The Josh Innes Show - Whataboutism

Episode Date: February 7, 2026

Obviously you've all heard about Donald Trump posting this video that depicts the Obama's as apes. The reaction to this has led Trump people to engage in what is often referred to as "Whataboutism". To me, whataboutism is one of the greatest detriments to our society. Let's discuss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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and you can say that this sounds makes me sound like a pussy or whatever and that's fine. I mean if that's what it makes me sound like, it makes me sound like that. But my biggest issue about why politics bothers me is I don't want to be disliked. And by I don't want to be disliked, I don't mean like I want to be disliked because of,

of a sports opinion or just someone thinks I'm annoying or they don't like my show. Like that, I don't mind. And honestly, I enjoy being the bad guy and having people hate me because at least it shows they have some sort of emotion about me and I enjoy that. Like, yes, I'll go back and forth with people about why they hate me. But I don't want to be, like, I don't mind being hated because I'm the guy that's got the opinions you disagree with as it relates to opinions on shit. The big picture doesn't matter.

because it's funny to see people get that angry over a sports opinion, right? And I don't make up sports opinions. I don't just say shit to get a reaction out of people, contrary to popular belief. When I tell you what I feel about something, that's how I feel about something. Now, part of that might be because I just hate the person saying the message so much that, like, my natural instincts make me disagree with it. But I never go into it. Like, here's an opinion I'm going to have just to get a reaction out of people. That is never the case.

And you guys know that if you've listened to me for. any period of time that's never been something I'm into. But the reason I struggle with the idea of going so deep into a political area is because I just don't want to be disliked by a large number of people. Let me play a few commercials and I'll explain what that means before you start saying, oh, you're just a pussy or oh, you don't have any courage or whatever. So I'll play a few commercials. We'll continue.

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And I get it. You'll hear that and you'll go, what a pussy. He doesn't say what he really feels about these things because he doesn't want to be disliked. Well, let me put it this way. Like, I'm not some big Trump supporter and you guys know that. I don't vote. I voted one time. And I voted for Trump in 2020.

And the reason I voted for Trump in 2020 is because he was not those people who were shutting down businesses, telling you about trust the science, making you wear a mask, putting the arrows in the grocery store. limiting your grandma's trip to the grocery store to four in the morning, telling you that if you go outside, you'll kill grandma. I could not allow myself to get down with that group of people. That was also the same group of people who were telling you that cops are the biggest pieces of shit on the planet, white privilege, all this shit. And I still can't get down with those people, right?

Like, I can't. That's not, like, I would feel like a fuck boy if I'm like, hey, all these people that just, their whole selling point is white men are terrible and cops are pieces of shit and all this. I cannot allow myself to get into a universe with those people. And I think I fall into a category like a lot of people who are not necessarily right-wing people, although they might have thoughts and beliefs that are sort of in that realm, right? Like they might, you know, they're not anti-gun people. They don't like being told that they're pieces of shit because of their race.

They don't like to be hammered over the head with your transphobic. Like, I fall more into that category, yes. So when I hear the other side of things, like I find myself, and I don't know if you guys are like this, but I was thinking about this yesterday because I was reading some post from Jack White of the White Stripes talking about Trump and how we need to eliminate the two-party system and we need to eliminate the electoral college. And I find myself agreeing with that, but then I'm like, but you know what? Then the assholes like Jack White win and I don't like Jack White. You know, like I don't like Trump, but I don't like Jack White either because they're all fucking wacko zeal. And it's like, I don't, I'm not rooting for the right wing people to win because I dislike a lot of what their politicians do. But I also don't want like Jack White and those type of people to win too because at the end of the day I think they're fucking bad shit crazy too.

And I think that's where it happens to a lot of people. And that's kind of the category I fall into is people like me are just kind of left in the lurch. People like me who just want fucking normal. Get back to some level of fucking normal. You can argue it was never normal, but get me back to some level of normal. Like, you can say whatever the fuck you want. But like the president, I don't care how the fucking video was or the context of the video. And you could sit there and try to lecture me about the context of the fucking Obama's as guerrillas or apes video with all the different people in the animal kingdom and all that shit.

You can try to sell me on it all you want. You can say, well, what about how all the liberals like Howard Stern and Howard Stone were blackface and say the inward? I agree. But at some point, it's just fucking absurd. I don't care what the fuck you say. The president of the United States should not be fucking tweeting the video. And you can say, well, it's not even that offensive anyway. And what about Jimmy Kimmel?

Jimmy Kimmel dresses up as Carl Malone and blackface. And here's eight other celebrities that wore blackface that are liberals. I agree. But that doesn't make it right or the smart move or. something that makes any sense for the fucking president to tweet the video. Like, I think that's the problem. Now I've had to take off my sweatshirt. Now I'm getting worked up.

But that's kind of my biggest problem with all of this and my biggest problem with the way people look at things. You can't, like, and it goes for both sides. You refuse to look at your own shit and decide whether or not your own shit in its own context is appropriate. And you base it in like, what I saw, Lamont actually. Lamont is a guy who listened to the show in Houston. And when I first got to Houston, early in my time in Houston, I did a remote.

And I forgot where it was. It like a storage place. And Lamont came out and J.J. Watt was there. And he wanted to get an autograph for his kids. So I took the helmet back for his kid. Got an autograph by J.J. Watt. And, you know, Lamont said some shit about the show. But a big picture, I think he's a really good guy at the end of it.

And he's a nice guy. Like, I like him. I didn't like him for a long time. And I didn't like a lot of his buddies for a long time. they shit on me for a long time, but I mean, shit, that's 15 years ago, who gives a fuck. But anyway, I saw him use the term aboutism. And I go, aboutism. I like that term.

I like about it. I don't know that. I doubt he coined that or not. I don't even know if that's a real term or not. Let me look that up. Aboutism. Let's see if that aboutism or what aboutism is a deflectionary, often fallacious, rhetoric, rhetorical tactic used to evade criticism or accountability.

by raising a counter-accusation or different, often-unrelated issue. It serves to muddy the waters, distract from the original topic, and imply false moral equivalency, commonly appearing as, but what about in debates? Okay, good. What aboutism? And he came to mind. Lamont came to mind because I saw him post something with aboutism. What aboutism is the actual term?

So what aboutism? At some point, our politics and the way everybody, reacts to things in America went from, hey, let me look at myself and judge myself or my person or my candidate or my politician or my athlete. And instead of looking at them and going, okay, Trump just tweeted out a picture or a video of all the animal kingdom and all the politicians, but he's got to know and somebody in the office has to know that, hey, putting the first black president, whether you like him or not, and the first black first lady on the body of a fucking ape ain't going to go well. And by the way, it looks shitty. You have to be able to look at that and go,

what the fuck, dude? You have to be able to look at that and do that. But we can't because we're so hell bent on not letting the other side win that we can't acknowledge when our, and I say our side, that's not my, but I'm saying like in a hypothetical sense, not just about politics, but anything. It happens in sports. Look at sports debates all the fucking time and look at people argue with each other over that. They use what aboutism all the time. People love. People love it. to use that shit. And what I saw yesterday with the tweet from Trump and the video that was tweeted out, which again, what the fuck, dude? What the, like, it's okay to just not do dumb shit. Like, and I understand why people defend Trump. And I get it. And I understand it.

And I understand it because you don't want the other side to win. Because the other side, no matter how moral or morally superior they claim to be, they're also pieces of shit. They are zealots and they have their own things they're wanting to hammer upon you they're all fucking nuts that's why hitting a reset button would be great men in black little fucking memory zapper thing bang it's over but we can't do that so going back to what aboutism so you got trump and trump tweets this fucking monkey picture of the obamas or the video of the obamas okay and that's the thing and you know it's going to get lags so instead of people just saying bro what the Fuck. Like, whether you agree with this or not, the country's in fucking turmoil.

Now, is it an enough turmoil that, you know, Ben Stiller can't sit court side at the next? No. Is it an enough turmoil where the people can't go to the Grammys and say dumb shit? No. Like, are we in truly Nazi Germany? No. The people that say that kind of shit are fucking imbeciles. And they all tend to be rich and all tend to live in mansions and have security. But they want to lecture you and I about, you know, how horrible the country is. Fine. Fuck them. but we are in a real fucking shitty time. And I tell you this all the time when we're on the pod that I don't believe it's ever going to get any better and I don't believe the genie's ever going to go back in the bottle. I believe the lion's out of the cage. And we can't go back. We can't go back to a simpler time where,

look, when I was a kid and I know that there was drama around like H.W. Bush and W. Bush, I get that. I didn't follow it all that much when I'm 15, 16 years old and I didn't care. But I don't remember the world being bat shit crazy in 2002, 2003, 2004, 1991, 1991, 1992. Obviously, there were wars and shit like that, I'm aware. But I didn't recall this country being that bat shit crazy about every fucking thing. In my day, I remember being a kid, and the Clintons actually kind of seems sort of normal.

I know that Rush Limbaugh wouldn't have you believe that, but you listen to some of the shit that the Clintons would say in the 90s and early 2000s, and you go, it seems kind of normal to me. Like one of the videos you see circulating a lot now is Hillary Clinton. talking about how we're going to get rid of all the illegals. And if you don't speak English, get out of America. And you're like, where was that person? I'm okay with that. I'm totally cool.

Like, I think that's a fine message to go with. Rock on. But we can't do any of that shit now because everybody's got to be either bat shit crazy on this side, bad shit crazy on that side. But you go back to what aboutism. At some point, and I'm guilty of it too. Like, we all are. Like, I used to do that all the time.

And I still do sometimes about my own life and my own job. because I'll see shit all the time about like how I'll get in trouble for something and that doesn't happen as much anymore but back when I was doing you know talk radio and shit I'd get in trouble for saying something and and I'd get in more trouble or like somebody will say something that I would view is far more offensive than shit I've said and this person doesn't get in trouble I go what about that like why do I get in trouble so we're all guilty of it but in the political world where we're all fucked up now anyway at some point you have to be able to say Hey, Trump does a lot of fucking dumb shit. Doesn't mean I'm not on his side. Doesn't mean I don't want him to win. Doesn't mean I don't want the country to be great. Doesn't mean that if I disagree with one thing he says, that I'm somehow a Nazi on the other side of things

that I've defected to the camp of the wacko, like I'm hanging out with Ben Stiller now or Jack White. But you have to be able to go, bro, what the fuck? And of course, what'll happen is though the what aboutism comes in. And the what aboutism is, you know, well, Trump did this, but what about how 30 years ago Howard Stern was in blackface? Is Stern a fucking hypocrite? Yes.

It's well documented that Stern's a hypocrite. We know Stern's a hypocrite. We know he's full of shit. We know that Jimmy Kimmel is full of shit. We know all of these people are full of shit. But at the end of the day, what does it matter if they're full of shit versus what Trump is doing? Or what your politician is doing? It can go the other way too.

I mean, it happens a lot of the time where people, on the left. I get it.