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talkingpointsusa · 11 months ago

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I Watched Charlie Kirks Awful MAGA Conference So You Don't Have To.

America should classify this as a national embarrassment

Well folks, consider this the Talking Points USA Christmas Special (not sure if I can get this all done before Christmas because there's a LOT of ground to cover but we'll see).

In case you weren't aware, the far-right student group Turning Point USA held their annual four day AmericaFest conference and the guest list was a who's who of far-right assholes. Many people at AmFest went viral for their extremely deranged comments, particularly revolving around Gaza. I can't wait /s.

Considering that the blogs name is a literal jab at Turning Point USA, I figured what better way to celebrate the end of the year than by fact-checking and making fun of the biggest event they have held this year?

So, let's get into it shall we?

First thirty minutes of the livestream of day one are waiting for the livestream to start. Then the national anthem, then more singing, then finally 49 minutes in the man himself arrives, Charlie Kirk. In case you aren't aware, Charlie is the founder and CEO of Turning Point USA and the reason why this is all happening (and as a result my current mortal enemy).

Charlie is somewhat hard to place on the grifter VS true believer scale, but he certainly does take a lot of money from right-wing billionaires. Since there are multiple speakers here, they'll all be referred to via their names after the timestamp (especially since sometimes they are speaking to each other and there are probably some speeches you want to read me dunking on as opposed to others). Charlie has his own show which we will definitely talk about on the blog at some point, but for now let's see what he has to say to start off the party!

Also, trigger warning: Racism, transphobia, sexism, misogyny really just all the ism's and everything wrong with the right in America. God, these people suck. Let's get on with it.

50:13, Charlie Kirk: "13,000 people in Phoenix Arizona for the largest multi day conservative event in the history of this country."

Does Charlie not realize that 13,000 people isn't all that impressive? I mean, not to rain on his parade or anything but the Toronto Pride Parade (for example) had 2.4 million spectators. If you want a similar political event, what about CPAC? I would imagine that CPAC has pulled more people in the past.

Anyway, moving on. Charlie does some completely irrelevant crap. "Give it up for the staff", listing some of the countries who have attendees at the conference, then his actual speech begins.

52:06, Charlie Kirk: "We're living through a top-down revolution everybody. We're living through a revolution that's different than most others. It is a cultural revolution, similar to Mao's China, but this revolution is when the powerful, the rich, the wealthy, decide to use their power and their wealth to go after you."

Charlie Kirk, taker of right-wing billionaire money and a man who has made a career out of defending the literal richest man in the world, has the absolute gall to play the "the rich are coming for you" card. And by the way, Charlie himself has a net worth of $27 Million and has a salary of $900,000. That's more than I can imagine making in my entire lifetime. Pretty much everybody speaking at this conference is equally wealthy. So, Charlie and his band of dimwits are certainly members of this class he's talking about.

Also, there is no way "some guy I don't like is president" is even comparable to Mao's China!

52:28, Charlie Kirk: "Instead of building hospitals and improving our country, they are spending their money to destroy the greatest country ever to exist in the history of the world."

Surely Charlie and his fellow wealthy right-wingers can spend their money to build hospitals and improve the country....right?

52:56, Charlie Kirk: "This country has never lived through the wealthiest hating the country."

This statement makes zero sense.

The fact that he's saying "this country has never lived through" implies that America has went through a period with the wealthiest hating the country, yet America is still around? So I guess either America has lived through the wealthiest hating the country or America has never had the wealthiest hating the country before.

Charlie Kirk's orator skills are almost on par with Dave Rubin's.

54:13, Charlie Kirk: "I inherently don't trust you if you have an office in DC."

Guess Charlie doesn't like the Republican Party, you know the guys Trump is campaigning under, much. Also, might I add that a lot of the people speaking here are congresspeople from DC. So don't give me this "Oh, I hate Washington and the government" crap.

54:18, Charlie Kirk: "You know what the other division is? It's the powerful and the well connected versus the middle class."

"Now, let me and my wealthy friends explain to you why you should vote against your best interests."

I'm leaning towards Charlie being a grifter as opposed to a true believer the more he talks.

55:01, Charlie Kirk: "The elites don't mean well when you have a wide-open border and 12,000 people are coming across the border every single day."

Biden is dealing with the ruins of Trump's immigration policy. When the Trump Administration made it absurdly hard to get into the country legally people naturally decided to try and come in legally.

Also, what was being done by the Republican's to fix the problems in Mexico that are causing the illegals to want to come here? An overpriced border wall? I'm not saying Biden is doing great at solving this humanely either, but this isn't a Democrat caused issue.

55:08, Charlie Kirk: "The elites don't mean well when they go after our children and they castrate our children in the name of 'medicine'"

As I say every single time one of these clowns calls gender-affirming care "castration", puberty blockers and hormones are reversible and are not being used on children.

Surgery is only available to people 18 and up and hormone therapy is only available to people 16 and up. Let's see an example of a child being given surgery before we make stupid claims, ok?

55:14, Charlie Kirk: "Our elites don't mean well when they put (I think he meant "take", again Charlie is such a master speaker) the leader of an opposition political party and try to put him in jail for 700 years."

Donald Trump being the leader of an opposition political party doesn't make him exempt from being put on trial for crimes, one of those being attempting to overthrow the entire government!

55:57, Charlie Kirk: "11 years ago, when Turning Point USA started, I could not have imagined what God had in store for this organization."

TIL that God is a cabal of right wing billionaires.

56:17, Charlie Kirk: "By the way, god bless Elon Musk I hope he sues Media Matters."

"Yeah, I hate elites....except for the richest man in the world. Since he let my shithead friends back on Twitter and agrees with my racist beliefs he's ok."

56:27, Charlie Kirk: "Where they (Media Matters) attack Turning Point and they say 'Oh, Turning Point just does events.'"

A): How is that an attack?! One of the main things Turning Point USA does is coordinate events like this. What does he want people to say? That Turning Point is the rebellion or something?

B): That's not even in the top 100 problems with Turning Point. For example, one of their main issues is that they have a history of rape at their student conventions, but I doubt Charlie is ever going to mention that. Also, platforming people on the far-right but we'll talk more about that later.

56:44, Charlie Kirk: "Elon Musk liberating Twitter will go down as one of the greatest free speech victories in the history of Western Civilization."

I guess Elon is one of the good elites because he let Nazi's and Alex Jones back on Twitter, goes to show who Charlie here aligns with.

56:51, Charlie Kirk: "You know how awesome it is where we can log onto Twitter and we can say 'Yeah, you know, Dylan Mulvaney, he's a man. Rachel Levine is a man, and kind of like a creepy pervert honestly.'"

So all I am hearing so far is that this "Twitter liberation" consists of allowing people like Charlie to be nasty and cruel about people they've never met's sexual orientation. I would like to see that evidence of Rachel Levine being a pervert, too bad they don't have that evidence because all this is is a way to attack transgender people for being who they are.

57:06, Charlie Kirk: "That January 6th is probably an inside job, it's more of a fedsurrection than anything else."

Now would be a great time to remind everybody that on January 5th, Charlie tweeted out that Turning Point Action and Students for Trump were sending 80+ buses of patriots to D.C to "fight for the president", then deleted the tweet when he realized it could get him into hot water legally.

Charlie Kirk isn't just running cover for an insurrection he knows was caused by the right, he's part of the reason that it happened in the first place.

57:12, Charlie Kirk: "And that 99% of people on January 6th did nothing wrong?"

Wait, I thought it was a "fedsurrection". So, just so we're clear, the insurrection was led by the feds but also even if they were Trump supporters, 99% of them didn't do anything wrong when they tried to overthrow the government.

We're only on day one out of four and I want to rip my hair out and eat it.

57:14, Charlie Kirk: "That we can go on Twitter and say that George Floyd wasn't a hero and that Derek Chauvin was targeted in a Soviet style trial that was anti-American and un-American."

Like every single other human being on Earth, George Floyd wasn't perfect, that doesn't make Derek Chauvin killing him excusable. If holding the police accountable is anti-American, American's live in a brutal police-state where the police can run around killing anyone they want.

Side-note, anti-American and un-American are the exact same thing only said in a different way. Something that's anti-American would be inherently un-American.

57:34, Charlie Kirk: "One of the main victory of 2023 is that we can say 'That's BS'. No, you're not going to trans our kids."

Nobody is "transing kids" because you cannot change somebodies sexuality. This "think of the children" rhetoric is just a framework that people like Charlie use to justify their irrational and bigoted hatred of a minority group that, like all of us, just wants to live their lives.

58:04, Charlie Kirk: "When we started Turning Point USA, we started in a very very humble way"

Charlie Kirk's father, Robert W Kirk, was a wealthy architect who was actually project manager for the Trump Tower (oh what a tangled web we weave) so this isn't exactly a "rags to riches" story on Charlie's part. Also, here's a bit on how Turning Point is being funded.

Charlie tells his version of the story about how Turning Point started. It's not really anything important.

1:00:33, Charlie Kirk: "A recent poll shows that high school boys are the most conservative that they have been in 50 years."

All the right-wing ghouls that have bandied this poll about as proof that young boys "seeing the light" and becoming conservative fail to mention that a whopping 64 percent of boys identified as "I don't know", which makes sense considering that high school boys are normally more concerned about getting their homework done and getting into a good college than politics.

Essentially, this poll doesn't say what Charlie says it does. Shocker.

1:01:04, Charlie Kirk: "They want a guy with a lisp zipping around on a lime scooter with a fanny pack, carrying his birth control, supporting his wifes career, while he works as a supportive stay at home house-husband."

As we'll see later on when we get to the guy who goes on a rant against suffrage at some point during this conference (Day three.), there's this bizarre trend of boldfaced misogyny that runs through the entire event.

Also, that sounds like a nice guy and a supportive husband? The guys supporting his wifes career and her choice not to have children (I'm guessing he means condoms when he says "birth control", I always find it so dumb that these guys are both anti-abortion and anti-birth control).

What's Charlie's "ideal" male? From the sounds of it, it's guy who "puts his wife in her place" using his fists because hey, that's masculine!

1:01:29, Charlie Kirk: "At Turning Point USA we resoundingly reject this. We believe in strong, alpha, godly, high-t, high achieving, confident, and disruptive men, are the hope, not the problem, in America."

These kinds of hyper-masculine gender rolls, when pushed as the be all and end all of being a man, have been shown to be harmful to young boys who don't fit these norms. It's essentially putting pressure on young boys to be this specific person that often times they're not, not to mention the harm this rhetoric does to boys who fall on the LGBTQ+ spectrum.

The truth is that there are all kinds of men, and that's great! What makes us human are those beautiful differences, and people like Charlie Kirk are downplaying that. And for what? The fact that they hate women, they hate minorities, and they hate LGBTQ+ people.

It comes back around, like most things do with these people, to a complete and utter lack of empathy.

Charlie plays a video of him arguing with some guy on a college campus, he proceeds to mock him (and has the gall to call himself and the people at Turning Point USA "Warriors", Charlie Kirk is one of those grifters who really sniffs his own farts).

But Charlie does ask the guy in the video to ask him to name something he's said that's racist and the guy, since he's a college kid who can't immediately rattle off every single thing Charlie Kirk has said, doesn't answer. So I took that as a challenge and found some things that Charlie Kirk has said that are, in fact, racist.

On July 14th, 2023, Charlie Kirk declared that Michelle Obama was one of the black women who "stole a white persons spot".

On November 16th, 2023, Charlie defended the antisemitic remarks that Elon Musk made on Twitter by saying that "Some of the largest financiers of left-wing anti-white causes have been Jewish Americans"

On May 19th, 2023, Charlie declared on his show that "Prowling blacks go around for fun to go target white people."

Those are just some examples of Charlie Kirk being a raging racist, and I'm sure when we start covering his show we'll find more. So the claim that Charlie has "never said anything racist" can be disproved with a 20 second google search.

1:04:11, Charlie Kirk: "There are no genders, two sexes, and unlimited personalities."

The no genders and two sexes thing is a completely scientifically inaccurate and overly simplistic way of looking at gender. Plus, what about intersex people? Even ignoring the countless studies saying that gender is a massive and wide spectrum, saying there are two sexes is completely innaccurate if you think of even that one example.

Let's talk about this unlimited personalities shit. First of all, your sexuality isn't a personality. That's a bizarre and ridiculous characterization. Since Charlie is cisgender, is his personality "I'm Charlie and I'm cis"?!

Let's also not forget that Charlie just went on a massive screed about how men can only be hyper-masculine caricatures. I guess there are unlimited personalities but in Charlies world, males can only have one.

Charlie then does what is basically an ad for Turning Point USA. Really this entire opening speech is just an ad for Turning Point USA with bigoted garbage peppered in to excite the audience. Another video of "Charlie Kirk destroys a lefty with facts and logic", in it he asks some women "What is a Woman?" in an attempt to rip off Matt Walsh (and we'll get to the OG What Is A Woman at some point, believe me).

1:07:54, Charlie Kirk: "Newly launched Turning Point Academy"

When the right says that the left is indoctrinating children, point towards stuff like this and PragerU Kids. Turning Point Academy is basically teaching materials geared towards Turning Points right wing values.

Oh, but a pride flag in a school is indoctrination.

More unimportant crap. Charlie whines about COVID lockdowns a bit, if I were him I'd just pretend that time period never happened because him and the rights whole thing that the left was going to never end the lockdowns and we'd be stuck in a left wing dictatorship never came to pass. Again, if the church decided to hold big services during COVID, people would have died. Bashes George Floyd some more and finally introduces "Turning Point USA Faith", which seems to be Charlie's mission to turn every church into the Westboro Baptist Church. Talks about how great Candace Owens is, irrelevant. He basically says nothing in this segment so we don't need to talk about it (especially with how long this blog post is gonna be). After that, more bigotry!

1:15:50, Charlie Kirk: "You know, some people say 'That's not very tolerant', good! I think we've tolerated enough nonsense over the last decade, don't you?"

Oh poor Charlie, I feel so bad for him. How awful that he's being forced to tolerate trans people existing.

For Gods sakes, and they call us the snowflakes. This is guy who has devoted his entire career to basically throwing a giant tantrum.

Verbal ad for Turning Point Action, says more hateful stuff about trans people. I don't care and I'd just repeat myself. He keeps throwing BS 'counter-arguments' like "Charlie, Turning Point Action is too aggressive". I'm shocked he didn't say "You know, people say to me 'Charlie you're too handsome and intelligent'". That's the level we are at.

1:26:27, Charlie Kirk: "If you're a young person in here, and you say 'Boy, what do I wanna do for my life'? Honestly, you should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible, period!"

First of all, you should wait until you find someone who truly makes you happy, no matter how long that takes. And if you don't want to marry at all or you marry but don't want kids, that's totally ok too. It's a free country and if these guys dictated the way we all lived our lives, half of us would be dead. Plus, the divorce rates of people who marry young speak for themselves. 60% of couples who marry between the ages of 20-25 end up divorcing compared to 25% if you wait until after 25.

Second of all, unless you have a really stable source of income to support them, having as many kids as possible in this economy is a really bad idea and will just lead to kids growing up poor and miserable.

1:26:46, Charlie Kirk: "Everyday I receive emails from young women filled with regret, in their late 30's, saying 'Charlie, I'm sobbing as I write this email because what you talk about on the show is exactly right. I have a couple college degrees, I have a great job and almost no debt, but I was told to forgo having a family but now I'm looking around and I have a lot of cats and no kids.'"

In the history of things that never happened, this is one of the things that never happened the most.

Shoutout to all the cat owners reading this by the way, hope your fur babies are doing well and I am glad you've made it this far (as is the case with all of you).

1:28:43: "The globalists are worried that you are waking up."

As I've said before, in far-right circles the term "globalist" is a common dog-whistle for "jew". Given all the people speaking at this conference who have a history of antisemitism and Charlie's own history of antisemitism which I mentioned in passing earlier, I don't see this as anything but intentional.

Charlie's speech finally ends and it's time for Roseanne Barr's speech. This is one of those "viral" moments from the conference since Roseanne went on a bizarre and racist rant about how a Muslim capitulate is going to spread across the world led by "stalinists". Roseanne Barr, for the uninitiated, is a former comedian and current Conservative "comedian" who has came under fire for seemingly embracing the alt-right. She's also a holocaust denier, although she claims it was sarcasm....sure it was. In short, I fully believe that the MAGA movement has rotted this womans brain.

We have what is basically a commercial break and then Roseanne takes the stage. The beginning portion is just a very extended "thank you for coming" but she's already speaking in a rather slow and unhinged way, the audience is pretty quiet. Then, the unhinged bit begins.

1:42:47, Roseanne Barr: "Do you wanna talk about how great it feels to like, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, FIGHT!!! FIGHT!!!!! FIGHT!!!! And then win?"

Yes, she said fight that many times and yes, it got more deranged each time she says it. Compared to Charlie Kirk's very political and self congratulatory speech, this was a completely different ballgame and the audience could tell as well. There wasn't really any applause for that fight thing, the audience really did seem like it was stunned into silence.

I never thought I'd say this, but I kind of feel sorry for Glenn Beck here. He's up after Barr and he has the weight of picking up the pieces of the conference after a deranged screed. Half the audience is gonna be riled up after Barr leaves and the other half is gonna be wondering "what the hell just happened?" None of them are going to care very much about what a guy who is basically "The Alex Jones at home" has to say. But I guess we shall soon see.

Also, I can't communicate this really easily through text but the second she took the stage I could immediately tell she was wasted. While I obviously wasn't there live, the general way she speaks is slurred and incoherent. She's tripping over her words and is jumping from bizarre tangent to bizarre tangent with no focus whatsoever. She's totally drunk and I recommend you watch the entire speech to see what I mean.

So the two keynote speakers advertised in the thumbnail are total busts. Charlie's speech is basically him doing an awful Trump impression whilst advertising for Turning Point USA and Roseanne is doing hers completely wasted. I would not be happy if I paid $60 for this crap.

She drunkenly reads Patrick Henry, it's not really anything to talk about or fact check. Then the insanity truly begins.

1:47:49, Roseanne Barr: "I'm just all in, you know, I said 'I'm all in' cause you know if I ain't all in they're gonna put my ass in a gulag."

Hey Tim Pool (Who's also speaking here but we'll get to that eventually), since you went off on Maddow for sarcastically saying that Trump would put her on trial for treason, you'd better come take a look at this.

Before you say she was joking, her tone is dead serious here. I'm not sure if it's the booze or if she's genuinely so delusional she thinks she'll be put in a gulag if Biden wins.

I do believe that, unlike a lot of the grifters here, Roseanne is a true believer. However I believe this is because she is legitimately mentally ill and that QAnon and MAGA dumped gasoline onto the fires of her delusions.

1:48:03, Roseanne Barr: "I don't really wanna...go to a reeducation camp and have to give all my money away to a bunch of losers who never know how to get a job"

I genuinely feel bad for this woman. Not that it excuses what she's done but this is clearly not a woman who is mentally well. If you factor in the traumatic brain injury and history of mental illness she has, this becomes a whole lot darker.

I know someone who has paranoid delusions and Roseanne sounds like a drunker version of her. I'm not a psychologist but I think Roseanne genuinely has something going on mentally. Plus, you're clearly not in a good headspace if you show up to a major speaking engagement completely wasted.

I think someone in her life needs to step in and get her the help she needs. Instead, shitheads like Charlie Kirk, Alex Jones, and Ben Shapiro are parading her around like a circus attraction and encouraging her delusions because she's a celebrity who's on their team. The sad thing is that if she was offered psychiatric help, she'd turn it down thinking that it's "leftist reeducation".

1:48:18, Roseanne Barr: "If we don't stop these horrible, communist, do you hear me? I'm asking you to hear me. STALINIST, COMMUNIST, With a huge helping of Nazi fascist thrown in."

I obviously don't need to explain how the left isn't a bunch of Nazi's and how this red terror stuff is ridiculous and so inaccurate that a majority of the right abandoned it when the mid-90's rolled in. Not to mention the fact that communism and Nazism are two opposing ideologies, look at WW2 and you'll see that communists and nazis don't get along too well.

Imagine being a member of the audience right now. You're expecting a comedian to lighten the mood after a serious speech from Charlie Kirk and instead you're met with a rant from a woman who is clearly mentally disturbed. No wonder they're silent, they're witnessing this womans booze and conspiracy fueled mental breakdown live.

1:49:01, Roseanne Barr: "To replace every Christian democracy on Earth now, occupied do you know that?"

Someone should send this to Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing up at the Daily Wire since she's gonna be working for them soon!

If you want a case study of what MAGA does to the brain, look at how this woman went from a seemingly progressive actress to rambling about how every Christian democracy is "occupied" (?).

1:49:44, Roseanne Barr: "We just want the truth about EVERYTHING THAT WE FOUGHT, AND DIED, AND SUFFERED TO PROTECT! WE JUST WANT THE TRUTH."

She legitimately sounds on the verge of tears here, and unlike Alex Jones who fake cries all the freaking time I think it's legit.

I mean, I get that it's Charlie running this thing and he's made a career out of embarrassing himself to "own the libs" but if it was me I would be working overtime to make this go away and make Roseanne stop talking.

You've got to keep this in context. Charlie just spent a good hour telling me that Turning Point USA is a serious organization and that some of the great thinkers of the conservative movement are going to be speaking at this conference, then the second he leaves the stage Roseanne comes on and has what is basically a televised psychotic break.

If I were him I'd first of all get Roseanne off that stage ASAP. I'd probably apologize and speak about more Turning Point USA business related stuff for the rest of her timeslot and then usher Glenn Beck in as was planned. Then I'd apologize again on Twitter and assure that Turning Point will be putting steps in place to get Roseanne the psychiatric help she needs. Just leaving this unaddressed makes Charlie look like a dick who is exploiting a mentally ill woman (which he is) and Roseanne look completely delusional (which she is).

1:53:04, Roseanne Barr: "Like gay and libtard, woah that's a double. That's some hard MKULTRA mind control to get over there."

I don't know what's more disgusting, this statement or the fact that some members of the audience cheered for it. Again, I do think she's mentally ill, but that only goes so far and I can't handwave blatant and disgusting homophobia.

I find this bizarre given the fact that she was quite progressive back in the day, even introducing gay characters into her show. She even attended the Clinton inauguration while out of character. I admit to having never watched Roseanne or it's reboot, but watching clips of Roseanne during interviews back in the day on YouTube is like a night and day difference, and not because she's older.

Not much more that's important is said by Barr and the speech concludes. Another ad for TPUSA and Charlie's book about how college is bad, since he's a college dropout this feels rather salty. Then Glenn takes the stage.

For those who don't know, Glenn Beck is a former FOX News host who now runs BlazeTV which is also the home of his show. His schtick is basically being a dime store Alex Jones. We probably will cover it at some point depending on how easy it is to access.

Whenever I think of Glenn I think of this:

youtube

The second he opens you can tell that Glenn is good at getting the audience engaged, which is good because the audience probably spent the entire break talking about how completely insane Roseanne is. This makes sense considering that Glenn has television and media training which has probably kicked into overdrive. He does some things to engage the audience and they work pretty well. It's not really the most important speech in the world so we'll probably skip a lot of it.

2:05:20, Glenn Beck: "I am so tired of being against the communists, the progressives, the insanity that is today."

Man, the Cold War never ended with these guys. I mean, I get that a certain generation of these guys were inspired by the John Birch Society and Glenn is one of them, but it might be time to modernize your nonsensical conspiracy gibberish.

2:05:41, Glenn Beck: "Let me show you some things on the chalkboard."

This caught my attention immediately. If you watched the clip I linked above you'd know why.

For those who aren't aware, Glenn Beck is/was notorious for drawing up and ranting about nonsensical diagrams on a chalkboard that supposedly prove his conspiracy theories...you know, like sane people do. He'd also fake cry a lot.

I don't think Glenn Beck is a true believer like Roseanne in the same way I don't think most of the guys who currently or formerly worked at FOX like Tucker Carlson are. Glenn, unlike Roseanne, doesn't have any evidence to suggest that he's mentally ill or really any evidence to suggest that he's doing this for anything other than the money.

2:06:18, Glenn Beck: "In Europe, what is the left? Communism, go on, say it!"

This is a completely insane thing to say.

In 1989, Romania's communist party ceased operations making it the last communist ran country in Europe. Nowadays, most of the former Eastern European countries are democracies, as are the countries that weren't ever communist to begin with.

What Glenn might be talking about here is Russia, but that isn't true either. Russia doesn't have a communist government, they have a far-right dictatorship.

2:07:16, Glenn Beck: "Fascists (in America) are on the left as well."

Oh really? So Donald Trump, the number one reason we are all here, isn't a fascist when he does things like calling his political opponents "vermin" and retweets quotes from literal fascists?

Fascists absolutely are on the right in America and Glenn knows it.

2:08:01, Glenn Beck: "What is the far-right in America? (Someone in the crowd yells "freedom" so that's where we're at). Anarchy, that's the extreme right."

Meanwhile a lot of members of the far-right, especially guys like Nick Fuentes, want to create an authoritarian theocratic dictatorship. So no, the far-right isn't anarchy.

And don't these guys complain about "left-wing anarchists" all the time? So I guess they're on the right now!

Glenn talks a bit about the constitution and how we're headed for fascism and does the same "You VS the unspecified elites even though I'm extraordinarily wealthy" thing that Charlie Kirk did earlier. Then he goes full conspiracy theorist.

2:18:38, Glenn Beck: "You can break the law and develop a virus in conjunction with China then cover all of that up, close the world down, be responsible for millions of deaths, an economy...just blowing it up around the entire world, telling people, taking their god given right away to make their own medical decisions."

So I guess Glenn believes that American and China both created the virus together, but how does that make any sense? If America and China created this together, to what end?

The lockdown is more or less over so the rights prediction that COVID would be used to usher in a left-wing dictatorship is demonstrably false, not to mention the zero pieces of evidence that America had any role in the creation of the virus.

2:21:01, Glenn Beck: "We're now worshipping the planet, the planet above all things.

Wanting to address climate change, which is a massive threat to the survival of the planet, isn't "worshipping the planet". If that's the case, than solving any problem is worshipping that problem.

2:21:58, Glenn Beck: "It is imperative that we know who we are and we know we are fighting not flesh and blood, but evil itself."

The "spiritual war" is one of the more insane talking points that the right in America likes to play these days and it's classic dehumanization of the opponents as well as a very good manipulation tactic.

Instead of "fighting" a political party that is ideologically different than you, you're now fighting against the literal incarnation of the devil and evil itself. This is a tactic that dehumanizes anyone opposed to you as either demons or influenced by demons and puts pressure on it's followers to never change their beliefs, after all you don't want to be on the side of evil!

This kind of manipulative language is used by another group, cults. By casting the world into this black and white framework of "our side VS pure evil", it prevents people who subscribe to MAGA ideology from engaging with points that the left, or really anybody who isn't a far right extremist, brings up because they are "evil".

I would argue that if anybody is holding up things as false idols, it's them. These people worship Donald Trump as the human embodiment of pure-good because that's how people like Glenn Greenwald keep the grift money flowing. As a result, Trump is elevated to a messianic level in MAGA circles to a point that could be easily argued is sacrilegious.

Glenn continues to play the fear card. Again, making the audience scared of the left works perfectly in his favor. This fearmongering is great for filtering people over to the Blaze where they'll buy Glenn's products to "fight evil" or whatever. There's nothing more we need to talk about in his speech, let's move on to the last speech of day one, Patrick Bet-David.

It starts with the VP of Patrick's company hawking some app he created, which is a great introduction to the biggest grifter here.

Patrick Bet-David is the CEO of the PHP Agency, an insurance MLM that has been accused by multiple people of being a pyramid scheme. He is also the founder of Valuetainment, a podcast geared towards "entrepreneurs". My main exposure to him was that time he interviewed a completely wasted Alex Jones in a hotel room (which was covered excellently by the Knowledge Fight podcast). We might cover him again here but how interesting his show is is completely guest dependent. He had Hannah-Pearl Davis (who we will DEFINETELY talk about later on) on at one point for example.

Patrick is a pure grifter through and through. He's made money off of the profitable scam of running a pyramid scheme and now he's making money off of the profitable scam of being a right-wing grifter.

His speech isn't particularly interesting and these guys are driving me nuts so we probably won't spend too much time on it. I will say that he's the most charismatic out of all of these guys. The beginning of his speech is about his background, not really important for our purposes.

2:58:31, Patrick Bet-David: "We are now afraid to pray in schools but we're ok with teaching all these other things to our kids, I'm not OK with that."

Good news Patrick, there's no need for your kids to be afraid to express their religion privately in school. As a matter of fact, it's quite common! Pew Research found that four-in-ten public school students say they routinely see other students praying before sporting events (Pew Research) and that about half of teens in American public schools say they sometimes see other students wearing religious symbols and jewelry.

However what that's code for is "We don't have religion in the curriculum anymore", and I think that's a good thing.

If you want your kids to have a more religious schooling, there are options available. Catholic and Christian schools exist. Public schools absolutely should keep religion out of the curriculum out of basic respect for people who may not practice that religion or are even secular!

Religion in curriculum at schools would also violate the separation of church and state. Since public schools are funded by property taxes, they are an arm of the state.

Patrick then lists off people who are "the enemies". These include unions (naturally this MLM huckster hates unions), LGBTQ indoctrination (which is a buzzword for LGBTQ people existing), and globalism (There's that antisemitic dog-whistle again.)

He then says a whole lot more of nothing. This is a lot like a Jordan Peterson motivational speech, just bland platitude after bland platitude. He talks about how they've gotta be "leaders", whatever. Then he decides to be a bigot, know your audience I guess.

3:05:06, Patrick Bet-David: "The second enemy are three communities."

Great, more us VS them. "Remember, these people are your enemy. That's why you've got to buy my crap!"

3:05:06, Patrick Bet-David: "Number one is the tolerant Christians"

If you actually look at the Bible, you'll find out that many of the things Christ said in it are encouraging tolerance. Here are some examples;

"With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love," - Ephesians 4:2

"And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” - John 8:7

And finally;

“Judge not, that you be not judged." - Matthew 7:1.

So unless Patrick is completely free from sin, which he isn't because he's an MLM con-artist and a hateful right-wing grifter, he should just shut up...at least that's what the Bible says.

3:05:36, Patrick Bet-David: "Do you think Jesus was a guy going around saying 'Yeah, yeah, it's ok'?"

Actually, yeah. He literally hung out with prostitutes and hung out with sinners in the Bible. I'm not an expert in theology by any means, but I do know that in the Bible one of the things that pissed the pharisees off was that Jesus would eat with sinners.

The second one he lists are "do your thing libertarians", blah blah blah. Then it's something about "spineless conservatives", blah blah blah. This guy feels like he's doing a bad Jordan Peterson impression. Let's end this bloody thing before we all lose our sanity.

Conclusion:

So, what did we learn? Well, for his big first day of AmericaFest Charlie had; A mentally ill washed-up comedian, a conspiracy theorist, and an MLM con-artist who desperately wants to be Jordan Peterson. If these are the great thinkers that will lead America into a brighter future we are truly fucked. Maybe we'll do more days of this thing, maybe not.

Whatever happens, cheers and I'll see you in the next one.

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talkingpointsusa · 11 months ago

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Michael Knowles Can't Handle Five Seconds Of A Show For Toddlers:

Michael Knowles is among the dumbest of these guys, like for crying out loud!

I figured we could use a break from AmFest (which is code for I could use a break from AmFest) so I figured that we should engage in one of our favorite past times here at Talking Points, dunking on Daily Wire third banana Michael Knowles.

The other reason why I wanted to do this episode is because Michael is once again on his deranged "They're turning you gay" soapbox and this time is targeting CocoMelon. It's just as stupid and hilarious as one might expect.

Warning: Transphobia, homophobia, and stupidity. These aren't my opinions, obviously.

00:00, Michael Knowles: "A popular kids show, quite possibly the most popular kids show in the world, is apparently trying to turn your child into a tutu wearing, mama denying, gender-bending dancer, as evidenced by this recently viral clip."

Let the stupidity begin.

So, depicting a child being raised by gay parents isn't "denying mothers", it's just a child in a different situation. Studies have shown that children raised by same-sex parents fare just as well as ones being raised by heterosexual ones. But these are the guys who are against gay parents even existing so this take is unsurprising.

As for the "child-crossdressing", a child wearing a tutu is a total "who cares" for me. It's a brief scene, really only lasting about five seconds, and the kid tries on multiple other costumes throughout the scene. This isn't weird at all, the only people making it weird are right-wing ghouls like Michael who are using it to justify their own homophobia.

01:00, Michael Knowles: "Why shouldn't kids shows depict little boys wearing tutus and dancing for the pleasure of homosexual men who have somehow gained custody of them, huh?"

Michael's mind is clearly in an extremely perverted gutter if that's the first thing he thinks of when seeing a five second clip from a CocoMelon video.

"Dancing for the pleasure of homosexual men", what?! Or it's a scene of him playing a game of dress-up with his dads. Even by Michael Knowles standards this is such a stupid take.

01:13, Michael Knowles: "Until the mid to late 20th century anyone who ever considered creating a scene like that for adults would have been ostracized from polite society and likely prosecuted."

Yeah, black people would also have been ostracized and likely prosecuted if they sat in the non-colored seat on the bus, what's your point?

Society actually does this thing called "change".

01:30, Michael Knowles: "This is just what kids are watching these days."

Yeah, a five second clip of a kid in a dress which is all of a sudden being turned into a dirty thing because the kid in this show happened to have gay parents.

Also now would be a good reminder of that time in college where Michael starred in a gay sex scene.

02:28, Michael Knowles: "I just assume that anything modern and popular and praised by the libs is poison, now we have proof."

This sums up Michael's entire mindset in one sentence. Michael, if he had his way, would drag us back into a backwards and Handmaid's Tale-esque world to "own the libs".

Racial equality is modern and popular and praised by the left, guess Michael doesn't like that. How about cell phones? Affordable healthcare? Women having the right to vote? I could go on and on.

My point is that this is an insanely stupid thing to say unless you want to go back to a Medieval feudal society.

Also your proof is just five seconds from a kids show that look innocent to anyone that doesn't have an extremely dirty mind.

02:35, Michael Knowles: "That's why we launched our own kids platform BentKey."

So, a lot of this fearmongering is mainly just to advertise the Daily Wires kids platform. This really shows how much of a grifter Michael is. Build up the fear about your kids being indoctrinated into...turning gay I guess and then BANG, ad pivot.

Most of the right uses these kinds of tactics to drive sales.

05:11, Michael Knowles: "I can already hear the objection to my criticism of CocoMelon. They're going to say, the libs of course, they're going to say 'Michael, what's wrong with a kid being himself? What's wrong with a nice supportive loving family encouraging a kid to be himself? Just be yourself!'"

As a person Michael would consider a "lib", that's the least of my objections to this. My 3 main objections are as follows:

This is a dumb thing to spend time on. There are so many important things going on in the world that spending this much time talking about five seconds of a kids show is a complete waste of energy.

2. As stated prior, it was only five seconds. The kid even tries on some more traditionally "masculine" costumes such as a firefighter one. There is no way that a child would be paying attention enough to even register it! Keep in mind that Cocomelon is targeted at ages 2-4.

3. Really all this is is a massive dogwhistle. Michael is talking about this because it gives him a way to paint gay parents as perverts and trans identifying kids as "groomed victims" to his audience.

Anyway, Michael argues against this strawman.

05:31, Michael Knowles: "I guess what's wrong with this is the assumption that that makes about human nature which is that there's this true self at the core of an onion, we just need to peel away the layers of society and norms and standards and practice and morality and tradition and ritual. We need to peel away all those layers and we will get to the true core of the self and the true core for that little boy is wearing tutus and dancing for a couple of homosexuals."

Again, mind in the absolute gutter. Michael absolutely would not give a shit if this was a straight imaginary couple. It's just a kid playing dress up, nothing perverted about it!

The episode doesn't even end with the child wearing the tutu or deciding to be trans or whatever Michael is saying it does!

This is also a stupid argument because it ignores the fact that those standards have CHANGED for everyone but Michael and other conservative reactionaries like him. While a child wearing a dress is appalling for reactionary trolls like Michael, the rest of society truly could care less.

06:24, Michael Knowles: "A lot of human behavior, and especially human desire, comes from imitation."

Yeah, a five second clip of a kid in a tutu is gonna make your two to four year old trans. Here I thought that the PornHub thing was a stretch, Michael is seriously grasping at straws to justify this being a big deal.

07:17, Michael Knowles: "We are mimetic when it comes to our desires as well. I mentioned this on the show yesterday in a different context, the reason people want the Rolex watch is not because they know anything about how the watch works, it's not because they no anything about the history of the company or the mechanics of watch gears, it's because other people want the Rolex watch."

Your sexuality isn't the same thing as a wristwatch, if that were true we'd all be running around banging inanimate objects.

Man this is one of the dumbest things I have ever watched for this blog, I'm almost beginning to miss AmFest....almost.

08:15, Michael Knowles: "So if a kid is raised by a lumberjack and his traditional wife in the mountains of who knows where, somewhere in the western United States, and they've got really traditional values and the dad goes out and chops wood and the mom churns butter and I don't know, I'm probably getting into some kind of fairy tale fable of a traditional life, but that kid is going to be more likely to go chop wood or if it's a girl go out and churn butter."

This removes all individual agency. What if that child doesn't want to chop wood or churn butter? It completely removes individual personality and hitches how a person is entirely on their parents.

08:45, Michael Knowles: "And if a child is raised by a couple of homosexual men who purchased the child from scientists and impoverished women in the third world through IVF and surrogacy then that kid is more likely to mimic their behavior."

Yes, there are some ethical concerns about cross-border surrogacy depending on the nation but a majority of surrogates are in the United States and a lot of cross-border surrogates are in other first world countries. The regions with the most surrogacies are India, Ukraine, California, and Central America. The most concerning on that list to someone would probably be India, but they've banned commercial surrogacy.

Also, what behavior is that? This statement is running on the homophobic myth that gay couples are inherently hypersexual which is false and rooted in harmful stereotypes.

9:02, Michael Knowles: "And if a kid is told that it is oppressive for a boy to play with G.I Joe and it's wonderful and liberating a boy to wear a tutu and dance for the pleasure of his 'fathers', quote on quote, he's gonna do that too."

When did the show even say that?! It never said it was oppressive for a kid to have traditionally masculine interests because nobody is saying that. Like I said earlier, the episode actually has the kid dressing up in more masculine costumes like a fireman before these five seconds that triggered Michael occurred.

I'm also getting really sick of Michael implying to his audience that all gay fathers are pedophiles. Like I've been saying from the very beginning all the way back when this blog was still called "Wired", this rhetoric can and will inspire violent attacks against the people these goons are targeting.

Since Michael is so obsessed with the concept of mimicry, here's something to chew on. What happens if someone sees this episode, decides to "do something about it", and shoots and kills a gay couple to "save the kid". Obviously Michael would have to take responsibility because that person was spurred on by Michael’s bigoted rhetoric, but Michael won't because he cares about his paycheck and not about who gets hurt.

Has Michael ever met a child by the way? Children usually rebel against what their parents want from them! If strawman child is being denied his G.I Joe doll, odds are he'll want it more!

09:12, Michael Knowles: "And if a kid is raised watching that absolutely degenerate cartoon than that kid is more likely to mimic those behaviors."

That's like saying eating one piece of broccoli will turn you into a vegetarian. Michael is breaking new ground in the world of right-wing stupidity.

09:39, Michael Knowles: "The more bad stuff we take in the worse we're gonna feel, the more it's gonna twist our desires and our sense of identity."

Yeah, five seconds of a toddlers show is gonna twist our "sense of identity". God, did Ben Shapiro OK this? Michael is making the Daily Wire look like a bunch of idiots who can't handle a toddlers show.

09:54, Michael Knowles: "That's probably clearest when we talk about porn, it's even worse than Cocomelon."

I don't think I've laughed as hard at one of these right-wing ghouls as I just did. The comparison between porn and COCOMELON, oh my God that is funny but also sad when you remember that people believe this shit.

10:23, Michael Knowles: "The company was called MindGeek but of course the company is so disreputable and so despicable that they have to keep changing their name because like the euphemism treadmill bad connotations just glom on naturally to whatever this company is called."

That's not how companies work. Even if MindGeek changes their name, it's not like a hard reset button that wipes the companies slate clean. Everybody knows that Aylo is the same company as MindGeek.

Michael then plays a clip of another PornHub employee that runs counter to his narrative. Michael chalks it up to him "not being one of the writers". He then, after an ad-break of course, drops a "rule for life".

14:41, Michael Knowles: "Don't let your behavior stop you from acknowledging the truth. Don't become a captive to your own bad behavior."

You lie to people on the internet for a living, get off your high horse when it comes to "the truth". Michael is a captive of both his own bad behavior and his audiences.

Michael basically says the same thing in different ways for three minutes. Who the hell cares?! He talks about the Trump and Colorado thing for a bit, mainly by playing clips of people who disagreed with Trump who don't agree with the Colorado decision, Michael reacting to CNN isn't something we need to dwell on. Ad pivot. And then he drops this amazing line.

24:05, Michael Knowles: "Peppa Pig, Blues Clues, Muppet Babies, and more continue to aggressively push radical leftist propaganda"

BAHAHAHA. I was drinking some coffee while listening to this in the background and this legitimately made me snort coffee out of my nose. Yeah, Blues Clues and Muppet Babies, well known radical leftist TV shows. They're not even making Muppet Babies anymore, the show ended in 2022.

The Daily Wire is legitimately a parody of itself at this point.

He then advertises BentKey a bit, gotta prevent kids from being exposed to the radical leftist ideas contained in Muppet Babies right? He talks about Vivek's PR stunt where he declared that he'll pull his name off the ballot in Colorado and how DeSantis didn't do it. I really don't care, again it's Michael reacts to CNN. We probably will have to do a blog post addressing the Colorado thing, everyone except Ezra (which makes sense because he's too busy yelling about Trudeau) did something on it. Anyway, here's Michael yelling about a diversity initiative.

33:06, Michael Knowles: "Now we found out that the Harvard president once created a taskforce on visual culture and signage to make white males less visible at Harvard."

First of all, white males don't need the extra representation at Harvard. According to Harvard's demographics, the student population at Harvard is 34.6% white. This is the vast majority as the second largest demographic is Asians which make up 13.6%.

Out of those white people on campus, 18.9% (the majority again) are males. So if they are trying to erase white males from Harvard they are doing an insanely crappy job.

As for this "taskforce" thing that Michael is talking about, it was just about making the campuses symbols (such as portraits) more diverse. It's completely innocent and a total who cares news story.

33:39, Michael Knowles: "The recommendations included a mandate to change quote 'spaces whose visual culture is dominated by homogenous portraiture of white men'. Homogenous, you know all those white guys look the same. You know how all those black guys look the same, hold on you’re not allowed to say that!"

I can't tell if Michael is trying to be stupid or if it just comes naturally.

It wasn't saying that all white people look the same, it was saying that the portraits and visual materials on the campus were all of white males.

Anyway, we already talked about the Congress thing with Tim Pool but essentially it's just an example of grandstanding and highly loaded questions meant to provoke the exact response the congresswoman got.

Michael says super dumb crap about climate change but I can't be bothered. Apparently some study said that breathing contributes to climate change, he didn't link it and I couldn't find it on Google but Michael's conclusion that it means that climate change advocates want you to kill yourself is stupid as hell.

Conclusion:

So, that was one of the dumbest things I have ever watched for this blog. I love how the same people who are complaining about leftists being "triggered" are the same ones who can't handle five seconds of a show geared at toddlers. The fact that ANYONE could take Michael Knowles seriously after this is honestly baffling.

#right wing bullshit #journalism #conservative bullshit #fact checking #bad takes #conservatives #disinformation #daily wire #debunking #michael knowles #god this guy is a complete moron #fuck transphobes #fuck conservatives #conservative l's #conservative logic #the right is dumb #Michael Knowles is such a dumbass

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