Well we're talking about Sinatra and using the term chicks. Well we might as
well be the rat pack. We're gonna be kicked out of You know whatever,
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can
do for your country. Mister garbahaw tear down this wall. It's the Ricche
Podcast with Peter Robbinson and Rob Block. I'm James Lyllax and today we talked
to David de Rojers about the war on Real Clear politics. So let's arisel's
a podcast. How would you put up that kind of money? Because you
have a bomb to put up, even if if you appeal, you got
to put up escrow money. That's it's a lot, a lot of form
of navali. It is a form of communism or fascism. The guys in
Nutsja America is a nation that can be defined in a single word. How
was gonna put him to put? Excuse me? Welcome everybody. This is
the Ricashy Podcast, number six hundred and eighty. James Lilx. Here in
Minneapolis where it's a little bit cool and overcast. So like Jack Webb starting
every drag net with a weather in La who cares? I'm just setting the
stage and different stages across the country. We have rob Long in Gotham,
and we have Peter Robinson in California. Gentlemen, welcome. How are you
today. Well, it's a little cool and overcast here, but again,
who cares exactly. I'm well, it's a nice respite from the ordinary beautifulness.
It was Friday in Los Angeles. It was cold. That was it,
you know, thank you, thank you very much, Joe Friday.
We you know, we never did broadcast live from Seapack, probably never will
in the future, because it seems to be sort of a diminishing concern,
does it not. It's gone from being sort of for everybody goes to do
the seatback thing to being sort of silly and now underpopulated and overrun by guys
who get up and say it's time for us to reclaim our democracy and end
it right Jack who so posso? Who was saying that? And other people
are saying, you're policing his language. He was getting He was just making
a joke in the rest of it. But it seems to be irrelevant,
does it not, As so many parts of the right seem to be just
painting themselves into corners. And climbing the walls. Yes. Yes, However,
it's amazing to think that SEAPAC has to be considered a legacy institution these
days. I think it does as far as I can recall. It was
founded during the eighties, during the Reagan years. In any event, even
as certain legacy institutions seem to wobble and grow less relevant, if not completely
irrelevant, there are new institutions growing up. A lot of activity is taking
place in Florida. The Global Liberty Institute, founded by Scott Atlas and Josh
Raw, two colleagues of mine here at the Hoover Institution, just had a
conference at which it seems to me, frankly, that half of our recent
guests spoke at this conference, including Christopher Rufe. So there's activity. It's
not there's a lot of activity, actually, but things are shifting. Well,
rob let me ask you this. One of the speakers that I would
have liked to have heard was the gentleman who happens to be the head hefe
of El Salvador at the moment, and he yes seatback, talking about how
El Salvador has turned things around and need to write it a quote. The
so called international community d quote the nngos and of course the fake news,
just like it happens here in the United States, he said, and talked
about the you know, the e schlerotic bureaucracy and the indifference that had plundered
and characterized the nation's fall, and how El Salvador has turned things around because
they just said, what if we took all the criminals and put them over
here in a jail? Well, what happened if we did that? And
you're going to see this model elsewhere, and you're going to see a lot
of people in this country fronting and chewing their nails about it because authoritarianism and
the fascism and the rest of it. If you put the kid the gang
members in jail, do you think that's a model that actually is going to
spread the United States, least rhetorically, the model of putting bad guys in
jail. Yeah, uh yeah, I think probably so. I mean,
it's a tried and true law and order is always a big issue. I
mean, I think the seapack problem is really I mean my personal political feelings
about it aside, it's a seatpack. Used to be this place where you
went and it was this you know, the keeping of the tablets and most
of the speeches were our politicians, even the conservative ones, are wavering in
our conservative beliefs. And the idea was you went to Seapack just to remember
what it was, what pure uncut conservatism was supposed to be. We aren't
a political organization where the theoretical organization right now, it's just really so close
to a candidate, specific candidate who also has rallies and conventions and also has
speeches where he sells his merch and sometimes in places that were unlikely. That's
the point of Seapack is sort of well why go I mean, why not
just go to a Trump rally. It's a much much more much more seems
like a much more fun and and then there's the there's the really lingering and
I think serious scandal with the leader of Seapack that isn't going to go away.
So why why go to this broken institution when you can go to the
real thing? Which is a problem I think a lot of the people in
the Trump you know orbit have, which is that there can be only one
Trump. Trump is sort of uniquely Trump and Trump be Trumpiness is really his
and his alone, And the more people try to be you know, Trump,
the more they seem more like Frank Sinatra junior and not Frank Sinatra,
and that ultimately is the problem. Even Donald Trump Junior is Frank Sinatra junior,
if you know what I mean. So I would say, yeah,
that's that's a problem. But in general it's a problem for conservatives who still
believe in conservatism because you end up having to do these weird things like saying,
well, I don't know, I think ten percent across the board is
a good idea, which may be a good idea, but it's certainly not
a conservative idea. It's kind of literally the opposite of conservative ideas. So
yeah, it's all these all these institutions are going to have to fall away
and be busted up and smashed and cracked in half. And that's a good
thing because institutions don't shouldn't last that long, certainly, not these these kinds
of institutions. They should be regenerating, the should be more more relevant to
the people who use the you know, maybe SEPAC in the future will sound
a lot more like old line you know, big government of nineteen fifties liberals
than twenty first century conservatives. Who knows that's that's good. All, that's
good. Well, Peter, let me ask you, do you think that
Frank Sinatra Junior was undervalued as a band leader he busted by Frank Sinatra,
That's for sure. Here's what I think about. First of all, I
am wondering how many of our listeners are now saying what Fank Sinatra Junior,
legacy Robinson and long and we got. So I'm wondering about that one.
I'm conscious of this. Look, Frank, if you're of the if you're
of the younger age, look up Frank Sinatra Junior kidnapping. And yes,
well look, I mean yes, yes that you kind of don't have to
know anything specifics because you kind of understand it exactly. Whatever you imagine is
the difference between Frank Sinatra and Frank Sinatra Junior. You are correct, You
are what I'm saying, Yes, yes, yes, And that is the
point that it's very In fact, I would argue, it's just it's simply
impossible to evaluate Frank Sinatra Junior in his own right. I mean, the
man he he marketed himself as Frank Sinatra Junior. The comparison with the father
is in your head fairly or not fairly. It's just in your head when
you look at him, and he just wasn't his father was he was fairly?
It was nobody was completely legitimate. That's an interesting point, isn't it
that when you get to I was thinking of this the other day somehow or
other, what the Academy Awards are coming up, and I thought to myself,
there's good even at the top of the profession, which I suppose.
Hold on, I've got dogs who have just come back from a walk.
I got him. I worried what those were Now that any other dogs much
better? Sound was completely confusing, Ok, it wasn't by stomach. So
you have politics, you have show business, and you look at the very
what you'd think of is the very top, the very best performers, and
even when you get it into that select group, you say to yourself,
oh no, no, no, there's a long tail here. There are
some who just are better. Meryl Streep is just a singular actress. Gary
Oldman is just better than almost anybody else in his generation. I've started Sean
Penn. His politics are so strange to me that I tended to write him
off. But his cameo in Licorice, whatever that movie was was just I
mean, some people just even within the top of the profession in politics.
I just look at the people who might have been president. This goes back
makes me legacy, I know. But look at the people who might have
been president in place of Ronald Reagan. And he was just better than they
were. He was better on camera, he was better, right, He
was just better. And Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin didn't come. All the
people who might have been Frank Sinatra instead of Frank Sinatra, so to speak.
The closest in some ways was Tony Bennett or Jerry Vale, and Sinatra
was just better. Now, I don't know quite what I'm going on about
this for Jerry Vale in a long time Goodloe exactly. Yeah, that one
that one does not contain within itself the message the way Frank Zinat Junior does.
But it is weird about human achievement. Oh, I know what it
is. I was looking at some Twitter posts by Charles Murray, who wrote
book on genius, and discovered that it all took place within a certain geographic
era. He sort of ranked scientific genius and discovered that it was quite specific
and that the geniuses really were geniuses, James, I dropped that one in
your lap and try to give We're going to watch with wonder how you segue
from my total tangent back to the show. Well for him, I mean
genius, is it inheritable? You can look at the work of Lawn Cheney
and then Lawn Cheney Junior and perhaps wonder if there was not to mention Lanhi
Chen it passed along in the jeens there. But then it makes you wonder.
I mean, Lawn Cheney Jr. Was noted for the shambling wreck of
his life. And you wonder whether or not the organizations like like seedback how
they will do if Trump loses. Because you spoke before about the new institutions
that are coming up. Rob spoke about the need to crush, to crack
the new old institutions and either reform them or replace them with new ones.
I'm open to the new ones thing. So that's the question. What happens
then should Trump lose. Do we see then everyone just resetting up ending the
edge of sketch and saying we're going to start from fresh with these or is
there another two to three four remnant years where trump Ism WAPs through the new
and the old institutions. In other words, in twenty twenty four, are
they just if he loses, will they open the windows and let the fresh
breeze in? Or is the institutions just simply corrupted for good and corrupted dependency
in your opinion, just changed for good. If there can be no Trump
Junior, if he loses, what happens, well, the Republican Party is
going to have to sort that out. I mean, they're going to have
to sort out what happens. I mean, that's that's gonna be a big,
big challenge, challenge anytime there's a leader who seems to rewrite the rules
a little bit of or rewrite the standards of what the movement has believed.
I'm trying to be as fair and judicious as it can be. The institution
then has to decide whether it's primary loyalties to a set of principles or it
needs to change some of its principles to maybe updates of its principles, or
its primary loyalty is to the leader. That's always go an issue that's always
going to be hard. Let me pivot on this one. How do you
think Trump would approach the student loan bailout the student loan forgiveness thing. Biden
announced one point two billion dollars in the student loan forgiveness right, which is
one hundred and thirty billion dollars to do this, any plans to spend three
hundred and forty five billion over the next few years, presuming he gets in.
Biden d that quote. The Supreme Court blocked that, he said,
but that didn't stop me. Now people are looking at saying, well,
imagine if Trump said that, I can use Donald Trump is the risk to
democracy. It is just astounding, right. I can I imagine any of
them saying that. The reason being is that the sentiment on the right is
if the old institution's block what needs to be done, let's not be a
constance, Let's not be a vellum fetishist. Let's not just say, well,
you know, the Supreme Court blocked it. We don't have to listen
to them. We have to do the right thing. I can easily see
that idea taking taking a purchase on both sides. If it hasn't already,
well, I don't know, I've had contracts. Phrase fetishist. By the
way, I don't want to I don't want to go too far from that
without without yes. As you speak, James, rob and I are taking
notes on what what what phrase that you toss out the title for the episode
The fetishist thought so far as upending the edges sketch, which I like that
where the episode is going to go, I don't know. Well, I
tell you where. I'll tell you where it goes, and it goes here.
All of this money is being spent in higher education. I was seeing
something today where there's a class and I think a University of New Mexico on
fat acceptance and fat fashion and the rest of it. You can get a
degree now in fat studies. And the person the the the instructor, declined
to grade anybody, because to grade anybody is ableism. To establish any sort
of hierarchy of abilities whatsoever is ableism. And you wonder why I mean,
And I speak to somebody who poured an extraordinary amount of money into an institution
on the East Coast for my daughter to be educated, and they did a
pretty good job of it. But at the same time, if you're a
parent looking around it, you wonder is there any place safe from this madness?
And the answer is up on a shining Hill Hillsdale is where you want
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this for the Ricochet Podcast and now we welcome to the podcast David de Rozer.
David is the president of Real Clear Foundation and as the publisher of RealClearPolitics
dot com along with its many other sister sites. David, welcome to the
podcast. It's great to be on. Thanks for having me. Those of
us have been reading Real Clear products for years are happy to have you here,
Bob. So let's just start off telling us about the Real Real Clear
Foundation and the Real Clear Mission. Well, I mean, we started in
two thousand and it was really at the day in the dawn of I think
the promise of what you know, kind of the Internet could do to kind
of free up and democratize communication. You know, So we were right there
at the beginning of it. And our kind of simple insight was to say
that we live in a fifty to fifteen nation and we should give a curated
account of that conversation that's happening. And we've done so for really you know,
we're going to be celebrating our twenty fourth year and wow. Yeah,
but you know things have changed. What I mean, you know this when
we started it was Bush v. Gore. You know, we're in a
very different world with you know, Trump versus Biden. I mean, I
think, you know, the news has gone through some fundamental changes, But
I really think what has changed is the attitude that we as the people have
to really our cornerstone political value, which is the First Amendment. I think
we've taken a dangerous turn since twenty and sixteen and it really is having effect
on the American mind in the future of this experiment of ours. So could
we talk a little bit. Hey, David is Rob Long in New York.
Thanks for joining us. So most people, I mean, I'm not
saying most people. I'm really generalizing from me me. Most people go to
Real Clear most of the time. Yeah, you go to Real Clear,
and you uh, you got Real Clear, Politics, you got Real Clear
all sorts of different verticals, like if you're interested whatever, you're interested in.
Real Clear it hasn't has a really thoughtful curated aggregator for the news that
day, for the longer stories. I mean, you really get a you
get a snapshot not just of the world news and political news, but also
specific news. And it's pretty fair. I mean, I know people who
are really on the left who are extremely proud when they get uh, are
actively trying to get a link from Real Clear because it means something, means
that their readers are going there. Smart readers are trying to follow up.
It's a place to go where you want to see both sides. And then
you have Real Clear investigations, which is I mean our friend, well,
Molly Hemingway was here for a long time, her husband Mark ham and Way
is a friend of ours for a long time. He's uh, he participates
in that great investigative stories. You've broken some big stories. But it doesn't
and of course everyone knows the Real Clear polling average. That's a big,
big deal for people, trusted brand. And then suddenly somebody decides that you
are disinformation and I mean not just different disinformation. Top ten. We're in
the top ten. Congratulations. So somebody decides this and it's a I mean,
it's a complicated chain of events, right, but it isn't the same
thing as the government sending an email to Twitter or to Facebook saying, hey,
this guy squashed him. It's in my opinion just reading the story,
I want you to tell it. It's a lot more complicated and a lot
more nefarious. Oh yeah, and sadly it's supported by our own government.
Right, So I do think the origin story has to start there. But
you know, what has happened is that, you know, there are are
two kind of corporate entities, right that exist in order to censor media through
advertising starvation, if I could have put it that way. So the way
to brown out like opposing viewpoints is to choke them off to access to capital.
So there's two primary outlets for that. You know, one is a
United States based company called NewsGuard and the other one is a UK based company
called GDI Global Disinformation Index. Like, you know, everybody in media knows
how hard it is to do the business. Everybody has kind of looked at
like the competition for eyeballs and you know, and not the rising CPMs but
the following. But it's you know, it wasn't until Matt Kaminski, you
know, at the Washington Examiners. It's not until he kind of exposed a
story that kind of showed that Real Clear was on a top ten blacklist,
right, And you know, and not only was there blacklist, there was
a whitelist too, And I think both of those lists were indicative of what
their vision of a proper media diet and future of media is. So you
know, Real Clear is labeled by all sides to be independent and centrist.
Right on that list, the blacklist, there were only conservative outlets. You
look over at the whitelist side of things, and what you do is you
find one centrist to conservative about with the Wall Street Journal, and then nine
other kind of liberal to progressive entities. So the world that they're working towards
is a nine to one world where that one entity that is allowed to be
you know, to survive with advertising dolls, just happens to be behind a
paywall. So but just because the mechanics of this, I think are really
interesting. So if you read a piece of you read the newspaper and it
says the Global Disinformation in dex has put Real Clear on it as a disinformation
you know whatever, and you've got to roll your eyes and you think,
oh, there's ridiculous progressive. What possible ripple effect downstream effect could be on
this stupid list by this shadowy NGO or whatever it is that I've never heard
of before. I don't care about what possible effect could this have downstream?
Oh my god, it's a media extinction. That's the downside of this.
I mean, but this is just not just you know, news Guard and
GDI aren't just some efforts of folks that sit out there and say this is
what we think you ought to do. I mean these folks are you know,
paid entities. They have put themselves as like the guardians of advertising dollars
right, right, And what they do is they go out there and they
label a marketplace according to disinformation, misinformation, malinformation, and then they give
ratings to entities. Right. So we made the top ten lists on GDI.
I got rating on NewsGuard at sixty two. That's not a good number,
right. So what they do is that as they go out there and
advertisers actually do their media buys on this stuff, right, That's what that's
kind of what I want to talk about. So if I'm a company I'm
selling tied detergent, I just you know, or I'm I'm I'm I'm giving
information to uh, you know, my ad buys for Google. I'm just
gonna say, well, give me what's the list I don't want to be
on. I don't want to be on that gd I list, right,
I don't want to be on the news Guard list. I don't want to
be there. So everybody but that and suddenly I have stepped on the artery
that it pays for and funds Real Clear. Is that kind of what happens.
Yeah. The thing that I think, you know, I don't think
Real Clear is on that list by accident. I think you know, I
think we're the crown jewel of the design of that list, because if you
bring down Real Clear, Real Clear's job is is to kind of be the
Bloomberg News terminal through media and politics and polling. You come to our site
to see what's happening. You get a sense of the media arc by being
on our page. And what we've done is we've built a business model and
an editorial kind of approach that's viewpoint diversity. If you blow a hole in
the floorboards of our ship, right, if you attack us on traffic,
you attack us on advertising, if you bring us down, you know,
the ascendant republicanism and conservative movement that we do our best to curate every day,
all of a sudden that gets broken apart and diluted. So, I
mean, I think they purposely put on us on this list, and it's
because we believe in viewpoint diversity. We'd like to show all sides. We
like our people to think outside their own tribe. Right, But I think
that in today's America, you know gets you marked for, you know,
for death through you know, advertising starvation. That's the beautiful thing about it,
you know. Don Draper's and Madison ab have outsourced the guardians of news
and advertising dollars to a cutout group that was funded by the State Department and
supported by left wing the philanthropies. Now has grown into an industry where I
think, you know, they really can control the news, the future of
the news, and they've done it in a particularly I mean, just to
give them props clever way, because the the no one no one's hands are
specifically dirty here, right. You have you have this NGO and they're just
putting a list together you don't like to listen, sorry, And then you
have advertisers who's saying, well, just give me a list. I'll follow
any list. And what you have as a squeeze on probably one of the
last places on the web where you can reliably get a fair balanced picture of
the national political, economic, social cultural conversation. And there's like one more
part of that. It gets a little worse. So the origin story of
this I think came really in the response in twenty sixteen and the really the
coordinated but really kind of started with one a couple of people against Breitbart.
So Breitbart had its hands harry because of Trump but also Brexit. There was
there was a small little effort a guy I think at San Francisco and you
know, and a partner in crime. What they did was they went out
there and started pressuring all the advertisers that had the temerity to actually want to
get a bright biot audience. I think it was called Sleeping Giants. Sleeping
Giants, I think was and Breitbart was, you know, victim one and
sleep the Giants was the kind of the code to the future and how to
move forward on this. But it's like that has developed. In fact,
one of the co founders of that, she went on and she has this
entity called check my Ads. Check my Ants is supported by George Soros.
The purpose of Checking my Ands is if you don't take NewsGuard and gd I
seriously enough, they'll do that to you. They'll go after and harass you
have people signed petitions, call you all every name in the book. You
know, you're against your transphobe, you're a hitler, and the rest and
pretty much what happens, you know, you know, what's to be expected,
happens that you know, these guys cave. And what happens is free
speech gets diminished, and instead of having a vibrant dialogue, we have a
monologue. And sadly, when it happens and it's exposed, instead of the
Fourth Estate being jealous of its prerogative and privileges, they're either silent or cheerlead
for it, you know. And am I thing this is sound democracy dies
in broad daylight and actually with the clapping of the fourth of State, right
David, David, I'm getting all this information for the really sort of the
first I was only dimly aware of all that you're describing. Can you go
go right back to the beginning. Where did news Guard come from? Gordon
Krovitz is the founder of NewsGuard, who used to be at the Wall Street
Journal, also of the Wall Street Journal, right, yeah, and also
something you know, I'm forgetting his partner's name, but kind of you know,
came from kind of the legal profession. They you know, I think
I think they saw the opportunity and quite frankly they were supported by our State
Department, so they got seed funding for their company by our government, which
is an obvious violation of First Amendment. And on what possible justification if you
were making the argument that the State Department official had in his or her head,
what would the argument have been, I mean that it makes sense for
the State Department to get in the business of grading websites. Well, I
think it gets back to I think the State Department is became conserved, not
only in the United States, but with populism, right, you know,
so they saw like the shock of like of what Bresit did to Europe.
They saw the you know, kind of the ascendancy of Trump. You know,
you know, whether true or not, I think it's not. You
know, it's like, you know, they were part of a narrative that
was saying Russia, Russia, Russia, like about a danger tow ourd to
mind danger. And again there's there's and this is something that's really happened.
There has been a complete shift, you know, from this kind of recognition
of free speech and what it means and what it requires, right and you
know, in healthy speech and healthy speech is the things that you know,
like disinformation, misinformation and malinformation in the whole idea of malinformation the definition of
it. I'm probably going to butcher it. But malinformation is not untruthful.
It's just not helpful to you know, insular minorities in blah blah blah.
Right right, Okay, So I just want to I just want to understand
where this. So the State Department gives NewsGuard some sort of seed funding,
and now their business model is what they go around to all the big advertisers
in Manhattan and say, bias subscription to us. We'll keep your advertisers out
of trouble. And if your P and G or some name it, you're
a big you're an executive, and say, look on General Mills, I
make cheerios. I don't want trouble. Okay, I don't want trouble.
I don't want trouble. And that's and then NewsGuard starts. Is there competition
to NewsGuard? GDI? Where's the push? I mean GDI? Oh,
the competition to NewsGuard. I mean, you know there's people who like fire
Phil Hamburger at American News Civil Liberties Unions. They're pushing back into the courts.
But you know the difficulty that you have is that you know they're embedded
in advertising, right It you know they have they you know, they have
a ranking system. They'll defend their ranking system. They invite you to participate
in arguing your score. Right, but news Guard does news Guard, but
it's so to give you a quick sense, So State Department NewsGuard GDI,
I check my ads as the enforcer. But then outside of that, there
are sixty universities across the United States and a lot of the big name philanthropies
are funding the universities. They're funding NGOs around it, and you have a
whole I would it's too big to be called a cottage industy once you hit
sixty. Just in the in higher education, their job is to go out
there and be the media minders, to go out and say this is different,
this is misinformation. They keep in the Nadia Knights list. So NewsGuard
can say, we're looking at these trusted, you know, independent NGOs.
We're looking to these higher universities Harvard and the like, and we're getting this
information. It's going into our rating and then you know, then the advertise
there's you know, act on it. The thing is the advertisers always wanted
the excuse to do this too, like, so everybody's pushing on an open
door here, right, It's like, you know, like I don't like
any of this stuff. I hate Fox News. Therefore, give me a
reason not to funded. I don't like the New York Post. Give me
a reason not the funded. And then all of them are kind of working
in this kind of coordination, coordinated circle of jerk and happening. This happened,
and net effect is they're browning out the free speech rights of half of
America, and it's being done in the notion of safe speech. David,
I'm in the fourth Estate. I'm here in a large, luxuriously appointed newspaper
office which happens to be empty at the moment. And one of the things
that is one of the things that has afflicted my profession is thankfully not evident
here in our new hires. But elsewhere I hear, and I hear from
people who are in Jay school, and the rest of it is that the
new idea amongst journalists who are coming up is that they're really the The idea
of objectivity is outdated because we face so many existential extinction level events coming at
our society. We're about to have a fascist government, We're about to lose
the world to global warming, we're about to all of these things that are
wrong. So therefore the idea of an even handed approach is hopping right in
the cradle with evil. There's no there's no time for objectivity. So people
like you who are facilitating the end of the world because of your refusal to
go along with every single prescription that we need to do, now that it's
a natural reaction to say no, that these places should not be subsidized,
How the devil do you get around that? When you have as you say,
when you mentioned with the clapping of the fourth estate, do you just
simply give up up in them entirely? We can't. They're still senting agenda.
I mean, I think we have to, Like Houston, we have
a problem. The problem is that, you know, academia, the commanding
heights, have been corrupted by this thinking. I mean, the Atlantic did
a survey and find it turns out, you know, not surprisingly but short
surprisingly to most out there, that the higher levels of education you receive,
the less tolerant you are of other people's opinion. And you have these monocultures
out there, I mean, like you know, so you know, the
left started their long march in entertainment you know, you know, you know,
it started to Bill you airs what he goes to the university, they
go into entertainment, but did march through everything, you know. So now
they have like that big company, they have big tech, they have advertising
and pretty much they're at a point where I think they know what their power
is and they're projecting it. And the real thing is, it's like,
try to stand up against it, you'll be labeled a fascist. You'll be
chilled out right. So I think they've created something that's very dangerous. But
you know, my thing is it's I think a lot of this has happened,
and you know, and I think it can be stomped. You know,
maybe I'm kind of reading too much to hovel right and the courage of
you know, being not afraid. But if you if we keep on being
adjacent and looking at our shoes and we don't say this is Unamerican. What's
happening here? This is the hallmarks of red or brown fascism, whatever you
want to call it, right, but this is not America. This is
we have a First Amendment protection. Sadly Europe doesn't, but we do.
And I think we have to stop looking at our shoes and stand up and
straighten our spines and say no, right, we have to go after this
and rip it out, root and branch. You know. It's like if
it's being funded by any state universities. Of these sixty, I think there's
more than a few that are, and they're in red states. I think
Republican governors should lean on these things, right. I think it should be
very clear. You know, if advertisers are doing this, I think they
have to be realizing there has to be just it's an all of society effort
that they've built. I mean, so they're enlisting civil society plan to be
higher education, advertising, big tech. It has to actually be at least
recognized and refuted. And what ultimately I think is the best thing is just
to replace a bad idea for a better idea. Right. I think these
folks who are out there with it, miss Dish and mal they really think
they're doing a good I think we have to show this as for what it
is. It's an Awellian project that is like being pushed and you know,
and this is something I think that you know, I don't care who you
are, like a Democrat Republican. If we do not actually have the First
Amendment in a real sense, you know, you know, the one that
follows it is kind of the recourse, and we don't want to go to
such a world. And I think the way that we do it is to
come out and say what separates us is we don't have an unum something that
connects our plur of us anymore. I would say, you know, one
of the foundational ones is the First Amendment, and that's why it's first.
I think it's pretty interesting theory. The uh the best way you know,
uh stricted here is to the First Amendment means we probably don't have to go
down to the second Amendment. Right. It seems like a good idea.
So, I mean, I guess what I would say is that what surprised
me at the story was that I just never I mean, I look,
I mean, there are other there are other names on that list. I'm
like, I I know why the liberals don't like the federalists. I get
it. Like it's not good, but I understand, right, but real
clear makes a scrupulous effort. I mean Carl Cannon, who is the editor
in chief and pretty much the editorial guide there is about as scrupulously down the
middle as you can get and whenever you ask, I'm all my liberal friends
and pretty much that's all my friends when they say, look, I just
want I just want to be fair. I just want both sides. And
then here you have an institution that was started with both sides in mind and
continues to do that being labeled and then the idea and we're done punished for
showing that again, punished financially. So let's talk a little bit about obviously
you're you're fighting that the way you can fight that, but you're also sort
of celebrating free speech was a new thing for the Real Clear Foundation. So
I could tell us a little bit about the Summits Dot Prize, and I
should say spoiler alert to our listeners. You are honoring a dear friend of
ours, of mine and Peters and James and also of the podcast. And
I think your dear friend and sent and in many ways of America. Uh
Jay Battacharia, who who needs not just this award but all the awards I
think for the next couple of years. Could you tell us a little bit
at the beginning of that, the reason for that, and and then we
can talk about howmuch Wheel of Jay for a minute. I mean, and
also I want to say to people listening, just because I don't want you
to have to do it. Uh. The prize is actually going to be
in a couple of weeks March seventh, in Palm Beach. So it's going
to be if you're if you're in a cold place right now and you want
to go to a warm place, this is a perfect reason to go to
a warm place. Uh. It's going to be at the Breakers, which
is a gigantic I Peter Wrotel, and you're honoring a couple other people.
But you know, for me, it's just all about Jay. Thanks.
I mean, you know, we wanted to actually create an event that highlighted
what we think is the cornerstone, you know. So like everybody likes the
reference that we're in eighteen sixtiesh moment. I think, you know, for
Lincoln, it was the principle of equality. I think equality needs a better
redefinition now because with the DEI stuff. But I think what we want to
do is stand up what we see the parament political value and you know,
and the thing that keeps this experiment in self government going, it's the source
of American exceptionalism and why an event? You know, why are we doing
a prize program? Look at what the Oscars has done. Look at what
the Pulitzer Prize and Poke Prize has done. You get the world that you
praise, right, And I think part of the reason why we were living
in this orwell world is because we've praised and rewarded it. Right. What
we want to do is stand up a rival to that that that that rewards
people about standing courage who when the rest of us look at their feet or
bend or would hem like in pulling their sales. People who stand up in
front of history and do what Buckley said and yell stop, and they'll stop
by actually living up to the highest standards of their profession. You know.
So you know doctor J. I mean he's you know, that is the
scientific method. Here's a man who stood up for science and he was instead
he was kind of told that he was a flat earther in a sense.
And and and that you know, you know that that you know in Fauci
was Galileo. I think the reverse roles is, no, Fauci was a
pope and doctor J. Bobichario was Galileo. And one of the things I
would say about our prize program, and we'll go into the other people there.
We're not just defenders of free speech. We're looking and I think if
you look at the people that we've chosen, we aren't looking for people who
stand up for free speech that modeled the behavior of their profession and also have
been proven right. Jay has been proven right. We're not just giving We're
not just giving him an award because he had a certain you know, like
you know kind of m D. Cojones. We're giving him an award because
he was right. He stood up to the truth while everybody was bending a
knee and he was right and they were wrong, and you know, and
I think that really carries over into the other two people that we have,
you know, David, Before you get to the other two people, I
just I have to engage in this much self promotion. The place Jay stood
up first was my show uncommon Knowledge. That's right, that's right as Jay.
So what I want to know is is this a cash prize? Because
I figure j ow's me fifteen percent, it is okay. On on to
the other two people and maybe he'll let you let you have like visitation rights
to his beautiful trophy. We talked earlier about this kind of shift in journalism
where we've gone from you know, kind of a recognition of a fact based
discipline, trying to capture and render a true reading of things so readers can
decide from themselves, to activist journalists. And you know, one of the
things that we liked in terms of the choices that we made about the two
journalists that we're honoring is that Matt Tahebe is like you know, Rolling Stone
Magazine, Za Cardi Park, you know, but it's like, it turns
out that this progressive believes in journalism, right. He believes in persuasion,
not coercion. And you know, when someone gave him the Pentagon Papers opportunity
that Elon did, he walked in it and he actually lived up to the
standard of journalism, right. And then on the other side, you know,
Miranda Devine at The New York Post, what journalists in the right mind.
You know, if you would say no to Hunter Biden's laptop and the
story that is actually in that, you wouldn't be a journalist, You'd be
a hack. But you know, both of these folks went into things,
rose to the occasions didn't bend there in these showed the courage of a profession
like day that Jay did for medicine, and what came of it was a
real awakening to the American people because it turns out, like again getting back
to hindsight, well it turns out those fifty plus intelligence operatives that actually said
Russian disinformation that wasn't true, that wasn't true, and and it turns out,
well everybody would apologize for Twitter or Google because there even though they saw
themselves when they came into their origin time, when they went public, that
they were free speech utilities, they would say they are private companies and therefore
they can do what they want. But when you open up and you get
to look inside the kimono there all you see is an alphabet stup of federal
agencies in this marketplace of you know, kind of the censorship industrial complex working
hand in glove to actually brown out one side. I could understand if you're
going after, you know, the outliers, you know, because in a
free world there are dangerous outliers. But if you look at it, they're
going after a certain type of mainstream, like a populous mainstream Republicanism and conservatism
right, and they're going after it in the most brutal way because they're just
trying to start it. And everybody thinks out there, that's like, I
don't know how I get my media. I guess that they they're able to
pay themselves through advertising. Well, they're going to brown that out, show
can and then we'll be scratching our head and saying, you know, whatever
happened to conservative media, right of center media, because you know, the
tea party once existed, it was vibrant, and then all of a sudden
it didn't show up one day. And then you find out it's because we
always learned killed it. You know, they if they see something, they
kill something. And I think that we have to be aware about it because
this is this is foundational. I mean, I do think that the fact
that real clears on this list is an offense and it should offend anybody because
it just shows its nature. They're not protecting, you know, they're not
protecting from that you know, evil outlier. They actually think that there is
that in a just world, there's nine liberals progressive to one centrist conservative,
and that person's able to that person's on that list because someone has to be
on that list, and it's behind a paywall, and then people who have
it will offend people who have principles, and that's what we need more of.
So when it comes to strengthening principles, or for that matter, for
those people who have different principles and just want to read the other side,
that real clear politics will provide them from time to time. I'm looking at
the I'm looking at that. I just clicked to the homepage today, right
this minute, RealClearPolitics dot com. Number one link is from MSNBC. Number
two is from New York Post. Number three is the Washington Monthly. Number
four is our old friend VDH Victor Davis Hanson. Then it's The Daily Beast,
the Federalist New York Magazine, Washington Times, The Atlantic, Emerican Conservative,
MSNBC again Kim Strassel, and the Wall Street Journal, another good friend
of ours, Washington Monthly. I mean it goes down. This is this
one, I mean the other one. It feels like the news. David
doesn't feel like the fake news. I think, you know, and I'd
love the opportunity. I appreciate the opportunity to come out. And it's like
people have to recognize that what these people want to take away in terms of
voices and finances behind those things what they want to take away. I think
readers in philanthropy has to get behind and come to the aid of it,
because if not, it's going to be browned out and it's going to be
over. We're going to be living in a uni party state with a you
like, like an idea that everybody has to go along with, and that's
not an America that I want with real clear politics. Stop going to false
murky politics dot com people, and go to RealClearPolitics dot com. And David,
we thank you so much for showing up today, and good luck with
the prize, and we'll talk again down the road. I hope that you
can come to our event all of you wants call, and all your viewers
you're welcome as well. I'll hope to see you next next week. But
thanks, thanks, thank you. You know, one of the things we
saw this week, gentlemen, before we go, we get a little time
here before Rob has to run and Peter has to run and I have to
amblocked to my lunch, and that is this. We saw the mask pulled
off of Google this week when they made the mistake of releasing Gemini. I
think it was one point five, and with their image generator that seemed to
be oddlysed to falsifying history in every single possible way, no matter what prompt
you gave it. Gentlemen, you know the story, right, I assume
everybody does by now, probably shouldn't assume. But what people found out was
when they typed in show me the founding fathers, the founding fathers did not
look like the founding fathers. Showed me a typical person from North Dakota,
well you would get, shall we say, not the typical. In other
words, the whole system had been devised, as we quickly learned to insert
the word diverse into any sort of prompt that you put. It was designed
with a specific bias that steered your image generation results in one direction. And
all of a sudden people looked at that and realized how they were forcing you
to do a thing that you were not requesting it to do, and thought,
might this characterize the rest of Google? Do you think so? Just
as we may have spent twenty twenty through twenty twenty three learning about the usual
institutions and government and education and medicine, and the rest of it not actually
being up to the job and being actually quite incompetent. Now we're finding out
that the company with whom we made a deal, as Corey Doctor put it,
we made a deal with Google. We'll give you control of all this
information. We'll give you the ability to sort it all. But in exchange,
you have to not be evil, as you used to say you did
not want to be. You've got to be on the up and up.
And it turns out if they're cooking the books and steering people this way and
this thing, people are thinking, well, wait a minute, the whole
enterprise is suspect. The entire enterprise is suspect. What do you think of?
Is this the start of a conversation about Google, or do we just
drift off to duck duck go and bing for a while before we go back
to Google, because its tendrils are everywhere in our lives, using duck duco
would not be a bad place to start. I thought of this as we
were talking with David. I thought, because as usual I'm slow on the
uptake, that when Elon bought Twitter and made public all the files that indicated
censorship on the part of Twitter, and Elon invited. This circles back to
Jay. Elon invited Jay, but I saw Jay the day after he's Jay
went up to San Francisco, and Elon was there to greet him personally and
sat Jay down with It was all much much worse than even Jay, who
knew he was being censored. He could feel it and see it. But
it was even worse than Jay had imagined. I thought, Okay, Elon
called them on it. It was COVID, it's over, We've turned a
page. Totally wrong, totally wrong. David de Rozier just sat here and
told us about the blob that's coming after him. Google. I'm sure they're
red faced with Embarres because what they did was permit us all to inadvertently,
they permitted us all to peek inside. It's, of course still it is
part of the That's the other thing it has In the old days. It
felt to me as though the Soviet Union and dissidents had that we're seeing the
same structure. Repeated that the Soviet operat was just a blob. Certainly by
the time you got to Breshnev, who could there were no great figures.
They were all just bureaucrats. So you had this blob against individual heroic figures.
You could name the figures who had the courage to stand up against it,
individual human beings Soljian Neats and hovel like Vansa and so forth. And
now it's happening here. We've got this nameless, faceless blob. People like
Matt Taibi are doing hard work to name names so we can go after but
we all experience it as a faceless blob and individual heroic figures. I do
I love this Samist Prize because it's pointing this out, the Ja Bodicharis,
the Matt Taiebe's but and where AI plays into this. I fear it makes
everything worse, but we're in. But what we saw of Google is again,
every time we get a glimpse of it, it's worse than we could
have imagined, more deeply embedded, more prevalent. Yesterday was I mean,
in one sense it was hilarious. I was delighted that Google was so thoroughly
embarrassed, but it was very unnerving at the same time. It's a gigantic,
immensely profitable corporation and look at the AI it was prepared to roll out
on the rest of us did roll out it? Did? I get?
Yeah, I actually don't think that Google, And it's probably what you said,
Peter, But I don't think Google was it. I don't think the
respond to me. There's some crazy ones like show me a picture of a
pope and it was like a black woman and an Indian woman like that.
I don't think that Google is originated this craziness. I think that you can
find this attitude in every public school in America. I mean, I think
this is the institutional attitude. And I think what the strange part of it
is that you can't actually control people's thoughts. You can't actually do that.
You can, you could control people's beliefs for a little bit, but eventually
tyrants fall. That's what they do. They take a lot of people with
them, but that's what they do. The theory behind all of this is
that if you if you have the information, you will make a decision that
we don't like correct. So we're not going to give you the information and
we're saving you from making errors. So the emblematic of that was COVID.
If you knew that the masks don't really work, if you knew that it's
just old people. You would then go about your business, and we don't
think you should make that decision. So we're simply we're simply gonna lie to
you and we're gonna say later what we had to, because you cannot be
trusted with information. And the sad part about that is is that that only
drives more. I mean, one of the reasons why we live in a
world now which seems to be exploding with conspiracy theories and exploding with crackpot politics
is because in a world in which I'm not going the trusted information givers are
not giving you the information, then almost anything can be true. Years and
years and years ago, we had on this podcast Peter Pomeranzev I'm probably miss
Perconsi's name A young I met in Budapest with Jonas Solivan actually and his because
his father is a poet living in Budapest, and and he wrote a book.
Uh, and I cannot, I mean, every enough, everything is
possible and nothing is true. I think it is the name of the book.
And he was a guest and he was talking about Putin's Russia. It's
really kind of worth rereading that book. And I don't want to say I'm
not trying to Tucker Carlson this, but it is something that we have to
be careful of, which is that information, even from the and the right,
has that problem too. Information is uniformly good. It is not something
that can be shaped or trimmed or massaged or spun so that you come to
the right outcome. And that's why I feel like things like but David is
doing it real clear and the Samisdat project, et cetera, and why we
have to celebrate people like Jay is really really important. By the way,
I can put your mind at ease on one point, no one will ever
confuse you with Tucker Carlson. That actually wasn't true at a certain point.
I did get confused a couple of times. True truly, when we're both
considerably younger. Reason why we have to push back as much as loudly and
as often as possible, because what Google revealed that it was doing is inserting
a poison into American and Western civilization, and acidic poison that drips down is
intended to drip down. I don't want to sound conspiratorial, but drips down
to the foundation and eats away at the stones that hold the whole thing up.
Somebody asked Gemini to generate some works in the style of Norman Rockwall.
It wasn't me, and Gemini refused to do so. I could have said
no, sorry, copyright. But what it said was that there were ethical
considerations in portraying something in the style of Norman Rockwall. And I'll read that
to you representation, quoth the AI. Rockwall's paintings often presented an idealized version
of American life. Well, first of all is the thought omitting or downplaying
certain realities of the time, particularly regarding race, gender, and social class.
Creating such images without critical context could perpetuate harmful stereotypes or inaccurate representations.
So the only context in which one can look at a painting of a fat
cop sitting at a small diner looking at a kid who's got a bendle and
who's running away, the only real you can. You can show that,
but you have to explain why there's harm, why there's stereos, why there's
what it's emitting. You can show the picture of the cop at the small
town little dinner talking to the kid, but you would damn well better come
up with the nineteen fifty three crime statistics that show exactly how the Department of
Police and that in that city was actually performing poorly towards this group that we
now elevates. It says that you there must be a critical intermediary between every
aspect of American history that that nudges you and points you in the right place,
in the right direction. Norman fricking Rockwell. Now, the people who
wrote this thing, and this isn't written right. That nobody sat down and
wrote this and coded it into it. It arose out of the mindset of
the people who did it because they have a contempt for Norman Rockwell for a
couple of reasons. One the wrong stupid people like them. Two, it's
been al kitchy art. They've been told they've never actually seen it, they
couldn't identify it, but that's the idea. And three just sort of wafting
up from the swamp of all the places that they scraped, like read it
and the rest of them, is the general idea that all of these things
backed that an idealized version of American life is not something to which we should
look and aspire and figure out how to attain and fix, and all the
rest of it. It is a it is a It is a bad,
onerous, odorous thing to even consider that there can be an idealized version of
American life, because American life itself, by definition is full of every evilism
in the world. And that's why the year zero. Dare I say,
upending the etch of sketch desire comes? That's it. I'm done. Anybody
else no, No, I think Rob has to fly, I think Peter
has to amble. I have to lunch. This podcast is brought to you
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We'll see everybody in the comments, said Ricochet. For if you join that
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