Timcast IRL - Timcast IRL #156 - Trump's Campaign Website HACKED, Anti-Fascist Socialist Vaush Joins

Episode Date: October 28, 2020

Tim, Ian, Lydia, and our first left-wing guest Vaush V (@VaushV on Twitter, @Vaush on YouTube) sit down for a fun, involved, and VERY long discussion about the left, the right, Covid-19, Joe Biden's odds of winning the election, government use of forces and funds, underlying race policies, UBI, and the definition and application of critical race theory. If you have felt a need for a growing understanding of left-wing thoughts, here is your chance. We encourage and enjoy conversation; this is not a debate. Support the show (http://Timcast.com/donate) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So as we're getting ready to go live, we're initially planning on starting by talking about the riots that erupted in Philadelphia last night because I covered this earlier. And as you know, I still live there. We've been setting up the new studio in the new space, but I was literally just back in the Philly area in the Philly burbs the other day. And so chaos, riots, looting, it erupted. There was a pickup truck rammed into a – was driving at a high rate of speed, went through a row of cops. A bunch of the cops jumped out of the way, but one got run over, ran over, broke her leg, got taken to the hospital. So it's pretty serious stuff. But as we were doing this, we got breaking news that the Trump campaign Web site got hacked. And I was like, that's breaking right now. Probably should talk about it.

And then it turns out like nothing really happened. It was just like so. So we'll briefly talk about it, I suppose, because I thought it was just like so so we'll briefly talk about it i suppose because i thought it was very very significant but as there's a ton of people already in the chat because we are joined today by libertarian socialist anti-fascist vaush thank uh yeah just about vosh hey how you doing vosh yeah there you go and uh look we had uh we had enrique tari of the proud boys i said we'll get we'll get somebody from the left in it's very difficult to get a lot of people on the left, so I appreciate you coming in and hanging out. We've been hanging out and talking. I think we're probably going to have some arguments about the riots, about a ton of stuff. But I just want to say to anybody who thinks that we're going to have like a blood sports-style debate, you're not correct.

We don't do this. And so I'm just going to tell you right now, now fair warning you're mostly all going to be dissatisfied i'm i don't i don't i don't i you know i didn't bring on uh the enrique tarrio to literally just attack him and get into a big debate with him i ask him some questions i you know i challenge him on some of his ideas and mostly just try to understand him we're gonna do the same thing with with vosh vosh right i'm pronouncing it right yes yeah excellent and we're gonna and i think uh we're gonna have a good insight into just a lot of the things we don't normally get to hear from from i guess leftist is that appropriate yeah the real blood sports is the upcoming me versus enrique tarrio of conversation obviously that one will be you know i mean i'd be down if you wanted

to like have a debate and like because i don't debate people i'll have a discussion we can talk about stuff enrique actually mentioned i think debating with you real when he was here was it vosh that he wanted no no no no probably hassan's the i know we look so similar yeah um yeah um well i'm terrified of flying so we'll pace them out one at a time but um i'm not trying to be opposed have your mic like right in your mouth and gotcha right yeah yeah there we go there we go nailing it better so so just like because the story just broke i don't want to i I'm not trying to be opposed. Have your mic like right in your mouth. And gotcha. Right. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Nailing it. There we go. Better.

So. So just like because the story just broke, I don't want to I don't want to just ignore it. But apparently it's like a big nothing burger. But I do want to show this real quick before we do. Welcome to the show, everybody. This is Tim Castarro podcast. Of course, Ian.

Yo. You know, we got Ian here. What it is. Lydia is producing, as most of you are aware. And I am Tim Poole. And as you all know, Vosh is our guest. So we're Vosh V. We're going to argue about

a lot of stuff, probably, and we'll talk about news. But hit the like button, subscribe, notification bell. We do the show Monday through Friday live at 8pm. And just so everybody knows, we're totally down to have literally anybody come into the studio and have a debate. I know there are some people who are like, Tim, why won't you have the far right on? I'm like, we wouldn't.

No one said we wouldn't. I interviewed a Soviet general in Ukraine during the You're My Dance stuff. I interviewed a Brazilian gang leader. Well, there are some limits. I'm not going to bring some lunatic serial killer into my house. What about like a...

Good content, though. It would be great. You're like, he's strapped to the chair, he's screaming, I'll kill you! And I'm like, that's interesting. Why do you want to kill me? It's true. Before I came on, they were actually there was a possum outside they were going to bring

into my place. So I'm not special. It really is. And that also would be good content. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Great stuff. I like what you think.

Well, let's let's let's let's first do this. You know, this is a breaking story. Trump's campaign website is seized by hackers who claim to have evidence that proves his criminal involvement with foreign actors to manipulate the 2020 election of course as of right now his website is back to normal we checked and so i saw this and i was like whoa this this is like you know something's gonna come let's let's let's launch with this and then it's just a big nothing burger these things happen but the gist of the story is his campaign website was seized by hackers tuesday a message reading this site was seized appeared briefly on

the home page of donaldjtrump.com before the website was taken offline completely just after 7 20 p.m the message continued that the world has had enough of fake news spreaded okay daily by the president it is time to allow the world to know the truth. The hackers behind the stunt claims to have compromised multiple of the president's devices. Seems like grammatical errors aren't unique to the hackers. Daily Mail. Come on, get a copy. That gave them full access to Trump and his relatives, along with access to confidential information.

Strictly classified information is exposed, proving that the Trump government is involved in the origins of the coronavirus. The Post read, We have evidence that completely discredits Mr. Trump as president, proving his criminal involvement in cooperation with foreign actors manipulating the 2020 elections. The U.S. citizens have no choice. Okay.

It's a nothing burger. I almost feel kind of dumb that we even decided to bring it up. It was like breaking news and I'm like, oh, wow, we got it. What's going on? I think you've got it, though. Same typos in the actual Daily Mail writing end of the thing. Maybe they did it. The Daily Mail. Yeah, the inside scoop.

Yeah, man. There it is. That makes perfect sense. We've busted. They're making the news. I got to be honest. Daily Mail needs to hire some copy editors. They have grammatical errors all the time.

Of all the outlets, there's that. So look, that's the g of of all the outlets you know there's there's there's that but uh we we so look that's that's the gist of it tim was it true what they were saying that they were trying to blame trump for the covid crisis what's going on there what the hackers yeah that's what i heard i heard that they were trying to blame trump for this and they were like this is a big deal i mentioned earlier is the u.s government and the chinese government are all these governments working together to create a bioweapon in a chinese lab that then got out that's like a movie script yeah that's just no i'm 100 behind it yes well the incorrect well half the the the bad grammar kind of leaves like involved in the origins i mean i think trump flubbed the covid response sure but involved in creating coronavirus

i don't know like um that that'd be a pretty sensational claim right it's pretty ridiculous maybe they saw borat they were inspired you know creative flourish but i don't know maybe could explain why the grammar was wrong they made it put it in china so they could blame china i've heard that it wasn't just a chinese company working out of that lab like other where did you hear this um i read it on the internet yeah okay i read that it was like some company that fauci was involved with was working at the lab in wuhan i do i don't have the documents yeah i give up but but i met fauci he admitted to it though it's true oh it's really oh snap so so well let's let's dive in you just said you think trump uh you think trump flubbed the the response

oh yeah yeah yeah for sure i think i mean one of the problems is we don't actually have a metric for knowing what success looks like. Every pandemic response is unique, you know, would Hillary Clinton have done better or worse? The fact of the matter is America is its own country. No other country is a perfect comparison. We also have a very decentralized government states are given a lot of autonomy when it comes to responses, which can be a downside when it comes to stuff like this. I think there were a lot of things that he did wrong from a sort of habitual tendency to downplay the severity of the virus. We know, of course, that he was informed of its severity, but didn't want people to panic, which seems like it was an effort to keep stock investors from sort of, you know, hard selling, which may or may not have worked. We know, of course, there was a crash later anyway.

But the thing that bothers me the most about the whole response is that i don't actually think there's a metric that republicans would like a line where they would say that's too many deaths because right now it's at 225 000 ish and i feel like and trump saying well you know they said it was going to be two million which was the estimate if nothing was done so what if it had hit a million would they say well that's half of what was expected? If it hit two million, would Trump have said, well, that's exactly what they said was going to happen? To be fair, you could say the same thing about the Democrats or, you know, if it's right versus left, the Democrats would not have accepted any number at all. Oh, I mean, if they were in power, I'd be perfectly willing to criticize for them. Absolutely. Yeah. But right now, I mean, this is I mean, Trump has had his hands have covered this whole thing. It's true. But it feels like then the

real issue is, do you like Trump or not? I mean, look, 200, 20, 25,000 is really, really bad. It's horrifying, right? And even even Trump has has said that we don't know what it could have been or would have been. There's no metric for success, which you pointed out. So it's either do you do you trust him or do you like him or do you not? Well, there are things that he did that I'm reasonably sure, like you pointed out. So it's either do you trust him or do you like him or do you not? Well, there are things that he did that I'm reasonably sure like a Hillary Clinton. And by the way, please, for everyone, I don't like Hillary Clinton.

We can write that on my tombstone. What about Joe Biden? No. I'll admit, I do like him more than Hillary Clinton. I think he is marginally more likable than Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is the bottom of the barrel, man. Right, right. So we're only nowhere to go but up that's right but um yeah so with trump when it comes to stuff like for example um uh downplaying the severity of the virus i feel like democrats would have done that to an extent

but when it comes to stuff like habitually like ignoring masks or like sort of arguing with fauci back and forth to the point where fauci now needs a security detail to go in his runs because there are a lot of far right groups who think that he's trying to lock down the whole country with him sort of promoting the anti lockdown protests, saying they were taking back the respective states, which has led to additional threats of violence. I feel like stuff like that refers to a particular kind of far right populism that the Democrats don't have the ability to tap into. You what do you mean i don't think the democrats really have the same base of fanatical support in the way that the trump supporters do they have now there are like k-hive lunatics and those people exist and they're real but i feel like their antagonism is more directed at sort of uh uh

chauvinism or anti-progressivism or just against any candidate their preferred candidate doesn't like. But this like hardcore, ultra nationalist rejection of a national response to COVID that I think is a particular to the Trump fandom. What what groups, like what right wing groups are engaging in this kind of violence and going after people? Well, the violence is fairly I mean, a violence like political violence is always going to be a fairly small percentage of the actual harm done here. No political group could ever do harm to rival the 225,000 dead. Right. But we tend to wipe that stuff under the rug.

This is one of the criticisms that I have as a libertarian socialist, like with the general system that we live in. You know, we'll say like news media will focus a a terrorist attack seven dead. That's horrible, of course. But at the same time, you know, pharmaceutical companies are pushing doctors to give unneeded opiates to people. And in the same period of time, 13,000 people might die. But that that's a statistic. That's not a news story that just keeps happening. So what I'm worried about isn't the actual political violence. It's about the attitudes we've taken that have allowed COVID to continue to this point. Just today, Trump said, as one of his campaign achievements prior to the election, conquering COVID-19.

On Saturday, highest recorded number of cases in the history of the country in a single day. Horrifying. And Mike Pence has said, I think he said during the debate, he tweeted it and deleted the tweet that Trump locked everything down, which is not the case. There's a lot of complicated stuff here because we're going now from COVID, we're getting into political violence. So I think the simple point I can make,

which I did, I guess, is when it comes to the COVID response, there's nothing to base it off of. For me, I'm kind of like, okay, well, early early on trump took action very early on like it was in january to form the task force to to suspend most to restrict most travel there was there were some cases in which people could travel from china eventually to europe and anthony fauci in march said no one could have done it better so that was the early response

dr fauci said don't wear masks we had who was the surgeon general guy don't wear masks they both they tweeted about it found she fauci is now saying it was a mistake for him to say not to wear masks. There's a video that the Republicans put out where you've got Kamala Harris and Joe Biden criticizing things Trump has said. And then they show that was Fauci was the one advising, like Fauci was the one saying it publicly. So in this capacity, I've been covering this since it started. And I remember Anthony Fauci saying Trump is doing the best. I don't think anyone could do anything better. Now we're several months on.

We're getting close to election. And all of a sudden, everyone's saying Trump has done a miserable job. To be fair, it's not all of a sudden. I mean, there have been points where Fauci's and I disagree, by the way, I think initially Fauci's arguing you don't need to use masks was I mean, the other the logic he used there was that he was trying to disincentivize the purchase of PPE that otherwise needed to go to medical professionals. Yes. And I think it's irresponsible to put that out saying masks aren't effective or we don't know masks are effective. I think a more responsible way would have been to sort of implore Americans to be responsible with their consumerism.

You know, the weird, you know, the weirdest thing about it is, though, early on, conservatives are the ones like, I'm going to go buy masks. I was getting messaged by people like it. Don't listen to Fauci. Go buy your mask. And now all of a sudden it's. Contrarians. Yeah, exactly. But it's but it's both like you had you had Democrats saying don't wear masks and the conservatives saying wear masks.

Then it flipped at some point. And now it's the Democrats or I should say the left or whatever it is. I don't think it was that unanimous. I think that for the most part, people were on board with wearing masks. And there was a brief period where we were very concerned about making sure there was enough materials available for the hospitals and for the nurses and what have you. But even early on,

and Fauci's in a difficult position here because I have a strong feeling that if Fauci was too critical of the president, he would be replaced for somebody less so. So Fauci's- Like Dr. Atlas? Yeah, yeah. So if Fauci praises the president, there's kind of like that,

okay, how much of this is like the kid getting patted on the shoulder by the teacher? And how much of this is like a real political assessment? I don't know. I just think it's a degree of skepticism that we have to apply. With regards to the early response though, with Trump though, we know that he defunded the CDC. He eliminated Obama's pandemic response team. He pulled the 44 researchers out of Wuhan who were supposed to investigate the origins of that virus. And while he did stop travel from China quickly, he did basically nothing for the next month before stopping it from Europe, by which point I think we now know it he says this now like Biden called me xenophobic for locking down China, which is not true. Biden called him xenophobic, comma, but also – But he was responding to Trump's tweet. Sure, but that's because Trump is pretty xenophobic when it comes to China. You can lock down China without it being like this weird nationalist condemnation of China. You can just say like, oh, they're going through their own stuff right now. What could he have done? I think obviously a lockdown from Europe faster would have been preferable. I think regardless of what Fauci said, you know, once it was known that masks were available for everyone, that the PPE line was secure, he should have been very on board with

promoting their use instead of like tacitly supporting the anti-lockdown, anti-masker protests with his tweets. And most importantly, i think he should have laid out a national plan to help states to guide states to give the money necessary he did to help them well he kind of held it over some of their heads it was like there was the three-phase plan that he launched earlier in the year of like what to do and how to do it and then he and then he did this press conference where it was like phase one phase two phase three here's what you need. I'm the president. I can't control the states.

Now it's up to the governors. Sure. But he but he can, though, like he can there. You can do a national mandate. You can order national distribution of resources. And it feels like and if we get down to the dates, it gets particular here. But there were times when it felt like he was like blackmailing states with support, like, oh, yeah, I'll give you this. I'll give you this. Your hospitals need. i'll give you this i'll give you this your hospital's need i'll give you these resources you know but you're doing so terribly lately just

recently he said i think this is one of the debates you'll have to figure me if i don't remember the exact source he said that um he he didn't care so much about aid for some of the stimulus deals um because they would have gone to high crime democrat cities and what this suggests to me is the partisanship of a president who is going to give preferential treatment to basis of support that he knows will vote for him doesn't really care so much about other groups. I respect your point. I think it's complicated in terms of Trump's ability to accurately and charismatically

convey an idea. I would say he lacks that substantially. But one of the issues with giving money to a lot of these states, whether he's legally allowed to do it, there's going to be a lawsuit. You've got these jurisdictions, because we'll now move into sort of the political violence stuff when we get into what's going on in Philadelphia. You've got these jurisdictions that are cutting people loose over and over and over again, and the riots keep going.

So why should I, as somebody who is, you know, I pay taxes in a state not having these problems. Why should I have those federal tax dollars go to a state that's just dumping it into a sinkhole? So now what we have is we have states that have a budget crisis, notably New York is a really good example. Cuomo said, I believe it was last year, God help us if the rich leave. Then you get Ocasio-Cortez leading a protest in the financial district, which triggers, I guess it was a catalyst for Amazon saying, we don't want to bring our 20 to 40,000 jobs here, which is $30 billion over a decade. So now you've got New York City in a budget crisis, and then they go to Trump and say,

bail us out. And then Trump says, no. And particularly because you've defunded a billion dollars from your police. You had widespread rioting and looting that wasn't taken care of. You've used taxpayer dollars to put a political message in the street. Why should federal tax dollars go towards what New York is doing when they're acting extremely irresponsibly? I think there are a lot of issues being conflated here. First of all, if we just look broadly at like a state level, we know that's generally red states who underperform when it comes to the investment they need from the federal government as opposed to what they pay in taxes, in large part because red states tend to have a smaller portion of their population in big cities which tend to be more efficient economically but then

like you say so new york's in a tiff as it is undeniably um and like ocasio-cortez and the marches and the protests the blm protests uh have caused an amount of damage which is infinitesimal compared to like um say for example the amount of money that is infinitesimal compared to like, say, for example, the amount of money that New York City Police Department spends every year on settlements from police brutality or other myths, about a billion, a quarter billion a year, which exceeds the damage done by any of the protests. And that's an every year thing, not a, an exorbitant, you know, like once in a half century civil rights protest thing. When we're talking about the reason why New York is struggling right now, it's undeniably because of the impact of COVID. And, and I mean, that's

hurting everyone. New York is a massive city, which means that its supply lines and its industries are going to be more on the razor's edge when it comes to their ability to support the population. Like a farm in a bad economy can hold itself for a while, but 8 million people in a dense urban network needs a lot of support. And I just, when it comes to like, how, why should I help these people? I mean, I understand the frustration, I guess. I mean, I grew up in California. Hold on. Not, not so much. Why should I help these people? I totally understand people of New York need help for sure. It's more of a, if I give money to the city, to the government, are they going to light it on fire?

Is it actually going to go to help the people or are they just burning money? Well, I mean, I haven't looked at their budget registry for the past. I imagine that most of it goes to the people. But I mean, when it comes to, you said defunding the police. I mean, that would mean there's less money going towards very high, you know, powerful institutions in that city. So I feel like if anything, that would aid in the responsible allocation of those funds. What we're talking about right now, now ultimately is how much do you trust city governments to support their people? And my answer unequivocally would be,

I absolutely do not, but I don't think the solution to that is denying them funds. I think that's the solution to that is a, uh, grassroots organization or network or uprising that tries to make our government more accountable to its own people. Like a blockchain or some sort of database that shows where the money went. It's the transparency in our cities, like absolute 100%.

Everyone should believe in that. I don't think these cities have done a good job at all. I think we are seeing a lot of problems with gross mismanagement. And even before COVID and before the riots, New York was in trouble. That's why I brought up Cuomo saying, you know, God help us of the rich leave. Doesn't that suck though? Like they're doing a terrible job. Well, I mean, that's the thing. Like, again, this could be my libertarian leaning here. I just don't like the fact that like cities in order to function properly have to suck up to big corporations in the way they currently do. Now I understand of course, business is a part of how

cities operate. That's how life is, But it feels very often that politicians are more interested in levying the money that they get to suck up to these corporations than they are using other people. Stadiums being a big, big, big part of that, you know? So I don't like Amazon, man. And I agree with you for the most part. Politicians suck up to corporations is a problem. It's a lot of what we're seeing now. And we've seen over the past several decades which has led to the erosion of the manufacturing base in this country but i digress uh where does the money come from you

know the government doesn't it runs the post office i guess what other what other like actual services that the government have in terms of giving a service like and making money it's the post office i guess apart from taxes so uh the the government uh the government doesn't generate revenue in the sense that like a business the government taxes the existing market yeah it i think only the post office actually creates an exchange medium for the government where people can exchange currency or whatever maybe i'm forgetting something obvious tolls you're talking about federal government what i What I'm saying is, like, if Amazon comes into New York, they're bringing currency in that people then trade with Amazon, and then the government takes pieces of that. And then it says, we're going to allocate, we're going to take this much, and then we're going to allocate it to fixing certain things.

And I got no problem with that. But that's why they need Amazon. Sure. They need these companies. But ultimately, it is the people who vote politicians and not corporations. I think that we, because we don't treat other like interest groups the same way. For example,

here's another thing essential to the functioning of society. Teachers, teachers are, we literally need them. Absolutely. We do. And yet teachers unions, while powerful in slim areas,

teachers are constantly getting their budgets cut. Schools are constantly getting defunded. Despite this essential element of a functioning society being something that we need to function in a modern tech-based economy, they get no relative power. Corporations get everything when it comes to the delegation of interest from politicians. I think you're right. But I think we need – one of the problems with government is that what do you do when it goes bad, when the government programs are no longer working properly, when the teachers are no longer teaching, when the schools are broken? Do we just keep putting money into it, keep spending tax and tax and tax, or do we finally cut it off and say, we got to shut it down, turn it off, turn it back on again because whatever we're doing isn't working? Sure, but denying New York City money during a pandemic isn't going to functionally change the way its government operates.

It's only going to hurt people. I think that, and if, and also just from a functional perspective, it also bolsters democratic political will. If you're not interested in seeing that happen, seeing the president like hold his hands up and let cities like wilt because of some presumption of,

you know, poor city management, it's certainly not just New York, you know, in fact, when it comes to actual like percentage of wealth that goes back to its because of some presumption of poor city management. It's certainly not just New York. In fact, when it comes to actual percentage of wealth that goes back to its citizenry in a meaningful way, I think New York is fairly in line with a lot of other large cities, including some Republican-run ones. We don't have those discussions about those cities.

How are they comparable to Republicans? With regards to these cities, in terms of the proportion of the money that goes into the city and how it's used, how it's distributed, New York isn't like some magic sinkhole. It's a very large city, but there are other cities that are in comparable spots. I think the big challenge, I guess, is Trump is looking at it from the perspective of, and I can only assume, I don't know, why is a citizen of Wyoming going to pay for what New York is doing? Look, so do you know what happened with Cuomo and the nursing homes? But we've been paying for Wyoming for like a century, though.

Yeah, but there's like it's way, way, way less. So I get it. Wyoming. I mean, right, right, right. So the issue is Andrew Cuomo puts sick people in nursing homes. People die. I'm not going to defend that. No, no, right.

But like the problems were caused by them you know what i mean sure but and they're like but i'll be honest wyoming right you could say the same thing like well why is wyoming as a state so poor like why does it have to take so much federal money compared to what earns in taxes well what are those governors doing what are those city mayors doing we just never have those conversations every time it comes to talk about like um the responsibility of city government, we always focus it on democratic-run strongholds, which is in part because cities tend to be more democratic for a number of really complicated sociological reasons, but also because I don't think we want to acknowledge the fact that

this poor city management thing isn't a democrat problem. There's a functional rot in the way this country treats its citizens. And that operates everything from county all up to the national level. And I wish when we had that conversation, it was less, less partisan, less, less, less about like getting owns for one or the other. Because I can tell you if Biden wins, and I hope he does, I hope to spend the next four years ruthlessly criticizing him and everyone who supports him on these same fundamental points right because they they do matter to me and i agree new york city is in a lot of ways of you know irresponsibly run i want to ask you about biden but i feel like we we we kind of glossed over before you mentioned fauci and uh threats of violence from the right

and things like that you so uh correct me if i'm wrong the general idea you're saying is that trump trump and the right have like fervent supporters of them that are ultra-nationalists and willing to be violent? Yeah, I would say more so than the left, at least if we look at like FBI data and crime statistics and such. So this past year, how many like pro-Trump things have happened where pro-Trump groups have gone out and committed mass acts of violence or targeted people or killed people or anything like that i can't tell you if i remember the number um i i will say though it's not i mean the the most the the most thing that immediately comes to mind would probably be the michigan uh governor kidnapping and you could argue those guys weren't right wing well they were i mean that that one guy was they said he was an anarchist but he was posting memes about killing commies on facebook so he definitely wasn't left wing some of them were uh i i think this is one of

the things where it gets really complicated yeah but these guys are clearly just anti-government i mean sure i will but i mean and then they went after a democratic governor who was being very heavily targeted by the right and they were seemed to doesn't mean their right wing well they were reflecting a lot of the rhetoric that was being used and some of the people aren't they're pretty sure they were mega hats i would need to look back they were seemed to doesn't mean their right wing. Well, they were reflecting a lot of the rhetoric that was being used. And some of the people out there, pretty sure they were MAGA hats. I would need to look back. They were at Black Lives Matter protests, actually, to the guys. So I'm not going to pretend those guys were left wing. They were just crazy, like anarchists.

Like the guy actually. I as an anarchist, I thoroughly disavow. They were they were and caps. They were a very different. I don't even know if they were and caps, though. Like they were marching with Black Lives Matter. They clearly have some of their social values aligning with leftist groups. Ideologically idiosyncratic, perhaps?

But I'm not going to call them leftists. I think it's absurd the media says these are right-wing militias or whatever. And it's like, it's a crazy guys. Like, look, you'll see a Trump rally. The people in Trump rallies aren't going around attacking people. Well, that's a little bit simplistic, though, isn't it? I mean, again, political violence, terrorist attacks, these always represent a very small fraction of actual deaths in a country at any given point in time.

Absolutely. Like, but since we started talking right now, probably you could chalk up 50, 100 people who've died in this country to some sort of pharmaceutical or military or something like that. Food induced. Opioids, man. But I'll be waiting a while until I get to see the next news story about like a terrorist attack.

I just when I'm concerned about far right violence, I'm less concerned with like the individual terror attacks and more concerned with the fact that their actions seem to reflect a disposition prominent in the Republican Party. Whereas with Antifa, for example, nobody in the Democratic Party is going to defend Antifa. I'll defend Antifa. Has any Democrat disavowed Antifa, for example, nobody in the Democratic Party is going to defend Antifa. I'll defend Antifa. But they... Wait, wait, wait. Has any Democrat disavowed Antifa? Didn't Biden say he would arrest the anarchists and looters? He has never said Antifa or Black Lives Matter extremists.

Well, what is a Black Lives Matter extremist? The people in Portland who are wearing Black Lives Matter sweaters and waving flags and throwing explosives at cops? Sure. Well, I mean, I think he sent anarchists and looters. I'm pretty sure there's been firm disavowal of people who have committed violence against the cops. He's disavowed. So he said violence is wrong and, you know, these people should be arrested.

And then when asked, like, will you condemn? What about Antifa? He doesn't say it. Then he yells at the Proud Boys. So I think it's pretty sure I remember him going over that. I know Antifa doesn't have like a base of support amongst the Democratic Party. It tends to be very far left people who hate the Democratic Party. What about Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and their cohorts?

They're soak dems. I mean, they're left-leaning compared to America. But if you put them in Europe, they'd be considered center-left politicians. I love them. Don't get me wrong. I mean, when you start talking about Europe and the U.S., left and right becomes rather meaningless. Because then are we talking about revolution versus status quo? Are we talking about economic policy? Are we talking about cultural policy?

I think it's fair to say that if you look at Ilhan Omar or AOC, they're probably not on the revolutionary side of the argument, just judging by the career path they've chosen. But the Antifa people are almost to a man going to be very far left, very anti-establishment types who are probably as disgusted by the Democrats as they are the Republicans. So a lot of people like to bring up Antifa all the time. And like a lot of the stuff we saw in Portland, I've actually said repeatedly, stop calling them Antifa. They're wearing Black Lives Matter sweaters. They're flying flags that say Black Lives Matter. They have plastic shields that say Black Lives Matter on it. The way I explain it to people is if you go to a large group of people and say, how many of you want to protest in the name of Antifa or anti-fascism,

whatever, you'll get a decent people saying yes. If you go to the average person, a group of people and say, how many of you want to go protest for Black Lives Matter? More of them will say yes. So I definitely think you have people who were previously flying the Antifa flag now flying Black Lives Matter. But you have way more people joining in the ranks of that violence in the name of Black Lives Matter, which is funded through ActBlue, which is the Democrats' fundraising platform, has been routinely supported by almost every, I would say every national Democratic politician. My problem is that this is the exact same logic that people use to condemn the civil rights protesters of the 1960s. Anytime you have a lot of civil unrest, there are going to be groups at different levels of radicalization that get involved. Most of the civil rights protesters

back in the day, 50, 60 years ago, probably boomers, you know, just like middle class, fairly progressive, black or non-black people who just wanted to see their rights achieved. And amongst those people, there have always been socialists and anarchists and much more left-leaning people. And sometimes those groups, or sometimes even the regular moderate folk,

will clash with the police. And the problem is that when we focus on this violence, especially with a movement as large as Black Lives Matter, which if judging by the number of people who participate in these rallies goes, the largest civil rights protest in all of American history, when we start saying, like, well, these few people through rocks at cops here, and then we're talking about fractions of millions of people. So I'd like to say Black Lives Matter as a movement is with Biden reformist and generally quite nonviolent as protests go. And then amongst them, are there more radical people? I'm absolutely.

But I'll even defend to an extent radical action when it comes to protesting against injustice like this. So do you know any people last year, how many unarmed black men were shot and killed by police? I think, I mean, it was like an unarmed black man. Unarmed black man shot and killed by police um i think i mean it was like a unarmed black man unarmed black man shot and killed by somewhere between 20 and 40 i don't remember exactly 13 do you uh but i i would want to be clear it's it's unarmed black men shot and killed there are instances you know like george floyd was not shot and killed but it seems like if you have an estimated 375 million interactions with police, if we're having double digits of unjust killings, it's not so much a widespread problem, but just areas where we need to hold people accountable. Sure. And I definitely think police are often not held accountable for sure.

But does that warrant millions of people, you know, protesting? Does that warrant like changing banners at every single park, every major corporation adopting these slogans? Does it warrant street paintings with taxpayer dollars and then using police to protect it? Does it warrant those who would commit violent in their name for 140 plus days? And will any of the Democrats call them out? Well, the corporations and the politicians doing all of that is just, I'm trying not to use the term virtue signaling. They're doing it because it makes them.

Well, that's the thing. But I'm not going to defend corporations who are throwing up like the black like for sure i app icon for 30 days then they throw up of course but they're only doing that to appeal to a popular narrative but i'm not going to defend their virtue their ceos are could be racist they could be not i don't care like it doesn't matter they'll do whatever makes them money when it comes to like the um the the protest itself you have to recognize that the um police killings of unarmed black men are very much the tip of a of an iceberg even a glacier here where that is the most easily and objectively verifiable injustice like george floyd i think a lot of people recognize

not great uh brianna taylor likewise but underneath all of that those do you well do you mean when you say not great like those stories were not clear cut acts of like, what do you mean by that? No, I mean that they're very easy things to protest against because I disagree. You think that the George Floyd thing was like people should see that and go like, you know, I think when the George Floyd thing happened, I covered it shocked that we had a video of this cop kneeling in the sky for eight minutes. And I think it was like, was it 43 seconds or whatever that shouldn't have happened but more information comes out later so i recognize that protest i do but i don't think any info came out that made that any less horrible that he had fentanyl in his system a lethal a lethal uh does a fentanyl and that uh when the body camera footage got released he's actually kicking his way out of the car

saying please hold him on the ground hold me on the ground. So I have to push back against this. He would not have died if that knee had not been on his neck. It is the degree to which fentanyl was in his system is something of a matter of contention. There are people who say there was a lethal amount. There are people who say that it was, while a substantial amount, something that was decreasing or indicative of a previous dose, and that his death was directly caused from constriction of his airflow. Well, I am not a doctor. I do think the undisputed sort of decision here is that it was because he was kneeled upon.

Did you watch the body camera footage? Yeah, I don't think that changed anything. Were he saying, hold me on the ground, hold me on the ground, hold me on the ground three times? Not by his neck with a knee. Did you see the manual that was released by the police defense showing them training the police to do that uh then i think that's a terrible manual i agree and i and so what i see with brianna taylor and with the george floyd incident is not massive systemic injustice but well actually i'll take that back

i think it's a broken system that needs to be amended but that's what i'm saying individual acts of of malice these are the tips of the iceberg with these two you know but if you actually look at the history of black people in this country and this is what people are fundamentally angry about because people don't go out and protest because one thing happened nobody does that it's always the accumulation of a large number of unfortunate events and when you look at black people in this country if you take a look at average household income or average like schooling quality in your neighborhood or the continued presence of redlining which hasn't changed in 70 years and all these things building up and it's actually the product of like this incredibly complicated network of interconnected systems

that a lot of which aren't even being managed by racist people a lot of it is just the system is stacked in a way that if you were once disadvantaged you'll still be disadvantaged and black people sure were disadvantaged a while ago and And that pattern's continued. And that's the underlying sentiment. And that's, I think, what people really want to address. Here's the issue. I agree completely. I did a documentary on blockbusting, redlining, Pruitt, Igoe, St. Louis, all that stuff. And the issue is race, racialized policies.

And that's not the answer. It's not that's not what's going to solve the problem. It's become a class issue because we've removed the racial component legally. But now we have issues of, OK, you changed the law. We made redlining and blockbusting illegal, though it definitely still happens. We've changed those laws. Now, how do we address the actual inequality? It's a class based issue.

So what ends up happening now is you get the likes. This is what really bothers me about you. You create Black Lives black lives matter i think it was created from trayvon martin and then people counter with all lives matter which instead of become instead of being a unifying thing becomes an like a adversarial thing then you get all black lives matter and it just and then you get blue lives Matter. I think Blue Lives Matter probably came second. And instead of people saying like let's work together to solve all these problems as friends, we get my issue is the issue and you're wrong and how dare you? And everyone just points the finger at each other saying how dare you? The issue is that all Lives Matter types don't really have an issue.

They're just counter- counter protesting Black Lives Matter. If the All Lives Matter thing was a legitimate effort to try to deracialize a broader class issue, I think that it would have turned out very differently. But we have to be clear, that's not what it was being used for. It was being used to say like, oh, you say Black Lives Matter. Well, you're implicitly suggesting mine doesn't. So All Lives Matter. It's a counteraction. This is the point I'm making. If you have an area, uh ferguson where it's predominantly black but there are white people who live there you're cutting out people based on race and it makes people angry what policy are you referring to here because i'm just talking about the slogan so when you so uh from for me growing up on the south side it was a very mixed race area you had white people black

people uh but there was a segregating line 47 47th Street. I watched the cops brutalize everybody. I watched the cops plant drugs on whoever. I watched white people die of heroin overdoses. Or I shouldn't say watch, but I've had friends who died of heroin. And so you then start talking about black lives matter because of brutality. And then you're going to get a bunch of poor people. And of course, there are more poor white people in the United States than poor black people. I'm not saying proportionally. I'm just saying the hard number more white folk

yeah well so right exactly so what ends up happening then is you create a movement that tells someone we are not focused on your problems we're focused on their problems and they say but what about what about me everyone's going to say what about me and i think that's a simple solution to addressing all of the problems this is my thing thing, though. The All Lives Matter thing was not made up by poor white people who are trying to get that solidarity. It was made up mostly by Republican counter-protests. I just, the All Lives Matter thing

was never made in a good faith effort to try to broaden the net. I think you're in a bubble, man. I really don't think so. I was in Cincinnati. But I can tell you, even if that wasn't the case, though, even if that wasn't the case, even if I were to accept your premise, back in the civil rights protests, the original ones, you know, there was a slogan that was used pretty frequently amongst the black folk marching. It was, am I not a man?

You know, am I not a person? And to me, when we're saying like, well, black lives matter, you're leaving out the white people who are poor. This sounds to me like if a woman of that era was to walk up to a man with that sandwich board over his chest and say, well, I'm not a man. What about me? I recognize that the language can seem exclusionary. But if you pull back, you recognize the Black Lives Matter movement is of exclusionary focus on black people, the people marching out there and the policies proposed by BLM advocates are generally very, very progressive when it comes to class based issues and class based solutions. And they also protest white folk getting killed by the police or black folk getting killed by black police. Your analogy, I don't believe fits what we're talking about right now. If you had, you know, black people in the civil rights era saying segregation is wrong, we need equality under the law.

And and we're also talking about, you know, getting rid of miscegenation laws. Those were actual laws in place. What we're talking about right now is our people facing injustice at the hands of police and our people facing disadvantages in life based on class and wealth issues. The answer is yes, it affects everybody. So why would you choose to exclude somebody? If we go back in time, we're talking about civil rights, and a woman went up to a civil rights activist who was black and said, well, what about me?

It's like, I'm actually fighting for something that has nothing to do with you. Whereas today, you do have white people, Latinos, Asians, and everybody who have faced injustice in the hands of cops. I met a black woman. If a black woman went up and said, like, I'm not a man. But, like, with the exclusionary thing, I just, I guess from what I've seen from BLM advocates, the protests, the movement, and even the organization, which is far to the left of what the general BLM actual marcher believes, I just, I guess I just don't see these exclusionary tendencies.

Even if we were to believe there was an exclusionary element here outside of the mere language of the movement, there are racialized elements of this disparity that can't be solved just with class solutions. It's like if a hundred years ago you put all the black folk in Section A and all the white folk in Section B, and then a hundred years later you're like, oh, I'm really sorry about that. So anyway, people in Section A make half as much as people in Section B. I'm sorry, that's the law. No race mentioned, just what neighborhood are you born in? And the breadlining and the distribution of wealth has reflected a distinct racialized oppression in this country that I think we can solve with race-neutral policies, but we must acknowledge that it exists.

But Black Lives Matter isn't advocating for race-neutral policies. solve with race neutral policies but we must acknowledge that it exists but black lives matter isn't advocating for race neutral policies they're advocating for racial policies like racialization like so in in uh for instance in seattle they're doing you know poc and non-poc separate events at the university of michigan we saw the non-poc and the like literal neo-segregation popping up in response to this movement and And the most notable thing and shocking thing to me was California's proposition, I believe it's Prop 16, repeal Prop 209, which would strike the civil rights language from their constitution. I want to be specific about those two. So the POC, non-POC separate thing, this is,

I don't really think that this is like an official BLM thing that's being pushed for. I think that's woke crap as well, by the way. I don't think that you can make an argument for it, provide a safe space, whatever. I don't think it does what it's supposed to. The organizers of Black Lives Matter say these things. Sure. Yeah. But when we're talking about like what BLM wants, I don't mean like these little events or soirees, which may have like these weird elements that are kind of like misappropriated

woke culture. What I mean is like broadly, how are we fixing this multi trillion dollar economic gap that we have? And when it comes to the California thing, I'm mixed on this. The reason they're doing that is because the language of their law prevents them from implementing affirmative action the same way other states in this country do. It's just optically, it looks terrible. Like, wow, you know, California gone so woke that they're getting rid of civil rights, and it looks terrible. And I recognize that.

I don't know if I support it. If it was a civil rights, if it was an affirmative action amendment, as they claim it was, then they would have amended it to add language protecting affirmative action instead of stripping all civil rights from the Constitution. Well, I mean, they still are. They're still they have to adhere of course to national law regarding that would require federal intervention so california is paving the way for internally so for instance california legalized medicinal marijuana when it was federally illegal and then complained when the dea would go in and raid if california strips away the civil rights language thanks to unanimous

support from democrats and federal democrats then they're going to start implementing racist and racial segregation policies statewide. Like what? And then specific programs saying no to this race and no to that race. I mean, if you're talking about affirmative action, we can start with that institutional racism outright. Do you think that affirmative action is an inherently wrong thing? I think it's an institutional racism sure well do you think it's wrong personally for me yes absolutely and that's because i come from a mixed race family so i've already experienced being a second class citizen from from uh groups aligned with whatever you want to call it intersectionality or whatever it's it's not fun it's i believe it flies in the face of everything my my uh grandparents fought for in

terms of civil rights they were a mixed race couple it was illegal they faced prison time over this and they had to flee several states because of it um my mom was born before civil rights and lovingly virginia as an illegal person like wasn't allowed to exist in this country because of miscegenation laws they're bringing these things back i don't think they're bringing back miscegenation no no no they're bringing back i'm talking about the the stripping away the civil rights law they're bringing back segregation i i really given the um the reasons and the unilateral or the multilateral support that this proposition have received the idea to me that they're removing a specific california set of policies um to to to then become the most racist state in in the in the nation even though they're

equally beholden because let's be clear once california removes these laws they're going to be at the same point a lot of other states in this country are other states in this country also rely on a set of federal protections when it comes to discrimination in workplaces and what have you. California is going to be in equal standing with them. I think we're being really uncharitable when we assume that they're doing this as part of a step one to like, you know, bring back like racism in this country. Well, it is. I mean, well, it depends on whether or not you think affirmative action, something which is already done in a bunch of other states.

Yeah, it is racist. Sure. But if that's the case, then let's not pretend that California is like backsliding past the civil rights movement. Let's just acknowledge that they're, I guess, awkwardly moving towards the implementation of policies that a bunch of other states already have. I think I'm 50-50 on affirmative action. I think that's like conceptually it disgusts me, you know? But on the other hand, like, if you think about it, in certain neighborhoods of like Los Angeles, for example, where I grew up, if you get like, a college admission, or college, yeah, like, application, sorry, from a black person to white person, you don't know anything about these two people apart from what they send you. Statistically, the black person has had to work harder because their neighborhoods on average are way worse,

same with worse schooling. This is actually a really good point. It's really funny when we hear. What was this? There was something about they wanted to do. They wanted to do blind hiring because they felt like names were. I saw a post on Facebook. Actually, people were advocating.

It was leftist saying we should get rid of your names and your address and let people choose based on what their merit is and blah, blah, blah. Well, they didn't say merit, but that was the general idea. You put an application. Their concern is that white culture or mainstream American culture favors anglicized names. Therefore, people are at a disadvantage. They actually found – there was a study that found the opposite, and it's actually exactly what you said. If you take a person – statistically, on average, a white person is more likely to have family wealth, more likely to have – to grow up in a wealthier suburb, less likely to have encounters with police for a variety of reasons.

And then they're going to have a resume that says, I went to this school, I went to this school, I went to this college. Whereas people in the black community, Latino community are going to have less. On average, yeah, because they've had to put up with more history. And so you end up with a racial disparity. But I don't see how, you know, that being said, I don't see how the solution is affirmative action or racializing. I completely agree. Yeah. And that's why affirmative action is at best a stopgap. And you could argue maybe it makes the world slightly more fair.

I think it makes it worse. Well, you could argue in a consequential sense, because personally, when I think who deserves to get this spot in a college, who deserves to get that job? I think of how hard they've worked, what effort has been put in, what is the, in a consequential sense, what is the income to outcome there? And affirmative action in some cases helps. In some cases, it actually quite hurts people when it comes to that, what is the income to outcome there? And affirmative action in some cases helps in some cases that actually quite hurts people when it comes to that, especially with the treatment of, say, for example, Asian immigrants in Los Angeles, UCLA, the negative affirmative action points that

they get because a lot of those students are sent over here from wealthy families in China, and you get this really complicated situation. And ultimately, we can avoid all of this, all of this, and I'd love to avoid all of this, if we just put more effort into addressing the underlying racial disparities in this country. But nobody wants to do that. Which would be in what? Real, real anti redlining policies and reparations, not on race. It gets messy, but on class, because if you're if you were poor 100 years ago in white, you had it better than if you're poor 100 years ago in black, for sure. But there are still issues you can fix across the board.

And that way you don't get a lot of really messy racial politics that might otherwise have felt like, what do you do? Like you test people's blood, you know? Exactly. I agree with that for sure. Yeah, that gets really, really messy. But nobody wants to do this. I mean, Republicans, Democrats, neither of them want to do this. How do you feel about – oh, sorry to interrupt, man.

How do you feel about universal basic income? Yeah, I think so. As a socialist, my one contention is my concern would be that universal basic income would assist in perpetually commodifying the standards of life. I don't want people to have the money necessarily to afford medical care or food. I want those things to just be available to people with that wealth maybe being divested to or diverted to like luxury goods, that sort of stuff. But I think that like right now in this country, this is me like picking which two beautiful, delectable fruits I want to eat from a tree. If we could get UEI in this country done properly, like a good UBI, absolutely. And that would go a long way to to fixing the situation poor folk are in so we got we got two routes to go i definitely want to talk about ubi socialism etc but i want to make sure because we were originally talking about

antifa and right-wing violence so going back to what we were talking about before with with antifa on the far left we have people engaged in violence consistently uh i mean i i mean if we look at the death count but what is that i mean that doesn't change the fact that someone gets bashed over the head with a brick sure but i think that generally speaking if we're looking to quantify the amount of violence done by any given number of groups the fact that we've had historic racial protests in this country with antifa involvement at some of these protests and we have i think we have one death and it was that hundred percent antifa guy who was in portland i believe well you had the security security guard

who shot the guy in the face that guy wasn't antifa no no no he was just a bernie bro but he was there but he was there's an unofficial security sure but he wasn't operating the capacity of like a revolutionary protester he was there and i i don't know the circumstance of the death but he was there as an unofficial security guard sure but he wasn't operating in the capacity of like a revolutionary protester he was there and i i don't know the circumstance of the death but he wasn't like black block um you have that and the fact that there's only been so and so much death from these groups i think when we're looking at over the past 10 years hundreds of deaths from the far right groups indicates something whether that indicates the far right group uses more lethal methods you know uh guns supposed to bricks i'd be willing to bet that Antifa don't carry guns for the most part. Except for that one guy. Right, right. Yeah, every once in a while, you know, but when you see

a far right militia group, these people are not carrying flags and bricks. These people carry firearms. But I think that ultimately, discussions on stochastic violence are distractions from greater systemic violence that i think that we all need to pay a greater level of attention i think if you got uh the left and the right in the room and talked about the opioid crisis and pharmaceutical companies they're gonna they're gonna agree yeah i think i think i genuinely agree with that the problem for me is man these guys in in michigan i don't care what you want to call them. Lock them up. You know, they're plotting a kidnapping, whatever it is.

They're staking out some governor's house. The courts had already won in Michigan. The legislation ruled she had her powers. You know, they stripped her powers from her. The courts ruled unconstitutional. And then the AG said, I will not enforce any of her laws. And these guys were plotting what for what reason? Like the system we built, it worked. And so these guys were nuts. They got caught. The FBI staked them out, locked them up.

Congratulations. But when we look at Portland, when we look at Seattle, when we look at what happened in Chicago, in the Pacific Northwest, we get what is like 140 nights now. That's a bit unfair because it's simmered down quite a bit. But we had a sustained period of about 90 or so days where it was just riot every single night explosives being thrown and when these people would get arrested for doing things that were like serious you know like you had cops who had like burns cuts lesions they were protesters who did too and well for sure but i mean if you're if so so i'll get to that you have these people getting arrested and then the But I mean, if you're so so I'll get to that. You have these people getting arrested. And then the D.A., Mike Schmidt, says you're free to go. So it was so bad.

The state police said, what's the point of being here if they're getting released as soon as we arrest them? And they left question. Well, Trump came in and deputized them, then later deputized the police. And now the feds are dealing with it. So death is death is the worst possible outcome. And we have Michael Reinhold who killed that Trump supporter. And that is extremely horrifying. And we didn Michael Reinhold who killed that Trump supporter, and that is extremely horrifying.

And we didn't get mass national press coverage about it. Which instance is this? Michael Reinhold, the guy in Portland who said, we got him right here, and then he fired two shots. We don't know if it's horrifying because he never lived to see trial. He was murked by Trump. It was definitely horrifying, and it was definitely horrifying that he got killed. Death is horrifying, but I mean, we didn't even get to see a trial there. You're right.

And that's something that the right doesn't really experience, by the way, too. You know, like Fort Hood, for example, you know, you treat these people with kid gloves. But that guy, that guy outside the house, apparently, according to, like, a bunch of eyewitness testimony and the conflicting narratives of the police who were there, he didn't draw a gun. They just saw him. Well, I'll tell you this there's they just there's conflicting witness statements but but only with minor variations the vast majority affirm that the cop story isn't true that he did not i i read that there was a witness who said they saw him drawing but i'll tell you what doesn't matter you know why because

uh uh even if we have witnesses saying he did and he didn't trump said twice oh he was at a rally he goes they they knew who he was it took him 15 minutes they don't want to arrest him retribution and and and the other time he said it was retribution and that's that's me that's messed up i'm trying to avoid swearing i saw you tweet that by the way when when i saw it was i was yeah the the president claiming that we should just get retribution and go kill people? No. We want that guy on trial so we can hear everything about him and make sure we know who he is,

we know what he's doing, we know why he's doing it. To me, it shows, to an extent, fear as well. If you are confident in your case, legally speaking, you want them to stand trial because a trial is a years-long prolonged shaming of them and everything they represent. Whereas them being murdered, martyrized, the only reason you wouldn't want that is if you were concerned that a trial would bring out information or would be inconvenient to you in some way. That's why, look, I think I'm not a big fan of trusting the government, but we've got a couple of statements and it just seems like inconclusive.

I'm not inherently going to distrust the cops who are there. I'm not inherently going to distrust the cops who are there. I'm not inherently going to trust them either. Inconclusive is the best you can ever get when it comes to conflicting witness testimonies. So to my point, just because sometimes one group of extremists kills people doesn't mean we ignore the other group of extremists. Oh, I'm not arguing that, though. I will defend. I will defend a lot of the protest violence that's been taking place. I know. And this is contended among a lot of conservative circles. But I think an economist recently estimated that the damage done to the black community in, there are different methods and methodologies. I'm not an economist. I can't fact check him.

I know there are lower estimates as well. But we know this, you know, in the United States of America, for the longest time, the western reaches of this country, they didn't have roads and they didn't have electricity and they didn't have phone lines. federal wealth, we put effort into bringing that infrastructure westward because the investment brings about more educated people, encourages the development of more land, which allows for more people to live there, which means more money. And we're facing now the same issue, albeit in a much more sophisticated way, with a lot of poor communities in this country, a lot of which are black or Latino, where we now know these communities are black holes of wealth. People will make fun of this. Like, why give money to the schools?

It's a black hole. We could invest. We could prevent that from being a problem. But there are more poor white people than poor black people. Sure. And we should invest. Absolutely. But there are specific elements of black poverty.

To be fair, I think you already said reparations on class, not race anyway. Yeah. So I, yeah, I get it. There are some elements that are heavily racialized. There are studies, for example, about the criminal justice system, where that are non sensationalized, like just flat out the likelihood of given charges or what your sentence will be, even if every other factor is accounted for just races left, and then you have things like implicit bias, but those things are cultural shifts. I don't think we can fix that with law. I certainly don't want there to be like a federal mandate. All judges must give black men 10% lower sentences to compensate for the racism

we assume they have. But when it comes to non-cultural issues like that, the deficit we see in these black communities, this is something worth protesting. And I think for a lot of people, people who grew up there, this is something worth fighting for. I don't think it's good to drive a car through cops. I don't think it's good to hurt police officers. But I recognize that riots and violence at protests just seem to be an inevitable product of great civil strife. And to me, the solution to this would be to say, what can we do to alleviate that strife? Arrest people is needed along the way. But giving them what they want just justifies their tactics. Well, what do

they want? Honestly, I don't know. I mean, Black Lives Matter on their website, they want to disrupt the nuclear family. They did remove it. Healthy food, man. It's a class war being subsidized by the sugar industry and the drug industry. No, no, no. Dude, dude, dude, we're talking specifically about what the protesters

are asking for. They want healthy lives. No, they don't. I mean, chill you know not yes what have they asked for specifically the movement or the the the the specific organization because they tend to operate there there's there's no cohesive ask well that's always the way i mean you were at occupy wall street you know there's but there was but there were a few general asks occupy wall street had yeah and it was and it was a lot of leftist stuff like health care, transit, schools. But that was a big problem with Occupy for sure. Yeah.

Well, we have – I mean there are fairly specific requests. We do have, of course, police reform, which I think is best represented in its most moderate form by Joe Biden's policies. I think – what's it called? I'm actually blanking right now. It's like eight main policies that have been scientifically proven to improve police well there's a name for it yeah there's like i don't know yeah well whatever the case is that's great that's fine but then you have other things like reinvestment back in the community that's what defund the police is mostly about terrible slogan optics wise mind you but defund the police where does that money go you know not to

politicians pockets hopefully it would go back towards stuff like social work or towards investment in education, or people forget about this, waste management, you know. These parts of these cities are absolutely filthy. It means nobody wants to go outside, travel to businesses, or work outside, which means that it's rough. Here's where I disagree. I think if people aren't motivated

to serve their own communities, I don't think any amount of money is going to change that. And I think it actually could make a bigger problem. So we had, are you familiar with Scott Pressler? You'll have to bonk me on the head. He's this Trump-supporting guy who goes around cleaning up. It cleans up.

That's awesome. He went to LA. He went to Baltimore. Literally cleaning? Literally cleaning. He brings a bunch of Trump supporters come out, and they'll just start cleaning things up. And he actually got smeared in the media for this. Like they said, his real motivations were to like help Trump or whatever. And I'm like, OK, you know, like carry on cleaning up. Do you think there's an element of that that could be true under certain conditions?

Like what if just hypothetically, I'm just curious before you go on. Like what if it had been like he'd go to black communities? That's what he's doing. Right. And he'd clean up. He'd be like, see how easy it is, you know? And he'd like clean up and he'd get to black communities that's what he's doing right and you clean up he'd be like see how easy it is you know and you clean up and you get like the picture you know and and to me and to me it would it would feel almost like a more patronizing you know like when the white evangelicals go to africa to help build one house over three months or something

like that i actually think i'm just asking i don't know the circumstance i'm just curious i i i don't think so but i think you absolutely could make that argument and you can make the exact same argument for the fact that Black Lives Matter is overwhelmingly white. To have a bunch of white people claiming they're representing the minorities. There's one viral video where it's like two white Antifa women are spray painting and two black a good thing. I think it supports my argument that, broadly speaking, this is a fight for a sort of plurality of social justice rather than a hyper-specific race war. But it's not popular. So the general movement has, right now, according to civics in the polling, 48% approval. Then you've got 39% opposition and then 11% unaffiliated. That's the civics numbers. That's better than the civil rights movement was it well well so so black lives matter as a general movement when you don't

get into the specifics you don't talk about the protests regular people just say oh i like that idea um but 48 so it's not a majority it was after george floyd but they lost ridiculous amount of support yeah after the riots heated up but to be fair again, I just, as a person who's very critical of the narratives media tries to push to us, how much of this is because the movement functionally changed and how much of it is because of the hyper targeted media coverage of all the violence to the exclusion of, again, for every person who dies at a BLM protest, a hundred black people die of COVID, a hundred black people die of malnutrition or of gang violence or of other issues that can be fixed through the systemic solutions that Black Lives Matter people tend to support. I agree with you.

I think the media is garbage in this country. And I think it's an issue of human behaviors and the incentives of the media machine as it exists. That's capitalism, baby. I got a socialism pill. It is. And no, no no no i was talking to some trump supporters a couple years ago and i said i'm for a mixed economy i want regulation on these companies and these three it was three guys they're trump supporters they

were like we think that's wrong and i i said i i do not believe in manip uh coercive force physical force and manipulative force to to make people do things and they asked me what i meant by manipulative force and i was like tricking people fraud and they were like no no no if you convince someone to exchange something for whatever that that's their choice and i was like i'm talking about the media lying to everybody all the time and it's and they're allowed to do it so the problem is i believe in free speech they're allowed to do it that's what it is i just don't think it's ethical the way our our media machines function like this and i don't think there's a way to solve for that problem because you can't put someone in

charge of what's acceptable speech of course that would be you end up with media machines designed to make people go crazy and i gotta be fair i think there's criticism you can point towards me for that absolutely because i have my personal biases and the things i don't like and i think if you look at this is why i'm actually OK with YouTubers, like whether you're left, right or whatever. Like for you, for instance, you're a socialist YouTuber. Like we clearly have disagreements. But you're one dude.

By all means, make all the videos you want saying, you know, Trump is awful. And, you know, all the Republicans and all and I'll talk about what i what i don't like and i don't like you know intersectionality and and democrats for the current iteration of the democrats for sure about that intersectionality thing by the way for sure when we get to that of course yeah yeah i think youtube creates a space where individuals will be like here's my world as i see it here the things i have problems with the thing about these these these companies is that they editorially choose to hyper target and ignore things. So to go back to your point, they'll never talk about the opioid crisis.

I mean, they will like a little bit, but they're not going to be like today. Another X amount of people. It's just whenever it's convenient and shocking and politically advantageous for like an election cycle, for instance. So to basically say, yes, the media is trash. I think when it comes to what we saw with the riots, they kept calling it peaceful and they kept making excuses for everything.

Well, some did. There's that very highly publicized clip of the guy saying, despite some fires, mostly peaceful. Well, like, so that I will say, absolutely hilarious. Not great. I don't know if that's representative of the general coverage i do think for example that a lot of it was necessary to push back on the narrative that like cities

were burning i hear this phrase all the time portland burning seattle bring nothing's one or two buildings in a block on sporadically once in a week that's not good semantics i'm not of course but when you use the term but there is a reason why that hyperbole is employed and it's not just a rhetorical flourish it's to give the person the impression that these cities are actually collapsing, which is, of course, not true. I've been to Portland. But have you seen all these small towns that had those problems that are struggling to recover? When you have a small town, Michael Tracy traveled to these places, a journalist. He went around to a bunch of small towns that people didn't care about or know about because they're not going to get national coverage.

And they had widespread lootings and were putting things on their doors like, we support Black Lives Matter. Please don't hurt us. Yeah, I think that's terrible. But their recovery is like, it's not going to happen because they're a small town that money doesn't exist. Right. But I mean, there is nothing I would propose that wouldn't try to solve that. I mean, the death of small town America has been one of the greatest like demographic crises that we've done. We don't even care about small town America anymore in anything other than a folksy aphorism we can use to drum up voters. When it comes to actual investment, we don't do anything about these communities. And the way our businesses

consolidate makes it easier and easier for everyone to just live in big cities. I live in a big city. I like living in a big city. I would like it if people could choose between that or more rural life without knowing they will have fewer opportunities in the latter, or at least severely hampered opportunities. But with regards to that, like the, we support BLM, please don't, you know, loot us. Looting's illegal. I'm not defending looting, or I don't think most BLM people are defending looting. You just said, you know, there's a book called In Defense of Looting.

And I think it was the New Republic. Did Biden write it? It was written by a, I think it was a trans activist, Black Lives Matter. And this is coming from an article that may have been, I don't think it's the New Republic. But so this is all stems for where, like, I started getting more upset with this level of activism because I've been covering civil unrest. But that's not broadly representative. You know, you said it yourself. Those two like black women trying to keep the two white people from spray painting.

When I see videos of these protests, one of the first things they teach you if you protest consistently, and I used to protest more before I decided I hated going outside and that I didn't like being sun you know, sunburned, was that you want to minimize negative engagement with the community that you're in. Looting, arson, tagging, these things, the definition of negatively affecting the community. But they defend it. Well, who? Because people keep saying they defended a book or a columnist. Sure, some activists. Media calling it peaceful over and over again. I mean, there's like memes. Most of the protests were peaceful though like a vast majority but what does that mean most

well like that's that's the joke we make mostly peaceful 97 93 so it's nine well but there's the and that's a tricky statistic too because at seven percent of all the blm rallies you know there was violence who started that violence you're based in Coppild, I know. You know cops will regularly initiate violence against protesters, either by putting one of their own amongst their rank, throwing a rock, and then using it as justification, or by just starting themselves. We have plenty of video and data-based evidence to defend that. But that's not enough to indict the officers in specific places. No, no, no. But I'm just saying, only 7% of these protests had violence, but we don't know how much of that was actually protester initiated violence and even of those

that were how much it was like one or two guys we don't know most of these protests were peaceful the data on that is very clear but that's that's that's that's fine we're arguing over margins no so so uh i then if that's the case why is it so difficult for anyone to come out and be like screw those guys i don't think it is i see that all the case, why is it so difficult for anyone to come out and be like, screw those guys? I don't think it is. I see that all the time amongst the left. Usually you have these hyper woke 18 year olds who have never been to a protest in their life who will say, yeah, arson. Yeah, you showing the system now.

And there was more of that at the very beginning with Minneapolis because people were very angry right after George Floyd. And there, you know, that leads people to make perhaps dumb decisions. But in terms of the broader movement, and I guess we don't have data because we're talking about people's perceptions, I don't think people are all out here defending, rioting, looting. What they are saying is hyper fixating on those things is a distraction from the real issues the protests are about.

So I've had many discussions with people, and I'm sure people in the audience who are watching can absolutely understand this. How many conversations have you had where someone says it's righteous anger, or you don't understand their anger? I recently had a conversation with someone where I was talking about, they said something like, if you are against Antifa, that means you are pro-fa, which means you're pro-fascist. And my response if i don't like say islamophobes does that make me pro-islam and they were like yes i'm like no it doesn't it means i don't like it when you go and beat random people so if you've got people wearing masks going around look i i can't go out there's a viral video of uh there's like a black dude and this info wars reporter is like come with

me to this trump this line of trump people coming to a trump rally and he was like oh okay i guess you know it's kind of worried and everyone there is like he says i don't i don't like trump i'm not a big fan like hey man that's cool no problem shook his hand gave him hugs some ladies were like oh that's fine we just love that you're you're here talking to us gave him a kiss on the cheek and this guy's like man i get more of those i'm gonna come hang out here this is great and then she goes now let's go over to the protest side and they start screaming vile disgusting insults and the guy's face just drops like random black guy it was so i don't know the exact context of who this guy was but he was talking to a reporter from info wars well they might have been screaming at the i can they're screaming at the info wars lady oh okay yeah

that's totally fine yeah there's nothing wrong with being black there is something wrong with being an infowars reporter so i'm fine so the point i'm bringing out is this vile hatred exists like but that's overwhelmingly shouting at people you don't like is fine that's but but i'm just giving that as an example to talk about if i were to go out right now to a rally, there's gonna be a lot of people who are going to if I said I don't like Trump, that's fine. In fact, I called I called Trump a very disparaging term on Twitter laughing about it. And I've done it like 10 times in the past two weeks. And people are just like, I disagree with you, Tim. But, you know, I respect that you're giving us your thoughts on this one and you're treating the news seriously.

If I I went out in 20, I think it was 2017 or 2018 i think it's 2017 it was in berkeley they were antifa was posting pictures of my mom like and me and threatening me and i went to a skate park minding my own business and i had guys come to me and start threatening me for no reason so i can't i can't defend all these individual obviously i think going after people's family members is unconscionable regardless of the the people you're targeting. You know, I can't. I mean, these are these are very spread out. The broad argument that I'm making is I genuinely do believe that the sentiment behind Black Lives Matter is about the things they're protesting for and not the defense of the most violent, extreme, hyperbolized actions that take place in a movement that tens of millions of participants. Two billion dollars in damages.

I mean. And that was just the insurance cap. Yeah. So beyond that, it's way more. But what do you want to do about it? Condemn it, call it out and say stop. But people, but I guess, I mean, I'm in some pretty far left circles. I think that when I, what I remember is this.

After George Floyd and after the Minneapolis riots, there were a lot of people who were very gung ho about the writing. And, uh, just a couple of weeks later, I remember there was a live stream segment from a far right. I don't know if it was a YouTuber, Twitch streamer. I think he was a neo-Nazi. The chat on screen had a lot of wacky stuff in it. And, um, and he, he was there at a BLM protest and he was saying hey hey you guys can you flip that truck

and he was trying to get other people to flip and the people who were there who were blm protesters all turned on him they were like no what absolutely not and they started like trying to chase him out the guy ran away and chat was like oh gotta run and when i saw that clip that made its way around the twitter the youtubes and people were celebrating it because the goal of protests should always be to affect positive change and you aren't going to affect positive change with the looting the burning the writing those things do happen but an over fixation can be detrimental to the actual message being made by the vast majority there's a video of some guy with a hammer and he's smashing up the sidewalk and like pulling bricks yeah have you seen this they run up they grab the guy and they throw him to the cops and then the cops

grabbed two guys and one of the guys was actually helping and then they cut the the good guy out and they arrest the guy who was vandalizing the street so i definitely praise that by all means like peaceful protest is what this is the foundation of this country we have we have the first amendment right to do so and it's amazing when we do. Violent protest is the foundation of this country. Technically, but when we told the crown, the American colonists, stop oppressing us, stop sleeping in our homes, stop murdering our people, and they didn't live here. They were from – like you had people who were born and raised in the colonies. What did they say? They said, we're severing ties from you. So what like you had people who were born and raised in the colonies and what did they say they said we were severing ties from you so what did the crown do they sent the regulars to

the states and then we said f off so it's a bit different than a bunch of people showing up you know an extreme minority of a community that is that is at odds with what the community wants burning it down getting defended by the press and then just only getting like well let's not focus on the extremists i just i think that's a really sensationalized narrative because we are focusing on the extremes here the vat so we have to remember we're focusing on a very slim minority probably exclusively you know stuff that's gone on in new york portland there are cities of course that have greater levels of agitation no no no no no graphic but there there are actions like that that take place otherwise but when we talk about persistent media coverage you know say port say Portland, for example, you know,

I would be willing to bet that for the most part, the people in the city of Portland are largely behind what goes on there for the most part. But even if they are not, I still just, I guess I just don't understand why this is as much of a talking point as it should be. Like, if we want to fix this. I think you should check out... We don't have it, but

Michael Tracy drove to small towns that never made the press. I know. I talk with Michael Tracy. I was very critical of him for his work in that bit. You think he went to all these small towns and showed that the riots reached places that didn't make the news. Let me tell you. I have family members who live

60 miles outside of chicago and for some reason black lives matter activists showed up to these towns of a couple thousand people demanded that the mayors allow them to march and when they did they started trashing the place this is directly from a family member of mine saying i don't understand why this is happening we're a small sleepy suburb out 60 miles outside of the city. And then here's the issue. In Minneapolis, you keep hearing things like they have insurance. And we've heard that from prominent activists in Black Lives Matter. They have insurance.

They don't. So in Minneapolis, for example, there were several stories covered by the Star Tribune that insurance only covers up to $25,000 for hauling away debris, which the cost of hauling away totally demolished buildings was five times that, which meant they just said goodbye and they walked away the business never to come back well you won't find me defending insurance companies well for sure but but the issue is but what do you want to do about it so what i'm looking for specifically is the prosecutors in chicago new york fort worth seattle and and port Portland to actually start prosecuting these people. I have heard many accusations. I have not seen many claims to indicate, or I've not seen much evidence to indicate that there are legitimately people just being let out. What often happens,

that police will gather up big batches of people that are even associated with an area surrounding a crime that took place. And then because there isn't enough evidence to find out which one of them actually did it, the whole group of them gets let go there's a video but that's due process right there's a video of a guy fighting with cops and grabbing his baton something andy no post and i know a lot of people on the left don't like him it's a guy fighting with the cops he grabs their baton a bunch of cops grab him throw him to the ground he got cut loose okay i don't know any of the circumstances yeah but again why are we i just why are we arguing about individual statistics when we're talking about a civilization-wide problem in a

country with a population of a third of a billion i'm okay with black lives matter rioters or antifa whatever have done damage this is bad this is bad i'm totally okay with that but when people say this they don't stop there they then go on to say and this is why i don't support black lives matter and that's the association I can't abide. Because if you do care about fixing these problems, you should care about addressing the underlying sociological disparities that have created them. This wasn't created by far left DAs who are letting them get off easy. This was all created by class and race based issues.

And it's going to boil up again in five or 10 or 15 years if we don't do something about it. It's an inevitable product of historic inequality and if you want to condemn those people i have no issue with that it's not just about that it's what do we do to stop it when we have district attorneys and county attorneys being elected that will let these people go but now we have actual stories where people who would defend their property are the ones getting charged right we're seeing this when uh the mccloskeys they brandish illegally on their own private property legally in missouri i am so i am uh not familiar with missouri specifically are you telling me that brandishing firearms of people uh without provocation is okay

as long as you're on your property according to the attorney general of missouri yes okay so it's not it's not for me like i'm not look you can say the attorney general is wrong and biased and all that stuff but they're they're being charged with felonies now they're being charged with evidence tampering because they claimed and it was reported that the the government uh the prosecutor actually took the gun and dismantled it and reassembled it and then accused them of tampering i can't speak to the specificity of these claims this almost i don't know if this borders on conspiracy but i'd have to look more into it if they're innocent the courts will find in their favor they are very wealthy i have no doubt they're going to get a good lawyer i'm not they're good lawyers i guess themselves oh right i shouldn't say they're good lawyers i say they're wealthy lawyers you know

right well they they uh yeah they um uh can't represent themselves of course but so so i guess i guess the issue is we have widespread rioting. It's consistent and it's sustained. Not as sustained as the systemic biases they're fighting against, though. But what systemic biases? I mean, all the stuff regarding class and race that has led to these conditions boiling up here. I guess it really just is a matter of, like, what do you think the solution to this is? Class. Class-based. Right. But is it like arresting a given number of people and replacing

some left-leaning da's or is it like a we fix this like from the ground up you know i think the first that needs to happen is acknowledgement and condemnation which is what we're not getting from the media i just i think we have and even by the way they're just saying peaceful protests over and over again with the flames yeah i know it's one i know i know but you're doing it now you're like well there was one for the most part the protests are peaceful so calling them peaceful protests is an accurate and factually no no description there i i went through this today they were calling what happened in philadelphia demonstrations like every outlet i read was like demonstrations took place in a pickup truck rammed a cop knocking on the ground and breaking her leg.

I'm like, you got to acknowledge CNN's crap. But wait, weren't they demonstrations? MSNBC. No, no, no. When people when people are going around smashing windows and stealing things from all these stores. That's not a demonstration. That's a whole. Wasn't there like a large part?

They were calling that a demonstration. The media doesn't say rioters. They don't ever call it a riot. Well, I mean, conservative outlets will. I know for a fact that's not true. I've seen even liberal or neutral outlets that have referred to these as riots. Sometimes, perhaps. I'll say this.

I don't think either of us have an example, but I'm willing to concede, yes, absolutely. But I'm just being hyperbolic in that, for the most part, they overwhelmingly say demonstration. And every time I read one of these stories, I'm like, dude, throwing a brick at the head of a cop is not a demonstrator or a protester. Here's where I have to turn this on you. OK, so I assume you and I have similar goals when it comes to class race based justice. You don't like redlining. Good. I'm glad we don't have to.

Right. But you seem very concerned about the inaccuracies and the way that the left-leaning media has covered this. And I've seen this on your channel, too. Many videos pertaining to that general trend. I see none of it with regards to how the right miscovers these. How many views does the right get? Views?

Like, how big is right-wing media versus left-wing media? At least on YouTube, the right-wing media is absolutely absolutely larger have you looked at the actual data on that uh yeah i mean if you if you i mean it depends on um it depends on what your metric is for left-leaning there are some like uh like neutral leaning like i don't consider cnn to be left by any metric for example they're anti-trump and he and cuomo uh cuomo specifically said since when do protests have to be peaceful i think that well that's a true statement there so i mean that's definitely left no there have been plenty of non-peaceful protests some of them led by right-leaning people in the history of this country protest does not inherently mean peaceful and also um the point

i'm making there is that he's clearly on the side of of the unrest i don't think i don't think being anti-trump makes you left-leaning i think that just makes you a fan of human decency. And in terms of how the media covers what's going on, but CNN's on clearly one side, you get that I think I think that CNN is at best neutral, they are absolutely not on my side. But when it comes to this, again, you have an enormous media platform. We have people like the President of the United States, saying that Black Lives Matter people, they aren't American, they hate America, they want to destroy it. This is up to the presidency of the United States. Right-leaning media, you think the left-leaning media has been inaccurate in their coverage of these issues. The right-leaning media is insane. But who and what?

Sorry, I just had a quick question. So I really wanted to ask you, one of the things that you mentioned was that you did not like Michael Tracy's coverage of these small cities. And I kind of wanted to loop back a little bit because we are still talking about riots and we're going to go to super chats, maybe eventually. And I wanted to ask, what was your issue with Michael Tracy's coverage? And why did you think that he was unfair in his representation of talking about these small towns? I think we have a really bad issue, especially with commentary on YouTube of people who will try to amass a series of descriptive positions and then use them to imply a prescriptive one without actually ever making that argument. So, for example, if your argument is that Black Lives Matter has led to damage in some small communities or that Black Lives Matter has increased the propensity of COVID-19 spread, which seems to not be true. Those are descriptive claims that you can make, but you're not making the prescriptive claim, which is that BLM is bad. The problem that I had with Michael Tracy is it seems like he wanted to do everything possible to supply the right wing with arguments that would support their idea that

BLM is bad without actually making the case himself, just making sort of hodgepodge descriptive claims to support it. The right is on the outs the bright bart is flagged deranked banned they their their live stream of a of a congressional uh a press conference was was removed immediately from youtube i would consider you far right and you have 110 million views far right yeah oh yeah you the actual the i like talking to you don't get me wrong the actual stuff that you do on your channel, though, is hyper partisan, like almost conspiracy bait. Like, like there was the clip you did where you said that if Joe Biden wins, they're going

to rewrite all the definitions in your dictionary. People are going to come to your house with fireworks and guns. It's all going to be over. Those things have already happened. People individually. First of all, bad things have happened to people on the left and the right. Second of all, this has nothing to do with Biden winning. This all happened under Trump, under protest that Trump has exacerbated with this poor response.

And third of all, don't you think it's a little bit disingenuous of you to imply that just because something has happened at some point in this country, that means that it's the product of an upcoming presidential election? Like at some point over the past four years, you know, there's probably been like a sewer explosion in somebody's toilet in an apartment. But if I said if Trump wins again, there will be toilets exploding in your home i feel like it would be a disingenuous do you think joe biden would reinstate critical race theory trainings at the government level i think that your opposition before before trump banned it i guess i think it was there your opposition to it is one of the most anti-free speech positions that you have possibly the most yeah so it's just you're getting off on this one we got to go back to the initial claim you made and and where i'm going with this sure when

i said that if biden wins and uh i don't know the exact quote that that you're referring to they're changing the definitions which they've already been doing your definitions have changed dramatically to the point where wikipedia makes no sense wait it makes perfect sense and definitions change all the time. No, hold on, hold on. If you go to Wikipedia right now, and I brought this up before, and look up the word woman, it has nothing to do with the word trans woman, and they both disagree with each other on reality. It's a Wikipedia article.

What does that have to do with Biden? That happened under Trump or Obama. What does that have to do with Biden? The point is, you have Donald Trump, who just recently banned critical race theory, and any company that does critical race theory trainings is banned from contract with the government. It's actually reversing this. Well, that's fantastic. Critical race theory is neo-segregationist. Can you describe to me what critical race theory is? In men's terms, I don't have the academic definition pulled up for you, but specifically like privilege plus power, whiteness, minorities, traits of whiteness would be specifically like hard work, scheduling.

I'll tell you this, the tenets of critical race theory, though I've definitely done segments on the overt academic definition of it. I don't have it pulled up, but when they put out a list that says whiteness, they say things like down with whiteness, um, traits of whiteness include schedules, hard work, planning for the future, 2.5 kids and all of those things.

You're just listing the one Smithsonian museum pamphlet that was passed out and largely criticized critical race. I criticized by who it was. It was in the Smithsonian for decades by that specific pamphlet. No, it was not this pamphlet you're referring to right now i know because i covered on my stream and made fun of it as well uh no it was made specifically probably some new in student or somebody who was in their 20s made it it got taken away almost immediately afterwards following bad reception to pretend that this is indicative of an entire academic theory is very silly i i

learned critical race theory in sociology that was was my major. It's very, very simple. Critical race theory is just the racialized element of critical theory. That is to say, you analyze racial relations based on distinctive power relationships between different groups. So how about instead, I guess, the application of? That's probably the best way to put it. There is something terrifyingly despotic about banning the teaching of a certain idea because it leads people to conclusions that are unfavorable to the president of the united states of america but i i think you're now ascribing an assumption on the intent what i'm saying is why was it why is it good that it's banned then well you're so the first assumption you made was you know exactly why

trump did it made him look bad i think actually trump doesn't know anything about it it was no trump specifically said that it promoted anti-american values which is the same tin pot dictator excuse that every authoritarian is ever given for their and so the context here is that christopher ruffo appeared on i think tucker carlson and said that and then trump just parroted it and didn't actually know what he was talking about so when it came to the debate he had no idea what he's talking about he's the president i'm going to hold him accountable for his language sure sure yeah trump didn't know what he was talking about. He's the president. I'm going to hold him accountable for his language. Sure, sure. Yeah. Trump didn't know what he was talking about. Yeah, but he said that. I mean, it's irritated me. So we have now the emergence of an ideology that is targeting specific races. It's not an ideology. It's just a mode of academic

analysis. Critical race theory is just, I guess, a broad term. This is the challenge I always get whenever I have conversations about this. It's broad because it's been made broad so you have something to criticize. So whatever happens is when I say something like, hey, I think these things are bad, I get semantic arguments about, well, then define it. What is this? You have to prove what the specific academic – what I'm telling you is when they say things like, I worked for Fusion, for example, and the editor-in-chief changes Twitter by a down with whiteness, like overtly racist. They use it to justify racial segregation, neo-segregation. I have seen protests by claiming that privilege – racism is only privilege plus power.

That's not an academic argument, though. I've only heard that from non-academics. So what I'm saying is you have a colloquial understanding of what's happening versus you demanding I make a specific definition and then attack it, which is not a fair argument. The colloquial understanding you have is as much an ideological mishmash as the anti-SJW compilations of 2015. That's not an argument. What are you talking about? The argument that I'm making is that the president of the United States is trying to engage in a modern form of book burning. And that is what this is, by the way, taking certain forms of knowledge and removing them from the public discourse, certainly with regards to federal funding.

He is doing this. And the reason he is doing this, as for his public comments, are because they lead people to become un-American. The trainings are a violation of Title, I believe, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. You can't tell people that there are certain races that are inherently good or bad. And that's not that's not critical. But that's what the trainings were doing.

What is a critical race? Pull up Christopher Ruffo. Wait, wait, wait. What federal trainings were saying that certain races are good or bad? Let's pull up Christopher Ruffo. He's got a huge list of it. This is what happened. Christopher Ruffo went on Tucker Carlson, gave a list of all these things that were

happening. Trump sought, reacted, didn't know what he was talking about. Do we have information outside of Christopher Ruffo went on Tucker Carlson, gave a list of all of these things that were happening. Trump sought, reacted, didn't know what he was talking about. Do we have information outside of Christopher Ruffo's testimony? Yeah. We have the articles and the documents and everything, all the research he's done. So look, this is just one individual I'm citing right now. This is like white people are bad, black people are good? No, we have down with whiteness.

We have racism can only be, only white people can be racist. Racism is privilege plus power. We have these components that make up some mishmash of intersectionality, leftist identitarianism, critical race theory, which form a nightmarish ideology. And it's very, very simple, actually, when Trump bans this. It's a violation of title, I believe, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to do trainings where you say white people this white people that and why did it wait so it's so so trump is actually just enforcing existing law when he says he can't do this those policies aren't against the law the uh the app the critical race theory is nothing more than a tool that helps us understand the reason why things are the way they are in this country when it comes to people's racial divides the application of this tool is

completely ideologically neutral. You can arrive at right-leaning conclusions through it. The only reason this is being discussed now is because it is being used as an academic scapegoat for the ideology that has led to Black Lives Matter. I think the issue is you haven't read any of this. So we have Christopher Ruffo. The Treasury Department held a training session telling employees that, quote, virtually all white people contribute to racism and demanding that white staff members struggle to own their racism and accept their. This is Christopher Ruffo's cited research on where this happened. So this is the Treasury Department. OK.

We also have the National Credit Union Administration, Sandia National Laboratories, Argonne National Laboratories, the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI all cited. And these are overt violations of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. So all of those departments said that exact thing? So National Credit Union Administration says they held a session for 8,900 employees arguing that America was founded on racism and built on the backs of people who are enslaved. How is that false? Founded on racism? Absolutely. Well, that's? Founded on racism? Absolutely.

Well, that's an ideological position. I don't think we should have that in government. Wait, all government training involves ideological positions. Even the understanding that our constitution is the founding document of the land is an ideological disposition, a bias that we adhere to. So yeah, absolutely. We found that a constitution that said all are created equal. We had black slaves. Yeah, of course.

I murdered a bunch of natives. So to be fair, had fun. To be fair, we'll say the National Credit Administration. That one's more of an opinion that I think actually is based on a history I could agree with. We definitely built this country off of slaves and racism. Definitely racism for sure. It was only we only got the Civil Rights Act in 64. Sandia National Laboratories laboratories which produces our nuclear arsenal

held a three-day re-education camp for white males teaching them how to deconstruct their white male culture and forcing them to write letters of apology to women and people of color whistleblowers from inside the labs tell me that critical race theory is now endangering our national security how is that endangering our national security regardless of whether that opinion is correct okay well holding holding camps for white males is a violation of the civil rights. Sure. What does this have to do with critical race theory, though? So what I'm saying is when I say things like critical race theory, I'm referring to one particular component that's used in these in these trainings that are being banned.

The point I'm making is there's a general understanding of what's happening in this country. And every time I bring this up to someone on the left, they use a semantic or academic argument to confuse the situation. Because he's banning it even as so far as to go to universities and funding for them is, this is a, a tremendous violation of our first amendment rights to bet to we, you have to understand that when it comes to, listen, I'm not defending white male training, whatever. Okay. Crap. We're talking about, you would need to meet the highest conceivable threshold of harm done to this country for me to even begin to believe it's acceptable for a president to unilaterally decide that a given type of academic analysis is no longer something that they will be permitting. This is like, it is insane to me that a person who considers themselves anti-authoritarian could ever even begin to condone this. If there are problems with those individual things, and I have no doubt, by the way, corporations have been doing cringe,

cringey, terrible diversity training for decades now. They've done it with men and sexual harassment. They've done it with like tolerance and everything like that. They've done it with men and sexual harassment. They've done it with tolerance and everything like that. They've done it with LGBTQ people. They're doing it with this. That's always been going on. But there are ways to address that that don't involve this. And even if there weren't, this is way worse. Well, so hold on. I agree. I think the issue is that Trump doesn't know what he's talking about. And I think he saw a Fox News segment and then was just like, oh, we got to ban all this. When asked about it, he couldn't actually tell people.

That's terrifying. It is a problem. Well, terrifying. I wouldn't say terrifying. This guy is the nuclear armcoach. He's going to do unilateral executive action which restrict the First Amendment rights of federal institutions

because he heard it from, like this is, I can't believe. Well, so look, I think the degree to which we find trump's lack of knowledge on this and his uh overbearing action uh that's where we're disagreeing i guess my issue is this is a first amendment violation i mean it's just you you can you consider yourself no no no no no no hold on hold on the government should ban violations of the

civil rights act and and that was the issue at play. Then Trump did Trump, you know, blanket banning critical race theory. I guess it depends on what the actual executive order is and to what extent critical race theory is banned. But insofar as it pertains to the training specified by Christopher Ruffo, then brought up by Trump, that should be this is how it's always done, though. And by the way, I know everyone loves the bring up government law. This is how it was done in Nazi Germany, too. When book burning started to take place, they didn't just say, let's burn everything progressive. They would say, this specific ideology is... But you're not arguing the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Wait, wait, wait. So in either case, there's a quote that I'm wonderfully fond of. And it's, if one considers himself a defender of human freedom, he must regrettably spend his time defending scoundrels, because it is against scoundrels, which authoritarianism is first aimed. And if it is to be stopped, I understand this is a hyperbolic argument. I'm just using it because it's a clear-cut example.

When it came to the types of literature they decided to burn, they didn't just say, oh, everything progressive, anti-racist, everything Jewish, let's burn that. They would say, oh, well, this. This is child abuse, but it was everything research about gay people. And if you use very specific problems to defend the dissolution of information on a broader topic you're participating in authoritarian apology so yes but i think you're talking about something else so we can break this down first if trump went so far as to ban universities teaching critical race theory then that's a serious serious problem i've seen people complain that there was like a there i can't remember what it was i think i think it was West Point that did a class on like queer theory and people complained about it. And I'm like, why are you complaining about a class on something? If

people want to go and learn about it, they should learn about it and they go to university for it. The actions being taken that I have issue with that I can only specifically cite was Trump saying these specific trainings violate the law. Now, I think it's fair to say Trump didn't know what he was talking about. That's easy. He couldn't even answer on the debate stage. And a lot of people complained about that. But if they violated the law, he wouldn't need to create any new laws to get rid of them. He didn't. It was an executive order. Well, an executive order is a function of the law now. So it's the president saying do this. It sounds like critical race. They took critical race theory and used it as a

excuse to create ridiculously racist functions and then they're just so instead of trump saying hey get rid of those functions don't do that again he's getting rid of the theory that was used no no no that's what it sounds like so that part of the argument is what we're actually talking about that's why i'm saying if trump went so far and that we'd have to pull up i would agree with you trump should not ban knowledge or theory. But if Trump is saying the government is engaging in trainings that teach this thing to employees and those things are violations of Title VII, we can't legally do those things. Is white is the idea that white people are inherently racist, a critical race theory idea? I think I think that most critical race theorists would argue that

everybody carries with them racial biases, whether you're black or white. I think any academic who would say that only white people carry with them internalized biases is absolutely ridiculous. We used to talk about we have comfort biases. So whatever you're comfortable with is what you're if you're not familiar, like familiarity familiarity biases so if a white person was born in a black neighborhood they'd be familiar with the black people yeah and white people not the white white people by the way who are born in like inner city kind of like black areas tend to develop same cultural affectations as black people when it comes to relationships with the police or other institutions like that it's about it's not about white people bad black people good or anything

like that even though these training some of these sessions, I've seen them, some of them seem horribly cringy and ham-fisted attempts by managers to try to fit some sort of nouveau standard of, you know, woke training. The fundamental idea here, at least for most critical race theorists, I imagine is just simply, we have to recognize these biases are inside of us, not just race, any type of inclination. The thing about race is what you're saying about everyone has some kind of racist inclination. I completely agree with.

I think people. So I learned this when I did fundraising for nonprofits. Anyone who's who's who's capable of teaching you sales or fundraising will tell you. Absolutely. People trust and like those who are just like them. And so hold on. So that means when you approach someone wearing a suit, you try to act like someone wearing a suit.

And that means there's a racial component to that, that if people see something familiar, you look like they do. They're more likely to be favorable. However, for what it's worth, I'm not going to pretend like Wikipedia is a fantastic source. I'm just not capable of pulling up the actual article, which goes back to 1999 from Harris. 1993, Ladson Billings' critical race theory, which views white skin that some Americans possess is akin to owning a piece of property. And in that it grants privileges to the owner that a renter, in this case, a person of color, would not be afforded. Cheryl L. Harris and Gloria Ladson Billings describe this notion of whiteness as property, whereby whiteness is the ultimate property that whites alone can possess.

Valuable just like property, the property functions of whiteness, rights to disposition, rights to use and enjoyment, reputation and status property, and the absolute right to exclude, make the American dream more likely attainable for whites as citizens. Yes, that would violate Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act if you told people that in a government setting. I genuinely don't believe it would. That's just a flourish, purple prose way of saying that white privilege exists. And while they may have phrased it there in a very alliterative way, I think everything there is perfectly defensible. If someone made a stereotypical statement about black people in a government setting, would that violate their civil rights?

It's not a stereotypical statement in a way that infers racism. It's matter just a discussion of privilege. That's your opinion. Well, if someone. Wait, wait, wait. Do you think it's a violation of the law in a sort of diversity training class to say that white privilege exists? Yeah. Well, in this context, it would be.

Yes, I genuinely don't think that is the case i i mean there there is a big difference between treating people differently based off their race and recognizing that society treats people differently based off their race you can't you can't discriminate on the basis of race but you're not by telling them but the thing is races are different genetically and telling people that one race is inherently privileged over another would be racist but i don't i just i just have to listen oh yeah go for it. Your argument about white privilege, the problem I have with it is, first of all, I recognize the concept of a majority privilege.

In the United States, there is a dominant, a much larger portion of white people than any other race, thus creating a familiarity bias that we mentioned. There's something, I'm not trying to say that

everything I'm saying is what Brett Weinstein believes, but Brett Weinstein has talked about things like this if you go to china for instance there's no white privilege there's there's none you're an outsider in fact it you know when i go to a country like korea they're extremely ethno-nationalist and they think they're better than everyone else in the world you get treated better there was a white person than a black person though you ever go to that's just racism yes i i have well that's privilege and so so people having racist views is for sure you can call it a privilege but you can't under uh the law discriminate against one race that's not discrimination the problem i have with this ideology is that what's the difference between saying that and say jewish privilege

well the difference would be that the Jewish privilege thing is incorrect, I imagine. Well, have you done research on it? Yeah, I certainly have. I argue with a lot of neo-Nazis on my channel. Vox.com. Vox.com wrote this, actually arguing you're wrong. And it was a professor who made the same argument. And it was the weirdest thing I ever read. And when I quoted it, a bunch of leftists tried ascribing that quote to me. The problem I have with it is I've heard the exact same thing about white privilege to Asian privilege. And I've been told that Asians are the true bearers of privilege. Then you get books like In Defense of Looting that straight up say that Jews and their opinion

and Asians, again, their opinion represent capital. I can't believe you would say that of your own opinion, Tim. What? Yeah, yeah. But you know I have to do that. No, I know. Of course, of course, of course. I give him his quote.

Listen, first of all, it's not just a majority bias. A country which, by the way, has a very pernicious history of white supremacy and white privilege is Bolivia, a country recently that had a socialist victory in an election. Two-thirds of that country is indigenous. The one-third that is white has hold held a great deal of power, because of course, they are the descendants from the conquistadors who came over there and just, just made a mess of things. And they've held power for for centuries since. So I just I need to I listen, if we are to defer to legal arguments, I am not a lawyer, I am of the utmost confidence

that saying that there is white privilege in this country does not violate any discrimination practices with regards to federal training or employment. I think it is a very true and very real thing that people should know, not because white people should feel ashamed. I have never once in a for a moment in my life apologized to anyone for being white or for a man or being a dashing six foot two. I think it's just a piece of information that is helpful to contextualize other pieces of apologize to anyone for being white or for a man or being a dashing six foot two. I think it's just a piece of information that is helpful to contextualize other pieces of information. So I disagree on racializing it, but I will say this. If we agree on that point,

then it sounds like what Trump did isn't terrifying. In fact, would just be a matter for the courts. So if Trump wants to say this is illegal because I believe it is and you believe it isn't, then the real issue is not despotism. The real issue is, okay, you file your lawsuit. It'll go to the courts. We'll interpret, determine whether or not it is a violation of Title VII. No, I can't accept that because, first of all, if it's already illegal, then they should be able to file court cases just based on the evidence they already have. They wouldn't need an executive order to give them the additional justification. Additionally, when he talks about critical race theory, when Trump, when the Republicans, whatever, they aren't talking about like this very narrow set of cringy diversity,

you know, training practices. They're talking about a broad ideology that is infesting and de-Americanizing people to make them hate whiteness, to hate this country, to hate their race, whatever. And these things, frankly, we should call them what they are, blatant authoritarian fear-mongering. And when we kowtow to it by saying, OK, well, we'll let the courts deal with it. OK, well, in some cases, maybe the worst iteration of these diversity training things could conceivably be a violation of that law. We are abetting authoritarianism, And that is something I can't allow. I would rather a country where these policies continue, and some are terrible, and we slowly change them via process of existing law than one where the President of the United

States of America, apparently operating on poor information, unilaterally decides to just shut it all down. That is a very dangerous precedent. But this is within the confines of our existing government, with the President has the authority to do, and there are means of rectifying it if it is a violation of the law. Yeah, sure. But that doesn't mean it's not authoritarian. Yeah, some bad authority. Yeah, like, exactly. Patriot Act and stuff. Yeah, like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It means that we have a system that, for one, is imperfect, but it's good in the sense that if Trump does something, he gets sued all the time and he's lost several times.

And in my opinion, I do not like the idea that there would be a government program, a government training program telling people that whiteness is inherently this, that. I wonder what's white. Like, are you white?

You're Asian. So are you white? I'm not even white. My skin's not white. I'm like pink. I'm voting Biden. I'm going to be black in a couple of days. There is no black human.

No white human. Let's get that out of the way. There's shades. No human has that color. Those are shades. We use them improperly, those words. But people will have biases based on what other people look like. And so the problem I have is your ideology inherently turns me into a second class citizen. Wait, how? Because I have been to these places where they tell me I'm not welcome in either space. I've been told that I both simultaneously have white privilege and don't. And as long as aligning with them in that respect, that your ideas are exactly their ideas. No, they hate me. They insult me and they use racist terms for what I am. Well, it really depends.

And so that's why I hate identitarianism, be it from them or the left. But I'm not engaging. But wait, wait, wait. But I'm not engaging. The white nationalists aren't putting policies in place. Neither are we. Trump removed that policy. No, first of all, place. Trump removed that policy.

No, first of all, we're not talking about policy. We're talking about the individual practices of individual government departments that maybe are worthy of criticism. Again, I haven't gone to these, and I have very perfect reasons to distrust sometimes right-leaning media's portrayal of these events. But even saying everything there cringy as it seems, this is not identitarianism. These are, at worst, poor ways of describing the concept of white privilege, which I think is a perfectly defensible concept. You can believe in white privilege. You can believe in Asian privilege. That bears absolutely nothing on your character as an individual. And anybody who would use these concepts as a hammer to dismiss you or to say your ideas aren't worthwhile. To me, I think that's disgusting.

And in fact, you know what? I'll be bipartisan on this, okay? Because I get this sometimes in the left. There are people who will say, you can't have that opinion. You're white. What are you talking about? You can't. You're a man, you know? By way of your privilege, and I acknowledge I have privilege, your ideas on this aren't worthwhile. And I say to that, as I always have, idiotic. Ideas are valuable. People are valuable by their own merits and none else. When we talk about concepts like privilege, we're talking about lofty statistical biases. Some black people will literally live their entire lives without really meaningfully getting racially discriminated against. And some white people will get frequently

messed up because they're white. It's all about averages and statistics. And anybody who uses that as an individual condemnation, I have to tell you, this is not anything that I support. And I don't think it's representative of critical race theory. The problem is when you try to address the problem from racial standpoints, you create the circumstances in which the individual will be oppressed. How? So if you create a training program that says, and I know you said you didn't like it,

when you take 8,900 white males or whatever, and I think that was actually a different circumstance, but when you bring white males to a special training camp to tell them to address their privilege, those people are having their rights violated based on, if you want to call it a distorted or corrupted view of whatever the theory actually is, then it's being used to oppress individuals. I just think it's like corporations, you know, like corporations. Let me give you an example.

Sure. I worked for Fusion. They had a presidential forum. They told me I looked too white to participate. What should I do? Well, I am. And in what capacity were you were you there? So I worked for this company as a senior correspondent and they were doing a presidential

forum where they were going to be asking questions of presidential candidates. And I went to the president and I said, I'm just wondering why I wasn't notified as a senior correspondent and somebody who's supposed to be hosting things for you. And they said they brought in someone else who was black. And he said, well, he's like, you're too white. And I was like, I'm second generation mixed race. I was like, I've dealt with violence and racism. And he was like, yeah, but come on, man. He's like, look, man, these people are extremely racist, you know, so you can't you can't do it. I think we're wait, I just want to say, I mean, you know I'm not going to come in favor of that,

but that has nothing to do with critical race theory. That is corporate PR 101. They do the same thing with their commercials. They'll be like, eh, you're a little bit too ethnic. You don't have these companies, dude. Yeah, yeah, but I have to say, that has, again, nothing to do with critical race theory. Often the people who are making these decisions are people who are, let me tell you, quite in need of understanding critical race theory.

If according to longstanding critical race theorists, whiteness as a skin color is something you can hold that grants you access and reputation and privilege, and it is a component of critical race theory being applied by people who, I think to be fair, we can say people who are dumb. But if people are taking these ideologies and saying whiteness is a special thing that applies to your skin color and negates who you are in the fact that an individual will then be oppressed or denied rights, it's a violation of civil rights law. The way it comes off to me – I mean I can't speak to these individually again regardless how bad they are. I will say though they – I mean you've heard of the book White Fragility. I assume this is a big popular leftists hate this book. We hate this book because the person who wrote it is, if I may,

a cynical corporate, uh, uh, uh, sellout whose primary interest is as a diversity trainer, encouraging other corporations to get more diversity training. Diversity training doesn't work. It doesn't actually work that well. Maybe you get some marginal benefits, but in terms of the money invested, it turns out that if a person has racial biases, sitting down in a one-week seminar is not going to do anything about it. Who knew? So with that being said, when I hear about these government industries, I don't think these are redone by far-left critical race theorists. I think these are people who are functionally working off the same set of misguided principles that have been dictating corporate policy for decades now in an attempt to overstate how hip and cool and totally not bigoted they are. But with regards to the executive order, if one ideology begets another – and if you want to believe critical race theory leads to stuff like that –

We agree on that point. Okay. Okay. Then I'm glad. I'm glad about that. So here's my question. Well, I don't want to interrupt you. You finish your thought just so people can hear it. because i i know i'm assuming i know what you're gonna say right if critical race theory leads to that and again i contest because i feel like corporations are doing basically that for ages

but um then we must acknowledge then of course that there are elements of trump's language like the way he presents himself the stuff that he says that do lead to the creation of far-right militias and violence in the same way that any political sort of extreme group will form from any type of speech. But to then executively ban conservatism in an attempt to target the extremism, I think we would recognize then, OK, maybe we should have painted with a finer brush here. So let's I guess the question then is, did Trump outright ban the ideology across the board, even at universities, or did he ban the specific trainings?

Well, he banned the trainings. Did he? Now, you're going to have to correct me if I'm wrong. Did he not say that federal funding would be taken away from universities that participated in that training? Or am I? I don't know about that one. Okay.

I could be misremembering that. I'll just put it this way. The training programs I read to you about taking white males on like some trip to like have them reflect on their racism whatever mud wrestle yeah exactly you would you would you would say that's bad i i can't imagine that being effective but can you can you denounce that with me but also acknowledge that critical race theory is like a tool for understanding racism based on what i can read about critical race theory i'd say absolutely well check it out race theory as like a tool for understanding racism. Based on what I can read about critical race theory, I'd say absolutely. check it out.

Race theory is talking about class and race combined because we come from a country where our ancestors were white. If you want to call us white, which I still don't think we are. And they were wealthy. And so that wealth has been passed down through generations to people with the similar skin tone and the black people with, they're not black.

They had slaves with no money. So that lack of wealth has been passed. So now there's a class diversion and there's an inherent bias in our society because of the class diversion so if the issue is if the issue is we want to help people who are poor we now have a problem with the likes of these programs in that you now have a whole mix of people who are both poor and wealthy, who are of all different races. And there's a disproportion of people of one race who might be wealthier or impoverished.

If you enact racial policy, you leave people poor and you don't actually solve the problem of poverty. So is our goal to just say we want to help one race ignoring all the others? Or do we want to end poverty? In which case, these programs should be ended and our policy should be based on class and not race, so long as we've gotten rid of racism in our laws. Sure. Well, there are racial disparities that will need to be addressed as well. If you have black folk on average in a certain place and white folks on average in a

better place, lifting people out of poverty won't fix the respective divide between black and white people. It'll just level the pot in general. But that's better than nothing. I mean, we're not even getting that in this country. So honestly, at this point, I mean, I'll take that. But I just I need to say, because I think I found a comparison, maybe perhaps a more effective one with regards to this. You're aware, of course, the back of the 1980s, even the 90s, the promotion of homosexuality as legitimate lifestyle saying it's okay to be gay this was called child abuse in many many circles this was in fact a mainstream republican position for a very long time and

we all know the propaganda that they used if there was an executive action that was taken to ban federal governments that told the people there that it was okay to be gay or that you shouldn't discriminate because the accusation that it abetted um child abuse i would be equally skeptical of that tendency we have to be when it comes to banning certain types of ideas in federal government we have to be very careful how would you feel if in the 80s there were government training saying it was uh government training saying that being gay was wrong and they told people who were gay to go on retreats to address their gayness you would want that banned wouldn't you yeah but i there wasn't uh what broader idea would i be banning along with it

i would be fine with that specifically i'm saying i think i think the real issue at heart is did trump ban the idea or did he ban the trainings well it's not it's really hard to tell because trump anytime he signs an executive order, it's really vague. I think we can, but I don't think we need to keep arguing. I think we can say we agree the trainings shouldn't happen and we agree that people should be allowed to learn. Assuming they're as bad as what's indicated here. Yeah, that's fine. I don't think they're effective anyway. I think, I mean, you'll find most critical race theories don't agree with that. Critical race theory, along with critical theory, are derivatives of the Frankfurt School and a generally Marxist perspective on social events.

That is to say, a sort of agitative, discursive process of different classes interacting with one another. Leftists don't like corporate diversity training. Of course, of course. Yeah. I'm just like, look, when you've got, I don't know who Cheryl L. Harris is or Gloria Lanson Billings. I'm sure they're wonderful people. 1993 research, whiteness as property. And you see how that extends into a whole facet of racialized thinking.

Like affirmative action, for instance, is a component of all of this. It's not of critical race theory. I mean, according to this, it is. Well, affirmative action was implemented off of reasons that had nothing to do with critical race theory. Critical race theory is just about the respective antagonisms. In fact, I think most critical race theorists, or at least most orthodox ones, you know, like leftist ones, would actually be quite critical of the idea that you could emancipate black people by giving them prioritization within a capitalist framework. And that in that respect, you're only further cementing them in a system that has caused them to fall to the place they're in today i i imagine that would be a critique of capitalism well sure i mean it all gets lumped together right yeah you know something that's interesting is how races

are actually genetically different like like effort you know and it's that's a challenging conversation yeah because it can be a seem offensive but i mean the genetic the reason you look different is because your genetics are different. I don't know. What's your thought on that? I mean, modern biology is very interesting. Again, I said I argue with a lot of Nazis. Nowadays, biologists don't even use race.

They use Kleins as an idea, which have intersecting lines of parallel DNA similarities that can vary based on race, ethnicity, geography. The interesting stuff is when you look at how all these intersect, there's more genetic diversity in the continent of Africa than there is between the average black and white person, meaning that if you took one African, not like black American, but African, and found another random African, and then DNA tested whatever, the difference between them would be greater than if you took a random African and a random European. Oh, so it's not the color of their skin necessarily,

even though there are different races within the Africans. It's just interesting. Yeah, yeah. So the issue is people use race as a colloquial term for saying the color of your skin and the certain features that exist

within typically your face or your body. So they'll use that to describe Asian eyes or whatever, or black people's noses or your body. So they'll use that to describe like, you know, Asian eyes or whatever, or, you know, black people's noses or whatever, whether they're racial stereotypes, which I think to an extent, yes, because just because the color of your skin is one way doesn't imply. But I bring that up to point out that some people don't get, I guess this might, you might agree with this. I don't know that white privilege doesn't necessarily mean white skin.

Yeah. There are ways that you can evoke white privilege while actually being quite non-white what i mean is like somebody who's perhaps albino but visually distinct oh yeah of course because even people who like black people or albino or there's a there's a skin condition some black people have that leads to them having patches of white skin michael jackson claimed that he had it but he obviously didn't because it was something like that yeah yeah um sometimes he can cover the whole face but obviously there were other indications from people who um who i guess prioritize different races over others that they should treat them differently or something like that anyway i just i think what i think we

all need to agree upon fundamentally and i'm sure that we all do here at least in concept maybe not an actual uh practice or implementation is that the idea that people have a different sort in life based on the color of their skin or whatever else. It's kind of cringe. It's not based. And I think there are a lot of deep seated problems in this country. And I guess my frustration here stems largely from the fact that I wish I could say, like, with great confidence that, you know, vote blue and this will get fixed. But while I do believe that Biden would be better for race relations than Trump, as do many Americans, we know that's not true. A lot of these cities with these deeply held racial disparities are Democrat run cities.

I don't think Republicans would necessarily do better. But it does indicate that the system we have right now is not really fixing this problem. No, it's made us debt slaves, slaves man to the banking system that wants interest it's a bit that that's a great point these cities that have the problems of police brutality the places where these uh these individuals have lost their lives that sparked these protests run by democrats now again it's we don't have the metric to say that big cities run by Republicans would do any better. I think we have San Diego, which is a Republican mayor and didn't see, I guess, high crime. It's not on the high crime list.

It's because they're all stoned, man. Southern California. Well, it's the same problem with COVID in America, right? No two cities are alike. No one country is alike. The best argument I've heard is that a lot of the cities that have high degrees of racial disparity are also run by Democrats because a multi-racial, multi-ethnic city is more likely to vote in Democrats just based on demographic trends. San Diego has a lot of white and Hispanic people, doesn't have as many black people, so it might contribute to the trend. I don't really know. So this was a post, I think it was Washington Post, they mapped out the highest crime cities because i think trump said they're all run by democrats and they found that i think in the um by sheer numbers that's true but obviously new

york has more people they have more crime yeah but per capita i think there were no republican cities there were two non-affiliated cities and the rest were Democrat. And that would exclude San Diego, which I think is like the eighth biggest city and doesn't have a high rate of crime. But I think it's fair to say that doesn't necessarily mean that the problem is individual Democrats. I think it shows a problem might be single party control, no political competition. So in California, for instance, they've had an ongoing problem with homelessness in Los Angeles and San Francisco. And what happens is because I actually worked for a homeless shelter in the L.A. area. You keep getting

Democrats who campaign on this, but they have no competition. So when they win, they just laugh and do nothing. Then you get wealthy people in the actual L.A. proper saying not in my backyard. So then nothing gets done about it. And unless I don't know how do you change that? Because what happens in these cities, people just go and they say Democrat all across the board, and then nothing changes because nothing has to change. We need absolutely we need rank choice voting in this country. This is we live in a shockingly undemocratic country. Nobody feels represented by we're not supposed to be overtly democratic. No, no, of course, we have the Republicans. republican but we need at least i mean even the founding fathers said that a two-party system even parties in general would would lead to the downfall of this country because and there are a

lot of problems with them but if we're going to keep parties man ranked choice voting would allow third parties to actually exist and flourish right now they never can they can't do it it's not possible the spoiler effect will always lead towards two parties being the two dominant ones so let's let's do this to jump into Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Hey, my man. We're going long tonight. Yeah, super long. Wow.

Wait, what time is it? It's 10. Really? Yeah. We've been talking for two hours. Yeah, man. Okay, we got to stay hydrated, people. I don't like any of the political establishment.

I think there's very few people on either side that I like and think are good people. And there's slightly more Republicans than Democrats. But, you know, I think it's because the majority of both parties are people who, like I said, didn't have to do anything. Gerrymandering, heavy guaranteed districts, you end up with Republican areas that are always going to be Republican. So the Republicans, they don't got to do anything. They'll be like, hey, vote for me or don't. Who cares? The Democrat says the same thing. Nancy Pelosi held up a glass of water and she said, in my district or AOCs, you put

a D on this glass of water, it's going to get elected. That's a problem. That's a serious problem. I disavow Nancy Pelosi. Yeah, as you should. So I like the idea of ranked choice voting because to me it would get rid of. Well, actually, I'm not entirely convinced it would get rid of Nancy Pelosi. Term limits would.

How do you feel about term limits? I haven't seen any evidence that they lead to a more Democratic government. I'm 50 50. I could go either way, though. I have to say, I really do think the only reason that Nancy Pelosi is still in there right now is because of fear. Democrats are terrified of Trump. I think they have good reason to be. But you have somebody, Shahid Buttar, who's running against Nancy Pelosi to try and unseat her in her district. Republican? No, a Democrat, a progressive, though, like in

line with Bernie AOC. But the primary passed already. Yeah, no, it did. And that's the thing. And I think that, like, fundamentally, the Democratic Party is ready to move on to a different set of ideas, a more true fulfillment, maybe of what it could mean for its citizens and the party by the by the citizenry. The actual elected officials, though, have every trick in the book that they can pull out to maintain themselves in power for as long as as humanly possible. And this is my argument for why Trump needs to win. Oh, no. Joe Biden is a 47 year establishment crony who wants to control of the executive branch to seal the doors and never allow any challenge ever again. They are upset that they lost in 2016. They weren't supposed to. They did everything to crush Bernie Sanders. And Donald

Trump is the insurgent who upended the Republican Party and they hated his guts, too. Now they're beholden to him. Here's here's my opinion. And I asked for yours afterward. If Joe Biden gets in, he's locking the doors. They're going to shore up the fences. They're going to install their bureaucrats. They're going to make sure that you guys don't get a foot in the door ever. You got too close with Bernie Sanders. Trump. See, here's the thing. Bernie Sanders, left wing populist, Donald Trump, right wing populist. The elites did not like either of them. The establishment Republicans hate Trump. And that's that's exemplified by the Lincoln Project and the cronies who have now are now just espousing whatever the Democrats want them to say.

If Joe Biden wins, they get back in the ivory tower. They bolt the doors shut and they laugh at both populist wings. Trump was a bull brought to the gates who stormed in, trashed everything. And the Democrats are freaking out, but still in there. Bernie Sanders was very polite. Hello. Hello. Let me in, please.

I'll agree with you. I'll stop saying the millionaires. If Joe Biden wins, I believe there will never be another populist, be it left, right or whatever. I think if Trump wins, Joe Biden was the best they could muster. They are done. If Joe Biden gets in and Kamala Harris then ends up being that person in charge, there will never be a Bernie Sanders.

There will never be a leftist populist. But if Trump gets in and the establishment withers and dies over the next four years because Trump's going nuts, he's going to fire everybody. He's stripping all these government protections from these employees. He's going to fire the head of the CIA. To put his own cronies in, yeah. I don't, I don't, but is he going to be able to do that? And if he fires them, somebody has to go there. But that's still an argument beyond what he is doing. So so maybe that's an issue. But if Donald Trump gets rid of the bureaucrats and he strips the establishment of its power,

then I believe in 2024, you're going to see something new and wild, whatever it is. I don't think it's going to be Trump 12 years. I think Joe Biden is the best they could muster up to try and save the crony establishment. And the Republicans like Rick Wilson and the other Lincoln Project people joined forces with them, showing us who they really are. Joe Biden is getting more money from Wall Street than Trump is. He gets more money from the wealthy than Trump does. He is the establishment billionaire candidate who is being protected by big tech and billionaires

who are censoring stories that might hurt him. Let Biden go. OK, so we've got a lot to unpack here. First of all, I fail to see in any meaningful way how Trump is anti-establishment. He has consolidated an enormous amount of power into the federal government. He seems as if not more comfortable with executive orders than Obama ever did. He's upped drone strikes. And what's more, he has fundamentally eroded the institutions which are meant to challenge

the government, the media. Is the media bad? Absolutely. But the media still serves a very useful role in this country as ineffectuously as they do. The media has constantly called the I'm sorry, Trump has constantly called the media the enemy of the people. He's threatened to remove press badges from people who are mean to him at press conferences. I know Obama did that to Fox News. Obama, it's the degree to which this took place is not even comparable. These are two different worlds. And calling a press the enemy of the people is like fascism 101. I don't care about right-leaning people getting their populists in office.

Right-leaning populism has a name. It's fascism. I don't want these people. No, it unquestionably is. I don't want these people in office. I don't care about the- Can you define fascism? Yeah, fascism is an ultra, ultra nationalist far

right form of governments, which relies on the assembly of the common will, the unification of a of a national narrative against enemies from both within from without, it usually has to focus on things like machismo, or perhaps on the belief in a type of ethnic or racial supremacy. How would you define right wing libertarians? Right? I don't think there is a such thing as a right wing libertarian. Well, how is that, how is that possible? I, cause I have never met one. I keep talking to people who say they are, and then they stop being libertarian. The moment it comes to literally any issue other than taxes and weed. There was a dude who took his clothes off on the stage of the libertarian debate to argue about

freedom. And they had a debate over whether or not kids should, you should be allowed to sell heroin to kids. Yeah. Oh, well they're, they are some amazing people um i will not deny it but they aren't they aren't populist libertarian but i have to say because we we have we have so much to unpack here with regards to trump okay uh is joe biden a candidate that i feel proud of voting for of course not absolutely yeah not even gonna waste time defending that when it comes to the means for populism to interfere with the government after Joe Biden wins, I am optimistic. He has managed to, that is to say, Bernie Sanders has extracted an enormous number of concessions from Joe Biden. And what's more, there are increasing signs that the popularity of the squad and other more populist, left-leaning, progressive, sometimes even socialist candidates,

they are starting to wean in on the Democratic Party. The constant conflict between Pelosi and AOC and the fact that at certain points, Pelosi has had to defer public opinion to AOC in those respects is an indication that within that party, there is a real chance at these dinosaurs. I think the average age of the Democratic politician is like 71 or something. These dinosaurs being ousted. Now, mind you, I am a socialist. I don't think AOC is radical enough, but I recognize that progressive change in a given direction is preferable, especially when we recognize what we're gambling with here. Even if I were to believe that Donald Trump was some sort of anti-establishment bull, and I don't, consolidated heavy amounts of federal power, defunded institutions. What does that mean?

Well, the constant use of executive action, the fact that he has normalized attacks on institutions which attack him, like, for example, his attempt to try and get the FBI director fired during the Russiagate investigation, or the constant attacks on the press and the media, or the fact that he seems to be contemptuous of the very idea of losing an election itself wait so uh he's consolidating federal power but trying to also fire the heads of these organizations it's it's fair i'm sorry i should be more specific executive power the right but hasn't hasn't he been heavily constrained in every direction he's been sued a million times yeah because he keeps breaking the law he breaks the law constantly like he well no he he does yeah he has uh engaged in scandal after scandal after scandal over the course of his presidency specific with what i mean we could name a scandal name name laws broken um because we hear it a lot i can tell you that uh does trump use his authority and push really hard and then get challenged in the courts and lose sometimes and win sometimes yes sure so we can talk about the administration

first of all the rustic gate the russia gate investigation led to literally dozens of credible indictments and arrests uh with regards to their misappropriation of funds or with their collaboration with foreign governments we have the ukraine scandal of course with regards to him bartering aid with their willingness to help him that seems true now though what do you mean that joe biden was was using his son as an intermediary you still can't withhold aid on the condition that they released that well so it's an argument about whether or not trump had a right to withhold aid he did it's that's illegal joe biden did it he did it he literally did it we have joe biden said so they're both criminals you won't get the

money unless you do what i want yeah i can't wait i'm not. Wait, I have never at any point in my life defended Joe Biden. No, no, no. I know. I know. But if we can make that argument, we could say then Joe Biden's doing the same thing. Yeah. The difference is that Joe Biden wasn't the president of the United States of America when he did it.

Yeah. I mean, if you want. You're free to investigate. You're free to investigate when you do this. Why won't they? What do you mean? Why is like the media and it's big time. What do you mean the media? Wait, this, this, this vague conspirac mean like why is like the media and it's big what do you

mean the media wait you this this organization this vague conspiracism you guys are the media no no no the new york times and the wall street journal have both now written that there was a big effort to not cover the biden scandal i would need to look into the specifics of it one of the things that i don't like when we talk about like the relative the badness of these characteristics is when we start playing defense for them on the assumption that the media is going after them or not going after them the left-leaning media will go after left-leaning aims right-leaning media will go after right-leaning aims there is no such thing as journalistic integrity or objectivity there are only people in power and money well the establishment media i don't know what the establishment

media times for instance how is that just the what what about fox news is the most viewed uh news station in the country tucker carlson is the largest pundit talk show radio views uh chris cuomo and rachel maddow got combined i i mean eight million and you know you know tucker carlson got in his average was five so if you're comparing he's peaked at tens of millions hasn't he didn't what hasn't he peaked recently he got like his ratings hit like it's five five million was like the historical record he's like the most viewed oh my goodness sorry but when you combine cnn msnbc abc nbc cbs it's tenfold because you're because you're combining all of the left-wing media and arguably some of these are barely left-leaning with very part with one partisan right media if you take a look at all of talk radio if you take a look at um uh fox news if you

take a look at uh take a look at oan for example viewership is like no it's not it's not great but it does have a lot of influence within the government because we know that trump watches it and trump is himself a form of media when he talks about things with the broadcasts that he give he reflects essentially far-right partisan talking points these are in many ways reflective of the political opinions that right-leaning people have forthcoming. We got off a little bit here. I want to talk specifically, though, about Trump with regards to his practice in government, even if we're to leave aside the supported criminality of any candidate, because as far as I'm concerned,

being the president is a crime. I'm not. I'm not. It's a weird job. I'm really not in a position to. I'm OK with the president, but I'd like to have more people. This is one of the things that I've said, even if because, you know, you don't want Bernie Sanders to win. You would you my fellow lefties, whoever's watching, would be devastated to see what even a left leading person has to do to be and stay president in the United States, especially with regards to foreign policy. But if we want to look past that stuff, if we want to look at stuff like climate change, or if we want to look at stuff regarding like education, or if we want to look at stuff just regarding like the fundamental gentleman's agreements that have operated in this country for centuries now that seem to be unweaving, I don't think that the Trump presidency is anti-establishment. I think that he's very

pro-corporate. I think he's very pro-government as long as it's his government. I think that the Trump presidency is anti-establishment. I think that he's very pro-corporate. I think he's very pro-government as long as it's his government. I think that his persistent refusal to acknowledge that if he loses in the election, that he should actually step down peacefully is terrifying. And I think that while Joe Biden is a haughty institutionalist crony who probably has as many original thoughts in his head that weren't given to him by focus groups as your average chipmunk. I think that he is a- That's me to chipmunks. Yeah. I apologize. I've known many wonderful chipmunks. I think that he is, at least with regards to climate change, which I think is a very simple, very, very easy thing to focus on an objective improvement, and that he also allows for meaningful left

wing populism, as opposed to what Trump is, which is a gateway to very, very bad far right populism. Have you read about Obamagate? Yes, I, you mean the thing where he spied on Trump? So, well, like the meeting with Sally Yates and Comey and Biden and Obama where Joe Biden suggested using the Logan Act against Michael Flynn to falsely prosecute him, where they then threatened his son with imprisonment unless he agreed to testify against Trump. Did any of that actually happen? Yeah. Okay. So to clarify, though, the notes that were released in the investigation by the FBI show that there was a note scrawled

that ascribed Logan Act to Joe Biden in a meeting with Sally Yates. Immediately afterwards, I think it was Sally Yates who then wrote an email to herself explaining everything that happened and sent it to her. And then several government employees in the FBI took out liability insurance saying in like, I'm paraphrasing that we're in serious trouble. We better buy insurance explaining everything that happened and sent it to her. And then several government employees in the FBI took out liability insurance, saying in like, I'm paraphrasing that we're in serious trouble. We better buy insurance because we're going to get sued over this. I can't speak to the specifics of this. I know that Trump has vaguely alluded at some sort of left conspiracy to deny him the presidency, which has always come off very fascist to me.

The notes are released. Do you know about the Peter Stroke and Lisa Page things? I have to say, and I apologize if this comes off like, I guess, disinterested, but having followed, I guess, the events leading up to, and I've explored this Obamagate thing pretty extensively, from what I've seen and from the media sources that I've looked at and the information, the analysis, I haven't seen anything that even remotely justifies the claims that Trump has made about this. Do you know about the text messages between Lisa Page and Peter Stroke? I don't know the analysis. I haven't seen anything that even remotely justifies the claims that Trump has made about this. Do you know about the text messages between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok? I don't know the specific where he said we're going to stop him. We have an insurance policy. I like this is

this is all public information. I think the issue is when you talk about Russiagate and Trump's actions, it's coming from a place of you not actually looking at the evidence. No, I assure you I have the issue is that you didn't know about the meeting with Comey and Yates, the Logan Act and what Michael Flynn was threatened with. And like, you know, about the ongoing court case where Judge Sullivan is blocking the prosecutor, like the government from dropping its own case. Now, I'm familiar with the things that you refer to here. The issue is that what usually happens with this is that there are a lot of nuances to these cases that need to be looked over thoroughly. And usually the way they're presented is extremely hyperbolic, like Russiagate. Well, Russiagate provides, well, again, keep in mind,

this is the big difference between right-leaning and the claims in Russiagate. Russiagate was investigated, dozens of indictments and arrests, all these accusations. Not related to Russiagate though. Well, they were brought about by the investigation into Russiagate involving the misappropriation of campaign funds. We have an FBI lawyer who was recently indicted on altering evidence to frame Carter Page and get false FISA warrants to investigate in the Russiagate. So some of these may have been, may be, what's the saying? Fruit of the poison tree or whatever? Fruit of the poison tree. Fruit of the poison tree. Yeah. I mean, a lot of the Trump administration has found themselves arrested. Do you know how Paul Manafort ended up getting found out? It was actually

Ukrainians colluding with the DNC operative and providing documents, which, which led to the investigation of Manafort. So it was all overtly political actions. There's nothing. Well, it's not, there's nothing necessarily wrong with political actions. We're talking about the investigation of a political, of a political administration of the Trump administration. The reason I bring this up is we've moved somewhat off of the electability or the, the electoralism argument. So here's the point administration the reason i bring this up is what and by the way we've moved somewhat off of the electability or the the electoralism argument so so here's the point the the way you framed everything about trump and the actions and the things he was saying firing comey sounds like comey should have been fired based on the information that's come out

since he fired him that is wait hold on that is apps first of all even if that is the case which i sincerely doubt it is that is absolutely not why Trump claimed to. The evidence that was provided with regards to his attempt was he wanted Comey fired because Comey was looking into him. You can't post hoc justify an illegal act because it turns out later. Trump tweeted early, way on, way early that he was being spied on by Obama. He wasn't being spied on by Obama. So the accusation that I had had informants that were going and having meetings with trump's people and then spying on them that is what the fbi does it's a colloquial so so sure so you have people who were spying on trump's campaign it's a colloquial i mean if you want

to argue semantics about no that's the fbi does that for every campaign that's their job so if you have before trump has inaugurated a meeting with obama yates comey and then you have these notes you have these text messages between fbi agents and trump knew about this but it wasn't declassified so trump took action and fired the guy i mean it sounds justified well he didn't fight he attempted to fire the guy and he wasn't able to call me yeah we did fire well no the comey was like i have a great recollection trump said this to me and i'm like no no no the um when he was being investigated for the rush against stuff oh my goodness no there a cat. I think a cat just knocked the. Oh, OK.

Well, the cat ran after. We got to fix everything. Well, anyway, you keep talking. Yes. His efforts to fire. There was the intermediary who asked to fire the guy. I'm forgetting his name right now. The the person who he attempted to fire and he said no.

And then Trump fired that guy. Do you remember that name? Was that, what was his name? I can't remember. I'm sorry. I'm completely, huh? Sessions resigned. No, no, yeah, Sessions resigned.

Look, look, look, look, look. I'm not bringing this up to be like everything's perfect. Yeah, I just feel, well, no, no, but it's just, it's interesting to me because, again, it just, it falls like on this vague conspiracism. Like, with regards to the- It's not vague. I mean, look, if you read the news on these things you know what i'm talking no i but i have it's just a lot of these claims get jumbled up and to be honest i forget which narrative which

universe that i'm operating in any given point with regards to like the uh russiagate investigation there was solid evidence they went in they investigated what was the evidence the evidence with regards to the russiagate investigation Yeah, yeah. Wasn't there some evidence that there may have been meetings held with members of the Trump administration with regards to them accepting deals or information from Russia? I don't know. Are you sure? I mean, it's been like three years since this was politically relevant. What I can tell you is that we know that the FISA warrants were obtained through malpractice, I guess you can put it. So we had, so they lied. A next FBI lawyer has been indicted and charged for altering evidence to imply that Carter Page

was not an asset of the CIA when he was having these meetings, when in fact he was doing it for the U.S. government. Yeah, I'd have to look into that. So they essentially got bunk FISA warrants. Then we ended up with, before Trump got inaugurated, you have these notes released that, to the best of our understanding, it's a meeting between several individuals in the Obama administration to try and find a way to go after Michael Flynn to get him to, I guess, the FBI notes actually read, what's our goal?

I think it's a text message. What's our goal? To think it's a text message. What's our goal? To prosecute or get him fired? My question when that came out was, why is the FBI trying to get a guy fired from his job? Well, why were they? Obama told Trump not to hire Michael Flynn. Trump hired him anyway. I guess Trump did it as an FU to Obama. So for some reason then, Obama has a meeting. They take notes on Logan Act, maybe, for Michael Flynn. Then Michael Flynn

gets accused of breaking the Logan Act or this was this was what launched the investigation, even though no one's ever been prosecuted under the Logan Act. It's an obscure law that says U.S. individuals can't represent themselves as agents of a government because as acting national security adviser, he had a conversation with the Russian ambassador asking him not to escalate tensions between the countries. That was the justification for launching this. It was insane. Then you have text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page where they're saying, we have an insurance policy. We'll stop him. So Trump complains about this. Trump wants to fire these people. But then the Russian investigation stopped him from taking any action against them. I'll tell you what, man,

if at the end of this, we say no Trump, no biden but we get rid of all of these intelligence bureaucrats i'm down i'm totally down well you'll find most leftists aren't big fans of intelligence agencies for sure for sure so when trump says that like i'll put it this way do you agree with trump then when he says that um they're spying on me they didn't i don't even didn't even get my first term frankly i should be allowed a third term no okay but i'll tell you this because he says a lot of really weird stuff sometimes now i get now i'm at something of a disadvantage here and i apologize for that because with regards to the russia gate investigation thing it's been a while since i've brushed up on this respective information i do know that the investigation that did lead to a number of legitimate investigations and arrests and indictments. And I think there's something to be said about that. I feel it's often very difficult to understand the totality of like

a government conspiracy or like something going on behind the scenes until everything is sussed out through a proper investigation. And for that reason, sometimes it can be really difficult to understand not only the specificity of events that have taken place, but the severity of them as well. Because if you want to, and I'm not saying you're doing this because everyone does this to some extent. If you want to, a disparate set of pieces of information that can be assessed and collected and presented in such a way as to give a narrative. And then once you have that narrative, you can run with it. And that's what Trump has done very often with this Obamagate thing, for example. Like, I remember when a reporter asked him what Obamagate was, and he was like, you know.

And then he walked away, which I think was fair. I think it was Trump not knowing. Well, then, I mean, but that's the thing. And that's one of the issues that I have as well. The the I think that there has probably been more confused information put out from our government over the past four years than possibly any other single presidential administration, in large part because there doesn't seem to be any sort of cohesive narrative. It's just scraps of information being used whenever they're politically convenient and discarded when they're not. And this is, if I may bring this back around to what we were talking about earlier, one of the things that really concerns me about Trump, this is an anti-establishment tendency. This is just incompetent governance. This doesn't break the government in a way that makes it more fair or more representative or more kind and more decent

or more efficient. This is a type of governance which just makes it worse. So do you want a competent establishment or an incompetent one? I mean, competent in certain ways when it comes to coronavirus handling, when it comes to the dissemination of health care, when it comes to proper schooling, all areas I think Trump has been woefully inadequate in. I would absolutely prefer a competent establishment because education handled properly empowers us, not keeping us in our homes to be sick and die from coronavirus. That empowers us. There are ways the government, when managed properly, even in an establishment sense, even like someone like Obama, and I hate Obama, can give us tools that we need to become stronger. The best example of this that I use, and I use this when arguing with Bernier busters all the time, is they say Obama stopped the wheels

of history. His corporate neoliberalism prevented the American people from waking up and recognizing what was wrong with the system. And I say to them, okay, I don't like Obama either. Great. Sure. After Obama had two terms, guess who ended up coming in second, narrow second under Hillary Clinton, the next democratic primaries, some nobody, independent senator, who then in large part, because people were disillusioned with Obama, but nonetheless given the tools to think and to act. That's the internet. The internet, yeah.

But also people weren't terrified of a pandemic or of global warming, at least not as much as they are today. People weren't dealing with substandard schooling. The more people are terrified and confined and weakened by their circumstances, the less politically emancipated they are. You know, it makes it a real challenge having conversations like this is just that there's a lot of things you've read that I haven't a lot of things I've read you haven't. And there are a lot of people who have read things that neither of us have or haven't. But everybody expects us to like come to a definitive understanding and solution within the span of a couple hours. I'm just

bringing it up because I know that no one's going to be satisfied. Oh, I have never come to a definitive solution on anything over any length of time in a conversation. The reason I say this is because when you bring up global warming, when you bring up the far right, when you bring up Russiagate, I'm like, wow, to have a conversation on each of those subjects would take an hour or two, three or four hours. So just to briefly mention this

in your opinion you said there's no actual right-wing libertarians because whenever it comes to it they actually end up you know being more authoritarian libertarianism was originally a leftist ideology and it was appropriated yeah i don't get into it just i'm just yeah yeah yeah to mention that then there's also like russiagate where you're like, oh, it's been a while since I've talked to this. And then the reason I brought that up was like, oh, we got to really break that down to address one point. And then climate change, there's a lot there too. Like, what are we doing internationally? What would Joe, like, why hasn't Joe Biden done anything about China?

Not to open up those conversations. I'm just pointing out there's a lot in each of those we'd have to actually break down. Yeah, it's literally impossible to even if you have a very specific policy focused discussion on one issue, say school choice. That's a big one for Republicans these days. That's easily a three hour discussion. Depending on how many sources you bring, I can go the whole day. So school choice. I am not for school choice now.

Why not? Why not? Why don't why should people have the right to just choose? I think it puts the blame on that. So here's my concern, right? Individual responsibility is the mantra of the Republican Party. Why are things in your life not going well? Individual responsibility.

Often, sometimes, that's true. We are agents capable of making our own decisions. But when it comes to systemic issues like neighborhoods with poor schooling, these people don't get bad educations because of poor decision making. They get it because their neighborhoods have been wastelands that the government hasn't invested in for decades. My concern, and this is what I fear. I wake up at night in the sweat thinking about this. It's imagine some single black lady, you know, two kids, two jobs.

And now all of a sudden school choice happens. Her local district is crap. There's one 30 minutes away. She could drive her kids to maybe even 20 minutes away. It's better. Okay. So you drive your kids to and from. Well, maybe you don't have time for that.

Do you hire like a sitter to do it? No, you send them to the crappy school. They would normally have to go to. Right. But that's the thing. And now when that woman writes online or writes an article or appears at a town hall and she says, what can I do? I am struggling. The answer is you should have took them to a better school. Sure. That worries me. But why take away the option? Because I think there's a better solution to the same problem. We just

invest in these communities. Also, we have to keep in mind if a lot of people choose to move to different school districts or like take their kids there, whatever, you know, um, the school district that's already there is going to be even worse because these schools get funding based on, you know, participation, uh, they're going to get cut more and more, meaning it'll be even worse for the people who don't have the option to go to the other ones. I say, why give people, why enable people to leave their wasteland and blame them if they don't, when we could just fix the wasteland? So this gets into the bigger question about socialism, I suppose, why I'm not a fan of socialism. I'm in favor of a mixed economy.

I'll get you one day. Mixed economy. I think we need regulation, but I think we need people to freely trade. And the issue I take with schools, for instance, is that when they have problems, we just dump more money into it as if a general investment fixes it. The problem, though, is we say, OK, what about review boards? What if we have like a review of the expenditures? Nobody wants to be the person to cut the job or to gut the schools. And then when people actually do, they complain the schools are being gutted. If the school isn't functioning properly, and I shouldn't say school, just government spending in

general, what we tend to see like in Chicago, for instance, for instance, is you get a wound. This is a way to describe it. You get a wound in your in your society where you have people who are suffering or struggling. We put a bandaid on it. We say we're going to we're going to provide funding in this area to try and solve the problem. A few years ago, Biden's house was going, I don't know, throw more money into it. And they put another bandaid on top we say we're gonna we're gonna provide funding in this area try and solve the problem a few years ago buying this house going i don't know throw more money into it and they put another band in on top of the band eventually just have a festering wound it's never been solved a lot of band-aids what do you mean because you have a lot of because they keep trying this i don't disagree by the way throwing money at schools doesn't work i think we've seen this time and time and time again everything right well there are some like for example like uh like the more

you give like the epa money that can like more reliable um testing or whatever but um generally speaking yeah i think like schools in particular and the reason for that is because schools aren't a product of the money that goes into them schools are a product of the minds that are inside of them from administration to teachers to the students the issue is uh minds born under broken circumstances are just more fragile that's just how it. Money on its own is not the solution. What I'd like to see, the pipe dreaming here, is a proper public works program instituted in certain districts in this country. The issue that we have here is that the reason these kids don't care about school is because they know nothing's going to come from it. A lot of the people in their neighborhoods end up burnt out druggies anyway with absolutely nothing to do with their lives because there's just no opportunity. Public works programs, you have to

invest in the community not by paying private contractors to do it, but by paying the inhabitants of that community fair, healthy salaries. You need to have works up there. You can have, for example, revitalization of the rails and the roads and the public transportation. People become less reliant on cars. I mean, they have to pay less car payments. There are so many things that you can do to these neighborhoods. And this is class-based. I don't want this to be like a black or a white thing. There are white communities in this country that are struggling. And I think that with these steps, we can, I don't know, man, just the idea of an America where it's like, here's a quarter of the country. We just don't go there.

You can invest in new kinds of roads made out of bitumen which will last for like decades but they like planned obsolescence they want to build things that will break so that they can spend more money on it again yeah and that's where the money's coming from politicians want to be under budget and they want to be friends of the corporation so so i mean look there's a lot of problems i want to say can i say one thing quickly about socialism? I don't mean to interrupt. I apologize. It's great. It's fantastic.

Yeah. So let me just talk about that for five. What I'm in favor of is something called a worker state. This is called by some people a dictatorship of the proletariat, which is a horrible term because it was termed before the term dictatorship meant what it currently means. But it essentially means I just want a state where the workers have power. That doesn't mean bring out the guillotines or anything. It just means that when I think of like, what is a good country? Like what is a good democracy or good Republic look like to me? I imagine one where the people inside of it have a lot of control over what goes on in a way that's

responsibly channeled. It's not just like crazy, you know, will of the masses stuff. And one of the big issues to me is that, as you just pointed out, corporations have a lot of power in this country, and we defer to them quite a bit of government power as well, much in the way that the old monarchies did with mercantilism, you know, you want to do an East India trading company spice run, you know, you get the Kings guard to help you, you get that fleet, because the state is invested in the corporation succeeding, the corporation makes a lot of money off that mutual partnership. But if these corporations or these construction companies or even these schools, frankly, are being run by people from the community who have a lot of internal democratic control within it, I think that could go a long

way towards fixing this problem we see where we just put money into these problems and it just burns through it falls through a hole i i think one of the problems we have with with all government spending is that we don't know how they how to fail them whereas with businesses they mostly just fail the big problem i see with with the way things going right now for one i think a lot of the critiques of capitalism are more about the the massive corporate structure and the imbalance of power that once you were to reach a certain threshold of of capital or wealth you just own critiques of capitalism are more about the massive corporate structure and the imbalance of power, that once you reach a certain threshold of capital or wealth, you just own the system. You will never be poor. You will never fail again. Your kids will never fail. I mean,

that's not necessarily true. There's generational wealth fades. Small businesses fail all the time. But if you're an ultra wealthy person, you keep pumping money in until you figure it out. Or lobby to get subsidies or tax breaks, and then you just forever. So these are the two issues I see. And it's interesting because this argument is actually more of a classical, I guess, left and right argument of the days of yesteryear, 10 years ago when it was like government versus corporations. I remember during Occupy, you had a lot of people on the left saying the government can help us. We need these programs.

And the right was like, we need the free market. We need the corporate solutions. And I'm like, both are problems in different ways. Massive multinational corporations. You're both wrong. Right. You're both just so awful. Government and massive corporations.

We want small government and small business. So I like a mixed economy. I think we need to figure out how we do government programs in a way that if they fail they fail and we need to make sure we don't have massive multinational corporations with no interest in helping the people but selling them out because they can get better laws to violate human rights in in other countries where they can just hire people for a quarter and then have them do you know essentially slave labor and then sell garbage to the american people at in a up price, and then become... But this is the final stage, right? And one problem I have, a lot of

people say this is globalism. I critique this strongly. This would happen exactly the same if we locked off all borders for corporations. Because one of the most unequal periods of American history was the Gilded Age at the beginning of the 20th century. And we were highly protectionist, highly isolationist at that point in time. With high taxes, though, like really high taxes. Oh, hey, listen, I'm not besmirching those necessarily. But at the time, just we, the problem isn't the internationalism, you know, I believe that corporations and government should be able to work together on an international scale. The issue is they're not doing it for us. They have a completely separate set. Marxists call this class interest between the bourgeois and the proletariat. What is your average parole? An average worker

one. They want clean roads. They want decent low crime, good schooling, good job, all that. They want water running to their house. None of these systems benefit the bourgeois. None of these systems benefit the ultra wealthy. They don't go to public schools. They don't drive on roads. They don't drink tap water. They don't need to invest in these programs because they aren't a part of them. How would you define socialism? Or yeah, we'll start with that. How do you define socialism? Socialism is an economic system where the workers control the means of production. So you have democratic worker control of the businesses and you've decommodified at least a significant portion

of society. So like you no longer produce a given commodity or service for the purpose of selling it. It's provided at free of cost, essentially. How would you define capitalism? I would say that capitalism is a, or laissez-faire, at least – is a free market system whereby private ownership of capital is afforded to essentially every citizen and that the essential – the civic structuring of the society is done in such a way as to maximize the economic benefit of the proliferation of the free market. Where on – well, actually, so how would you define left and right? I'm trying to, I'm trying to just create. Like economically or socially or? So I guess economically. To be honest, I've thought about this more and more. I don't know if there is an economic left

and right. I think most people who care about economics want the same basic thing, which is good life for as many people as possible. And I feel like we just have different ideas on how to achieve that. And maybe that the implementation is the left-right element. But I don't think the left is like more government, the right is less government. I think that generally speaking, left-leaning people want as much power in the hands of as many people as possible. And right-leaning people believe certain individuals are deserving of higher levels of power that they use to adjudicate. The reason I bring this up is because, you know, you mentioning far right early on, I don't think anybody knows what far

left or right actually means. They're definitely really arbitrary terms. I try, I should say, I was lazy of me to use. I try not to use that very often because they are necessarily definitions which require sort of like immediate codification and it changes depending on the context of the conversation. I think defining far left is actually kind of easy because you tend to have tendency, not absolute. You have leftists who are adamant in socialism, and alongside that typically fall some kind of social progressivism typically not always you have the dirtbag left which are not woke and you have the woke left so there is a divergence there but when you come to the right it doesn't make sense at all i think that what what defines the right individualist i mean are you looking at collectivism individual

because the way we just we just like white nationalists are collectivists. They're not individualists at all. And many of them are authoritarian collectivists. So it's like, we call them far right, though. What does that really mean? Then we say that these, you know, ANCAP extremists are far right, but they absolutely in no way align with white nationalists. Maybe it's just time to do away with those ideas. We should eliminate all conservatism.

Yes, ban it from the school. I actually, I think this could be my partisanship showing. No, the left and the right is what I meant. Get rid of that. No, I gotcha, I gotcha. This could be my partisanship showing, possibly. But I think one of the reasons for this is because the right is a lot more idiosyncratic

than the left is in a lot of ways. Most left-leaning values were hammered into books 150 years ago, you know? Like, if you talk to, like, your average socialist than the left is in a lot of ways. Most left-leaning values were hammered into books 150 years ago. If you talk to your average socialist or communist online, you're probably going to find that a lot of them have an investment in some type of theory or literature that is very specific and very laid out. And you can agree or disagree, but it was written there. And a lot of right-leaning ideas, I feel, are more of, again, I understand this is a product of my partisanship, but sort of an emotive response to a given set of material conditions. The Sam argument goes the other way, man.

I know, and it really depends on perspective. Like nationalism, for example. Very few people subscribe to the intellectual tradition of nationalism, yet we have a lot of nationalists in this country. What do you mean by the intellectual tradition? Well, the intellectual tradition of nationalism came along with the codification of the nation state and the idea was that the individual will should be subservient to that of the nation because the nation was the with the sort of amalgamation of the people's will the individual dies the nation lives really weird orwellian stuff you know trump supporters that's like authoritarian nationalism

so you you have the libertarian arguments over borders and some people like no true libertarian supports borders no you can't be libertarian without borders because how do you protect your ideas like every i i i see it from left right up down everybody says you know the left this the right that i i think in terms of trying to actually identify the right and the left, you've got right and left in terms of social values, tradition versus progressivism, traditionalism. And then you have economics, right, laissez-faire capitalist versus left, socialist. The problem is people use them interchangeably, and they essentially end up meaning nothing. This is one of the things that I really respected about Bernie Sanders. People disagree with me on this. I think there are a lot of people in this country who are just,

let's be real, just don't like black people very much. And that informs a lot of their political opinions. And I don't think there's anything I can do about that with policy or with my channel or anything like that. But there is something the vast, vast, vast majority of the people in this country want and care about. And that is a good life for their children. I think virtually everyone. You'll have some antinatalists now and again, but almost everyone wants that. And Bernie Sanders was good at tapping into that. Bernie Sanders did not align himself

with any nouveau woke tendencies with regards to progressivism. He would support, but his main messaging was very consistent all the time. Until he got on the debate stage and said, when you're white, you don't know what it's like to be poor. I agree. Wait, wait, wait. I remember that. I remember that. That was bad. That was a slip up. I, I know if I talked to him and he was like, yeah, of course there were white people. He gave in. Well, he gave in. Well, what do you

mean? Like now he endorsed Hillary Clinton. Now he, he, I voted for Hillary Clinton. I'm, I'm farther to the why because because she wasn't trump because no because on because she's worse than trump i understand biden at least no i well wait i think biden's bad i think i think that hillary clinton is an odious person but when it comes to basic policy issues like climate change or like what economically you're going to do for the country i think the democrats just generally have a better plan for this country than the republicans the best economy in generations as a continuation of obama era policies what policy did he implement so uh we had tariffs we had border controls wait what bailed out freddie may and fannie may and

freddie mack wait wait billions of dollars in the economy so it looked great one of the time terrible economy one of the time the the um the tariffs were maligned by virtually every economist in the country and he has had to spend an enormous amount of money with subsidies used right exactly so i don't think that had anything to do with the economy that could be considered a detriment when it comes to closing down the border i have seen no evidence that that's improved the economy all of the the unemployment rate the gdp this was a straight line continuation of obama said you wouldn't reach these numbers and then he did i sure i don't think that changed anything factories came back to michigan that he massive multi-million dollar investment massively overstated the extent

to which the manufacturing industry came back he said it was like tens of that it was like a couple thousand and even then having is like that's your goal like a couple thousand whenever whenever we get a presidential change i remember since i was I was little. It's like, oh, actually, the success of this president is from the past president because everybody always does this. We look at policies, though. So Obama did inherit a mess from George W. Bush. This isn't just like, oh, it was because he came after Bush. It was a objective thing that had happened under Bush's presidency. And Obama's policies allowed the economy to get back on track in a straight line trend that continued into Trump's years. I haven't seen any evidence that Trump's policies meaningfully affected that trend, with the exception of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which did end up spiking everything back into the into the touchdown zone.

And, of course, that spike down would have happened under any precedent. It's a pandemic. But recovery has been in large part hampered by a non-existent federal response and the tone deafness of, again, like we have conquered coronavirus the day after the worst record number of cases since it all started. I just, this type of leadership, even if we're to leave aside populism and whatever i think populism flourishes when people are happy and healthy because it gives them time to think and it gives them room to breathe and for that reason i think we need four years of competent milk toast neoliberal centrist governance under biden he's not competent

but he's not moderately he's not competent and he's and he's he's like a angry racist man harris he's like oh sure plastic as she comes she's oh yeah but i don't locked up people and held them past their their parole yeah she's terrible for cheap labor but they're all neither of them are competent that's the problem well i there's well they're certainly more competent than trump wait wait i just want to say again i'm not defending the moral character of any of these politicians. But if we want to go back to back policy by policy, promise by promise, absolutely. I'll wrap. It's an abusive relationship you keep going back to, man. You're going back to Trump. No, no, no, no. I'm not going back to Trump. I didn't vote for Trump in 2016. I'm saying right now I'm sitting back with my feet up watching a bulldog trash

around the ivory tower. But people are dying while you laugh. No, you brought this up earlier. It was a really great point. We have no metric of success for COVID. I look at what Fauci said in March when Trump was taking action. He said no one could do better. Why would I now change my opinion on this? Because he said that once

and because he's in a political position where he has to say things that are positive. What on earth? Oh, Betsy, I think she's scratching her face. We had several governors praise Trump for his response in, I think it was May. A quarter of the deaths from COVID worldwide in a country with four percent. Nursing homes where the governors of Democrat-controlled states put sick people, killing. Wait, wait, wait.

Again, that's not good. I feel like we're engaging in whataboutism right now. The fact of the matter remains that this country has more federal power and more wealth than literally any other country in the history of this planet. No, no, no. These other countries don't have the state structure we do where the president is inhibited from taking actions. How has he? He absolutely had the ability to do a national plan. It was.

Wait, it was. I'm sorry. I can't engage in this apologism. You say you dislike both. Apologism. You say you say that you like don't like either candidate but the 10th amendment doesn't prevent a national response to the covet crisis this is one would have to invoke serious powers yes people were encouraging him to evoke the war

powers because this is a time more people have died during this than they've died over the past 50 years you're making a political statement about whether the republicans who wanted it or who didn't want it the democrats who did what one side was right or wrong. I'm saying, I'm saying is you made the point earlier. We have no, we have no bar of success on what this would have looked like because that doesn't wait. That doesn't. Yeah. But that's the thing. That's the apologism. Just because we don't have a bar where we can objectively determine how well Hillary would have done. Doesn't mean we can't criticize. No, it's not. We know that this country has done terribly. We know this administration lies about it. We know we have 4% of the world population and a quarter of the total

number of deaths from COVID. Hold on. Before you take that number, you got to take out the nursing home deaths. And then tell me what about the 94% that were 2.6 comorbidities. No, that's not an issue. Trump is the president. No, that's not. Wait, wait. Trump is the flu deaths. Trump is the president. No, that's not. How is that not an issue? Wait, Trump is the president of the whole country, Democrats included. The Democratic governors and everything they do is all part of Trump's overall. Trump can't control the governors.

Trump can't control the governors. He can control our national response, which has been non-existent. He's lied frequently about the nature of the coronavirus, the extent to which will harm this country. We know he wouldn't. For good reason? No, not for good reason. Do you think a panic would have been better? I think being honest would have been preferable.

Wait, you earlier on Twitter, you were criticizing Fauci for saying that masks weren't effective when we know now that they are. But you'll defend the president of the United States of America lying to the population? For repeating? No, Fauci never said that COVID would be no big deal. Trump was informed. He actually did. He actually did. You need to watch the videos because he did.

The video was put out with all of Fauci's statements and Fauci. I've criticized Fauci over and over again. Early on, I was very not Trump. And because Trump's repeating what Fauci says, Trump does not just wait. They fight constantly. No. Early on, they didn't. Early on, Trump made the mistake of just parrot what Fauci says. Trump does not just wait. They fight constantly. No, early on, they didn't. Early on, Trump made the mistake of just parroting Fauci.

And I got to the point. He did not exclusively parrot Fauci. You need to watch. Wait, I know I can watch. I can watch the clips. Wait, I understand. I understand there was a lot of complexity here when it comes to the information that was disseminated and who did it.

But that doesn't change the fact we know Trump was given information and then lied about it. And that's your and your opinion is that's not an opinion yes no no no i'm saying and your opinion is he shouldn't have and mine is i don't know maybe there would have been a panic maybe there wouldn't like in canada made a call and you're criticizing him and we don't know what the result you've criticized fauci for what he said about the masks how can wait how wait how can you say trump well maybe it would have caught us caused a panic but then not say the same thing about for what he said about the masks. How can, wait, how, wait, how can you say Trump? Well, maybe it would have caused a panic, but then not say the same thing

about Fauci when he said that masks weren't effective sometime. We should have worn masks the entire time. Are you sure? We don't know. Are they like made of cloth and dirty?

We don't know if a panic would have destroyed everything and killed 10 times the people. How would that being honest about the extent? First of all, hundreds of thousands are dead and they're dying in large part because we don't have a consistent national policy about social

distancing and about mask wearing that is obesity no dude i don't know sickness in general can't issue uh look he does not have the constitutional authority to issue a mask mandate he has wait first of all he has war powers he absolutely can he uses executive actions all the time this is not something that he would do this would not be legally challenged he was being called for to do this even by the democrats he was being called to do this he disbanded the um pandemic response team he removed people consolidated it no no he no he withdrew he withdrew their power so who did he consolidate them what did you consolidate them? What did you, can you pull up the, I don't want to pull up the fact check on this. Trump consolidated the roles of the pandemic response team fact check.org. I've been through this like a million times.

So, so Trump did disband the pandemic response team. Where did they go? Allocated those functions into a, into a group of people. Wait, was that Pence's task force? No, this was the existing CDC. The existing CDC that he defunded by like a massive percentage so factcheck.org the way they put it was trump was trying to streamline the process early on and that it's been weaponized by partisans to make it seem like he just straight up got rid of it so he got rid of it then took its functions and put it into

the cdc and he's cut the cdc we gotta pull up no it's factcheck.org it's trump disband i'm familiar with the site factcheck.org i know she's trying but i mean do we want to look at like cdc cuts or what he did with the people in wuhan that he pulled out if we want to pull up the source and talk about trump consolidating the roles of what i'm trying what i'm trying to talk about is the totality of evidence that he has mishandled this pandemic and it's interesting to me that you were extremely unwilling to criticize him for that. Because what's the alternative? The alternative.

What would have happened in any other circumstance where we have no control group? What am I supposed to say? How many would have had to have died before you would criticize him? I don't know. Give me a number. Wait, so you could have led a million so what you're telling me is that we have no idea what would have happened if trump did anything else we don't ever we don't we don't that's you're you're making a tautological statement that's how the universe

works we don't ever know what would happen if what am i supposed to say when fauci early on praised him when governors early on praised him now they're critical of him in an election not oh wait wait wait first of all the praise of governors is irrelevant. Are governors health experts? Second of all, Fauci praised him a couple of times. He's also under a lot of political pressure to do what Trump says, or otherwise, there's a very decent chance of him getting canned. Fauci has made plenty of statements, which Trump has later contradicted. Trump has been back and forth on the mask issue, going so far as to make fun of people for wearing masks. Trump didn't wear a mask in public for months. Wait, wait, wait. Nor the clairvoyance to say if only Trump did X, Y would have happened.

Wait, but then you can't criticize anything. What if we didn't go into the Afghanistanian war? What if some terrible thing would have happened if we hadn't done that? What if we hadn't gone to Iraq? No, no, no, no, no, no. I think we can objectively say, wow, that war was bad. We shouldn't have done that. Yeah, I can say this is objectively very bad. We should be doing something different. And I can say Trump should have done these things, but I can't get overly angry about making assumptions on what I think would or wouldn't have happened. So you are of the opinion that you should not be able to criticize a sitting president as long as you don't have... I think you're using semantic arguments. This is not semantic at all. Because I actually said you made a good point and we don't have a measure of

success for what Trump should have done. Yeah, that's to indicate we can't know for sure, but we can make reasonable arguments. You're using hindsight to make it seem like you could have done a better job. No, we know he lied at the time. Wait, I'm not the president. I'm not saying I could have done a better job. I'm saying that he messed up. And if you actually are anti-establishment, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. If you actually are anti-establishment, as you claim to be, you are shockingly unwilling

to criticize Trump on some of the most objectively. Wait, you listed the tariffs that he did, even though it destroyed American farming for essentially no benefit, as a positive... As a policy he did. ...to the economy. And then we ended up with a good economy. No, we had the good economy.

$27 trillion in debt right now. We had the good economy. You mentioned that as a positive, even though all that did was hurt American workers. You are willing to defend... How did that hurt American workers? The subsidies that we needed to provide farmers because they were being destroyed.

The manufacturing that was being hurt from our inability to came back. Also, there's a Trump threat. That's not that's not a tariff to put tariffs on their vehicles manufactured overseas. And then they brought their we brought back a shockingly low number of jobs that don't come. No, no, no. About panic. The point was, I don't know what would have happened if Trump caused a panic by coming out and saying you know america there's a dangerous pandemic why not why not not constantly downplaying it like he did this is going to be over any second we're rounding the curve now the heat's going to

get rid of it constant statement why did george w bush come out and say keep shopping keep shopping i don't like george w bush i'm not saying you do i'm saying there there there are presidents and there is a decision to make and sometimes they're hard and we don't know what would have happened in a panic or otherwise. This is the fundamental issue that I have. You're coming out and saying Trump should have told everyone. Maybe he should have. I don't know. If you actually consistently held to this, then you would never be able to criticize anything a president does because you don't know what would have happened if they hadn't done it.

You're not arguing what I'm saying. Wait, hold on. I would like to. What I'm saying is your standard for assessing the validity of this behavior is nonsensical. Is a panic bad. You don't know that it would have caused a panic. Trump said also to avoid a panic. Why not not lie about it? Why not say, Hey, why not say we need to buckle down as a nation and we need to recognize that a, that we need to be wearing masks and socially distancing. Yeah, he could have done that. Yeah,

absolutely. Okay. that's great. So wait, why isn't it okay for Fauci to have been wrong about the mask? Because he didn't want to incite a panic. That's not incorrect. That's great. So you're in favor of Fauci saying that you didn't need to wear masks? I think it's like you're purposefully misunderstanding to make an argument. No, the argument that I'm making, fundamentally.

You can't criticize Trump over masks and then act like Fauci was a saint the entire time. I have never done that. I'm not saying it's the it's the it's the rhetorical. You're talking with other people. If you're if people are going to look at Trump and say Trump said all these things and then I can go back and see that Fauci was the one who said them to Trump and Trump repeated them. Then my issue is maybe we could have done better. Maybe we could have done worse. Trump banned travel early on. He formed the task force.

He brought Fauci on in the first place. And the New York Times is estimating if the infection rate reached a certain level, it could even be as high as 6 million. First of all, I don't know what would have happened in any other circumstance. Nobody ever knows. We don't have vision into alternate futures. We have to make reasonable assessments based on the fact that we are doing terribly contributed to all of this the same as trump this is this is exactly what i mean and this is the issue that i have they're all you could wait

you claim to have like this um a disaffected sort of like anti-establishment view of all of this but you are your channel is hyper partisan against the left and then when anyone criticizes trump you'll either defend him harshly or you'll back up and say, well, they're all bad. You are taking the choice to defend Trump. You are the partisan here. You're not a distanced anti-authoritarian.

You are standing with him and you are saying, yes, I am anti-authoritarian. I am anti-establishment. But also, we don't know if him lying to the American people was bad. It could have caused a panic. Should I make a video right now where I just scream about Nancy Pelosi causing all of the problems? I haven't done that. We don't know if him lying to the American people was bad. It could have caused a panic. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,

Should I make a video right now where I just scream about Nancy Pelosi causing all of the problems? I haven't done that. Why? I don't know what that has to do with what I just said. So if Nancy Pelosi went out to Chinatown and said, everyone come party. If Bill de Blasio went out. This is whataboutism in the extreme.

You can't do it. You can't accept criticisms of Trump. You can't tell me that I'm whatabouting by, by. You can criticize those people. You can criticize those people. You can criticize those people. What about Trump? What about Trump? This is what about ism.

You can criticize those people. I criticize those people. I love the paradox of you. What abouting me on Trump and then claiming I'm what abouting when I let's talk about Trump lying. Wait, I just. But that is that good or bad? Well, that's my point.

You can't. You keep defending him and backing up to other people. It might have been good that he want me to make a video where I go over how all of the Democrats screwed everything up? I haven't made a video about Fauci in mass. I haven't made a video about Pelosi in Chinatown. I haven't made a video about de Blasio. What does this have to do with what I was saying? You can if you want to.

You want to say that I say they're all bad. They are all bad. Yeah, OK. And I didn't make a video critiquing Pelosi the same as I did about de Blasio. I've mentioned all of it and Trump in a sort of we don't know what would have happened. But I'll tell you what, if you want to say Trump was bad for the things he did, so were they. And I haven't dedicated this entire thing to you. You are describing whataboutism right now.

Listen, it's this simple, OK? If you actually if you wait, I would really like it if you would let me. If you actually think they're all bad, you wouldn't be this uncomfortable with a conversation about how Trump messed up. Who said I was uncomfortable? Wait, hold on. What I'm comfortable with is when I answer you, you change the subject and then you I'm trying to very specifically talk about Trump's failure.

I've already given you my answer on panic and you haven't let it go. Your answer is that you don't think it's acceptable to criticize Trump because we don't have vision into an alternate universe? No, that's not true at all. I think Trump is an arrogant blagger. In this specific, in this specific respect. And I think you are partisan biased pro Biden. And you don't even know about half the things that have happened that you're criticizing Trump for.

Oh, wait, I'm talking about Trump's handling of the coronavirus. Right. So don't come to me and say you're hyper partisan because you're saying I don't know about Trump. When I also said I didn't know about Nancy Pelosi. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on. Again, I don't know why you keep moving on. We're talking about Trump and coronavirus.

I acknowledge my partisanship, by the way. I'm totally fine with that. You moved on and made a whataboutism statement about me saying you criticize Democrats, but what about Trump? This, because I was trying to explain to you my broader issue. So don't use whataboutism claims against me. That's not what whataboutism is. Whataboutism is when you say, oh, you want to talk about this?

Well, what about this? What I was trying to do was you immediately jumped into how you hadn't made a video on Pelosi or Cuomo or what have you. Because you claimed I was only defending Trump when I pointed out I also did not make a video about Pelosi. But we're talking about Trump. The point is. You brought up Pelosi. You brought de Blasio. You can't accuse me of what about ism. And then when I say, actually, I haven't criticized either of them. You say, that's what about ism? Can we? Is it possible? Yeah, I got a question. What do you guys think about Trump lying about the masks in general?

Do you think he did a good thing? Masks? He lied about the severity. Yeah. To avoid Iran on masks so that to keep the stock market from plummeting. And that. That's possible, too. That's an opinion. All he said was to avoid a panic. Dude, he fearmongers all the time. He talks about how Antifa is going to burn down suburbs.

He doesn't care about a panic. And then when Antifa went to the suburbs. No, no, no, no, no, no. The CIA lies. This is its job. The president has to lie. It's his job. That's one of his job duties is to lie when you need to lie.

Right. And we can criticize them when they do that. Trump fearmongers constantly. Every rally of his is a treatise on how America is about to be destroyed by far left lunatics. I don't think he has a problem with panic. I think he had a problem with panic being tied to his name, whether that be a product of the stock market dipping, which ended up happening anyway. That was pretty much inevitable, given the consequences of the action, or whether that just be a matter of his personal image, which is also something presidents have to be concerned about. I think this is worthy of

criticism. But it's weird to me. By the metrics of this country's performance relative to other countries, we have done shockingly poorly. Tell me the metrics on nursing homes. Wait, I think that's bad too. you can't you can't just talk about trump you have to bring up other things because if how many deaths were caused by the nursing homes by the way out of the 200 like 40 or some really large number of the deaths in america uh can you pull up the numbers yeah i can look do you mean wait i thought you were just referring to the uh the new york like 7 000 in new york okay so so if you want to ignore that, we're looking at 218,000. Look, even again, we're going to compare the numbers. There is so much nuance in this discussion. And I think the

president, what you are misunderstanding is, I think Trump has very serious problems. I think he lies often. I think he's a blagger. He boasts he won't shut up. And I think most people know he's got a mouth that he couldn't stop blabbing to save his own campaign. I think he caused a lot of his own problems. And there is an actual really great argument that he should have been honest with the American people. This stemmed from me saying, I don't know. And then you turned into why won't you criticize the president? Because I don't know what would have happened. Well, first of all, the statement, I don't know in the statement statement i think there's an excellent argument for your point are not the same statements even remotely you said there was no there was no standard by

which we could like but there's no control as i have clarified there's no control group for anything like this but we still have to be able to criticize so when i say stuff like he lied and he has downplayed relentlessly even though he had information which suggested that would not be the case, and he is constantly scapegoated this onto China in a pathetic attempt to avoid any responsibility or culpability for his actions or those of his administration. Or the fact that he has done absolutely nothing to invoke war powers. And one of the few instances where even I, a left-leaning person, would say is perfectly acceptable these are worthy criticisms i think it seemed to me like you were being rather defensive about that what kind of what would he do with war power the insurrection act against the riots when they were at their peak what this is what about ism again we're talking about coronavirus what would he do with war power with coronavirus have 225 000 people died to riots can we pull up

the numbers on god i hope i'm sure they haven't i would like question is at what point are you okay with authoritarianism at whatever first of all i don't think invoking war powers is the same kind of authoritarianism you said an executive order was yeah an executive order to ban a type of speech no partisan reasons and then you inflated he didn't he didn't just ban the trainings he banned critical race theory you actually know that can you do you want to look at the language of the executive order? Because I guarantee you it doesn't specifically say these trainings. We both agree the trainings would be bad, but you brought it to a speech argument and then went off on First Amendment rights and everything.

Because the language of the executive order was not specifically targeting those training seminars. You said earlier that Trump's use of executive orders was him expanding federal authority. That is. Now you're also arguing he should have overridden Constitution using war powers. Wait, first of all, that's not overriding the Constitution. That's a power delegated to the president in times of great need. Second of all, I would say that's legitimate use of it. I'm a pragmatist.

I'm a utilitarian. No, wait, wait. All of it is opinion. I know. I think it's OK. Wait, I think it's OK to use federal power to keep hundreds of thousands from dying due to a pandemic. I think it's not okay when you're attacking an entire subset of academic critique because of some federal training programs. I'm okay with X and Y.

I don't think it's okay to use the police to arrest a child for dropping a lollipop stick in the ground. I think it's okay for them to go after rapists and murderers. There are contextual uses for state power that I think can be justified in different ways. The issue is, my opinion was, I don't know. Should we criticize Trump for not telling the American people? I don't know. I don't know what would happen if a panic started. All the other stuff I mentioned, too, it wasn't just that. It was also the constant downplaying. It was also even after people knew how severe it was. That was literally it.

That was him trying to avoid a panic. But then he kept doing it. He said, I downplayed it because I didn't want to start a panic. He kept not wanting to start a panic. Every week he'd start it over again and be like, we're going to get it next week. In two weeks, it'll be done. I agree with you when he comes out and he puts out these videos where he's like, Antifa is coming. Because clearly, I don't think panic is the real issue.

I think it's fair to criticism on that broad point. As for COVID, maybe that was a real threat that, you know, really could have screwed everything up to an extreme degree. It's killed like a quarter million people. That's a pretty real threat. New York Times high estimate was like six point something million, too. It wasn't just two million. It was it was the slider bar they had for their analysis was the worst case scenario

was like six plus million. But we can. Yes. But the best that we can do at this point is see how other countries have done. And we can tell just from the responses they've taken that ours has been woefully inadequate. But you already said no two countries are the same and we can't compare them. Wait, we can't compare them exactly. But of course, we can take info. How can we compare a federal system with 50 states to a single state of 10 million people?

Well, maybe we could find a single state with 10 million people and then compare what it did to a single one of our states. Sweden. Well, Sweden did rather poorly. They didn't know. Sweden's doing fantastic. They just had a massive drop off in cases and they're doing great. My friends in Sweden said they've never encountered problems.

Testing is easily available, but cases have gone down and they've never locked down and everything's improved. They locked down their borders. The UN has said the economic lockdowns will lead to mass starvation and that now they've said we advise against them they must be avoided at all costs it's fair to say everyone screwed this up royally yeah that's and that is to be expected just us more than many other countries if we look at our states stayed open we never had closed borders in the states that's the problem to the united states well no you can't because they closed their borders we never closed our

state borders europe isn't beholden to a single executive power the eu isn't like it can't tell every country to adopt like it doesn't have war powers over the entire continent of europe so it's an opinion on whether or not everything should or shouldn't happen what i'm saying is it's not an issue of we know what could or would have happened. It's just an issue of I believe things would have been better had Trump used these powers. Yeah, but that's the case with literally all public policy. We have to be able to assess these things from inferring data examples that we already have and applying to them to the different situations. We can't say, say, for example, criticizing him saying, I don't know, whereas you're taking

a position. That's it. Well, you don't know that. But what about all of the other things I mentioned, like, like him repeatedly saying that it was going to be away anytime now him making fun of people for wearing masks and not publicly appear. Okay, I'm glad that we agree on that. My only concern here is that the way you talked about it initially, where you said we don't have like a metric for objectively. I did say that. And I said, that's a good point. I agree with you. Yes. But that doesn't mean you can't make inferences. I'll give you an example. Say you have two cities, different cities,

different demographics, populations. One city applies a policy, works great. People get happier, wealthier, richer. Those two cities aren't exactly the same. If people in city B, the one without the policy, start saying, hey, mayor, you want to maybe do that? And the mayor said, well, our city isn't exactly like their city. And then just dead stopped as like an excuse for not engaging. And I don't think that's acceptable. I think we need to look into the policies these other countries used, the nature of their country, the way their balance of urban and rural populations played off each other. Did they do lockdowns? Did they do mask mandates? And if we can do that, honestly, and this is not something the Trump administration is willing to

do because he has fausted all responsibility for this onto China. Absolutely all of it. And he praises himself every time the opportunity comes for his handling of coronavirus. This administration, I think, frankly, is at least with regards to COVID handling a death cult. And if. Oh, come on. No, people are dying. But a death cult. are dying and many of the people who are dying that are i guess not dead themselves because that'd be voter fraud are then going to go out there and affirm uh the the practices of a candidate

who has lied to them i just read it was a 99 not 97 to 99.4 percent recovery rate for the virus yeah but it doesn't seem deadly at all well i mean if you hit millions of people with that that'll be hundreds of thousands dead but that the flu does that too the flu doesn't kill nearly as many people heart attacks not obesity with the flu third how many people with 2.6 uh the flu's morbidities is like a third of the flu is also not as transmittable and also it's not as um another thing people don't talk about with covid this is what scares me personally like coming out here for example i, I flew across fantastic. I love flying. I say sarcastically, um, uh, uh, COVID-19 I'm young and healthy, like a horse. I'll be fine. But sometimes there are after effects, you know, I've heard a lot of cases. People have had COVID-19. That's a preexisting condition, heart and lung problems, sometimes even brain problems that really, really scares me.

Yeah. Yeah. Ventilators mess people up too. Well, they're not doing that anymore. Yeah. I, but the secondary effects are serious. They're crushing their lungs. It's, like, actually terrifying. And it's because a flu could never, I mean, I guess in very rare cases, a flu could do that. Look, I think COVID's very serious. If you mix it with other diseases, it can really, the flu can mess you up. If we were going to make any determination, I think we can look at, if we were going to go country by country, I think we should look at Sweden and say, we really screwed this one up.

Did they close their borders? I don't know. That's a good question. I don't know if they did i'm looking at new zealand they apparently locked down well they are crazy well they did it they they did it they came back and then they did another hard they did another it there was a light resurgence and they locked down again i was like oh well i mean i suppose they're very sensitive fluctuations but as the moment i think they're doing hawaii has a lot like not to discourage new zealand's they've got i think auckland and wellington there are a lot of kiwis right nowage New Zealand's, they've got, I think, Auckland and Wellington.

There are a lot of Kiwis right now who are pretty mad at what you just said, Tim. Well, it's like 4 million people. Yeah, small country. Of course it gets easier the smaller you get. Island nation. They could easily suspend travel, do a short lockdown. COVID can't swim. I swear the food supply, man.

Unhealthy people are going to get sicker faster. If you have an obesity epidemic. Right, that's true. So the United States has other health issues which contribute. In New Zealand you have to fish for all your own food. The police will shoot you if you buy anything from a grocery store. Rice and fish. You know what it is? The cost of living is really high in New Zealand. Oh yeah, for sure.

By the way, from what I've seen though, beautiful country. I've never been there. I don't even know why I'm repping them. I would love to go. And the seasons are inverted. Yeah, they have... Let's go in the winter. They have Christmas in like July. Yeah, that's cool. I wanted to ask you, by the way, just out of curiosity, and this isn't a criticism thing.

I'm not a public health official. What would you do? You had war powers, whatever. What direction do you think is best for getting America on track with COVID? Early on, I think in a bunch of videos I did, I talked about the severity and the need for locking down our borders. But I never thought an economic lockdown, the concept didn't even exist to me. And I think at this point, based on everything we've learned, it probably is a really, really bad idea. So the few things I would say is protect the vulnerable, take strong measures,

keep the economy open, suspend travel and border crossings for the time being. And that's probably the best we can do. And then we really want to make sure that we have control in the hands of local officials who know their regions better than anyone else. There were a few cities in New Mexico that shut down. It was crazy. When I drove out that way, there was a city where the sign actually said no foreign, like no outside visitors allowed. That's up to them. And I think that's, there's a big difference between the way that America handles things, the way Americans will respond to things and travel suspension, leaving it for, to local officials. And I think the one place where Trump did well,

but then did poorly was early on he was providing quick assistance. He got praise for it. But then, as you mentioned later, he started playing games with federal assistance, which I guess there's a conversation about the riots. But perhaps the issue is a difference between a view of America as a single nation or as a union of states and a balance of authorities. My view is I don't think Trump should have used the war powers. And it's also similar to how many on the left want to get rid of the electoral college. I don't because I don't think this country would run better through a top town executive approach. I think we need to have a balance of powers at local, regional and then federal levels.

I don't think the electoral college does much to empower the small states. I think the Senate does. So we should abolish that, too. No, I'm kidding. Oh, well, yeah, sure. I mean, you can hear that argument. It's really hard to say with the COVID stuff. I agree that the localization thing is really, really important.

China seemed to have handled COVID pretty well after initial burning period. Well, China has the ability and the authority to do – well, they can do stuff we can't do. And I wonder, I mean, to what extent is that effective? Like hypothetically, imagine money is not an issue. If you could do a month lockdown where you suspend all rent, mortgage, everything, like suspend all forms of know debt payment and provide people a base stipend and then have like um uh local officials who are tasked to provide like groceries or rations to every house if you could do that without money that would do a really really really good job but that in america in a country this huge with this many different people with

this many different ideologies that would be a well it's it's it's authoritarian versus libertarian authoritarianism versus libertarianism. And so I've had this argument with many libertarians who don't want to accept it, but there is a strong efficiency in serious authoritarian regimes, notably China. When a pandemic hit, they welded people into their homes and sacrificed the individual for the sake of the collective. They glued everyone to their seats in their house. It was a big campaign. They'd run in with the Elmer's bottle, you know? Well, they really would while their doors shut. No, yeah. But, and the thing is, but this would be my counter argument. I like to fashion myself

a libertarian socialist. I don't like the government. When it comes to this, there are two types of freedom, positive and negative freedom, you know, and I always get it mixed up. Which one is which, but I'm just going to guess and hope it's right. And you have positive freedoms, like the ability to do whatever you want freedom from law you know essentially yeah and that's what most libertarians talk about are you talking about rights like negative and positive rights yes i think i i get them mixed every time positive a positive right is something granted to you and a negative right is something that can't be done to you um it's it's kind of these way to put it is a positive right to life means if ian threatens me with a knife you must it is a positive right to life means if ian threatens me

with a knife you must save me a negative right to life means you're not allowed to kill me i don't blame you yeah i think i will but i will butcher it if i attempt to recite it verbatim so i'll simply say this i think there is a freedom in not living in a country with a pandemic uh because there are implicit threats to my safety that come not from the autonomy or agency of any individual, but simply now from the process of participating in society. So which freedoms do I value more? Do I value my freedom to not get locked into my house by the government for a month? Or do I value my freedom to live in a country over the next two years in which there's not a pandemic? And I don't have an answer to that. I genuinely don't. It's often a rural versus urban issue in the United States. So people in cities, it's probably better just lock in your house for a short time and

then get back on with it. But people who live on the middle of nowhere are going to be like, screw you. I can do it. Oh, yeah, true. There's no. Yeah, you go. You go out to Wyoming or something. These people are never, ever because we have such a diverse country.

That's one of the things I love so much about. That's why a national mask mandate would not even be enforced. Because in, I would say, more than half the states, and I would say probably 95% of the country, you know, outside of the blue counties, they wouldn't even enforce it. Well, 95% of the country by landmass, maybe. That's what I mean. Yeah, yeah. They probably wouldn't enforce it. Not by people, by landmass.

I think the best thing they probably could have done was set up a system of incentivizations for all the cities and governors and what have you with relative levels of COVID. Get paid to wear your mask. Now we're talking. Or like a – Get a piece of crypto every time you're seen in public with a mask on. Like a state gets an extra so-and-so much if they can report a certain number. But then you have toxic incentives too. Like what if they under-report cases because they want to meet a federal quota or something terrible like that?

Yeah. Vosha, I had a question you said you were a libertarian socialist but you don't like the government you said that in quick succession but i always think socialism is using the government to do things so what do you how do you rectify that socialism should be about the people controlling the systems they live within the state uh if it's functioning properly and i don't think it is right now in america should be an apparatus of the will of the people and so so far, such a thing exists. Right now, we're like, you're like authoritarian, maybe, maybe a little Yeah, well, that's the that's

the authoritarianism, the non populist element, you know, when corporations get involved, or when long standing career politicians start solidifying their power in a way that's really, really hard to remove them, then the will of the people matters less and less. I want the government to whatever extent it does exist to be beholden entirely to the will of the people matters less and less. I want the government, to whatever extent it does exist, to be beholden entirely to the will of the people, a perfectly democratic society. And then I want corporations to do the same thing, too. I think corporations should treat every single employee like a little citizen. Yeah, I was thinking you should give stock to employees like a scaling mechanism.

Oh, man, I don't have the math on me. Well, so Bernie's proposed, I think, like a 20% stock package. I couldn't believe he did that, by the way. That was based on... Very socialism-y. Very socialism-y. I was getting hot under my collar just imagining that getting elevated. That'd be nice, because I've worked for startups, and when you have

a percent, when you have some part of the company, you have such more incentive to make it great. I disagree. Really? Yeah. I just don't care about it if I'm not getting... If I don't have anything, it's like... That's you. We're self-employed, though. Because I've worked on a bunch of companies where giving up equity to people is really, really difficult. Because you'll find a lot of people immediately go, I got equity.

Later. Oh, no. But you have to put them on a five-year plan where they earn only a percentage of the equity every year. So they're incentivized to stay to make the equity. It's called best in stock. I think you should just split the, uh, the revenue from the company fairways. And that might be cool to have people vote out. So easy how to determine how you do that. Sure.

Well, there are a lot of different, this is a worker co-op. It's just a lot of different ways that you can do it. There's actually a lot of really interesting data and worker cooperatives. Those come out from Latin America over the past 20 years that indicate that in certain fields, it's an extremely efficient, uh,

uh, form of corporate structuring. Cause you know, one of the big problems that we have with your average company, maybe not the very high-end tech ones where the big brainy folks work out, but even just in the lower end of things, retail, whatever, restaurants, people don't work too hard. Why? You get crap wages. You're not really respected that much because your work is pretty interchangeable. It's that creative investment in the work process, I think, that sparks the ingenuity, the investment, the work ethic in a lot of people. I had a conversation with an accountant in New Jersey. This was like

a year and a half or two years ago. And they were complaining about the $15 an hour wage hike that was coming or whatever, and how he him like he lost like 30 of his clients they shut down immediately because what people don't realize is many many of these small businesses and most businesses are small businesses the people who own them aren't wealthy and making tons of money like the guy who owns a hardware shop might make 40k a year and he might pay his employees you know 12 or 13 an hour then they come and they say we're doing a 30 percent you know hike on all of your salary on all of your costs. And he goes, then I won't make any money for my family. And so he just shuts down.

Yeah. Well, the goal would be that if things are parted out equally or fairly, I shouldn't say equally because sometimes people are deserving, I think, of more compensation, that stuff like that wouldn't happen. A model that I've seen that looks really, really nice is you have a type of like payback investment on the part of anybody who's founded a given company where they are, they get a proportional wage in addition to like a higher percentage that they pay back until they've made back a certain percentage of whatever they initially invested. And then after that, they're just kept in a higher tier. And that way you have like the, cause a lot of people say, you know, what about rewarding

ingenuity? Great. Ingenuity is phenomenal. You know know just got to find a way to set it up properly i wish we i wish we um um i don't know experimented more with different ways of running governments companies that's what america could be we have all these states they're all that's his choice people could do it they could yeah though there are systemic barriers to forming worker cooperatives banks tend not to loan to them because it's kind of like a spooky form of managing people but no i kind of want to segue off uh from this because i just thought of something but uh you're in favor of political violence for as it means a revolution if it's done i mean given that it's done well effectively and for good reasons sure so what is well and effectively sure i mean like for example if um

if the working class and jewish and queer people of nazi germany had risen up sometime immediately after hitler was appointed chancellor i think most of us would agree that's probably like i mean things get messy sure but like now in hindsight like we know and i think that like right now in the united states of america the idea of like political violence for a revolution is it's like a it's like a comedy it's not gonna happen are you kidding me it's not who's to say that the jewish violent leader wouldn't have been worse than hitler well no because that stemmed from the communists being violent then the nazis were violent in response and then if the jews had been violent in response you'd have a try a three groups of violence i i i agree with you on that

point and and the point i was going to make is that the argument about political violence isn't just it's always good, it's always bad. It's that there are certain things we accept and certain things we don't. The American country came from political violence revolution. I'm totally cool with that. I don't like it, but it happened. The regulars were sent here when we asserted our rights.

So if the Jewish community in Nazi Germany were like, you can't do this to us, and the Nazis came in and they rose up, I agree. Political violence in defense of rights, etc. To me, it's just another tool. Take, for example, again, with the police. Imagine you've never heard of police, never heard of prisons, foreign concept to you. And somebody says, hey, what if the state had the ability to lock a person up in a steel cell for an indefinite length of time if they make a mistake and you would say make a mistake well i mean depends on the mistake right i would say violate

some pre-ordained structure sure right but even then the law is just codified morality right i mean you get flexibility with that different countries consider different things in singapore if you spit gum on the street you can get to jail for that there are state where pornography can get you in jail like yeah yeah and and i certainly don't agree with those things, but I'm sure if I argued with them, they would say, well, you have a civic duty to not pollute your streets or whatever. And, uh, but with regards to like violent revolution, it's just a tool, uh, same as any other type of political violence, like policing, absolutely a form of political violence. Laws are codified by people in power to enforce a certain set of principles and police are

charged to enforce it. It's legitimized political violence, but it is nonetheless that. And with regards to this violent revolution thing, there have been many tyrannical despotic governments in human history. And the reason at any point in time why a revolution would be justified is the promise that it would make life better. Often it doesn't. And that's the issue. If there was ever a point where I felt it would in America, then I would support it at the moment. I absolutely do not. That good point. Uh, I guess the way I see it is I would never trust someone to know what's best for anyone else. And so that's like, I guess the libertarian, I guess the, the,

the reason I ask is because socialism requires cooperation to an extreme degree that capitalism doesn't. I'd say it depends. I think that, I mean, to the extent that democracy requires cooperation, then I would agree. But like if, so I think you mentioned before socialism, you viewed it as certain goods become, I don't want to put words in your mouth. Decommodify industry and make sure workers are in charge of the industries. Those things still have to be produced. Someone still has to do that work. And that means resources still have to be allocated to those individuals.

So it puts a certain group of people in charge of allocating resources to those people. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. And this is the flaw with democracy. If you go very far left, like very, very, very far left, there are some anarchists who will say that even democracy is a metric of oppression, because democracy is a system by which you put people on top of you. So you must necessarily as an anarchist, you must rid yourself of these political structures, because all you're doing is choosing who will next stomp on you.

Now, I think that's perhaps a little bit hypothetical, but Vosh, I'm really glad you came on. This has been Oh, man, we're gonna do super chats. Yeah, of course. We're gonna say like, I hope both left and right little bit hypothetical, but. Vosh, I'm really glad you came on. This has been. Oh, man. We're going to do super chats. Yeah, of course. I want to say, like, I hope both left and right got their hot takes of both of us. Yes. Honestly, we have a ridiculous amount of super chats.

Oh, man. It's just it's 1130. Oh, yeah. No, I'm sorry. I have no sense of time. I apologize. I think this is fantastic. Really fun.

You probably got me a bunch of things people are going to highlight. I'd like to think that there were a few things I threw at you. I don't think it's... My intention was not ever to be that. I think it was awesome to have a conversation and I think it was interesting hearing your perspectives. So I am really grateful you came on and I'm going to... I'm looking at the

comments and there's like somewhere like Tim sucks and somewhere like Vosh sucks. If I don't tweet after this it's because Tim had me shot outside of the studio yeah you were mentioning earlier like on your way here the driver is like oh yeah the the the uber driver was because this you know the right the studio is in the middle of nowhere the uber driver was telling me and i'm you know i'm on the other side of the country so i'm already i'm already hyped up and he's like you know the blair witch project was shot here oh my gosh there sure are some winding roads and like yeah it's like just like there's no street lights it's all black there's mountains and it's like, you know, the Blair Witch Project was shot here. Oh, my gosh. There sure are some winding roads. Yeah.

It's like just like there's no streetlights. It's all black. There's mountains. And it's like, welcome. By the way, I'm sorry. This is completely irrelevant. What microphones are these? These are SM7Bs. These are really nice.

These are just like everyone uses them. I love them. I'm using an AT-AT40, I think. These are nice. I am excited for anybody who wants to make those clips and be like, you know, it's really funny because it always happens where both sides will think that their person won. And I'm more than happy to provide that entertainment. Let's read some super chats because I already see, like, you're probably touching yourself. What?

Says, get back to the actual argument, Beanie Man. But then Yorozuya says, this guy's disingenuous. Don't bring him back, oh snap actually no i i absolutely would love to have you back you know yeah because i don't think i know everything and i probably could find election night party you can make it well he's a busy guy i can only fly so much i'm terrified of flying jv says ask vosh if he thinks Mao was better than Trump. Oh. Oh, sorry. These are... What? It's apples and oranges, literally.

No. No. Wait. Wait. Hold on. Is he better or worse? No. Mao was very, very bad.

Mao killed so many people. Yes. We don't even know. He did like... I think if I remember, he did like three good policies in an ocean. Like you'd have to dig for those. Yeah. I dis...

I dis... I disamow. So what you're saying is that you prefer Trump over Mao? Disamow. Listen, you're not getting me clipped. If Mao came back, listen, maybe he's reformed, okay? What I've heard is that it's his wife. I don't believe in cancel culture, okay?

I think Mao should have to come on this program to give his side of the story. Yes. Now, here's the good, good comment. Mr. Comfy pants has amazing exchange. Great discussion. Love your work. Appreciate it.

Thanks, man. And then Dick Johnson, I will literally pay you $5 to never have this guy back on. Listen, man, I think this kind of stuff is important. And so I like, well, I'm willing to invite anybody who wants to have a conversation. Some people were like, why don't you have the far right? We didn't even talk about Magic cards and Dungeons and Dragons which we all play. I was really psyched up for that part of the conversation.

I actually said early on I was like, how about we just ditch the whole political conversation and talk about D&D? DM a game on the fly? It's 11.30. Is it crazy? Fireball. the whole political conversation, talk about D&D. We'll just DM a game on the fly. It's 1130. Is it crazy? Oh my gosh, you guys.

Fireball. I don't know if this one is... Can I dispel that on the phone? I don't know if this comment is fair, so I don't know if I should actually read it. Uh-oh. I don't know. What do you think? You know what? Go for it. Why not? They said, ask him why he thinks child... Prawn? Yeah, should be legal why he thinks child. Prawn.

Yeah. Yeah. It'd be legal and is moral. Oh, okay. This is it's a it's a misinterpretation of an argument that I made like a year ago or something. And I phrased it horribly. My basic argument is that, like, why is that material bad?

Because it hurts people to produce it. Yeah. Yeah. There are other commodities that hurt people to produce, like the child slaves that mine up like cobalt and stuff like that so my argument was like it's all bad um however like it sometimes it really bothers me when like people will be like oh dude whatever like we make computers they look sick bro like don't think about it that was essentially the argument that i was making yeah i really don't like that there's so many out of context clips of me that's why i was like i don't even know i should read it but i kind of felt like

you probably would have a response to it so i bet if we had video those child slaves that there's so many out of context clips of me that's why i was like i don't even know i should read it but i kind of felt like you probably would have a response to it so i bet if we had video those child slaves that there'd be a lot less of that i talk about this stuff all the time like that there's a lot of people who say things like i'm more effective that's why i should be allowed to use this computer i'm like look man i fully acknowledge this was probably made by you know like the foxconn laboratories are really really bad at least but at least like own it, you know, like it'd be like, okay, this is bad, but we can do something about it. There are more slaves today on Earth than there ever have been at all

in human history. Yeah. All right, let's see. Damien says brushed up question mark. Russia Gate made people like you hate more. You wouldn't be here at this point right now without the lies getting your head. Wake up. I don't know who he's talking to. I assume that's directed at me.

I would assume that would be to you, yeah. Because you said you mentioned getting brush up on Russiagate. I guess I should again. It's just been a while. It's a dark time. I don't like the gate part of it. It's dumb. Now everything is gate.

Water gate. Yeah. All right, here we go. Sean Kennelly says, Tim, I'm your biggest fan, but you completely let this guy run your show tonight. He diverted your questions. He had no clue about Russiagate or Obamagate. But you still used kid gloves.

Thought you were better than that. Like I said early on, look, as much as we did have a bit of a back and forth and some debate, this show isn't a blood sports debate where I come here with a big stack of notes to be like, I'm taking you out. It's a conversation show. It's an RL, man. And I want to have people to have a conversation. That's about it. I'm sorry if you come here, and I mean this sincerely, thinking that I a big list and like i'm preparing a takedown i didn't no preparation

i was like i really love to have this guy in and just have a conversation i kept trying to look up the what happened with the philadelphia right because i've been in a news dead set for 25 i kept trying to look up and i kept getting distracted by dnd talks so i came in equally so much better yeah i'll tell you my thoughts on this. And with respect, Sean, to your opinion, thank you for your super chat. I do. Like, I let Enrique Tarrio come in here and speak a whole lot. And I pushed back less than I pushed back on Vosh. Like, seriously.

Like, I actually raised my voice. And we went back and forth. I didn't do that with Enrique. That's great. Yeah. So, you know, I'm trying, man. I really am. But this is not a show where I'm here to just take people down.

You know, I want to bring people on, have them say their thing. I'll give them my thoughts. Sometimes it'll be more adversarial. And I think it's fair to say I was harder on you than I was on the leader of the Proud Boys. Oh, by the way, I'm going to get the exact same comments on my Twitter feed after this. I'm sure. Yeah, this will be fun. It's the mutual.

Oh, yeah, yeah, the mutual. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure. I've seen it already. I wish people would just, like, most of the comments, they're actually pretty cool. They're great, yeah. They're like, this is a really great, great conversation. Yeah, I like you guys too.

Is this the camera? Yeah. I like you guys too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hello. The way I tell people, like, dude, feel free to hate me. Like, you know? I mean, I wish there was less hate, but I don't think I'm perfect.

And I think people can criticize you and can criticize you. Whatever, man. Look, I'll tell you what. You know what the craziest thing to me is? I don't know. I'm just some dude turned a camera on and started talking about stuff on the internet. whatever man look i'll tell you what you know the craziest thing to me is i don't know i just i'm just some dude turn a camera on started talking about stuff on the internet i'm not i like i got no degrees you know i'm not i'm just someone who reads stuff and has opinions and i want to talk

to people who have opinions and sometimes i probably sound like a moron that's just the way it is and i we have conversations live to cringe yeah man people like i i i'm sorry if i don't live up to the expectations of some kind of like you know walter cronkite or something i don't think i ever will but uh a lot of criticism coming your way i'm sorry i'm not as tall as hassan piker oh what the heck come on man i'd love to have him on as well personal failing uh beau darville says this dude is in a huge bubble how could he not know the details of obamagate or is he lying you're not alone i think it's fair i i don't assume everybody that's why i asked instead of just saying well you're wrong about russiagate now i asked you i have a quick two cents about uh obamagate um i think that it is very complicated i think this is why trump doesn't want to talk

about it and i think this is a part of the issue that people have with it is that it's just complicated it's okay and i think that you should read up on it for sure i definitely should use that gate word again they're confusing everybody by like this gate and that gate and gamer gate and what it's all hotels called watergate like let it go use a different word to describe these different situations a lot of it really does come to the media that you consume because um even with all the complexities you get different types of complexities depending on what you consume uh because what i've read in obamagate has largely been a denunciation of certain perhaps hyperbolized claims, though, as is the case for many situations like this, there usually are bits of legitimately worrying information

underneath anything. And, and I think that's totally valid. And I'm happy to look more into that. I use a third party app called News Guard, Everybody mark off your bingo cards for me mentioning it. And what I try to do is I typically start with mainstream media and then I check right-wing media because mainstream typically has a left bias or at least a left perspective. So I try to read both. And then this is really funny because I was criticized for this, for using the Daily Mail very often. Daily Mail is certified as credible. And I really mean this. They usually have the most comprehensive take on the Daily Mail very often. Daily Mail is certified as credible. And that's interesting. I really mean this. They usually have the most

comprehensive take on a story. If I go to the Hill, where I go to the Hill often because they're considered center and they talk politics, I'll read a story about Amy Coney Barrett that'll have like one paragraph and then I'll search for it

and find several other articles. Fox News will have two. Daily Mail will have like 15. And it'll be breaking down the nuances and getting into depth on it. You know what actually does really good reporting? BuzzFeed News. I was actually surprised when they split off from regular BuzzFeed. I found they actually have really, really,

really good in-depth coverage of stuff. They've done a really good job on a lot of things. I'm critical of them on a lot of other things. Notably, they ran a racist piece claiming that two black men fought to the death over a chicken sandwich, which I'm not kidding what oh i didn't hear about that it was fake news and it really made me angry because i'm like i know what they do i know what they're doing and it's disgusting i give i give uh wait did two did they actually fight to the death or did they

completely make it up or was it just sensationalized popeyes and cut in line and so like he walked outside and some guy was yelling at him for cutting in line and got shot okay so it was literally so literally just racist yeah it was it was totally racist okay wow got those clicks man anyway maybe mad buzzfeed does have some some good stories they've done i've actually read one recently but often they have poor framing i think okay fair to be to be fair a lot of right wing right wing media has poor framing as well for that for that it's the same issue it's like if your buzzfeed is a left partisan source yeah i'm rolling i'm rolling through breitbart articles pretty much every day uh these days breitbart is uh uh has some good report it's same as it's like

people are gonna get mad but it's i think it's comparable to buzzfeed that's gonna trigger the left and the right. Dude, Breitbart's released some breaking stuff. We're in the super chat section, so I'll let my facial expression carry the weight. Right and left. Rob in 123 says, Vosh said right populism can only be fascism. What is his view of left populism? Well, I think left populism can go in a lot of directions. I think that right, I think that society's become potentially more complex,

the further you go to the left, in large part, because there are so many different ideas on how to achieve the basic underlying goal, or I feel like the farther right you go, it's pretty much just absolute power of the state or absolute power of corporations. I guess it's conceivable to be a right-leaning populist and not be a fascist. I admit I'm struggling to find them at times. Well, it's simple. It's a bunch of people in a small town who use capitalist systems, have traditional values, and want to be left alone. Sure. Well, but traditional values, left alone, this can mean a lot of things. Isolationism, ethno-nationalism.

No, like, this is, you know, I'm growing my farm. Please don't steal my stuff. I hope we could do that anywhere. But that would be arguably right-wing. You've got people waving American flags and Gadsden flags and saying, we love this country. And that's about it. Sure. Well, the populism usually

is about, like, the manifestation of the popular will, you know, the idea that the establishment is something. But usually the way the establishment gets codified in right leaning narratives means that like in addition to the establishment, you've other threats from without. In some states, it's been the Jews here. We have like, for example, MS-13, the cartel. We have ISIS. We have undocumented immigrants. And we have within our own country we have antifa we have you know this sort of thing and i guess fear i think is the underlying

emotional pinning to these um to these tendencies would a far left populist be a warlord well i think i think a far left well oh i think um because the the issue is when you think of a populist like you have somebody like Lenin, right? Lenin, you know, he stirs up the peasantry for a long time. He gets his armies. He marches alongside the partisans and the Democrats and such. And eventually he seizes power. And what does it become?

An authoritarian state. Is that populism? I don't think so. In fact, I would argue there are elements of Lenin's government that were distinctly right-leaning in spite of all the aesthetics and sort of performative socialism. Left and right. It's so confusing. No, but that's exactly what I mean. The term left and right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think at the end of the day, I want people to be happy. I want people to be healthy. I think everyone in this country should be able to get good health care, good food. And I think that most of us lived under the thumb, two thumbs of corporations and of government in ways that are vastly disproportionate and unjust.

What do you think about the Federal Reserve? We barely got into it. That's a whole subject. I think the issue with socialism is that the only way to create a system as of right now where everyone adheres to the commodification of certain things is by force. Well, let's take steps then. Maybe. Let's feel force. I mean i mean well then any policy is force i mean it is because any law passed by a government is the libertarian argument would be yes yeah of course government telling you you must at gunpoint but i think but again that's one what's the quote you know the poor man and the free man are both

equally disallowed from sleeping beneath the bridge freedom in a legal sense means very little if you're starving so if the government for example, uses its authority to provide everybody a base stipend of food and education, you may technically be removing freedoms in a certain way because now people have to do this or whatever. But on the other hand, you've given an entire population of people a different, more essential kind of freedom. It just feels too utopian. Well, but you agree with public education, don't you? No, actually, no. Well, the founding fathers did.

They thought that public education was about emancipating the mind of the average person, that democracy could only function if we were sufficiently educated. I should clarify that in its current form. Oh, well, yeah, sure. I mean, it hasn't changed in 150 years, right? When you ask me, I'm imagining as it exists today, and I'm very much against this.

It's broken, completely broken, and needs to be redone. Then in a different phrase, that education should be a human right. I'm 100% for social programs and government programs. The issue, I think, is that we need to fix them. I feel like we're operating off of civics developed hundreds of years ago that haven't scaled properly. Especially education, yeah. Nothing's changed since schoolhouse days. Like I said, I'm for a mixed economy.

I think we should have regulations. We should have taxation. We should have some government programs. But the problem is our government programs don't fail. So when public schooling breaks, we just keep dumping money into it, and it's just a broken thing. But we also can't let it fail because you can't wake up one day and say like, oh, sorry, Timmy, your school went bankrupt. You'll be working around the house for a year. Well, why not?

Well, the systems have to be kept up. Or if they're going to be broken, then accommodations have to be made by those hurt. And that I think – so for example, like our failing schools, right? I don't think – if anyone defends the education system as it currently exists in this country, they're delusional. This education system is terrible. It's broken. they're delusional this education system is terrible it's broken or worse than other countries with half our gdp it's not gdp gdp per capita it's terrible um but at the same time if we just let every failing school just shut its doors we would have a a spike in economic and everything would be bad parents use school as daycare yeah so they can go to work now i read

the super chat where they said how does he he not even know about Russiagate? So I'll read this one where Redway2 says, Vosh is so obviously winning, it's not even funny. I enjoy it. I think it's fun. I wouldn't be surprised if everyone walked away thinking that I was a moron. It's fine. I don't think I'm, you know. Havtone says, this is like watching that Joe Rogan interview with Barry Weiss.

Vosh is extremely uninformed and lives in a bubble you see it goes both ways what it reminds me of is i remember i had a hosted or like a moderated debate with um anti-climate change guy fairly recently like full-on anti like it's all a hoax you know flat earth whatever and um afterwards you know the super chats roll and the moderator reads them and it's like you know the 50 50 it's like vosh you did really good there and then the next one's like vosh clearly lives in the globe head bubble if he actually believes that temperatures are rising and it's it's fun you know not to say this is equivalent in that respect but i like the back and forth ken w says scandinavian socialist countries have school choice japan has school

choice and compulsory education is uh only up to junior high they rank higher than u.s education why should we continue failed u.S. public education policies? In Japan, first of all, even though high school is not compulsory, you'll find that if you want to get ahead in Japan, you absolutely need to get to a good high school. That is a culturally obligatory thing. Additionally, middle school goes up to ninth grade in Japan. Also, with schools like Sweden, school choice to me is acceptable in concept as long as it's not being used as a way to demonize people who are caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to where they're taking their kids. And a school choice would be something I would 100% support as long as I felt like it was

going along with a genuine effort to revitalize all of these communities. That I would be in favor of. On its own, though, I don't think so i i think we got to do something man yeah we got to revive we got a public works program yeah 100 we got to start we got to start building them roads you know we should yeah we have the money do you know much about graphene uh you mentioned it earlier incredible modern material i think i think we need to uh i think we should start implementing programs where we're like we have we're going to do a public education thing. Maybe it's school choice, maybe something else. And then we got to wean ourselves off these addictions.

I think I think you're right about public schools in that if we just shut them down overnight or they went away, it would hurt a lot of people. Parents rely on this is why Trump's been so adamant. Like, we got to get the schools open because people want to go to work and their kids need to go somewhere, be occupied. I hate that. I think it's a huge problem. And I think we've given away our responsibilities as parents. So I think we need to change this, but it's like a drug. We just end it. It causes massive destabilization. The same thing is true with our healthcare system. So my thing is, I've said over and over again, I would love universal healthcare. The difference between us and many European countries is that universal healthcare in Europe was born out of World War II, a necessity, a mandate, and it had to exist. In the US, we've tied our economy up to it to an extreme degree,

where I think it's wonderful to want a system where we can guarantee, what did we call it? Non-acute treatments are universal. Is that what you were saying? Well, yeah. Acute treatment you would fund. I like the idea of doing that, but like, um, chronic treatment, I wouldn't want to fund. Right. Right. Right. Right. Like if you eat poorly and then you get like chronic disease. So just, I find that that's usually dietary and I don't want to fund other people's chronic diseases, but acute problems, like they fell down the brick, their leg, there's an emergency. I like funding that stuff. Exactly. People shouldn't – you have – it's hard to quantify where we draw that line on what would qualify as a chronic thing caused by you or whatever.

But I think ultimately my point is flipping that over to get off the addiction of this like – I'll tell you a story, man. I got a kidney stone in 2014. And the bill was like $20,000 for going to the hospital and being given water and painkillers, 20 grand. And then I told them, it's the worst timing ever. I just changed jobs right after I left Vice. And there was a week period where I was unemployed. And they were like, oh, oh, no problem. It's $4,000. I'm like, that's still a ridiculously large amount of money. But why did you just cut off so much of the price? And they were like, we thought you had insurance. I'm like, that makes literally no sense. No, they make it up.

That's how the hospitals they're in bed with or some say coerced by the insurance agencies. You know, they literally just make up these numbers. And then they say, hey, insurance company, you don't have to pay this much. This guy has to pay this much. You get to pay a tenth of that. And it's great. And they dropped the price for me when they realized I didn't have to pay this much this guy has to pay this much you get to pay a tenth of that and it's it's great and they drop the price for me when they realize i didn't right and some but because it's inflated because sometimes you know it's like with other debts like uh if you're if your student debt gets collected you know um you can actually argue it down from debt collectors you know if it's thirty thousand dollars you can sometimes say

like oh my god my car just crashed and my arm fell off and i'm dying please god and they'll knock it down a little bit but they're operating in the margins, whatever they bought for it. With the hospital though, they inflate this so high that the actual relationship between the cost of care and what you have to pay is, it's like fantasy. I think we could start with covering basic acute treatment, broken bones, really simple place and like flu and immediate sicknesses. So we can make sure kids aren't dying of, you know, really simple place and like a flu and immediate sicknesses. So we can make sure kids aren't dying of, you know, because their parents couldn't

afford Tamiflu like that one story, getting to the point where we can cover chronic treatments and severe treatments could be really, really difficult. But my main point is I would love to live in a world where it's like you could walk in and there's no bill. The problem is we have two very different circumstances for how some countries emerged in their national health systems versus how we developed ours. So I think it's like what 20 of our economy is tied to health care and i think bernie sanders said was it two to four million jobs i think would be lost if we abolished i like the idea of acute treatment plus private health care for supplemental uh ultimately getting to a point where we have a functioning system would be very

very difficult but i'm for it i don't want to rant too much on that. I'm already angry that you can buy Pepsi with food stamps and then go into the doctor because you have the flu because of the Pepsi. And then I'm not going to pay for it. Well, I do want to say though, if we do want to drop the cost of healthcare in this country, we also need to start regulating food companies way, way harder. We don't, one of the reasons why we have this obesity epidemic, it's not because people got less responsible or whatever. Our moral character didn't decline. The chemicals they put in food are designed to make them addictive, and they use whatever

chemicals make them addictive, and those chemicals tend to be really, really bad for you. And I think that, listen, you're an American. You have a God-given right to eat as many twin pieces you want on any given day. But I think we also have to recognize, just as a matter of public policy, that it may be good to make it easier for the average person to get a hold of quick, cheap, easy food items that weren't made out of kerosene and toothpicks. Don't pollute the environment with your body. We have a lot of anti-Vosch comments. But Zephan says,

I disagree with Vosh a lot, but I'm glad you've had him on and would like to see it again or someone similar. Also, is that a new watch? It is. It is. Fancy.

Because I've been doing, I'm trying to track fitness. We started with watches again. To measure your biometrics or something? Yeah. Oh, nice. Apparently, I have a really great heart rate. I'm very fit.

Oh, awesome, dude. He's fit. Who knew? What are your numbers? So my resting heart rate this morning was like 46. Wow. That actually is really good. I skate almost every day.

And now I'm mountain biking. And yeah. I've been trying to go on a jog every morning since lockdown. Jogger walk, man. Coronavirus. Shut down. Yeah, shut down. Yeah.

There you go. Tyga says, this guy makes me want to be a proud boy. Trump 21. There you go.iga says this guy makes me want to be a proud uh be a proud boy trump 21 there you go doing doing my work tommy groschung says great conversation for showing how this election comes down to low information versus high information voters i think that could go uh honestly depending on which which go either way man look i i do believe that's the case but i think it's fair to say that uh i'm not going to pretend like i know everything i think it's fair to say there's probably a bunch of clips of me looking like a moron you know none of me whatsoever right now like even the right is going to be like making memes saying you were so smart painting you yeah actually there was one comment

where someone said they agree with you on schools and they were shocked that's cool i like it like socialism what you realize when you have a conversation it was just not that different Actually, there was one comment where someone said they agree with you on schools and they were shocked. That's cool. I like it. They don't like socialism. What you realize when you have a conversation, we're just not that different, man. No, well, yeah, I think. Humans are so similar. I think a lot of our difference in opinions is rooted in what we've read. That's like the gist. That's why I said it earlier on.

Fundamentally, I am and always have been of the belief that given the right conditions and realistically speaking, the right media exposure, because we do live in two different worlds these days because of what's recommended to us and stuff, at least two at minimum two, I think functionally most people would want the same basic things. And I think we can find those, I think,

and we can work towards them. And it's just a matter of agreeing or disagreeing on the pragmatic implementation. Yeah. The founding fathers would go at it. A lot of these comments are like, Tim is really dumb. You nailed it, Tim. Vosh is so dumb.

Vosh is winning. So, you know, that's I'm bringing it up again for like the eighth time because I'm scrolling. There's a lot of a threat trend. Yeah. Polly V says you can't get mad at Trump for executive authority when you say he should have used more to force a national plan choose a side i think there are good and bad reasons to use national authority i that like um like uh um i'm trying to think of right example um imperialism for example hate it i mean lefty right what does american imperialism do kill democratically elected latin american socialists not my thing however sometimes

interventionism can be decent we had soldiers in syria for example that were helping out the rajavan army and then whatever the case may be together they were doing a phenomenal job against isis and rajava was a burgeoning anarchist project that was one of the and still is to this day one of the most legitimate examples of like a democratic anarchist society. By pulling out, we ended up endangering them. And we still have because of Turkey. And in that instance, I am in favor of military intervention. It's just a matter of how it's applied.

You know, the problem with like these these democratic anarchic states is. Well, they usually get destroyed by larger, more military. Right. Well, I'm of the opinion. An anarchist society can only truly exist, perpetually exist, in a global sense. Because the existence of outside authoritarian influence is a very strong destabilizing one. But what if the aliens come? Then we are well and truly gone, my friend.

Oh, okay. So authoritarian. Listen, anarchist world with highly authoritarian geosynchronous defense cannons. I'm into it, dude. Like an AI. Orbiting around. It bows to us. This is an account, and it's got the Antifa.

What is it called? The strikethrough? Is that the three arrows? The strikethrough? Oh, yeah, yeah. Three arrows. Yeah. Very nice comment.

And they said, DimTool, DimTool, your source on factcheck.org contradicts what you said in all caps. Oh. I accept it. I don't know. Well, what? I was reading a factcheck.org articles what you said in all caps. Oh. I accept it. I don't know. Well, what? I read.

I was reading a factcheck.org article and we didn't pull it up. So if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Yeah, I wasn't able to find it. My bad. I haven't seen any screens. I'm not the. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Let's see.

I'm vibing right now. A lot of it just. Vibing with Biden. No. You sure are. They're mad you're not wearing a mask. He was earlier. He was. He's wearing a mask. None of're not wearing a mask. He was earlier. He was.

He's wearing a mask. None of us are wearing masks. He's sanitized. He came in. We have hand sanitizer. He's wearing a mask. There we go. There we go.

We got it. Okay. All right. We got this. You don't need to wear a mask. I tried. I did everything in my power. I was literally under the desk trying to get it.

There was a cat sitting on a cable. I couldn't find it. Bosch is hot right now. Oh, shit. Oh, snap. I love it. There was a cat sitting on a cable. I couldn't find it. Vosh is hot right now. Oh, snap. I love it. Yes, thank you. Let's see. Albaloni facsimile says Trump blows Trump, then calls himself a centrist based.

What is that? Okay. Let's see. Ender says no federal aid by Trump. Didn't Trump send a Navy medical ship to NYC which went unused? If your argument is Trump didn't provide aid but he stayed to war powers to get businesses to convert to create masks and ventilators, yet Trump didn't use war. I got to find the other. War powers. War powers to get governors not to mess up, but the governors didn't mess up leading to those deaths.

Blasio didn't use the medical ship, didn't use Samaritan's Purse. Then we had like three months of riots where governors didn't prevent people from gathering, though. Well, the riots seemed to have not increased COVID-19 spread. There was a ton of data done in this. And it wasn't because people didn't get COVID at the riots. It was actually because the existence... By the way, by riots, we mean... I'm sorry, I shouldn't adopt this narrative.

The vast majority of these gatherings are protests without violence. These protests, while there was transmission amongst the people there uh people stay inside during protests i think well to be fair we we definitely need to draw a distinction between riots and protests in this regard well some protests are protests well no the protests that we're referring to are large gatherings of people marching down the street the protests would be way more at risk for covid 19 because because right people people don't march right next to each other during riots. People running around randomly. So that's an important distinction when we're talking about COVID. So with regard to the protests, it doesn't

seem like it's increased COVID-19 spread because people stay inside when there are protests because they don't want to get caught out in any of the mess. And maybe you can say that's a toxic disincentivization, but whatever the case may be, of course, there are governors who bungle this. Absolutely. And one of the unfortunate downsides of the way our system works is that we have to accept the fact that decentralization will lead to decentralized failures. That being said, I do think there were stronger federal steps that could have been taken, generally speaking, but we already went along with that. Austin Eris says Vosh discounts the public response to measures that are viewed too as too authoritarian. lots of people have gone crazy with things are now given the anti-authoritarian culture tracing to the founding people uh would be wildly great

wildly crazy i will say you know about the riots in europe right now over covid lockdowns right uh yeah well i'm not entirely sure what that donation was referring to um yeah well i, I think what they're saying, the first part, at least, you're discounting the public response to the COVID lockdown measures when people view them as authoritarian. So in Spain, Italy and Prague, there's rioting over the lockdown has been going on for several days. And in London, there's been clashes with police. I don't call it rioting, but it's overt rioting in Italy, for instance. I'm honestly mixed on the effectiveness of lockdowns just generally speaking i think that um i think that maybe if they had been done very early it would have been possible for us to contact trace um

and like very very early you know but that would have required a response so immediate that it's almost impractical for a government of this size at this point i really do think it's just about really really really promoting the mask wearing the social distancing and then additionally i think we need to divert funds towards providing businesses and schools materials that they need to um uh to operate more safely whether that be plexiglass screens or like cleaning materials vitamin d i hear is really good for you yeah everyone could use some use some vitamin D. I got it. Mark Grains says, can confirm, Tim definitely plays Orzhov stacks, Lids plays Boros,

I think Ian would play obscure Simic combo deck, Vosh plays mono green stompy. Dude. Simic? I like green. Green and blue, right? Simic, green and blue? Green stompy? You animal. He's red and blue? Yeah. Let's go. Green stompy? You animal.

He's red and green. Come on, man. Is this black? It's black and white. Tim doesn't play black and white. Tim's got some blue in him and also some red. Yeah. Tim's kind of fiery.

He's not playing. Yeah. All of my decks are blue. He's white. White, blue, red. Yeah. All of my decks are blue. You don't want to give Tim black.

That's dangerous. I was green. I hate black, too. I don't think any of us like that whoa whoa whoa whoa nobody here was talking about magic i completely disavow oh no i don't know where i am check please i don't know what you're talking about stephanie b says now 27 back in uni, had to take ethnic class, learned colorism, was told because I'm pale, I'm less Mexican than someone darker.

Even if they didn't speak Spanish, lived in Mexico, I did. It's racist, toxic BS. Well, I don't think. BS. Tim's intelligence and looks are highly attractive. Oh, snap. That's the best part. I like that.

Nailed it. We'll take it. I obviously don't think. Again, judging from the characterization, because you never know how accurate people are retelling anything that's obviously not very good the difference though distinctly is that a mexican is an ethnicity not a race of course when it comes to race a race is a social construct like we were all talking earlier what makes a race like skin color even that not really facial features facial features yeah but even then like you can find people who if like they're like they're black people you know but if you change the tone of their skin you would instantly assume

they were white looking at them you can find black people for whom that is not the case and then genetically it's a whole mess underneath the surface so when we talk about like what makes a person more white i mean am i more white than tim i it's there's obviously no objective well if we look at genealogy i mean i'm all european so by that measure sure but when it comes to like culturally how do we treat people you know there are black people who get treated like pretty good because they're really really light skin and it's really complicated i made a a joke in a video once about mixed race supremacy like being sarcastic because i was that's the future well i was reading an article that said that um people with uh parents

from different parts of the planet typically have uh it's not hybrid vigor but it's kind of more robust immune systems right uh more diverse genetics results in you know more robust certain features or whatever and so i was making a joke about it and i was kind of poking fun at ethno nationalism and a bunch of leftist screenshotted it to make it look like i was actually against myself it was the weirdest weirdest thing people have tried to smear i unironically believe that by the way i mean eventually assuming we don't do some really weird international ethno-national stuff uh eventually we're all going to be a light shade of mocha you know every yeah i i'm not entirely sure i think maybe but china's ethno-nationalist we'll see how long i do not like china very much we'll see how

long that goes and then of course eventually i mean even if it's like everyone's light mocha brown eventually the people who have settled in africa are going to get darker and the people who have settled in scandinavia get lighter but whatever the case is i i'm just glad we can travel around the planet do you want to something crazy There's like, I was reading this article about a place in China where the people there are very white, but with Asian features. And there's a legend of a Roman legion that was making its way that never came back. And they think it's settled and then had a big family and created this area where all these people have like white Mediterranean. I look it up. Yeah.

And people don't realize that Russia is in Asia. And like like they don't realize that russia is north of north yeah they call it european but it's all asia yeah it's almost almost all asia there's a lot of people in eastern russia who have asian features there's a lot of a lot of that with uh polynesian features as well there are places all from like South Africa, all the way up to Japan and Russia, and even parts of Africa, apparently where there's genetic clusters of people who the old like a seafaring Polynesian cultures would go to. It's actually pretty crazy how much diversity there was even before we were really an international species. Yeah, I think we need to clarify to when you said race is a race is a social construct, because this is something that I think

is missed. Like there's there's a semantic difference between left and right on this one we're talking about the there's a phenomenon where like you might see someone who is an albino black person and people will say that person is black regardless and there are people who are who identify as black even though their skin is clearly white which which shows that, you know, what features define what we qualify as like a race or whatever. The other argument that the reason I bring this up is that there is a genetic component to specific races as we view them. And this is important because we actually have a law that protects people based on medical research to make sure they're getting adequate treatment.

So I think sickle cell anemia is more prominent among African-Americans. Yeah. So it's going down since they since they they got shipped over here apparently because a lot of it was uh um geographically determined so like the conditions necessary because the malaria is not weird weird thing mal air they don't really it doesn't really have a meaning yeah it's a bad air but the the uh with regards to the social construct thing it's, it's all a matter of social perception. For a while, Italian people were considered swarthy, kind of the way we would consider Spanish people,

but now Spanish people are white. Obama is genetically half black and half white, but we all consider him black. The world is not so black and white, is what they tell me. But people are? No, we're not. And yet you hate black

as a species to not call each other white and black i think well that's the thing we didn't until the mid-1600s the entire modern conceptualization of race was like an ad hoc intuitive response to a desire to scientifically separate the races and what we ended up with was a system to cement white supremacy initially that was literally like we're bringing slaves over from africa we know we're better than them let's study the genes as they knew it back then skull shapes whatever phrenology yeah yeah exactly so so they were like well of course we're different look at our brow shape so here are the three categorizations of man yeah and and we what we use today are intuitive asian black white exactly the same

we've updated a little same basic system i got i got a comment that might make you angry give me are you sure i'm ready do it hindu andy says tell vosh to debate nick fuentes he always dodges him dude i so the position that i'm in right here is that um i'm totally fine to have nick on the channel uh if he wants to come on and he keeps like posturing on his own. All I ask, he just send me an email. We can like set up a time. It's really that simple. But I never get that.

Come on, Nick, let's do it. I want to say this. Like, I know there are a lot of people that on the left who are going to insult me and so you, I brought up a million times, but I've been reaching out to a bunch of lefties and Vosh was like, I'm totally down. It was a simple booking.

We reached out to you. We set it up. You came on the show. There are a lot of other people who are like, it'm totally down. It was a simple booking. We reached out to you. We set it up. You came on the show. There are a lot of other people who are like, it's impossible. They either ignore or they deflect. They won't do it. There's a lot of people who don't do this, but I'm grateful that you came on. Yeah, of course. I love

talking to people. It's actually a little bit annoying though because I've said like 80 times just email me. Please. It's actually a little bit like kind of annoying though, because I've said like 80 times, like just email me, please. Just cool. Yeah. But it's,

it's midnight. I think we, yeah. So I'm making faces over here because we really got to call it. Cause I got to get up and clip this up in the morning. I'm calling a lid. That's what I do. I have a,

a early flight to catch. We're going to have to do this. Yeah. We do four hours. Oh my gosh. I really appreciate you coming on. I'm glad we had a lot to talk about. We had like a second wind at 1030.

Oh, my gosh. That's what happened. Awesome. I don't know. You brought up the time, and then we were all, you know, we all were invigorated. I'm not tired. I'm not either, man. You will be in the morning.

You know what invigorating is? I feel like we've been playing D&D. Well, I think a lot of the conversations that we typically have are with people that we've either heard from or ideas we've heard. And so with you, it's like we're getting into a lot of things and challenging having a back and forth, which is good. And everybody thinks I'm the smartest person in the universe, and we want to have real conversations with people, and that's what we did. So I'm going to wrap it up. Do you want to mention your channel or whatever for people who hate you to troll you or for people to like you to subscribe?

Sure, yeah. If you enjoyed what I had to say or if you didn't but are just really angry and want to let me know, I'm on YouTube at Vosh, which is V-A-U-S-H. And yeah, I don't know. I do political commentary. I'm a libertarian socialist.

I also play video games a lot. It's a fun time. Cool, man. Appreciate you coming on. And we'll have you back, dude, whenever. Yeah, for sure. You can follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Parler, at TimCast. You can follow my other channels, YouTube.com slash TimCast, YouTube.com slash TimCastNews. We are also on every single podcast platform, wherever they exist. Of course, you can follow Ian.

Yes, Ian Crossland. That is at Ian Crossland. And you can follow me anywhere. Twitter, Instagram, YouTube. I have a YouTube channel. Oh, yeah. And, of course, you can follow at Sour instagram youtube i have a youtube channel and of course you can follow at sour patch lids i am here still here four hours later i'm dying over here i'm tired but i've had this such a great conversation l y d s friends i wish you good

tidings and good clippings of this video oh gosh probably ian saying yes. I said I hate black. That was really messed up. Come on, Ian. What the heck, man? Talking about the color of the magic. Magic the Gathering. Alright, it's too late.