#right wing disinformation

[talkingpointsusa]

The profound laziness of Dave Rubin

No, but you posting a video about it for clicks is. (source: Rubin Report on YouTube)

Dave Rubin is a pretty regular source of truly insane and stupid takes and today is no exception. This was the episode he put out on January 31st and as usual it breaks new ground in the realm of stupidity. Lets get into it.

Dave starts off by declaring the theme of todays episode, or lack thereof.

01:24, Dave Rubin: "The theme of todays show is there's an awful lot happening in the world right now. This WW3 situation seems like it's ramping up a bit. I'm gonna try to cool the jets as everyone loves talking about 'Oh my god WW3 is happening and oh my god the civil war is happening and oh my god the alien invasion is happening.' Sometimes, maybe we can have some calmer heads prevail so we'll do a little bit of that. But what I wanted to start with that'll kind of prime everything is that Jon Stewart-"

Brief pause, so what's the theme? If the theme is WW3 related stuff, how on earth is Jon Stewart even remotely related to that?

01:51, Dave Rubin: "Jon Stewart, I guess former comedian. I don't know what we call him at this point, he's basically a progressive activist now."

"Yeah, imagine being a former comedian who became a political activist. Man, I can't even imagine. That's so sick."

First of all, the sheer lack of self awareness is stunning. Second of all, watch that video in full if you want to get an idea of the sheer lack of talent that Dave brings to the table. It's three minutes of Dave being a complete moron constantly trying to do crowd work and getting absolutely no laughs out of anyone.

02:18, Dave Rubin: "Jon Stewart left the Daily Show, what was it? About six years or so ago. Ends up bringing a new show, The Problem With Jon Stewart onto Apple TV and he just goes all in on the crazy leftism."

Jon Stewart is back at the Daily Show for a limited time and Dave Rubin isn't gonna take it! He's only hosting on Monday nights to cover things related to the election cycle.

Jon Stewart was always a pretty big leftist. Here's him absolutely demolishing fellow blog favorite Tucker Carlson all the way back in 2004. I can't help but feel a tinge of jealousy in Dave's coverage of Jon. Jon also stood up for his free speech, something that Dave should love, by walking away from his show on Apple TV when they told him he couldn't talk about AI and China.

Dave doesn't even understand the most basic facts about this story...like the fact that Jon isn't the only person hosting the Daily Show or the fact that they are making more than the Monday episode.

02:30, Dave Rubin: "But the machine is bringing him back now, putting him back at the Daily Show at the chair on a weekly show not a daily show. So the Daily Show's going to weekly, alright they're going to struggle with that."

Here's what happened, Dave read some headline somewhere about Jon Stewart returning to the Daily Show and instead of trying to learn the facts about the story that he's trying to cover, he just barged in and started talking about it on his show.

If Dave actually read about what he's trying to talk about the subject he's talking about, he'd know that Jon is only hosting on Monday’s and that other people are hosting the show on all the other days of the week. It's also only for the election cycle.

Dave plays some clips of CBS for him to react to.

03:36, Dave Rubin: "We're doing PR, we're owned by the same people and we have to tell you he's really great. Yeah, ok! So you guys get how the whole machine works, right? There's no reason for CBS News to be covering that on their nightly news program."

At the end of the clip he plays, the reporter discloses that CBS and Comedy Central are both owned by Paramount, in short disclosing the conflict of interest. Should they have maybe not covered this? Yeah, I wouldn't have because it's a conflict of interest. But they did disclose it.

03:51, Dave Rubin: "And the damn shame about Jon Stewart and we'll illustrate this in just a moment is that at least for the first couple of years at the Daily Show he was doing something kind of new and poking and prodding at the media the way I kinda do on this show."

Dave Rubin and Jon Stewart have one key difference; Jon is funny and insightful and Dave is well....Dave.

04:07, Dave Rubin: "He's sort of gone off the deep end, or I don't even need to qualify that, he has completely gone off the deep end when it comes to progressive politics and I would say become everything that he probably once despised."

Just to recap some of Dave's career; Dave started off at the Young Turks, a progressive news outlet, and ended up starting a conservative news show after leaving the Young Turks. His sudden pivot to conservativism coincidentally dovetailed with receiving money from the Koch Brothers.

So who has became everything they once despised here?

Dave plays a clip of Jon confronting a Republican attorney general about gender affirming care for minors. If I were Dave I really wouldn't have played that clip as Jon does a really good job dismantling the Attorney Generals arguments. Dave does cut the clip and this was his takeaway.

06:51, Dave Rubin: "And it goes on and on, what an absolutely smug unlikeable person he became for the cool one million plus per episode he was making on that now defunct show."

More of Dave describing himself. Seriously, take some time to watch a Dave Rubin episode if you have time. He talks in this really slow and condescending way that's near unbearable to listen to.

07:10, Dave Rubin: "Jon Stewart, if you are watching this you might want to read Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier, thank you, who wrote an incredible book about how so much of what's happening to our children is a social contagion. Particularly when it comes to young girls thinking they can transition and become young boys."

Abigail Shrier is one of those right-wing grifters who has made a cottage industry of spreading misinformation about transgender youth. Blog favorite and professional sociopath Matt Walsh is another example of that. Shriers book is filled with massive amounts of misinformation and outright falsehoods.

Also, the idea of Jon Stewart even knowing of Dave Rubin's existence is laughable. You just know if Jon stepped foot on Dave's set, Dave would be tripping over himself to get Jon a beer and a pillow for his feet.

08:04, Dave Rubin: "No you cannot take a boy and actually make them a girl, that's just not reality."

Say it with me; absolutely nobody is giving transgender surgeries to small children. Dave's entire framework is simply denying the existence of transgender people.

I've said this before but I find the fact that Dave is a member of the LGBTQ community and still has hopped onto the right-wing transphobia bandwagon really infuriating. Years ago his ilk would be trying to make his marriage illegal and guess what? They still want that! It's so frustrating to watch this guy run defense for guys who hate who he is.

And talk about "smug and unlikeable". Dave hasn't even bothered to meet up with the families of trans youth like Jon has and is handwaving legitimate medical treatments because "my billionaire sponsors don't like it".

Anyway, lets move on before my head explodes. Dave plays another Jon Stewart clip, this time him interviewing Gavin Newsom. Dave then plays some clips from the Daily Show when Trevor Noah was hosting it. Dave proceeds to call a transwoman a "creature" and I want to throw my laptop out the window. I'll elaborate on this in the conclusion, but I'm starting to realize that Dave Rubin is a profoundly lazy content creator.

14:22, Dave Rubin: "Now the reason I'm showing you all this and starting the show with this Jon Stewart thing and everything else is because the Daily Show became this cultural touchpoint. 'More young people get their news from the Daily Show than anywhere else.' So when you wonder how did this all happen? That so many kids are confused about their gender. How did it happen that being not racist made you racist? It's because this is the crap that Hollywood pushes on us."

"The Daily Show is turning people trans" is an argument that I never thought I would hear and yet here we are. The median viewership age of the Daily Show in 2024 is 63 years old by the way so this argument makes even less sense in this day and age.

Dave plays another Daily Show clip. This time it's one of the guest hosts talking about migrants.

15:54, Dave Rubin: "Illegal people are here illegally. Even if there are jobs for them then what you do is you have them come legally and you figure it out."

Except that the pathways to legal immigration are borderline impossible to fulfill. If Dave is saying that we should loosen those pathways, I agree. But that's not what he's saying so this is just him being an obtuse idiot.

Dave does an ad for Tax Network USA and then he expands on his broader point.

18:10, Dave Rubin: "What I'm trying to lay out to you, and that's all well and good, is that all the ideas that we just talked about there are the things that get into the culture and you wonder why everything is wrong, why our politicians suck, why we don't know up is down and up is up and down is down and all these things."

Dave Rubin: Master Orator strikes again.

"Up is down and up is up and down is down", truly profound stuff right there. Seriously, who the hell watches this unironically?! How does this guy have 2.14M subscribers?! At least guys like Ben Shapiro have certain airs around them that make them seem like intellectuals to people who don't know any better.

18:25, Dave Rubin: "But now I want to drive this a little further into the cultural piece of this because Law & Order where a white woman is raped by a black man but doesn't want him to go to jail. Take a look at this."

Dave then plays the clip from Law & Order. Again, this a ridiculously stupid thing to talk about, especially since Dick Wolf seems like a pretty conservative guy from what I can tell.

19:40, Dave Rubin: "Could we do a road trip after the show? Would you guys be interested in doing a road trip after the show? Drive cross-country, go to Hollywood, bomb the place?"

Law & Order has been filmed in New York for a million years.

Also, the episode ends with the rape victim testifying against the rapist so this whole story is a complete load of nothing even if we follow the parameters that Dave laid out.

20:11, Dave Rubin: "The messaging that they are sending to the brains of young people and I guess middle age people who watch Law & Order, everything is freaking backwards. They have taken art and made it activism."

Does....does Dave not realize that art and film has been a form of activism since its inception. Also, I love how he realized in the middle of his sentence that young people tend not to watch Law & Order and threw that "middle aged people" in there at the last second. Nice save.

Dave talks about the Disney Snow White remake. This is such an insanely old story. Ben Shapiro even announced a "competitor" version that will be hosted on the Daily Wire what feels like a century ago. Old news and an immediate skip.

21:21, Dave Rubin: "I do wanna back up for just a second. I don't condone or call for terrorism in Hollywood or anywhere else. I didn't mean bomb the place, I meant like glitterbomb it, you know what I mean? Just go there and pour glitter all over these people, that is what I meant. Lets be clear about that because Media Matters I'm sure is watching every moment of this 'Rubin just called to bomb Hollywood.'"

I've got bad news for Dave, he's not even important enough to get clipped by Media Matters. He's been mentioned by them in passing but the last time he got clipped was February of 2023. Really the only people criticizing him are a Twitter account called "Dave Rubin Clips" on Twitter, his own subreddit, and me.

Dave plays a clip from SNL. He does an ad for the Wellness Company, it's the same company that makes those emergency kits that Charlie Kirk was hawking in our last episode.

Now, its time to get serious. Dave wants to talk about the news...it involves playing more stupid freaking clips. He plays an MSNBC clip and here are his thoughts.

26:11, Dave Rubin: "Ok, I'm only showing you that because these people that they put on there, they just offer them the red meat. And of course their kind of brain damaged progressive audience eats it up."

"And then I play a clip of it so that my audience can eat up my commentary on it"

Also, the brain damaged comment was stupid as all hell. Anyway, Trump lost the defamation suit against E. Jean Carroll and Dave comments on it the only way he can...by commenting on a clip he plays from The View.

28:13, Dave Rubin: "It really, it's so horrible. And watching the women applaud. If they all felt like this woman really got raped, again rape is pretty bad, they wouldn't be celebrating today, right? Like, it wouldn't be a day of celebration. It would be kind of a somber like, 'Oh there was a verdict in the defamation thing related to the rape and Donald Trumps gonna have to pay up.' But they know it's all bullshit, it's all a show."

"Woah, a rape victim celebrating finally getting justice?! That makes no sense!"

This argument makes absolutely zero sense. Imagine if you got raped and the court forces your rapist to pay you millions of dollars. You'd be pretty damn happy. Does Dave think that after you get raped you are incapable of feeling anything outside of sadness?! And what's more, if you manage to score a win against your rapist you are still going to be sad.

Lets play a game. Do you think that Dave is going to;

A): Offer insightful and nuanced commentary on the verdict that considers the evidence and leads to an informed conclusion.

B): Play another stupid clip and then say something stupid.

The answer is A....just kidding! This is Dave Rubin we're talking about, of course it's going to be B! Dave rolls a CNN clip and mumbles about some stupid shit.

30:20, Dave Rubin: "If she got raped, which Donald Trump was not convicted of, would you want to make a show of all of this?"

The guy was extremely wealthy and that was before he became president. She's celebrating getting a form of justice against an extremely powerful adversary.

Also, Trump was found liable of sexually abusing Carroll which is commonly understood as rape. So he didn't even get that part right. Again, laziness.

Dave comments on a joke Carroll made to Rachel Maddow that she would "buy her a penthouse". It was a joke and apparently Dave is pissed about it. Whatever. Dave plays more clips of Carroll and then plays a Megyn Kelly clip. Again, letting others make his arguments for him.

35:16, Dave Rubin: "This is why Megyn is just so consistently great. I don't know what happened, you don't know what happened, Megyn Kelly doesn't know what happened."

So the bar for trusting a rape victim is if you know for sure what happened? That's ridiculous! Plus the evidence was clearly compelling enough that Trump was found liable for sexual abuse.

Also, wasn't the theme for today supposed to be about WW3? "Cooler heads shall prevail" and all that?

37:03, Dave Rubin: "But now I wanna connect that to something that's happening in the world and show you Trump at his absolute best. Because these are the moments that we could use a real leader in this country and I think he has an interesting opportunity. And as I've been telling you for the last two weeks, I wanna nudge him to be the best Donald Trump if possible."

Oh yeah, that's gonna happen. I can just see Trump now;

"I was gonna make this decision but Dave Rubin said that would be a bad idea! Guess I'm not gonna do that!"

Anyway, Dave's next story is about the drone-strike in Jordan that took the lives of 3 US soldiers. He reads some stuff from the Daily Wires website (and here I thought he was going to play a clip of Ben Shapiro, he's evolving!) and then launches into his take;

38:44, Dave Rubin: "So now you might be wondering 'Dave, what does this have to do with the E. Jean Carroll thing?' Well, Donald Trump issued a statement on this and I think he nailed it."

Dave reads out a Donald Trump post that he very clearly didn't write (not enough random all caps). Again, Dave can't really make content of his own capably and just relies on everybody else to do the heavy lifting. Also, I love how quickly he switched over from being a Ronnie D simp to being a MAGA moron. Those boots need a lickin'!

40:20, Dave Rubin: "Look, I don't know if Donald Trump wrote that himself. It's obviously irrelevant, they have speechwriters and everything else."

It's relevant when you spent the past four minutes hyping this post up as "the Trump we need" and "Trump at his absolute best". If Trump didn't write it then it isn't Trump. Unless you are saying that Trump is at his best when he isn't in control, in which case me and Dave might have more common ground than I thought.

40:26, Dave Rubin: "But the clarity, the moral clarity, 'peace through strength'. The reality of the fact that three, four years ago, when Donald Trump was still president, especially pre-COVID, that the world was peaceful and Middle East peace deals were being signed left and right. The Iranians were doing absolutely nothing."

It may have seemed more peaceful compared to right now but it's important to remember that the conflict between Israel and Palestine has been going on for way longer than October 7th. The Abraham Accords, which I assume is what Dave is talking about when he mentions about peace deals, was brokered between countries that weren't engaged in conflict and did nothing to impact Israel and Palestine. Also, nothing happened with Iran? Remember the assassination of General Suleimani that nearly pushed the US and Iran to the brink of war? That certainly didn't help peace in Iran.

41:30, Dave Rubin: "The first thing that Donald Trump did when he got into office was drop the mother of all bombs, the MOAB, the mother of all bombs, dropped it. People didn't even know why he dropped it but it made it seem like he was kinda crazy so don't mess with this guy."

So Dave's brilliant foreign policy strategy is acting like a complete lunatic?

41:43, Dave Rubin: "He killed Suleimani, right? And everyone was like 'this is gonna start World War Three', actually it caused Iran to not do much of anything while he was president."

The reason we are seeing so much action from Iran is because of Israel/Palestine, a conflict which finally boiled over after decades. Blaming Irans increased action on Biden is stupid.

Again, I don't think Biden is faultless. His continued funding of the genocide in Palestine is awful and I fundamentally disagree with it. But criticizing him for stupid made up reasons is well...stupid.

Conclusion:

Ok, so Dave playing a lot of clips and not adding a lot of original ideas to his commentary took me off guard the last time that I talked about him but this time I was ready for it. This episode didn't break a lot of new ground but I felt that it would be a good opportunity to talk about something about Dave that needs to be said and it's that his content is so deeply lazy.

Think about it. Your average Dave Rubin episode is just him playing television clips completely out of context and then saying a two second conservative culture war related soundbite after it. Dave Rubin basically gets mad at TV for a living.

Even when he's trying to make an argument, he just mumbles something that doesn't really make any sense and then lets someone more articulate like Megyn Kelly pick up the pieces. It's to the point where I would be willing to wager that a good 50% of his show is just clips of other people talking.

This is because Dave Rubin is a grifter who doesn't really bring any new ideas to the table outside of "I'm gay and I'm also conservative". I feel like a big part of him realizes that when he talks for long periods of time he usually ends up making a fool of himself.

And it's not just the clips either, he barely researches what he's talking about. Take for example, the Daily Show coverage. With a five second Google search I knew more about the story than Dave did and as a result was able to point out his inaccuracies and make him look like a complete idiot. Same thing with him not realizing that Trump was found liable for sexual abuse. This is basic shit that you need to know when you are trying to act like the authority on a subject. But Dave doesn't even look into it because he's too busy clipping NBC and being deeply lazy.

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

[webntrmpt]

Joyce Vance, Civil Discourse

[alwaysbewoke]

i have to remember not everyone in florida voted for these people in power because it's hard to feel sorry for them sometimes. really hard (watch til the end smfh)

and she's going to turn around the vote for him AGAIN smfh

[contemplatingoutlander]

Yoel Roth, PhD used to be in charge of the trust and safety team at Twitter. This is a must-read article to better understand how the far right is attacking anyone who wants to guard against disinformation being shared on social media. Consequently, the link above is a gift 🎁 link, so anyone can read the entire article, even if they do not subscribe to the NY Times.

Below are some excerpts:

When I worked at Twitter, I led the team that placed a fact-checking label on one of Donald Trump’s tweets for the first time. Following the violence of Jan. 6, I helped make the call to ban his account from Twitter altogether. Nothing prepared me for what would happen next. Backed by fans on social media, Mr. Trump publicly attacked me. Two years later, following his acquisition of Twitter and after I resigned my role as the company’s head of trust and safety, Elon Musk added fuel to the fire. I’ve lived with armed guards outside my home and have had to upend my family, go into hiding for months and repeatedly move. This isn’t a story I relish revisiting. But I’ve learned that what happened to me wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t just personal vindictiveness or “cancel culture.” It was a strategy — one that affects not just targeted individuals like me, but all of us, as it is rapidly changing what we see online. Private individuals — from academic researchers to employees of tech companies — are increasingly the targets of lawsuits, congressional hearings and vicious online attacks. These efforts, staged largely by the right, are having their desired effect: Universities are cutting back on efforts to quantify abusive and misleading information spreading online. Social media companies are shying away from making the kind of difficult decisions my team did when we intervened against Mr. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. Platforms had finally begun taking these risks seriously only after the 2016 election. Now, faced with the prospect of disproportionate attacks on their employees, companies seem increasingly reluctant to make controversial decisions, letting misinformation and abuse fester in order to avoid provoking public retaliation.

I encourage you to use the gift link above and read the entire article. It is worth your time.

[volumniafox]

Since the only way our fresh government managed to get rid of a literal nazi as a minister was when foreign press started taking notice... It would be a shame if some recent developments gained international attention :-)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 6, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 06, 2024

Yesterday, November 5, 2024, Americans reelected former president Donald Trump, a Republican, to the presidency over Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. As of Wednesday night, Trump is projected to get at least 295 electoral votes to Harris’s 226, with two Republican-leaning states still not called. The popular vote count is still underway.

Republicans also retook control of the Senate, where Democrats were defending far more seats than Republicans. Control of the House is not yet clear. 

These results were a surprise to everyone. Trump is a 78-year-old convicted felon who has been found liable for sexual assault and is currently under indictment in a number of jurisdictions. He refused to leave office peacefully when voters elected President Joe Biden in 2020, instead launching an unprecedented attack on the U.S. Capitol to stop the counting of electoral votes, and said during his campaign that he would be a “dictator” on his first day in office.  

Pollsters thought the race would be very close but showed increasing momentum for Harris, and Harris’s team expressed confidence during the day. By posting on social media—with no evidence—that the voting in Pennsylvania was rigged, Trump himself suggested he expected he would lose the popular vote, at least, as he did in 2016 and 2020. 

But in 2024, it appears a majority of American voters chose to put Trump back into office. 

Harris and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, offered a message of unity, the expansion of the economic policies that have made the U.S. economy the strongest in the world in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, and the creation of an “opportunity economy” that echoed many of the policies Republicans used to embrace. Trump vowed to take revenge on his enemies and to return the country to the neoliberal policies President Joe Biden had rejected in favor of investing in the middle class.

When he took office, Biden acknowledged that democracy was in danger around the globe, as authoritarians like Russian president Vladimir Putin and China’s president Xi Jinping  maintained that democracy was obsolete and must be replaced by autocracies. Russia set out to undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that enforced the rules-based international order that stood against Russian expansion. 

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who overturned democracy in his own country, explained that the historical liberal democracy of the United States weakens a nation because the equality it champions means treating immigrants, LGBTQ+ individuals, and women as equal to men, thus ending traditionally patriarchal society.

In place of democracy, Orbán champions “illiberal democracy,” or “Christian democracy.” This form of government holds nominal elections, although their outcome is preordained because the government controls all the media and has silenced opposition. Orbán’s model of minority rule promises a return to a white-dominated, religiously based society, and he has pushed his vision by eliminating the independent press, cracking down on political opposition, getting rid of the rule of law, and dominating the economy with a group of crony oligarchs. 

In order to strengthen democracy at home and abroad, Biden worked to show that it delivered for ordinary Americans. He and the Democrats passed groundbreaking legislation to invest in rebuilding roads and bridges and build new factories to usher in green energy. They defended unions and used the Federal Trade Commission to break up monopolies and return more economic power to consumers. 

Their system worked. It created record low unemployment rates, lifted wages for the bottom 80% of Americans, and built the strongest economy in the world in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, setting multiple stock market records.  But that success turned out not to be enough to protect democracy. 

In contrast, Trump promised he would return to the ideology of the era before 2021, when leaders believed in relying on markets to order the economy with the idea that wealthy individuals would invest more efficiently than if the government regulated business or skewed markets with targeted investment (in green energy, for example). Trump vowed to cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations and to make up lost revenue through tariffs, which he incorrectly insists are paid by foreign countries; tariffs are paid by U.S. consumers. 

For policies, Trump’s campaign embraced the Project 2025 agenda led by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which has close ties to Orbán. That plan calls for getting rid of the nonpartisan civil service the U.S. has had since 1883 and for making both the Department of Justice and the military partisan instruments of a strong president, much as Orbán did in Hungary. It also calls for instituting religious rule, including an end to abortion rights, across the U.S. Part of the idea of “purifying” the country is the deportation of undocumented immigrants: Trump promised to deport 20 million people at an estimated cost of $88 billion to $315 billion a year. 

That is what voters chose.

Pundits today have spent time dissecting the election results, many trying to find the one tweak that would have changed the outcome, and suggesting sweeping solutions to the Democrats’ obvious inability to attract voters. There is no doubt that a key factor in voters’ swing to Trump is that they associated the inflation of the post-pandemic months with Biden and turned the incumbents out, a phenomenon seen all over the world.

There is also no doubt that both racism and sexism played an important role in Harris’s defeat. 

But my own conclusion is that both of those things were amplified by the flood of disinformation that has plagued the U.S. for years now. Russian political theorists called the construction of a virtual political reality through modern media “political technology.” They developed several techniques in this approach to politics, but the key was creating a false narrative in order to control public debate. These techniques perverted democracy, turning it from the concept of voters choosing their leaders into the concept of voters rubber-stamping the leaders they had been manipulated into backing. 

In the U.S., pervasive right-wing media, from the Fox News Channel through right-wing podcasts and YouTube channels run by influencers, have permitted Trump and right-wing influencers to portray the booming economy as “failing” and to run away from the hugely unpopular Project 2025. They allowed MAGA Republicans to portray a dramatically falling crime rate as a crime wave and immigration as an invasion. They also shielded its audience from the many statements of Trump’s former staff that he is unfit for office, and even that his chief of staff General John Kelly considers him a fascist and noted that he admires German Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.

As actor Walter Masterson posted: “I tried to educate people about tariffs, I tried to explain that undocumented immigrants pay billions in taxes and are the foundation of this country. I explained Project 2025, I interviewed to show that they supported it. I can not compete against the propaganda machines of Twitter, Fox News, [Joe Rogan Experience], and NY Post. These spaces will continue to create reality unless we create a more effective way of reaching people.” 

X users noted a dramatic drop in their followers today, likely as bots, no longer necessary, disengaged. 

Many voters who were using their vote to make an economic statement are likely going to be surprised to discover what they have actually voted for. In his victory speech, Trump said the American people had given him an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.” 

White nationalist Nick Fuentes posted, “Your body, my choice. Forever,” and gloated that men will now legally control women’s bodies. His post got at least 22,000 “likes.” Right-wing influencer Benny Johnson, previously funded by Russia, posted: “It is my honor to inform you that Project 2025 was real the whole time.” 

Today, Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump would launch the “largest mass deportation operation” of undocumented immigrants, and the stock in private prison companies GEO Group and CoreCivic  jumped 41% and 29%, respectively. Those jumps were part of a bigger overall jump: the Dow Jones Industrial Average moved up 1,508 points in what Washington Post economic columnist Heather Long said was the largest post-election jump in more than 100 years. 

As for the lower prices Trump voters wanted, Kate Gibson of CBS today noted that on Monday, the National Retail Federation said that Trump’s proposed tariffs will cost American consumers between $46 billion and $78 billion a year as clothing, toys, furniture, appliances, and footwear all become more expensive. A $50 pair of running shoes, Gibson said, would retail for $59 to $64 under the new tariffs.

U.S. retailers are already preparing to raise prices of items from foreign suppliers, passing to consumers the cost of any future tariffs. 

Trump’s election will also mean he will no longer have to answer to the law for his federal indictments: special counsel Jack Smith is winding them down ahead of Trump’s inauguration. So he will not be tried for retaining classified documents or attempting to overthrow the U.S. government when he lost in 2020. 

This evening, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán posted on social media that he had just spoken with Trump, and said: “We have big plans for the future!” 

This afternoon, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at her alma mater, Howard University, to concede the election to Trump. 

She thanked her supporters, her family, the Bidens, the Walz family, and her campaign staff and volunteers. She reiterated that she believes Americans have far more in common than separating us.

In what appeared to be a message to Trump, she noted: “A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results. That principle as much as any other distinguishes democracy from monarchy or tyranny, and anyone who seeks the public trust must honor it. At the same time in our nation, we owe loyalty not to a president or a party, but to the Constitution of the United States, and loyalty to our conscience and to our God. 

“My allegiance to all three is why I am here to say, while I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fuels this campaign, the fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness and the dignity of all people, a fight for the ideals at the heart of our nation, the ideals that reflect America at our best. That is a fight I will never give up.”

Harris urged people “to organize, to mobilize and to stay engaged for the sake of freedom and justice and the future that we all know we can build together.” She told those feeling as if the world is dark indeed these days, to “fill the sky with the light of a billion brilliant stars, the light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service,” and to let “that work guide us, even in the face of setbacks, toward the extraordinary promise of the United States of America.” 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[emperornorton47]

[noir-poetography]

I ended my Twitter account today.

Should have done it in 2015

It is nothing but a disinfo site now

Elon Musk is a traitor

[ceevee5]

[talkingpointsusa]

Tim Pool waxes poetic about biology, "sneaky fuckers", and masculinity....it's about as dumb as you might expect.

This promises to be painful (Photo credit; Timcast on Youtube)

If there is one lesson we all learnt on this blog in 2023, it's that Tim Pool might be one of the dumbest political commentators in recorded history. I figured what better way to wring in the New Year than watch one of his recent videos and fact-check them and laugh at the stupidity along the way!

Tim has thoughts on masculinity in this episode, unfortunately they are all very stupid ones. So, let's get into it shall we?

00:00, Tim Pool: "Oh boy we got a viral video of a young woman saying that when she went on a date with a bro, a mans man, and he paid the bill, whoo, she got all hot and bothered and felt the feminism leave her body."

Alright, so this video was making the rounds in the griftersphere recently. It was a video of some woman saying that after she went on a date and a guy paid the bill, she "felt the feminism leaving her body". The opinions of griftersphere commentators have been mixed, for example professional sociopath Matt Walsh didn't like it and said some predictably dumb crap about how woman are only motivated by money or something. Tim likes it because it lets him rant about "masculinity" for 20 minutes.

First of all, there is absolutely no way to verify the legitimacy of some anecdote that an influencer said in a TikTok video, that's why you don't see legitimate news organizations covering this story (that and the fact that nobody outside of these losers care).

Secondly, who the hell cares? This may come as a shock to Tim and Co but some random woman on TikTok isn't the net voice of every single woman on the planet.

Gee, it's almost as if women are all individuals with their own thoughts and feelings and stuff. But that can't be true! Woman all like the same things because some woman on TikTok told a probably made up story for likes.

How long is this crap I've decided to watch anyway? Can't be more than five minutes right?

Christ....

00:19, Tim Pool: "It started making me wonder about maybe the reason a lot of young women have these politics is because they aren't around actual men."

This take is stupid on multiple different levels.

So, according to Tim feminists are feminists because they haven't met the "right guy". To reach this conclusion you have to be extremely ignorant of feminism and really women in general. The feminism movement is about equal rights for women, some examples of some of the things a feminist might strive towards would be ending gender pay gaps or reducing sexual violence against women. Saying that women are feminists because of a lack of masculinity is essentially reducing all the challenges that women face due to a misogynistic society while also saying that women don't have autonomy outside of the men that they are around.

Tim is also categorizing men into "real men" and "fake men". This mindset has been pervasive throughout our society and has done nothing but damage the self-esteem and mental health of young males who don't fit that extremely linear idea of what a "real man" is. The fact of the matter is that not all men fit that idea but that's ok, there are many different paths to being a good person and if you are a good person that's all that matters at the end of the day.

0:52, Tim Pool: "I think a lot of younger women are surrounded by these low-t loser guys who are super effeminate and think that the media tells them what women actually want, in that they go on dates and say 'do you wanna split the bill?' and women are like 'sure'."

Some people are just naturally born with lower testosterone levels than other ones and that's ok, you can't just categorize somebody as a loser just because they have lower testosterone or are more effeminate.

Besides, the ideas of masculine and feminine men are just made up social constructs anyway. The day we start to judge people by their character and not these constructs of masculinity and femininity is the day society improves as a whole.

The media is also not telling men that they should split the bill, I'm pretty sure it's still considered good form for a man to pick up the tab on the first date.

01:21, Tim Pool: "Now in biology this term is called 'sneaky fucker', I am not making that up, it is quite literally the actual academic term."

The term is actually "kleptogyny" and the term sneaky fucker is more just an expression used to describe it (although I've also heard it applied to kleptogamy, shows how relatively obscure and unused the term sneaky fucker is in academia) . Tim is also using it completely incorrectly.

kleptogyny is a zoology term where males with less attractive characteristics copulate with a female in a harem while the male who is running the harem isn't looking. Couple problems with Tim's usage of it here.

The most obvious issue is that women aren't herd animals who don't have individual personalities outside of the pack, women have individual personalities and sexual preferences. Some women might like quote on quote "effeminate" men and some women might like the type of men that Tim seems to think that every single woman is into.

This term only applies if Tim thinks all women are dumb herd animals and if that's the case he's a detestable person. I personally think what's going on here is a little of Tim being a misogynist and a bit of Tim being a dumbass talking shit, not that that makes it any better.

1:30, Tim Pool: "So in biology they have this idea of the attractive male, the female seeking the male. Ah cardinals cardinal, you've seen cardinals, beautiful birds, very red. Ah but alas only the males are red. Why? The bright colors are to show off and attract the female. The females tend to be brown, more plain looking. But there's another reason why the males are bright red, to attract predators. You know I wondered about that, it's winter, there's snow everywhere, and there's these red birds everywhere that easily stand out. Because when the predators seek to strike they are drawn to the male and not the female and the female has the babies, the babies survive."

I am slightly used to Tim Pool's inane ramblings after I listened to one hour of him for this blog and it nearly broke my brain, however I ask again; WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?! Why the hell are we talking about cardinals?!

This kind of stupid tangent is how Tim distracts from the fact that his points are completely ridiculous and have no basis in facts or even basic reality. While he isn't one in the kleptogyny sense, Tim Pool is a sneaky fucker (as are all of the grifters and hacks we talk about on this blog).

Anyway, he's right that scientific evidence backs up male cardinals being red to attract mates but he's completely off base about it being a way to attract predators. I found absolutely nothing saying that which makes me think that Tim just pulled that "fact" out of his ass.

How is this supposed to apply to human males by the way? So we're supposed to wear bright colors to attract females and uhhh....hope those bright colors attract muggers and criminals so that they kill you and the females babies are protected? Stepping in and protecting your partner is something I can get behind but dressing up like a pickup artist and not fighting back against an attacker are both stupid.

02:12, Tim Pool: Now in biology you also have the concept of the sneaky fucker. That is, there is a high value male that dances for the female, you know (how) birds do those dance, I love watching those nature videos where the birds are like they dance, it proves their value or whatever. But then you have the very strong males and they win over all the females and reproduce. The sneaky fucker is the lesser male who in the middle of the night sneaks in a lay to pass on it's genes."

I mean, kind of. Kleptogyny isn't necessarily sneaking in during the middle of the night, as a matter of fact it's mostly scene when the alpha male of a pack is distracted by another rival.

This again doesn't really apply to human males unless you assume that women are all attracted to the same type of male and that human males are sorted into objective categories of good men and bad men.

What would a human example of kleptogyny even look like? All the made up examples I could think of were dumb because they immediately remove any and all human agency from the equation from both the males and the females. It also ignores the existence of LGBTQ+ people who aren't only interested in male + female like straight people are.

02:44, Tim Pool: "I'm imagining this, I'm wondering I should say, if this young woman, she looks like she's in her 20's, has only been around sneaky fucker types. Male feminists, low-t weak men lacking passion and ambition. Men who don't get up, don't exercise, don't improve themselves and she thought 'this is what men are'."

So, those types of men don't apply to the definition of kleptogyny. The closest application I can think of would be a man who slips a woman a date rape drug while her boyfriend is distracted and rapes her and that's WAY too evil of an act to simply be labeled as kleptogyny.

Come to think of it, paying for a meal isn't even an alpha male move in Tim's imaginary cartoon version of reality. Any male can do that, even the ones that Tim described.

What's wrong with male feminists by the way? Would Tim rather we go back to the 1950's style "get back in the kitchen" way of treating woman? Not every male feminist is a whiny loser like Tim seems to think.

Tim's thought process whenever he sees a male feminist seems to be "Respecting women? Psh, loser."

3:04, Tim Pool: "Perhaps one of the big reasons many women are claiming to be LGBTQ is because they're not feeling strong attraction to males because they're not actually encountering real masculinity for which they're attracted to."

That's not how sexuality works. A woman doesn't become attracted to other women because she hasn't met the kind of male she'd be attracted to. The internet exists for one, odds are those women would find footage of the type of guy they are attracted to and realize that they are cis women. It's also extremely unlikely that those women would be alive for 20+ years and never meet the kind of male they would be attracted to. For this to work you'd have to say that you can just switch your sexuality whenever you feel like it.

Man, Tim is truly one of the dumbest guys in the griftersphere.

Tim then plays the TikTok so the next couple comments are him reacting to it.

04:43, Tim Pool: "Ok, I'm gonna pause right there. I've never had that negotiation about who pays, never. That's just me. Every date I've ever been on, every time I go out, I just throw my card down."

Congrats Tim, do you want a medal? Seriously, most guys do this, it's the polite thing to do. Paying for a meal on a date isn't some alpha and macho thing to do.

I doubt this TikTok's legitimacy the more I watch it. You're telling me that a lifelong feminist suddenly decides that she doesn't believe in feminism anymore because a guy paid for her meal at a restaurant? That's extremely stupid if true, which again I doubt it is. Her usage of the term "liberal snowflakes" at the end of the video also indicates to me that she's trying to appeal to right wing grifters like Tim for attention.

08:22, Tim Pool: "I'm not gonna speak for every single woman, women like different things."

"That's why I titled my video 'Women LOVE masculinity NOT male feminists', because I'm not speaking for every single woman."

By the way, the reason that you are seeing large time skips is because Tim spends a lot of this episode talking about nothing. Here's an example of what most of this episode is like.

12:04, Tim Pool: "If you ask a lot of guys, they'll say they don't like makeup. I don't know if it's the majority, but most of the people I know don't like makeup. Me personally, I think it's gross. I really find it gross and then I hear this from women all the time, they're like 'You don't really find it gross, your just saying that' ladies it's gross. I do not like makeup, it's gross."

Guys, I am just gonna go out on a limb here and say that Tim thinks makeup is gross. He's so subtle about it thought that it's honestly hard to tell.

12:38, Tim Pool: "Women dress up not for other men but for other women."

Tim doesn't really elaborate on this beyond "Oh yeah, I hate makeup so every other guy probably does as well so that must mean that women wear it for other women." He also contradicts this later in usual Tim Pool fasion.

13:10, Tim Pool: "Here's what happens. You get a woman like this and she says 'Look at the guy I'm gonna date with'. The other women say 'He's not socially acceptable because he's a Trump supporting chad bro' and they're like 'Oh, better not date that guy because he doesn't have social status.'"

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

What does the guys politics have to do with this by the way? We don't even know what this alleged guy looks like, forget who he's voting for in the next election. For all we know he could be a democrat Biden loving male feminist who just happened to pay for her meal, maybe he doesn't have strong political opinions at all.

This is absolutely just Tim catering to his fanbase of conservative MAGA guys. "Hey guys, guess what? YOU'RE the hot chad-bro's because you like Trump or whatever."

13:54, Tim Pool: "Because I think what women are attracted to but what is socially acceptable is split, and so you have women on social media being like 'No no, Dylan Mulvaney, that's the person you wanna be with!'"

Tim Pool is legitimately obsessed with Dylan Mulvaney to an almost unhealthy degree. He manages to mention her once every other video.

By the way, who died and made Tim the expert on women and how they interact with one another? I don't see how women in a certain social group would know a guys politics unless he's extremely obnoxious about them and that's a total turn off.

15:32, Tim Pool: "100 men 100 women, 99 men die, that one man can make a whole bunch of babies in 9 months. A lot of work for that one guy but it's possible. 100 men 100 women, 99 women die, your done. You get one baby in nine months, ya ain't gonna be having a lot of babies, that woman's gonna be working more than any woman's ever worked to save their village. For this you have the expendable male, if a man dies society can still survive."

This is ignoring a lot of things, for example what if that one male is impotent? Or what if out of those 100 women, some have fertility issues, some miscarry, and some are LGBTQ+, the number of babies is slashed pretty quickly. Maybe this mythical village that we shall call "Strawmanville" could call in more women or men from neighboring villages and as a result they have more people to help with population growth. Or maybe the residents of Strawmanville can go to another village, get engaged, and then come back and repopulate Strawmanville with their new spouses.

That's not important though because this viewpoint is also harmful for both men and women. It makes men completely expendable and worthless in society and women only worthwhile for child rearing. Since our planet has 7.8 billion people on it, the situation that Tim is describing will never take place and thus has no bearing in reality.

Tim talks about how wolves were domesticated, it's super long and rant-ey so we'll skip straight to his point.

18:22, Tim Pool: "So how does a dog come to be? Social pressures created social behaviors, environmental pressures created social behaviors. The same is true for human beings and eachother. Human's that would send their women to go hunt likely would not last that long, so women end up not hunting."

Interesting that Tim would bring up women hunting since there is actually evidence that contradicts his statement. For example, a recent study found that 50% of prehistoric big game hunters were in fact females. Another paper published by the peer reviewed journal PLOS ONE showed that 79% of past and present foraging societies have had female hunters.

In essence, women have hunted for centuries.

19:09, Tim Pool: "What colors women wear, dresses, yeah that has nothing to do with social pressures."

Wait a minute, wait a minute, back up the bus. Didn't Tim say a couple minutes ago that women "dress up for other women"? So which is it Tim? Does the way a woman dresses have nothing to do with social pressures or is it influenced by the social pressures of other women?

Whenever I watch Tim Pool I find myself wondering how he is able to get away with being this bloody daft on his own show to an audience of over a million people. Do people just have that little critical thinking?! I just don't understand why he's successful.

On the Daily Wire side of the griftersphere I kind of see why they all have some success. Matt Walsh just allows people to indulge their personal prejudice with the thin veil of an "intellectual" (read: narcissistic ex shock jock) saying bigoted linguistic vomit and Ben Shapiro at least pretends to be a legitimate political commentator, Michael Knowles is simultaneously dumb and boring but again at least he kind of tries to make sense and not many people watch him anyway. I don't know enough about Candace Owens to comment, but we will talk about her at some point. As for the others we have talked about so far; Ezra Levant is just the Lite Canadian version of Alex Jones and Charlie Kirk and Dave Rubin are also really dumb but for different reasons and at least they can stay on track most of the time.

Tim? He's annoying to listen to, goes on long and stupid-ass tangents about nothing, and regularly contradicts himself over the course of single episodes. I just don't get it!

19:16, Tim Pool: "But of course, the reason why women weren't working, the reason why women weren't voting was absolutely because men were involved in external affairs and war, conflict, hunting, et cetera, and women stayed in the camp raising children because they're the only ones who can."

Of course, how could I have been so foolish? Here I was spending my life thinking that the reason why women weren't working or voting was because they literally weren't allowed to, boy was I sure wrong there! The reason was because they were in "the camp" where they belong raising children.

This is so idiotic. If I were to directly talk to Tim about this episode I'd ask him if he thinks women being allowed to vote is a good thing or not, because it sounds like he doesn't from where I'm sitting.

Conclusion:

Alright, so what have we learnt? Well, as is always the case when I watch Tim Pool stuff for this blog, I feel like I actively have lost brain cells watching this video. I certainly have learnt that Tim possesses the amazing talent of being able to stretch out coverage of a TikTok video into 21 minutes and I learnt that he likes saying the word "fucker".

[davidaugust]

Riots from rumor, rumor from Russia.

Russia tries to use us to sow chaos.

“The rumor was included in an article published by Channel 3Now, a site with suspected links to Russia, Logically said. The article was then cited by Russian state-affiliated news organizations including RT and Tass.” -AP

With ABC in US saying Channel 3Now’s Facebook is run by people in Pakistan and the US, and Daily Mail saying Channel 3 Now started 11 years ago sharing videos from Izhevsk, Russia.

Sources:

AP: https://apnews.com/article/britain-riots-unrest-social-media-misinformation-attack-5824d3136675e10d6a25c9e17287c994

ABC: https://abcnews.go.com/amp/International/wireStory/online-misinformation-fueling-tensions-southport-stabbing-attack-killed-112437256

Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13695801/amp/The-Russian-linked-fake-news-website-fuelled-lies-Southport-stabbings-sparked-violent-protests.html

[hezigler]

How Russia Today Infiltrated Right Wing Media | Coming to your country soon if they are not already there.

Such fronts for Russian propaganda have opened in many countries since the beginning of the Russian Ukrainian War. Particularly democratic countries with right wing governments, such as India.

[anyoneknowwhatbrexitmeans]

[whats-in-a-sentence]

Their strategy of change is based on psychological warfare, as Supreme Commander Nikolai Alexander explains:

You cannot get rid of everyone that gets into your way, and even if you could, that wouldn't be smart. No, it's best to beat your enemy without firing a single shot. This means you have to beat him with legal or at least semi-legal means. [. . .] Through demoralisation, subversion and infiltration. This means you need to undermine the morale of your opponent by spreading defeatism. For example, by saying this doesn't make any sense, this doesn't lead anywhere, just leave it. Ideally, in combination with smear, for instance by claiming that you work for the enemy. Then of course denigration, so that everything will be questioned, picked to pieces and decried. You sow discontent, impatience and doubt about the leadership. The word for this assault tactic is 'constructive criticism', a concept of the Frankfurt School. Then you try to pit members against one another, stir up disputes, create coteries, promote traitors and expel loyalists. Install levers to influence everything in your interest, outsource relevant structures, etc. And of course, spying, disinformation, lies, smear – the entire set of approaches. These are the tactics and mechanisms to sabotage and destroy a movement.

"Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists" - Julia Ebner