The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome, welcome, welcome. Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. Don’t forget to visit PhyllisSchlafly.com and there you’ll see lots of our work, but follow me on Twitter. @EagleEdMartin also.
Welcome to the Pro America Report. A lot to cover today.
In a few moments we will catch up with my old friend Todd Bensman. We’ll talk with Todd Bensman and catch up. What’s going on at the border. His new book out is called, let me get it right, Overrun.
Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History is what it’s called. Great book and a great guy. We’ll talk with him and also we will spend some time with another author.
His name is Kenneth Timmerman and he has written a book. I found it very, very entertaining. The book is let me see, I’ll get the paper work out in front of me. It’s called And the Rest is History: Tales of hostages, arms dealers, dirty tricks and spies. Kenneth Timberman is a longtime journalist. A very cool book. We’ll talk with him. Alright.
But what you need to know today is this The Alex Jones decision, you probably saw this, that he was sued in Connecticut State court. He was sued for the tort, which means a civil proceeding about what he said when he claimed that I think it was the claim was something like Sandy Hook was staged. I’m not sure how that he of course renounced that after a while.
He did it for a long time though, I think, and he renounced it and said he was wrong to do it and he apologized and all that, but he had done something damaging to the parents, to the families of Sandy Hook and they sued him, okay, which they have the right to do.
And I think I can understand, no, I CAN understand the argument about why he got to sue. His point was, their point was you said this about our kids, it damaged us, traumatic damage and all that.
And so he was sued, he was sued and he went to court and they tried the case and he lost the case. And at this point the jury gave awarded a nearly 1 billion with a B award.
Now, that’s ridiculous on its face. And frankly, you can’t, if you’re the judge actually, I don’t know what the law is in Connecticut, but you don’t let that stand, right? The judge has to throw that out. He has to have the courage to throw it out because there’s no way that’s an appropriate remedy for that lawsuit.
But they covered it like it was righteous, like it was okay.
And here’s the point. My point on this is they’re not doing this to actually handle the Alex Jones so called tort. They’re doing this as a political point. And I was on a different program.
I was on a TV program, I was recording it earlier today and the left winger on there said it’s exactly what he deserves.
But here’s my point. When Kathy Griffin, Kathy Griffin took a severed head of Donald Trump’s image and took photographs and she got in a lot of trouble, I said, that’s crazy. She’s a comedian. You can’t punish her for and you can say people said at the time, oh, well, what about Barron, Barron saw his dad like this. I mean, first of all, Trump is a public figure. That’s one part of it. But second, she’s a comedian, and so she lost jobs for it. Fair enough. She lost livelihood. Fair enough. If people don’t think she’s funny anymore. Fair enough. But she shouldn’t be charged with a tort or threatened with legal action.
And Alex Jones went further than that, I guess. I mean, I think that’s right. And he is certainly a performance artist, so I don’t have any problem with the legal system addressing his conduct. That is what should happen. But people that think it’s appropriate to give a billion dollars in damage, that’s just crazy.
And the message is you will be quiet. And the guy that I was opposing on the TV show was saying, we have to have some standard of disinformation. People have to be held accountable.
And I went, Holy cow, are you serious?
Because one side gets to say what disinformation is. One side gets to, one. Who is the judge of all that? Now, I’m not a relativist. There is truth. The sky is blue. Gravity makes things fall down. You have a certain age. I’m actually a realist, too, in terms of, you know, you have a you’re born with a certain sex, male or female, but here we are. So I don’t want to be a relativist and say none of it matters.
But as to our system of living together, it has to be balanced. It has to not be that the legal system is used as lawfare against the unfavored in the society. It can’t be that.
Now, I know somebody, a good, pure leftist will say, ah, but that’s how it always is. Whoever doesn’t have power is targeted. I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I think that’s sort of Marxist and all that crazy kind of analysis, psycho babble and stuff.
We have a system, especially around property rights, especially around contractual relations. I’m talking the civil side, and then we have the criminal code.
But we can’t have a system that will allow one group or one set of people to define who’s in or who’s out, and in this case, use the financial burden of a billion dollar judgment, and he won’t pay it. He’ll go bankrupt. He’ll just declare bankruptcy.
But here’s another example. Kanye said something terrible, terrible, like antisemitic terrible stuff. And Citibank is going to stop his business from practicing his business.
Is that the model? Is this the model we want? I’m not sure.
I’m not saying I know, but I am saying I know. I’m saying, does citibank have a right to not associate with somebody who says antisemitic things. I got to think they do, but in this case, that’s a little clearer, or maybe it’s not, but we’re charging forth. And when you have an administration, the Biden administration, that started to set up an information, a disinformation center that was going to screen things, and here’s my problem, my real overriding problem is when big government and the power of government and our legal system is used in conjunction with big media and big tech, they are winning the argument on what you’re allowed to believe.
And they’re not just saying anymore that you are allowed, if you believe something that goes against what we think is the right thing, that we think you’re quirky. They’re not just saying that anymore. They’re saying we will destroy you. That’s what they’re saying.
So that if you’re someone who doesn’t think, for example, that marriage, that gay marriage is real marriage, then that’s so unacceptable to them. They want to make that hate speech, and they want to prosecute your hate speech, and they want to civilly penalize you for hate speech. That’s where we’re headed.
That’s a terrifying direction, whether you’re Kathy Griffin making a stupid joke, really poor, really poor, or you’re Alex Jones who says something terrible, really horrendous, terrible. That’s a very dangerous track to be on, pathway to be down, that we’re headed really fast. And there’s example after example.
I actually saw Ambassador Sam Brownback from he was a former senator, former congressman. We talked about this a few a month or so ago. He served in the House of Representatives. He’s been a governor, and he started an organization that’s promoting religious liberty, and he got a bank account open with I think it was one of the big banks. I forget which one now, so I won’t guess. And then they realized what the topic was, and they shut it down, and they wouldn’t give him a reason. I mean, again, the woke culture, the woke culture should correct and self-correct when their insanity is confronted by we the people, right?
If you’re going to let all the boys run and excuse me, all the boys swim as transgender women at the Ivy Leagues, pretty soon normal swimmers, boys and girls, are not going to go to the Ivy Leagues. I think they’ll decide they’ll sort of self select, that it’s very bad, and I hope they actually do pass laws that don’t let it happen.
But still but when more and more of the institutions or the entities that want to do that are backed up by the government and I’ll just put a fine point on it.
Remember, I keep telling you, in Georgia, we had John Schlafly on the show yesterday. In Georgia, we have a local prosecutor who is echoing the attorney general from New York in saying that they have to get Trump and they’re using their job, their law, their power to do that.
That’s a bad, bad thing to be so obviously doing and not being limited by the others in your tribe.
Alright, we gotta take a break. We’ll be right back with Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report.
Back in a moment.
