WTW95: Where Was Gondor When I Got Cancelled for Orc-Face?!

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:03 Clip: What's so scary about the woke mob? How often you just don't see them coming. Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed. Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down. The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything.

0:00:33 Clip: Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green M&M will now wear sneakers.

0:00:42 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Where There's Woke. I'm Thomas, that over there is Lydia. How you doing?

0:00:45 Lydia: Oh, hello. How are you? I'm good. That was the opposite order. Wokies!

0:00:48 Thomas: Wow, you didn't... you didn't blurt out Wokies, I'm surprised. You were so... That was like Bortles. You're doing the Bortle thing.

0:00:55 Lydia: I'm just here keeping you on your toes. Yeah, Bortles! Great show.

0:01:03 Thomas: Oh man, I am excited to do some more Whataboutery from the sparkling Whatabouterie region of whatever. Just non-stop Whataboutisms.

0:01:07 Lydia: Yes. Yep, yep. There's a few more that we're going to get into on this Federalist article. Yeah. That's so funny. Every time.

0:01:15 Thomas: Where was Gondor? When I need to make that like meme or I guess I could get, I mean, I really easily could grab the soundbite and do it. Maybe I should start doing that. Hold on. I'm just going to,

0:01:22 Lydia: Merch.

0:01:28 Clip: Gondor will answer. Gondor. Where was Gondor when the Westfold fell? Where was gondor when our enemies closed in around us?

0:01:38 Lydia: Yeah… I love that little

0:01:42 Thomas: Where was Gондor when I was being canceled for blackface?

0:01:44 Lydia: Choice yeah okay let's just watch lord of the

0:01:48 Thomas: And oh, hold on. Okay. Stop the show, everybody. My wife wants to watch Lord of the Rings. I think, uh, no, I, you don't understand the bit I'm doing right now. And cancel everything for the next 12 hours because we're doing the extended series. And then I want to find the old DVDs I had with the commentary. God, that was so fucking funny. You haven't experienced that. Hold on. You haven'T experienced that, have you? Oh, my God. You are there. I don't know. Where can one still find that? Because in Wokies, I know. Yeah, they literally 201. 201 they all will answer in unison because like it's the best my sister and I in 2000 fucking like two or whatever it would have been no I guess it wasn't until the whole series was out I

0:01:54 Lydia: Rings it's good okay yes extended editions yeah yeah and then watch it additionally okay uh no I don't think so wokies let us know I know you guys are

0:02:37 Thomas: Think maybe because I remember the set that we had yeah I think and it was the extended ones and there's the DVD commentary kind of thing and obviously like Mary and Pippin are just so funny like

0:02:37 Lydia: Nerds yeah that they did like the full release mm -hmm oh yeah they're the best

0:02:49 Thomas: I still quote those lines with my it's pretty good when you can quote a DVD commentary like Like, that's, you know what I mean? Like, it was that funny. We got it. We got to do it. And then they would have some other, like, it would go through them, you know, and be like, Gandalf would come on. It's like kind of interesting, you know, Ian, Ian McKellen. Yeah. And then like, and like someone else would come on and they take this serious approach. I'm like, can you put the hobbits back on? Like, I want to hear more of the bullshit. Like, they're so silly.

0:03:05 Lydia: Yeah well he's a freaking knight so like he's like a serious person oh I love it that's so

0:03:15 Thomas: Like, there's not all these jokes. They're the best. I can't, I never, until this day of my, of our year of our Lord, 2025, we've You've been married for however many years, and I've never thought of the fact that you don't know what that is. Like you haven't experienced. It's such a touchstone to me personally.

0:03:23 Lydia: Cute yeah how many yeah I don't think I I mean I think I've seen like like maybe clips here and there, like if they get used for certain things? Because like Mary and Pippin especially, but maybe?

0:03:34 Thomas: Maybe of the of the commentary, I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's pretty funny anyway. Well, what were we doing? So we're going to do that. Everybody would cancel the episode. No, we're gonna take on the latter half of the where was Gondor when Megyn Kelly endorsed Blackface, I guess, and some other things. We're going to see if they have any better whatabouties, whataboutisms, whatabowteries. I don't know which one it is. Is it both whataboutery or whataboutism? I've heard both. Oh, is it the plural maybe? Like whatabout -ism is a singular and whataboutary, I don' t know. No? Okay. Well, someone else answer that. Or is the whataboutry like the patisserie, like where the whataboutisms are? Oh, like a creamery. Yeah, exactly. I think we've solved it. I'm not down to the Whatabattery. Do you want me to get any stupid justifications for fascism while I'm there? Yeah, I could go. I don't need them right now, but I imagine by the time you get back from the Whata Battery, I'll be like, I'll want to do some fascism, you know? Probably. I could eat, yeah. So we'll head on down to The Whatabaddery and see what they have in store for us. Hey, support this nonsense and the eBay auction for the extended DVDs for Lord of the Rings and the eBay auction For the DVD player that will need to watch

0:03:42 Lydia: Yeah, I don't know. Anyway. Yes. Whataboutisms and whataboutery is the practice? No, I do not think so. Unless like maybe if you are selling it as like a collection you can be like this is the what aboutery yes yes that's what it is the whataboutery is where you get your whatabout I'm gonna make merch about that too I'm just gonna make merch yeah mm -hmm yeah well if you're gonna go anyway yeah yeah yes

0:05:06 Thomas: That is assuming that's the only way it's still available. I doubt it. They probably have some other way at patreon.com/where-theres-woke. Oh, and also you can support the content and you know, debunking whatever that bullshit is, but mainly fund our like, every every man listening. I don't want to sorry to get gendery. But like every dude listening heard you say, Oh, yeah, let's watch Lord of rings. Rings and the things they did. I can't repeat it on the air, but likely the reaction they had was probably they loved it. So more of that and watching Lord of the Rings with patrons at patreon .com slash where there's woke. After this break, we'll get to it.

0:05:14 Lydia: Lord of the Rings watching watching activities.

0:05:42 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:05:42 Thomas: All right. Well, here we are only a few seconds into the episode because I edited out all of that intro. Yeah, we're right to it, right to the point. We're at the what about re. No, we got to keep that part. That was funny.

0:05:47 Lydia: We're so quick. Man, very focused. Okay, so let's get back into this article.

0:05:56 Thomas: Business mode. Serious.

0:05:56 Lydia: And yes, very serious. I will say this next one involves the government. So they're getting closer. So let's talk about this one.

0:06:04 Thomas: I called it. It's going to be, you know, they're going to try to do the either Hunter Biden's dick or COVID. That's my guess. But I don't know. Did I lose? Neither. OK.

0:06:11 Lydia: Kind of, sort of. It's sort of both. And let's not forget the Biden administration's censorship machine exposed in yeah exposed in Missouri v Biden later known as Murthy v Missouri the administration and federal agencies coerced and colluded directly and indirectly with social media companies to censor things they didn't like on a litany of topics such as Hunter Biden's laptop election integrity and COVID -19 in fact

0:06:14 Thomas: Oh, OK. Then did I double win? Censorship machine. Yeah, such as these. I love it, too, because I just have to point out the stuff that Trump is censoring, literally censorship is stuff that he doesn't like for personal reasons. Reasons. The stuff that they're even alleging before we get into it, the stuff that they're alleging is pro -social, like science, election integrity, genuinely stuff that we should care about. I just think it's such an indictment of the right. It's such a sign of how the sides aren't equal where it's like, well, this guy got censored, taken off the air for saying something that was perceived to be a slight insult to like a conservative. And that's just like when Biden tried to get them to take down medical misinformation. Yeah. Well, you don't know how dangerous it is to not worship Charlie Kirk for a moment. You don't know. Hashtag not even once. Yeah. So fucking pathetic. I saw clips of this pathetic, transparently self -interested interview that he did. And it's so pathetic I'm embarrassed for this billionaire. It's just stupid. He clearly saw which way everything was

0:07:21 Lydia: Yeah. That's the thing. It's like like obviously those are things that we should care about. But beyond that, they're also the things when you get it wrong, it's dangerous for people. So that was like safety and protection. You're right. I don't know. I do not know. In fact, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg later admitted on the Joe Rogan experience that Meta was complicit in the censorship. So let's talk about this a little bit. Yep. Yep.

0:08:04 Thomas: Going, obviously and was like how do I go and pander badly there's something I've been meaning to say and sorry to hijack your episode I've heard at least three people who were doing the same thing where they're trying to find a way to justify a shift in support to trump you know and the thing they all picked because it's this like values neutral thing do you know what it is when they say when they ask like oh here's why I started supporting trump any guesses on this well it was was when they tried to shoot him and just how he just like got back up on the stage it was so badass so that's what we need we just need that that kind of leadership it's so perfect too because it like they're picking something that can't it's they can't tie it to like well I love how he treats trans

0:08:10 Lydia: No, go for it, please. No, no guesses. Oh, geez. Okay. Cool. Yeah.

0:08:47 Thomas: People and kills immigrants and stuff like they don't zuckerberg doesn't want to be pinned to that you know in four years when the when the democrats might take over kind of thing so he has to pick this like values neutral thing and it's just so pathetic like the idea that that like we We just need this like masculine hero energy. The idea that that's how you would support a president. I know it's not how he made his decision, but just the calculation that goes into that fucking pandering lie is just so pathetic to me.

0:09:09 Lydia: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So let'S talk about that case a little bIt. Murthy v. Missouri. The claim behind that case was that the Biden administration jawboned, which is informal efforts by government officials to persuade someone outside of the government to take action in a particular way.

0:09:26 Thomas: Okay, I'll hear it out. Like if it is true that there is a government official that like tried to informally, like if somebody sent a confidential email instead of going on a right wing fucking Russia propaganda website, like I'll still say that's censorship. Like if they were to do that, I would like, like if this FCC guy, what's his name again?

0:09:45 Lydia: Brandon Carr.

0:09:46 Thomas: Yeah. If Brendan Carr had sent an email with this same message, it would, I would still say, oh, that's censorship, you know? So like, I will entertain the idea that, oh maybe if this is some informal pressuring that we, that was kind of behind the scenes, I will totally accept that that could still be censorship.

0:09:57 Lydia: Mm-hmm, yeah. So here it was about social media companies took down or, quote, downgraded posts by attorneys general and various individuals in two states. So two states kind of combined for this effort. And the specific thing that the Biden administration, at least with regard to this lawsuit, was interested in was restricting misinformation about the COVID -19 vaccine. We not only got a court case about it where plaintiffs actually won at the district court level.

0:10:28 Lydia: They said that the Bidens administration had violated the First Amendment by coercing or significantly encouraging social media platforms content moderation decisions.

0:10:36 Thomas: What circuit was it?

0:10:37 Lydia: Louisiana. So, yeah. Yeah.

0:10:38 Thomas: Okay. So is it fifth circuit?

0:10:40 Lydia: So then we get to then the Biden ministration appealed that it went to the U .S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. They largely held the ruling from Louisiana. Louisiana, the federal judge out of Louisiana, also part of the order was that it was going to limit the extent to which the White House and other government agencies, not all of them, but a lot of government agencies could communicate with social media platforms moving forward, which seemed odd and a little bit of overreach. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:11:04 Thomas: That seems like a, yeah, that seems like an overreach. Yeah. That's not even, so that wasn't even like, we're not even at the the circuit level that's the just the district court saying like let's control how they're even that's okay don't have a lot of faith in their unbiased decision making there wow

0:11:19 Lydia: Right. So then the Court of appeals largely upheld it. And so the Biden administration took it to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court reversed the decision. Barrett drafted the order and basically said that even if government officials sometimes influence content moderation decisions, quote, the platforms moderated similar content long before any of the government defendants engaged in the challenged conduct. So there were thoughts about like, well, what what kind of standing do you have? Like what kind of damages are there? They were not convinced, the majority here, they were not convinced that the government had actually altered the way that, yeah, the way that the private companies were acting here.

0:11:48 Thomas: What they were going to do anyway yeah that's interesting what was the margin on the decision no way uh-huh for fuck's sake but

0:12:00 Lydia: 6 -3. And the dissent was Alito, who authored the opinion, joined by Thomas and Gorsuch. And he suggested that the case could be, quote, one of the most important free speech cases to reach the Supreme Court in years. He said in one of The Footnotes, Matt Cameron over at OA will will appreciate this. We know now that valuable speech includes information about the origins of the COVID -19 virus, which was also suppressed. Cool.

0:12:30 Thomas: That doesn't really like again if the logic of the majority majority is, well, they were going to restrict this anyway. I feel like that's just trying to have your own way without considering that, you know, like what the majority is saying, you know, it's not really, it seemed like the majority thing wasn't, well I, who knows, this is an opening argument. So we're getting, not getting super deep into it, but it seemed like the reasoning wasn't from what you're saying related to like, well was the information right or whatever. It wasn't really, didn't seem like the decision rested on that.

0:12:58 Lydia: No, no, it didn't. It was more like and also it didnít really totally rest on like did the government engage in conversation, you know, with the social media company regarding their moderation practices. I donít think they They were making an opinion about that. I think they were like, well, they were doing that stuff before. They continue to make those decisions after.

0:13:20 Lydia: And it doesn't seem to be influenced by the government. Yeah, so here's the thing. Before the SCOTUS decision came down, like very shortly before, the House was also investigating this simultaneously. And they have a select subcommittee now on the weaponization of the federal government. And they released a staff report right before the decision camedown. And it's titled the Censorship Industrial Complex. How Biden White House Officials Coerced Big Tech to Censor Americans' True Information and Critics of the Biden Administration. I think this is Jim Jordan's committee. And it's 881 pages long. And so there might be something in there, I guess. It's not exactly at the front of anything. I mean, they were doing hearings and things like that. And I don't even know that the Biden administration would disagree that they probably contacted social media companies and said like, Like, hey, you know, we are concerned about people getting the wrong information here. What kind of, you Know, policies do you guys have in place? Also, keep in mind, this is after we, you Know, finding out about Russia's influence on the election in 2016. You know, like there's, there was a lot of concern as we were getting to the next election in 2020 about what disinformation is going to look like on these platforms.

0:13:20 Thomas: Do we have in the record? I don't, I know, you know, this is one of six items in this article. But in the record, I assume if there are any bad documents of, you know, the FCC fucking chairman at the time saying we can do this the easy way, the hard way. I'm sure we would have that in the fucking record.

0:13:56 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. It's fucking nonsense. Written by Marjorie Taylor Greene or some shit. She can't write. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Not only that. I mean, when you think of speech, we do have an extensive, obviously, freedom of speech in this country. But when you think of the few things we aren't allowed to say, one of them would be like, well, you can't like lie about medicine. You know, I know we have the supplements are kind of bullshit and a lot of that is not as strong as it should be. But I think if you talk to average Joe, you'd be like well, people shouldn't be able to say like this medicine will save your child's life. But actually it kills them, you know, like I think we would all agree on that and who is the only entity that can limit the speech. It's the government. So, yeah, like if it involves medical misinformation, it doesn't surprise me that the government would be at least trying to influence them. And maybe even depending on how it is, like maybe this would be some like a rare case where the government should actually be able to restrict certain kinds of speech. But it sounds like they didn't even get close to that oh

0:15:04 Lydia: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Right. They have an interest. And yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, as I have this 800 -page document in front of me, let me read to you actually a couple examples that they cite here of big tech changing their content moderation policies because of Biden White House pressure. In March 2021, an Amazon employee emailed others within the company about the reason for the Amazon bookstore's new content moderation policy change. Quote, the impetus for this request is criticism from the Biden administration about sensitive books we're giving prominent placement to. Too. Okay. It's just it's an internal email between Amazon employees. It could be someone who's just saying that that has no information, like could just be someone venting to their coworker. Yeah. I mean, is it related to like

0:15:49 Thomas: Here we go criticism okay like what yeah well yeah and and what is the criticism do we know like if yeah

0:16:24 Lydia: The plandemic kind of stuff?

0:16:27 Thomas: Was it done out in the open was it them just saying like we don't again were they just giving their opinion on like we don't think this is how they should do their thing or is it like an email where someone's like all right you better do this differently or else you know which is a very different thing and I think thing, because if it was, I'm sure we would have fucking heard about it.

0:16:40 Lydia: Yeah. Also, I think the other piece here, too, is that like with very, very few exceptions, Amazon hasn't taken books off of the marketplace, right? Like there's a couple, I think, that I can think of that they've ceased selling. But what this criticism could be is that because they say, you know, we're giving prominent placement to some of these items, the criticism couldbe like, hey, your algorithm is really pushing this. You might want to take a look at it because we're concerned about, you know, how like dangerous some of that content could be. Who knows? It could just be that like you can still buy those items. It's just they're not going to be posted as like, you you know, things you should read or whatever the little lists are on Amazon. In March 2021, just one day prior to a scheduled call with the White House, an Amazon employee explained how changes to Amazon's bookstore policies were being applied, quote, due to criticism from the Biden people. OK, that's the same exact thing that we just said.

0:16:55 Thomas: Why don't we have the criticism? Why don'T they have, you know, like, why don'T THEY have what the criticism was? I feel like that's pretty important.

0:17:42 Lydia: Yeah, I mean, and that's a quote literally from the internal email. So there is nothing specific about what the criticism was. Yeah. In July 2021, when Facebook executive Nick Clegg asked a Facebook employee why the company censored the man -made theory of the SARS COVID -19 virus, the employee responded, because we were under pressure from the Biden administration and others to do more, we shouldn't have done it. Who is that random employee that was responding to Nick Clebb's question there? I have no idea. They don't tell me. How would they know? We don't know. They won't tell us. So anyway, there's just it's examples like that that are vague and sound scarier than I think they probably are. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, of course, like in the wake of like the Twitter files, they have infographics here, the Facebook files, the YouTube files, the Amazon files. It's just so gross. It's an yeah. Yeah. No, totally. Let's pull it from the archive. I think it's still worth.

0:17:49 Thomas: So they have that. Yeah. And that page count is entirely intentional too, because they're just like, look at this huge ass fucking report. No one's going to fucking read it. Two people will read it and no one listens to those people.

0:18:40 Thomas: God, I still want to do the Twitter file someday, even though it's not really relevant anymore. Like that was just such such a fucking joke and Matt Taibbi is is like fully I guess you wouldn't call him like MAGA but he's fully bought into that worldview still like he was I saw him on an interview I almost almost was gonna look into it for maybe doing something but I didn't I was doing something else at the time but I saw an interview recently of him saying like oh these indictments are coming for like Hillary and Russiagate and crap I was like what is that like he's bought into that it's crazy guy

0:19:11 Lydia: Weird. Wow. This is an old Supreme Court case, you know, from last term, I guess it's not that old. But the issues are, you know from years ago, it's still going. Just a week ago, we get an update from the Judiciary Committee in the House. Google admits censorship under Biden promises to end bans of YouTube accounts of thousands of Americans censored for political speech. You might have heard about this because everybody was saying Alex Jones is coming back to YouTube. Nick Fuentes is coming back to YouTube. And then you might have heard that shortly thereafter, them joining back on YouTube, they were kicked off again. And they were saying it's, you know, a witch hunt, an equivalent of that, right? Like, we're being censored, we'RE being silenced. You know, they said we could come back and, and they lied and just just me existing is a problem for them, etc, etc. Well, YouTube has responded to that very, very recently. Andthey said that the program to reinstate accounts actually isn't up and running yet. Also, it's going to be a pilot program. So it's not going to be available to every single account that was removed. They're going to do a limited program to reintroduce some folks whose accounts were taken down related to like COVID -19 situations and things like that.

0:19:18 Thomas: Sucks Yeah sure that's weird

0:20:23 Lydia: Also Nick Fuentes and Alex Jones may not even be eligible to participate in the program because of the particular things that they violated. It wasn't like COVID COVID misinformation, Sandy Hook stuff, anti -Semitism, like really gross, gross conduct. And so YouTube has explicitly said in this response, Jim Jordan, like, you know, took it the whole way and said, everybody's coming back. And he like spread this idea. So everyone was expecting everybody to come back immediately. And then YouTube had to be like, we never said that. We said it was going to be a pilot program. And we never Said that we were ready to start it now.

0:20:38 Thomas: It was fucking sandy hook stuff you know like

0:21:02 Lydia: We're getting ready and it's not launched yet. So yeah, these are people that are trying to get their accounts back online before we've given them the green light to come back. So, yeah, just kind of an interesting thing there. Vivek Ramaswamy, a name we haven't heard in a while, actually commented about Nick Fuentes and Alex Jones being removed, quote unquote, from this and compared it to Kimmel's suspension and preempting.

0:21:02 Thomas: Yeah wow yeah for sure yeah totally let's not look into any of the details there that's probably a good

0:21:27 Lydia: Our country is at its best when we're able to hear one another.

0:21:30 Thomas: Comparison shut up fuck you

0:21:33 Lydia: Nick Fuentes and Jimmy Kimmel probably don't like me for different reasons. I don't care.

0:21:38 Thomas: What a hero god you're such a

0:21:38 Lydia: It's still un -American to muzzle the peaceful expression of opinions. Peaceful expression of opinion.

0:21:42 Thomas: Hero he's such a a hero.

0:21:44 Lydia: And no, that's not a legal point. It is a cultural point. Yeah.

0:21:46 Thomas: Man, what a better American than everyone else. So I'm so sick of it. Can we be done? And it sucks. Like, I want to be done with the bullshit free speech argument, except it did actually apply in Kimmel. So it's like, yeah, well, when it's actual government censorship, that matters. When it's, hey, this guy who made up shit, horrible stuff about the Sandy Hook victim, like just unforgivable stuff. Well, we're better off when we can all listen to it. Shut the the fuck up fuck you oh

0:22:13 Lydia: Yeah. And even to, you know, as we're recording this, Senator Cruz. So he oversees the Commerce Committee in the Senate. He released today an investigative report revealing how the Biden administration transformed the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency CISA into an agent of censorship, pressuring big tech to police speech. Now, his report that he's issued is only 40 pages long.

0:22:38 Thomas: I couldn't get the page count

0:22:39 Lydia: Also, his cover page is way nicer.

0:22:40 Thomas: Up these blue is load on the cover page you couldn't so I couldn't get the 888 pages or

0:22:46 Lydia: Senator Cruz said as he was discussing this report, our report shows that the Biden administration used CISA to strong arm social media companies into taking action against speech protected by the First Amendment. For the past decade, I've led the fight against government censorship, whether it's CISA or the FCC or the Biden White House. Inevitably, these tactics have been and will be disproportionately used to silence conservatives. Given renewed Democrat interest in the First Amendment because of Kimmel, I'm slightly more optimistic that Congress can pass legislation to stop government from using this left wing playbook to jawbone private companies to censor speech, especially in the age of artificial intelligence.

0:22:49 Thomas: Whatever what

0:23:22 Lydia: Yeah, I don't know.

0:23:22 Thomas: Is that what does that have to do with

0:23:24 Lydia: Oh, like that it could be fake or something maybe? Or I don't know.

0:23:26 Thomas: Anything I don't think that's it you just like threw that in out of habit I don't know pretty much every statement you say especially in the age of artificial intelligence

0:23:31 Lydia: Yeah, it could be. So in the previous episode, you know, we gave a little shout out to Ted Cruz. I'm taking it back because now he's using the Kimmel situation. I appreciate your cover page on this report and that's about it. So I think it's

0:23:41 Thomas: Yeah give it back give back your shout out sir yeah

0:23:50 Lydia: Perhaps their most compelling example or possible example of of government. But like, yeah. But even then, as we're breaking it down, there's not really a lot of there there.

0:23:54 Thomas: Not saying much but yeah nothing again if there was any any smoking gun document. I know we would have seen it.

0:24:06 Lydia: It would be it would be everywhere. It Would It Would Be It Would Literally Be News. And there's nothing like this stuff that's hidden in 800 page reports on government websites that only people like me and other nerds are going to be pulling up.

0:24:23 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:24:23 Lydia: All right. Now here's our next example. Speaking of the Hunter Biden laptop, no one raised any alarms when conservatives were were being locked out of their Twitter accounts for sharing the New York Post's bombshell story. In fact, left -wing media outlets gave cover to big tech, with NPR framing their reporting on the censorship as Twitter and Facebook merely limiting, quote, the reach of an article with unconfirmed claims. Before couching that with a note that so -called, quote. Experts warn that social media platforms are full of misinformation and conspiracy theories. I don't hear anything wrong in that. It was an article. It was a article with unconfirmed claims."

0:24:35 Thomas: A lot of people did, but yeah, this is probably actually the best case. I still don't know. Like the laptop thing is really confusing because apparently like we don't Know what was the definitely something was real in there, but we don'T know what and we DON'T know 100 % if it wasn'T like tainted by Russia.

0:25:03 Lydia: It's very confusing. Amazing. Well, they did like these forensic teams have like very meticulously gone through like the all the emails, the thousands, tens of thousands of emails and stuff. And, you know, they've been able to verify X amount with a particular method and then they use another method to see if they can verify others. So there are some things in there that are legitimate, but I don't know if they've ever finished because it's a lot.

0:25:33 Thomas: And the amount I don'T have you look this up the amount of time that it was was throttled was like not a lot well were they really locked out of their twitter

0:25:36 Lydia: Lot. No, no. And really like when people were locked out of their Twitter accounts, it really was like the premise was it was basically Twitter was concerned that users were violating a policy regarding sharing hacked material.

0:25:47 Thomas: This oh yeah right and if they refused that yeah yeah that's like pretty much how it always

0:25:55 Lydia: And so they basically said, hey, you need to delete this tweet and then they would be allowed back in. Yeah. Yeah, that was them being locked out. And then Twitter tried to prevent users from being able to tweet or direct message a link to the article because again that was at that point in time no one really knew what was going on and so twitter was treating it as distributing hacked material which there's a ban on

0:26:19 Thomas: Works yeah they made a call may it might have been the wrong call but it's also like a tough close call yeah oh come on jesus christ that would have changed the election it's like

0:26:21 Lydia: That and it was short I think it was 24 hours when I was watching the jack dorsey interview about it yeah yeah it yeah exactly

0:26:32 Thomas: Really they don't You don't think enough people heard about Hunter Biden's fucking laptop? Because I think they did.

0:26:36 Lydia: And like and the elements of even how the post got this story are so insane too that like Like, I don't blame a company for being like, OK, like, like pump the brakes. This seems nuts that Hunter Biden dropped off a laptop at a repair store and then it wasn't picked up timely. So then, yeah,

0:26:51 Thomas: Yeah, the repair store thing. Seems crazy. I don't know. I've heard from people that like that's not that crazy. So I don'T know. That just seems fucking like, what are the odds? And like the guy, the guy's a Trumper like that gave it to them. And like Rudy Giuliani, right? Wasn't it like just

0:26:59 Lydia: Yeah. An abandonment contract clause. Yeah, I know. I don' t know.

0:27:08 Lydia: Well, and then he's blind also. Yeah, it's via Rudy Giuliani. Gave it to the New York Post. It's it's weird. And exactly. And that's the thing. It's like, I do not blame, yeah,

0:27:13 Thomas: The whole thing? I donT know. Hard to believe. Leave. So they took 24 hours to maybe.

0:27:21 Lydia: I don't blame Twitter to be like, we need to check this out like a little bit more before we let it take over the entire site because this seems suspect. So from what I was reading, it's not clear what triggered Twitter to act on that. Facebook had said, yeah.

0:27:28 Thomas: Yeah now who wait did the government direct that what was the evidence did they ask them or something or was that just them doing it because wait yeah hold on that's when Trump was in office. So what the fuck are we talking about here.

0:27:49 Lydia: Well, so Facebook had Said that their decision had been informed by an FBI warning to watch for disinformation spread by foreign actors. So it's similar. It's kind of like the similar thing that we were seeing in the content moderation in the previous example, where we had significant disinformation surrounding the 2016 election. We're coming up on 2020. And not only is it another election, it's also in the midst of COVID and everything. And so I think all these social media companies were like, well, we know we screwed up in 2016. What we did, which was nothing, was not enough. So let's see if we can correct here.

0:28:26 Lydia: And maybe they overcorrected in some cases. I don't know. That's not for me to say exactly. But it sounds like all I can think of is like, yeah, you're right, that it would have been the Trump administration anyway. So there's no government pressuring them.

0:28:36 Thomas: So it's them making a call. You don't the details matter in terms of the fucking censorship. So dumb. It's not the same if it's not like the actual FCC threatening you. With real, and not just like, hey, our opinion is that this is bad. Not just that, like actually threatening to remove licenses and stuff. It's just so categorically different.

0:28:59 Lydia: Some people feel that the way that this was approached by the social media companies, though, like they say, you know, could have amplified disinformation thanks to the Streisand effect.

0:29:08 Thomas: Maybe, I don't know.

0:29:09 Lydia: Who knows? Who knows. And then this sparked Trump going off about Section 230 and, you Know, all the things around that.

0:29:13 Thomas: You know, one of the many, obviously, harms from fucking Trump being elected the second time is, I meant to say with the Google thing and with the Mark Zuckerberg Facebook thing, they all had every incentive now to just fucking legitimize the bullshit conspiracy theories to try to get on their good side. That's why they all were like, yeah, they admitted this. And it's like, yeah, it's fucking bullshit. They're kissing ass and they're trying to get back in the good graces because they know, precisely because they knew that Trump is going to abuse his power, they're not as worried about getting in the Good Graces of Democrats because Democrats aren't going to abuse their power to this degree, you know, to like make life miserable for these companies in the way that Trump definitely will. Oh, final story, everybody.

0:29:57 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. OK, so that was story number five. You ready for this last one? OK, this is a little combined, but I'm really just going to focus on this first sentence. No one clutched the First Amendment when the Federalist John Daniel Davidson was locked out of his Twitter account for stating the obvious fact that then U .S. Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine is a man. Yeah. So do you remember the name John Daniel Davison? Yeah, we did. It. We just covered him briefly on OA a few weeks ago. Yeah, I guess two weeks ago when we were doing the reaction to Charlie Kirk's murder. And he won Matt's award for the most unhinged right wing op -ed. The title of it was Charlie Kirk assassination should herald the end of the American left. I'm just going to read a little bit from this because I know folks here, you know, you got a lot of pods to listen to. I get it. But if you didn't catch that over on opening arguments, I'm going to give you a little a little snippet of what John Daniel Davidson was writing over at the Federalist about Charlie Kirk. So how should the right respond? On the formal institutional level, the Trump administration should dismantle the entire ecosystem of left -wing political activism in America. Antifa and BLM groups need to have their assets seized and donor lists

0:30:03 Thomas: Where was Condor? Oh, for fuck's sake. Stupid. God, that sounds really familiar. Yeah. Didn't we just cover that? Boy, that's sounds really free speechy.

0:31:13 Lydia: Scrutinized. Yeah. The left - Wing billionaires who fund these organizations need to be criminally investigated and charged if possible. Groups tied to transgenderism, Palestine, Hamas, socialism, and other radical leftist causes should be targeted using every tool available to the Justice Department and federal law enforcement agencies. The law should be applied maximally to these groups and the individuals who lead them and fund them. If the Democratic Party and Democrat leaders are implicated, so be it. It might be that the DNC and the Democratic Party itself need to be destroyed, root and branch. In the near term, Democrat politicians like Representative Ilhan Omar, who mocked Kirk after he was killed, should be expelled from Congress by the Republican majority. That's a chill take.

0:31:54 Thomas: She didn't. Yeah, man. Just like you can just say stuff. Also, no one should ever be allowed to like a flavor of ice cream that I don't like. It's just fucking stupid. They're doing maximum fascism, this guy. And where was Gondor when he He called a woman a man. I don't care. Gondor was like, why the fuck should we care about that? Don't even, I'm not lighting my fucking beacons over transphobia. And also I love it too, because like, if you just think throughout history and throughout, like, Why did the founders care about free speech? You know, and like, what were they thinking of, you know, in terms of like, probably some really horrible stuff, especially when you talk about like the crown and like executing people for saying the wrong thing, just like horrible stuff like that, like they probably wanted to avoid. And I just imagine telling them like where were they when okay so I was locked out of my twitter when it's just like fucking pathetic man it's so dumb yeah where I just use a different pronoun than the person is

0:32:36 Lydia: Oh yeah unless I deleted this one tweet.

0:32:53 Lydia: Yep yep. I need to also read this tweet this is related to Charlie Kirk's murder that he posted that was not in his article and then we'll talk about his great offense and his martyrdom. He said for people on the right who publicly engage in political cultural debate with the left. Kirk's murder and the celebration of it revealed there's a lot of people in this country who want to kill us. We don't intend to let you. Everything that's coming is defensive. The left has brought this on itself. That's scary. Don't love that either.

0:33:19 Thomas: Uh -huh it's like when the cop shoots an unarmed person says he reached for his gun like on the so the body cam has the fat.

0:33:29 Lydia: So in the article we've been reading, it links to a piece that he wrote when this happened. So I wanted to share a little bit from it, from his perspective. Twitter locked my account for telling the truth about Rachel Levine. And he wrote, Big Tech, this is his tweet. Big Tech will eventually silence everyone who dissents from their woke ideology. They're not even trying to hide it anymore. If you say that Rachel LevINE is a man, they will come after you.

0:33:56 Lydia: Doesn't matter that Levine is in fact a man. Truth is no defense. Telling the truth about Rachel Levines. Like, but you think it's going to be something like actually like weighty, like, you know, there's some sort of scandal. Yeah, Yeah, exactly. Like, like how, how she's treated people on her staff or,

0:34:06 Thomas: Like a whistleblower thing. Yeah. I disagree with someone in their assertion of what their pronouns are like. No, that's stupid. That's nothing. Also, this wasn't the government at all. This is fucking Twitter. And don't don't worry. That doesn't exist anymore. Twitter is the opposite of free speech now. It's it's Nazis. Free speech for Nazis and not for the free speech for me, for Nazis, and not für die. I was trying to I was trying to remember how it goes oh that's

0:34:16 Lydia: No, this was Twitter. Yeah. This is all related to Twitter's at the time, what their hateful conduct policy was, which was intended to be protective of trans folks. There's been some commentary at the Time when it obviously changed with Elon Musk, but it was, it did in writing say You cannot, you know, misgender or deadname trans folks. That's considered to be hateful conduct.

0:34:59 Lydia: Alejandra Caraballo, you know, from all the social media sites, Carabollo had said, you know, that she had tried to report various things that either she observed or were directed at her as violation of this hateful conduct. And Twitter failed to act on a lot of occasions, you know, so it's it was not always applied. It seemed to have been applied in this case. And it really, really pissed off John Daniel Daniel Davidson. He said, this article is just, it's trash, honestly. I'm not going to read much of this at all because it's just so incredibly rude and dismissive

0:34:58 Thomas: Good disgusting yeah

0:35:32 Lydia: And disgusting and all the things. But he said, you know, I'm the first commentator to get locked out of Twitter for pointing this out that he disagrees with Rachel Levine's gender identity.

0:35:35 Thomas: Wait how are we even hearing from him I thought he'd been silenced how are you even hearing this

0:35:43 Lydia: Yeah, well, you know what? It's nice because he's an editor over at The Federalist, so he has a platform. Form yeah senior editor indeed my offending tweet

0:35:46 Thomas: Take oh no wow maybe just use that fucking platform fucking dick

0:35:55 Lydia: Was merely linking to a column I wrote last week detailing how twitter had locked out the babylon b its editor-in-chief kyle mann its founder adam ford and Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA all of whom ran afoul of twitter's terms of service for saying levine is a man in twitter world saying Levine's a man amounts to hateful conduct as you can well imagine twitter's hateful conduct policy is rather capacious it isn't limited to prohibitions on obvious things like violent threats or harassment but that is that is harassment or calling for harm to specific groups of people it also includes quote targeted misgendering or dead naming of transgender individuals

0:36:21 Thomas: Yeah it is kind of calling for harm to a specific group of people

0:36:28 Lydia: Yeah yeah it absolutely is and then he he just tries to like really twist things here and and decides to define things the way he wants to define them dead naming is when you use a person's given name is what he says next for example before Before Rachel Levine transitioned, in quotes, his given name was Richard. Misgendering is when you say a trans woman is in fact a man or a trans man is in fact a woman. It's just nonsense like that.

0:36:42 Thomas: Could be yeah that that that is what it is sorry what's the point of this that is what it is

0:36:56 Lydia: Yeah, it's just it's nonsense. He goes on to say that trans people suffer from dangerous delusions, that they need people to tell them the truth. And that's what being compassionate means in their case and transgender folks cases is to deadname them and misgender them because they are disturbed and they don't know.

0:37:13 Thomas: Oh cool well this private company had a different opinion at that time I mean they don't anymore but they did at that Time so that's what

0:37:20 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Unfortunately, it has changed in the wake of Elon coming. Everyone kind of expected it because of Elon and how anti -trans he is. So no one was really surprised, but it became a less safe space for sure.

0:37:32 Thomas: Happened you know it's funny and they always say I think there even are people on the left who will talk about like hey it's you can't just hide behind the private company thing because like it's convenient when the company agrees with you but then once like your side's being censored then you're gonna be pissed and it's like I don't think that matters because the reason that like with what twitter's doing and with what truth social is my argument is not oh now I I am hypocritical because now I'm saying the company should allow all kinds of whatever no it's just like well you shouldn't have those shitty values that's my

0:38:04 Lydia: Mm-huh. Yeah, I thought it would be fun to I'm enjoying layering these things in with the Jimmy

0:38:11 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:38:15 Lydia: Kimmel cancellation

0:38:15 Thomas: Argument because they're so equivalent it's like the same thing I forgot which we were talking about honestly I think we were talking

0:38:18 Lydia: Because it's so equivalent. But I want to I wanted to share some of what John Daniel Davidson wrote when Kimmel was suspended and preempted and all that stuff. He wrote this on the Federalist. Davidson writes the title, we are not going to have a debate about free speech. Okay.

0:38:39 Lydia: The cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel's show doesn't matter. What matters is the left. What, what matters? What matters is the Left's embrace of

0:38:37 Thomas: About him oh okay well that's settled no I'm sorry you're debating I said we're not going to have it but I'm not listening you said we're not listening. There's no debate is happening. Why are you still talking? La, la, la. You can't be like, we're not going to have a debate. Anyway, here's my side of the debate.

0:38:53 Lydia: Political violence. Yeah. No, seriously. So, okay. And here we go. The conversation we need to have is about the normalization of political silence on the Left. We need to be talking about left -wing Antifa trans terrorists gunning down Christians in broad daylight while Democrats in the corporate press justify it and the online left celebrates it. That's the only conversation that matters right now. The manufactured outrage over ABC canceling Jimmy Kimmel's show is an attempt to change the conversation, to flip the script, so that instead of talking about the first major political assassination in America in 60 years, yeah, instead of telling the media, the media is talking. They don't count. Exactly. Instead of talking about the mainstream left's embrace of political violence and the institutional ecosystem that foments and funds that violence. We can talk.

0:39:30 Thomas: Sorry, what? There was literally the Minnesota folks right before this. Oh, those don't count. Yeah.

0:39:44 Thomas: You know, John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, there will be no debate because I don't debate fascists. You know Mehdi Hassan in that debate video thing that I don' t think you saw, but was just truly really fucking horrifying. There was one of the disgusting, smiley fascists who was just a fascist. And then Medi was like, oh, well, I don't debate fascists. I'm not going to do that. Like, why would I talk to you? And then they tried to do the free speech thing. Whoa, you're not going to even listen to his ideas. He's like, why would I listen to him? Why would I not listen to his ideas? He said, I don't get to count as a person.

0:40:15 Thomas: I don't get to live here. I DON'T get, like, I don't debate fascists. Yeah, we shouldn't debate facists. This guy is the most fucking This guy is more fascist than Trump. So, yes, there will be no debate, douchebag, because I'm not fucking listening to you.

0:40:22 Lydia: He's bad. Yeah, yes, I agree with that.

0:40:29 Lydia: Okay, but I'm going to keep reading this article because it's crazy. What nonsense and what a tell. It speaks volumes that Democrats, liberal media, and online leftists are so desperate to pivot away from talking about Kirk's assassination that they have chosen to take up the transparently stupid cause of Kimmel's free speech rights. Remember, these are people who don't care at all about free speech.

0:40:41 Thomas: Oh, I'll talk about it. No. Because when I, my account, I couldn't log in. And I think it was because of misgen... Shut up, dude. This is actual government censorship. God, it's so fucking funny. They don't even care. Where was Gondor when my twitter account wouldn't log in so fucking pathetic yeah

0:41:08 Lydia: And it hardly needs to be said that nothing about the Kimmel story implicates free speech in any way. Kimmel didn't just mock MAGA or criticize Kirk, he patently lied about the ideology of Kirk's alleged assassin, and by allowing his comments to air, ABC arguably violated the terms of its FCC license. Anyone with an internet connection and half a brain cell knows that Kirk's alleged killer was deeply into Antifa and transgender ideologies, and that he specifically targeted Kirk for speaking out against these things. He was a creature wholly of the left, and to declare otherwise, as Kimmel did, is a deliberate falsification of the facts surrounding the most high -profile political assassination of our time. That means Kimmel blatantly violated FCC regulations. And then he goes on to talk about that. No surprise, then, that Brendan Carr addressed Kimmel's comments when he went on Benny Johnson's podcast on Wednesday and quotes that, not that the FCC had to take action because the marketplace was already reacting. And he just talks about the fallout there. It's so crazy. It is so nuts.

0:41:14 Thomas: I agree that that doesn't need to be said you're right yeah it's they get to say whatever the fuck they want there's no there'sno rules they can just fucking say the most hypocritical fucking dog shit and uh I won't hear it I for one would like you to stop reading it is

0:42:23 Lydia: So no, we won't be having a tortured debate about the nuances of the First Amendment and the finer details of FCC regulations. We won't be furrowing our brows over the line between regulation in the public interest and censorship of free speech.

0:42:27 Thomas: That you or him I agree oh darn That's convenient.

0:42:38 Lydia: We won't be agonizing over what Democrats might do once they regain power and deciding it's best just to let the late night host spew whatever lies they want. Yeah.

0:42:43 Thomas: Yeah, because you're going to do a genocide of Democrats. You already talked about it.

0:42:48 Lydia: So that's that guy.

0:42:51 Thomas: Guy is great. Awesome. Cool. Chill.

0:42:54 Lydia: Then the other thing that she mentions is when YouTube censored Senator Rand Paul for disagreeing with the government about CDC guidance. That was regarding masks. And I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about that because Rand Paul never even called it government censorship or anything like that. He was like, YouTube's a private company and they didn't want my position on this and my pushback against what the government was saying on this. And it was at a challenging time in the pandemic when we were all encouraged to get cloth masks and knowing. Yeah.

0:43:22 Thomas: This is him talking or?

0:43:23 Lydia: So his well, so his position was cloth masks will not protect you. And it wasn't.

0:43:29 Thomas: Like, did he have a YouTube channel? Like, what the fuck? Or did they just put like a notice, maybe over footage or something? Because I don't. What did he get banned from fucking YouTube?

0:43:32 Lydia: I think it was, you know, good question. Yeah.

0:43:39 Lydia: So he posted a video of a journalist interviewing him, I guess, on his channel and his. Yeah. YouTube removed the video and then banned him from uploading content for seven days. And so it really was about cloth masks versus N95 masks and Rand Paul being like N95 work. Cloth masks don't. And the government having concerns, understandably, at the peak of the pandemic about N95s not being made available to folks in the health care industry, you know, needing to up the supply chain there. So, you Know, that's a tough call to make. But but even Rand Paul is like, that wasn't the government shutting me down as you know YouTube policies.

0:43:43 Thomas: OK. Like and subscribe. Oh, did you say that because it was the Trump administration?

0:44:17 Lydia: Yeah, probably, probably. But whatever. He's on record saying it.

0:44:18 Thomas: Yeah, that's probably why. Yeah, okay, we get to it

0:44:21 Lydia: So I'm not gonna talk about it. And then she closes out this article. So why the sudden panic now when a private company makes a determination on its own to pull a host for spreading egregious lies? Yeah.

0:44:24 Thomas: Counts oh because of censorship because of threats from the government that's why unlike any of the fucking examples you gave it's actual censorship so that's why if you're confused why now it's because now there's actual censorship

0:44:40 Lydia: Check out this parenthetical. And possibly violating the law. What law? What law. Jimmy Kimmel violated the law?

0:44:44 Thomas: Wait who violated what law oh there was a point I did see earlier in the article she tried to make reference to like the news distortion thing but it's not it's I mean I mean, I don't. Yeah, but I guess you could say that those have the force of law because, you know, I guess you could call that a law.

0:44:53 Lydia: But that's not a law, is it? It's just that those are the FCC regulations. But it's not like he's gonna be criminally charged like the way that she wrote that definitely makes it seem like there's some steep consequences for jimmy kimmel in

0:45:06 Thomas: Well, yeah, she could be. I don'T know what she's referring to. I mean I would be I guess slightly charitable on that that like maybe like but but I don't know. You could be right. I'm not sure what the fuck she has in mind. I was trying to like be nice. But yeah, it's like where was Gondor when I stubbed my toe and now that Mordor is at our gates. Gondor wants to come and help. Where were they?

0:45:13 Lydia: Particular okay yeah

0:45:32 Thomas: It's like, well, yeah, that's one of those things is the thing that, one of those things is the thing and the others aren't the Thing. So where were they when not censorship happened? Well, they didn't give a shit. Where are they when censorship happened? They give a shit. I solved it.

0:45:32 Lydia: Yeah yeah um if you remember at the beginning of this article her thesis was that this isn't about us caring this isn'T the left about uh caring about free speech it's you know all in service of Trump is authoritarian and trying to keep that narrative alive. So she hasn't touched on that at all for the rest of the article, but we're going to get to it here in her

0:45:52 Thomas: Yeah. I mean, it's still the same thing, really. Oh,

0:46:05 Lydia: Final paragraph. So why the sudden panic now, etc., etc.? Partially because it's one of their own, but even more so because, as Rahm Emanuel once said, and note, she initially attributed this to Barack Obama and then had to issue a correction, never let a crisis go to waste. The left doesn't really care about Kimmel or free speech, but by pretending that this is some unprecedented Trump crackdown, they get to smear Trump as a dictator or authoritarian to delegitimize his presidency. It's not about defending free speech. It's just about exploiting a convenient storyline to keep their narrative of Trump is authoritarian alive.

0:46:40 Thomas: You don't really care about my fascism. You just want to use my fascism to call me a fascist I've made a point so fucking dumb it's amazing how much of their bullshit has to rely because they just it's just fascism it's just tu quoque blah blah appeals to like hypocrisy that don't all of their arguing gets caught up it's it's like a certain point you just want to be like do you want to just like talk about like policies that you want or don't you know do you wanna just like about taxes or something you know it's all well they what you you don't understand when I my twitter and when they not they said that we said and they don't really care they don'T really care THEY'RE JUST SAYING THEY CARE BUT THEY DON'T CARE THEY REALLY THEY DONT BECAUSE IT'S LIKE WHAT IS THIS LIKE CAN'T WHAT CAN'T THEY JUST BE LIKE WHAT SHOULD THE MARGINAL TAX RATE BE ON THE

0:46:50 Lydia: Unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. No.

0:47:31 Thomas: WHATEVER OR WHAT SHOULD OUR FOREIGN POLICY BE OR WHAT SHOULD THE WHATEVER BE IT'S Like They Just Have To Be So Fucking Caught Up In This Grievance Nonsense Yeah It'S

0:47:39 Lydia: And not even just on like, you know, within the media and stuff or on Twitter or, you know, talking heads of various whatevers, but like also in Congress, like, like I shared, like these are huge reports and committee time that is being spent instead of doing other things. They are spending it doing this and following these weird ass breadcrumbs that lead to nowhere and they pretend that they lead to somewhere. Somewhere

0:48:03 Thomas: Our Whole Politics Has Become That It's so fucking Depressing It was one thing when it was just online, but now it's like, no, that's the Senate and the fucking House and the whatever. It's just such dog shit.

0:48:08 Lydia: Yeah yeah word of advice to folks um do not search for john daniel davidson videos on youtube unless you want to be bombarded with his horrific transphobic views so and that's why I did not play any clips of him talking for this uh because they were all dark and disgusting

0:48:28 Thomas: I mean, yeah, we heard some of it. Well, that guy sucks. I would say we completely dismantled this article. Some things are bad and other things are not bad. You know, there's not the what about. It's like I actually I like good things. I don't like bad things. End of argument. This hypocrisy nonsense. And yeah, it's just fucking stupid. Hmm. All right. Well, thanks for the breakdown. This has been fun. Thanks so much. Wokies for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. Please share the show. Please support the show patreon.com/seriouspod and you can get Sydney swingies boobs on there.

0:48:30 Lydia: So we did we did he's the worst they're all the worst yeah and you know one thing I do want to close out on too is in our bonus episode for Sydney Sweeney I had mentioned that the new york times actually did a good thing and they had an article kind of tracking the outrage creation that happened as part of the american eagle controversy and they they did some really good data there um they similar to that they also tracked the the evolution of the Kimmel controversy, quote unquote. So there's some good stuff there. I'll link a bunch of things in the show notes for this one. I think there's some good pieces to check out. I think when we talk about the right -wing outrage machine and how truly it is a machine, we're seeing it time and time and time again. And here's just another story where we're seeing it too. Yes, that's a promise.

0:49:45 Thomas: That's that show. Oh, wow. Hold it. Holy shit. We got 10 million patrons just from saying that.

0:50:09 Thomas: Can you put the hobbits back on? Wait, how are we even hearing from him? I thought he'd been silenced. We're not going to have a debate. Anyway, here's my side of the debate.