Yang supporters were middle of the road.
Fans of Joe Rogan, for instance.
Tulsi Gabbard, same thing.
Although their policies were center-left and progressive, when it came to cultural issues, they were normal people who actually talked about ideas.
The Democrats didn't want that.
They didn't want Tulsi Gabbard because she was the wrong culture war candidate.
So they went after her and the media smeared her and wiped her out.
Andrew Yang had a bunch of good policy ideas.
I'm a UBI skeptic, to be honest, but I was hoping that we could at least try and get somebody who wasn't a potty mouth, who actually had some ideas.
Joe Biden has no idea what's going on.
He didn't even exist.
I've said this before, and I'll say it again, and I'll wrap up on this point.
If the Democrats found someone who had Trump's policy positions, maybe a little to the left on some issues, a little bit, No potty mouth.
Calm.
Collected.
I think they'd win.
Whoever this person was.
They can't do it, though.
So they don't do it.
Instead, you get Trump, and Trump will win.
And they know he's gonna win.
And that's why they don't bother, I guess.
They can't beat him.
Fine.
Whatever.
What happens in 2024?
You know, you need to be tough.
You need to be authentic.
You need to be real.
But what you don't need to be is, well, what you don't want to be is plastic.
And you don't want to be what Trump is.
You can hold his positions, but I tell you this, and I mean it, a lot of people, I know a lot of people really like the way Trump acts.
He's got a lot of supporters who love his attitude, loves how he insults these people.
I think regular Americans, the ones who just want to go to the beach or go to the gym, who want to work, come home and chill, would prefer if Trump wasn't tweeting nonsense all the time.
His dyads love it.
It's funny.
But I've talked to a lot of regular people.
This is my assumption, my opinions.
If Trump toned things down, he'd probably get a lot of support really, really fast.
But he can't.
He's Trump.
So what do we get?
I'm not a big fan of drama.
It is a rarity for me to actually engage with other people that I'm critiquing.
Typically, I just look back at the stories, I talk about what's going on, kind of mind my own business.
But today, something different.
You see, Oliver Darcy of CNN tweeted about what Fox News was covering.
And I've repeatedly ragged on CNN, Oliver Darcy, Brian Stelter specifically, because they're basically becoming the Fox News review channel.
They don't debunk or fact check.
They literally just give us a TV guide for Fox News.
It's the weirdest thing.
Well, mostly Oliver Darcy.
He's a media reporter over at CNN.
Well, I engaged with him on Twitter, and we exchanged some words.
He tried to defend himself, and I'm going to show you this drama because I think it's kind of funny.
And he ultimately just kind of disappeared as soon as I brought up Chris Cuomo faking his quarantine.
But there is a bigger story here.
Glenn Greenwald from The Intercept writes, Ben Smith's NYT critique of Ronan Farrow describes a toxic, corrosive, and still vibrant Trump-era pathology.
Resistance journalism.
And that's what we're swimming in right now.
Resistance journalism.
Even though Russiagate ended, the conspiracy-minded fake news trash still exists.
And I have to wonder.
There are some journalists I know.
I'll do air quotes.
Journalists.
Who have gained hundreds of thousands of followers peddling fake news about Russiagate over the past several years.
How do they still have followers?
How are they still being booked on these cable channels?
Not only were they wrong about their reporting, and Russiagate itself.
We later learned that with the release of these transcripts, many of these people appearing on these cable networks, the non-journalists, like the Obama administration types, were just making it up.
They had no evidence at all.
Yet the media uncritically just word vomits all day, every day.
Glenn Greenwald is a bit of a progressive guy.
I disagree with him on many things, but I love his takedowns of the conspiracy media and the fake news.
While The Intercept is far from perfect, and I've called them out for their poorly framed articles, everybody can be criticized.
I think The Intercept does a pretty good job, especially when they're calling out the establishment press and how they lie.
Ben Smith, formerly of BuzzFeed News.
I've been singing his praises for quite some time.
He's now at the New York Times, and he is sparing no words.
Holding no punches.
I mean, maybe he's holding some punches, but man, is he really going after the establishment.
He actually wrote a critique, a takedown of Ronan Farrow, who's like a media darling, a liberal darling.
Gotta say I'm impressed.
In it, he brings up something called resistance journalism.
Here's a quote.
He said, Pharaoh's work, though, reveals the weakness of a kind of resistance journalism that has thrived in the age of Donald Trump.
That if reporters swim ably along with the tides of social media and produce damaging reporting about public figures most disliked by the loudest voices, the old rules of fairness and open-mindedness can seem more like impediments than essential journalistic imperatives.
That can be a dangerous approach, particularly in a moment when the idea of truth and a shared set of facts is under assault.
Think about that.
The goal is target high-profile individuals that enough people hate to generate support to make money.
It works.
That's what they're doing.
I bring you now to Mr. Oliver Darcy, who is getting a direct dose of criticism from me and a bit of drama.
Again, I'm not a big drama person, so it is the rarity when you see me actually do a thread about my back and forth with someone.
But I want to get into this.
I think it's important to criticize what CNN is doing, this resistance journalism, this fake news, how they manipulate people and how they devolve into something unrecognizable, just a heap of garbage.
Take a look at this tweet.
Oliver Darcy said, here's a graph showing how Fox News spent a lot more time last week discussing topics related to the Obamagate conspiracy than it did talking about the coronavirus, which has killed tens of thousands of Americans.
You actually spent time to track the words they were saying?
Wow.
What you can't really see, it's kind of small, is that, for those that are listening, You got a blue line, you got a red line.
The red line says Obamagate.
And we can see that around, you know, May 11th, it spikes.
And you can see coronavirus dips down quite a bit.
But you can see it's scaled, right?
So the peak is actually 30, the top of the chart is 30%, the bottom is 10%.
What Oliver Darcy is doing right here is not a critique of Fox News necessarily.
If you are a resistance individual, it probably is a critique because now you're going, I can't believe they're talking about Obamagate instead of coronavirus, which is really dumb because it was a span over a few days when big breaking news came out.
I mean, listen, Michael Flynn had his charges dropped.
This was huge news.
And yes, Donald Trump then tweeted about Obamagate.
Perhaps Fox News wanted to cover that.
If Oliver Darcy wanted to post a long-form critique of Obamagate, argue against it, or actually create an argument about why coronavirus was more relevant, I'd be willing to listen to it.
He's not doing that.
Instead, what we're getting is TV Guide.
Yes.
If you follow Oliver Darcy on Twitter, you will get TV Guide Fox News Edition.
You want to know what Fox News is talking about?
Just follow Oliver Darcy.
He won't critique the channel.
He won't fact-check the channel.
He won't debunk it.
He'll just tell you what Laura Ingraham said, or what Sean Hannity said, or the amount of words that were used.
So here's where it gets funny.
Drama time.
So, I tweeted, Oliver Darcy, host of Fox News Review.
It's like an angry director's commentary on one news channel.
He's not even debunking or fact-checking, it's literally a career dedicated to, quote, this is what Fox did today.
Oliver's response.
Sort of an important story for a media reporter when the president is obsessed with the cable
channel and gets his info and makes decisions based on what it airs. But apparently that's
too complicating of a concept for you to understand! Exclamation point. Too complicated!
I follow and critique the news all day every day.
I'm doing it literally right now.
A media reporter you'd think would actually report on the media.
Ben Smith is a media reporter, or media columnist for the New York Times, and he's done a really great job across the board.
There's not just one story to cover.
Ben Smith's critique nails what Oliver Darcy is doing.
It is perfect.
You see, there's a large group of resistance people who hate Fox News.
Yeah, Trump too.
Fine.
Oliver Darcy has found a high-profile takedown target.
It doesn't matter if he's critiquing.
It doesn't matter if he's actually talking about them.
All he has to do is say, look what Fox did.
Boom, clicks.
Now, to be fair, I'll accept equal criticism because I rag on CNN very often.
The difference, I would say, in my own defense, is that I'm actually critiquing and trying to debunk what CNN is doing and explain why they're fake news, where what Oliver is doing is literally like, did you see they talked about Obamagate yesterday?
I don't care if CNN talks about Trump all the time.
I care if they're lying and putting out fake news and that's what I'll critique.
They can absolutely talk about Fox News all day and night if they debunk it.
It's a fair point.
Yeah, Trump watches Fox News a lot.
Fox News is the highest rated cable channel.
I personally don't think it's necessarily that fair because even though they're the highest rated cable news channel, they're still a ton of other Channels that have a more leftist perspective.
So Fox News still isn't all that powerful, right?
But it's fine if you want to critique or fact-check.
I'll go after CNN and MSNBC for their fake news.
I only ask that if Oliver Darcy and CNN actually want to review Fox News, will they actually present some facts and debunk and challenge what's being said?
No, this is something else.
My response was, you guys did nothing but Russia for years.
Don't act all high and mighty.
You're the Fox News review guy.
I then said, Fox is one channel.
The president watches it, but still, he's been ragging on Fox for the past year.
In fact, he just tweeted smack-talking Fox last night.
Yes, last night Trump said, Fox News, what's happened?
Oh, harumph.
Oliver's response.
Dude, the President of the United States literally spends his days live tweeting what he sees on Fox.
Maybe focus on his obsession with the network, not my reporting on it.
But you're not reporting on it.
You're just telling me what Fox is talking about.
If you wanted to talk about the President and question the President's sources and things like that, debunk what he's saying.
But simply telling me what Fox is covering is not reporting.
It's what Ben Smith said.
High profile target.
Loud enough angry voices.
You've found your audience.
Congratulations.
My response to that, I said, uh, right.
And you're not fact-checking or debunking, you're just tweeting about what people on Fox say.
It's not even about Trump half the time, it's just Fox.
Care to comment on Cuomo and your network faking his quarantine?
And poof!
Like magic!
A beautiful magic act where the assistant to Brian Stelter, Oliver Darcy, was put in a little box, and now he's gone.
Simply bring up that CNN produces fake news and he won't comment on it because he's not really interested in what the president is doing.
I don't even know why he bothered to try and justify what he's doing.
It is apparent you're the TV guide for Fox News because all of the... You can see all the replies.
People are saying, aha, Fox isn't news.
You've proven it.
Oh, he didn't even say anything about Obamagate.
Care to actually explain what Obamagate is to anybody?
I didn't think so.
You're just calling it a conspiracy.
And here we go.
Here's what I said to him.
Can't lose those CNN shill bucks, right Oliver?
Might get fired if you actually talk about how your network staged Chris Cuomo being under quarantine.
But please, continue to explain to me why being the TV guide for Fox News is so important.
You know what, man?
I hate drama.
I really hate drama.
You want to criticize me?
People do it all day, every day.
I am totally fine with it.
I don't think I'm perfect, right?
I try to do my best.
I don't believe that's true for what CNN is doing.
Chris Cuomo apparently went on his show last night and started blaming Trump over the Pensacola.
I don't want to get too much into that stuff.
But it's just, CNN is devolving into a knockoff MSNBC.
And it's substantially worse.
Look, the guy running it now, Zucker, he's a reality TV guy.
We knew where they were going the whole time.
They don't bring on any conflicting voices.
They don't bring on anyone to challenge anything.
It's just reality TV garbage.
Like Ben Smith said.
Let me read a little bit.
I want to now read the story about resistance journalism.
We get to combine the establishment and media critiques of Glenn Greenwald and Ben Smith.
It is truly an excellent read, mind you.
After talking about the dangerous approach, particularly in the moment when the idea of truth and a shared set of facts is under assault, Glenn Greenwald continues.
In assailing Farrow for peddling unproven conspiracy theories, Smith argues that such journalistic practices are particularly dangerous in an era where conspiracy theories are increasingly commonplace.
Yet unlike most journalists with a mainstream platform, Smith emphasizes that conspiracy theories are commonly used not only by Trump and his movement, Donald Trump, one man.
If Donald Trump has a bad idea, I really don't care all that much.
is virtually never denounced by journalists because mainstream news outlets themselves
play a key role in peddling them. And there we go. Donald Trump, one man.
If Donald Trump has a bad idea, I really don't care all that much. I mean, he's the president,
so his bad ideas are substantially more important than the average person's bad ideas.
And you guys, if you've listened to my content consistently, you've heard me critique the
president on a wide range of things, but usually just the foreign policy stuff, right?
Let's be honest.
Selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, missile strikes, you've heard me, Yemen commando raids, drone strikes.
These are the things that I'm just like, every president does, I'm not gonna lend my support to it, it needs to be criticized.
But when it comes to what the mainstream press does, they're putting out fake news deliberately.
This is why I think there's a big difference between what I do and what, say, CNN is doing.
CNN has an editorial department.
They have a higher-up.
They have instructions.
They're telling people to do things to encourage things.
I'm one dude with an opinion.
If you're one person, if you're Trump, and you say, I saw this story in the news about Obamagate.
Man, that's crazy.
Okay.
That's, you read something.
I can respect that.
If you're a news organization and you have a big meeting where everyone comes together and they say, let's claim Trump colluded with Russia.
Let's just do it.
You've now got people working all together in an establishment to push a narrative that many would know to be false.
If I have an opinion as an individual, I'm welcome to say it.
And the same is true to varying degrees with Oliver Darcy.
Except he works for a company as a media reporter where his job is to report on the press, and all he does is rag on Fox News and give us a window into what's basically Fox News TV Guide.
Not that I really needed it, but I appreciate it.
Fine.
I'm kidding, by the way.
Let's read this quote from Ben Smith's article.
He says we are living in an era of conspiracies and dangerous untruths, many pushed by President Trump, but others hyped by his enemies that have lured ordinary Americans into passionately believing wild and unfounded theories and fiercely rejecting evidence to the contrary.
The best reporting tries to capture the most attainable version of the truth with clarity and humility about what we don't know.
Instead, Mr. Farrow told us what we wanted to believe about the way power works, and now it seems he and his publicity team are not even pretending to know if it's true.
This is really incredible.
Ben Smith of the New York Times actually fact-checked a lot of what Ronan Farrow had claimed and found, at least according to his assessment, not true.
You know, I'm really impressed by the intelligence of Ronan Farrow and his team.
They saw what was going on with Russiagate, dissected the media system, and applied it in another direction.
It was brilliant!
Brilliant!
I, as an individual, love taking apart machines.
I like looking at them, figuring out how they work, because you can reapply the principles that make the machine turn in a different direction.
When it came to resistance journalism and the anti-Trump narrative, you can see all that mattered is what... This is coming from Ben Smith.
People hate Trump.
Therefore, anything goes.
All you have to do is present something as crazy as possible that might make Trump seem bad, and people will applaud you for it.
They will love it.
They will buy it.
They will eat it up.
Based on that, based on the assumptions people have about people like Trump, can we do this again?
The answer?
Yes, and he did.
Bravo, good sir.
Now, let's be real.
I think what he uncovered about Weinstein and Lauer and his other people, it's actually for the most part on point.
These people were disgusting.
Now, the challenge is, Knowing what he did and knowing this resistance journalism tactics, I wonder how much of it was actually misframed and misrepresented.
I can't trust his reporting if that's the case.
I mean, look, Ben Smith straight-up says, he straight-up debunks a few of the major claims made about these individuals by Pharaoh, and that calls into question everything about it.
Let's read a little bit more about what Glenn Greenwald says.
Ever since Donald Trump was elected, and one could argue even in the months leading up to his
election, journalistic standards have been consciously jettisoned when it comes to reporting
on public figures who, in Smith's words, are most disliked by the loudest voices,
particularly when such reporting swims ably along with the tides of social media.
Put another way, as long as the targets of one's conspiracy theories and attacks are
regarded as villains by the guardians of mainstream liberal social media circles,
journalists reap endless career rewards for publishing unvetted and unproven, even false
attacks on such people while never suffering any negative consequences when their stories
are exposed as shabby frauds. I think I think this actually explains very well why there's so few hit pieces against me, but ridiculous takedowns of other personalities.
I mean, for one, I'm not an overt supporter of any political party or individual, although I've made donations a lot to Democrats.
I know, it's kind of funny, right?
In my opinion, in my defense, trying to donate to people I think could actually save the party.
Because as the saying goes, an eagle needs two strong wings to fly, and right now the left wing is shattered into a million pieces.
And there are some people I think could actually bring something sane to the party.
That's maybe my naivety, because I'm out of that as far as I'm concerned.
But I typically don't go to war with people on Twitter.
Drama is rare for me.
And for the most part, I actually respectfully engage with people on various platforms.
I am not someone most people care about.
I'm a milquetoast fence-sitter.
And thus, I'm not an easy target for them because nobody cares who I am, to be honest.
I mean, maybe you guys watching like watching my videos.
A lot of people, like, you know, hanging out, following me on Twitter.
But the group of people who dislike me and are, you know, it's relatively small.
So it doesn't fit the framework.
You can look at other higher profile personalities like Mike Cernovich.
People- you- because he was a high profile- I say was, but you know, he was a very active Trump supporter.
I don't want to assert where I know- I know where he is now and what, you know, he goes by.
But Mike Cernovich was very high profile.
And they went after him with hit piece after hit piece after hit piece.
They do something similar with Joe Rogan.
Why?
High profile, enough people hate you, then they can make money off that hate.
That's how the game works.
Fortunately for me, not enough people hate me, I guess?
So, it doesn't really work out that well for the resistance journalism.
Glenn says, it is this resistance journalism sickness that has caused U.S.
politics to be drowned for three years in little other than salacious and fact-free conspiracy theories about Trump and his family members and closest associates.
Putin has infiltrated and taken over the U.S.
government through blackmail leveraged over Trump and used it to dictate U.S.
policy.
Trump officials conspired with the Kremlin to interfere in the 2016 election.
Russia was attacking the U.S.
by hacking its electricity grid.
Oh, I love it!
Recruiting journalists to serve as clandestine Kremlin messengers, and plotting to cut off heat to Americans in winter.
Mainstream media debacles, all in service of promoting the same set of conspiracy theories against Trump, are literally too numerous to count, requiring one to select the worst offenses as illustrative.
In March of last year, Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi writing under the headline, quote, it's official, Russiagate is this generation's WMD, compared the prevailing media climate since 2016 to that which prevailed in 2002 and 2003 regarding the invasion of Iraq and the so-called war on terror.
Little to no dissent permitted.
Skeptics of media-endorsed orthodoxies shunned and excluded.
And worst of all, the very journalists who were most wrong in peddling false conspiracy theories were exactly those who ended up the most rewarded on the ground that even though they spread falsehoods, they did so for the right cause.
And there it is.
It's what I've been saying for quite some time.
When you write fake news, you make money, you gain followers.
And when you correct, no one cares.
The people who hate Trump will not stop following you.
For years, the resistance journalist people published fake news about Trump gaining hundreds of thousands of followers.
And today, Those people still follow them.
They don't care if it was wrong.
It feels good.
Orange man bad.
That's all that matters.
The reality is it extends beyond the orange man.
As Ronan Farrow found, you can extend that principle to basically anybody.
Find someone sufficiently famous enough and you can even make the hate yourself because you can prey upon people's assumptions.
Glenn says, under that warped rubric, In which spreading falsehoods is commendable, as long as it was done to harm the evildoers.
The New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg, one of the most damaging endorsers of false conspiracy theories about Iraq, rose to become editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, while two of the most deceitful Bush-era neocons, Bush-Cheney's speechwriter, Two of the, uh, David Frum and Supreme Propagandist Bill Kristol have reprised their role as leading propagandists and conspiracy theorists, only this time aimed against the GOP president instead of on his behalf, and thus have become beloved liberal media icons.
The communications director for both the Bush-Cheney campaign and its White House, Nicole Wallace, is one of the most popular liberal cable hosts from her MSNBC perch.
I love it!
George W. Bush.
Do you remember this poll came out?
W. Bush was polling more favorably among Democrats than Donald Trump was.
How insane have people become?
It's amazing.
And they tell me That I changed.
Tim sure has become different.
They say, man, you've changed.
No, I really didn't.
I mean, a little bit.
Come on, let's be real.
I grew up.
I think back to my teenage years and my early 20s, and there's a lot of things I didn't know for sure.
So I definitely had my opinions change as I got older.
For the most part, my opinions on policy and the structure of government, civil services and things, they mostly remain the same.
And I've maintained those.
My opinions are relatively founded.
Static.
Look, if you're presented with new information, your opinions change, that's fair.
But what happened is, these resistance people operate off an emotional basis of hating Donald Trump.
That's what it's all about.
That's the market opportunity.
So I'll throw it back to Mr. Darcy, Oliver Darcy, and Brian Stelter.
I'm pretty sure they know what they're doing is the opposite of prestigious.
Do you think anyone in their right mind will write about the great journalism of famed media reporters Brian Stalter and Oliver Darcy, or will they be relegated to footnotes of history as Fox News review channels?
This is why I hate drama.
unidentified
This is why I can't stand it when people are like, Tim, did you hear someone made a video about you?
The only reason I'm engaging in this drama with him is because it's me talking about what's going on with the press as a whole.
And it's an individual target of somebody who is doing it more so than most other people.
They've built careers off this.
You've got the Donald Trump reply guys.
It's what they do.
Donald Trump tweets, what do they do?
They respond to Trump saying, you're dumb.
And they get a ton of followers.
Congratulations!
I hope you can find a way to monetize that in the future.
And I hope that deep down, you know, do you really think in the future they're going to say, Donald Trump reply guy number 73, historical figure and icon?
The answer is no.
Probably not.
Because you are dedicating your time to bickering about nonsense.
This is why I hate drama.
I don't care if someone makes a video about me.
I'm not going to respond to it.
Now, many of you and the haters will say, haha, Tim thinks they're going to write about him.
All he does is reply to people and comment on news.
I never thought.
I never said I was looking for some great prestige.
And in that regard, maybe they aren't either.
Maybe it's a quick path to a paycheck.
But I will tell you what.
I have tried to make sure that there is balance in the work that I do.
Working on starting a news company, fact-checking organizations, other shows.
What the critics like to do is highlight my main channel, which is very political, and my opinions are very much pointed at Democrats and the media establishment.
Because I have my opinions and my bias, that's fair.
They often make sure they go out of their way to ignore Scanner, formerly Subverse.
They make sure to ignore this channel and Timcast IRL, where we talk about aliens and movies.
I do almost four hours of content every day, of which about 40 minutes has to do with politics.
I don't think I'm perfect.
I think I'm worthy of criticism in many similar ways.
However, what we are getting right now in our political landscape are people just blindly following overt grifters who do nothing but Fox News bad, Orange Man bad, propping up people who are nasty people.
I'm going to read you this one last thing.
Here we go.
Exactly the same journalism-destroying dynamic is driving the post-Russiagate media landscape.
There is literally no accountability for the journalists and news outlets that spread falsehoods in their pages, on their airwaves, and through their viral social media postings.
The Washington Post's media columnist, Eric Wemple, has been one of the very few journalists devoted to holding these myth peddlers accountable.
Recounting how one of the most reckless Russiagate conspiracy maximalists, Natasha Bertrand, became an overnight social media and journalism star by peddling discredited, conspiratorial trash.
She was notably hired by Jeffrey Goldberg to cover Russiagate for The Atlantic.
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow spent three years hyping conspiratorial junk with no need to even retract any of it.
And Mother Jones' David Corn played a crucial, decisively unjournalistic role in mainstreaming the lies of the Steele dossier, all with zero effect on his journalistic status other than to enrich him through a predictably best-selling book that peddled those unhinged conspiracies further.
I gotta keep this short.
It's already going on long.
But I'll shout this out.
Ben Smith, the former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, published the Steele dossier.
In my opinion, making things worse.
I mean, it was unverified.
I understand his argument for it.
The people had a right to see what journalists and politicians were talking about.
You can criticize him, but I'll tell you what.
Pencils out of erasers.
For all the bad that BuzzFeed News had done, Ben Smith is now absolutely slaying it at the New York Times.
And it's epic.
It's excellent work.
I'll leave it there.
We'll see how the future plays out.
Stick around, next segment's coming up at 1pm on this channel.
And I will see you all then.
Recently I covered a story about Google rolling back a diversity and inclusion program.
It was written by an activist working for NBC News who seemed to be quite upset that this was happening.
We now have a major breaking update.
House Democrats press Google over report of scaled back diversity efforts.
It is no secret that companies across Silicon Valley and the tech sector have struggled to increase diversity, and Google is no exception, the representatives wrote.
This story is also written by the same activist.
Now the reason I call this individual an activist, and the reason I say that they're upset about it, is that on Twitter they are now celebrating the intervention of the Democrats going to Google and saying, you know, asking questions about this.
Certainly not something a journalist would do if they had no stake in the game.
Clearly, this individual is happier now that the Democrats are trying to intervene.
The reason I say it's not a journalist is that this woman who works for NBC News previously worked for a company, I believe it was Slate, where she sent in an email that implied some things ultimately resulting in the banking account of some right-wing individuals being closed, their merchant account for their business.
The email in question I reported on was essentially an activist tactic where you accuse a company of frame, you frame it in a certain way like, I'm curious as to why your business actively supports this group or whatever, right?
And you can argue that if someone opens a bank account for your business, you're supporting them, but it's really sneaky.
This scares the PR people because they know what comes next.
You're going to write a hit piece claiming that they chose to support them and when we're alerted did nothing.
What do they do?
They ban the individuals.
It's a common tactic.
I don't care about the Google diversity and inclusion narrative.
We'll go through it maybe.
We'll see what the update is because it's important context.
But what I'm going to walk you through today Is how this activist in media tried to smear me because I accurately reported on what she was doing and also gave my opinion.
Fine.
You want to counter with your opinion?
I'm totally fine with that.
But I'm going to show you the proof.
This individual is an activist.
What we're seeing is the activist infiltration of mainstream media and how they funnel leftist ideology from the press to the Democrats and to Google.
What she's done here is she's created public pressure for something she clearly wants.
This alerted Democrats to then rally to the cause and say, we've seen this investigation, this is alarming, to then use public pressure to go after Google to force them to inject ideology into their company.
It's going to be a fun one.
This is the main story.
This is the first story.
House Democrats press Google over report of scaled-back diversity efforts.
The original story.
Current and ex-employees allege Google drastically rolled back diversity and inclusion programs.
I take you now to the Twitter of the journalist in question.
It's a viral tweet, mind you.
So, she says, Scoop, Google has drastically rolled back its diversity work due to fears of being perceived as anti-conservative.
Sources say employees have been pushed out, programs cut, and workers have been discouraged from even using the word diversity anymore.
She went on to say, sources told me new diversity trainings at Google lack the racial justice framework that employees worked so hard to build.
Google confirmed it's turning to vendors to create its diversity training, saying it lacks the resources to build D&I trainings in-house.
Google is a model for workplace culture in Silicon Valley and beyond.
There's a concern that companies could follow suit, and that if Google and other tech companies deprioritize diversity, that philosophy will impact the AI products that we all rely on.
Now, first of all, you could argue she's just reporting this stuff, telling people concerns.
But it's a fringe ideology.
I mean, Google actually isn't even, doesn't even have racial parity for white people.
If the argument is that you want racial parity, meaning there needs to be more, you know, individuals of certain ethnic backgrounds, well, that would include white people.
Google employs, I believe the number is around 53, I believe, percent of Google.
I have an older story, but take a look at this.
Google is still very white and male.
They say that globally, Google is about 69% male, and it's 53.1% white.
Well, if that's the case, and you want racial parity, meaning you want Google's interior to look similarly, To the country in terms of racial makeup, the U.S.
is around 70-72% white.
Meaning Google doesn't even have enough white people.
So it's weird that, you know, they make these arguments.
But I don't even really care if Google wants to hire whoever they want.
I think it's totally irrelevant.
But I do highlight this to show that what they're advocating for is ideologically driven, unpopular, and not based in principle.
The arguments she's putting forward are very much so to pre- Like, it's a really bad thing?
Oh no, if Google does it, it's a bad thing.
Why is it a bad thing?
Maybe it's a good thing.
Why frame it as a net negative?
It's just a business decision Google is making.
It's because they're making... Look, I'll just move on and show you the next tweet, right?
She tweeted this.
Another tweet that's now picking up steam.
Breaking.
In response to my reporting, 10 members of the house sent a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai today demanding answers about the company's alleged reduction to its diversity work, specifically asking about the impact on Google's AI teams.
First of all, you can see also the ego involved in response to my reporting.
Well, that's technically the truth, fine.
Is it really relevant for a journalist to say, I did this?
She's very proud of it, right?
And I'll show you, she celebrates.
Congress members are asking Google to directly answer questions about its cuts to its diversity and inclusion efforts following my investigation last week.
The cuts were made in an effort to shield Google from being perceived as anti-conservative, sources said.
Now I'm going to stop right here.
Perhaps she is just reporting on what sources have told her.
This is relevant information.
Whether it came from someone on the left or the right, I don't think it would matter.
It's interesting to know this is all happening.
But take a look at her responses.
Yo, this is so badass, says one person.
Thanks!
Clap, clap, clap, award, award, award.
In case you were still wondering if your work made a difference, it does.
Very obviously supporting left-wing activist causes, being praised for doing so, and clapping and saying thank you and praised for doing it.
Talking about how her investigation did this.
What we can see is a left-wing activist getting a job for one company, Moving to another mainstream company and now pushing this stuff.
We saw something similar with the guy from BuzzFeed who used to write fake news about Sargon of Akkad and Count Dankula, then getting a job at the Financial Times.
They work for these small, like, so she originally worked for I believe it was Slate, which is very left-wing.
She wrote activist pieces targeting people based on my understanding and my reporting it appears that she directly targeted a right-wing group to damage them financially.
That's my assessment based on what I saw her doing.
That's what activists would do, right?
Now here she is celebrating for activist causes and activists are cheering for her.
I take you now to this story where, I tell you what, normally I wouldn't care to actually engage in any kind of drama with this woman.
So it's less about me, though she directly writes about me and we have more evidence of her being an activist.
But it's more about, I want to give you a clear picture of how these activists navigate the space and manipulate public pressure to push fringe ideologies.
It's what I've been saying, right?
This is a story called Journalist's Resource from Harvard Kennedy, Shorenstein Center on Media Politics and Public Policy.
What she does, the same woman, is a very clever tactic to create a source which would be damaging to my reputation.
She doesn't directly attack me, she just seeds negative press that could eventually be used as a source to harm my public perception of me.
13 tips for journalists covering hate online.
You would think that writing a story about how to cover hate would not have a reference to me at all.
I think what we're seeing here is activist retribution against me for accurately reporting what she had done.
Listen, if you want to argue that my assessment of her email was wrong, that's fine, you can do so.
If you want an opinion about my work, that's fine, you can do so.
If you are tasked with writing tips for journalists online, and you shoehorn in a personal attack at me, who has nothing to do with this story, I find it absolutely interesting, don't you?
The goal we've seen from many journalists, and it's happened to me several times, they take out-of-context clips and they seed fake news.
Another activist who works for NBC, because NBC has a serious problem with hiring activists, included a fake clip arguing that I pushed the Seth Rich conspiracy.
Why?
Because I had argued that I didn't completely believe it was true.
But let me give you some context.
It had been reported definitively by Fox Business that Seth Rich had communications from WikiLeaks on his laptop or something to that effect.
I was asked about it, and this is my best understanding of what it was.
And I said I didn't think that it was completely true.
You know, maybe 60 or so percent.
We'll see what happens.
Sure enough, the story was retracted.
Why?
I'm a milquetoast fence-sitter.
I typically don't assert things unless I have facts to back them up.
At the time, Kim Dotcom and other individuals had argued the conspiracy theory was real, right?
Or that they had evidence.
And so I said, I don't know, I trust these individuals.
I typically put out information that I could use, that I've dealt with before.
And I still concluded in all of the videos, I just don't think it's going to happen.
I don't think it's legit.
This stuff never happens.
But of course, an activist at NBC, where this woman also works, included a clip out of context from another activist website.
Once that story got picked up by a bunch of other websites, he went in and removed the source, thus creating a circular loop of sourcing that had no real actual basis in reality.
It was then used by the Today Show to smear me.
Why?
Because I had been invited to the White House Social Media Summit.
They certainly couldn't have a journalist and political commentator centrist appearing.
It needed to be a who's who of the far right.
So they needed to make sure they damaged my reputation.
It's a tactic they use.
When I tell you this woman is a left-wing activist, I tell you very simply, it's because she's targeted her political opponents and got their businesses closed, and it's because she's advocating for leftist causes.
If you want to argue that I'm right-wing or conservative, by all means, do so, and give some real information to back that up.
Let me show you this story.
And again, to stress, This is a story about tips online.
Why would it include anything about me?
I honestly have no idea.
Full disclosure, I have a Google Alert set up for my name as well as other name, other stuff associated with me and brands I work with because it's just general PR stuff for your business.
So when stories pop up, I get notified by Google, here's someone writing about you.
Journalists resource.
Mind you, Harvard Kennedy School.
At the beginning of August 2019, okay, I'm not even gonna read this because she immediately just starts talking about, you know, a tragedy, so I'll ignore that.
She says, Online hate is not an easy beat.
First off, there's a psychological toll of spending hours in chat rooms and message boards where members talk admiringly about the desire to harm and even kill others based on their race, religion, gender, etc.
We get it, that's tough.
Now, before she gets into the details, she says this.
Consider a case from my own experience where my reporting triggered a harassment campaign.
Let's give some context.
It wasn't her reporting.
It was an email that was leaked to me by someone concerned about what she had done.
Let me tell you the story.
The Proud Boys chairman, Enrique Tarrio, had a business where he sold clothing.
Somebody, for some reason, he got banned from several merchandising, from payment processors.
He only got banned after he was contacted I'm sorry, after the payment processors were contacted by some journalists.
Now, I can confirm this journalist specifically contacted one bank, and what she said was alarming enough that someone who worked there saw it and leaked it, concerned that she was targeting individuals to get their accounts banned.
She said something to the effect of, you currently provide merchant services for, you know, the Proud Boys website, you know, these groups have done X, Y, and Z, have been accused of violence and all these things, you know, and then she said something to the effect of, like, you know, does your business condone this or support, you know, why do you support these organizations?
Something to that effect.
I don't have the email pulled up, so I want to be careful about how I phrase this, to be fair.
Sure enough, almost immediately, internal communications that I reviewed, but the bank refused to confirm, showed they panicked about negative press and moved to immediately terminate the account.
That's not journalism.
A journalistic ethic involves minimizing harm, which means if I find out that a group of, say, white supremacists has an account set up with a bank, I don't contact the bank and say, this person does this, why are you supporting them?
I say, I have evidence of various white supremacist groups that are using your platform.
Is this something you normally condone?
Do you have policies against this?
And upon finding out, do you plan to take action?
Something to that effect.
Even in that regard, it's still kind of a, what is the story?
Someone has a bank?
I mean, what are you gonna do?
You're gonna write about McDonald's serving white supremacists?
They get cheeseburgers too.
It's a difficult thing to actually write about.
When you put someone's name in it, reference their specific business, and then insinuate its support, you are maximizing harm.
It's a violation of journalistic ethics.
It's an activist move.
So no, it wasn't the reporting.
Someone working for the bank saw the email she sent, was so concerned about it, saying, this is not journalism.
What are they doing?
Leaked me a ton of stuff.
The bank refused to confirm a lot of it, but I was able to confirm the email and Yeah.
The Proud Boys, the right-wing group, was targeted by an activist.
And there's a lot of other things to it as well.
Like, she actually sent the email and then waited until the bank banned them before actually writing the story.
Another activist move.
Because if they wrote you back, or didn't, you wouldn't or would have a story.
But no.
You seed the emails, you cause a trigger, at the very least we can argue she's not an activist, she's a grifter.
She creates the news by inciting, and then says, oh wow, look what happened.
Let's read what she says.
In February, I published an investigation of an e-commerce operation that Gavin McInnes, founder of the far-right men's group Proud Boys, whose members have been charged with multiple counts of violence, described as the group's legal defense fund.
During the course of my reporting, multiple payment processors used by the e-commerce site pulled their services full stop.
What she left out is that it specifically targeted Enrique Tarrio himself and his private accounts, not Gavin McInnes and not what Gavin McInnes was doing.
Totally different person.
In the days after the article published, I received some harassment on Twitter, but it quickly petered out.
That changed in June after the host of a popular channel on YouTube and far-right-adjacent blogger Tim Pool made a 25-minute video about my story, accusing me of being a left-wing media activist.
The video has since been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
Welcome to journalism.
Yes.
I was leaked some damning information showing that you targeted an individual and maximized harm against them, a violation of journalistic ethics, and I published my findings and gave my opinion.
It was kind of a long video.
What is a far-right-adjacent blogger?
And why would you include that at all?
What's your assessment and what's your evidence?
What does far-right-adjacent even mean?
First of all, I'm not a blogger.
I don't write anything.
Blogger is a reference to weblogger, somebody who writes.
You can argue I'm a vlogger for doing video logs.
Totally different.
Okay, I'll chalk that up to her not understanding what she's writing about, and then maybe the worst we can say, or the least I could say, is she's inept and doesn't know what she's talking about.
Far right adjacent?
What does that mean?
You've got the center, the center right, the right, and the far right.
If I'm adjacent to the far right, does that mean I'm just right wing?
This is loaded terminology meant to, you know, malign me to the best of her ability, in my opinion.
I don't see a real reason to add that at all.
Sensationalize, I guess?
She could have argued conservative right-wing or cultural right or whatever you want, and people have.
Simultaneously, articles have been written calling me left-wing as well because of my overt support for people like Tulsi Gabbard, to which conservatives make fun of me and things like that.
I think Glenn Beck put it, he doesn't even know what I am, you know, other than I rag on Democrats in the media all the time.
Why include this in your story at all?
I think it's... She was angry.
She was mad that she got called out.
But let me just tell you.
If you are working in media, and you maximize harm against someone, and that alerts an employee of that company, and they're scared, and they look at me, I'll tell you what.
I think it's entirely possible That the leak to me was condoned by the company because it's akin to blackmail.
I say akin to.
I'm being very light here.
It's my opinion.
But think about it.
If someone emailed you because you serve, you're at an ice cream shop, and they said, you know, every Friday night, a group of Proud Boys comes into your business and you provide material support for them, allowing their meetings where they recruit.
Does your business typically support the recruitment of fringe, far-right, blah, blah, blah?
They know at the company what that means.
You're going to accuse them of exactly this?
In fact, there was a bar in Philadelphia where activists accused the bar of supporting Proud Boy recruitment.
Why?
Because some Proud Boys may have—it wasn't even the Proud Boys, I guess.
It was like Turning Point USA—showed up, and they had some flyers with them, and they had drinks.
Some Antifa activists found out and accused them publicly of supporting meetings.
Guess what happened?
Somebody showed up and smashed out all the windows.
So yes, it's akin to blackmail.
I wouldn't be surprised if this leak came to me on purpose because someone at the company said, what do we do?
They're threatening us.
Is there anyone in media who would report this story?
Couple things they could do.
They could try and leak it to friendly media.
That's few and far between.
There's few people they could actually leak it to where it would actually benefit them.
I'm one of those people that would actually benefit them.
Why?
I'm not overtly in the bag for any groups in particular.
And I've repeatedly said I haven't and I won't vote for Trump.
This cycle I've said, you know, maybe we'll see.
But at the time of this reporting last year, absolutely not.
In which case, they can see someone who clearly, based on the content that I criticize, I criticize
the media and the Democrats all day and night, they might get a story out there that protects
them and shows they do not support this, even though they ended up banning the individuals.
It's entirely possible it was a counter effort to say this person's going to drop a massive
smear against us.
Can we leak this so people can see what she's done?
And that's exactly what happened.
To put it simply, this left-wing media activist is now at NBC News funneling leftist ideology to pressure Google, writing stories that activists are praising, that Democrats then respond to, and they celebrate.
She goes on to some Harvard website to talk about tips, and for some reason she just smears me.
These are total activist moves, not journalistic moves.
Now, to be fair, there is some emotional release in me talking about this.
I'm not a big drama person.
I'm not a big fan of drama.
I did a drama video earlier, but to put it simply, I like the fact that I get to call out this person for coming at me and trying to lie about me.
But more importantly, I wouldn't do this video if there wasn't real merit.
The breaking story about Google's diversity initiative got like 7,000 retweets.
It was viral, tons of people are talking about it, and now she's gloating and celebrating the fact.
In today's day and age, especially with the Ronan Farrow story coming out from Ben Smith, I think it's increasingly important to call out the people who use this resistance journalist style tactic, activist journalism, where they're just trying to push their ideology while pretending to be journalists.
The news industry is on fire.
It's been burnt to a withered husk.
Journalists are quitting, being laid off.
A lot of journalists went to go work in marketing a long time ago.
Companies are collapsing, and maybe it's a good thing because of people like this activist.
Then you have people like me, and there's a bunch of other journalists who have left the industry and gone completely independent because we see how broken and fractured it is.
So I say this to NBC News.
You have two overt activists I know of.
I've called them out.
In response, they have both tried smearing me.
You've got serious problems, NBC News.
They're not gonna fix it.
I mean, look at what's happened to the network.
They are the epitome of this resistance journalism.
I mean, MSNBC, go figure.
Let alone the rest of NBC News.
Activists look for these jobs.
They get promoted, they hire their friends, and they push this stuff.
They push things to empower Democrats.
To put it bluntly, We know that often, the Democrat narrative and the media narrative aligns.
For three plus years, we had Russiagate fake news conspiracy.
Where was any journalist to call this out?
Very few.
Very few independent organizations.
You've had The Intercept.
You had people like Michael Tracy, Air Matea of the Nation.
You had people like me, even though I still entertained it much more than the average independent media, because I was still saying, let's see what the news has to say.
For the most part, I didn't cover every waking moment of it.
It was rare.
But I was not totally on board.
I entertained it.
Maybe I shouldn't have.
But I took all of the news at face value.
After all these years of seeing the fake news, you gotta say, fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
These organizations are still doing the same thing.
Google rolls back an initiative, you know, on diversity and inclusion.
Somebody leaks the information to an NBC reporter, who then publishes it as this horrifying bad thing, and then the Democrats get wind of it, and she cheers and celebrates while her friends say, you're doing, you know, your work has an impact, and congratulations, this is awesome.
Thank you.
Awards and claps.
That's total activism.
Why would I... Look, when Google announced they were getting rid of this initiative...
What do you want me to say?
I don't celebrate it.
I just say it's a thing that happened.
It's interesting.
My take on it, for the most part, was I wonder if this has anything to do with James Damore.
Not that they should or shouldn't be getting rid of it.
Now that I'm hearing that Democrats are going after it, my response isn't they shouldn't and Google shouldn't or should reinstate it.
I have no position on whether they should or shouldn't.
My position is on journals not manipulating the game and people not infiltrating news media.
This is an example of so much wrong with what's happening in the news industry.
It's an example of activists funneling into these companies to infiltrate them and sow their ideology, but it's also an example of how the Democrats and the mainstream media share the ideology and walk in lockstep.
Will we get real journalism?
No, we won't.
Maybe when the news industry collapses, I guess.
But I'll leave it there.
The next segment will be coming up at 4 p.m.
on this channel— I'm sorry, at 4 p.m.
at TimCast.net.
Go to TimCast.net, check out my channel if you haven't already, and I will see you all then.
The other day, a gym in New Jersey, in the Philly suburbs, opened up in defiance of the executive order of the governor of New Jersey.
Police showed up.
Protesters showed up.
I don't know how long this has been going on for, but something incredible happened.
You see, according to Steve Keeley, local Belmar police lieutenant walked up to the front door and owner of Atlas Gym and said, you're all in violation of governor's executive order.
That being said, stay safe and have a nice day and walked away and crowd of supporters let out a cheer.
In response to this, I said, looks like local cops refuse to enforce governor decree.
I want to show you the chain of events and the press release, but we have a breaking update.
They're now arresting people who are showing up to the gym.
The people just going to the gym.
They're issuing citations to the gym's owner, and the people who are going to the gym are getting arrested now.
I'll show you that story, but the first thing I want to do is I want to show you what's happening.
This, to me, is insane.
Right now, we are seeing major, massive corporations make tons of money, and small businesses are being crushed by these executive orders.
It's a really simple explanation.
For those, you probably already know, but I gotta give the context.
If you sell clothes, your store is closed.
If you're a skate shop, I actually need shoes.
Sorry, can't go.
Skate shop's closed.
Walmart sells shoes.
They're open.
So what do people do?
They go to Walmart.
Because Walmart's allowed to stay open and keep making money.
And all of the necessities everybody had, they're going to Walmart.
They're ordering from Amazon.
Small businesses are going out of business.
They're being crushed.
Meanwhile, major corporations are allowed to stay open.
You know what's gonna happen?
After months of this, the owners of these businesses, now seeing their businesses destroyed, let's say, you own your own skate shop.
You sell clothes, you sell shoes, and skateboards, and maybe some other stuff.
You've worked really, really hard to open shops, and I tell you what, skate shops have very thin margins, but it's your dream, right?
You've finally been able to open your own store.
They shut your business down.
After months, you can't afford your bills anymore, your staff has moved on, they've moved out of state, maybe.
You can't reopen.
Now, fortunately for skate shops, these products don't go bad.
Skateboards can, you gotta make sure you maintain them.
But let's say, you know, you lose some product, a little bit, because skateboards can twist and warp if they're not properly cared for.
There would.
Let's say now, you can't reopen.
So what do you do?
You call the local mall chain.
What's that, Zoomies?
You're a mall shop?
I've got, you know, five years running my own private, you know, skate shop we went under due to the pandemic.
What's that?
You're a massive corporation and you can afford to reopen?
Can I please have a job?
Now look, right now malls are closed too, so some of these stores, like Zoomies, are hurting as well.
But Amazon is still selling stuff.
I'm still able to order stuff from Amazon.
So your business is closed.
Maybe Skate Shop wasn't the best example.
Let's say you opened your own vegan food store.
You fought really hard, said, this is the stuff I believe in, this is the food that I like, I want to sell these products.
Well, actually, no, that's a bad example, too, because food stores are allowed to remain open.
The point, which you get, is that smaller businesses are forced to close, and when everything finally reopens, the big chains are allowed to stay open, and you will go and work for the corporations now, your dream being crushed.
Let's read this story.
So here's the photo of the moment.
Officer Kelly tells everyone to have a good day.
There's actually a video of it.
Local police returned and issued a citation to both of the owners for disorderly conduct and violation of executive order is handwritten over the description of the offense.
Here's a photo of it.
We then have this.
Here is the news release put out by the police and forwarded to us via New Jersey OAG this afternoon, confirming the summons handed to the Atlas Gym owners.
It reads, This morning, Monday, May 18th, shortly after 8am, Frank Trombetti and Ian Smith, the co-owners of Atlas Gym, reopened their business in violation of Executive Order 107 issued by New Jersey Governor Philip D. Murphy on March 21st, 2020.
This order currently remains in effect.
Executive Order 107, paragraph 9, provides in pertinent part all recreational And entertainment businesses, including but not limited to, the following list must close to the public as long as this order remains in effect.
C. Gyms and fitness centers and classes.
As a result of the direct violation of the terms and conditions set forth, Executive Order 107, Mr. Trumbetty and Mr. Smith were both charged on a summons with a disorderly person's offense by the Belmar Police Department who had a presence on scene in order to protect the public's safety and welfare.
I'm gonna throw some shade at some of the people involved in this protest who pointed to the police enforcing what I would assume, my understanding is, unconstitutional orders, saying they're just doing their job and they're being forced to do it.
Okay, hold on.
You want to make an argument about the executive order and the legality of it, feel free to do so.
I'm not a lawyer.
But if you truly believe they have no right to do it, do not defend the police.
If the police are truly being forced to do it, then they're pathetic.
Okay, I'm sorry.
I don't live that far away.
I'll say it to their faces.
I got no problem.
If you know that there's an unconstitutional order and you say, well, they're making me do it, Okay, please.
You've got no respect from me.
And the people who are saying, please, you know, they're just being forced to do it.
Nah, I'm sorry, dude.
I'm sorry, man.
I understand.
It's a rock and a hard place, okay?
But I'll tell you what.
I risk getting my entire channel deleted by even questioning these decrees.
And I'll do it every single day.
Because the Constitution says we have the right to peaceably assemble.
And if we want to, so be it.
What grounds does a governor have to issue an executive decree about what anyone can be doing?
Now, if people don't want to go out, they don't have to.
But the idea that we live in a country where mayors, governors, the president, anybody could snap their fingers and say, this be done.
It's the law.
No, it isn't.
No, it isn't.
The law doesn't work that way.
And you know, maybe it does now because the Constitution has become Swiss cheese.
But I bring you now to this story.
At least one person arrested leaving Atlas Gym in Belmar, owners charged again for violating stay-at-home order.
We have a video.
I think more people have been arrested.
I'm not entirely sure.
They say at least one person was arrested after leaving the gym in Belmar on Tuesday.
This comes as the gym's owners were charged again today for violating Governor Phil Murphy's stay-at-home order.
The charges are not yet known for the person who was arrested.
Adelaide's gym opened at 8 a.m.
again after receiving a warning from Governor Phil Murphy Monday that they were in violation of New Jersey's stay-at-home order.
Belmar Police tell CBS3 the owners have been charged for the second day in a row, but no further information is available at this time.
On Monday, officers from Belmar Police Department also showed up to issue disorderly persons.
We read that one already.
Governor Murphy can do whatever he wants, co-owner Frank Trombetti told Eyewitness News on Tuesday morning.
I'm going to do this tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day.
Trombetti encouraged gym members to come back out Tuesday, but to be prepared to face the consequences.
No, that if you walk into Adelaide's gym, you're probably going to be potentially arrested.
Trumpetti and his business partner Ian Smith retained a lawyer to send a letter to Governor Murphy calling shelter-in-place orders draconian and unconstitutional, and pushing back on the distinction between essential and non-essential businesses.
While Trumpetti is urging other businesses to stand with him, Governor Murphy had a stern response Monday for the gym and anyone else thinking about defying the order.
If you show up at that gym again tomorrow, there's going to be a different reality than showing today.
These just aren't words.
We've got to enforce this, Murphy said.
It's unclear at this point what further action the state can take against the gym and its owners, but a disorderly person's charge carries a fine of up to $1,000 or up to six months in jail.
On Monday, officers gave warnings to those working out at the gym.
Governor Murphy, bold statement.
Well, I'll tell you what.
Walmart sales soar by 74%.
Home Depot rises by 7%.
Department stores tumble 44%.
Why is it that we have to sit back and watch the big box chains, the big corporate stores make all of this money, while small business gets trampled all over?
I understand, right?
It's a rock and a hard place, okay?
Walmart sells food.
Okay, then I think we figured it out.
If you own a gym, then the answer is simply, in the future, get a license to sell food, and have an ice cream freezer of some sort, or a bread stand, and then say, we're a bodega that sells food, therefore, we're allowed to stay open, right?
Walmart sells electronics.
They sell video games.
They sell auto parts.
They sell everything.
Gardening.
And because they serve food, they're allowed to stay open.
What about the small businesses that are being trampled all over?
I don't know to tell you, man, but I will say I do not believe that government decree is law.
The Constitution says you have a First Amendment right.
So what would happen if this gym just opened its doors?
If the gym just said, we are not open for business, y'all can come hang out anyway because we rented the space.
Can the city then come shut them down?
I suppose they would still do it no matter what.
So, look, here's what I think needs to be done.
You always follow the law.
The challenge is, in many states, the Supreme Courts have already struck down what these governors are doing.
It stands to reason, then, that legal precedent is being set, at least in some jurisdictions, that the governors do not have a right to do this, that they're actually in violation of the law.
I don't know what the appropriate thing to do is.
We're seeing civil disobedience.
When people go to the gym, civil disobedience.
For the most part, that's fine, okay?
I don't think—that's a YouTube-bannable offense, like people engaging in general protest.
So if people go to the gym in protest and they walk out and get a ticket, I actually think this is, uh, it's okay.
It's in line with what I've said about, say, Extinction Rebellion.
Blocking the street is illegal.
I don't encourage, you know, for the most part, a lot of these activities.
But I think, morally, the line is drawn at peacefully protesting.
And that's what we're seeing.
So, there's been no violence.
That's really, really good.
There are people challenging the law.
That seems like it would actually lose.
That's also good.
And we'll see how this plays out.
I guess that's all I can really say on it.
There is a risk.
I don't know where the line is for YouTube, but they've been deleting channels, so... I'm gonna keep saying it like it is.
You know, these cops, I believe, are enforcing unconstitutional mandates.
They're not laws.
It's decree.
And they are breaking the law, as far as I can tell.
They can call the law all they want, but simply someone saying, go arrest them, is not how the legal system is supposed to work.
I hope these governors are held to account.
We'll see how things play out.
I got one more segment coming up in a few minutes and I will see you all shortly.
In California, illegal immigrants are now able to collect some sweet stimulus cash.
And a lot of people are very angry about this.
Now, California, for the most part, is a democratic state.
We'll see how things change now that everyone's kind of upset about the lockdowns.
But, you know, look, polls say a lot of things.
The only thing that's going to really prove anything is when it comes to the votes.
We can see what the media says.
You can hear my opinion.
We really don't know.
But I will tell you, there's probably a lot of people in California who don't like the idea that people who came in illegally are now getting cash.
Doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense.
Fox News says California opens up coronavirus funding for immigrants in state illegally
faces backlash.
Undocumented immigrants in California are now allowed to apply for the state's coronavirus
relief program that will pay $500 per person and up to $1,000 per household, according
to Reports Monday.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Sacramento has freed up $75 million for the fund.
which could help about 150,000 who may be facing severe hardships during the pandemic.
An earlier report in the paper said the Center for American Liberty is suing the state, claiming that the money is not a slush fund for the governor to spend as he sees fit.
It hopes to block the package.
Opponents of the measure insist that any taxpayer funds should be directed to U.S.
citizens who are also struggling amid the pandemic.
The L.A.
Daily News reported that the state is home to about 2 million undocumented immigrants who are not eligible to receive any kind of federal stimulus.
The report said the fund could hit $125 million, which would include $50 million from donations.
The money is expected to run out quickly.
The state website opened on Monday and there was so much traffic the site crashed, the Fresno Bee reported.
The website is currently up and running and we are continuing to increase its capacity.
Kim Kulat, attorney and fellow at Legal Aid at Work, told the paper that the state should step in and do something more significant because the funds will only cover a percentage of the immigrants in the state illegally.
Applications will be accepted until June 30th or until funds dry.
Governor Gavin Newsom announced in April that he would spend $75 million of taxpayer money to create a disaster relief fund for immigrants living in the country illegally.
And of course, he was criticized by Republicans for this.
They end by saying, Instead of meeting these urgent needs, Governor Newsom has chosen to irresponsibly pursue a left-wing path and unilaterally secured $125 million for undocumented immigrants, said Grove, who represents Bakersfield.
Conservatives are furious about this, and I can understand why.
Now the left argues that many of these immigrants are taxpayers, even though they're here illegally, and thus they're entitled to this money.
But how do you track whether or not everyone who's getting the money is a taxpayer?
You theoretically could with, I believe it's called a TIN number.
The left is trying to create open borders.
I guess.
It's hard to say definitively, and the reason I say this is because of what the left is.
The mainstream left kind of just dotes along without paying attention, and that's why I say kind of.
In reality, there are many activists, the democratic socialists, who want to overt open borders, and the weird thing about it is that even Bernie Sanders acknowledged this is a right-wing proposal, a Koch brothers proposal.
It really is.
I mean, even today, libertarians, right-wing libertarians, are typically for open borders.
At least, most of the ones I talk to.
Not all of them, is an argument.
It's hard to know for sure.
But many of the libertarians I know believe borders are wrong.
You shouldn't have them.
People can come and go as they please.
They can work for how they want.
The free market will dictate.
Now we're seeing the left propose this, and they use sneaky tactics.
Notably, referring to illegal immigrants as unauthorized, or just as immigrants to confuse the issue.
There are legal immigrants, and there are illegal immigrants.
An illegal immigrant, I think, is... I don't actually like saying illegal immigrant, to be honest, because I think it makes it difficult to actually... Look, It's about an olive branch.
You want to talk to people on the left?
I actually think unauthorized immigrant may be a better way of phrasing it.
That's what the Associated Press says.
But take a look at this.
The House's latest coronavirus relief bill gives stimulus payments to unauthorized immigrants.
Now is where Vox gets sneaky.
House Republicans tried and failed to strike a provision that would give stimulus payments to immigrants.
I don't know what they're talking about.
Is Vox trying to say illegal immigrants?
Or legal immigrants.
By conflating the two, as they've often done, people like AOC, you have the left believing that Republicans are saying the people with green cards shouldn't have access, when actually what they're saying is the people who came here two months ago illegally through the border should not be getting taxpayer funds, period.
And I think the fair argument is, if you give stimulus money to any illegal immigrant, you're incentivizing this behavior.
People then think, I better go now if I want to get free cash.
And it's just, you've got to set a hard stop.
Because, well, for one, you don't want double standards.
You can't just say, okay, fine, if you've been in the country for this long, you can get it.
They want to say straight up, no incentivizing illegal behavior, period.
Think about it this way.
Well, we can argue that illegal immigration is a victimless crime in the sense that there's no direct victim.
You can argue there's economic damage.
Fine.
You're basically saying, we've created a special bill that will give cash to all people who have broken these specific laws.
That doesn't make sense.
The law is there to deter the behavior, to say we will enforce against this.
If you say these laws get special exemption and will actually give you money if you qualify having broken these laws, then you're going to get people breaking those laws.
Let's read what Vox says.
Specifically, I want to see what they're talking about with Republicans.
House Democrats voted in favor of offering stimulus payments to unauthorized immigrants Friday night, prevailing over Republican efforts to strike the provision from the latest $3 trillion coronavirus relief bill.
The HEROES Act, which passed the House on Friday, would make taxpaying immigrants and their families eligible for federal stimulus funds regardless of their legal status under the $2.2 trillion CARES Act.
So I think, okay, fair to point out taxpaying illegal immigrants.
Only immigrants with social security numbers...
Okay, so here's what they say.
Under the CARES Act, only immigrants with social security numbers
and who fulfilled certain residency requirements were able to receive the payments,
meaning unauthorized immigrants and many temporary visa holders were excluded.
Yeah, well, okay.
I don't see why that's a problem.
Republicans are not convinced that another aid package is warranted after the CARES Act, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying he hasn't yet felt the urgency of acting immediately on further legislation.
And Republicans in the House argued emphatically against the HEROES Act provision, offering immigrant stimulus payments with Rep.
Denver Riggleman of Virginia calling it a poison pill.
The Republican position was that relief funds should be dedicated to U.S.
citizens only.
Despite being joined in their opposition by 13 Democrats, however, Republicans failed to block the provision in a 198 to 209 vote.
But it isn't likely to survive the Republicans-led Senate, where McConnell has been explicit in his
objection to the plan. Another round of checks for illegal immigrants. Can you believe it,
McConnell said in a floor speech May 14th. We forgot to have the Treasury Department send
money to people here illegally. My goodness, what an oversight. Thank goodness Democrats are on the
case. I'm seeing this meme go around that says, want to know what I think about people getting
unemployment checks with a $600 bonus?
Nothing.
It's none of my business.
Poor people and how they spend their money are, you know, I don't care because they're not my enemies.
People don't seem to understand that if someone comes to this country, you know, a year ago or whatever, and now we're cutting them checks, we are hurting the labor market.
Bernie Sanders words, not mine.
Even to this day, Bernie Sanders has still maintained illegal immigrant immigration hurts low skill labor.
When you flood the market with money, you devalue the worth of that money.
So, there's a lot of complicated problems in economics, and there is one interesting thing I've been reading about.
Because of the scale of our economy, and its difficulty to track, and the massive nature of it, we're seeing a lot of strange phenomena in terms of how inflation and deflation work.
Notably, right now, we have a major influx of funds into the market, but the cost of things is dramatically dropping because of lack of demand, thus prices are actually in a weird
position.
Some prices are going up, some prices are going down, even though the money market,
the money flow is increasing.
Ultimately, however, we can expect that if nobody's working, there's no food, there's no supplies, and there's no
services to be rendered.
Plus, now everybody has a ton of the money you can't do anything with.
That means we are facing, well, rapid inflation.
This is the problem with printing out money for just everybody.
If someone's gonna be on a temporary visa, why not print money to people in foreign countries?
Oh wait, apparently that was happening.
At least some stories suggested people who weren't even in the US anymore were still getting these checks.
So look, I get it, right?
I was in favor of passing it quickly because we gotta do what we gotta do.
But now we're in a position where we've seen what's happening and we can track what makes sense and what doesn't.
I'm not entirely convinced the Democrats actually want to give illegal immigrants money, to be honest, because they know the bill will never pass.
I think they saw it as an opportunity to virtue signal to the progressive left and to certain communities to try and get their votes, knowing the Republicans are never going to let it through.
And even if the Senate did agree on it, which would never happen, but if they did, Trump would veto it.
And then it would go back, and then it would be over.
If the Republicans in the Senate don't want to move forward, then ultimately nothing moves forward.
There's still an argument to be had about people who are paying taxes receiving benefits from taxes.
The issue I see, however, is, look, I don't care if you're paying taxes.
To me, that is not the end-all be-all qualification for anything.
If someone is here in violation of the law, and they're paying taxes, that just means that we're overlooking the fact they're breaking the law.
If someone broke the law, then we have to enforce that, otherwise we don't have one.
Ultimately, If you want to argue these people should be allowed to be here, then change the law.
Vote in Congress, vote for your people, and change it.
For the time being, America does not agree with open borders, so we shouldn't be providing taxpayer benefits to people who aren't citizens.
You want to change it?
Change it!
But the argument stays the same.
We're a community.
We all pitch in to help each other.
Not other people who break the law.
If someone broke into my house, I wouldn't be like, you can have my food.
I'd be like, get out of my house.
Knock on the door and ask for food if you want it, and we'll see what we can do for you.
But me and my friends, when we pitch in for stuff, we're not pitching in to feed the neighbors.
Sometimes we'll be nice and we'll try our best, but you've got to secure your own mask before securing the mask of those seated next to you, right?