The Daily Signal - Tim Pool: Why He's Suing the Harris Campaign for Defamation

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

Podcaster Tim Pool filed a defamation lawsuit against Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign Thursday. He says he has faced an increase in death threats and that suspicious people have been monitoring his place of business, two developments he finds alarming after two assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump. Enjoy the show! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, September 24th. I'm Tyler O'Neill. I sat down with Tim Poole, who runs the Timcast podcast, extremely influential, popular podcaster. You know, a guy who is really known for opposing things like the death penalty and standing for civil liberties. And a lot of people may disagree with Tim Poole. He has a lot of people on his podcast who actually support the death penalty. And he's debated this issue many times. He loves to debate it. Anyway, I spoke with him because he filed a defamation lawsuit on Thursday

against Vice President Kamala Harris's presidential campaign. And it's all because she sent out this tweet. Her campaign sent out this tweet that he says defames. him. And he goes even further than that. He says, it's putting a target on my back for things I don't believe and things I actually argue against. And I think that is the fundamental issue in this lawsuit because this tweet that the Kamala Harris campaign put out there suggested that Tim Poole supports extrajudicial killings, not just of people who might be guilty, but of people who just oppose the campaign of Donald Trump.

And, you know, this is, or rather, don't support the campaign of Donald Trump. So here's the statement that Kamala HQ tweeted. They say, Trump, and this is a quote, Trump operatives say their Project 2025 plan is to give Trump total unchecked legal power so they can jail and execute those who don't support Trump if he wins. And this one message could not be further from Tim Poole's actual position. And you know, you'll hear him explain more in depth on that shortly. But this is an extremely heated claim for a campaign to make. And it's one that has, you know, been completely disproven.

I mean, not only is Tim Poole not a Trump operative. That's the first thing. He doesn't have a connection to Project 2025. That's the second thing. And then the third thing is he is well known for consistently opposing the death penalty. And he just, he doesn't support the death penalty even when someone's civil rights and civil liberties have been followed, not just in cases like this where, you know, the campaign is suggesting he supports extrajudicial killings where people wouldn't have been through a process. And so this claim is really beyond the pale. And Tim Poole gets into that.

There are concerns that I have about the lawsuit, though, just because defamation is an extremely high bar too clear. And this is something I've found by covering the Southern Poverty Law Center for years, where the Southern Poverty Law Center has been able to weasel its way out of numerous defamation lawsuits, partially by claiming that everything they say is opinion. and nobody takes them seriously, which is a very interesting claim considering how the legacy media and corporate America and a whole bunch of people rely on the Southern Poverty Law Center and repeat their claims as if they were gospel. But I digress. If the Southern Poverty Law Center can escape so many lawsuits, then I really think the Kamala Harris campaign will be fighting strongly against this one.

That said, this claim that they have against Tim Poole is beyond the pale. And I'm really glad to see him pushing back against it. So listen to my interview with Tim Poole right after this. Hey, it's Rob Lewy from The Daily Signal. Want to stay ahead of the curve on conservative news and analysis? Subscribe to our free Daily Signal email newsletters. You'll get the latest headlines, detailed policy coverage, and exclusive interviews delivered straight to your inbox.

Whether you're interested in our morning update, breaking news alerts, or weekly roundups, we've got you covered. Don't let the liberal media control the narrative. Sign up now at DailySignal.com slash email and join thousands of informed conservatives who rely on the Daily Signal to cut through the noise and get the truth. Hi, this is Tyler O'Neill, managing editor at The Daily Signal. I'm honored to be joined by Tim Poole, who is the host of Timcast, IRL, and James Lawrence, who's a partner at Envisage Law and former Deputy General Counsel. at Health and Human Services. Gentlemen, it's a pleasure to have you with me.

Thanks for having me. Thank you. So I want to just jump right in. Tim, you filed a really powerful lawsuit against Kamala Harris's campaign, specifically for making a claim that goes against pretty much everything you've been saying in public life. She said that, or she, I'm not sure if you want to say said, implied, like suggested, but very clearly the campaign stated that you support extrajudicial killings. When you have a continual track record of opposing the death penalty in pretty much every case,

so can you talk us through, you know, what this accusation looked like to you, why it was so shocking, and how you eventually decided to file a defamation suit? Absolutely. The Kamala Harris campaign put out a statement. statement, stating several false, making several falsehoods, one that I was a Trump operative, which is absolutely incorrect. As it is to imply that I'm being paid by Trump or anyone associated. It said that I had a project 2025 plan as if I was affiliated with the Heritage Foundation or any kind of organizational function of it, not true. And it stated that I wanted

Trump to have extra judicial authority to jail and execute the people who refuse to support. him, which is, I believe, the most shockingly extreme thing you could accuse someone of advocating for or believe it. And so when this tweet was made, using a clip from my show, pulled out of context, further insinuating that we had scrubbed it from YouTube, as if to imply they knew exactly what's going on, yeah, they, I believe it's getting messages from people who are asking me what it's about. Obviously, I have many friends who are like, I can't believe they would dare or say something so obviously false. But there were actually people I knew.

People that work here at my company who said family members were concerned and reached out to them. And so, in fact, my personal family were freaking out, demanding that they have to take that down. I mean, we already have serious security issues as it is. We can't have the Democratic presidential campaign in a national election lying and accusing you of these things. And so, you know, I'll state even lay.

Last night, we had Matt Walsh on the show, and we debated the death penalty, to which I believe, correctly and articulately explained why an institutionalized death penalty is wrong and why I don't agree with killing in this regard. And I just, I'm not a fan of the death penalty for a variety of reasons. But it's routine, in fact, on my show that I speak out against the death penalty. And there's a lot of arguments for it. One is actually simple as taking a life is wrong. If someone is subdued and no longer a threat to anyone else, I don't believe their life should be ended. But to see the campaign, to make this argument is, they made a false statement, I should say. And they took it far beyond just an argument with the death penalty.

They actually stated they're presenting people with this reality, a false reality through this false statement, that I would like to see a world. and I'm going to be very clear on how I say this. This is a false claim insinuating my belief would be somewhere in the realm of should Trump be elected, there would be individuals who would agree that if you don't support Trump, you be killed, which is insanity. If we're going to argue the death penalty and we're going to argue the most heinous of crimes were committed, a man has murdered and brutally tortured somebody or something to this effect, and that we believe capital punishment should be applied is a totally different.

that people make arguments about. What the Harris campaign stated is that I and others, but namely me with this video clip, think that people for no reason, other than they don't support Trump should be executed, not even a capital crime. I don't think there could be anything more extreme to accuse a person of advocating for or doing.

This is effectively stating that I'd be an agreement in the worldviews of some of the most evil men throughout history who are reviled. it has caused us already damages. We have to consider, you know, I can say, I don't want to get too much into it. I do want to defer to James a little bit, but I can tell you right now, we have lists of people that we reach out to to come on the show and we're getting dead again. And so when someone who works for my company says, my mom called me and saw this and she

wants to know what's going on, she's very concerned, we have to deal with this. And so we, you know, we're, we filed the suit. I filed the suit we're seeking remedy. I think, you know, maybe James could speak better to more than that. I don't want to, you know, overstep my bounce here. Well, so I've covered the Southern Poverty Law Center for a long time. I wrote a book called Making Hate Pay, the corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. I've seen a whole bunch of people file lawsuits that I thought were very strong,

claiming that the SPLC had defamed them by calling them hate groups, by putting them on a map with the Ku Klux Klan. And yet, I've seen. seen many of these lawsuits dismissed because, you know, the New York Times v. Sullivan, the precedents in the American Supreme Court, you know, jurisprudence, say that in order to survive a defamation count, you know, in order to prove defamation, if you are a public figure, and now they've redefined public figure, so it can be a limited purpose public figure or an all-purpose public figure and all this stuff, but essentially almost anybody can count as a public figure if you put

yourself out in the national debate, which I'd say you certainly have. I've seen many of these cases dismissed because you can't prove actual malice, which in many cases means that the campaign in this case, the Kamala Harris campaign knew specifically and had publicly acknowledged that they knew that you opposed the death penalty. I don't know if you have evidence that that they've done so. So one of the difficulties with defamation law is that you essentially have to prove that they have a reckless disregard for the truth. And you have to meet this extremely high standard. It's not enough that they defamed you, that they said something completely false. In order to win in court, you have to meet a really high bar. And so I want to hear a little bit more

either from you, Tim, or from you, James, about why you think this case meets that bar. Not saying, I mean, obviously, it's an egregious lie. It's an absolute falsehood. I think filing a defamation suit makes a ton of sense. But the particulars of defamation law, they make it extremely hard. You're right, Tyler. The Supreme Court's precedent with New York Times v. Sullivan and the actual Malice Standard does erect a bar. And it's a bar that Mr. Poole and we as his counsel think we're going to

meet in this case. And we've pled in the complaint. Mr. Poole's views on these issues. And he mentioned capital punishment at the outset, are well-known, well-publicized, have been for years. And not just that, but also his perspectives on civil liberties and jury trials and the need to follow the rule of law if you are going to try to imprison someone. If the state's going to do that, there are various safeguards that have to be followed, legal guardrails that have to be followed if the prosecution's going to prove its case. And in that in the clip at issue, Tim was calling for bringing evidence to bear on people, as he said in the clip, who had actually committed crimes to, if the state's going to prove its case, let's have public trials, evidence can be brought forth. And as he clarified even

later in the program, somebody can be tried and found guilty or acquitted by a jury of their peers. So he has a lengthy track record of, again, not only opposing counsel. capital punishment, but also support for civil liberties and interconstitutional rights. And the claimant issue, which was not cast as opinion, but cast rather as an assertion of fact in this tweet that's been viewed more than 12 million times is that is that Tim was advocating very much to the contrary. And as he pointed out, lumps him in with some of the worst murderers and offenders of human rights in history now and in the past. And you mentioned the Southern Poverty Law Center and in cases that have been brought against the SPLC on defamation grounds. And you're right,

a number of them have been dismissed. Recently, there's an interesting case that was decided against the SPLC at the motion to dismiss stage. It's King versus Southern Poverty Law Center. It was decided by the Middle District of Alabama last year. And the plaintiffs in that case were able to get past the SPLC's motion to dismiss. And the underlying claims that were at issue there was that the plaintiffs and the group that sued the Southern Poverty Law Center in that case had been defamed by the organization as an anti-immigrant hate group. And the reality for those plaintiffs was that not only were they not an anti-immigrant group, they had people on their board and positions of power that were themselves immigrants. And I'm oversimifying at some level

case for purposes of this discussion. But in that particular case, the plaintiffs were able to get past a motion to dismiss and get into discovery. And we think that case provides a similar roadmap here where you have somebody like Mr. Poole who, who's again, views on these issues are not a secret. They're well known. They're articulated by him every night to tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. And yet here we are with the campaign for one of the two major political parties in this country, potentially even the campaign for the next president of the United States, spreading this kind of disinformation against my client. So yes, we think it's actionable. And we think that when we have an opportunity to brief the issues for the court, we're going to get past any motion to dismiss premised on the New York Times versus Sullivan defense,

which also will put the Harris campaign in the position of not coming forward and actually defending what it said and saying point like, this is why we think it's true, but to sit back and rest on that defense instead of owning what it said, which in and of itself is important. I want to add real quickly as well. As the filing states, the tweet itself makes reference to deeper knowledge about the show. They state that it had since been scrubbed by YouTube, which would indicate they did some looking into what the show actually was. The show was removed from YouTube, but that's only because of YouTube's rules, the show actually exists its entirety on all platforms. And so I just want to make sure that's clear that implication. Well, that is the key point because one of the things. about that case, James, if you wouldn't mind me saying, because I've interviewed DA King multiple

times, and I believe I was the first national outlet to cover that story, that it survived the motion to dismiss. The reason he could do that was because the SPLC previously had said that his organization, they had previously specifically stated it's not a hate group. We don't like this organization. They said, but they didn't, but they explicitly said it wasn't a hate group. And then a few years later, when they had a lobbyist registering against a bill he supported, then suddenly they changed their mind about whether he was a hate group. So like that is, that's an extremely strong position for a defamation case because it shows that at least with the second statement, with the defamatory statement, you can prove that they knew that it was likely false.

And so I do take Tim's point, though, the fact that they mention YouTube acting in this way does suggest a familiarity. And I wanted to know, like, you talk about following the system with civil liberties in that same clip. Did you mention in that show your opposition to the death penalty? Yes. In great detail, in fact, not only my opposition to the death penalty, but even my personal opinion that the individuals that we see in government aligned with Democrats who are accused of crimes have not committed treason and wouldn't warrant the death penalty even if even if they were tried. My argument on this issue extensively over the past several, over the past year or longer,

I'll give you some context very quickly. This was about the clipping question is about Sean Davis of the Federalist saying he wanted to see lists of Democrats who are going to be arrested if Trump wins. the context of what I was saying on that show was that, and I'll give you the context, as in context as I can to explain what I'm saying, because they pull this out of context, is that in the event, you do want to arrest some individuals who are Democrat aligned. There has to be evidence. There has to be trials.

There has to be an opportunity for defense. There have to be investigations. Judges have to issue warrants. It must be done by the book for the world to see because we believe in the rule of law. The point being made was, are there Democrats who have committed crimes? Well, of course. I mean, Joe Biden, they outright said he did have the classified documents, but for reasons, you know, that the special prosecutor has determined they don't want to bring it to court. But he did have the classified documents. There's also the lawyer who altered an email. And so in that show, I said, of these people, they didn't even commit treason anyway. It may be seditious, but the penalty for these actions is not death. So for them to then go on and claim that even in the greater context of whether I believe in capital punishment or not, the show itself is me saying no to the death penalty. I understand the death penalty exists. And I said no in this show.

And, you know, I think it's a shocking lie to, well, I just, I'll lead to that out. I don't want to, again, overset my bounce here. And maybe James would want to chime. Yeah. Well, and again, to follow up on the preexisting knowledge piece, and we pled this in the complaint, Tim mentioned the face of the tweet itself talking about or alleging that he and others pulled the clip off of YouTube, which is as we pled faults on its face that they initiated that action versus. Well, to clarify, no, we we did. take that show off of YouTube. It exists on all platforms, however, on altered. It's just that YouTube as a platform as specific rules as to advocacy for the death penalty. So the show in its

full context can be viewed basically anywhere podcasts are available. Right. Including Rumble, where the video is posted and which is incorporated in the complaint. So as he said, it shows a familiarity that this particular account operated by the campaign had with his content. But the other thing that we pled in the complaint is that this clip was not broadcast just before Labor Day weekend. This had been out in the internet or on the internet being discussed for two months. And if you compare the clip at issue that the campaign posted in the watermark in the top right corner, it looks like it was pulled off of reporting that was previously done and channeled through the website mediaite, which if you look at that reporting and other discussion that was around this at the time,

does not attribute these atrocious views to Tim. In particular and relevant here, but focuses on what others on the broadcast were saying. Again, no allegations in that reporting or statements in that reporting that Tim advocated for, again, as we pled in the complaint, Donald Trump to be made dictator for this constitution to be suspended and for President Trump in a second Trump administration. to imprison and then execute his political enemies. You don't see any of that in the reporting. And at the pleading stage, at the Rule 12 stage of a case like this, there is enough of an assertion and a basis on the base of the pleadings, we think should allow this case to move into discovery to show exactly in more detail what they knew

and when they knew it about Tim, his show, and what gave rise to this particular disinformation-laced tweet that, again, has been viewed by more than 12 million people, cutting Tim off from the very audience that he wants to engage with. And I would say to the 12 million number is conservative because we know that this is also quote-tweeted and republished by others with ill-intent. And I will also stress that the tweet, We didn't specifically say political opponents.

It said those who don't support him as if to imply your run-of-the-mill voter who says, I don't support Trump, made face extrajudicial execution by some kind of psychotic dictatorial regime. It's absurdity. It's insane. Well, so, and I think that insanity, we've seen two assassination attempts against former President Trump amid rhetoric comparing him to the worst dictators in history, spreading lies about him. And I mean, you know, there are things that people disagree with Trump on. Of course,

he's a political figure. But the level of vitriol that's been spewed at this man, I mean, do you think that, you know, this ratcheting up of the rhetoric that may have contributed to these assassination attempts has, you know, in this context, is it particularly dangerous to lie about you as the Kamala Harris campaign is done? Within a few days of this post going up, a strange man started lurking around one of my properties, our old studio location where we no longer operate out of, and there are just some private residence there. There are employees, it's multiple properties, and we do have some employees there as well. The first thing I heard abruptly was that a strange individual wearing a dress was trespassing on the property and filming the building

We then started to get more information. Now I will preface this with, I was not there, so I don't have the full details. My understanding is I was told there's a police report. And this individual was lurking around our neighbors surrounding properties as well. This individual had apparently gotten to a fight injuring one of our employees as one of our employees was deeply concerned due to, namely the swattings we've already had, the death threats we get on a regular basis. and then all of a sudden, it's just within a couple days of this post going out, a crazy person shows up with the property. And now we're already having discussions with our security team about what it's going to cost to deal with things like this. I have absolutely seen an uptick in, I don't read them, but I started getting notifications blasted on various social platforms of messages coming in, very, very disparaging, some insinuating.

to the effect of wanting me to die or intention to have me die. Things like, you know, it just, I try, I can't, I'm not going to go through thousands of messages and read them all, but I'm getting these notifications and they're just things like, you know, wait until we see what you do to you, if this is what you want, blah, blah, blah. And we get these, and we get these, these moments. We just had another incident the other day where one of the employees said that there was a car lurking around our new property. And this is back country rural roads.

These cars should not, this kind of behavior is seemingly out of place. And so I don't think it's a coincidence. I mean, when one of the top presidential campaigns claims that one of a top global podcast, prominent political show is calling for run-of-the-mill voters who don't support Trump to be executed should he win, the tensions are so hot in this country. it's putting a target on my back for things I don't believe and things I actually argued against. And so I think in terms of the business repercussions from security, our booking, our advertising, I mean, as we mentioned in the filing, we spent in the past year and a half or so millions advertising in Chicago and New York specifically to try and bring this show to moderate and Democrat viewers for the purpose of, hey, come watch this show.

We are politically moderate. it. And this has just been, I mean, I'm going to lost rewards for how damaging, I feel it is. And you also recently got, you know, attacked and broiled in the situation where Russian outlets allegedly were paying you, and you didn't know anything about. That is incorrect. Sorry. Let me, yeah, yeah, yeah. Frame it how you would frame it, because I don't want to say anything false. Or just the truth.

Yeah. Well, so the reporting is that you did not know where these, you know, where the ultimate sources of these checks were, but that Russia was involved, allegedly involved in an influence campaign that, you know, that you ended up benefiting from, not, you know, And from what I understand, neither you nor any of the other influencers who received money in this situation were aware that there was any alleged Russian involvement. So I think the first and important thing, I can't speak to anybody else involved. I run several companies. One of the companies produces a show on Friday mornings, which had a non-exclusive distribution license with unmanned.

American company based out of Tennessee called Tentadet Media is the operating name. And like every other licensing agreement we have, there is arm's length. A company approaches us and says we'd like to distribute this. I've sold footage in my career to discovery, to, I believe, even National Geographic. So this is a run-of-the-mill licensing agreement in which we produce our own show. under our own editorial guidelines for distribution on multiple platforms. And in this particular case, I don't want to speak too much because we are, my team is still in communication with the DOJ.

I am a victim, and I don't want to say too much more on that other than, I don't know, we maybe have dozens of agreements with various media companies for distribution. The show in question still airs to this day on the same on YouTube and on iTunes, Spotify, find all their platforms. It was, the arrangement we had was, as a, as states, in the indictment against these two Russian individuals as well, not exclusive. So it's our show. We own the show.

There's just some company that asked if they could broadcast it. So that's how I can say, I suppose. Yeah. No, and that's very helpful. I was just wondering, you know, because we're talking about a democratic campaign lying and smearing you. And we're seeing in a lot of media. sources, suggestions that this relationship you had with tenant media was untoward. And I want to make

absolutely clear, you know, that's not the position of the daily signal. I'm just trying to understand where, you know, and I think you explained it very, very clearly. Have you seen any untoward reporting, any false claims regarding tenant media as well? I think considering that without getting too much into it for, I suppose, legal reasons, a statement was put out by Benny Johnson, as well as myself, indicating that our teams have been in communication with the DOJ and we are victims and we can't comment further. I wish I could, but I, you know, presumably individuals can understand what that means and why we can't talk about it.

Yeah, of course. what you know without going too much because i know you said you don't read these threats but had you been receiving death threats or attacks like this before the kamala harris campaign attacked you and has has the volume ratcheted up considerably afterward uh so in 2022 we were swatted uh or to some type of of false threats uh 13 times i believe the number is 13. Wow. Now, after the first instance where the police actually demanded they enter the property and sweep the building, much to our chagrin, after that it became more security formal. I won't get into the details of how we handle the swaddings after that, but we

had numerous. Some of them were bomb threats where they actually deployed the bomb machines. We had credible threats, which one instance resulted in us having to evacuate. the entire building for three hours while the Timcast hour live stream was on the air to dead empty space to 40,000 people. So certainly this has happened before. But after this tweet goes out, I certainly noticed a dramatic increase in messages and hate. I would say that I would not consider it to be all that notable when we get hate messages or failed threats, meaning, I don't know, once or twice a month, maybe someone says something, which we just, we don't even read the email, we just ignore.

I think now, I don't know, it could be in the hundreds. Just right after late, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, de-activate my Facebook notifications because the, it was vibrant. My phone's going off like crazy, which never happened before. And, uh, some of the things being said, because when you get the notification, you don't see the whole, the whole thing, but it probably would be more pretty just to hand it off to say, James, uh, to go through. some of them were very much veiled indications of wanting to do less harm.

And I'm being led on that. And then, of course, we have an individual over the span of three days showing up and trespassing. Now, look, at our old property, they're trespassing, we have gigantic, a gigantic sign saying, no trespassing, you will be prosecuted, you are being reported. And we've actually created physical barriers for legal purposes, as we were instructed to do by the police. this has, there's legal reasons for, they said even tying a piece of yarn, not that they're being literal, but that's the general idea of a fiscal period. And so this individual is, as I understand it, on neighbors' properties, on our properties. And what I was told, and I want to be careful here

because I was not there, and there's nothing, a security company deals with this, is that an employee was left with black eyes after being beaten back of the head by a lunatic who came onto this property. For what reason I don't know. But this happens within days. of this false tweet going on. And just to follow up on that, this lie has gone out, as we've outlined in the complaint, Tyler, it's cutting Tim off from the very people

he wants to engage with in the realm of ideas. His programming, his shows are from an independent perspective. They are, he exercises full editorial control over the shows. And there are authentic interactions that are happening every night, every day on his programs where people are coming together to discuss issues from varying perspectives. And again, I mean, he's had self-described liberals, conservatives, libertarians, greens, people from all over the political spectrum. who come onto his program every night to discuss the issues of the day and debate them. It's probably one of the reasons why the show is so well received by the marketplace and has had so much uptake and uptick and viewership.

But for the presidential candidate for one of our nation's two major political parties, the potential next president of the United States, for her campaign to engage in the kind of blatant, false dissemination of disinformation on X that happened over Labor Day weekend is something that demands a legal response. And Tim has taken that action. Would you say that this attack on you and the other attacks that you've experienced are part of a broader, you know, I see this trend of demonizing and going after those who are either conservative or perceived as conservative.

I mean, the interesting thing, the Southern Poverty Law Center recently went after gays against Groomers, and they called them an anti-LGB-Q hate group, never mind the fact that, you know, gays against groomers is an openly homosexual organization. So some of the attacks that we've been seeing, I think it's not just against conservatives,

but also against moderates, those who dissent from this worldview that's being pushed by our, leads. James, do you want to do I don't want to. Yeah, I know. I think that I think that there's, there's a lot of validity in that observation. Again, we detail this over the 17 to 18 pages in the complaint and right on the very first page. We go over Thames own political autobiography to some extent or biography. This is somebody who opposed the George W. Bush administration on many fronts, came of age in the global war on terror, was concerned about America's involvement in

overseas conflicts. He was concerned about constrictions on our freedoms here at home. It's what led him out onto the streets of New York City to follow the Occupy Wall Street protests. This is this person we're talking about, Tim, is not a, a quote unquote, right-wing figure. He's a person that's coming at things from an independent perspective, and he's trying to have and facilitate open dialogue and discussion on his show and in his other media activities. And again, the Harris's campaign's tweet is designed to shut that conversation down and to shut it down. And to shut it down basically two months or so before one of the most important elections of our lifetime, not to sound cliche, but the 2024 election is going to be a defining moment for our country.

And here we are with the campaign shutting down or attempting to shut down debate, attempting to keep Tim away from people he's trying to influence and to dialogue with. and that can't stand. I think there's an important thing to consider as well. If you ask a conservative, is Tim Poole a conservative? They'll say, no, of course not. If you ask a liberal, as Tim Poole left wing, they'll say, absolutely not. People on the right will refer to me as a liberal,

and people on the left will refer to me as a conservative, which typically implies you're a moderate somewhere in the middle. And I think that's fair. Some of my views are more aligned with Republicans, conservatives, libertarians, and people on the right. And then I have other views that are more a lot of people on the left, namely the death penalty, for instance. In fact, as I mentioned, I was debating Matt Walsh on the issue,

a prominent Christian Catholic conservative. And we had the debate, and I said, I think the death penalty is wrong, and here's why. And then even on issues of abortion, I view myself more aligned with where Democrats were maybe 10 or 15 years ago, certainly not with the Democratic Party today, but also not a pro-lifer who wants to see it banned nationwide. and I enjoy those debates.

But it's very important for us, especially right now with the election coming up, it's the most important time for news, politics, and commentary shows for news organizations, of which we also do operate an independent newsroom. This is the most important time to bring in voices from different parties, from different viewpoints, to discuss the news, to debate these ideas so we can figure out what we want for this country. To inhibit that conversation is a massive detriment to democracy itself. If people can't work through the ideas of say, hey, look, we've got an abortion debate. It's pro-life, pro-choice. How do we navigate this? Come to an understanding between people so this country moves

forward. Well, certainly if you inhibit the ability of people to have those conversations, the problem could never be solved. And democracy itself is hard. I think that really puts you what's the nail on the coffin. I'd like to thank both of you. Is there anything else that you'd like to add about this particular lawsuit, about the lies that you've experienced, and just about, you know,

what we're facing in this election? There's a lot of misinformation out there. And I can tell you every day on the Timcast, Timcast News Show in the mornings, as well as Timcast, I roll the two shows that I host Monday through, well, just let's just say, throughout the week, Monday through Friday. I go through these stories from corporate media outlets as well as smaller independent outlets. And I try to fact check to the best of my abilities,

find sources and verify them, and then give my thoughts and opinions on them. And so I try my hardest. And this means that I'm often using news sources from the corporate press, much as many people on the right may distrust them. They actually often get things right. But they often intentionally or incorrectly publish, you know, misinformation, they often publish disinformation. And it is my goal to just break through what is true so that people can make these decisions for themselves. This type of defamation inhibits my ability to do this. And so it has to be answered.

Yeah. And I think that's key because when you talk about the way that they push the misinformation and disinformation, it's usually an analysis. in analysis of the news of the day. They'll say what's happening. So, like, I've found legacy media outlets to be useful in terms of figuring out what's going on, but then often you have to question, like, okay, what are they saying about this? And what is the real truth under it?

So that sort of skeptical eye is what a lot of Americans appreciate about your show. and, you know, I think when they go to the Daily Signal, it's for similar reasons. And James, do you have anything else to add? Yeah, it's a privilege to represent Tim and to bring his case before the courts. And we look forward to seeing how it's resolved. Thank you both so much for joining me on The Daily Signal and wish you best of luck in your case. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

And that was Tim Poeh, and his attorney, James R. Lawrence III. If you liked what you heard here, if you found it thought-provoking, if you found it really important for an issue of public debate, I would just encourage you to share the podcast, to leave a five-star rating, to leave a review. These things really do help us reach a broader audience and enable us to give voices to people who are being smeared by something as big as the Kamala Harris campaign. And don't forget later today to tune into this very podcast feed at around 5 p.m. Eastern today, where we'll give you the top news of the day. We'll go through the major headlines to keep you informed and in the know for your evening commute.

So again, this is Tyler O'Neill. That was Tim Poole. And we're so glad that you're listening. don't forget to tune back in at 5 p.m. for our top news edition. The Daily Signal podcast is made possible because of listeners like you. Executive producers are Rob Lewy and Katrina Trinko. Hosts are Virginia Allen, Brian Gottstein, Tyler O'Neill, and Elizabeth Mitchell. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, John Pop, and Joseph Von Spakovsky. To learn more or support our work, please visit DailySignal.com.