Speaker 1: Welcome back, everyone to a new episode of You Were
Wrong with Molly Hemingway, editor in chief of the Federalist
and David Harsani, senior writer at The Washington Examiner. Just
as a reminder, if you'd like to email the show,
please do so at radio at the Federalist dot com.
We want to hear from you. So, Molly, I hope
you had a very solemn January sixth commemoration day.
Speaker 2: I love that January six has become a big holiday
because for me as a Lutheran, January sixth has always
been a big holiday. It's when we mark Epiphany, the
epiphany of our Lord, when Jesus, when we re mark
Jesus being not just for the Jews, but for all people.
And the story mostly associated with it is the arrival
of the magi from the East to pay homage to
the King. And it is a big day. In Lutheranism.
We have, you know, church separate, like if it doesn't
fall on a Sunday, we do church separately. And now
everybody seems to be into it. So but for a
different way.
Speaker 1: It's the epiphany of the Viking shaman. Yeah, I fasted,
did you?
Speaker 2: I was surprised at how many normies in my life
were wishing me a happy Patriots Day that day, which
I will admit bothers me because Epiphany is such a
big day. But one of my one of my friends
who did it, was like, we can celebrate both Patriots
Day and right, am I not being solemn enough about
the worst moment in American history?
Speaker 1: It's sunny, Houston. Is that you pronounced her name Bustin?
She said it was. She compared it to World War two,
the Holocaust, and I forgot what else She did not
bring up nine to eleven, which apparently doesn't rank as
one of the worst days in American history. Listen, I
have to just say not to be a party pooper,
but you know, I think it was a pretty bad
day in a certain way. I mean, I think it
was an embarrassing day for the United States. I just
don't think it was this event that we should you know,
that was. I don't think it was a coup. I
don't think it was a very you know, important event
in American history. It was just an embarrassing day because
many people, not all engaged in behavior I think was
pretty condemnable.
Speaker 2: Well, I was actually talking with a reporter who was
there also that actually Emily Jishinski, who was also there
that day, and one of the things I was telling
her and those of us from the Federalists who were
there were Chris Bedford, Jishinsky, and me, and I do
think Bedford and Jishinsky were closer to the bad action.
I mean, I was pretty close, but I didn't see
lot of what you've seen on TV. And anyway, my
point when I was talking to her was just how
in retrospect, I am extremely glad that I was there,
because if I based my understanding of that day on
what corporate media were saying about that day, I would
know I wouldn't understand it at all. The biggest thing
that I think is key there is that the massive,
truly massive rally at the White House was completely separate
from what happened at the Capitol, which I don't think
the media ever made a good distinction. They tried to
kind of link those two things in a way that
was not based on fact. I mean, they were two
miles away from each other, so I'm not saying people
didn't go from one to the other on foot, but
not a ton of people, And I mean it was
a ton of people, but not relative to how big
the crowd was at the Ellipse, which is where you know,
most people who say they were there that day, that's
where they were or and it was it was massive.
I mean it was. I've covered a lot of DC events,
and that was definitely one of the biggest I've ever seen.
And then also just how nonviolent so much of it was,
and also how poorly managed by the police it was.
And I'm not blaming them for this, not the people
who were actually policing. I'm blaming the people who were
in charge of the policing. They didn't have enough people there,
they were not using crowd control techniques to calm the crowd,
but to in fact rile up the crowd. And it's
just I'm glad I was there so that I know
what I know instead of what I've been told about it.
Speaker 1: Oh sorry, no, no, no matter what, No matter.
Speaker 2: What I think, we can all agree that the persecution
of the people involved, particularly relative to every single other
political protest movement in history, is completely unconscionable.
Speaker 1: Well, I do. There are two things that I hate
that happens. First is people you know you'll see someone
and they'll you know, some person who is there, and
he'll be accused of Borshe will be accused of being
there on January sixth, as if they knew what was
going to happen, or that they immediately participated. Now, going
to January sixth is fine, I mean, it's just a protest.
The second thing I hate is when they're constantly, as
Nancy Pelosi did in others in the recent days, claiming
that I forgot how many police died on January sixth.
It's completely dishonest. No one, no cops thankfully died on
January sixth. There were tragic events that happened afterwards that
of course they link to it, but it's just dishonest.
Media does not correct them. No fact checkers who will
be talking about soon correct them. So anyway, those things
bother me. Let's talk about fact checking Molly. Mark Zuckerberg
came out the other day in a video where he
gave a statement on let me just say up front.
I thought was a very good statement. Taking in and
of itself, what he said was completely fine. Going through
a new going through a few points about how Facebook
was going to change its censorship policy, but one of
them it was moving the operation from California to Texas,
and the other was to sort of accentuate or change
the fact checking to more community notes like x has
and some other stuff. He admitted, I thought rightly that
fact checking has become a very partisan doesn't really get
us closer to the truth.
Speaker 2: So I think it's worth just kind of thinking about
what happened with Facebook censorship. Facebook is just one of
this of this big tech social media companies that was
engaged in massive censorship of American speech and debate. But
because Facebook is so big, it was really influential in
what it did. So if you can go back to
the twenty fifteen twenty sixteen political campaign, Donald Trump was
treated by corporate media as I mean, they were insane
about him. I know, it's stupid to even comment because
of course they were insane about him. So he develops
a strategy where he works around the press and just
deals directly with people through social media, Facebook being a
great example of how he just connects with people on
social media. And so when he surprises everybody by winning,
a lot of big tech CEOs had emergency meetings that
week where they all promised that they would do more
to prevent Donald Trump from speaking directly to the people.
And I think it was the I think it was
maybe even a Facebook leader, but it might have been Google,
and forgive me, but I'm pretty sure it was Facebook
said we will never let this happen again, meaning never
let a Republican candidate for president speak directly to the people.
So in that same way that the news media had
become this place where you obstruct news and information from
getting to the people, social media and big tech said
that they would also do that. So there were some
you know, the light algorithmic game playing that you were
seeing in twenty sixteen becomes pretty serious once the Trump
presidency starts, where things got real. And Mark Zuckerberg, by
the way, was facing a lot of pressure from the
Russia collusion hoaxers in the censorship complex to do more
censorship of American speech and debate, and he would say
pretty good things like I think his instincts are actually
pretty good on speech, and he stayed pretty strong. Once
the pandemic happened, it was insane how much censorship was
going on. And you might remember that Mark Zuckerberg personally
emailed Anthony Faucin was like, how can we help, And
we don't know exactly what was said in response, but
we do know that Facebook starts censoring speech and debate
about COVID, that it came from China, that it might
have come from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, debate about
what is the best way to handle a pandemic was
completely squashed off the platform, and this was where I
think things for the Federalists first started getting pretty serious.
And just for I'm sure people kind of understand this,
but when you run a media company, the way you
make money would be through either subscriptions that where you
kind of keep your stuff private and you have people
pay for it, which a lot of media companies do,
and I understand why because it's like the easiest way
to stay afloat, But it also means that the people
who are getting your content are the people who maybe
least need to get the content. What I'm saying here
is if you're trying to affect the DC conversation, hiring
people to pay for it makes it less likely that
you're affecting the DC conversation. In our current way of
distributing the news, and so people make money through advertising.
The Left organized this massive campaign to bully advertisers away
from advertising on non leftist media. So if you're MSNBC,
you get Lexus ads, and if you're Fox you get,
you know, something much less lucrative, even though Fox is
watched by like so many more people than MSNBC. Same
works for websites. If you're the Atlantic and you're pushing
the Russia collusion hoax and you're pushing COVID conspiracies and
Brett Kavanaugh conspiracies, you get the Lexus ads, And if
you're the Federalists, you don't because you're put on these
lists by the censorship industrial complex to prevent you from
getting that. Well, a big part of that also is
to just cut off traffic to your site so they
can say, well, why would we advertise on this site
when traffic's not going there, not realizing that it's artificial
disruption of the market through the censorship industrial complex to
affect who is visiting the site. So Facebook censoring people
is huge. It's massive. It keeps your stuff from being
shared in the conversation, from being educating the masses, from advertising.
It's a massive, big issue. I mean, I'll just say,
like people are sometimes like, why don't you write more.
Why don't I write more? Because I have to be
spending a lot of time trying to keep the publication
afloat because of what Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg did. Right,
So I would love to be doing nothing but writing,
but I can't do it because of what Mark Zuckerberg did.
And what Mark Zuckerberg did in twenty twenty was just
start censoring things using fact checking programs. Fact checking programs
had already been in existence. I feel like I'm just
saying way too much here, but it's okay. Fact checking
programs had already been in existence. They're a left wing
way of fighting conservative information. So they really arose after
Obamacare fights, where you had corporate media saying all these
things about Obamacare, but it wasn't actually affecting the way
people thought about it. You were having like mass resistance
to what everybody in the media was saying. So they
kind of developed this idea of what if we fact checked.
So when people say I think this is bad to
take over, you know, a third of the US economy
and have it be controlled by the government, we say, no,
you're wrong, you know, for whatever reason. And so it
was a way of doing propaganda. But claiming that you
were checking facts. It would It got ludicrous pretty quickly
where they would fact check predictions. You know, someone say
I think this is going to be bad in this way,
and they go fact check it won't be and it's like, well,
how do you know the future PolitiFact or all these
different groups. So the fact checking becomes this massive enterprise
in the censorship industrial complex, and facebooks are it's using
fact checkers where they pay people to help censor speech
and debate that they don't want. This is just bad
for any media organization to get involved in because Mark
Zuckerberg and Facebook are massive entities, and when you're taking
money from them to hire staff to fact check and
you're getting like an ability to censor your political opponents
or whatever, like, it's just bad incentives. But a lot
of media companies did, including some never trump Aloo publications
and anyway, get to twenty twenty and that's where everything
just starts like being insane. You say anything other than
what Anthony Fauci wants you to say, you get censored.
And once you're censored three times, your publication is forever censored.
You are forever Like you could get censored three times
for saying I think the best way to handle a
pandemic is different than Anthony Fauci. But then even if
you're writing about like why by basicles are great, that
gets censored too. And the George Floyd riots were another
high point of censorship. Questions about the election in twenty
twenty were another high point of censorship. And so basically
within nine months, the Federalist is completely wiped off the
big tech grid because we were saying things differently than
what the regime wanted us to say about key issues.
This is Molly Hemingway encouraging you to listen to my
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Speaker 1: Yeah, let me just ask you a couple of things.
So essentially there, I think there from what I'm gathering,
there are four areas here. We have the fact checkers,
which I want to talk about separately after for a minute,
just the whole industry. There's algorithms that suppress conservative content,
and okay, and ask in a second, and then there's
outright censorship, and then there's attack on advertisers and things
like that. Not a tax on advertisers, tax on sites
that limit advertise, you know, big dollar advertising. As I
remember when I was paying attention to where hits were
coming from, and so on a lot of hits at
least you know, five six, seven years ago, we're coming
through social media, so Twitter, Facebook, things on Facebook was
a huge driver of content at one point. So obviously
that's probably you know, they can just essentially destroy a
site if they feel like as far as hits go.
Is that the case now? Or I have like sites
feared away from relying on them because they've been so
because they've been so censorious that a word, But I
don't know's I guess that's the question.
Speaker 2: Well for us, you know, a lot of media publications
relied almost exclusively on Facebook. You know, you look at
the Daily Wire, I think they were getting most of
their traffic from Facebook. And in fact, you'd see these
left wing people say, what are they saying about censorship
on Facebook. Look at these top twenty stories. They're all
from the Daily Wire or whatever as it always called that.
I don't know. Never mind that that was the only
publication that was getting you know, fed by by Facebook,
and then even they get cut off. For us, we
were getting most of our traffic through Google, and Google
is even worse than Facebook in terms of the censorship.
You if I if I looked for an article using
my name, the headline I wrote, and the word the
you know, the Federalist, I might not find it on Google.
Speaker 1: For sure. I love the old people. Yeah, I look
for old pieces on Google. Right, So I have a
s indicated column that will have Sometimes the piece that
I wrote for the Federals go out as a syndicated column.
It will come up. I will write, I know that
I got you know, a lot of hits on a
piece on the federal so it should be on the top.
But you will have like a small newspaper in Idaho
who like ran it, and it will come up before
the Federalist. There is no way that that's organic, that
that someone is suppressing content. And you know, I've noticed
this a lot, you know, I just want.
Speaker 2: To make a real quick point on this. The entire
Russia collusion hysteria was based on supposedly Russia spending about
one hundred thousand dollars on Facebook ads, some of which
supported Hillary Clinton and some of which supported Donald Trump.
And for that we got like four years of absolute
hysteria because that was viewed as meddling in an election. Okay,
let's say an election is really coming down to what
people think about the radical transagenda, which, by the way,
this last one did right. And you are Google, and
if you support the permanent sterilization of children in the
way that you write your copy, if you lie and
claim that men are women, you and someone's like looking
for information on trans stuff, you get shot up to
the top twenty pages. Top page, top part of the
top page, next page, next page, next page. If you're
telling the truth about that issue, you may not appear
in a Google search. Is that not like dramatically worse
election interference than what we claimed was such a big
deal with Russia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not just that. The AI program Google has. I'll
put in some kind of social you know, I put
in stuff about the trans and children. What's it called
gender affirming care? You know? And it gives me just
it vomits out, just complete nonsense about this stuff and lies,
and this is supposed to be AI, so it's I
don't know how it works, you know, I'm going to
pretend I know how it works. But it is supposed
to be a reflection of the general consensus on something,
and it is clearly not the case. So someone must
be manipulating those programs.
Speaker 2: I wanted to tell one story about the fact checking
program because I just remembered it. Because we wrote a
piece this week about ten or eleven times that we
got censored by Facebook, and one of them related to
something I wrote, and I was responding to a poorly
done fact check by a Chinese communist company called Lead Stories,
and this Chinese communist fact checker that Facebook worked with
had said things that were not accurate about I don't
know if you remember this. Like down in Fulton County
after the twenty twenty election, the supervisor at a ballot
counting place at State Farm Arena sent everybody home, including
the media and other people. Although she says she didn't
send anyone home. She just said she was stopping counting
for the night and that it wouldn't be going till
the next day. She didn't technically tell people they had
to leave, She just gave them no reason to stay there.
And then the counting continued. And we didn't know about
this until a videotape came out showing all of this,
showing her telling the people that she was done having
the people leave, which included media and Republican observers. Totally
matched up with the affidavits written by the Republican observers,
by the way, and then it goes back to them
like just just counting with no supervision, which is a
big issue because Fulton County was under DOJ supervision. They
also were supposed to have a state person overlooking them,
and for like an hour they had nobody watching nobody,
And so it matched up with reports from Republicans. But
when the video came out and everyone was like, holy schmolly,
this looks bad, Leads Stories puts out a fact check
saying like, actually, it's no big deal. We talked to
we talked to officials, the ones you're criticizing, and they
said it was no big deal, which is not a
fact check. So I do a bunch of reporting on it,
interviewing people involved, and I fact checked the fact check
but I'm not an authorized fact checker on Facebook, right,
So those Chinese communist fact checkers proceed to say that
what I wrote was false. They're wrong, but they say
that thereby censoring my story but also censoring me. So
now on I mean, I don't I'm not on Facebook.
I mean, I'm technically like I still have like a
page there, but I haven't used it since this since
about this time, because Facebook decided I was so dangerous
that for people to share my stories would be a
threat to the republic. And that's just a so you
could try to share my story on Facebook and it
wouldn't go anywhere, any story from me, any story from
the Federalist. I mean, what a horrific interference in the elections.
And you know, we'll just remind people. Mark Zuckerberg personally
paid four hundred and fifty million dollars to meddle in
the twenty twenty election by funneling it to two Democrat
groups who claimed to be non political, who took over
government election offices in the blue areas of swing states
to run there get out the vote operations.
Speaker 1: Did you know when he donated a million dollars to
the to Donald Trump's inauguration committee, the whole left melted
down that he was bending the knee, but he was
giving one hundred Wasn't it just a million? I forget exactly.
Speaker 2: Just a million, but it's to him his pocket change. Yeah,
four hundred and forty million or something like that, four
forty seven, I can't remember exactly what the number was.
To two Democrat groups that just figured out how to
game election offices, they would they would say, we're just
helping everybody vote, but we're going to do it in
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Well, are you really you know, we're
going to drive up the vote in Atlanta. We're going
to you know what I mean, Like, we're going to
drive up the vote in Madison and Green Bay. But
don't worry, we're doing it for everybody who lives in Madison,
in Green Bay and Detroit and Chicago and Philadelphia and Atlanta.
We're not going to pick which people. Well guess what,
you idiots, I mean, you're not idiots, they're very smart. Actually,
you were helping Democrats vote, driving up Democrat votes. Like
you look at the twenty twenty election and how many
just the insane number of ballots that were in the
system for Democrats far more than in twenty twenty four
because of what Mark Zuckerberg did there.
Speaker 1: So I get all that there's no way for him
to take it back. He has not, you know, I
think this is probably cynical as well. Maybe he believes
that has changed his ways and his ideas about free speech,
which should never you know, which I you know, it's
hard to believe that these people weren't bigger champions up.
I do think that it's important to acknowledge though, that,
for whatever reasons he has, it's a good thing that
civic leaders and CEO is a big tech companies find
it not just acceptable to defend for your speech and
to stop with the fact checking and I put those
in quota in fact checking quotation marks, but also to basically,
you know, feel compelled to do it right that things
are changing. Do you think that that's true.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm it certainly would rather have him stop
paying these fact checkers than continue. I just don't think
you get to say, like I think Sean Davis put
it this way, It's like someone saying, yes, I have
burned down every house in the neighborhood, but I'm not
going to burn down any houses anymore, and everyone being like,
what a hero. I mean, it's good that he's not
going to burn down any more houses. Probably for a
serial arsonist, you should make sure that they're truly not
going to do it, and there should be some measure
of transparency to ensure that. But there also needs to
be accountability for all the houses he burned down, and
he destroyed a lot of people's lives. He destroyed free See.
He was part of the most horrific attack on free
speech in American history. Yes, I understand the government was
bullying him and that's horrible, but he went along with it,
and a lot of what he did was also just
on his own. And so for someone like me, I
think about my children and how much we've had to
suffer because of this attack on us, and I am
not like elated that he's stopping. I'm I think that's good,
But I also think that what he did to me
and my family, like the fact that I've had to
work around the clock for years just to keep something going.
You know that I've had to face so much pressure
from so many people who just like went along with it,
and I had to like fight hard for it and
what I missed out for my family and my health
and all of that. Like I'm not ready to be like,
oh great, Mark Zuckerberg says he's not going to do
it anymore. I mean, I want there to be payment
for it. Do you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there's no way that that's going to
be extracted from him in any way.
Speaker 2: So wait, why not.
Speaker 1: I just don't think there's any mechanism or way to
make him pay for what he's done. I mean, unless
he's done something illegal.
Speaker 2: George Floyd dies at the hands of the Minnesota police,
you know, lifelong druggie career, criminal, and one hundred billion
dollars gets transferred from corporations to BLM affiliated movements. One
hundred billion dollars. I'm not asking for a hundred billion dollars,
but I certainly think Facebook, which probably was responsible for
many tens of millions of that transfer of wealth, they
can certainly do something to help out non leftist media. Absolutely,
maybe just one hundred million.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean he could. I'm just saying that it's
going to be difficult to force him or compel him
or compel him to give reparations for the things he's done.
That's all I'm saying. I mean, that's just reality. I'm
not saying he can't help conservative media. Maybe, you know,
if he wants to, but it seems unlikely to me
that he would do that. Yeah, I don't know, you know,
casting him as a hero, I agree with you, it's ridiculous.
I mean, the guy has been terrible. This may well
just be him as usual. Like I was going to
say this before, he feels like an easily manipulated person
and kind of weak when it comes to this kind
of stuff, So he'll just go. You know, Elon Musk
has given him a spine in a way on this issue, probably,
But I do just want to say this. You know,
one of the most corrosive parts of the legacy of
the Biden era, I think is the normalization of censorship
and the rationalization of censorship, and the embrace by journalists
of censorship. New York Times like every week has a
new piece saying that the Constitution first amendments outdated basically,
but though they may never be payment for what happened,
I think you should take solace. You should take solace
in the fact that you've won the ideological battle in
a way. I mean, or that we who believe in
free speech as a not just a in a First
Amendment sense, but as a tenant of what freedom means.
You know, we're kind of winning right right now, and
that is that's something good.
Speaker 2: I didn't actually watch what Mark Zuckerberg said, so I
need to revisit, but I kind of saw some clips
here and there, and I read some of the quotes,
and on that issue, you are exactly right, like he's
admitting all these things. He's completely conceding all these things
about how this was a censorship tool, about how it
was biased against conservatives, about how it was without reason.
These are really important things from a high level player.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: One of the pieces that we had at the Federalist
was pointing out that Zuckerberg was admitting things that the
sort of weaker Supreme Court justices were saying, like, we're
just not sure if that's happening, and he's just flat
out saying that it's all happening, the censorship at the
direction of the government. So it's a start. It is
nowhere near sufficient. I mean, you just raised the AI situation.
Google is as bad as it has ever been. The
censorship is draconian, and Facebook is just one part of it,
a key part of it, but not like a majority
of it or anything, and so there's a long way
to go. But just having to admit these things is good.
On that note, I did get a kick out of,
like all these propagandists at CNN who are very pro censorship,
we're saying that it is bending the knee to support
free speech, it's bending the knee to Trump or Republicans
or his supporters. And I think that's kind of an
interesting admission from them. They're saying, if you censor, you're
with us, you're bending the knee to us, and if
you don't censor, you're bending the knee to Republicans. It
might even be why Republicans are winning right now because
Americans don't love the censorship that they cannot deny exists.
But I like even that they're being clear about it,
Like we support oppressively limiting speech and debate of views
that we do not support, and these other people think
that speech should be free. It's like, yeah, well you
said it.
Speaker 3: Cutting the deficit seems simple.
Speaker 1: It's just not easy.
Speaker 4: The watched aut On Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski.
Every day Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and
the economy and how it affects your wallet.
Speaker 3: Like dieting or saving money. Cutting the deficit is simple,
It's just not easy. Cutting the deficit is not so
much about cutting personnel. It's about cutting the money they
hand out. Whether it's happening in DC or on Wall Street,
it's affecting you financially.
Speaker 1: Be informed.
Speaker 4: Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with christ
Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: It's funny. I had a note that said exactly that.
Brian Stelter said, you know, this is bending the need
to Trump, And it was interesting because what you're saying
is that you don't want Trump people who defend Trump
and who have opinions that align with Trump on massive,
allegedly open forum sites on the Internet. That says that
your pro censorship. To me, even if I don't like
what these people are saying, I think they should have
a say. And another thing is and Zuckerberg talked about
this is the idea that everything you don't like is
far right or radical or extremists. This is just untrue
because people are winning elections, not agree with it or not.
They're winning elections. More than fifty percent of people who
voted aligned with Donald Trump, So how could it be
far to the right or out of the mainstream or fringe.
It's not. And honestly, most of these opinions are incredibly mainstream.
Actually talking about defending free speech, COVID lockdowns, all that stuff.
It was mainstream. So anyway, I think that's interesting as well. Yeah, yeah, sorry,
I just want to talk about the fact checkers. I
think you're about to say that as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what were you going to say?
Speaker 1: I was going to say that I cannot wait for
this fact checking scam to end. I want to call
fact checking a euphemism, but it's not even that. It's
just a complete misleading. I don't know name for an
industry that does the opposite.
Speaker 2: The euphemism for censorship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, euphemism for censorship is better they do. I've brned
columns about they do a million things that are dishonest.
They lie. But here's something that they do that drives
me crazy. They become hyper pedantic about anything a Republican
says right, and they'll write a long piece about how
they're not it's not true, and then when a Democrat
says something that they like, they will put it into
very big, widespread context, you know what I mean. So
it is the idea that they're arbiters of truth, or
that we need arbiters of self you know, self named
arbiters of truth in the media is just undermines everything
that we're supposed to be doing out there and they're
supposed to be doing out there. At least that's my opinion.
Speaker 2: So my husband, Mark Hemingway wrote one of the first
big takedowns of fact checking, I want to say, like
twelve years ago. He has written multiple lengthy investigative reports
on fact checking and what a scam it is and
how it is just a means by which Democrats like
advance their narrative. By the way, I want to say,
like I'm a little frustrated about that, meaning he had
it all figured out, like twelve years ago. He was
writing this at the Weekly Standard, a publication that, under
Steve Hayes's direction, went on to become a fact checker
for Facebook. So it's not like the information wasn't out
there exquisitely argued and laid out. It was by my
husband you know, he's been brought on all sorts of
you know, panels and discussions to talk about this. It's
not like it needed to take twelve years of getting
to a dystopic hell hole for people to realize there
was a problem. Smart people knew or should have known
more than a decade ago. But yes, it's a complete scam,
and I do kind of love that everyone recognizes it
as a scam right now. That is a complete nutter joke.
That the Glenn Kesslers of the world are a complete
and utter joke, to the point that if you hear
the term fact checking you most people will now just
be like, oh, yeah, that's a censorship tool. It means
that something was said that was true that they wish
weren't true. You know, it's become different, but still every
single person involved in the shady fact checking censorship enterprise
should be shunned, every single person who went along with it.
It's just reprehensible to take part willingly in a censorship
industrial complex role, you know, and to pretend to believe
in any of it. To that end, I did see
Steve Hayes was very upset that the money he gets
from Facebook to fact check his political opponents was going away,
so he tweeted about it, and I do my best
to ignore these people now, kind of realizing they don't matter.
But I failed with that yesterday because it was just
too much. You know, he took sweet sweet money from
Facebook to hurt his political opponents by running the fact
checking scheme. And he was quoting from some not very
good writer who was there at the Bulwark where he.
Speaker 1: Which he it's that it's the Dispatch, not the Bonorn.
Speaker 2: Oh sorry, the Dispatch. Yeah, the Dispatch, the guy says.
Mark Zuckerberg says that the fact checking had become like
bad and biased. I sure, hope he's not talking about us.
We've been We've been an accredited fact checker with Facebook
for you know, since two thousand. You hope he's not
talking about you. He's talking about you. Of course he's
talking about you. I mean, I haven't been paying it.
I've been so we've been so destroyed on Facebook that
I just haven't even like visited there or cared to
see what's happening in their fact check censorship program. But
in the year twenty twenty, shortly before the election, Steve
Hayes and The Dispatch got the Susan B. Anthony List
censored their ads in the election, censored for saying that
Joe Biden had supported late term abortion, which he had
voted to support, or something like, I mean it was
something that he had absolutely done. They were one hundred
percent right, and Steve Hayes got them censored in the
middle of an election, and he's like hosting stuff saying like,
I sure hope he's not talking about us. We were
the highest and most ethical fact checkers in history. No
you weren't. You were awful.
Speaker 5: You did evil, evil things that led to like babies
being killed, Like how could you not think about your
role in this and be honest about it?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just looked it up. I didn't even remember this.
Facebook used their fact checked censor Susan B. Anthony List,
but it was incorrect. It's according to National Review, which
isn't exactly you know, Trump friendly.
Speaker 2: Well, Jordan Boyd at The Federalist wrote it up, and
I remember that also. Steve Hayes said, oh, yeah, you
know what this fact check once everybody kind of like
said your fact check was full of lies. He said, oh,
you know, this never should have gone out. It didn't
go through proper editing. We're going to get right on that.
It's been four plus years and they have never corrected
their error. I mean they pulled their fact check after
it didn't matter, because like once you sense again, once
you censor someone, you're just kind of screwed into perpetuity
on the Facebook platform. Just horrible behavior.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I just I oppose the idea that
there should be anyone censoring someone else. Do you know
what I'm saying that if you don't if you think
something's wrong, is I do? I go online and I
write about it, and I point out my and I
give my arguments. Once you label something a fact checker,
gives you this power over other people to, like, as
I said, are be an arbiter of what's true and not.
It's very problematic, first of all, because a lot of
our debates that we have are not that simple, you
know what I mean. And the other problem is that
if you're wrong, you're censoring someone. You know, you're censoring
an opinion, and we can't have a debate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I feel like that the community notes program
on x is not perfect, and I've certainly seen some
real doozies. They're about as bad as a Glenn Kessler
fact check. But I still like the idea that instead
of censoring something you're like, well, the community kind of
thought this was important context as well. It might not
be saying what you said was wrong, but what you
said could have been helped by this additional information. Again,
not perfect. I don't even think community notes are needed.
You can just quote, tweet and respond to tweets if
you need to. More speech is the way to go,
but it's a less bad way of dealing with information
you dislike.
Speaker 1: I agree with that. The thing that helps with community
notes though, is that it is attached to tweets, so
I don't have to go to you know, there'll be
a million responses I want to see. Oftentimes they have
links that you know, debunk what's you know what the
person said. Listen, if you're on Twitter and you're just
taking what people say, you know without researching, you're you know,
that's not that's the wrong way to go about your life,
I would say. But yeah, just last thing on this
for me is that once fact checking goes away, I
think media is going to be in better shape. It will,
it will, it will tell us that things are getting better,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: I love the whole idea that media outlets would need
to do fact checks. Isn't that just jourjournalism, Like the
idea that you're like, well, here we got our reporting,
but here we're going to do fact checks. It's like,
so you're reporting isn't fact checking?
Speaker 1: If anything, they should have a fact check for their
own publications to say, you know, what are those call
They used to have them at newspapers where person's like,
actually the story wasn't done right, or it's not fair.
Public editor, public editor right, Yes, except that though that
position was filled by people who were just defending it. Yes. Yeah, Anyway,
it's such a big topic, it's it's kind of difficult
to kind of like bore down to it. I think
we'll get back to it in the future because this
may be a trend coming up thing I would. I
wanted to talk about something else, and that is the
if you're ready to move on Trump, I want to
talk about Donald Trump. I want to talk about the
Monroe doctrine that he is going to institute, apparently, where
we will rule all, we will have Greenland, we will
have Canada. But we don't want Mexico. Is that correct?
I have Faro Islands and Iceland.
Speaker 2: Things that we're focused on maybe right now would be
the Panama Canal, the Panama getting control of that back
and away from China. Getting Greenland, which is you know
I think we should talk about. And then there has
been this talk about bringing Canada in. I love the
first two ideas. I do not I do not want Canada.
I do not want Canada were its problems with us.
Speaker 1: I think Canada should not be a state. I think
he should be a territory like Puerto Rico. So it
would be my name for it that I had was
northern North Dakota for all of Canada. That was the
name I came up with. Mexico's Lower Canada. I don't
really have a Greenland name. What do you call it?
Didn't you have a name for it?
Speaker 2: Oh? Senator Eric Schmidt of Missouri keeps on calling it Magdonia,
which I love. I have long supported this idea of
acquiring Greenland, and I think there I think that we
could make the Greenlandians what is the word for them,
I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think we can make future Americans.
Speaker 2: I think we could make an offer that would really
work for bringing them in as a territory, I think.
And they are so close to Russia. You know, if
you were to go like straight from Washington to Moscow
that way, it would be over Greenland.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, Greenland has potentially oil minerals other things there,
so you know there are on a unexplored so I'm
all for it. In fact, there's a long history of
Americans talking about taking Greenland in various ways, going back
to the eighteen hundreds. I think it's always always been
on our minds. So I have no problem with that.
The Panama Canal thing, I'm also on Trump's side now.
In nineteen seventy nine, there was a huge debate between
Reagan and William Buckley over the Panama Canal. I watched that, Yes,
it's cue.
Speaker 2: I loved it.
Speaker 1: Yes, so Reagan.
Speaker 2: I think McCain was there.
Speaker 1: Exactly, Admiral McCain, Pat Buchanan was there with Canada.
Speaker 2: People realize how contentious that debate was. I think the
Senate authorized losing the Panama Canal by only two votes,
and there was major pressure not just from like left
wing forces, but also helped by Buckley and them two.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, people have the time, they should watch
the debate. It's very you know, he hit a very
well thought out kind of case to make I guess,
but I I mean, you know, I think it was
a mistake. But anyway, I suppose the Canadian thing goes Obviously,
I think he's kind of joking, but he is joking.
But other I would love to take in Canada. But
I would take all those provinces I don't remember all
their names that are like West, leave Ontario to be
its own European quasi European nation and let the French
have Quebec. That would be my plan. And I would
take British Columbia, Manitoba, Alberta. I forget the names of
the rest. So that's anyway, that would be my plan.
Speaker 2: Did you see what Pierre Polover, I don't know how
to say his name, what he said in response to
Donald Trump's continued threats to make Canada It was great.
It was this really like strong defense of Canada never
being an American state, while also acknowledging all the problems
that lead this to even being a discussion. He is
a really impressive politician. I think, have you seen one.
Have you seen the interview? Elon Musk sent it out
again recently, where he's in an apple orchard getting interviewed
by a left wing journalist who's just saying all sorts
of stuff that doesn't even you know. He's like, you're
so trumpy, and he's like, what do you mean by that? Well,
you know you're Trump, Okay, do you what can you
explain to me what you mean? Well, you know what
I mean. I have no idea what you mean? You know?
And so he's just like for two minutes dealing with
stupid questions from a stupid journalist, and then he asks
some open ended question, at which point Pierre polivert Oliver
is that right just proceeds to explain like monetary policy
and how it's been screwing over Canadians. And I was like,
I like this guy. He's like a trumpy free marketer guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean in Canada, the right is not what
we would consider a very conservative or anything. But yeah,
he's impressive. That apple orchard, well he's he's eating his apple. Yeah,
is so funny. But it looked like a skit right
when I first watched it. I'm like, is this real
because it seems like a skit on like SCTV or
some whatever Canadian as an eleca.
Speaker 2: The journalist is so bad.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, so he keeps saying, you know, people are
saying this about you. So he keeps asking, you know,
Paulaviar keeps asking him which people who and what the
journalists can't say is we we keep saying that you
only keep saying that not people. People don't say because
he says, you're always talking about right wing left wing.
He's like, I never talk about right wing or left wing.
But anyway, so yeah, he's pretty impressive. And obviously Trudeau
has stepped down on well he's.
Speaker 2: He will be stepping down and he's still the yeah minister.
Speaker 1: But obviously Canada is Canada. But you know, Daniel Hannon,
he's kind of this British British guy's conservative. He had
an interesting idea that instead of this you know, the
anglosphere should come together, you know, into a sort of
alliance where we defend the things that make the end
anglosphere great. I would say that Britain seems to be
on its way out of this of this these you know,
this kind of Western defending Western values these days but
I don't know if we want to get into what's
going on there right now anyway, I think I want
to say also, I.
Speaker 2: Think it's funny to read the supposed, you know, intellects
of the d C media publications where they are just like,
what is he talking about with Greenland? Like makes a
lot of sense, And as you point out, this is
something we have thought about repeatedly over the years, and
it makes a heck of a lot more sense than
like overthrowing you know, Libya or whatever. The neocons are
always like proposing to do or getting involved in some
war that has very little impact on the US. And
I'm not advocating a war here for taking Greenland, but
I think, you know, there's a way that we could
acquire this that would be mutually beneficial to all parties, Denmark, Greenland.
Speaker 1: US, of course.
Speaker 2: But it's I mean, it's okay. And what's not like
they're like, Oh, you want to propose a war in
a country nobody's ever heard of, that's great. Oh you
want to talk about like your strategic security over the
long haul by acquiring the world's largest island, that's crazy.
Speaker 1: The first proposal to buy the island was in eighteen
sixty seven. After buying Alaska, they wanted to buy Greenland.
Then there was a proposal in nineteen ten. So you know,
obviously this is nothing new, and I think it's a
great idea, especially if we buy There's nothing wrong with
buying a piece of land. We've done it before. One
of Alaska's a state.
Speaker 2: We can do it Agasana purchase.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. I don't think it's a I mean, I
don't know if it will happen. I don't know any
think about the politics of Greenland or how this works.
But I think it's a fun idea.
Speaker 2: One thing I think that is interesting because it's also
I think it's a pretty Lutheran place, so I like
that we could dramatically increase the anyway. I think that
people might not realize that. I wasn't it that the
Danes inhabited that island before the Inuit population.
Speaker 1: I don't know enough about it. That's interesting.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: So the number one religion there is Evangelical Lutheranism. What's
the population though.
Speaker 2: It's like under one hundred thousand, it's not big.
Speaker 1: Also, the fifty six thousand.
Speaker 2: The father of Eric the Red named it Greenland as
a pr move. I thought people would be more likely
to go there if they thought it had any green
at all, which it does not.
Speaker 1: I hope that happens. Here's the thing. When Trump first
mentioned it, it seemed weird he mentioned this, I think
at twenty sixteen, right, But then as things happen with Trump,
you're like, don't dismiss what he's talking about, because it
very well could come true. Right.
Speaker 2: I saw this tweet from Pierre Trudeau that was like,
let me be absolutely clear, Canada will never be part
of the United States or something, and someone was like,
I don't know much, but I know enough having been
on this platform for a while, that you do not
tempt the fates by tweeting something like that out. But again,
I don't want. I don't all the good Canadians to
become Americans something, most of the good Canadians to become Americans.
I don't want their problems. I think they're too friendly
towards socialism. I don't like it.
Speaker 1: Well true, I think it's important to remember that we
don't need Canada. We just need to seal their hockey teams,
take them out of fake cities like Edmonton, put them
in real cities like Dayton and so forth. If Canada
became a state, just so people understand how how much
richer we are than them, they would be the poorest
state per capita in the United States under Mississippi. People
have to remember that at one point Canada and the
United States GDP was growing around the same, you know,
personal wealth was around the same, and then they decided
to embrace socialism, and we've gone in different directions since then.
Not full blown socialism, but pretty socialistic country. Okay, is
that it? Do we want to talking about culture? Sure
you do. You have you noticed that almost eighty percent
of our mail, I would say, is about culture, not politics.
Speaker 2: Eighty is low.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also, like we were really thinking nobody was going to
be listening to us over the Christmas break, and apparently
y'all were listening to nothing but us, because I think
we got more mail over those two weeks than we
did from the entire year combined.
Speaker 1: Like it's just crazy, Yeah it is. We got that
episode generated the most male we've had and it's I
don't even think it's it's it's close. Next year, if
I remember, we will go through all those emails and
all those Christmas the recommendations. If I remember, so maybe
someone can email and remind me or we get there.
Did you watch anything or do anything?
Speaker 2: No, because I got sick, which meant that I wasn't
on my bike, my husband's bike that I've been using
while my rower while we wait to get that fixed.
So no, I guess I did. I don't remember when
we last hped. I did start that thing recommended by
a listener. I forget what it's called madness, maybe about
a CNN contributor who I think gets framed with killing someone.
Speaker 1: Hm, did you know it was it's David Bowie's birthday today?
Speaker 4: Wait?
Speaker 1: In his birthday?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I watched a movie called The Return. Oh, who was
it it? I thought it was okay. I mean it
was okay. It's it's kind of the from what I
gathered the Last the story of the last third of
the Odyssey. It was fine.
Speaker 2: My husband and and oldest kid were gonna go see it,
but it was already out of theaters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, Rap Finds is great. He's great. First
of all, you know, he's in great shape, He's got
his shirt off a lot of this. For a lot
of this movie, I was rather impressed with his workout.
You know, I think he's sixty one or sixty two,
and he was good. And Juliette de Binoche was in
it what is her name? And they were together remembering
the English patient.
Speaker 2: Did you ever see the movie Damage?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't think so.
Speaker 2: It's all with a novella. It's super dark. It includes
the line damaged people are dangerous because they know they
can survive. It's a great very steamy, totally inappropriate, like
I shouldn't be recommending it, but great movie.
Speaker 1: I should say that the uh, the Return is not
for children. Probably there's violence and also plenty of full
frontal nudity in that movie. I did go. I forgot
to mention this, but I did go to the movie
theaters to see Lord of the Rings movie called The
War of Row for Naunce, which is an animated film,
and it was math for me. It didn't really have that.
It didn't feel like Tolkien, you know, it wasn't. It didn't.
It wasn't about bigger I you know, bigger things than ourselves,
you know. It was kind of like I felt, it
was okay though it wasn't terrible. It's not a strong
recommend for me.
Speaker 2: So I did not watch The Golden Globes, but I
did watch the little like the Nicky Glazer mini roast
at the beginning of it. So The Golden Globes kind
of has a tradition of having the host of the
show roast the crowd. Ricky Gervais did this the best
it's ever been done, like an actual meaningful roast against Hollywood,
like five years ago, and Nicki Glazers was much much,
much nicer. But I did kind of think it was
opening the doors. It was like Hollywood's version of a
Maga moment. You know. She kind of mocked the me
too movement as opposed to made it this like central,
the central issue of how people get cast in movies
has to be dealt with in a really somber way.
She kind of like dealt with it, but mocked it.
Was also making fun of like the Diddy Parties in
a way that was interesting to me. And then also
I thought that a lot of the women there were
showcasing their womanly figures in a way that was better
than I'd seen in recent years. So I was like,
is Hollywood having a little bit Oh. She also made
fun of them for being crazy left wing democrats that
have no influence.
Speaker 1: I thought I was. I've listened to her in interviews
and I find her somewhat refreshing. Like she will go
she will tread in areas that usually these people won't,
though I won't say she goes hard like Ricky Gervaise
at all, but she does, you know, she does touch
the fringes of sort of you know, contrarian or non orthodox,
you know, kind of comedy.
Speaker 2: I guess she called out Harrison Ford for being a
pothead And how did I miss this? Like apparently everybody
knew this and I did not know this.
Speaker 1: Oh that reminds me. I finished watching the show Shrinking
on Apple. Oh yeah, I think it's a strong recommend
for me. I mean, listen, it's not for kids either.
There's a lot of language and sexual stuff going on
sometimes you know, talk about it, but it's like about
forgiveness and it's about grief, and I think it was
just interesting and funny, and you know, I don't know,
I recommend it. He's in it, and he's very good
plays a character with Parkinson's and I think he does
a pretty good job. So I recommend that. Since you
have nothing. We shall move to be fair different. That's
it I gave you. You know what else? I watched
a show called The Sticky. Did I mention this last week?
I didn't think so, Oh, I'm never going to remember.
The woman's name is Margo Martin Dale. Yes is in it.
It's about Canada. Yes, from what was that show? What
I'm Yeah by Jack Ortzman. It's kind of like a
cake crime caper. Jamie Lee Curtis is in it, and
uh it happens in Quebec. And it was good. I
wouldn't say great, but it was fun to watch. She's
always great. I can't she was justified. I think she was,
you know, she was just amazing and she's great here too.
She's always good. I've never seen her in anything where
I'm not like that. It's so much fun to watch.
So yeah, to recommend us, Well, that's all. That's all
I have.
Speaker 2: Great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, Well, and don't forget.
Speaker 2: Our email address is radio at the Federalist dot com.
Speaker 1: Yes, we have to hear from you until next week.
The Lovers of Freedom and Anxious with a fray