S541 - FBI Confirms Congressional Reps Are Now SUSPECTS In Capitol Riot, Democrats Pushing For War With GOP
FBI Confirms Congressional Reps Are Now SUSPECTS In Capitol Riot, Democrats Pushing For War With GOP. Democrats are pushing harder and harder for escalation now targeting GOP reps as suspects.The FBI may have crossed the line in seizing cell phone records from members of congress including man republican reps who have been accused to colluding or working with the rioters at the capitol
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It's February 23rd, 2021, and the news for today's episode, the FBI has confirmed members of Congress are criminal suspects in the investigation into the riots at the Capitol.
Democrats have long accused several Republicans of actually granting access to some of the rioters, though these claims have been denied.
We're also learning that a prominent leftist Joe Biden voter has now come out saying she regrets the decision because we are watching totalitarianism before our very eyes.
Dr. Naomi Wolf recently joined Tucker Carlson to express her criticism.
And Facebook has won their fight with Australia.
Recently banning all news from the country and many other important government services, the lawmakers in Australia have caved in to the demands of Facebook, granting them even more powerful censorship abilities.
abilities in the future.
Before we get into these stories, check out TimCast.com for exclusive episodes.
We had Sidney Watson recently for a full hour discussion, talking about a variety of things
like kangaroos, but also the fake news.
We've also had some recent discussions with Phoenix Ammunition and even James O'Keefe.
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Become a member to help support this show and the TimCast IRL podcast.
Let's get into today's news.
During Donald Trump's campaign, we saw many rallies where people in the audience would
chant, lock her up.
Donald Trump was very disparaging towards Hillary Clinton and even said she'd be in jail at one point.
So many people started saying, lock her up.
The media decried this.
We cannot target our political rivals with threats of jail time.
So they said.
Well, now we're getting what may be, once again, a dramatic escalation in whatever you want to call the conflict that's going on right now.
It didn't end with Donald Trump leaving the White House, and as many feared, it's only going to escalate.
According to a new report from The Intercept, the FBI has seized congressional cell phone records related to the Capitol attack, with the FBI stating explicitly that some of the suspects they're investigating are members of Congress.
My friends, we're getting dangerously close to, I guess, the next escalation, the next breaking point, the next... I'm not even going to call it.
Because I've said too much in the past, like, that's the precipice.
Oh, we're off the edge.
Oh, we're falling.
And in those previous statements, those previous videos, I'd say something to the effect of, I meant that we were past the event horizon, as it were.
There's no turning back.
But the next major milestone in this would be the first, the investigation of members of Congress as some kind of criminals, as they now want to launch this 9-11 style commission on the Capitol riots.
But the next and most terrifying thing would be the arrest of these individuals.
My fear is that I have no reason to believe they won't do that.
I mean, they very well may.
It's getting to that point.
The Democrats are acting as though what happened on the 6th is akin to 9-11, and don't take my word for it, we have even the Independent, a typically left-wing Publication stating that January 6th now stands alongside 9-11 as an act of war against American democracy.
But this article is actually critical of how the media is covering this.
The escalation is getting to the point where they're going after members of Congress.
They are trying to remove them.
Listen, when we started with them wanting to, say, remove Marjorie Taylor Greene and then Lauren Boebert, That's worrying.
The demonization of political representatives, the removal of their positions on committees.
The point that we could get to in that regard is that people in certain states and jurisdictions would feel like they have no representation.
That's worrying.
But what if they outright arrest these people?
Now don't get me wrong, if people commit crimes, they have to be held accountable.
Regardless of whether or not these people did commit crimes, though, we have to recognize the bigger picture here.
There's tribalism at play.
The right will not agree with the assessment from these leftists who are targeting conservatives or Republicans with jail time.
The left is going to say they're criminals, arrest them.
The right is going to say this is fabricated, this is ridiculous, these are lies.
And we can see how the Intercept actually tries manipulating this information.
After they mention the FBI saying these members of Congress are suspects, they say Capitol Police are reportedly investigating whether lawmakers helped rioters gain access to the Capitol, as several Democrats alleged they did.
But Republican officials deny this.
That's a lie.
I'll prove it to you, and I'll show you, because the actually link to the real story in the context is dramatically different.
But the reason I show this here in the intro is just to point out the left and the right will not agree on what the data reveals.
And if the federal government, the executive branch under Joe Biden takes direct action to imprison Republicans, I'm worried about where we're headed.
I wonder at what point you decide not to, you know, stick around to get out, get away from these cities.
I don't know.
But if they start arresting, I mean, listen, I got to stop there.
They're criminally investigating members of Congress.
That's scary enough.
Again, it could be scary because members of Congress actually engaged in this behavior, or it could be scary because the Democrats, now with political power, are going to destroy their political enemies, much in the same way they criticize Trump for even alluding to.
In this article from The Independent I bring up, they mention that the media is essentially fabricating everything that happened.
They're hyping up its war propaganda.
So what do you think happens next with all of these National Guard troops around the Capitol?
I think things get particularly worrying.
Well, let's read this, but before we do, head over to TimCast.com and become a member in order to get access to exclusive members-only segments.
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And as they start going after more and more people, things are getting scary, my friends.
I don't know how else to describe this, but behind the scenes, the conversations that are occurring, they're scary.
Make sure you like, share, subscribe, hit the notification bell.
Let me read for you the story from The Intercept so you understand what's going on, and then I'll show you how they're manipulating the information to make it seem like Republicans are worse than they really are, and then I'll show you the article from The Independent, which basically says the same thing.
From The Intercept, FBI seized congressional cell phone records related to Capitol attack.
They say, using special emergency powers and other measures, the FBI has collected reams of private cell phone data and communications that go beyond the videos that rioters shared widely on social media according to two sources with knowledge of the collection effort.
In the hours and days after the Capitol riot, The FBI relied in some cases on emergency orders that do not require court authorization in order to quickly secure actual communications from people who were identified at the crime scene.
Investigators have also relied on data dumps from cell phone towers in the area to provide a map of who was there, allowing them to trace call records but not content from the phone.
They say.
The cell phone data includes many records from the members of Congress and staff members who were at the Capitol that day to certify President Joe Biden's election victory.
The FBI is, quote, searching cell towers and phones pinging off cell sites in the area to determine visitors to the Capitol.
A recently retired senior FBI official told The Intercept.
Let me just pause right there and say, that's a violation of people's Fourth Amendment rights.
That is members of Congress who have nothing to do with this.
You want to argue some of them did?
No, no, I'm saying regular old members of Congress, their data is now being collected by the executive branch.
That's creepy enough.
They're going to say that data is also being used to map links between suspects, which include members of Congress, they said.
There it is.
The FBI has told The Intercept, if you trust The Intercept, that they are trying to map links between suspects, which includes members of Congress.
Trust me, they're not going after Democrats on this one.
This is freaky stuff.
Now, as for that quote where they said Capitol Police are reportedly investigating whether lawmakers helped rioters gain access to the Capitol, as several Democrats have alleged they did, let me show you the actual story is.
The New York Times reported police investigating whether lawmakers gave rioters tour of Capitol before siege.
Well, we can't read it because, you know, I don't have the New York Times account pulled up.
What they're basically saying in the New York Times is, some people may have gotten a tour of the building.
That does not mean that the Republicans helped them enter the Capitol.
You see what they're saying?
Capitol Police are reportedly investigating whether lawmakers helped rioters gain access to the Capitol.
They are trying to manipulate you.
This is insane!
They want you to think that Republicans, like, held the door open.
There may have been some tours the day before the riot.
Not the day of.
But you see how they manipulate.
This is the story from The Independent.
US media reports of the invasion of the Capitol have contributed to the spread of hatred and fear.
The decline of journalism in America is made clear by the reporting of the attack.
Did you know?
That Officer Sicknick, the man who lost his life, they initially said that it was because he was hit over the head at the riots.
That's not true.
The man's own mother came out and said, no he wasn't.
It was an unrelated stroke.
Why push the lies?
The media and the Democrats and their allies are waging a war.
I'm sorry, man, this is just reality.
Republicans are sitting back doing, for the most part, nothing.
But the Democrats, their media allies, they're pushing these narratives and these lies.
You've got the Independent calling them out.
The FBI is collecting cell phone data and saying that members of Congress are suspect, are suspects in this case.
Pray it does not escalate further.
In this article Patrick Cockburn says, The invasion of the Capitol on 6th of January now stands alongside 9-11 as an act of war against American democracy.
Unsurprisingly, news coverage of the incursion has come to resemble war propaganda.
All facts, true or false, are pointed in the same direction with the aim of demonizing the enemy and anybody who minimizes its demonic nature.
The three-hour takeover of the Capitol building by a pro-Trump mob is portrayed as a coup or an insurrection egged on by President Trump.
The five who died during the events are seen as evidence of a violent pre-planned plot to overturn the result of the U.S.
election.
Film spliced together and shown by prosecutors during the impeachment proceedings give the impression that what happened resembled a battle scene in Braveheart.
Does it really matter what did occur?
Many people feel that anything damaging to Trump and his fascistic followers is alright by them.
They may suspect privately that accounts of Trump's plot against America are exaggerated, but the fabricator of 30,573 falsehoods over the last four years is scarcely in a position to criticize his opponents for departing from the strict truth.
They argue that he is an unprecedented threat to American democracy, even as it becomes clear that what actually happened in the Capitol on that day was radically different from the way elements of the media reported it.
It's amazing.
This man, particularly critical of Donald Trump, but calling out the media for their lies.
He says, But what is reported matters, and particularly so when it risks exaggerating violence or deepening fear in a sense of threat.
If the U.S.
government really was the target of an armed insurrection, then this will be used to justify repression, as it was after 9-11, and not just against right-wing conspiracies.
But with theorists, by becoming partisan instruments for spreading fake news, the media undermines its own credibility.
They say, a problem with a giant news store like the Capitol is that at first it is over-covered before we know the full facts, and then it is under-covered when those facts begin to emerge.
This has been true of U.S.
media coverage, but even at the time it seemed to be a very peculiar armed insurrection.
Only one shot appears to have been fired, and that was by a police officer who killed Trump supporter Ashley Babbitt, who was involved in the storming of the Capitol.
In a country like the U.S.
awash with guns, this absence of gunfire is remarkable.
Five people died during the takeover of the Capitol, and this is the main proof of a deadly intent by the rioters.
But one of the dead was Babbitt, killed by the police.
Three of the others were members of the pro-Trump mob who died, respectively, from a stroke, a heart attack, and from being accidentally crushed by the crowd.
This leaves just one person, Capitol Policeman Brian Sicknick, as the sole victim of the Trump supporters, who allegedly beat him to death with an extinguisher.
On 8th of January, the New York Times ran two stories about his death, quoting anonymous law officers as describing how pro-Trump riders had struck him on the head.
He is then reported to have been rushed to a hospital, placed on life support, but to have died the following day.
The graphic story went around the world and was widely picked up by other outlets, including The Independent, the BBC, USA Today.
It was also separately reported by the Associated Press.
It gave credibility to the idea that the pro-Trump mob was willing to kill.
I'm gonna stop there and just mention, even I fell for this.
I believed all of these outlets.
I didn't think it could be false.
It was false.
They say, Over the last seven weeks, without the world paying any attention, the story of Sicknick's passing has progressively unraveled.
Just how this happened is told in fascinating detail by Glenn Greenwald, the investigative journalist and constitutional lawyer, who concludes, the problem with this story is that it is false in all respects.
It was always strange that, though every event that took place during the riot was filmed, there is no video of the attack on Sicknick.
He texted his brother later that day, and sounded as if he was in good spirits.
No autopsy report has been released that would confirm his injuries.
Conclusively, the New York Times quietly updated its original articles, admitting that new information had emerged that questions the initial cause of death.
Since these officials were the only source for the original story, This, though readers might not guess it, amounts to an admission that it is untrue.
And we have the update.
Politifact states, on February 22nd, the Daily Mail reported that Gladys Sicknick, the officer's mother, had denied that Brian was struck in the head.
He wasn't, quote, he wasn't hit on the head, no.
We think he had a stroke, but we don't know anything for sure, she said, according to the Daily Mail.
More than a month after its January 8th article, but before the Daily Mail report, the New York Times attached an update to its report about the extinguisher saying new information has emerged that questions initial cause of his death provided by officials close to the Capitol Police.
They don't want to admit it.
But it was just not true.
And this is how scary things are really getting.
When this was used to justify an impeachment.
When they're now trying to launch some kind of 9-11 style commission investigation.
They are treating this as though it is 9-11.
Again, I want to make sure I just stress, the worrying thing is, I fear what will happen if they actually arrest sitting members of Congress.
And dare I say, I think we are close to this.
The Feds are investigating it may stop there.
But Donald Trump has indicated he will run in 2024 and many pundits have stated Trump is going to run again.
The impeachment did not stop him.
The Supreme Court recently said that Trump's tax returns can be released to the New York prosecutors.
So they may try and get Trump on criminal charges to prevent him from running.
Where are the cries that they're trying to interfere in the presidential race of 2024?
When they're trying to criminally prosecute Trump for this.
When Trump tried investigating Joe Biden, they claimed he was interfering in the election.
He was trying to dig up dirt on his opponent.
Where are those cries now?
I do not believe for a minute that there are people in this country who will just sit back.
The 6th should have been scary enough.
What these people did going into the Capitol was crazy and dumb.
But it shows you that many don't care.
They're angry.
Some of them were calling it a revolution.
And do you think, like, this is scary stuff.
We do not want violence.
We do not want this.
The Democrats need to stop.
Republicans aren't doing anything.
They're sitting around twiddling their thumbs.
The Democrats are ramping up everything.
The media is lying to make it all seem worse than it is.
This is going to drive people to the edge.
There's more.
The Feds are investigating Roger Stone, Alex Jones, over roles in the Capitol riot.
Charges were unlikely for Stone and Jones, but investigators want a broad view of who might have instigated the violence.
Well, I don't know what Alex Jones was saying to people there, but many people have pointed out that he was actually saying, stop.
Don't go in there.
Be peaceful.
Donald Trump himself said, peacefully and patriotically have their voices heard, but the Democrats still said that that was calls to violence.
This is going to bifurcate this country.
It's not about whether you like Jones or Stone.
It's about the fact that the hyperpolarization is just getting worse.
You know, there was a period where there was still a swath of land between the two large masses of hyperpolarized tribal left and right.
That landmass is gone, but briefly there was a small bridge.
That bridge shattered.
Now you have two entirely separate island continents.
You have the left saying, we know it's true, lock them up.
You have people on the right desperately calling for calm, for the most part.
You had Ted Cruz and many others saying, we need to stop this.
The Democrats won't.
They're out for blood, figuratively and probably literally.
NBC News says, Federal authorities investigating the Capitol riots are looking into whether high-profile allies of former President Trump, including Roger Stone and Alex Jones, played any role in organizing the violence, a law enforcement source with knowledge of the inquiry said Saturday.
The Washington Post first reported that the possible roles of Stone, Jones, and Ellie Alexander, organizer of the Stop the Steal rally, were being investigated.
The law enforcement source said that charges were unlikely, but that investigators want to get a broad understanding of any possible instigators.
They go on to say that Trump parted in stone, blah blah blah.
I don't think that's really relevant to what's going on right now.
They say authorities announced Friday that six more people linked to the far-right Oath Keepers militia had been indicted on charges that they planned and coordinated with one another in the deadly January 6th attack.
I really am worried about where all this is going.
Perhaps I could give you a comforting lie and say things are calming down, people are coming together, but it's just not the case.
Every day we hear some more insane news story about how things are just escalating.
And I really am hopeful.
I mean, I really am crossing my fingers and hoping that the feds do not arrest sitting
members of Congress.
I mean, look, it was bad when Trump was threatening to lock up Hillary Clinton.
I often said, if she committed a crime, lock her up.
If Donald Trump committed a crime, lock him up.
If these members of Congress committed crimes, lock them up.
But you need to consider the tribalism today is it's insane.
The divide is massive.
There will never be a unified belief that an arrest will be justified in any capacity.
I mean, that's probably true for Hillary Clinton, I'd imagine.
The thing about arresting Hillary over the email scandal because she essentially ordered the destruction of public documents is that the progressive left and the Trump-supporting right would all basically be okay with it.
There would be no large unifying base upset over the arrest.
Right now, if these members of Congress, Republicans, presumably, are arrested, the progressive left is going to cheer.
The Democratic establishment will cheer, and that will be the hard, explosive divide in this country.
Byron York says, all the witnesses at the Senate Capitol riot hearing say they expected January 6th demonstration to be similar to MAGA events in November, December.
Chance of violence was thought to be remote to improbable.
That's what I thought.
Seriously.
On that day, on the 6th, at 1pm, I put out a video saying, nothing's happening, everyone's gonna go home, it's over.
Literally.
Just 10 minutes before, they actually breached the first barricade.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, just a few minutes after they breached the barricade, because I record about an hour before publishing.
I was like, nothing's happening.
Trump's giving his speech, he said, be peaceful, and that was the end of it.
I did not expect this.
And I'd been saying before, nothing's gonna happen.
You know, and that's why I thought there wasn't a heavy security presence.
Nobody thought this was going to happen.
But the escalation, I suppose, the culture war has come to that point, and, you know, I've brought that up for a long time.
When people used to tell me that it wasn't possible, they're angry, many of these leftists, that I dared mention the possibility?
Because these news outlets were talking about civil war, and I said, I think we're getting dangerously close?
That's my fault?
Whatever, man.
These conversations happen, and we're being told that people on the right should have no faith in this system.
The people they want investigated don't get investigated.
The court cases they want are thrown out on standing, not on merit.
You then hear these progressives, I can only imagine grifters, not accurately depicting why the Trump court cases are being thrown out.
Standing is not merit.
If there was a court case that came up and they said, I believe X, they said X is untrue, that's on the merits.
What they're really saying is you have no right to actually challenge this.
Which brings me to the next worrisome escalation.
I mentioned this briefly the other day, but there's a statement that I think really should be brought up.
Justice Clarence Thomas reveals some sympathy for Trump's baseless fraud claims.
A lie.
The media is lying.
This scares me, man.
Clarence Thomas issued a dissent because in Pennsylvania, Republicans filed a lawsuit saying that changing the rules around mail-in voting was unconstitutional.
Clarence Thomas said, essentially, if we're not going to hear this case before, because it's too soon, and we're not going to hear it after because it's now moot, then when do we clarify the rules to prevent, you know, to let people know they can trust the election in the next cycle?
What does WENY, Newsguard Certified, say?
That he's revealing sympathy for Trump's baseless fraud claims?
That's not what happened, but let's read.
What they don't tell you is that most of them, not all, failed on standing.
Meaning, if someone throws a rock at you, I can't sue on your behalf, because I was not the injured party.
for how it how much it's subscribed to the Trump worldview of fraud, an ocean debunked
by election law experts, and that has failed overwhelmingly in dozens of state and federal
court challenges.
What they don't tell you is that most of them, not all, failed on standing, meaning if if
someone throws a rock at you, I can't sue on your behalf because I was not the injured
party.
You see how standing works.
Quote, we are fortunate.
It's unfortunate that many of the cases we have seen alleged only improper rule changes, not fraud.
But that observation provides only small comfort.
Thomas said, An election free from strong evidence of systemic fraud is
not alone sufficient for election confidence.
He's correct.
He says, The decision to leave election law hidden beneath a shroud
of doubt is baffling.
By doing nothing, we invite further confusion and erosion of voter confidence.
Our fellow citizens deserve better and expect more of us.
The 2020 election, occurring in the midst of a pandemic, increased mail-in voting, and that led to a raft of lawsuits, ending with no proof of fraud, let alone widespread cheating that could have flipped an election result.
Full stop.
There is evidence of potential fraud, and the reason I say that is because if these cases aren't adjudicated, then I can't determine, I can't confirm, as a legitimate journalist with ethics, whether they're true or not.
Crowder recently did a segment on his show where he showed People who worked with him going to addresses in Nevada, many of these addresses were not real.
One was really interesting.
An individual's address had apartment number 409.
And when they showed him the address, it was an empty parking lot.
One comedian said, where's, or I'm sorry, it was Crowder, he said, where's apartments 1 through 408?
It's an interesting question.
These questions never got answers.
And this is what, I bring this up because If people feel like there's no confidence in the system.
If the Supreme Court won't even hear an argument!
And many of these courts threw them out not on the merits.
Then people will feel like there is no opportunity for a redress of grievances.
And what happens then?
Desperate people do crazy things, man.
We are watching right now Joe Biden, as president, do things that a lot of people don't like.
The Democrats are ragging on him.
Republicans are ragging on him.
And there are many angry Trump supporters.
Maybe 75 million.
Now how many of them are actually angry enough to go crazy?
Probably a decent amount.
That's what we're worrying.
If they're telling us that you have legitimate instances that need to be investigated, but they won't do it.
If they're saying that before an election it's too soon, during an election you have no standing, and after an election it's moot.
There's no opportunity by which we can actually say, hey, we want answers.
I hope for a peaceful resolution to this, and I hope that the legal system actually addresses this, but it seems like that won't be the case.
So let me read specifically about what Clarence Thomas said about the Constitution.
He goes on to say, Because the federal constitution, not state constitutions, gives state legislatures authority to regulate federal elections, petitioners presented a strong argument that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's decision violated the constitution by overriding the clearly expressed intent of the legislature.
They're going to say Thomas observed that the state's court's decision involved too few ballots to affect the outcome of any federal election.
But that may not be the case in the future, he said reinforcing his larger point regarding election integrity.
An election system lacks clear rules when, as here, different officials dispute who has authority to set or change those rules.
This kind of dispute brews confusion because voters may not know which rules to follow.
Even worse, competing candidates might each declare victory under a different set of rules.
They go on to say Pennsylvania state election officials enforced a state court deadline and, under a prior court order, segregated the late-arriving ballots, of which there were only about 10,000.
Quote, If state officials have the authority they have claimed, we need to make it clear.
If not, we need to put an end to this practice now before the consequences become catastrophic.
They didn't.
The Supreme Court has abdicated, or probably a better word, has absolved themselves of any responsibility of what the court is actually supposed to do.
They wouldn't take up the Texas court case.
Thomas and Alito said they have to.
It's original jurisdiction.
The states are suing the Supreme Court while it's an appellate court.
In this instance, needs to take the case.
How else do you resolve state disputes between states?
They didn't do it.
The Supreme Court needed to hear before, during, or after this case.
There was a lower court that agreed.
They refused to do it.
What you need to understand in this What the many on the left will ignore.
This is not them saying your argument is incorrect.
This is the Supreme Court saying under these circumstances we will not even bother listening to what you have to say.
If people were told here's why you're wrong and we'll lay it out, you've lost.
Well, that would probably make a lot of people simmer down a little bit.
Instead, it's almost like they're just laughing your face saying, we will not take our responsibility seriously.
If the Supreme Court won't, then why would people have confidence in what the Supreme Court is saying?
Because they're supposed to be doing this.
What you need to understand about Pennsylvania, and I know I said this, but let me get into the nitty-gritty.
If someone goes to the court and says, here's my argument, the court says your argument is wrong, that's legit.
That's not what happened.
And now, when it comes to standing, they argued first.
When it comes to these court cases, when these lawsuits were presented, the courts were like, no, no, it's too soon, there's no injury.
You're arguing mail-in voting is causing these problems and is unconstitutional, but there is no one injured by this policy change, therefore, we will not hear this.
During the election, they said, no, no, no, you have no standing to bring this because, well, it was Republicans who actually passed the law, and that's true.
And it's too late anyway.
But, maybe afterwards, when we have the injury and we see who the injured parties are, then they said, eh, it's moot.
Trump's not gonna be president anyway.
So where do we go from here?
Hopefully, things simmer down.
But as I often bring up, why would they?
Why?
They're investigating Alex Jones.
They're investigating Roger Stone.
Charges are unlikely, they say.
But why?
Why are they going this far?
They didn't do it during the Trump administration.
The establishment is seeking to protect itself.
And the populist wave is unstable, but powerful.
Sometimes, the left progressives and the Trump supporters agree on things.
And with that, that's powerful.
The problem with the left progressives is that too often they're hoping the Democrats will throw them a bone, but they don't.
And they think the Democrats are their path to salvation.
Republicans, I should say Trump supporters, for a long time thought Republicans were their path, but now they've basically split and said, F the Republicans.
Now is the opportunity for the populist wings of the left and the right to say, get the establishment out of there.
But the left progressives won't do it.
What that means is, if the Feds start going after the right, they'll be cleared to essentially do it.
Once the Republicans get arrested, they'll come after the progressive left.
They've already talked about, over the past several years, how to get rid of Ocasio-Cortez, either by redistricting or running a primary against her.
Right now, I think the only reason they're not going after the progressives hardcore, like they have banned many YouTube progressives, but the reason they're not going to go after the left the same way they're right, the reason why they're not targeting Antifa is because they're using them.
For them, it's a united front.
Republicans won't defend Trump supporters.
They'll defend the Democrats.
And the progressives who are lining up behind the Democrats are creating an opportunity to shut down the populist right.
The progressives on the left say, good, they're fascists.
What do you think happens when the populist right is crushed and removed?
Who do you think the Republicans and Democrats will target next?
That's right, the progressive left.
They're basically digging their own graves by refusing to stand up for individual liberties and demanding legitimate review and justice.
Well, nothing you can do, I suppose.
Jacobin Magazine, socialists, made this point about free speech, and good on them.
They said, if you allow big tech platforms and politicians to remove speech that falls outside the mainstream, eventually you will be outside the mainstream and they will come for you next.
They said, of this leftist magazine, we must resist the urge and fight back against big tech censorship.
But too many leftists just don't get it.
And so I fear that it's just, they're just chipping away, and sooner or later the whole thing's gonna come crumbling down.
But I guess we'll just see.
I guess we'll see.
I'll leave it there.
Next segment's coming up at 8pm over at youtube.com slash timcastirl live tonight.
We'll talk more about this stuff.
It should get interesting.
So thanks for hanging out, and I will see you all then.
of people who had voted for Trump who came to regret it.
We now have, ladies and gentlemen, another really awful meme.
Biden-Grett?
Biden-Grett, I guess?
Whatever.
People who voted for Biden and then have come to regret it.
Notably, Dr. Naomi Wolf.
Now, this story is actually pretty awesome, and at least initially, I've got some optimism.
Naomi Wolf went on Tucker Carlson last night, and she's calling out the totalitarian state before our eyes under Biden.
Naomi Wolf famously, just after it was declared Joe Biden was the winner, she came out and said if she had known, well she said this, if I'd known Biden was open to lockdowns, as he now states, which is something historically unprecedented in any pandemic, and a terrifying practice, one that won't ever end, and because elites love it, I would never have voted for him.
I'll say a couple things.
With respect to Dr. Wolf, it's fantastic that she came out.
She's calling this out.
She went on Tucker Carlson last night, and she said, freedom to worship is being threatened, our Fourth Amendment is being threatened, free speech is being threatened, and I can respect that.
Part of me, however, is rather upset that it's quite convenient and easy for her to have voted for Joe Biden, getting him into office, and now being like, oh, but Biden is bad.
See, we're seeing that a lot from many leftists.
They screamed and hemmed and hawed about how bad Trump was and how we had to have Biden.
But did any of them actually do their due diligence before they decided to vote for a man who had been in office for 47 years, who oversaw the Iraq War and the expansion in the Middle East under Obama?
Did anybody bother to actually do that research?
Well, I guess people like me, you know, because I'm center-left politically, even though it doesn't really matter because left and right doesn't mean anything these days.
But I took a look at what Biden had to offer, took a look at what Hillary Clinton had to offer.
I didn't vote for Trump in 2016.
But when I saw what Biden was bringing to the table, I was like, dude, we can't have this, okay?
I did my homework.
Naomi Wolf didn't, so... It's unfortunate, but I can say this.
At this point, there's nothing to be done.
You know, you're not gonna go back and change your vote now.
So I'll say this.
To Dr. Wolf, welcome to the fight, and I have tremendous respect for you appearing on Tucker Carlson and writing the things you have written.
Many people on the left are probably getting a cold wake-up call, a splash of a bucket of water just right in the face.
And I want to read this story about what Naomi Wolf is warning about because she's a leftist and I respect that she's coming out and saying this, but I also want to point out another area of regret for Biden voters.
The Washington Post posted this tweet.
First migrant facility for children opens under Biden.
Please tell me what you hated so much about Donald Trump.
See, I'm sorry.
I knew.
I knew.
Most of you did.
We all knew.
Trump is not perfect.
Trump has a lot of problems.
Trump did a lot of really bad things.
But Joe Biden was going to do exactly the same things.
It's not going to be any different.
The problem is, with Donald Trump, you had a bull in the ivory tower, as I describe it.
And it was causing panic among the establishment elites.
They were freaking out.
Now, Trump still did some bad things, but he did a lot of good things, a lot of things I liked.
And I'm like, look, if I got a pick between, you know, Donald Trump, who's an outsider, who's causing establishment problems, and the establishment, and what they're going to do, they're going to do the same things you're complaining about under Trump.
You call Trump a fascist?
Wait till Joe Biden gets in and goes back to the policies that we used to have under Obama and Bush.
It'll be way worse!
So please spare me this fake outrage.
Now you have people who have voted for Joe Biden who are regretting it.
And you know what?
I ain't here to rag on these people.
A lot of people want to gloat and laugh and say, Biden, why would you do that?
That's the wrong move.
You know what you do?
To those people who voted for Joe Biden and are now upset about it, you reach out your hand to shake their hand and say, welcome to the fight.
Because, you know, look, we can try and rehash the past and be upset about it and be mad that Trump didn't win or whatever.
Or we can say, okay, what can we do now?
So I get it.
Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, so we better pay attention to what happened.
We better pay attention to that Kavanaugh, Coney Barrett, and the other Supreme Court justices refuse to hear the PA mail-in voting case, Clarence Thomas, epic.
Imagine being as spineless and cowardly as, say, like Brett Kavanaugh or Amy Coney Barrett, and imagine being as brave and as principled as Justice Clarence Thomas.
Now, look, I don't know what their reasoning is, for the most part, why they decided not to hear this election fraud.
I'm sorry, it was the mail-in voting case in Pennsylvania.
Clarence Thomas says, we didn't adjudicate this before the election and now after, so we've not clarified any of the rules?
People are not going to have faith in voting!
Yeah.
I think these other justices are just cowards.
But anyway, I digress.
You know, Trump is the one who put those people in, so I can only say, you see?
It ain't perfect.
Trump did not do a perfect job.
You got your conservative justices, and then they didn't stand up for, I guess, the rule of law.
But I'll say this.
To people like Naomi Wolf, welcome to the fight.
I thought the left was there for a long time.
They're not.
Some people will probably say it's awfully convenient that people like Naomi Wolf are all of a sudden now coming out and saying, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Biden's actually bad!
Because their whole shtick is always being anti-establishment.
With Donald Trump as president, they had to oppose Trump, which means they had to support Biden.
And now with Biden president, it's, oh, oh, oh, oh, Biden, Biden is bad.
I, I see it now.
Well, I'll tell you this.
Fine, whatever.
I'm not going to question the integrity of individuals.
I'll take what I can get.
If people are angry with Biden, I'll accept that.
And I'll say, let's criticize the man.
And then, you know, be critical of what Democrats are doing.
I also want to stress one important point.
I am not, right now, based on the news I'm seeing about these child migrant detention facilities, going to scream and cry about kids in cages.
Because Biden has to have these unaccompanied minors placed somewhere.
I don't want them in, you know, harsh conditions.
They should be, you know, taken care of.
I was, you know, previously saying that we should have families stay together.
But if we have kids coming across the border unaccompanied and we can't determine who their parents are, I mean, then we need to put them in some kind of holding facility, man.
It's not because we're trying to cage or imprison or torture these kids.
So I'm not overly critical of Biden for that.
Now the left is realizing, however, you're gonna get the same thing you get with Biden that you got with Trump.
Here's a story from Fox News.
Ex-Clinton advisor Naomi Wolf warns U.S.
becoming totalitarian state before our eyes under Biden.
Author tells Tucker Carlson Tonight, Americans must wake up before it's too dangerous to fight back.
Wolf, who served as an advisor to Bill Clinton's re-election campaign in 1996, told Tucker Carlson that in her view, The United States is swiftly moving into a coup situation, a police state, as a result of Biden's ongoing coronavirus-related economic shutdowns.
Wolf added that she believes the orders are being improperly extended under the guise of a real medical pandemic.
Quote, This is not a partisan thing, Wolf told Carlson.
That transcends everything that you and I might disagree or agree on.
That should bring together left and right to protect our Constitution.
Wolf has ramped up her warnings against extended lockdowns on Twitter in recent months.
In November, the author wrote on Twitter that Biden's openness to reinstating additional shutdowns made her question her decision to vote for him.
Look, respect.
Absolute respect for coming out and saying the right thing.
Quote, the state has now crushed businesses, kept us from gathering in free assembly to worship as the First Amendment provides, is invading our bodies, which is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, restricting movement, fining us in New York State.
The violations go on and on, she said.
The outspoken liberal.
So you're saying that we're there?
It's been a month!
Joe Biden has been president for a month and he's already accomplished it?
She believes the United States is heading towards what she refers to as Step 10.
So you're saying that we're there?
It's been a month.
Joe Biden has been president for a month and he's already accomplished it?
Is that?
Or is Step 10 the first step?
Is it go backwards?
I don't know.
No, Step 10 is the last one.
Whether, quote, whether they are on the left or right, they do these same 10 things Wolf
And now we're at something I never thought I would see in my lifetime.
It is step ten.
And that is the suspension of the rule of law, and that is when you start to be a police state, and we're here, there's no way around it.
You know what, man?
Look.
Again, with respect, because I can appreciate her coming out and speaking out against this.
The Democrat governors have been doing this for a year.
You want to talk about step 10 from Biden?
Biden sat back as all of these Democrat governors literally murdered elderly people.
One of these individuals was the, I don't know the official position, the individual that Joe Biden has nominated for the health secretary.
Well, this person in Pennsylvania took their parent out of a nursing home while sick patients were being put in nursing homes, killing many.
Cuomo did the same thing.
Cuomo lied about it.
Cuomo covered up the numbers, but many governors literally killed the elderly by taking sick people and putting them in nursing homes.
Why?
They had to know.
There's no way.
I'm sorry.
You're never going to convince me these people were stupid enough to be like, I know, let's put sick COVID patients in with the most vulnerable.
Tens of thousands died because of this.
In New York, it was around 13,500 individuals.
And Cuomo, the governor, covered this up.
So you want to tell me about step 10 for Joe Biden?
Look, I'm listening, for sure.
But how about we talk about the other governors and the nightmarish things they did and the people they killed?
Wolf said that she has interviewed U.S.
citizens of various backgrounds and political affiliations who are in a state of shock and horror as autocratic tyrants at the state and now national level are creating this kind of merger of corporate power and government power, which is really characteristic of totalism, fascism in the 20s, she told Carlson.
I completely agree.
They are using that to engage in emergency orders that simply strip us of our rights.
Rights to property, rights to assembly, rights to worship, all the rights the Constitution guarantees.
Wolf called the United States' overall response to the coronavirus pandemic completely unprecedented, arguing that lockdowns have never been done in a society, and really, we are turning into a totalitarian state before everyone's eyes.
It's a shame that you and I, the people watching this, we've been saying this for probably about like eight months.
Look, when they initially locked things down, we were all kind of in favor of it.
I say kind of because it was like begrudgingly like, we have to do something, right?
It was pretty scary, the videos we were seeing.
And then after a certain point, it's like, okay, we need to ease this.
And they didn't.
15 days became a month, became two months, became five.
And now we're going on almost a year of a total lockdown.
People are still wearing masks.
Many businesses have been completely destroyed.
And now, a year later, we get Naomi Wolf speaking up.
So again, I'm not trying to rag on her because being late to the party, you're still at the party.
I just wish many of these leftists were paying attention.
And you know, I don't necessarily hold it against the individuals who didn't know.
I blame the media.
The Trump derangement syndrome that blinded these people.
Wolf called the U.S.' 's response to Totalitarian State, quote, I really hope we wake up quickly, she said, because history also shows that it's a small window in which people can fight back before it's too dangerous to fight back.
There was a chance to fight back.
That chance's name was Donald Trump.
I know, the left just hated him so much.
And I love it when I see these leftists say, Bernie Sanders was cheated, but Joe Biden won fair and square.
Okay, dude, pick one.
Like, whatever.
I think Bernie Sanders was cheated because the Democrat primaries are privately controlled, and I think, as I've said often, Trump got oceans elevened by all these changing policies.
Like, the Democrats made their moves well before the election to give themselves serious advantages, and Time Magazine basically said it.
Call it whatever you will, I'll avoid the more direct language and you can make up your opinion.
But here we are.
Joe Biden is going to be president for four years.
Kamala Harris apparently, according to some reports, is fielding phone calls with foreign leaders for him.
Is Joe Biden actually even the president?
Did y'all vote for a guy who wasn't actually going to do anything and wasn't doing anything just because you hated Donald Trump?
Well, then I'm sorry.
Listen.
It would be great if they all came out now and, I don't know, if they impeach Biden and Harris and then have like a recall vote or whatever, I don't know how that happens.
I don't think that's something that happens at the national level.
But if people like Nomi Wolf and everyone else came out now, I tell you what, here's your opportunity, and I'd be interested in this.
How about y'all Vote to impeach Joe Biden.
Maybe it'll happen in 2022.
Get him actually impeached and convicted.
Maybe over the China scandal and the lockdowns.
And then, there you go.
You get a new vote and maybe you get Bernie Sanders or something.
I'm willing to bet that if there was a big push by a general populist, We Hate Biden, it would work.
Now this could be dangerous, it could be a bad thing, because the neolib, you know, corporate damn establishment would probably just still maintain control of everything, as they do, and the corporate press basically has a stranglehold over regular people who don't seek out information.
That's why the New York Times wrote this very hilarious article the other day, or it was actually a couple days ago, it said, uh, critical thinking as we've been taught is not helping, And the opening line says, stop overthinking the things you read.
That's right.
Just accept whatever the mainstream media says.
Don't challenge any of it.
No, I'm sorry.
That's the opposite of what you should do.
You should take a look at exactly what they're saying, why they're saying it, and then seek out the sources to determine if what they're saying is true and credible.
But that's where we're at.
The mainstream media wants to maintain its stranglehold over, they want a unified monoculture.
To be honest, I can understand why.
I mean, we're a divided nation.
The internet is allowing the opportunity for people to find smaller and more niche kind of, you know, places to communicate.
Or to absorb information.
For instance, it used to be that there were, like, five TV news anchors.
Now there's probably thousands of news anchor-style personalities, and where you'd have millions of people getting all of their information and opinions from one guy, so they were basically unified, you have people getting their opinions from a bunch of different people.
I mean, check it out.
If you watch this show, I mean, there's probably many Trump supporters, but the staunchest Trump supporters don't like me.
And they've posted things saying that, you know, they won't support me, and that I'm wrong, and that they think Trump won, and all that stuff, and that's fine.
You're allowed to believe what you want.
And there are many leftists who don't like me.
This is a rather moderate, you know, channel for political commentary, I guess, as milquetoast, perhaps, as some would say.
So you're not gonna get socialists, and you're not gonna get the diehard Trump supporters, nor any of the far right, watching a channel like this, for the most part, I'm sure.
There actually is a decent amount of, you know, far leftists who watch and have sent me compliments.
No joke!
Whatever, you know, even though I'm fairly critical of them.
I guess they respect something about the show.
And there are far-right people, I guess they hate watch, too.
But imagine if you watched, say, like Kyle Kalinske.
Your world view is going to be dramatically different than if you watch a channel like mine.
And these are not particularly large channels.
You know, I think Kyle, I'm not sure how many subs he has, just I have a million.
And then, you know, this channel has just about 1.1 million.
And so, People are no longer going to that one voice.
They're no longer just going to Tucker Carlson.
Many people are choosing to get their news specifically from smaller creators.
What that means is, where it used to have maybe five different trains of thought that were mostly unified.
ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, whatever.
And they'd come out and say, here's what we think.
You now have these thousands.
So there's someone who's going to come out and say, I watched Tim Pool and he said X. What are you talking about?
I watched the Young Turks and they said Y. You're crazy.
And then they fight.
And so, as long as there's this incentive for, you know, these channels to pander to a tribe, which is something I try, I don't try doing, I, you know, I'll say what I think.
Like I did, I ran about, you know, institutional racism, like, can't imagine that's endearing to many on the right who don't believe it exists.
And I'll just try to be principled and say what I think.
But many on the left, many, are scared of their tribe, and will say whatever the tribe wants, and that's a problem.
Especially when there's different, you know, sects of each tribe.
I digress.
I don't want to get into all that.
I do want to talk a little bit about what's going on with this Biden administration migrant facility because this story came up from the Washington Post.
It's another example of a form of Biden regret.
So I want to highlight this because I need to say, as much as I've referenced the Biden regret, it is unfair to claim that Biden voters would have chosen Trump.
Many of them knew this was going to happen.
There's a tweet from the Gravel Institute you may be familiar with.
They're trying to be like a left-wing PragerU, and they made a tweet saying, Joe Biden's not getting the stimulus check, you know, he's going back on immigration or something like that.
I don't know exactly what they said, but they said, when are we going to learn we can't trust Democrats?
And then many people were like, haha, look, the Gravel Institute, oh, you know, you guys voted for Biden, now you regret it, hey, you learned your lesson, blah, blah.
No.
The Gravel Institute ALWAYS hated Joe Biden.
These Democrats, these lefties, ALWAYS hated Joe Biden.
They just hated him less than Donald Trump.
That's what I disagreed with.
Cam Kasky says, guys, stop getting upset, he has stated multiple times that he likes ice cream.
Making the point.
Many people were saying, vote for Joe Biden, because they loved him.
That was dumb.
But many of these progressives, younger leftists, were saying, vote for Joe Biden because Trump is a fascist.
That's stupid because Joe Biden's essentially the same thing.
I guess with a smile on his face, that was the problem.
Donald Trump was the nasty guy on TV and Joe Biden was like the same thing, but whatever.
Why any of these people would be like, I think the establishment should be in charge.
I'm like, dude, if they're both awful, then give the outsider the keys to the castle so at least you can get a different outsider in later.
You let the establishment back in, they're gonna lock the doors up.
So anyway, look, the point is...
Just because many of these leftists are coming out now and saying, look what Biden is doing, he's awful, doesn't mean that they're regretting their decision.
If given the choice between this and Donald Trump, they probably still would vote against Trump, and I think they're wrong for it.
But I'm glad they're now ragging on Joe Biden.
And this creates something very strange.
A united front against the establishment.
So you know what?
I'll take what I can get.
And my advice to all the Trump supporters is, when you see Naomi Wolf, be like Tucker Carlson.
Invite her on the show.
Give her the respect and praise for coming out and saying it, even if it's late to the party.
When you see people like Cameron Caskey, fairly lefty, anti-Trump, anti-Republican, all that stuff, respect.
I mean, to be honest, I don't like Republicans either.
They're like, you know, a garbage party.
And I think most Trump supporters agree.
So if you've got these leftists coming out and they're saying Biden is bad, I'm going to be like, yes, thank you.
Good, sir.
I agree.
And here we go.
So I don't know what that means, you know, for 2020, 2022, 2024.
I think it means, however, the Democrats are in serious trouble.
And not just the Democrats.
I think it's the Republicans too, but the Republicans are a pathetic, leaderless, feckless party.
Donald Trump effectively is the leader of the Republicans, but come on, nobody likes the Republicans.
Everybody hates the Democrats, and everybody hates the Republicans.
Jacobin wrote an article, it's a socialist magazine, where they said everybody hates Democrats.
And they are correct.
And I think they should just add another article, everybody hates Republicans, too.
Now look, there are some people who like Democrats and there are some people who like Republicans, but when I say everybody, I think they're referring to, like, a majority.
Republicans don't like Democrats, Trump supporters don't like Democrats, and progressive leftists and even Democrats don't like Democrats, so I'll tell you this.
I think the establishment is routed.
They have fallen from their horse and they are fleeing as we chase behind.
And in 2022, we'll see what happens.
So I do have some optimism here, I do.
I have concerns over the culture war, don't get me wrong, and the progression of critical race theory and things like that.
Politically, however, I'm optimistic the establishment might get knocked off their horse and then ousted, essentially.
I don't care for these Republicans.
You know, a lot of people are saying, Tim, you still have to vote Republican again because 2022.
We'll see, man.
If we get like a libertarian type, you know, we'll see.
We'll see.
There are a lot of people who said, look what the Democrats do when they get power.
So maybe the answer is we get Democrats in who are not these corporate garbage politicians.
The problem, however, is that when these 31 moderates got elected promising to focus on issues, they went full culture war, bent the knee to Nancy Pelosi and begged her just to Just tell me what to do because I'm a spineless coward.
unidentified
And Nancy Pelosi was like, do as you're told and vote to impeach.
So you yell at Trump because you're a spineless loser.
Well, some of these spineless losers lost re-election for being spineless losers.
So we'll see how things play out.
We need to get rid of the corporate establishment politicians.
That includes these Republicans and Democrats.
And so, for a period, I suppose I fell into a similar trap as many of these leftists.
Saying, I'd rather have the Republicans than the Democrats.
At this point, I'm like, geez.
The Republicans squandered every opportunity to do the right thing because they don't want to do the right thing.
They don't care to do the right thing.
They're not going to fight for your rights.
They're not going to fight to oppose censorship.
A small handful will.
But in the end, it's one big party, it's one big club, and you ain't in it.
I'll leave it there.
Next segment's coming up at 1pm on this channel.
Thanks for hanging out, and I will see you all then.
You may have heard that recently, Facebook essentially banned the entire country of Australia from posting content.
Now, not Australian citizens, but basically government services, businesses, news outlets.
I don't know exactly how many different industries were affected, but news organizations and a bunch of other peripheral websites were blocked.
Their posts were all gone, their pages were wiped clean.
Facebook flexed its muscles and told Australia, you try to regulate us?
F you.
They shut it all down.
Now, at first, they said, look, Australia passed this law where they want us to pay news providers when we host their content because someone shared it.
That's not our fault.
Someone else shared it.
Don't look at us.
They don't have the Section 230 protections.
I don't know if that would necessarily protect them in that regard, but it might.
So basically, Facebook would have to pay every time someone tweeted a link to an article and they said, nah, we ain't doing it.
We're gonna shut the whole thing down.
Well, this is amazing.
Facebook has come to an agreement.
After strong-arming Australia, they've caved for the most part.
Facebook will now decide who they do pay and who they don't, and it carves out basically the ability for Facebook to ban news organizations who disagree with them.
Let me break this down for you and then I'll read the story.
Just give you the quick gist.
What it sounds like is going on.
Facebook, one.
The Australian government is cowering in fear behind this monolith because too much of their economy is now intertwined into Facebook services.
Too many businesses rely on it for advertising.
Many businesses operate on Facebook entirely, like news and video.
What Facebook is now doing is saying that they will have a legitimate path towards getting rid of any news outlet who dares oppose them, while pushing money towards those who say what they want.
It's not necessarily a grand victory for Facebook because they could already do this, but now they basically got the rubber stamp of approval from the Australian government to do this.
Congratulations, citizens of Australia!
Mark Zuckerberg is now your Supreme Chancellor.
Because if you don't know what's going on, you can't vote properly.
Mark Zuckerberg can just determine what news outlets get funded and which ones get deleted, and the information you see will be chosen by the Zuck himself.
Congratulations.
The nightmare dystopia only gets worse.
Let's read the story from Daily Mail.
Facebook claims it can pick and choose who it pays after Australia caves in over news blockade.
They say Facebook claims it will have the power to pick and choose who it pays for news after Australia's new media laws come into force, handing the company a powerful weapon in its fight over paid content.
Campbell Brown, Facebook's vice president of news partnerships, said Australian ministers assured him today the site will be free to support the publishers we choose after new bargaining laws are voted into force later this week.
The rule could allow Facebook to ban companies demanding higher prices for their news while using cheaper rivals, a significant loophole in legislation that was designed to level the playing field between tech firms and publishers.
It could also allow Facebook to block news outlets who are critical of the site that the final deal has yet to be published.
This is basically the government of Australia saying, we will in no way stop Facebook from taking over public discourse in our country.
And I can only imagine something similar will happen here.
Google has been a target of many journalists and leftists because, you know, many of these leftists, not like the core leftists, but many establishment type lefties just fall in line behind their media overlords.
They've been targeting Google and Facebook saying, you guys are making money off us.
Now to be fair, they kind of are.
Let me break this down for you because Facebook and Google are a very serious problem.
They created the problem and now they're offering a solution which only empowers them more and turns news outlets into subservient Entities of these platforms.
Back in the day.
If you wanted to read the news, you had to go to the news.
You had to go to New York Times, CNN, whatever, you know, trash outlet you read, I guess.
Fox News, maybe.
And you'd read what they had to say.
Well, then Google started scraping websites, and the content of many of these news articles just appeared in the search.
Which made it so that a lot of people didn't have to click the links anymore and actually go to these sites.
They started losing money.
Google started making money because then instead of selling ad revenue on news websites, Google started selling ad space instead of getting ad revenue.
So Google started getting the ad revenue that once went to news organizations.
News organizations complained about this.
Here we are now.
The deal is basically, these news outlets are going to bend the knee to Mark Zuckerberg in exchange for some cash.
Zuckerberg and Facebook can determine how much they're going to give out and who they're going to ban outright on monetary grounds.
It's just a new path for Facebook to say, here's why we removed this person legitimately, because they didn't agree to our terms on pay.
So that's it.
Another way that they are going to take away your voice, your right to post, independent news organizations will not be allowed to flourish.
And that's Facebook just winning.
They say, Mr. Brown spoke out as CEO Mark Zuckerberg agreed to end a week-long blockade of news in Australia after ministers significantly watered down laws designed to force the site to pay for news content it hosts.
The concessions will have global ramifications.
The UK, EU, and US are all considering whether to pass similar rules, but will now find it much harder to go beyond the precedent set in Australia.
Nevertheless, Australian Treasurer Josh Fryberg painted the move as a victory, saying Facebook will now negotiate deals to pay for content, albeit with a stronger negotiating hand than it had last week.
UK Culture Committee Chairman Julian Knight, who had called for social networks to be brought to heel, that's H-E-E-L, After Facebook blocked news in Australia, told the Mail Online, I hope that Facebook gets the message loud and clear.
It is a long way to go to restore an increasingly tarnished reputation.
That doesn't take away from the fact that Facebook has behaved very poorly.
Unfriending an entire continent is clearly unacceptable.
I hope that Facebook gets the message loud and clear.
It is a long way to go to restore an increasingly tarnished reputation.
You know what?
Dude, they own you.
They control what you think.
They can dictate what you will see.
You're not going to have an opportunity to actually share ideas and argue for your own politics when you are beholden to what Facebook allows.
Facebook's gonna go, oh no, we're gonna allow this publication to post at a cheap rate.
Here's what you end up getting.
Facebook can effectively say, this news outlet is too expensive, so we won't allow it.
Fox News, The Sun, whatever, gone.
Then you get these powerful and prominent outlets that can afford it.
Facebook says, we're going to give you a pretty penny.
Once again, the nightmare dystopia is just pushing forward as Facebook used the weight of their power to shut down competition.
We've seen something not too dissimilar happening here in the U.S., and I think the direction we're going is going to be absolute control of speech.
It's going to be... Look, Politico wrote about this.
I talked about it yesterday.
Democrats question TV carrier's decisions to host Fox, OAN, and Newsmax citing misinformation.
What they're trying to do, the establishment, is, in a sense, create a monoculture, a monolithic, singular worldview among the U.S.
or among probably the world.
And what this means is that your ability to speak freely, to challenge the lies and misinformation, will be stripped away.
It's not just happening at the governmental level, it's also happening at the social level.
In the U.S., we have a First Amendment right.
Facebook does have some constraints, but they do have a lot of protections.
In fact, they have more protections here than they would in a place like Australia because of Section 230.
Australia doesn't have that.
So theoretically, people could sue Facebook.
Not that I think they'd win because, you know, Facebook's too powerful.
But in the US, this kind of manipulation and monolithic thought policing is coming at the social level and from private companies.
And that's technically the truth in the UK and Canada and Australia as well.
That's literally what we're talking about.
Facebook's grown so powerful that Australia is basically getting on bent knee and saying, please, please don't hurt us again.
And what we see in the U.S.
is that if you do something wrong, if you said something wrong ten years ago, four years ago, five years ago, there's no apologizing.
There's no acceptance.
You've did it.
It's done.
And they will destroy you.
It's almost like a sorting algorithm, as it were.
The idea being that the only people who are allowed to be working are those who are sufficiently woke and have never said a naughty word in their lives.
And then everyone else, I guess, is just part of the underclass.
Now part of me actually, part of this, it makes me actually optimistic.
There's only so much you can do before you lose the majority.
Right now, the ultra-woke that bend the knee and cheer on the massive private corporations, they're essentially fascistic.
I don't want to say fascist because they're not necessarily nationalist, but they're super fascistic, right?
They love big private corporations stomping all over people's individual rights to expression and say, I'm a private company.
Yeah, private companies stomping over someone's rights in the public space.
Not a good thing.
Facebook clearly has a monopoly.
Or it's part of a duopoly with Google.
But they can clearly cause massive damage to an entire country.
But I do have some optimism.
I want to show you this story, which is... First, let me pull up this one.
Trevor Tim, in reference to the Politico story, says, barely anyone is grappling with the fact that much of the
misinformation posted to social networks is protected speech, and Congress may be violating the
First Amendment by issuing threats to tech companies over it. And that's why—one of
the reasons I get fairly optimistic.
The U.S.
has certain protections.
And that's a good thing.
But I'm also optimistic because of ridiculous stories like this.
From The Defector, Slate podcast host Mike Peska suspended following internal discussion about use of a slur.
Hmm, okay.
Let me break this story down for you.
This guy Mike Peska hosts the Slate podcast, or one of them, which is a leftist podcast.
He was having an internal Slack discussion where he said, in certain descriptive contexts, such as quoting someone, the use of the n-word, you know, should be allowed.
Now the problem I have right here is, a lot of people don't seem to understand this, because maybe they didn't think about it.
There's more than one word that is referred to in that way.
And, uh, I'm not referring to, you know, a bunch of people post a joke saying, like, Nabisco, and nationalism, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, quite literally, there are three different versions, I believe, off the top of my head, of the slur, the N-word.
So, I'm curious as to what was this guy actually saying, I don't know, because they did not tell us the word he said there are three.
And there's probably more, I guess.
There's three different iterations of a similar word, and I can't say it on YouTube.
Like, any iteration of that word, for any context, for any reason, gone.
That's, well, I should walk that back.
It's not necessarily true.
It's more of a social pressure, where they will try and destroy you and strip your ads away for saying it.
Google will actually let you say it.
I'm not going to.
Because, well, I'll only put it this way.
This article conflates the statement, saying the word in a descriptive context, with literally using it.
And so they tell people that you were using the slur, which it kind of implies you were actually deriding someone, actually using it to target them, when in fact you were describing it.
So this guy gets fired, but again, let me tell you why I'm hopeful, and then I'll read you what happened.
Facebook can keep doing things like this.
But all that's happening in its wake are people making their own websites.
Hence, I started TimCast.com.
We're signing up members and doing exclusive episodes where we can have discussions like this without fear of getting banned.
It's our own website.
Now, don't get me wrong, you can actually still get banned from your own website if the server hosting or DNS or Google or whatever come after you.
But, for the most part, this doesn't really happen right now.
There's more leeway.
Because of what Facebook is doing, I mean, I gotta be honest, people are trying to find other ways to communicate.
They're using different apps.
They're using Instagram.
I'm sorry, not Instagram.
They're using Telegram and Signal.
And this is causing outrage among these woke leftists.
Like, oh, they're getting misinformation now in private.
Yeah, too bad.
People can use private communications.
As for the Slate podcast, let me just ask you.
This dude was having an honest, good-faith discussion over quoting people who have said the N-word, notably people like James Baldwin, a renowned civil rights hero, super smart guy, he was awesome.
I've watched a ton of his speeches, I've seen tons of his debates, that dude was amazing.
And he frequently used a version of the N-word that was particularly common back then that we aren't allowed to say on YouTube or just in general society.
And so what ends up happening is, When this guy, when this Slate guy's having this debate, and they fired him for it, how long?
Look, this guy's a lefty.
This guy hates Trump.
This guy seems to be like, he works for Slate.
Slate is lefty.
He doesn't seem to be a fan of Trump.
Where's he gonna go now?
You see, what's happening is the purity testing and the lack of tolerance for any kind of actual debate is destroying the left.
The censorship, the refusal to allow people to speak and share ideas is resulting in an opposite reaction.
So that's where these two stories kind of come together.
Facebook can ban Australia, and they can try and pull this stuff, but people are going to find other ways to share news.
They're going to use competition.
They're going to make their own websites.
They're going to have their own websites.
They're going to create networks between decentralized, you know, systems to create an unbannable internet.
With this, Slate particularly.
This dude's gonna find a job with a more moderate, you know, ideology, I suppose, and they're gonna say, we understand why you might say the n-word.
Listen, I think the use of racial slurs against people is wrong.
It's abhorrent.
I think racism is disgusting.
I also think that you can make racist jokes like Family Guy does every single day, and we understand it's mocking the stereotypes, not trying to Assert them.
I think Family Guy and South Park do a great job of making fun of the uptight BS.
But we live in a society right now where you will be socially ostracized if, in any context, you do say these slurs.
Here's the story.
The Hill says, Slater suspended Mike Peska, host of the podcast The Gist, after he debated whether non-Black people should be allowed to quote certain racial slurs with colleagues.
The New York Times reports that Peska, who is white, was suspended indefinitely after getting into a debate on Slack regarding Times reporter Donald McNeil, who was recently suspended for repeatedly saying the N-word during a 2019 student trip.
The issue is, this journalist guy, he wasn't calling people the n-word.
He was apparently explaining racial slurs.
My understanding is that he was telling people why it was wrong.
So much like that story with Netflix a couple years ago, where an executive was literally giving a list of things you can't say, and they're like, how dare you say those words!
You have this guy who was saying, we need to be allowed to do it.
This is crazy.
This is a cascade of facts.
Check this out.
This journalist apparently was giving some kind of descriptive use of a slur, so the New York Times fired him.
So another podcast host on the left is saying, I think you should be allowed to do it.
So they fired him!
Keep firing these people.
Eventually, you'll have no one left on your side.
That's the point.
Keep banning our ability to communicate, Facebook.
Eventually, people will find other ways to do it.
I've said this over and over again.
It goes back to when Patreon banned Carl Benjamin, a.k.a.
Sargon of Akkad, of the Lotus Eaters podcast.
And they banned him outright, with no warning, with no chance for apology, nothing.
And I said, listen, if you got this guy on your podcast, on your platform, and he's saying something you don't like, if you ban him, what's his incentive to stop saying these things?
But if you're providing a service, like he's on this platform, you could say, hey bro, please, I understand the context, you know, and I think your use of it was inappropriate.
Don't do that again.
And he would have been like, you got it.
Yeah.
Okay.
I get it.
I could make my point better.
I'll say something else.
I won't say it.
In which case, you actually have the influence.
What's happening now with the firing and suspension of the things that Facebook is doing, don't get me wrong, what Facebook is gaining here is massively powerful, but like I said, it makes me kind of optimistic in the end, because I think it's going to create a pressure which forces people to create alternate platforms.
So I'll tell you one of the things I want to work on.
We have TimCast.com, but one of my goals, ultimately, is to create a larger brand that can be more of a decentralized network, individuals who are moderate left, moderate right, not staunch conservatives, not traditional, just like kind of anti-every, you know, anti-establishment.
Individuals of varying political ideologies can have real debates, and that can be a place where we don't have to worry about being banned.
I also want to create some kind of open source social networking technology that can plug in to individual websites, effectively creating a decentralized social network through all of these different platforms.
So if you post an article to your website, we can have a parent hub that just feeds a bunch of different topics and basically functions like Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube, but it's a directory, not a hosting service.
Don't actually host the content, that's expensive anyway.
Then no one can be banned.
That's what I want to see.
This guy got fired from his job.
Because, uh, let me read a little bit more.
Pascoe reportedly argued that there were contexts in which the slur could be used.
No, no, no, no.
Which could be quoted.
That's the important way to phrase it.
Dan Chek, Slate's chief executive, quickly stopped the discussion, saying, While I can't get into specific allegations that are under investigation, I can confirm this was not a decision based around making an isolated abstract argument in a Slack channel.
For those unfamiliar, Slack is like Discord, but for businesses.
According to the Times, Pesca said he was heart-sick, over-hurting his colleagues while adding, I hate the idea of things that are beyond debate and things that cannot be said.
Joel Anderson, who hosted a season of Slate's Slow Burn podcast and is black, shot back at insinuations that Pesca's suspension was an overreaction.
Saying, for black employees, it's an extremely small ask not to hear that particular slur, and not have debate about whether it's okay for white employees to use that particular slur.
You see what they're doing here?
They're conflating the use of it with the explanation of it.
So here's my ultimate problem.
Just as kind of an aside on the bigger picture.
I don't know what word was being said.
Like I stated, there are three different direct iterations of that particular word.
And I can't say any one of them.
One is particularly egregious.
One is considered acceptable in colloquial contexts among certain people.
And one was extremely prevalent and exists today in modern usage.
Even there's a documentary that uses one of these words.
Can't say what they are.
You can't say him.
That's the issue where we don't actually know what's going on because people can't say what he said.
I'm not saying to call someone a word.
I'm saying, I don't know what word you're talking about.
And there lies the problem.
People like this lefty Mike Peska guy, he's gonna keep working.
He's going to keep existing.
And he's going to be angry over the idea that he lost his job for saying, we need to talk about what this means.
The aftermath of the big tech censorship has been... Parler.
Gab.
Gab's particularly resilient.
There's now calls among the right to create a new internet that preserves our individual freedoms.
Because too many companies got woke.
And maybe now will go broke.
And then on the flip side, too many companies in response to this firing people, terminating them.
You're going to create large groups of people who want freedom, who will build the infrastructure to do it.
So I'll put it this way.
Facebook may have gained this massive power.
But in the end, I think people are going to say, I'm not going to pay you, or I'm sorry, I'm not going to accept your terms.
Facebook will say, we refuse to allow you on our platform, and they'll say, well then I'll make my own platform, or find my own way to do it.
Already, you have platforms like Minds, and BitChute, and Gab, and Parler, and people use them, and communicate on them, and they work.
They're not nearly as big, but does it really matter?
I understand that these big tech platforms essentially have monopolized public discourse, but what I mean when I say, does it really matter, is in the long run.
This is why I'm more optimistic on this.
While I can certainly complain that right now we need some kind of regulatory protections because they might try to shut down these other institutions, which they've been doing, I think you can't stop the tide.
Too many people are facing this kind of absurdity.
Getting fired for having a discussion around contextual uses of certain words is insane.
If the dude literally went up to somebody of a certain race and used a slur, I'd be like, even then, no joke, you have to issue a warning.
However, I, as much as I try to be reasonable in terms of legal context, if he walked up to somebody and used a slur, I'd be like, buh-bye.
You're out.
Get out of here, dude.
We don't want any of that nasty stuff in here.
It's awful.
But he didn't do that.
Where's this guy gonna go?
The people who are being fired over this stuff are gonna be the ones who build the new culture, the new infrastructure, who populate new websites and say, we should be allowed to speak.
So long story short, These platforms, these businesses, they're burning themselves to the ground.
We'll see, though.
It's hard to know whether to be optimistic or pessimistic, depending on what the news is, but I'll leave it there.
Next segment's coming up at 4 p.m.
over at youtube.com slash timcast, which is a different YouTube channel, just type it in, you'll see it.
