No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Biden fights back on abortion rights

Episode Date: July 10, 2022

Biden signs a package of executive orders protecting abortion rights. Brian interviews NBC News reporter Ben Collins about the July 4th shooter’s online activity, how culpable Tucker Carlson is for mainstreaming the conspiracy theories espoused by young men who are radicalized online, and what can be done to help.Donate to the "Don't Be A Mitch" fund: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dontbeamitchShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today, we're going to talk about Biden's executive order protecting abortion rights, and I interview NBC News reporter Ben Collins about the July 4th shooter's online activity, how culpable Tucker Carlson is for mainstreaming the conspiracy theories espoused by young men who are radicalized online, and what can be done to help. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. So, a tad late for my liking, but Biden came out with a series of executive orders aimed at protecting abortion access in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning row. So I'll get into what those executive orders contain in a moment.

But first, I want to play a few moments from this press conference that he had because I think that Biden said a lot of things that really needed to be said. And in a number of these states, the laws are so extreme, they've raised the threat of criminal penalties for doctors and health care providers. They're so extreme that many don't allow for exceptions, even for rape or incest. Let me say it again. Some of the states don't allow for exceptions for rape or incest. this isn't some imagined horror it's already happening just last week was reported that a 10 year old girl was a rape victim of high 10 years old

and she was forced to have to travel out of the state to Indiana to seek to terminate the presidency and maybe save her life that's last part is my judgment 10 years old 10 years old rape six weeks pregnant already traumatized. It was forced to travel to another state. Imagine being that little girl. Just, I'm in serious, just imagine being that little girl, 10 years old. Does anyone believe that it's Ohio's majority view that that should not be able to be dealt with? Or in any other state in the nation? A 10-year-old girl should be forced to give birth to a rapist child? I can tell you what I don't. I can't think of anything as much more extreme. Justice Thomas himself said that under the reasoning of this decision, this was Justice Thomas

said in his concurrent opinion, that the court should reconsider the constitutional right to contraception, to use contraception, even among married couples. You know, what century? So I know that Republicans are plowing forward because they think that they're completely unaccountable to voters, but it is messaging like this that I absolutely believe is going to change the calculus. I mean, for God's sake, Biden himself said it perfectly.

A 10-year-old girl should be forced to give birth to a rapist child. I can't think of anything that's much more extreme. That's what we're talking about here. And it's not even theoretical in Ohio. A 10-year-old girl, a rape victim, was forced to travel to Indiana for an abortion. A 10-year-old. Like, my God, have we lost a plot or what? What American, who's not already deep in the Tucker Carlson rabbit hole,

looks at that and thinks, yeah, yeah, no, these are people who want to give more power to. So, you know, as horrific a point as it is for Biden to have to make, I'm glad he made it, because this is what's happening, and we shouldn't carry water for Republicans by sugar-coating what they're quite literally doing. All right. In terms of his executive orders, here's what they do. First, Biden's Health and Human Services Department is going to work on expanding access to emergency contraception like IUDs. It'll also ensure that patients have access to, quote, the full rights and protections for emergency medical care afforded under the law. On the medication front, Merrick Garland's already announced that states can't ban Miffa Pristone, which is a medication abortion with FDA approval. HHS is going to ramp up outreach and public education on abortion so that people know their rights. The White House and the DOJ are convening pro bono attorneys and legal organizations to give legal help to those seeking abortions and those providing abortions. Biden's asking the FTC to protect consumer privacy about reproductive health, and he's asking HHS to consider additional action to safeguard

sensitive information related to reproductive health care, including updated HIPAA guidance that would actually prevent doctors from disclosing private information of patients, including to law enforcement. And finally, Biden's looking to protect mobile clinics that have been deployed to provide care for out-of-state patients. Now, that's a lot in the realm of what he can do, which, of course, brings into very clear focus just how limited Biden is in terms of what he can do. But on that point, here's what Biden had to say. The only way to fulfill and restore that right for women in this country is by voting, by exercising the power at the ballot box. Let me explain. We need two additional pro-choice senators and a pro-choice house to codify

row as federal law. Your vote can make. that a reality. I know it's frustrating and it made a lot of people very angry, but the truth is this, and it's not just me saying it. It's what the court said. When you read the decision, the court has made clear, it will not protect the rights of women. Period. Period. And this is exactly how simple it needs to be. It's also what I've been saying for weeks now. Hold the house, expand the Senate majority by just two seats, eliminate the filibuster and then we can finally pass a law codifying row. I've also mentioned how important

it is that we expand the court because we all know that this court will twist itself into pretzels to strike down the Women's Health Protection Act is unconstitutional. But first things first, and that is the election coming up in November where all of this rests on holding the House and expanding our Senate majority. And as long as we keep repeating this simple direction, then people will recognize that putting up a fight is within reach. So good on Biden for making this as clear and concise as he's doing right now. And I know we spend a lot of time talking about abortion, but I think it's also important to note that this isn't just about abortion. Here's what Positive America's John Lovett said a couple weeks back on this podcast, which has only become more apparent given

everything that's going on. I think at root, we want to find a way to create a choice between Republican extremism and Republican deference to rich people and corporations and the steps Democrats want to take right now to protect access to health care, protect access to abortion, to help people with high costs, and tell a story about that choice, that on the one hand, you have Democrats who have been fighting to take on high gas prices and Republicans who have been trying to stymie what they are doing. On the one hand, you have Democrats who have been desperately trying to expand things like the child tax credit, but have zero Republicans willing, well, who have often had zero Republicans willing to go along with any part of their agenda to make life more

affordable for most families, middle-class families, poor families. And then on the other hand, you have the leader of the Republican senatorial campaign, basically saying it wants to sunset, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. I think that's the story we have to tell. I think what this decision on Roe has to be a big part of it, and it has to be a signal, if not the most important, probably the most important example of the difference between what Republicans want to do and what Democrats want to do. In other words, it's not just the issue of abortion where Republicans are extreme, but it is Republican extremism that's the principal issue here.

Like just this past week alone, Republicans in Pennsylvania moved to amend their state constitution, stating explicitly that that document doesn't guarantee any rights relating to abortion or public funding of abortions. The Republican Supreme Court in Wisconsin ruled that drop boxes are illegal. The Republican governor in Oklahoma announced an audit into Tulsa schools over fear that critical race theory is being taught like like what are we even doing you go to work every day you you bust your ass you save up for whatever you need you buy what you can afford and if you live in a red state your tax dollars are going toward this fucking circus auditing critical race theory

striking down drop boxes like my god i'm sorry but i refuse to believe that any semblance of a majority of people on either side of the aisle work their entire lives and pay taxes to fund this clown car bullshit. So while I don't like repeating myself, I'm going to repeat myself. Remember this feeling you have right now because the quickest solution, the longest lasting solution, and the most impactful solution will be a repudiation at the ballot box. The only way that Republicans get off this path is to vote them out and show them that they are being rejected. That's it. Anything other than a full-scale shalacking will be taken as validation. In other words, if they win outright, they keep going. If they win some,

They keep going. If they just barely lose, they'll pretend that it was stolen and they'll keep going. The only way they take a step back and say, oh, shit, hold up, this strategy isn't working for us, is if we have general election level turnout and destroy them at the ballot box. And we can do it because we just did it in November of 2020. And yeah, for those who say, you know, we already voted, you're right. But we got to do it again because we're getting a taste right now, a taste of what will happen to an exponentially worse degree if we don't fight back with everything we've got.

Next up is my interview with NBC's Ben Collins. Now we've got NBC reporter, Ben Collins. Ben, thanks so much for coming on. Thanks for having, Brian. So you cover disinformation and extremism for NBC. Just days ago, on July 4th, another mass shooter terrorized the Highland Park community now. Can you talk a little bit about the shooter's online activity that ultimately led to what happened? Yeah, so the shooter in this case was obsessed with mass murder on the internet.

which is a space that does exist on the internet. I know a lot of people are shocked to hear that this is a real community on the internet, but it is. You know, they lionize mass shooters, people like Dylan Roof or Andrews Breivik. You know, over the last 10 years,

we had a litany of them. People who've live streamed their murders or posted manifestos on the internet for their murders. This person was obsessed with that sort of thing. He made music videos about school shootings, about getting into shootouts with the cops. You know, he had what he thought was a manifest,

manifesto, but it was just a bunch of numbers, a lot of indecipherable stuff. This guy was a doomer or a nihilist. He believed that there was more community in this space online, this inherently violent, often racist, inherently misogynistic space online, and he thought he had in the real world. And that you can tell, he planned this four months, leaving hints in the spaces, is sometimes that he created. He created Wikipedia is about himself

or small wiki spaces about himself. He had an online rapper identity named Wake where he had his own Discord where people posted Nileas memes on there as well. So that's where he came from. And he's not alone. There are a lot of these people on the internet. Only some of them go to commit mass murder,

but he was one of these people. You know, a lot of what we're seeing right now in terms of these shootings, in terms of these young men who are being radicalized, online, this community is obviously growing. To what extent do you think that mainstream figures like the Tucker Carlson's of the world

can be credited for mainstreaming, a lot of what used to be kind of whispered in the corners of the internet? He'd spouted the exact same conspiracy theory, the white replacement theory, as the Buffalo shooter. And we're seeing more of this. It's not just the Tucker Carlson's of the world. It's a lot of these public figures who are now, like I said, mainstreaming a lot of what used to be

just kind of, you know, you know, the quiet stuff. Well, yeah, he was part of a subculture that, you know, some people called Fashwave, you know, like, you know, as in fascism, Fashwave, where there's an aesthetic around this now. And it comes from this much larger push on the mainstream right. It is an offshoot of the stuff in the mainstream right, where they talk constantly about how the media's lied to you.

Everything's wrong. There's this big, scary entity coming to replace you. And they are, you know, the mainstream media version of this, the Fox News version of this leads you to fill in the gaps, especially if you're a teenager with not a lot to do. And the way they fill in the gaps on the Internet, they say, you know, oh, replacement theory, oh, so we're being replaced by Hispanic people from the Mexican borders or who's doing it? Who's the big cabal guy that they keep talking about?

They generally come back to antisemitism. They come back to, you know, the Jews are doing this. That's what happened absolutely with a Buffalo shooter. So that's the issue is that the downwind effects of the mainstream stuff from people like Tucker Carlson, who is, he will admit this readily to you. He thinks he's just asking the questions, right? Right, right. If you have a lot of time in your hands as a teenager and you think life is an alternate

reality game because you play a lot of video games, you try to fill in those gaps with the most ridiculous and ludicrous over-the-top ideas, and there are spaces in the internet that will fill them in for you. You have to have like a racist bone in your body to start down this path, right? You have to think that, hey, it could be the Jews. It could be black people or whatever. And there are people on the internet who will fill in those answers with those really simple solutions that are just fundamentally not true, these large conspiracy theories about the New World Order and about, you know, like a cabal trying to take over the world. That is a simple solution to these people who want answers who don't have, you know, a community in the real world.

It actually kind of fits in with Fox's business model pretty perfectly because for years and years, it's always been fearmongering about migrant caravans. I mean, this was mostly to just scare old white people, but now they've figured out a way to kind of more insidiously manipulate it to, I guess, manipulate young white people and just kind of have the next generation of people that are just kind of scared of people who don't look like them. Yeah, and I think with young people, they don't have the Fox News aesthetic. They don't have the talk radio aesthetic, right? But they've created their own aesthetic. Like, Fash Wave has an aesthetic, right? It's those big, like 80s style, you know, neon things that you see from people like Nick Quentes, who's a white nationalist who's a white nationalist, who has way too much influence, frankly, on the white nationalist far right on the internet. But they have, they've built their own world and community around racist, far right ideas, stuff that doesn't, frankly, at all serve as a feedback loop back to Fox News.

Tucker Carlson is not talking about Nick Poentes. He's not talking about, hey, that stuff. He knows exactly where to stop, basically. But it is a perpetuating device on the far-right Internet that allows this to be a real political faction on the right that needs to be catered to by people who are running for office in some capacity. You can't completely write these people off. You've seen people, you know, do a dance, people like Paul Gosar

with people like Nick Poentz in the past. the far right parts of the Republican Party are kind of playing around with this because they think they have to. They think the young people in their party, that constituency comes from that really far, fashy kind of far rate. You know, you'd mention that Tucker Carlson knows where to stop. He did say after the July 4th shooting that, you know, all of this was the fault of, I think, the quote was mostly women who never stop lecturing men about their male privilege.

Do you see a link between this like anti-women grievance that Tucker's tapping into and what these, you know, very online kind of, I guess they call themselves like in cells or they're called in cells or are blaming in manifestos in their online communities? Kind of. Look, this guy did not blame his mom or anything like that. That's of Tucker's imagination or maybe a projection or something. I don't really know exactly what's going on with Tucker. I will say that there is, you know, part of this thing is in-cell core. In-cell core is another kind of like far-right aesthetic that is inherently the idea that young white men are being discarded by society and that no women will sleep with them anymore. And then the only way to take it out in society is through violence or to group together and to, you know, try to harass young women into, you know, being more open to serving

them or something. It's really grim, gruesome, old politic for them. However, I don't, look, with this guy, this guy had a lot of problems that Tucker, I think, probably tried to place his own, what's the generous way of saying this? He tried to place his own political leanings on top of this thing instead of looking at the obvious problems that are going on. This kid had incredibly easy access to guns. He had a forum that was rooting him on in the real world to do this kind of thing. He created an identity around this. He had tens of thousands of views on YouTube with this sort of school shooter rhetoric stuff. And that's a much bigger problem. And the fact that this kid thought he had no social mobility when in reality it seemed to get outside. That is a lot different

than whatever, like, you know, his mom didn't like him or something. That's a completely different thing. Yeah. You know, you've done a lot of reporting on like 4chan, 8chan, those kind of sites. I know the number of shootings are going up, but what about the problem of these sites? Like, is the trajectory that more of these young men are getting radicalized online? And so, you know, the root problem is actually getting worse and not better? The root problem is definitely getting worse.

The issue is it's so decentralized now. You can't just take down a website. If you were going to take down 4chan tomorrow, these sort of things would still happen. Yeah. Because somebody would just create a new one. There is no way to stop this sort of thing. That's how 8chan started. 8chan began, which is where a lot of these manifestos were posted in 2018, 2019, before mass shootings.

That began because people thought that 4chan was too restrictive because you couldn't post graphic depictions of child pornography on 4chan. So people just made 8chan. So there will be a, you know, whatever. 16 chan. 8 squared is, right. Exactly. That's just going to come the second you start.

regulating individual websites we have a much deeper societal divide how do you know how do we get all these kids who are so seduced by like these racist forms again you have to start a little racist so that's where the societal problems start with racism misogyny these much deeper academic issues that are that we have to fix but once they're down that path like after that path how do you get them like away from those places how do you get them so those places aren't as addicting and easy to form communities around than the places in the real world. And how do you give them hope? I always say this about in-cell forms.

In-cell forms are the worst places in the world because there are this self-perpetuating grievance form where anybody who's not an in-cell anymore gets outside, gets a girlfriend, gets a job, whatever. They don't go back to the in-cell forms and they're like, hey, guys, it's fine. We figured it out. I'm all right. It doesn't happen that way because no one wants to go back to that sort of. pathetic part of their life and just remind people it's going to be okay. And sometimes you get banned

from those forums for even, you know, bucking the trend or going against the, going against the talking point. So we have to figure out a way to get people out of that path and admit that it's a path and stop people from driving people down that path, giving, you know, telling young men that, you know, life is hopeless and all their problems are because of women or black people or Jews or something. That is a, from a media perspective from, you know, there is a, the number one cable TV show in the world somebody is driving them down that path that's going to stop too so we have a much we have a very large heuristic problem that like the quickest thing you could do is stop the gun stuff and then there's this other stuff we have to go through

as well so i was going to ask you the very unfair question of of how do we solve all of this uh ben collins i just need you to solve all of this right now but i think i think the the better question would be what has worked like have there been any solutions that have actually that have actually worked in terms of um you know de-radicalizing people deprogramming people or or just like more more broadly than like these individuals yeah so like individual individual intervention varies by person but the thing that we see you know for for example cue and on supporters who come back from the edge uh there's a thing called exogenous shock like you have to be you have to be like zapped in your brain

like oh wait that doesn't make any sense this doesn't make any sense and with QAnon supporters for example they see something that they know doesn't make any sense from their own like expertise or something sometimes it's like they see a video and they're like wait a second

I know a lot about you know I know a lot about surfing or something and there was a cue post about surfing that just doesn't make any sense to me and then that that zaps him out and they're like wait if he's lying about this then maybe he's lying about the whole thing yeah so from from an individual

perspective, you have to be kind and patient and sort of let them come back into the real world because you're not going to yell at them into this. They have to just through, just because they're in the same way their self-discovery led them down this path, it kind of has to lead them out because you're not going to, you're not going to scream at them until they come back. And trust me, I think we've tried that as a society at this point. We've tried to scream at these people and say, hey, this is all nonsense and garbage and it's, you know, this is the protocols the elders of Zion. This is the oldest trick in the book in terms of radicalizing people. Why are you guys falling down this path again? People have to come to it of their own

volition. And it's really difficult to say that because that is an individualized thing that requires a lot of personal attention to people in your life. And from a top-down perspective, we absolutely got to stop playing to those fears. We have to stop saying there is a big cabal coming to get you because it's first of all, it's a lie. It's not true. It's not true. It's not not the news. It shouldn't be under the banner of the news. It is an old-fashioned fascist tactic used to separate people, make people really angry, and make people buy, you know, meal prep kits for the end of the world. So that's where we're at. It's two prong. Individual attention, and it's also, like, from media and a political perspective, you have to stop telling lies.

You know, we're seeing a lot of Republican candidates for the House, for Senate, sound increasingly like, you know, the human manifestation of a Facebook comments section. Is there any indication that appealing to a smaller and smaller niche of people, because this is a small niche of people, is making them any less electable? Or is that rhetoric only for those people online and everybody else kind of just, you know, It goes in one ear and out the other, but like that rhetoric is for those people and everybody else kind of just, you know, has selective hearing when people say that kind of stuff. Yeah, Brian, the fundraising attention goes to the crazier thought, the more accelerationist

thought. Nobody's making a lot of money being like, hey, everybody, let's just slow down, we'll figure it out, let's fix a pothole. Like, that is not a, that's not the sexiest, scary political email that you get that goes to your spam folder because the headline is ridiculous um but the you know the the the fundraising stuff goes to the marjorie taylor greens and it goes to the people who are constantly driving that attention because they've hacked our it's like they've hacked our brains into thinking that's the most important thing because it's urgent you know in their world the world is collapsing tomorrow um the cabal has to be taken down here are the bad guys we have to get rid of once we get rid of them everything will be fine

the day after that and the way you can stop it is giving me 20 bucks That is a very, like, it's super easy. It makes a lot of sense. It's a one-and-done thing. The world's problems are super nuanced, and nuanced doesn't work well for political money-making. It doesn't work well within also, you know, a two-party system where the goal is to get the nomination. Once you have the nomination, people just decide between two people who, you know, they're like, whatever, I guess this guy's a little bit less bad. So we are in a very bad spot with that because the most radical person probably will win the nomination from here and out until we fix this, until we start talking about it.

You know, just switching gears here. You know, you've been immersed in all of this stuff while reporting on it. Even from my like very light experience, just being online and looking into this stuff, it's so toxic that there comes a point where I can't even. And, you know, on July 4th, I couldn't even, I couldn't even open Twitter. I was just like, and I have that luxury, by the way. And I was like, you know, hyper aware of that that I could close Twitter. But I just, I needed a break. You are kind of like immersed in this stuff on it.

This is what you do. How has that impacted you? And like, how do you hold up among like all of this reporting? Yeah, it's, look, I'm not going to say it's not hard. It's very difficult. But you view it like a triage situation, like you're ready when the time comes to deal with it. And then a few days later, I always kind of lose my mind. I was like, you know, if we get five days between something that's two horrible events,

you know, that's when I get like headaches and sad and all this stuff. But you kind of deal with the crisis, you know, it's this car accident after car accident. You can't avoid it. You get to get off the highway. And that's how I deal with it. And I also say, like, the thing that I really want to stress people, like, this is not getting better tomorrow, get some good hobbies. Do something else. I have a lot of people in my life. I go on like every NBA podcast that asked me and I just talk about like, like, is it, I don't know, DeAndre 8 and the max player. Like I just do this all the time. And it is a really good way to like just blank slate your head and get into a different world for a minute. And whatever that hobby is, as long as it's not hurting anybody, just keep doing it because it will help you in next few years. That's what I've learned. And is I, you know, you really have to create a separate universe where the constant dread isn't just, you know, just burrowing into the back of your head.

Yeah. I, I've said, I've said to my friends, like, I've literally had this conversation where I was like, I wish, I wish I loved sports because it would be such like, it would be such a good escape from all of this stuff. And, like, sometimes I'll work all day and I'll wake up, you know, at 8 o'clock in the morning and I'll start working by 8.30. And it'll be 1 o'clock in the morning and I'm still editing or something like. that and i'm just like i wish i wish i had like sports where i could just take like a couple hours

three hours a day and just like watch a game and like the i'm like jealous of those people who do who do like focus whose life is like basketball and i and they can just you know the worst thing that happens is like you lose a game you know what i mean as opposed to like like there's there is a version of that for everybody like the the good and bad side of the youtube rabbit hole is that like i didn't know i liked music theory until youtube just like shoved it in my face over and I was like, oh, yeah, that's kind of interesting. So, like, there is a version of this for, I don't, right? I don't know, what is it for you, right?

Like, what's your, like, deep dark YouTube rabbit hole that's pretty interesting? Oh, I mean, it's, it's not, like, deep and dark. My, my, all I watch on YouTube is episodes of Shark Tank. That's it. It's like, but it's great. And it's like, it's not, it's not political and it's just, you know, you see all these. I don't know, it's, it's, yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's like my only escape and my whole YouTube algorithm is completely, completely screwed. Like, there's nothing.

nothing else I'll ever be able to watch because, like, the first nine videos are all are all Shark Tank and YouTube gets it by now. It's like, you're not going to click on anything else. So like, here's, here you go. Here's, here's 27 different options of Shark Tank. At least that's useful. You can elevator pitch Mr. Wonderful and be a millionaire tomorrow. I can, whereas I'm like, oh, that looks like a good second round pick. So, yeah, that's the thing, though. You've got that and that's good. And you get lean into it and don't feel bad about it when you lose like three hours of your life to Shark Tank. I think that's the way to move through this.

Well, hang in there. And thank you so much for your reporting. And let's finish off with this. Where can people hear more from you? Oh, go to NBCNews.com. That's where all my stories go. You can go to my Twitter account. I would just search my name because my Twitter account handle is ridiculous.

It's the words. It's one underscore with two underscores after it. It was a joke. And then my life became serious. I don't like that. So just search my name on Twitter if you want to. But thank you for having me on, man. This is great.

And I really love your show. Ben Collins, thank you so much. I appreciate you taking the time. Thanks again to Ben. One quick note, if you want to watch this week's highly anticipated January 6 committee hearings with me, subscribe to my YouTube channel, Brian Tyler Cohen on YouTube,

so you can watch along with my live stream. They're scheduled, I believe, for Tuesday and Thursday of this week, Tuesday in the morning, and Thursday in prime time. So definitely don't miss that. Okay, that's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen,

produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review, and check out briantylercoen.com for links to all of my other channels.