0:00

NOLOGE FIGHT

0:11

Dan

0:30

and Jordan NOLOGE FIGHT RIDDLEWORK

0:35

I NEED MONEY RIDDLEWORK RIDDLEWORK

0:39

Andy in Kansas ANDY IN KANSAS

0:42

STOP IT! ANDY IN KANSAS ANDY

0:45

IN KANSAS It's

0:46

time to pray! Andy in Kansas, you're

0:48

on the air, thanks for holding. Hello Alex, I'm a

0:50

fifth time caller, I'm a huge fan, I love your

0:52

work. NOLOGE FIGHT NO

0:54

NO NO NO NO NO NO LOGE FIGHT DOT COM

0:58

I love you. Hey everybody, welcome back

1:00

to NOLOGE FIGHT, I'm Dan. I'm Jordan. We're a couple dudes,

1:02

like to sit around, worship at the altar of Selene,

1:04

and talk a little bit about Alex Jones.

1:07

Oh, indeed we are, Dan. Yep. Dan!

1:09

Jordan. Quick question for you. What's up? What's

1:11

your bright spot today, buddy? My bright spot is that

1:13

this weekend was Money in the Bank.

1:16

Oh, okay. Coming to you live from

1:18

London. Ooh. Yeah, they went

1:20

over to the UK to do Money in the Bank. Alright.

1:23

Pounds in the... I was about to

1:25

get there. I think they still

1:27

use the word bank, yeah. I think, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um,

1:30

so yeah. But bank is spelled Q-U-E. That's

1:33

right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you have the

1:35

premise of the match, of course. Sure. There is

1:38

a briefcase on the top of the ladder, or hanging

1:40

from the ceiling that you have to

1:41

get a ladder to get up to. And

1:43

then you grab it, and inside is a contract

1:45

that you can cash in at any time. Sure. To

1:48

become the champ. It's a great anticipation

1:50

device. What fun. Yeah. A bunch

1:52

of nonsense. Absolutely. Anyway, I don't

1:54

care about either of the matches. There was a men's and a

1:56

women's. I don't care about either of them because in

1:58

the middle of the event... You

2:00

hear the those familiar sounds

2:05

John Cena was there out

2:07

of nowhere John Cena comes running

2:09

out of the back. I mean what a thrill What

2:12

is he gonna do? Fast 10

2:14

is over right? Oh, if peacemaker isn't

2:16

even started again yet. There's

2:18

the writers strike going on So yeah, you might

2:20

as well show up. I really

2:23

got excited Probably

2:25

more than I should have

2:28

or had any reason to be cuz I don't even

2:30

love John Cena

2:30

that much I was gonna say I don't know you Incredibly

2:34

charming, but whatever so

2:36

I texted Marty. Oh my god. Yeah, then

2:38

I looked at the phone like why'd I text him then? So

2:45

anyway John Cena sure sure

2:47

does an incredibly pandering

2:50

You crowd here at London

2:52

you are the best sure sure People

2:56

in the back they're all worried

2:58

because you guys yell too much This is

3:00

a hostile environment, but I say you are

3:03

the best sure you know very much First

3:05

of all I thought he was supposed to be the USA guy Wow

3:08

what he's a marine and I mean

3:10

now he's Great, we're gonna

3:12

go apeshit on how they still have a monarchy

3:15

and be like what are you doing? Outsize

3:17

them out of control over your government still you

3:19

think they're basic figureheads,

3:20

but it's not true I would have

3:22

enjoyed it. I would have too so he was given this great

3:24

speech Sure, and then he his whole reason

3:26

for being there which was very unclear for minutes

3:30

How he was out there was to rile

3:32

up the crowd by saying it's time to bring Wrestlemania

3:35

to London oh that way and that was

3:37

it

3:38

well here's the thing what I started thinking

3:40

man It would be funny if someone came

3:43

out and their whole entire thing was

3:45

they didn't want Wrestlemania to be in London

3:48

and then John Cena beats them up. Yeah, absolutely Metaphorically

3:52

that's perfect so John Cena It

3:55

doesn't need to take long he treads water for a

3:57

little bit longer, and then this Australian

3:59

guy comes

3:59

He

4:02

comes out and he's like, I think we

4:04

should have the money and the most strictly

4:06

up. And then John Cena beats a buck.

4:10

So the very thing that I thought would be hilarious

4:13

if it happened happened and I was, I

4:15

got a charge out of it. That is great. Yeah. That

4:18

is a feeling of somebody pulling it off

4:21

correctly. Yeah. It went too long,

4:23

but otherwise delightful. Exactly

4:26

what it was supposed to be. Sure. Everyone

4:28

went home happy. Fantastic. So

4:30

what's your bright spot? My bright spot is

4:32

I finished Final Fantasy 16. You

4:34

said that the last time we were recording.

4:37

No, I didn't. Privately. I

4:39

mean, I understand that, but there's a new game

4:41

plus, man. Oh, that's right. There's a new game

4:43

plus. I didn't even start the game until I

4:45

beat the game. I retract my statement. Yeah, yeah,

4:47

yeah. Anyways,

4:49

fantastic story. And

4:51

you know what? It is very, very

4:53

difficult to end things well. It's

4:56

very difficult to end. Are there multiple endings

4:58

as they were saying? Nope. There's

5:01

one ending. It culminates the,

5:03

I mean, it puts together all the themes

5:05

of the story. It's successful

5:08

in everything it sets out to do. And I

5:10

think honestly, what's amazing about it is

5:13

that they got away with telling one of the most,

5:17

I mean, dangerous to capitalism

5:19

stories that there's ever been. I mean,

5:21

essentially what this is, is imagine,

5:24

I mean, here's the story, all right?

5:26

Jesus tries to free

5:29

the slaves,

5:30

realizes that it's actually God

5:32

who has enslaved all of us. And instead

5:34

of being like, okay, I'm the son of God, they

5:37

kill God. How about that? Is this

5:39

actual Jesus or metaphorical Jesus? Metaphorical

5:41

Jesus. Okay, because I feel like if it were literal,

5:44

this would be trouble. But again, that's what I'm saying.

5:46

Like this is so much like

5:49

a story of a people

5:51

over-reliant upon one resource

5:53

and a guy who is saying to everybody, listen,

5:56

it is a bad idea to keep

5:59

doing this. regardless of the harm it

6:01

will cause, we must remove the resource

6:03

entirely. So the point is

6:06

he sets up the entirety of the people

6:08

for a hundred years of extreme misery

6:11

in order to free them from an evil

6:13

god who tries to make them

6:15

over-reliant again on a specific resource. Yeah.

6:18

So when you say it's hard for it to end

6:21

well, you don't mean for you

6:23

as the player. No, no, no, for the story.

6:26

As a writer, it's difficult to end it. For them, it

6:28

was difficult to

6:29

wrap things up in a satisfying

6:32

way and then they pulled it off. Well, I mean, Game of Thrones,

6:34

obviously, is an easy corollary. They

6:38

fucked it up. And in this story, they nailed

6:40

it. I think it's time for a reassessment.

6:43

I don't. I don't actually. I was gonna

6:45

say, I was gonna say, you didn't even, did you even watch it?

6:47

Yeah, I did. Oh, okay, you did. I

6:49

joined Game of Thrones a

6:51

bit late. That's true. So I joined

6:54

maybe in the fourth or fifth season

6:57

or something like that and I got up to speed and

6:59

everything and

7:00

I don't know. I was like, I kinda like these

7:02

kids, but the rest of this is a little bit, like I

7:04

liked Arya's Adventures and I thought Bran was pretty

7:06

cool. Bran's pretty nice. Going hanging out with a tree.

7:08

He's got a tree friend. Yeah. Well, who doesn't

7:11

want a tree friend? I want a tree friend so bad.

7:13

Yeah, but all the politics and everything was annoying

7:15

to me. It got in the way. Yeah. I

7:18

was like, I want more of the magic stuff and

7:20

like kind of like, why, will people just

7:22

get along and hang out and have fun with tree folk or

7:24

something?

7:26

Yeah, no, I mean, you know, I think Martin

7:28

had a sort of magic should

7:30

be the shark and jaws view of Game

7:33

of Thrones where it's like, it's really there,

7:36

but it's never quite, it's not like people walking

7:38

around shooting thunderbolts at other people, that

7:40

kind of thing, you know? Yeah, but there are ice people

7:42

who are constantly a threat. I'm not saying there

7:44

aren't ice people who are constantly a threat. Yeah.

7:49

Maybe that last season wasn't as bad

7:51

as people, I think it might've been. I don't know. I

7:54

haven't thought about it since it happened. We don't have

7:56

to reclaim anything. I don't, there was

7:58

a few months ago where...

7:59

or whatever there was, there's a whole

8:02

effort to reclaim Phantom Menace. Fuck

8:04

off, that movie sucks. How

8:07

dare you try and reclaim that shit. Oh

8:09

no, we need to critical re-examine it. We do not. Alex

8:12

is gonna charge in here like the Kool-Aid man and kick your ass. Somebody

8:15

said, somebody defended pod

8:17

racing. How dare you. Hey, his

8:20

pod racing is. Was

8:22

it Greg Proops who was defending

8:24

pod racing? I don't think he defended

8:26

pod racing once. I think he apologized but

8:28

said, I had a great

8:29

time. Made a lot of money. I'm Greg Proops.

8:33

I was high the whole time. I should not have been

8:35

in a Star Wars movie.

8:36

So Jordan, today we

8:39

have an episode to do. We're gonna be talking some

8:41

Tuck, some Tucker. Now here's

8:43

where things get messy.

8:45

Tuck, Tuck. We're gonna be talking about

8:48

episode six of his show. Sure.

8:51

But this is episode three of our series about

8:53

Tucker. So how do we title it?

8:55

I mean, are they serialized? I

8:58

mean, there's an order of them in

9:01

terms of when they come out. Right, right, right.

9:04

I don't know whether we should call this episode

9:07

three or episode six. Because

9:09

if we call it episode six, people are gonna be like, where's

9:11

episode three, four, and five? Sure, sure, sure.

9:13

If we call it episode three, it's

9:16

actually episode six of Tucker's show, that might confuse

9:18

people. All right, let me throw this out at you. We

9:20

call it episode three Tuck 60.

9:24

No. Okay.

9:26

I'll figure it out. I'm not gonna get any help from you clearly.

9:30

I'm gonna get jokes. I

9:34

come to you for serious advice. This

9:36

is what I get. Fair enough, fair enough. I

9:39

actually,

9:40

you know, having some fun, but

9:42

I really don't know what to title it. Because the first

9:44

episode of the Tucker thing was about the first episode of his

9:46

thing. Sure. Second episode, but the second episode.

9:49

Sure.

9:49

I mean, by the time anyone's

9:51

listening to this, it'll be a dead question.

9:54

Yeah, they'll have already figured it out. Anyway,

9:57

here's the reason we're doing some Tucker. Alex

10:00

was still out of town doing

10:02

his remote, sort

10:04

of rented studio vibe thing

10:07

where he's on the big screen. Uh-huh.

10:09

And Roseanne filled

10:11

in in studio. Sure.

10:14

On Friday. Uh-huh. And it was,

10:16

you know, her being on was huge

10:19

and like bizarre. Yeah. And

10:21

we talked about that when that happened. Yeah. And

10:24

then the second time, it's not really all that bizarre

10:26

anymore. The seal has been broken. Yeah. It's

10:29

not like she was talking about anything that

10:31

was all

10:32

that interesting. I found it to be a

10:34

dud. And so waste of time.

10:37

Alex, while he's been in Florida, did a

10:39

Q&A at the church of

10:41

Pastor Howard Brown,

10:44

Robert Howard Brown, whatever his name is.

10:46

And that was hard to watch.

10:48

Q&A? Yep.

10:50

Yep. What? Yep. Q&A at the

10:52

church. I mean, who? Of

10:54

all the, listen, I mean, even if you're

10:56

a fan of Alex, Q&A is a

10:58

bad idea, right? I

11:01

don't know. He's a performer.

11:03

You know, like he turns it on. You

11:05

could see him turn it on. You could see him like

11:08

dodge questions in real time, kind

11:11

of, but not in any way that I felt like,

11:13

oh, this is interesting. There was one guy who

11:15

was insisting that Alex debate the JQ

11:18

with Nick Fuentes. And

11:20

that, uh.

11:21

You know, there's nothing quite more

11:24

deserving of a house of

11:26

God than I don't

11:28

even like saying those two words. I

11:30

don't like saying the two letters. Yeah. I'm sure each

11:32

other anymore. Yeah. Alex wasn't thrilled with it either.

11:35

So he started yelling and

11:38

the Holy Ghost thing kind

11:40

of like, he got up, he stood up, and

11:42

then the audience got on their feet. He was like, oh,

11:44

God. Just such

11:47

a distraction. I have been given a translation

11:49

of Alex by the Lord. It

11:51

was horrible.

11:51

Yeah. So then I was like, let's go to

11:54

the past. Sure. I always love it. It's

11:56

kind of, you know, self-care

11:58

for me when I get to.

11:59

time in the past. But unfortunately, March

12:02

2nd and 3rd were a zero.

12:05

Nothing is happening. Alex does not

12:08

recant the story about Carrie

12:10

hanging out with Anton LaVey. This

12:12

was the only thing

12:15

that I even found at all.

12:17

This is from March 2nd. This

12:19

was ridiculous.

12:21

That's why America's degenerating. I do

12:24

have to say this. I can hardly go see

12:26

any film. What? I

12:29

mean, the passion of the Christ or any of

12:31

the last few films I've seen. Paycheck,

12:33

I saw that.

12:34

I'm a big fan of Philip K.

12:37

Dick, a sci-fi writer. I

12:39

mean, it doesn't matter what movie you go to. There

12:41

will be five to 20 prying

12:44

infants. And who does that?

12:46

Just a few years ago, people didn't

12:48

do that. We

12:50

really are degenerating in this country.

12:52

I mean, that's just an example. I mean,

12:54

women look at me like I'm weird when

12:57

I open doors for them at restaurants

12:59

or

13:00

at the shopping mall. Older

13:03

women don't, but young ones think you're hitting on them

13:05

or something. You're opening a door for me. Well,

13:07

I'm sorry. My mama taught me to do

13:09

that.

13:10

And I'm not even

13:12

that polite or nice of a person. I got my own

13:15

problems. I'm pretty aggressive.

13:17

I sit there in movies

13:19

and I can never have suspended disbelief

13:21

because

13:23

mainly the third world populations are

13:25

here and then they just think you bring babies to movies.

13:28

You know, it's so

13:30

I might as well just, you know, move to China

13:34

or move to, you know, Venezuela

13:36

or something. I don't understand it.

13:38

Yeah. That took a weird turn at the end. That was,

13:40

that was very odd. Yes.

13:42

I mean, you know, in comedy,

13:45

you know, I've heard plenty of the black

13:47

people in movie theaters, trope type

13:49

jokes. That's not quite what he's doing. No, that's

13:51

what, that's the thing. That's very strange.

13:54

That's a strange interpretation of it.

13:56

He's complaining about the inability to suspend

13:59

disbelief to get into

13:59

into a movie because there are babies there. Which

14:03

I would argue that Alex lives in a constant

14:05

state of suspended disbelief. He sees

14:07

demons everywhere he goes. But

14:10

I thought, oh, this is

14:12

fine. This is kind of like a trite

14:14

point that he's making and he's saying

14:16

that society's deteriorating because

14:19

babies are in movies and I'm annoyed by

14:21

it. But then bringing in third

14:23

world immigrant populations

14:25

as they're the ones who bring

14:27

babies to movies. There's a baby breakers. I

14:30

don't even know, that's not even a

14:32

stereotype. Exactly, it's a bigotry

14:35

that you could never see coming. It

14:37

was fantastic listening to it. But I

14:40

was like, there's nothing else going on here. So

14:42

there's no episode

14:43

for that. Brutal. Yeah. So

14:47

we're gonna cover Tucker because of this challenge

14:51

of content. Yeah. And

14:54

so we'll do that. But before, let's

14:56

say hello to some new wonks. Yes, that is. That's

14:59

the preamble. So first, Ryan

15:01

and Lena, thank you so much. You're now policy

15:03

wonk.

15:04

I'm a policy wonk. Thank you very much. Thank

15:06

you. Next, in the fuck

15:09

you and your horse you rode in on technocrat sound

15:11

clip, Alex's babbling translates

15:13

to I'm the devil. I've got to be taken off of the air.

15:16

I did all this. Thank

15:18

you so much. You're now policy wonk.

15:19

I'm a policy wonk. Thank you very much. What

15:22

a translation. Yeah, that's true. Next,

15:25

really loving the show. Keep up the great work. Hopefully

15:27

Jordan's writing something new that

15:30

I will get to read in the future and maybe

15:32

get to meet you in September so you can

15:34

sign a copy of your book for me. Thank

15:37

you so much. You're now policy wonk. I'm a policy

15:39

wonk. Thank you very much. I know the fuck you think we're gonna

15:41

be in September. Oh wait, we already said we're gonna be in

15:43

Manchester. Yeah, we're gonna be in Manchester. Yeah.

15:46

Next, I wonk it to the east.

15:49

I wonk it to

15:49

the west. I wonk it to the

15:51

policy that I love best.

15:54

I'll be wonkin'. You're now policy wonk.

15:56

I'm a policy wonk. Thank you very much. Next,

15:58

someone's got a...

15:59

come up with a dark end of the street

16:02

parody for the wonks. Yeah. You

16:05

ever made policy in the backseat

16:07

of a car? Ooh, ooh, I

16:09

don't even know. Children, I remember one time

16:12

I made policy in the backseat of a car. I

16:14

don't know how that's somehow more

16:16

uncomfortable for me than usual. Mm. That's

16:20

where people go, you know, the dark end of the street. To

16:22

make policy. Yeah. Some

16:25

people,

16:25

the rich people that go out on a boat and

16:28

make policy. Some people, they

16:30

go way up in an airplane somewhere

16:33

and make policy. But for those

16:35

of us who don't have nothing,

16:37

and they never have, never ever gonna

16:39

have anything. That sounds like a fucking. We get ourselves

16:41

two dollars worth of gas. A congressional

16:43

aid pickup line, like, hey, do you wanna go make

16:46

some policy with me? Like, that's, that's.

16:49

Next, you need to close, you

16:51

need to close to the toilet lid in

16:53

porta-potties for them to work properly

16:56

and not smell. Thank you so much for an aisle policy

16:58

wonk.

16:58

I'm a policy wonk. Thank

17:00

you very much. To get an extra word in there. So, also

17:03

we got a technocrat in the mix, Jordan. So thank you so much to

17:05

Zaprzdauer and the Razzdauer

17:07

Mobile. Thank you so much, you're an Iowa technocrat.

17:10

I'm a policy wonk. Thank you very much. Go

17:12

home to your mother and tell her you're brilliant. Someone,

17:14

someone, Sotomayet sent me a bucket of poop. Daddy

17:17

Shark. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. Jar

17:19

Jar Binks has a Caribbean

17:22

black action. He's a loser

17:24

little, little kitty baby. I don't

17:27

wanna hate black people. I run out

17:28

of Jesus Christ. Thank you so much. Thank

17:30

you very much. My daddy was a big old man.

17:33

I can see him with some policy in his hands.

17:37

Policy, we never heard. Oh

17:39

boy. This is what we do. But we do the

17:41

walking when the time's got bad. That's

17:44

your ending bit now. You just put policy in songs.

17:46

And Clarence Carter songs. Yes, absolutely.

17:49

And then Aaron Carter songs. For

17:52

just a few policies. No,

17:56

slip away doesn't work. That's fair.

17:58

So we're going over number.

17:59

Number six in the line

18:03

of Tucker monologues. He's

18:06

stretching out a little bit. He's doing

18:08

a little more time. This one's about 18 minutes long.

18:11

So

18:13

it's very dumb. That sounds right.

18:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So here we go, we'll

18:17

start and you'll get the theme right away.

18:20

Okay. Hey, it's Tucker Carlson.

18:22

Hi Tucker. I've never been a candidate for president

18:25

the media hated more than Robert F.

18:27

Kennedy Jr. You thought that title belonged

18:29

to Donald Trump. Of course it must,

18:31

but go check the coverage. Trump got

18:34

a gentle scalp massage by comparison

18:36

when he announced. When Trump rolled

18:38

out his presidential campaign in 2015, the

18:42

New York Times waited until the 17th

18:44

paragraph of the story to attack him. But

18:47

as well known as he is, the paper

18:49

said at the time, Trump is also widely disliked.

18:51

Then they cited a poll to back it up. That

18:54

was the attack on Trump.

18:56

Eight years later, the Times attacked Bobby

18:58

Kennedy in the very first sentence of

19:00

the story. Quote, Robert F. Kennedy

19:02

Jr., the paper declared, announced a presidential

19:05

campaign on Wednesday built on

19:07

relitigating COVID-19 shutdowns

19:10

and shaking Americans faith in

19:12

science.

19:14

Wait. Shaking Americans faith

19:16

in science. Imagine if you're an

19:18

ordinary New York Times subscriber reading that

19:20

over coffee in your pre-war rent

19:22

control duplex on Columbus Ave. What?

19:25

Do you think Bobby Kennedy just declared war on the Enlightenment?

19:28

My fellow Americans, I have come to shake

19:30

your faith in science. Join me

19:32

as I drag our nation back to the medieval

19:34

period. You'd

19:36

be appalled. I imagine those

19:38

readers already would know who Robert F. Kennedy

19:40

Jr. is. I would assume. I

19:43

mean, I- You're reading the Times, you probably have an

19:45

awareness. You've

19:45

created a very strange fictional human

19:48

being for 2023. You

19:50

know, like that can't

19:53

be that many people anymore. Probably not. Pre-war

19:56

rent control. Rent control department. Most

19:59

of the people who had rent. control departments died a long

20:01

time ago, right? I don't know. I'm not sure. I don't

20:03

have a lot of experience with that. I

20:05

think that's evidence of my claim. Yeah, perhaps.

20:08

So what do you think about this premise, though,

20:10

that RFK Jr. is the most hated

20:12

candidate ever, more than Trump?

20:14

I kind of don't even think that that

20:17

was an insult in their first. No, I don't

20:19

either. I don't think there was an insult. I think that was descriptive.

20:21

I mean, honestly, I think that was a little bit light compared

20:24

to what Pete deserved. Yeah, it certainly

20:26

could have been a little harsher. Yeah, absolutely.

20:28

But

20:30

back to... So you would say no. No,

20:32

I would say no. I would say that around

20:36

not too far into the campaign

20:38

season,

20:39

a video was released of

20:42

Trump saying you should grab him by the pussy.

20:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I remember that one. That

20:47

did happen. That happened, and I don't know if

20:49

I've ever hated anybody more than everybody

20:51

who's like, Hey, lock a room top. But

20:53

the media didn't even really

20:56

go too hard on that. Which is, again,

20:58

amazing. Because we're not talking about the most hated

21:00

politician. We're talking about the media treating

21:03

them the hardest. Okay.

21:04

And I think that Trump, for

21:07

everything that was insulting that was said about

21:09

him in the press, he was not treated as harshly

21:11

as he should have been. Oh, no, absolutely. Nor

21:13

is Robert Kennedy, Jr. But I would say that

21:15

neither of them probably get the title. I

21:18

mean, what about like Ross Perot? He

21:20

was given a pretty shit hand. He was

21:22

treated like an asshole. There's definitely that.

21:24

Or Ralph Nader? He got beat

21:26

up pretty good. No,

21:27

any closeted

21:29

gay politician ever. David

21:32

Duke? David Duke? I don't

21:34

think he got that much of a... Richard Spencer was

21:36

treated very, very nicely. I think they treated David

21:38

Duke fairly fair. But Richard Spencer didn't run for president. No,

21:40

well, I mean... Did David Duke ran for president? And

21:43

he almost won. No, he didn't. But

21:46

I'm saying that there are other people who

21:49

the media was. Lyndon LaRouche? Oh,

21:51

LaRouche. LaRouche got it bad. He was not treated

21:54

nicely by the press. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

21:56

LaRouche made it to the news radio joke

21:58

room. Pat Robertson.

21:59

Also ran for president no he was given

22:02

a lot of he was given a lot more He was given a

22:04

TV show for fuck's sakes did he give

22:06

himself that TV show that's fair So

22:10

anyway Robert F. Kennedy jr. Is obviously

22:13

the premise of this? Yes, peace

22:15

because

22:16

you know I I mean the Tucker

22:19

is very invested in the democratic primary

22:21

Yeah, I'm very concerned about who the

22:23

Democrats pick I I think

22:25

this is I think what I feel like

22:28

is starting to come to my theoretical

22:30

understanding of this is that they're trying

22:32

to push

22:33

RFK jr. For the primary

22:36

in the same way that some people tried to push Trump

22:38

for the primary as like a hey listen

22:41

Crazy's crazy man if we

22:43

get it in there. We're gonna change the the

22:45

window if you will and somewhat

22:48

also the last time around

22:50

with You know Tulsi

22:53

you had all the people who were the you

22:55

know sort of right-wing folks saying

22:57

that like oh You know get Tulsi in there.

23:00

That's gonna be the she was the favorite

23:04

Democratic primary candidate of the

23:06

right right now RFK

23:08

is basically that yeah Yeah,

23:10

but way worse in many ways if

23:12

I was the Democrat who was like looking

23:15

around at my rally and being like yeah We

23:17

can do it. There's a bunch of Nazis. I'd be like maybe I

23:19

shouldn't run for president

23:21

If I were in a debate with Robert

23:23

Kennedy like if he gets to that stage yeah,

23:25

I would not even address him Anyway

23:28

the media's mean yeah, probably not as mean as I'm gonna

23:31

be but they're mean the

23:32

LA Times called him a threat to democracy At

23:35

the offices of National Public Radio in Washington

23:38

a full-blown category 5 hysteria

23:41

typhoon broke out

23:42

NPR devoted an entire segment to savaging

23:45

Kennedy not just as a candidate but

23:47

as a human being NPR described

23:49

him as someone who for his own perverse reasons

23:51

has made quote Debunked and false

23:54

and misleading claims that undermine trust

23:56

in vaccines and who in his spare

23:58

time

23:59

provides moral support to crazed

24:01

extremists who quote, rally under the

24:03

banner of what they call liberty or freedom.

24:07

People

24:07

Magazine didn't even bother to report

24:09

a single word of anything Kennedy said

24:12

at his announcement. Yeah. And instead wrote an

24:14

entire story about how his relatives hate him. Yeah,

24:16

well the story was about how his relatives hate him and

24:18

not about his. True. Yeah. And

24:21

all of the stuff that he was saying that NPR said is true,

24:24

like all of that, he's just saying it in a derisive

24:26

tone. It doesn't make it any less like fair.

24:29

Oh, you go to the store on Wednesdays.

24:32

Yeah. Why'd you say it like that? I don't

24:34

know. That's weird. That's weird. Also

24:36

a category five hysteria typhoon

24:39

is great. Someone's taken a creative

24:41

writing class and that's a person who's hired

24:43

by Tucker. I think it's a real evocative imagery.

24:45

It is. I think so. Yeah, if we were a workshop

24:48

and I'd be like, well done. I

24:50

think, I appreciate that

24:53

because they've lived in an alternate

24:55

reality so much that it's controlled

24:57

by, their own perceptions and projections.

25:00

If you're a Tucker listener listening to this, then

25:02

you think, yeah,

25:03

Tucker is saying that NPR savaged

25:05

him because we think that

25:08

media networks savage people because we watch

25:10

Tucker. Probably yeah. NPR

25:12

hasn't savaged anyone in their entire

25:15

existence. They go, I

25:18

really don't appreciate his policy

25:20

positions but I think we can

25:23

respect each other's differences and

25:25

while we can't come to a compromise, I think it's

25:27

still possible for us to say

25:31

goodbye as equals. So

25:33

thank you very much, Robert Kennedy. What do you think

25:35

the Fox equivalent of Lake Wobegon

25:38

would be? If they had

25:40

a Garrison Keeler type who was

25:43

just telling

25:44

old

25:49

quaint stories about an angry,

25:52

angry fucking town who

25:55

just chased off outsiders. Yeah,

25:57

I mean, isn't that the inverse of Tucker?

25:59

an innocuous thing with

26:03

a very derisive tone. A

26:05

garrison killer being like, and he

26:07

went to the goddamn store on Wednesdays.

26:10

Yeah. So yeah, RFK

26:13

is views.

26:14

You know, people say they're bad. I think

26:16

they're great. Kennedy's younger sister, Carrie, the

26:19

magazine reported solemnly, does not approve

26:21

of Bobby Jr's harmful views. His

26:24

harmful views! Bobby

26:26

Kennedy's thoughts alone are evil

26:28

enough to hurt people.

26:31

That's been the tone of the media coverage around Bobby

26:33

Kennedy Jr. for the past 18 years. Obviously,

26:36

Tucker is saying that RFK's ideas are evil enough

26:39

to hurt people as a way of mocking the very notion

26:41

that such a thing is possible, but that's really

26:43

dumb. When someone's pushing a false ideology

26:46

that leads people to make misinformed and dangerous

26:48

choices as it relates to their healthcare and the

26:50

healthcare of, say, their children,

26:53

those ideas are capable of hurting

26:55

people, and Tucker knows that. This is the,

26:58

I, there is stupid,

27:01

and

27:01

Tucker's

27:02

not that stupid. No, no, no,

27:04

this is one of the things that somebody says

27:07

that I really think has to be, like, you

27:09

and I both know what's going on, and my response

27:11

to that is, all right, and then we stop. Like,

27:13

I can't, if you're not going to acknowledge

27:16

what you just did, there's no point in us continuing

27:18

to talk, you know? Sure, and that's probably why

27:21

we don't wanna talk to Tucker. Yeah, absolutely. We can

27:23

talk about him. That's why NPR didn't

27:25

savage it. Wait till,

27:28

um,

27:30

they do, fuck, I

27:31

can't remember. What do you know? Isn't

27:33

that a show on NPR? On

27:35

Pure Saturday Mornings? Michael

27:38

Feldman? I've never listened to NPR. No? No,

27:40

no. You didn't listen to Prairie Home Companion?

27:43

Never, wait, was that on NPR?

27:45

Yeah, that was like, what, when I was a kid? Yeah,

27:47

when I was a kid. You didn't listen to Celtic Connections? No,

27:49

I didn't listen to that either. Didn't listen to Hearts of Space?

27:52

Not once. Nope. I've never

27:54

chosen, I've never been like, let's put on NPR. What

27:57

about, um, uh.

27:58

You've

28:00

already answered your question. You

28:03

know, just the news, all things considered. I've

28:05

never actively listened to NPR. Man,

28:09

every day it was on in my household. My

28:11

parents listening to that damn NPR.

28:15

That's nuts. Yep. Yeah. I listened

28:17

to that Irish music. Obviously,

28:19

obviously, obviously it's better.

28:21

But I feel like that is just as

28:24

much an annoyance as if somebody has Fox News

28:26

on all day every day. Well, yeah,

28:28

I guess it wasn't all day, but it was like, you

28:31

know, there were things on the weekends

28:33

when people were home that like they

28:35

listened to regularly. So there was like Saturday

28:38

mornings. Maybe it was Sunday mornings. I can't

28:40

remember the day exactly, but there

28:42

in the mornings, there was What Do You Know with

28:45

Michael Feldman. There was there

28:47

was a fun quiz type game show. Sure.

28:50

And then there was Prairie Home

28:51

Companion. And then in the evening, there

28:54

was Celtic Connections and Hearts of Space. Right.

28:56

And then every day when they'd

28:58

be cooking dinner, you know, they'd have all

29:01

things considered on. Gotcha. Gotcha. I

29:03

think I think the reason that it's less

29:05

toxic maybe than Fox News is

29:08

that like some of it is

29:10

entertainment. Like, you

29:12

know, obviously Garrison Keillor's a weirdo creep.

29:14

We didn't know that at the time. Nobody did. I

29:16

mean, he's on the radio. At the time, he's

29:18

a just folksy storyteller. And

29:21

you know, there's that. And then it

29:23

like Hearts of Space and Celtic Connections just

29:25

music, you know, it's not even like and

29:28

it's not even someone yelling your political ideas.

29:30

Yeah. So I don't know. Oh my God.

29:32

I wish it was annoying at an hour just of

29:34

Celtic music. Yeah. And then another hour

29:37

of weirdo space techno. Yeah.

29:39

At a certain point, it just becomes MTV

29:42

in the 90s just playing music videos. Oh,

29:44

I would love that. I really

29:47

okay. Now I would love curated

29:51

by Tucker, but

29:51

it has to follow the format

29:54

of Sundays on NPR. Furious

29:57

Hearts of Space.

29:59

Well actually I mean like Hearts of Space was

30:02

a show that it would explore

30:04

themes and so there'd be

30:06

like anger or

30:08

like heartbreak or

30:10

whatever and then the music would explore

30:12

that. I feel like Fox News would play a lot of Wagner.

30:15

But it would just be like boop boop weeeee.

30:19

But that we was like a comet going through

30:21

space. I'm gonna have

30:23

to go with Potter Dammerung being on

30:26

repeat. Anyway,

30:29

clearly don't want to talk about Robert Kennedy. Nope.

30:33

But we must. So anyway the media

30:35

has hated him for a really long time and

30:37

rightfully

30:38

so. That's been the tone of the

30:40

media coverage around Bobby Kennedy Jr.

30:42

for the past 18 years since

30:44

July of 2005.

30:46

That's the moment that Kennedy published a magazine

30:48

article suggesting there might be a link

30:51

between the rise in diagnosed autism

30:53

cases and the ever expanding schedule

30:56

of mandatory childhood vaccines.

30:58

The day that story was published Kennedy's reporting

31:00

was considered so solid that two

31:02

outlets went simultaneously. Sorry what? Reporting?

31:05

Rolling Stone and Salon.com. Unfortunately

31:08

neither one of them understood what they were up against.

31:10

The pharma lobby rolled out the most ferocious

31:13

public relations campaign in memory

31:15

and both publications swiftly caved. Both

31:17

pulled the story and then disavowed it, groveling

31:20

as they did. No one in the

31:22

national media bothered to explain why

31:24

autism diagnoses had skyrocketed.

31:27

If it wasn't the vaccines and maybe it wasn't, then

31:30

what was it?

31:31

To this day there has not been a convincing

31:33

explanation. Instead reporters just

31:36

attack Bobby Kennedy.

31:37

Tucker sure is having a lot of fun with details

31:39

here. Yeah I was going to say. The piece that

31:42

Kennedy wrote in 2005 was titled Deadly

31:44

Immunity and it was making the argument that

31:46

thimerosal and vaccines were responsible

31:48

for the rise in cases of autism. Slondon

31:51

caved to big pharma pressure. They were bombarded

31:54

with corrections and had to add five

31:56

different major corrections to the story

31:58

in the immediate days. publishing

32:00

that an editor said quote went far in

32:03

undermining Kennedy's expose. The

32:05

media didn't hate Kennedy for this article. If

32:08

he's even hated at all it's because of all

32:10

the shit he says that's long

32:12

debunked and he just continues spreading

32:15

the same bullshit pretending that no

32:17

one has provided any reason that he's wrong. And

32:19

when that doesn't work he just moves goalposts. If

32:22

he'd published that article then seen the corrections

32:24

and said oops my bad then no

32:27

one would be mad at him. It might lead

32:29

to a reconsidering

32:29

of his credibility and his ability to investigate

32:32

things but he would show a measure of goodwill

32:34

and people be like man whatever it happens. Instead

32:37

he's just doubled down and led tons of people

32:39

down a really dangerous road. And guess

32:41

what ding dong people not having an easy answer

32:44

for the question of autism diagnoses doesn't

32:46

mean that Kennedy just might be right. Because

32:48

that's the game that Tucker's trying to play insinuating

32:51

that because no one's fully solved this issue

32:54

that leaves some room that Kennedy could

32:56

be right he has given an explanation.

32:59

And guess what else ding dong there are a number

33:01

of very well understood reasons why autism diagnoses

33:03

have gone up. One is greater awareness

33:06

in the wider population of the autism

33:08

spectrum with a greater likelihood that parents

33:11

you know will seek out appropriate care and that'll

33:13

likely come with a diagnosis. There's

33:15

also you know some screening that

33:17

people do in well child visits now

33:20

that wasn't routine before but

33:22

has become more now. There's also a number

33:24

of other ideas like genetic predispositions

33:27

but the vaccine link has been investigated

33:29

and found to be bullshit and

33:31

yet Kennedy pushes the same shit that he pushed

33:33

years ago. And that's why

33:34

people hate him and Tucker fucking understands

33:37

this it's nonsense he's playing a

33:39

weird game where maybe he's right. Yeah

33:43

I mean I agree with everything that you said

33:45

and I I think that those

33:48

are good concerns but my biggest issue

33:50

is whoever

33:52

gives him adjectives should be fired

33:55

and in trouble. Tucker? Yeah these are a little overwrought

33:59

maybe.

33:59

Look, they fucking

34:02

groveled at the, just, when

34:05

you're in a creative writing class,

34:07

it's a process. That's what I'm saying, this

34:09

is a high school student. They're in the middle

34:11

of the semester. Jooj it up a little

34:14

bit. Right, they haven't reeled it in yet. They don't have anything

34:16

good. Right, but

34:18

look, you see little signs

34:20

that there's progress. It's like Jesus

34:23

Christ, calm it down. Yeah.

34:25

Ugh, I'm tired. So if you're wondering

34:27

why this is happening, it probably is because

34:29

Robert Kennedy was on Rogan.

34:32

Oh, for fuck's sake. So Tucker's going

34:35

to play a clip of that.

34:36

At this point, most Americans have heard a lot

34:38

more about Bobby Kennedy Jr. than

34:41

they've heard from him. Bobby. He doesn't

34:43

get paid offers to speak from big platforms. But

34:45

last week, Joe Rogan gave him one.

34:47

Here's some of what he said. Why do

34:49

five of my seven kids have allergies? You

34:52

know, it's weird, and of course,

34:54

we know why. As

34:56

aluminum, adjuvants

34:59

give you allergies. They're designed to make you,

35:01

you know, to create a hyper-immune

35:04

response to, you know, to

35:07

form particles. What? And

35:09

the last category is, you know, the allergic

35:12

diseases, peanut allergies, food

35:14

allergies,

35:15

eczema,

35:18

which I never knew anybody with eczema when I

35:20

was a kid. I never, asthma,

35:23

I knew people with asthma. But

35:26

it wasn't one in every four black kids like

35:28

it is today.

35:29

So, you know, all of those things.

35:31

Now we went from 6% of

35:35

Americans having chronic disease by 1986,

35:39

we're starting to have the vaccines and we

35:41

get an 11.8% of kids now.

35:44

So it's doubled. Why

35:48

do five of my seven children have

35:50

allergies? Now we don't know the answer, of course, but

35:52

it's an interesting question. In fact, it's an important

35:55

question that deserves an adult answer, not

35:57

that you should hold your breath waiting to get one. Bobby.

35:59

Bobby Kennedy asks a lot of questions like that. He

36:02

notices things. Kennedy pays attention

36:04

to the world around him,

36:06

and he wonders why it's changing. Bobby

36:08

Kennedy is not wondering why his kids have

36:10

allergies. He asked that as a rhetorical

36:12

question then gave his answer. Tucker

36:15

is acting like this guy is just out here noticing things

36:17

and playing the role of an observational comic,

36:19

pointing out things that seem weird. Kennedy

36:22

is not doing that. He's using his children's allergies

36:24

to push his anti-vax worldview. There

36:27

are a lot of theories about the rising number of people with allergies,

36:29

but there isn't a full consensus on the matter.

36:32

One of the most popular theories has to do with children being

36:34

exposed to less microorganisms early

36:36

in life than they were in the past, but

36:38

there's another co-founding factor that's difficult

36:40

to deal with, and that is that way more people

36:43

think they're allergic to things than actually are

36:45

allergic. According to a paper published

36:47

in 2018 in the International Journal

36:49

of Environmental Research and Public Health, quote,

36:52

currently the majority of available data

36:55

is based on self-reporting, which generally overestimates

36:57

food allergy prevalence by a factor of three

37:00

to four. People aren't reliable

37:02

reporters of whether or not they're allergic to something

37:04

or really just don't like it, or maybe they got sick

37:07

from it once and decided it was an allergy. I've

37:09

been guilty of that even myself.

37:12

I thought I was allergic to avocados, and I

37:15

think it was just because I got sick eating some bad

37:17

guacamole when I was younger and I made

37:19

a bad data set there. Based

37:22

on everything else I know about Robert Kennedy Jr.,

37:24

I'm going to have some healthy

37:26

skepticism about whether or not five of his children

37:29

actually do have allergies. Maybe

37:31

they do, maybe they don't, but

37:33

the thing to note about this that is

37:35

really important about the way Tucker's playing this game

37:37

is he's acting like he's just asking questions

37:40

when in fact Robert Kennedy is making

37:43

very emphatic statements. This

37:46

is not questions. Well, but that's the

37:48

trick there is because he's asking rhetorical

37:51

questions, if you leave off that he gives

37:53

answers at the end of it, then you give the viewer

37:55

the idea of this person being an open-minded

37:58

truth seeker and then

37:59

when you go listen to it, you

38:02

come back and you say, oh, this open-minded

38:04

truth seeker has found an answer,

38:07

not just is asking questions anymore,

38:09

and because I know he's an open-minded truth

38:12

seeker, I can trust him. Yeah,

38:14

it's dumb. Is that what he

38:16

sounds like all the time? I've never heard him speak before.

38:18

Yeah, I regret not

38:20

knowing the specifics, but he had some health condition

38:23

that led to, I

38:26

apologize that I don't know the exact

38:28

details, but he had some

38:29

health thing a number of years ago, and

38:32

so he has a

38:34

throat thing. Oh, okay. Then

38:37

he won't be president, so I'm not worried. Well, he

38:39

sounds like that all the time. People are shallow,

38:41

but maybe not. I don't know. Sure.

38:44

I don't know. I don't think it's disqualifying necessarily.

38:47

His ideas are disqualifying. Oh, I

38:49

think his ideas are disqualifying, but I think that

38:51

the reasons... So

38:54

look, he says that Robert Kennedy, Bobby

38:57

is really observant. He

39:00

sees things, he notices things, he's

39:02

a falconer. Sure. What? Bobby

39:04

Kennedy

39:04

asks a lot of questions like that. He notices things.

39:07

Kennedy pays attention to the world around

39:09

him. It's a bird! And he wonders why it's changing.

39:12

He's an outdoorsman, a falconer, and a fly fisherman.

39:14

He's interested in how nature works. He's

39:17

curious. What? Not so long ago,

39:19

these qualities were considered essential to the

39:21

practice of science. All scientific

39:23

discovery comes from observation and piercings

39:25

and patient watching.

39:27

Without the willingness to put aside your pre-assumptions

39:30

and assess with honesty the things you see

39:33

and touch and smell, the changes taking

39:35

place right in front of your face, you can't do

39:37

science. You

39:38

can't create art either, or journalism or

39:40

theology. You have to be willing

39:42

to notice the obvious. I mean, they tell you you're not allowed

39:45

to notice the obvious. You should be concerned.

39:48

Imagine you were on a commercial airline flight.

39:51

The plane is just leveled out at 37,000 feet. You're

39:54

closing your eyes for a nap. And

39:56

suddenly you smell smoke, and it's not your imagination. You can see

39:58

it. It's starting to fill the kitchen. cabin. All

40:01

around you, people are hacking and choking. The

40:03

guy in the next seat has a napkin pressed against his

40:05

mouth and he's mumbling what sounds like Psalm 23.

40:08

What? He walked the valley of the shadow of death.

40:11

So clearly the airplane is on fire. Okay.

40:14

But almost unbelievably, no one has said a word about

40:17

it. Not the person is acknowledging this

40:19

is happening. Brevlins. Everyone

40:21

is silent.

40:22

So in panic, you yell for the flight attendant.

40:25

There's smoke in the cap and you say as if she hasn't

40:27

noticed, but she stares at

40:29

you with hard eyes. Shut up racist.

40:31

She replies. That's a dangerous Russian

40:33

conspiracy. Stop spreading misinformation

40:36

or I'll call TSA and have you arrested

40:38

when you land.

40:40

That sounds like a fever dream. This

40:43

also pretty close to the experience of living in

40:45

the United States at the moment. Not

40:47

for me. That's a genuinely funny. Look,

40:53

Kennedy, he can be a stoic and observer

40:56

as he wants, but he's not a scientist. No

40:58

amount of hiking and playing with Falcons is going to

41:00

change that, but I don't really care. I want to

41:02

talk about Tucker's metaphor because I think that there's

41:04

something slightly off about it. Oh yeah.

41:07

In the context of talking about Robert Kennedy, the points

41:09

of comparison are pretty obvious. The

41:11

people coughing and the smoke

41:12

in the cabin are things like more people

41:14

having allergies or there are more autism

41:16

diagnoses than there used to be. Kennedy

41:19

is seeing those things and pointing them out

41:21

and people are yelling him down as a racist or a Russian

41:23

conspiracy theorist when in actuality he's

41:25

just being observant and pointing out the things that

41:28

he's seeing and no one else wants to accept.

41:30

But here's the problem with the metaphor. Kennedy

41:33

isn't observing things and pointing them out.

41:35

He's also ascribing a reason

41:37

for the things happening and he's wrong.

41:40

He says that vaccine vaccines are doing

41:42

all the things like causing allergies and autism.

41:44

So in the plane metaphor, what he'd actually

41:46

be doing is yelling at the flight attendant about

41:48

what he's decided is causing the smoke

41:51

in the cabin, but he'd also be wrong.

41:54

Maybe Kennedy would be telling the flight attendant that

41:56

the way landing gear installed

41:58

create fires. In reality, it was just

42:00

someone vaping in the bathroom. Then

42:02

Kennedy would start a lifelong, highly-funded

42:04

campaign to get rid of landing gear on planes,

42:07

and then he'd marry Cheryl Hines. My

42:09

point is that this metaphor is dumb. Tucker

42:11

is trying to play fast and loose about what Kennedy does.

42:14

He doesn't observe the world and ask questions.

42:16

He has a dogmatic answer to those

42:18

questions already in place, and

42:21

whatever observations he does have are

42:23

merely meant to prop up the already-determined

42:25

conclusion that he's based his life on. Yeah.

42:28

So fuck off.

42:30

Yeah. Is Cheryl Hines on the plane

42:32

in this metaphor, though? She's the one on the wing.

42:34

Tucker didn't make that clear, and I feel like that's

42:36

a huge detail for me. It depends on...

42:39

That changes everything, because then I want the plane

42:42

to... I mean, I've got nothing there. Yeah.

42:45

I mean, it's just... It's dumb, because I get

42:48

the point that he's trying to make, but

42:51

there is such a refusal to

42:53

accept that, like, this is not just

42:55

a person who's, like,

42:57

pointing things out and observing

42:59

things.

43:00

Yeah. That's the entire shell

43:02

game he's playing, and it's

43:04

ridiculous to anybody who has any, like,

43:07

familiarity with the people involved,

43:09

the history of this. No, I think

43:12

what I find so fascinating about that is that

43:14

from the writing of that, I do feel

43:16

like

43:17

all I would need to do to make a solid bit

43:19

about that is be like, oh, Tucker

43:21

is saying things, like, and then

43:24

say that word for word, and people

43:26

will laugh at it at the beats. If

43:28

you just change the inflection points and

43:31

you calm the beats and the timing down... But

43:33

let me ask you this. That's a bit. But let

43:35

me

43:35

ask you this. What's that? From a creative writing

43:37

perspective. Sure.

43:38

Pretty good. No, that's

43:40

why it's a bit, is because it's overwritten, it's

43:42

way too dramatic. But

43:44

the high school staffer is getting better.

43:47

Well, that's true. I will say

43:49

that there is a full

43:51

narrative conclusion there. There is a problem

43:54

that, like, the entirety of the piece

43:56

is uneven.

43:59

and just taken as a whole. Yeah, there's a little

44:02

bit of a problem there. So look, man, there's something

44:04

going on, but no one admits

44:06

it, much like the plane with the smoke. Right.

44:08

All around you, things seem to be fraying

44:10

and getting worse. Your gut tells you there's

44:12

something very bad going on,

44:14

and all the evidence suggests that there is.

44:17

But the people in charge won't acknowledge that. Everything's

44:19

fine, they scream, stop noticing! But

44:22

wait, I don't remember this many kids

44:25

having allergies or asthma or eczema

44:27

or autism, or for that matter, body dysmorphia,

44:30

and why so many suicides? What's going on here?

44:33

Shut up, stop asking questions! That's

44:35

their answer. But Bobby Kennedy

44:37

won't stop asking, and that's why they hate him.

44:40

So all the things that Tucker brought up

44:42

there as pieces of evidence that there's something really bad going

44:44

on are things that serious people study, and questions

44:47

are asked about them all the time. The

44:49

people are not being like, don't look at this, no, no, no,

44:51

no, no! I mean,

44:53

the idea that someone in America

44:56

is saying things are fine is un-American.

44:59

Since this country was born, everyone bitches

45:02

about everything. It's honestly

45:04

a bizarre idea to say,

45:08

like, all of this stuff, the people in charge,

45:10

by the way, who are the people in charge? Yeah, exactly, exactly.

45:12

Very unspecific. Yeah, totally. They're just

45:14

like, oh no, everything is fine. This is all, no,

45:17

everything is good, no questions. Countless

45:19

pages of media have been written on these

45:22

topics, and for Tucker to pretend otherwise is honestly

45:24

embarrassing. And again, no one hates

45:26

Kennedy for asking questions. They hate

45:28

him because he won't stop making the same debunked

45:30

arguments he's been making for years. Yeah.

45:32

That's it. Yeah, I mean, I genuinely

45:36

believe this, and I think this is kind of funny

45:38

in light of Tucker's comments, is like,

45:41

if we had a full-on tech

45:44

recording of every single American's

45:46

day, on the day he recorded

45:48

this, I guarantee before 8 p.m.,

45:51

every human being would have been like, this is

45:53

not fine, about something. Sure.

45:56

Every single one of us. That day. But,

45:59

what about that?

45:59

the people in charge who are not specified and

46:02

we don't know who they are. See, those are the people that

46:04

we have documented video of saying this isn't

46:06

fine on that day. Beg to differ.

46:09

Fair enough. I just heard a very reputable

46:11

source named Tucker tell me that

46:13

they don't. People are screaming things are fine.

46:16

Yes, sure. So Robert Kennedy

46:18

was on Rogan,

46:19

but then someone at Vice wrote

46:21

an article about him being on Rogan.

46:24

As Kennedy spoke on the Rogan show, a reporter

46:26

for vice.com called Anna

46:28

Merlin was watching. Hi, Anna. Merlin

46:30

was so enraged by what she saw that

46:33

she dashed off an article attacking Joe

46:35

Rogan's employer for allowing the conversation

46:37

to take place.

46:39

Spotify has stopped even sort of trying

46:41

to stem Joe Rogan's vaccine misinformation,

46:44

read the headline. The piece never

46:46

even described much of what Bobby Kennedy

46:48

had actually said. Merlin

46:51

dismissed the entire interview as quote, a

46:53

detailed survey of Kennedy's most dangerously

46:55

incorrect views,

46:57

a far too extensive list to outline

46:59

in full.

47:01

In other words, we here at Vice don't have time

47:03

to describe all of Bobby Kennedy's lies,

47:06

but trust us,

47:07

they were lies. Look at that delivery. Yeah,

47:10

that was probably his worst delivery so far. That was Tucker

47:12

getting fancy. Yeah, that's

47:14

troublesome. So he's also just lying. Yeah.

47:17

Anna's article is pretty specific about the claims that

47:19

Kennedy made on Rogan and like

47:21

which ones are bullshit. Tucker

47:24

took that line that said it was too long of a list to

47:26

outline in full, and then he just lied to the audience

47:28

that that was the extent of the discussion. In

47:30

fact, the next paragraph starts quote, they

47:32

included innumerable talking points that

47:35

have already been debunked. At one point,

47:37

for instance, Kennedy

47:37

falsely suggested the vaccines cause

47:39

autism, which has been repeatedly and roundly

47:42

disproven with Rogan interjecting supportively.

47:45

Kennedy also trotted out one of his favorite talking

47:47

points that vaccines contain a dangerous

47:49

form of mercury, something he says a lot.

47:52

As ever, he conflated ethyl mercury,

47:54

which is not considered hazardous to human health and

47:57

methyl mercury, which is considered dangerous.

47:59

in small doses. Both of these points

48:02

are backed up with links to supporting research

48:04

in Anna's article. Anna goes on to

48:06

point out that Kennedy also said that WiFi

48:08

quote, degrades your mitochondria and

48:10

it opens your blood-brain barrier with no

48:12

evidence at all. Well, no, that one's true. Tucker's

48:15

just straight up lying about this article because

48:17

he knows the audience isn't going to check and he doesn't care.

48:19

The image that Vice

48:21

is just posting essentially empty attack

48:23

articles is what the audience wants to hear.

48:26

So that's the image that Tucker paints for

48:28

them to make sure that they don't

48:30

consider any criticism of Robert

48:32

Kennedy for some reason. And

48:34

you know, it would be ironic if

48:37

he were unaware of it, but appropriately

48:41

his last line is they're just saying

48:43

things and then asking you to trust them. Yeah.

48:45

And essentially the exact thing

48:48

of his crime being done to

48:50

people. And then he does a fancy voiceover

48:52

it. So fuck off. But then he

48:54

also in the next clip, he, uh,

48:56

he's going to say more about the article from

48:59

later in the article. So

49:00

he would have had to read the beginning and then skip to

49:02

the end in order to not get

49:04

the part where Anna went over the specifics.

49:07

See, it's not ironic because he's appropriately

49:11

lying about it. Yes. It's a fucking malicious

49:13

liar. Yeah. And then God damn it, I'm

49:15

sorry about this, but we're about to get back into Peter

49:17

Hotez.

49:19

Then Merlin called Spotify

49:21

to see if she could get the episode censored. Much

49:24

to her profound frustration, Spotify refused

49:26

to censor the episode and kept the interview

49:28

on its website. So she spent

49:30

the next several days ranting about all of this on

49:33

Twitter. People were listening to the wrong

49:35

things and Anna Merlin was mad about it.

49:38

So it was Peter Hotez. Hotez is

49:40

a pediatrician from Texas who became moderately

49:43

famous on the MSNBC during the COVID lockdowns

49:45

as a Biden's shill and a vaccine promoter. Hotez

49:48

read Anna Merlin's piece and then huffily

49:51

retweeted it. Effectively,

49:52

why is Bobby Kennedy allowed to talk

49:54

in public?

49:56

And that gave Joe Rogan an idea. Why not have

49:58

Peter Hotez debate

49:59

Bobby Kennedy on his show. You claim he's wrong.

50:02

Why don't you explain why he's wrong? That

50:04

seemed fair. Yeah, but why? Your

50:06

question is why not? And why

50:09

is the rebuttal? Why do that? Yeah.

50:12

Stupid. That's simple. But it's really

50:14

uncomplicated. Yeah, so now we're

50:16

getting into the Peter Hotez of it all. Great.

50:19

Great. I mean, it's just

50:21

the derisive tone towards moderately

50:24

famous when it's like the guy

50:27

didn't want to be any of this. You

50:29

should have not had a pandemic

50:32

assholes. I didn't. Well, I didn't

50:34

start a TV show leader. Tucker

50:36

does call it a so-called pandemic. So

50:38

there may not have been one. Mother fucker. Jesus

50:42

Christ. I

50:45

didn't start a he didn't start

50:47

a podcast. He didn't like go out and

50:49

he wasn't like on the open

50:51

mic circuit and then he got his big

50:53

break at JFL. And then he finally

50:56

but he never made it to the big times. He's

50:58

just

50:58

a fucking doctor. That's where you're wrong.

51:00

Okay. He did make JFL new

51:02

faces, pediatrics unsigned. I

51:06

would watch that show. Purely

51:09

all pandemic with no agent. It

51:16

would be good. It'd be a good show. Oh,

51:18

we could write their bets. So anyway, Peter Hotez

51:20

went on MSNBC instead of talking

51:22

to Rogan because he's

51:24

a he's a coward. Yeah, sure.

51:26

But Hotez wouldn't bite.

51:28

So Rogan offered to give a hundred grand

51:30

to Hotez's favorite charity if he agreed

51:32

to come on. Soon others made their own

51:34

pledges and the pot swelled to over a million dollars.

51:37

But still Peter Hotez wouldn't come.

51:40

Instead he scampered back to MSNBC

51:43

where one of the channel's oilier host assured

51:45

him he was doing the right thing by dodging

51:47

the debate.

51:48

Arguing with Bobby Kennedy is morally equivalent

51:51

to debating a Holocaust denier, the host

51:53

said. No decent person would do that.

51:55

And of course Hotez agreed. Quote, 200,000 Americans.

52:00

needlessly perished because they believed the

52:02

anti-vaccine disinformation and

52:04

refused to take a COVID shot.

52:06

So really, talking to Bobby Kennedy would be a lot

52:08

like a betting murder.

52:10

And Peter Hotez, M.D., Ph.D.

52:13

was not going to do that. But

52:15

wait a second, you ask yourself. Let's

52:18

think about those numbers. 200,000 people

52:21

died because of vaccine disinformation

52:24

from Bobby Kennedy and people like him?

52:26

Hmm. How do we know that? Is

52:29

that really science? No. It's

52:31

not science.

52:33

Because we don't know that.

52:34

We can't know that. There is no way

52:37

to know that. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Peter Hotez's

52:39

claim

52:40

is a political attack posing as science,

52:42

and he specializes in those. He's a specialist.

52:45

Is he literally trying to break

52:48

people's faith in science? It seems

52:50

like it. Yeah. So you can probably bicker about

52:52

the exact number, but you would have a really

52:54

difficult time refuting that there was a large

52:56

number of excess deaths caused by vaccine refusal.

52:59

Just to start, in November 2022, Yale

53:02

School of Public Health released a study that looked

53:04

at excess death numbers across partisan

53:06

lines. The authors found that the

53:09

excess death rate was 1.6% for Democrats

53:10

and 10.4% for Republicans. Fucking

53:15

Christ. Specifically after the vaccine

53:17

was released. They said, quote,

53:20

the gap in excess death rates between

53:22

Republicans and Democrats is concentrated in

53:24

counties with low vaccination rates and

53:26

only materializes after vaccines became

53:29

widely available. Other research

53:31

has done that's tried to disambiguate these variables

53:33

and look at vaccine refusal and health outcomes,

53:36

and it doesn't look great for people who are telling

53:38

people not to get vaccinated. In all

53:40

likelihood, 200,000 is a pretty

53:42

fair estimate of the deaths caused by anti-vax

53:45

profiteering during the pandemic, and Tucker

53:47

is most likely just really upset about that

53:50

because those people's blood is on his hands

53:52

too, and he knows it. But also,

53:55

he can always hide behind the impossibility

53:58

of drawing straight lines.

53:59

between like why exactly

54:02

did someone not get vaccinated you

54:04

know like right did was it because

54:07

of my telling them not to get vaccinated you

54:09

can't prove that right that is true

54:11

that is fair that's probably why

54:13

people shouldn't be charged for like manslaughter for

54:16

disseminating misinformation sure sure

54:19

sure sure um but

54:21

you can look at you can look at the numbers you

54:23

can look at differences in excess death

54:25

rates and vaccination rates and right

54:27

right it's pretty clear that the spirit

54:30

of what Peter Hotez is saying is accurate

54:33

yeah

54:33

yeah I mean but that's that's kind

54:36

of the problem is that if we're

54:38

so obsessed with only dealing

54:41

with straight lines then boy

54:43

there are so many ways to get to a different

54:46

point that aren't a straight line so

54:48

if the problem is the point we get

54:51

to if we're done you have to deal with where we start

54:53

and not the line well and if we're adhering

54:55

to this rigid a standard

54:58

for proving things yeah

55:00

there's a whole lot that's already been said by Tucker

55:03

in this episode that's going to fall the

55:05

fuck apart yeah yeah yeah absolutely

55:07

so I don't know yeah I would

55:09

say that you know that that like

55:13

a to b relationship is

55:16

messy yeah to delineate

55:18

with a straight line sure and you could probably

55:20

argue about the precise number and

55:23

that's fair enough right but for

55:25

him to be making a mockery of this and saying

55:27

it's a political point that

55:30

has nothing to do with science and yeah no this

55:32

is ludicrous yeah and Tucker he knows

55:35

well enough well I mean knows you know as well his

55:37

his job is to force people

55:40

to be so angry and

55:42

pointlessly combative about

55:45

a superficial problem

55:46

so it avoids actually dealing

55:48

with the fundamental problem yeah man there's

55:50

a there's actually a really great example of

55:52

that later on of course in this where

55:54

like you know he's talking about this

55:57

like big pharma cabal

55:59

that

55:59

trying to attack Robert Kennedy because

56:02

he's a threat to it. And meanwhile, Tucker's

56:04

spending all his time demonizing Peter Hotez,

56:06

who tried to make a patent-free vaccine

56:09

for coronavirus, which is a giant

56:11

attack against Big Pharma. I mean, it's

56:14

absurd. It's forest

56:16

for the trees, definitionally. Of course.

56:19

And I mean, just the idea, the idea that you

56:21

can give a fuck about the number.

56:24

That's bananas to me. 200,000 is

56:27

an unconscionable number. Do you know

56:29

what else is an unconscionable number of people to die

56:31

because of lies that get other people made?

56:35

One! Oh, yeah. I'll go with you on

56:37

one. You know? Yeah. So

56:39

why are we fucking talking about this at all? Because Tucker wants to create an

56:42

argument out of something that is inarguable. Right.

56:45

And he wants to just shit on Peter Hotez. Yeah, well, that's fair.

56:47

Here he is on television during the so-called pandemic.

56:50

It's all about mass

56:52

compliance. That's going to be absolutely critical.

56:55

Because if you don't have mass, remember, this virus aerosolizes.

56:58

So even six feet is not enough. It

57:00

can go 17, 18 feet, several meters. What

57:02

we really have to do is have vaccine mandates

57:05

in the schools. We should have a rule that

57:07

anyone who walks into a school over the age of 12

57:10

has to be vaccinated. This is the nature

57:12

of the anti-vaccine movement in this country.

57:15

It's somehow married now to

57:18

far right wing extremism and

57:20

white nationalist group. Anyone

57:22

who's unvaccinated and

57:25

has been lucky enough to escape COVID,

57:28

your luck is about to run out. And I call

57:30

it anti-science aggression coming from

57:32

Senator Rand Paul, Senator Johnson,

57:35

members of the House of Representatives, in addition

57:37

to those two senators, are killers.

57:40

It's all about mass compliance. We must have

57:42

vaccine mandates for children. Take

57:44

the vaxxer, you will die. Anyone

57:46

who disagrees with me is a white

57:49

nationalist and a killer and probably an

57:51

agent of Putin.

57:52

Do we say probably? Let's revise

57:55

that. Certainly an agent of Putin. Again, here

57:57

is Dr. Peter Hotez. We're starting to

57:59

see now.

57:59

those same anti-vaccine messages

58:03

that's coming out of the US. And

58:05

now we're finding it in Africa and Latin

58:07

America. And remember what the other reason

58:09

we're seeing this is the Putin government

58:12

has, this has been reported by US and British

58:14

intelligence has been piling on with this whole

58:16

systematic program of what's been called weaponized

58:19

health communications, trying to destabilize

58:21

democracies with anti-vaccine, anti-science

58:25

messages and targeting.

58:27

So according to British and US intelligence,

58:29

anyone who disagrees with Dr. Peter Hotez

58:32

is a disloyal American working to destabilize

58:34

our democracy. I'm sorry, what? On behalf of Vladimir

58:36

Putin. Yeah, it all makes sense. Yeah. Like

58:38

that so-called pandemic in there, that was a

58:40

super good touch. Wow. Hotez's

58:43

points were totally fair and Tucker is misrepresenting

58:45

what he said in order to pivot the argument into safer

58:48

waters. Hotez didn't say that if you were

58:50

anti-vaxx, then you're a white nationalist

58:52

or whatever. He just made a very accurate

58:54

point that opposition to vaccines became involved

58:56

with white nationalist groups during the pandemic.

59:00

It's a fertile recruitment pool that extremist groups use

59:02

to grow their ranks and they associated

59:05

intentionally. Hotez also didn't

59:07

say that if you're anti-vaxx or even if you're spreading

59:09

anti-vaxx messages, you work for Putin. That's

59:11

ridiculous. These are interpretations

59:13

you might make if you had a difficult time with

59:16

reading comprehension, but that isn't the case

59:18

for Tucker and his staff. They're just liars

59:21

who are hiding behind poor

59:23

comprehension as a way of

59:26

sort of passing off their lies. Yeah.

59:30

On the other hand, one of his writers did give him the

59:32

word huffily. Huff. Which

59:34

I mean, that's just. Huff, huff, huff, huff, huff. That

59:37

suggests a poor reading level. I

59:39

mean, it's a bad sounding word. It

59:42

does a pad rhythm. So Hotez

59:44

thinks that if you're anti-vaxx, you're

59:47

a white nationalist, you work for Putin. And

59:49

also everyone who criticizes him

59:51

should be arrested. Fair.

59:52

Now, by comparison, never

59:54

in his life has Bobby Kennedy

59:57

Jr. said anything half that demented.

1:00:00

If

1:00:00

you could mind, Peter Hotez claims to have

1:00:02

a valid medical license. He allowed you to treat

1:00:04

patients. After a while,

1:00:07

even MSNBC viewers were going to

1:00:09

have some questions about a guy who talks like that,

1:00:11

and apparently some of them did.

1:00:12

As the lockdowns wore on, the population started

1:00:15

to notice that many of the core claims

1:00:17

the TV doctors were making were

1:00:19

untrue. You only need one shot. If you got

1:00:21

the shot, you would never get sick. You would

1:00:23

never pass the virus to others, and so on.

1:00:26

They said these things, as you know, again and

1:00:28

again. And ultimately they were proven wrong,

1:00:30

but they never admitted it. That

1:00:32

is to tact the people who noticed.

1:00:35

Here's Dr. Peter Hotez calling for

1:00:37

the Biden administration to arrest

1:00:40

anyone who questions the COVID vaccine.

1:00:42

The Biden administration has to realize

1:00:45

that anti-science is a killer,

1:00:47

disinformation. It's not even just disinformation.

1:00:50

This is an anti-science empire

1:00:52

right now, and we need Homeland Security. We need the Justice

1:00:54

Department. We've really got to figure this out,

1:00:57

and Health and Human Services will

1:00:59

not be able to figure this out on their own.

1:01:02

It's not a medical problem. It's a law enforcement

1:01:04

problem. They've doubted me. Arrest them.

1:01:07

It's a horrifying outburst, if you

1:01:09

think about it. If you were on tape saying something like

1:01:11

that, you would be deeply ashamed.

1:01:13

But Peter Hotez is not ashamed. He's

1:01:16

become even more grandiose. He's

1:01:18

emboldened. I am

1:01:21

so

1:01:23

speechlessly angry about this. Yeah, and if

1:01:25

you watch the larger context of that clip

1:01:27

that he played, they're

1:01:30

talking about how you could save more lives

1:01:33

now. You could still save lives.

1:01:35

And people are dying because of... Still.

1:01:38

Yeah. And so I don't think...

1:01:41

I would hear that clip, and I would

1:01:43

have

1:01:45

follow-up questions about exactly

1:01:47

what the roles of the Department

1:01:49

of Justice would be. But

1:01:52

I don't hear that as arrest people who

1:01:54

disagree with me. I would

1:01:55

hear that as sue

1:01:57

people and see

1:01:59

some... to people who are like

1:02:02

making money off. Don't

1:02:05

do nothing. Your job is to do something

1:02:07

to save people's lives and you're doing nothing about it. So

1:02:10

do a different thing. Yeah,

1:02:12

not necessarily like arrest Tucker. I mean,

1:02:15

I don't want you to arrest people. I

1:02:17

want you to do a thing because arresting

1:02:19

people wouldn't do any good either. Yeah, it wouldn't.

1:02:21

It would just create

1:02:23

heroics out or martyrs

1:02:26

out of those arrested. Yeah,

1:02:28

no, I find it unacceptable

1:02:31

on a human level for Tucker

1:02:33

to say that

1:02:35

it was other

1:02:37

people providing a shit. It was doctors

1:02:40

who are providing misinformation during the pandemic.

1:02:43

That really is unacceptable shit.

1:02:45

It is. It is. And,

1:02:48

you know, it's always going to be easy

1:02:51

when you have an evolving public health situation

1:02:54

and a novel virus

1:02:56

that you are able to create

1:02:59

a vaccine for in, you

1:03:01

know, such a brief window. Yeah. That

1:03:04

there's going to be times where

1:03:05

you're wrong about something. You're not providing misinformation.

1:03:08

You're wrong. And then because you're

1:03:10

wrong for all the right reasons. Exactly.

1:03:13

And maybe you correct it. And also

1:03:15

maybe you were right at the time. And

1:03:17

then there's another variant, you

1:03:19

know, like that that can happen.

1:03:22

And you're always going to be able to make mileage

1:03:24

out of misrepresenting things

1:03:27

that doctors and such said earlier. And

1:03:29

then also there were some people who were maybe a

1:03:31

little capricious with their messaging. But

1:03:34

that wasn't the lion's share of

1:03:36

the folks who were in support of the vaccine. I

1:03:41

mean, it's just so,

1:03:43

you know, the feelings that

1:03:45

the pandemic arose. So-called

1:03:48

pandemic. See, you

1:03:52

know, do you know what I mean of like this

1:03:55

is something that I do not feel

1:03:57

was reckoned with. Nope. The pandemic.

1:04:00

was not reckoned with and it still hasn't

1:04:02

been. And until it is, we're

1:04:06

guaranteed for chaos. We don't do that

1:04:08

here. See that's an issue. Our country

1:04:10

doesn't reckon with stuff. We need to reckon

1:04:13

with things. Definitely. There's so many things that

1:04:15

need a reckoning. Yeah.

1:04:17

And if we don't reckon with them, we

1:04:20

will be reckoned with. And

1:04:22

it's not going to be good for us. Nope,

1:04:24

it never is. Nope. And

1:04:27

we don't learn. Nope. Someone

1:04:30

who does learn is Peter Hotez. He learns

1:04:32

to be emboldened by

1:04:35

getting away with it all in plain view.

1:04:37

He's emboldened, doctor. And

1:04:40

so Tucker, in order to take

1:04:42

him down a peg, decides to read his bio.

1:04:45

Okay. But Peter Hotez is not ashamed.

1:04:47

He's become even more grandiose.

1:04:50

Hotez has written a self congratulatory new

1:04:52

book called The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science.

1:04:55

A scientist warning, as if you were a scientist.

1:04:58

Here's how Hotez describes himself in

1:05:00

the book's promotional literature. Quote,

1:05:03

during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, one

1:05:06

renowned scientist in his famous bow

1:05:08

tie, appearing daily on major

1:05:10

news networks such as MSNBC,

1:05:13

NPR, and BBC, and others,

1:05:15

Dr. Peter J. Hotez often

1:05:17

went without sleep,

1:05:18

working around the clock to develop a nonprofit

1:05:21

COVID-19 vaccine and to keep the public

1:05:23

informed.

1:05:24

During that time, he was one of the most trusted

1:05:26

voices on the pandemic and was even

1:05:29

nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for

1:05:31

his selfless work.

1:05:33

He also became one of the main targets of anti-science

1:05:36

rhetoric that gained traction through conservative

1:05:38

news media.

1:05:40

End quote, though we could go on. So

1:05:43

here you have a renowned scientist,

1:05:45

selfless, trusted, going without sleep,

1:05:47

self-denying, persecuted by extremists

1:05:50

for daring to tell the truth. The Albert

1:05:52

Schweitzer of cable news.

1:05:54

That's Dr. Peter J. Hotez.

1:05:57

The fact that a partisan buffoon like...

1:06:00

Peter Hotez can describe himself this

1:06:02

way with a straight face and the backing of a publisher

1:06:05

makes you despair for the country's future. But

1:06:07

don't despair. There is hope. There's

1:06:10

hope, Jordan.

1:06:11

Wow. Brass balls for Tucker to joke

1:06:13

about Hotez's bow tie. I

1:06:15

am beyond... Also,

1:06:19

Tucker really slipped over something there that

1:06:21

him and his ding-dong friends all ignore and that is

1:06:23

that Hotez's, you know, I would

1:06:25

say his primary claim to fame at this

1:06:27

point is the work towards creating the

1:06:30

non-profit COVID-19 vaccination. Yeah. Which

1:06:33

kind of makes him like legit an opponent

1:06:35

of Big Pharma. Yeah. In a way that Tucker

1:06:37

could never even pretend to be. Yeah, no. One

1:06:40

of the... I mean, the greatest thing you can do to Big

1:06:42

Pharma is threaten them economically.

1:06:44

In service of providing something

1:06:46

for people. Yeah, absolutely.

1:06:49

That's what Hotez and his team were nominated for

1:06:51

a Nobel Prize for. Making a patent-free

1:06:54

COVID vaccine which could help people in the developing

1:06:56

world. Millions of doses have been administered

1:06:59

in poor areas of India and other countries, but

1:07:01

you won't hear about that from Tucker. The guy who applauds

1:07:04

dumb fuck Robert Kennedy is some kind of a

1:07:06

maverick standing up to Big Pharma. These

1:07:08

guys are just jokes. They're idiots. Yeah.

1:07:11

I just don't. I just don't.

1:07:13

And like we could play the same game that if Tucker wants

1:07:15

or I go find one of his bios from his books

1:07:18

and I read it in a snarky voice, but where does

1:07:20

that get us? No, it doesn't get us anywhere. And

1:07:22

it is... It is what... I mean,

1:07:24

it's so fucking annoying because he's correctly

1:07:27

grasping a serious issue and

1:07:29

distracting from it and

1:07:31

then giving power to the people who are

1:07:33

causing it. What? Lay

1:07:35

it out. I mean, like, the

1:07:38

reason that you're willing to go along

1:07:41

with Tucker's dumb shit is

1:07:43

because Big Pharma is fucked up.

1:07:46

That is true. You cannot deny

1:07:48

that. They're fucked up. Yeah,

1:07:50

maybe. That's how you go along with Tucker's stuff. No,

1:07:53

no, no, I understand. But the Reckoning

1:07:56

never came for the Sackler family. You know, like all of these

1:07:58

things are there. Right. There

1:08:00

is a problem. Right. Yeah. And then you

1:08:03

come to it with like, oh, this person

1:08:05

who gave people millions of doses

1:08:07

of a vaccine that they don't have to pay

1:08:09

for is evil and a murderer.

1:08:12

And that's why we need Robert F. Kennedy

1:08:14

Jr. the guy who is almost directly

1:08:17

responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths

1:08:20

to become our leader. Arguably,

1:08:22

like, so, you know, with Peter

1:08:25

Hotez, with his, you

1:08:27

know, patent free vaccine, he

1:08:29

is providing something for people. It

1:08:32

benefits their health at the expense of

1:08:34

Big Pharma. Right. They're in.

1:08:36

They're not able to charge for it and

1:08:38

what have you. Right. Conversely, if

1:08:41

you if you really look at it,

1:08:43

if you're a cynical, evil,

1:08:45

Big Pharma person, you're probably thrilled

1:08:48

with Robert Kennedy. Totally. Like he's

1:08:50

advising people not to get vaccinated,

1:08:52

which will create more health conditions

1:08:55

that they have to deal with with medicine later

1:08:58

and throughout their lives, perhaps. And

1:09:00

so like it's actually the reverse.

1:09:03

Like Hotez is doing something

1:09:05

that helps people at the expense of Big

1:09:07

Pharma.

1:09:08

Kennedy is doing something at the expense

1:09:10

of people that helps me. Well, I mean,

1:09:12

but that I mean, that's what Tucker's avoiding.

1:09:15

All medicine should be nonprofit.

1:09:19

Well, he doesn't touch on that surprisingly. Yeah,

1:09:21

exactly. But Peter Hotez is a coward

1:09:24

because he won't debate Robert Kennedy. But

1:09:26

there's still hope. Is there? But don't

1:09:28

despair. There is hope.

1:09:30

Hotez will never debate Bobby Kennedy

1:09:33

Jr. But it doesn't matter. Kennedy has already

1:09:35

won. He's more honest than Dr.

1:09:37

Peter Hotez. And that's obvious to anyone who's paying

1:09:39

attention.

1:09:40

A new economist poll shows that Kennedy is

1:09:42

more popular and far less hated than either

1:09:45

major party front runner. After

1:09:48

almost 20 years of being silenced, Bobby Kennedy

1:09:50

Jr. is being heard. And why wouldn't

1:09:52

he be? He was on. Kennedy's theories

1:09:54

about vaccines may be right. It may be partially right.

1:09:56

That could be even utterly wrong. No one's proved

1:09:58

it. I'm sorry. What?

1:10:00

But what we can say with certainty is that

1:10:02

America's medical establishment has beclowned

1:10:05

itself. Damn. For all time. What? Beclowned.

1:10:08

What? Yeah. Who? What

1:10:11

fucking asshole wrote this shit? I'm telling

1:10:13

you. Creative writing class. My red

1:10:15

pen would tear this person. Beclowned. Ugh.

1:10:18

So that's a really weird formulation on Tucker's

1:10:20

part. Basically he's saying that the

1:10:22

audience shouldn't despair because Kennedy may

1:10:25

be totally wrong and misleading

1:10:27

hundreds of thousands of people towards risking their

1:10:29

lives for no reason.

1:10:30

But a recent poll said he was popular.

1:10:33

Mm-hmm. And Peter Hotez beclowned himself.

1:10:36

Biden, Trump, and Kennedy have pretty

1:10:38

similar favorability numbers in

1:10:40

that poll that he's talking about. Although Kennedy

1:10:43

does come out ahead a bit in net favorability

1:10:46

because he has a higher number of people who answer

1:10:48

don't know about him. They don't have an opinion.

1:10:51

Right. Biden and Trump are well-known quantities

1:10:53

at this point. They have much heavier

1:10:56

unfavorable abilities built in because of that. Yeah,

1:10:58

yeah, yeah. Also in that poll that Tucker's,

1:11:01

he's not mentioning this, but they

1:11:03

have a question. If the GOP primary was

1:11:05

held today, Trump would

1:11:08

fucking cook everyone. Yeah, of course.

1:11:10

He destroys DeSantis at,

1:11:13

oh, I think it was like 51% for him and then 20-something

1:11:15

for him. That

1:11:17

sounds right. Yeah. That poll didn't have

1:11:19

voting metrics for a hypothetical Democratic

1:11:21

primary, but the most recent poll that's

1:11:24

available has Biden at 64%, and Kennedy at 17. And

1:11:28

that was a Fox News poll. So

1:11:30

not Biden favorable

1:11:32

territory. Right, right, right. But

1:11:35

McCleowned. That's

1:11:37

insulting the noble profession of clowning, of

1:11:40

which I count myself a member. I will say

1:11:42

that I

1:11:45

don't know the word, but

1:11:47

I typed it into my word processor. Oh, yeah?

1:11:50

And I do not have a red line under it. No, it's a real

1:11:52

world. It's a real word. It's a real word. Yeah.

1:11:55

That's not the problem here. The problem is not that words

1:11:57

aren't or are real. It sometimes is.

1:11:59

In this case or not. I prefer,

1:12:02

there are so many unreal words that are so

1:12:04

much better than beclowned. It's

1:12:06

certainly attention grabbing though. So

1:12:09

anyway, medicine is witchcraft now. Sure.

1:12:12

But what we can say with certainty is that

1:12:14

America's medical establishment has beclowned

1:12:17

itself for all time.

1:12:19

It's official positions on vaccines,

1:12:21

psychiatric drugs, puberty blockers,

1:12:24

reassignment surgeries, a long list

1:12:26

of other politically fashionable priorities have

1:12:29

no connection whatsoever to legitimate

1:12:31

science.

1:12:32

It's all effectively witchcraft.

1:12:35

At the annual meeting of the American Medical Association

1:12:37

in Chicago last week, for example, delegates

1:12:39

issued a statement attacking the

1:12:41

body mass index as

1:12:44

a tool of quote racist exclusion,

1:12:46

which has caused historical harm. Next

1:12:49

year they will denounce thermometers and stethoscopes.

1:12:52

They're

1:12:52

insane. Ha ha. So

1:12:54

the importance or significance of BMI

1:12:56

or body mass index has always been kind of shaky.

1:12:59

The idea of putting one number on body mass

1:13:01

is a bit simplistic and the medical community

1:13:03

has known about that for a long time. It's

1:13:06

a foundation for a measurement that could be

1:13:08

important, but it needs a lot of work to account for

1:13:10

various things like fat distribution,

1:13:12

age, and ethnicity. The reason that it

1:13:14

was called a tool of racist exclusion

1:13:16

is explained this way in an article from

1:13:18

the Washington Post from over

1:13:21

two years ago. Quote,

1:13:23

BMI was invented about 200 years

1:13:25

ago in an era that saw the creation of

1:13:27

pseudoscientific theories such as social

1:13:29

Darwinism that was used to justify

1:13:31

nationalism, racism, and eugenics. The

1:13:34

index was established by Belgian

1:13:36

mathematician Lambert Adolf Jacques

1:13:40

Quitalat, who sought to

1:13:42

measure the height and weight of the average

1:13:44

man based on a sample of white European men.

1:13:46

He saw this average as quote ideal.

1:13:50

It's not a universally applicable

1:13:52

number, but most experts recognize

1:13:54

the BMI idea is a jumping

1:13:56

off point for a measurement that could be more meaningful.

1:13:59

but it just hasn't been developed yet, whatever

1:14:02

that more meaningful metric is. This

1:14:04

isn't an instance of the medical community being insane

1:14:06

unless you're a white identity zealot like Tucker

1:14:09

who thinks that everything about the world should use

1:14:11

white people as the default and the ideal.

1:14:14

Then the idea of reconsidering that legacy

1:14:16

might seem insane like it does to

1:14:18

Tucker. Yeah.

1:14:19

What I find fascinating,

1:14:22

all right, now, Tucker

1:14:26

lives in a world where witchcraft

1:14:28

is real. I

1:14:30

think that might've been a flourish for him. But

1:14:32

this is what I'm saying here, right? Alex

1:14:35

lives in a world where witchcraft is real. In their

1:14:37

world, if you call doctors

1:14:39

witchcraft, I feel like that means they are

1:14:41

effective at doing what they are asked

1:14:44

to do, right? They have power.

1:14:46

They have the ability to heal through

1:14:48

witchcraft. I don't think

1:14:51

that's the conclusion he wants to lead you towards. I understand

1:14:53

that, but if I am listening to this, I'm

1:14:55

thinking, oh shit, witches can save

1:14:58

me. I think it was meant as just strictly

1:15:01

a pejorative thing. Sure, sure, but I feel

1:15:03

like we need to reexamine whether or not witches

1:15:05

are real because Tucker is clearly

1:15:08

considering them. Listen,

1:15:09

hopefully in episode eight or whatever of

1:15:11

his show, we'll get to the bottom of whether or not there

1:15:13

are witches. I hope he does a witch episode.

1:15:16

I wanna do that. Please, Tucker. I'm gonna do

1:15:18

a witch episode. Please. So

1:15:21

compared to these witches who are talking

1:15:24

about BMI being racist, they're all

1:15:27

on another planet. Compared to them, Robert

1:15:30

Kennedy's sane, man.

1:15:32

Next year, they will denounce thermometers and stethoscopes.

1:15:35

They're insane. Compared to them, Bobby

1:15:37

Kennedy is a mainstream figure

1:15:39

and people understand that. That's why he's winning.

1:15:42

And you know he's winning by how his critics are doing.

1:15:45

So just four years ago, Anna Merlin was

1:15:47

regarded as an important expert on conspiracy

1:15:49

theories and misinformation. She'd written a book

1:15:51

on the topic.

1:15:52

Here she is talking about it. I've always

1:15:54

thought that in the case of conspiracy peddlers, it's

1:15:57

not necessarily a super profitable enterprise

1:15:59

to ask. whether they really believe it or

1:16:01

not because I don't know what's

1:16:03

in their hearts, I don't know what's

1:16:06

in their minds, all I know is what they spend their

1:16:08

time doing, which is promoting

1:16:10

conspiracy theories. In the

1:16:12

case of ordinary people, conspiracy

1:16:14

consumers, and most Americans are

1:16:17

to some degree consumers of

1:16:19

conspiracy theories, all the studies that we have

1:16:22

show that like one in three Americans believe

1:16:25

in some conspiracy theory to some extent.

1:16:29

For the people in the very sort of deep end of the

1:16:31

conspiracy pool, people who are consuming a lot

1:16:33

of conspiracy content, I think it's

1:16:35

really important to look at the way it helps them

1:16:38

make sense of the world and make sense of our

1:16:40

political moment and make sense of a lot

1:16:42

of times like what's happening in their own lives.

1:16:45

All the studies that we have show that like

1:16:48

one in three Americans believe in some conspiracy

1:16:50

theory. You'll

1:16:52

notice the up speak, the rising inflection

1:16:54

at the end of the sentence. That's a familiar tick

1:16:56

in Brooklyn. It's familiar tick for

1:16:58

you. It turns a narrative sentence into a question and thereby

1:17:01

belittle the listener. Do you follow me? Is this too

1:17:03

complicated for you?

1:17:04

So the lady in the nose ring wants you to know she's

1:17:07

smart,

1:17:08

but she's not. Damn. What

1:17:10

the fuck? I feel like listening to Anna

1:17:12

speak was far less condescending than

1:17:14

listening to Tucker's bizarre vocal flourishes.

1:17:17

Amazing. I don't know what's going on.

1:17:19

She sounded like a completely normal person to me. I

1:17:22

don't know what the point of this is, to be totally honest.

1:17:25

It feels unnecessarily mean. Uh,

1:17:27

and the larger point of the segment legitimately

1:17:29

makes no sense. None. Is

1:17:31

Tucker trying to say that compared to a medical

1:17:33

establishment that he defines as insane and

1:17:36

beclowned, Robert Kennedy is not

1:17:38

quite

1:17:38

so insane or beclowned. Like I'm not sure

1:17:40

that's a great point. And he's saying that like,

1:17:43

look at where his critics are.

1:17:45

What? Listen, doctors are witches

1:17:48

and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might be

1:17:50

completely wrong. Mm-hmm.

1:17:52

But that one poll

1:17:54

said he has more favorability

1:17:57

than Biden or Trump. Then we've gotten to

1:17:59

the bottom.

1:17:59

He won the popularity

1:18:02

contest in this one economist poll. I

1:18:04

feel like Tucker is

1:18:07

trying to create the platonic

1:18:10

ideal of gaslighting. Like he is

1:18:12

literally embodying

1:18:14

the concept of aggressively

1:18:17

existing in one reality and trying

1:18:19

to force a false reality on whoever

1:18:21

is around him. Yeah. Yeah.

1:18:25

I mean, it's absurd. Maybe that's the mission statement

1:18:27

of his Twitter show. That could be. I

1:18:30

mean, somebody is eventually going to have to create

1:18:32

the platonic ideal of gaslighting.

1:18:35

That's just simply once something exists,

1:18:37

a human must create it.

1:18:39

Well, now that you've spoken into existence, episode

1:18:41

nine of the show, after the witchcraft episode is going to be... Yes,

1:18:44

yeah, yeah. We got to do the witchcraft first. Yeah. So

1:18:46

here's the dismount.

1:18:48

And I think he's like legitimately,

1:18:51

I think his final argument is that Robert

1:18:53

F. Kennedy is pretty cool because

1:18:56

Anna Merlin's dumb because

1:18:59

Vice is going bankrupt. I

1:19:02

think that's the point. All right. Okay. So

1:19:04

the lady in the nose ring wants you to know she's smart,

1:19:07

but she's not. When Merlin

1:19:09

recorded that interview, Vice, where she now

1:19:11

works, was valued at more than $5 billion. Genius

1:19:15

investors like James Murdoch

1:19:16

were showering the company with money.

1:19:19

Everyone wanted in on the future of media,

1:19:21

which was up talkers like Anna Merlin lecturing

1:19:24

you about racism in this information. Sorry, what? That was... That

1:19:27

has changed. Last month, Vice

1:19:29

filed for bankruptcy.

1:19:31

Anna Merlin is still on Twitter screeching about how

1:19:33

her critics are transphobic, but

1:19:35

nobody cares. What? Nobody

1:19:38

wants to hear from Anna Merlin anymore. The

1:19:40

gatekeepers are transparently ridiculous.

1:19:43

Everyone can see that. People have started

1:19:46

to notice. And that's the end. Really?

1:19:49

Yes. I don't

1:19:51

know what's happening. I think, I mean... This show is

1:19:53

so dumb. I'm, I, I

1:19:56

honestly, um, I, I think I,

1:19:59

I'm, I'm sure Anna's...

1:19:59

is overjoyed. I feel like that's pretty funny.

1:20:02

It is. It's pretty funny. Yeah. I did not

1:20:04

reach out for comment. Yeah, obviously.

1:20:09

I mean, this ending is a little incoherent.

1:20:12

Oh, because Anna's reputation

1:20:14

is still quite good. Even

1:20:16

if vice goes bankrupt, it really is not.

1:20:19

It's not like,

1:20:20

Oh no, she got sued

1:20:23

and that's why they're bankrupt, much like somebody

1:20:26

Fox News. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

1:20:29

No, they didn't go bankrupt. He still

1:20:31

did. Did Anna

1:20:32

lose vice $800 million?

1:20:35

No. Oh, okay. Well then I think

1:20:37

we're probably okay. But also like,

1:20:40

I don't know what the bankruptcy has to

1:20:42

do with like whether or not Robert

1:20:45

F. Kennedy is cool. Well, as everybody

1:20:47

knows, she was criticizing him. Yeah.

1:20:49

Being on Rogan. This

1:20:51

is the connective tissue is thin. And

1:20:53

then also like if going bankrupt

1:20:56

somehow has anything to do with like your intellectual

1:20:58

like credibility, what about Alex and

1:21:01

Infowars? They both are bankrupt. Yeah. I mean, you

1:21:03

see, so what happens, and

1:21:06

I think a lot of people know this now, right? Is that

1:21:08

the writers control the finances

1:21:10

of most media companies. They really

1:21:12

want the input of the, of the people

1:21:15

who make their content, right? That's definitely

1:21:17

not like, um, I don't

1:21:19

know, groups of rich hedge

1:21:22

fund investors who saddle

1:21:24

the company with all the debt that they

1:21:26

use to buy the company. And then they

1:21:29

declare bankruptcy and sell it for parts because

1:21:31

they've actually, and they make money coming

1:21:33

and going. I'm honestly shocked

1:21:35

that he didn't somehow tie this into Gavin

1:21:37

McGinnis and the proud boys. I was kind of feeling like

1:21:39

Gavin McGinnis should have showed up. Yeah. Like that

1:21:41

seems like fertile ground for him to

1:21:43

get into. Yeah. I think that's the way to do it. So

1:21:46

yeah, I mean, look, I don't know what

1:21:48

we,

1:21:48

I don't know what the point is here. I mean, obviously

1:21:51

this is just meant to be a defense piece

1:21:53

of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I guess,

1:21:56

but it,

1:21:57

like it, it doesn't at all.

1:21:59

deal with any of the criticisms that

1:22:02

are really being levied against him. No. And

1:22:04

it seems to mostly be like,

1:22:06

I don't like hotels and a Merlin

1:22:09

sucks. But he's and I don't

1:22:11

I don't really think that that's powerful. Yeah,

1:22:14

no, I mean, it is. It is a little

1:22:17

bit like listening to a well,

1:22:19

no, it's not a little bit like listening to a high

1:22:21

school kid. This is listening to an annoying

1:22:25

freshman high school kid who comes to school

1:22:27

in a suit and you're in the same English

1:22:29

class and he won't shut the fuck up about Lord

1:22:32

of the Flies for some reason. And you're like,

1:22:34

when we get to catcher in the rye, I'm going

1:22:36

to kill myself. You're describing his

1:22:39

head writer. I

1:22:41

think so. Apparently. I think so.

1:22:43

Oh, category five

1:22:46

typhoon of what

1:22:48

was it? Hysterics? Yeah. Hysteria

1:22:50

typhoon. Oof. Good stuff.

1:22:52

Yeah. So I mean, look, I

1:22:55

continue to be bewildered by this show.

1:22:58

I like as somebody who's

1:23:00

used to somebody who has no point at

1:23:02

all. Yeah. But it's forgivable that he has no

1:23:04

point because he's just rambling. That's the idea.

1:23:08

It's very jarring to

1:23:11

listen to this and see like, I

1:23:13

think I get what your point is supposed

1:23:15

to be. It's flawed. The premises

1:23:18

upon examination fall apart. It

1:23:20

becomes entirely unclear what you're

1:23:22

trying to say. Yeah. The point like I

1:23:25

get the anger behind it, but

1:23:29

like there

1:23:31

has to be a

1:23:32

second like pass at

1:23:34

this, like you wrote this. You

1:23:37

need to, you need to edit it. Yeah. Did

1:23:39

it please to do a better job of

1:23:41

making this argument stand up to scrutiny?

1:23:43

Cause it's silly. You have Alex doesn't

1:23:45

try. He doesn't have a teleprompter. He's

1:23:48

just talking shit. Yeah. I get it.

1:23:50

This is unpolished garbage.

1:23:52

It is. It is a bit like, um,

1:23:55

uh, so, so Alex is like a roller

1:23:57

coaster that is poorly

1:23:59

made.

1:23:59

and it might fall apart at any

1:24:02

second. It's like that New Jersey park.

1:24:04

Yes. The Danger Park or whatever, Action

1:24:06

Park. The one where you're, yeah, yeah. People die.

1:24:09

And, and, but Tucker is like the hall of

1:24:11

warped mirrors, you know? You walk in there

1:24:13

and you're like, I, none of, none of this

1:24:15

looks like this and I can't escape. Mm-hmm.

1:24:18

This is horrific. Yeah,

1:24:20

I, I, I, that metaphor

1:24:23

is as good as anything his writers are gonna come up with.

1:24:25

Probably. So Jordan, we'll

1:24:27

be back for another episode in the near future.

1:24:29

Hopefully Alex will be back in studio. Um,

1:24:33

but until then, we have a website. Indeed we do.

1:24:35

It's knowledgefight.com. Yep. We're all on Twitter. We are on Twitter.

1:24:37

It's at knowledgefight. Yep. We'll be back. But

1:24:39

until then, I'm Neo. I'm Leo. I'm

1:24:41

DZX Clark. Boop-boop-boop. Boop-boop-boop-boop.

1:24:46

Your time is up. My time is now. London!

1:24:50

WrestleMania! Oh, God.

1:24:53

What about Australia, mate? Woo-yeah!

1:24:55

Woo-yeah! And now here comes

1:24:58

the sex robots. Andy and Kansas,

1:25:00

you're on the air. Thanks for holding.

1:25:03

Hello, Alex. I'm a first-time caller. I'm a huge

1:25:05

fan. I love your work. I love you.