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Trump HUMILIATED, Suing Twitter, Facebook, Google
Donald Trump has announced that he is filing class action lawsuits against the tech giants Twitter, Facebook, and Google. Trump held a press conference to make the announcement and it was such an absurd event that even Fox News had to cut away when the former president started taking questions. Trump said during the big announcement that “the founding fathers inscribed this right [to free speech] in the very First Amendment to our Constitution because they knew that free speech was essential to the prevention of horror and to the very preservation to our republic.” This was certainly a bizarre statement to make, given that Twitter, Facebook, and Google were not around during the founding of the country. These are also private platforms which aren’t required to guarantee First Amendment rights like the US government is.
The appearance for Trump didn’t get any better when he opened up for questions from the media. At one point, Trump was asked about whether he takes any responsibility for the events of January 6th which triggered these social media bans in the first place. One reporter asked “what did you do to stop the insurrection . . . and why were you not able to stop it?” The former president took the question as an opportunity to deflect blame and to ask why the identity of the person who shot Ashli Babbitt isn’t being released. He said “the person that shot Ashli Babbitt — boom right through the head, just boom, there was no reason for that. And why isn’t that person being opened up and why isn’t that being studied?” The killing of Babbitt was indeed tragic, but the officer in question was relieved of wrongdoing since they were protecting the House chamber (which still had lawmakers inside) from being taken over by a mob of Trump supporters. It’s this very undermining of the events of January 6th that led to Trump’s social media bans in the first place and the reason he’s probably not going to be allowed back on them anytime soon.
I F&$@!ng HATE Politics
I have an admission to make today that might strike you as a weird thing for someone who hosts a show about American politics to say. And that is that I absolutely hate politics. That’s not to say that I don’t care about the issues we cover on a day to day basis — I do care about them deeply. But I do hate the way elections are the way they are, that the country is the way it is, and that the political system is the one we have. American politics is all based on a huge portion of this country being a combination of ignorant bad faith actors and people whose views are completely retrograde and antithetical to the direction that we need as a country and as a planet. I hate the fact that when we take phone calls, for example, so much time is spent on trying to unwind how so many ideas are rooted in misunderstandings and a completely backwards view of morality. Unfortunately, this is what it means to engage in American politics today because the level of discourse is so toxic and remedial.
I hate that because of these reactionary, right-wing movements, when we have a pandemic we actually have to fight people to just get them to accept uncontroversial science. I hate that when we could be figuring out how to move away from dirty energy and start treating this planet with some respect and reorganizing our economies and societies to be more sustainable, we're still dealing with people who don't even think abortion should be legal, or that two gay people shouldn’t be able to get legally married. Having to counter these right-wing narratives is frustrating but at the same time important because otherwise their beliefs go unchallenged and more people fall for them. But we begin to realize how much we are really missing in our ability to make progress. Here, at least in the US, the modern political media space ends up saying very little about what are some of the big questions of our time. Now obviously to change the system you have to engage with the system, so maybe this isn’t a problem that can be solved anytime soon. But there is so much wasted time and it’s this aspect of American politics that I could really do without.
From yesterday’s show:
OH NO: Fox News Launching Their Own Weather Channel
News Corporation and Fox News have announced that they will be launching their own weather channel. Rupert Murdoch is looking to rival the Weather Channel with his own station, Fox Weather. The crux of the matter here is that this “Fox Weather” channel will almost certainly put into question the existence of climate change and its impact on extreme weather events. Chief content officer at the Weather Channel Nora Zimmett said about this that climate change “is too important to politicize, and if they do that, they will be doing Americans a disservice.” Fox asserts that weather is an underserved market, which is hard to believe given that it already makes up a significant amount of local and national news programming. What they may be referring to as an “underserved market” is the people who want to get the weather but don’t believe in climate change so they want that aspect of it to be ignored. If this network is ever launched, it will serve the climate denial sector of the market, likely get viewership, and ultimately make the entire planet worse off.
--More on the show:
--Bill Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, Head of the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign, and author of the book "Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice," joins David to discuss his time in Russia, his arrest, being targeted by Vladimir Putin, and much more. Get the book: https://amzn.to/36ne9ju
--Haitian President Jovenel Moïse is assassinated in his own home when a group of assailants stormed the resident early Wednesday morning, sending Haiti into possible chaos as a "state of siege" is declared
--The global pandemic recovery is in question as cases rise globally and within the US, where economic and employment indicators also start to raise questions
--Fox News propagandist claims that the National Security Agency has not only being spying on him, but also leaked his emails to journalists
--Rudy Giuliani, former Mayor of New York City and Donald Trump's former personal attorney, has his law license suspended by Washington DC, shortly after New York took the same step
--Voicemail caller confronts David about Joe Biden's "mental acuity" test
--On the Bonus Show: Recently freed Bill Cosby planning a comeback tour, Iceland's 4 workday per week experiment, Oregon's heat wave is now a mass casualty event, much more...
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