“I know exactly why right wingers are engaging in political violence, it’s because every single one of them thinks they’re going to have their guns confiscated!”
Two minutes later…
“I have no idea why left wing violence is on the rise.”
This is his ongoing rubric. Every comment is flavored with partisan reasoning. I'm glad the fellas challenged him throughout, but also let him spew nonsense.
Yeah there was a point when he was suggesting that the Kirk assassin’s political affiliation was ambiguous, and MM was trying to correct him but finally let it go. Why lefties can’t admit the most logical explanation of who shoots a conservative activist? It’s beyond me. Then again, I wonder if someone shot AOC, how would conservatives respond? Perhaps they would deflect just as much as lefties do with Kirk.
Agree. When it's right wing violence he's a slobbering madman; when it's left wing suddenly he's trying to split hairs. This is what's so tough about the dialogue nowadays.
It's not just political violence, but politics in general. There are probably many examples, but the 2024 book "The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America" by Verlan Lewis and Hyrum Lewis is a good read on this topic. They were on both Nick Gillespie and Coleman Hughes podcasts discussing the book.
"But I have no doubt that if you just ask them (the Jan 6th protesters) why they cared so much about Trump, and why it was so important to beat Joe Biden, it was because Biden was going to take their guns away."
Dude, you're the one who wrote a book about this. Did you ask them that and get that answer?
JT is totally wishcasting his preferred motivations into those people.
That’s a good catch. He could, you know ask them, but if you do ask them that question and the answer doesn’t fit your priors, you lose your gig on CNN. That is, of course, if you don’t lose it by disgracing yourself because you were shaking hands with the governor on live television.
I had to listen back to that section and yes, you're right. He doesn't know, despite doing a bit of research, I think it's more he has an idea but since he works at the New York Times, he doesn't want to say.
Souter would like a word about Toobin’s erroneous claim that how judges rule are tied to who appoints them. For more proof, see also Braun & Sandoval (2022) Existence of Ideological Drift Within the US Supreme Court, UC Merced Undergraduate Research Journal; Zhou & Mueller (2022) The Dynamics of Ideological Drift Among US Supreme Court Justices, PLOS One; Purdam (2005, July 5), Presidents picking justices can have backfires, NYT; and Posner (2015, December 14) Are Supreme Court Justices Loyal to the President That Appoints Them, ericposner.com
Toobin is a true believer l’ll give him that. The legal origami is impressive. Imagine using your legal intellect in defense of the democrat party no matter what they do.
It is interesting to see how motivated his thinking is. Seems he starts with a conclusion and works backwards. He doesnt lack intellect or competence, just intellect honesty and clarity of thought. Was a great interview. My only gripe is they didnt spend more time on what we have all come to know and love toobin for....pulling a toobin.
I commented after MKH that the first two public video episodes featured two very attractive ladies, probably done on purpose in an effort to boost subscribers. In a follow up comment, I said the lads might go “punk rock”, and book someone on the other end of the attractiveness scale.
This clown straight up says James’ directed, targeted “we’re gonna put Trump in jail and figure out the crime later” is her being victim to a shitty prosecution system in the horrible, awful, USA? Not really her fault at all!
No, no you don’t get it. She HAD to be prosecutor, and because the US is one of the ONLY nations that elects prosecutors, she HAD (he used this exact verb) to name those she intended to prosecute.
It’s such a retarded take it’s really beneath him. Because we allow too much icky small-d democracy in the selection of those that wield practically untrammeled state power over us, she is forced by the system to identify a (then) private citizen who she will prosecute for crimes to be discovered/invented later. Fucking horseshit.
Up here in Maine so local news is covering the shit out of the tattoo thing. He was 18 on leave with a bunch of drunk Marines in Zagreb. It’s a skull and crossbones which if you know Nazi iconography I guess is obvious but out of context just looks like a dumb tattoo an 18 year old would get. His campaign caught it and he got it covered up. Lot of people are saying “being hammered in Croatia is no excuse”. It’s actually a great excuse for almost anything. Not going to try to explain away how other internet lefties are hypocritically trying to cover it, I don’t listen or read much of that stuff, that’s why I have this show to cover it for me.
Honestly I feel like I’m fairly knowledgeable about that era, I didn’t know that it was until this week. I guess ignorance isn’t an excuse but pretty small towns around here would be hard to be a secret Nazi. I think there’s a certain element of defensiveness when local/state elections become national news also. We’ll figure it out for ourselves, don’t need any internet defenders or attackers.
Semi-related we invented a new party game at my house last night where you write your own hypothetical opposition research for yourself. Pretty good time.
You dont think you'd see the symbol in the next 15 years and say "hey, I recognize that from somewhere?" Really? It's featured prominently in damn near every war movie (Inglourious Basterds, Schindlers List, Indiana Jones, to start) and anybody with military background habitually notes uniform insignia.
Just think it’s way down the hypothetical guessing hole at that point. He was the one who reported it, got it covered up, and although there’s plenty of other “colorful” stuff in his history there’s nothing to suggest he’s Nazi sympathetic.
First primary poll came out yesterday and he’s up 34 points on the sitting governor who is 77 years old.
He was absolutely not the one who reported it. The oppo was going around DC circles earlier in the week. He only admitted to it when Pod Save America asked him about it. By his own admission:
“It was not until I started hearing from reporters and DC insiders that I realized this tattoo resembled a Nazi symbol,” Platner said in a statement to POLITICO on Tuesday.
I guess my definition of “reported” is when something is in the press/podcast world as public information. The first time I was made aware of it was from him in an interview, if there was an earlier article or post or whatever maybe I missed it. I’m way way outside of any DC circle.
Again he got it covered up and either people here will let it slide or kick him to the curb. Past experience with Nazis in Maine, and yes there are real ones on occasion, has been that they usually don’t immediately ditch all their ink as soon as someone points out that it’s offensive.
Yeah there’s plenty of policy space to go after him but that’s not what the DNC or Schumer’s Senate PAC is doing right now. It’s all mean tweets and tattoos. Maine is 90% rural, most jobs don’t offer health insurance, we’re losing hospitals all over so a lot of the messaging resonates. I’m sure he has plenty of dumb ideas but what it feels like is all of DC being freaked out that normal people might figure out we can run for Congress.
A self identified “acquaintance” happened to tell one Politico reporter, anonymously, that he would joke about it often. A campaign staffer who quit, well known as a political consultant around here and probably just looking for another client, also swears he “for sure knew” but doesn’t offer any proof of that. First poll came out today shows him up on the Governor by 34 pts. Doesn’t mean anything but funny if nothing else.
I don’t know if “testimony” and “proof” are the right words for a one off unanimous source for Politico in the middle of oppo season. More people could come forward in the future I suppose.
I agree, 99% of people would look at that tattoo and not realize it’s a Nazi symbol, but oh well, there have been several other symbols tangentially related or less well known that have been used to tar Republicans as proof of being Nazis so Idgaf, turnabout is fair play and all that.
Genuine question on the political violence question, how in gods name do people count this stuff?
I keep hearing everywhere that right wing violence is more than left throughout the year, and I get that in the sense of individuals you can name potentially. As in Timothy McVeigh, headline names that people remember (although I think his politics are much more complicated than just “right wing”).
However, why is it that outside of Jan 6th, which was one day, like 99% of political movements/protests that turn violent are left wing? Like 2020 George Floyd protests had 100+ straight days of outright riots around the country. Police getting hit by bricks/debris, storefronts being smashed and goods stolen, people beaten up in the street, etc. The 60s and 70s had like a decade+ of this sort of violence. 2010s had years of it with Michael Brown/Treyvon Martin/etc. Ferguson still has not recovered from all the damage done 11 years later. 1992, LA Uprising (Maxine Waters), 63 killed, 2,300+ injured, $1B+ in damages, etc.
Genuinely, what is the right wing version of those examples? This is not to score points, it is an honest to goodness question because I simply do not understand how these stats are ever calculated.
The only thing I can think of is if there is mass rioting under a left wing banner, statisticians just don’t count all of the looting, stealing, terrorizing of neighborhoods, etc. because they couldn’t track each individual perpetrator down and ask them if they had a political philosophy. Which to me entirely misses the point.
That, or the statisticians are all doing the “fiery but mostly peaceful” calculation and suddenly throwing a brick through a window and stealing an individuals entire livelihood is not violence.
Again, I get the right might have the headline individual names. Those individual names did absolutely awful things singularly. There is no world in which those individuals singularly did more violence than the violence of millions (tens of millions) of people rioting over years in the aggregate.
Lastly, Michael brings up Islamic violence, which is a great point. Ideologically the individuals I 100% agree are “right wing”, POLITICALLY in the USA? Unquestionably “left wing”. I mean for everyone who disagrees, how do you hold the position Trump wants to throw out all the Muslim people, before that the right wing over and over has tried to tighten immigration and limit these people getting into the country, separately the crazy right wing is trying to limit Islams influence in schools, separately crazy right wing is trying to limit Islamic social practices (burkas, etc) in public, meanwhile the left wing has been pushing for more open borders and acceptance of everything above, promoting Islam. The most stringent Muslims in Congress are all on the left wing, but Islamic Radicalism is “right wing” violence. Again, I get why ideologically on paper the individual who is a religious zealot is classified as right wing; however, politically meaning as a political issue and where it finds support/dissent in the US landscape, it is unquestionably a left wing political issue.
Seems like there is a ton of fuckery going on with the numbers. Yet Toobin seems overly confident. So maybe I am missing something huge.
You said it better than I could. I agree, it seems like it’s almost always the left that’s doing the violence. You laid it all out, same reality I’ve lived (and read about, for the stuff that predates my birth). So yeah I don’t get it. Also I suspect it’s why the left is so fixated on Jan 6. It’s the only big example of the right rioting, and it deflects from the “summer of love”.
I just watched the 30-second cold open. There is no possible way that Moynihan aced the comedic timing that perfectly. It had to have been scripted and rehearsed.
The thing he says about the Trump trials annoy me, enough where I have to do something I hate, which is throat clear and say "I don't like Trump" but the powers that be were definitely trying to find anything that will stick to throw him in prison for "reasons." And this guy is like "this all seems legit" is just annoying. Like, wasn't it that the crimes were misdemeanors that they just made felonies because they could? I'm pretty sure I heard that on this fine podcast.
I believe the stat that Toobin references about “right wing violence” levels, the 75% number of “right wing violence” either excludes Islamic terrorism, or includes it as “right wing”. In other words…it’s useless.
Hang on - wait - so in sidestepping the charitable framing Moynihan offers when asking if cable news incentives him to turn more partisan, Toobin counters with a mistake that im boiling down to "we were too fair and balanced in service of fairness and balance, and I'm sorry I ever participated in that" ???
Real "I am divorced now because I loved her too much and my dong was too big" energy from the Trouser Snake here.
“I know exactly why right wingers are engaging in political violence, it’s because every single one of them thinks they’re going to have their guns confiscated!”
Two minutes later…
“I have no idea why left wing violence is on the rise.”
Dude is a clown.
One might call him a “jerk off”
This is his ongoing rubric. Every comment is flavored with partisan reasoning. I'm glad the fellas challenged him throughout, but also let him spew nonsense.
Yes. Partisan. But it's good that they chat with folks on both sides whether it's Toobin or Megyn K.
Yeah there was a point when he was suggesting that the Kirk assassin’s political affiliation was ambiguous, and MM was trying to correct him but finally let it go. Why lefties can’t admit the most logical explanation of who shoots a conservative activist? It’s beyond me. Then again, I wonder if someone shot AOC, how would conservatives respond? Perhaps they would deflect just as much as lefties do with Kirk.
Agree. When it's right wing violence he's a slobbering madman; when it's left wing suddenly he's trying to split hairs. This is what's so tough about the dialogue nowadays.
"Well the left wingers have incoherent politics so not as bad but the right wingers are evil Nazis and love daddy trump."
I'm increasingly inclined to think that "incoherent" better describes more political violence in the US than "left" or "right."
It's not just political violence, but politics in general. There are probably many examples, but the 2024 book "The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America" by Verlan Lewis and Hyrum Lewis is a good read on this topic. They were on both Nick Gillespie and Coleman Hughes podcasts discussing the book.
Link to Colemans pod:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHv009kiIug
Link to Nick's pod:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOMIJvbosRA
I heard them on The Remnant. Jonah Goldberg wasn't as convinced as I am. I should read the book too.
"But I have no doubt that if you just ask them (the Jan 6th protesters) why they cared so much about Trump, and why it was so important to beat Joe Biden, it was because Biden was going to take their guns away."
Dude, you're the one who wrote a book about this. Did you ask them that and get that answer?
JT is totally wishcasting his preferred motivations into those people.
They're just a bunch of bitter clingers.
That’s a good catch. He could, you know ask them, but if you do ask them that question and the answer doesn’t fit your priors, you lose your gig on CNN. That is, of course, if you don’t lose it by disgracing yourself because you were shaking hands with the governor on live television.
I had to listen back to that section and yes, you're right. He doesn't know, despite doing a bit of research, I think it's more he has an idea but since he works at the New York Times, he doesn't want to say.
The power of the Fifth over me is that I’ll even listen to a conversation with a partisan hack
And a tedious one, at that.
Yeah, they are really testing us with the partisan hacks lately. First Megyn Kelly, now Toobin. I did find both conversations worthwhile though.
glad you had him on, cuz i'll be honest: I know precisely 1 thing about Jeffrey Toobin lmfao
Souter would like a word about Toobin’s erroneous claim that how judges rule are tied to who appoints them. For more proof, see also Braun & Sandoval (2022) Existence of Ideological Drift Within the US Supreme Court, UC Merced Undergraduate Research Journal; Zhou & Mueller (2022) The Dynamics of Ideological Drift Among US Supreme Court Justices, PLOS One; Purdam (2005, July 5), Presidents picking justices can have backfires, NYT; and Posner (2015, December 14) Are Supreme Court Justices Loyal to the President That Appoints Them, ericposner.com
Toobin is a true believer l’ll give him that. The legal origami is impressive. Imagine using your legal intellect in defense of the democrat party no matter what they do.
It is interesting to see how motivated his thinking is. Seems he starts with a conclusion and works backwards. He doesnt lack intellect or competence, just intellect honesty and clarity of thought. Was a great interview. My only gripe is they didnt spend more time on what we have all come to know and love toobin for....pulling a toobin.
I commented after MKH that the first two public video episodes featured two very attractive ladies, probably done on purpose in an effort to boost subscribers. In a follow up comment, I said the lads might go “punk rock”, and book someone on the other end of the attractiveness scale.
I mean…
Just call me Nostradamus…
You volunteering? 😎
Speaking of MKH & the Toobs….
https://open.substack.com/pub/mkhammer/p/in-the-age-of-quiet-quitting-i-was?r=7enhd&utm_medium=ios
How?! This is a masterful booking. Mojica, you're incredible!
This clown straight up says James’ directed, targeted “we’re gonna put Trump in jail and figure out the crime later” is her being victim to a shitty prosecution system in the horrible, awful, USA? Not really her fault at all!
No, no you don’t get it. She HAD to be prosecutor, and because the US is one of the ONLY nations that elects prosecutors, she HAD (he used this exact verb) to name those she intended to prosecute.
It’s such a retarded take it’s really beneath him. Because we allow too much icky small-d democracy in the selection of those that wield practically untrammeled state power over us, she is forced by the system to identify a (then) private citizen who she will prosecute for crimes to be discovered/invented later. Fucking horseshit.
It's not beneath him. He's a shameless hack.
Up here in Maine so local news is covering the shit out of the tattoo thing. He was 18 on leave with a bunch of drunk Marines in Zagreb. It’s a skull and crossbones which if you know Nazi iconography I guess is obvious but out of context just looks like a dumb tattoo an 18 year old would get. His campaign caught it and he got it covered up. Lot of people are saying “being hammered in Croatia is no excuse”. It’s actually a great excuse for almost anything. Not going to try to explain away how other internet lefties are hypocritically trying to cover it, I don’t listen or read much of that stuff, that’s why I have this show to cover it for me.
Great excuse for getting it… not a great excuse for keeping it…
Honestly I feel like I’m fairly knowledgeable about that era, I didn’t know that it was until this week. I guess ignorance isn’t an excuse but pretty small towns around here would be hard to be a secret Nazi. I think there’s a certain element of defensiveness when local/state elections become national news also. We’ll figure it out for ourselves, don’t need any internet defenders or attackers.
Semi-related we invented a new party game at my house last night where you write your own hypothetical opposition research for yourself. Pretty good time.
You dont think you'd see the symbol in the next 15 years and say "hey, I recognize that from somewhere?" Really? It's featured prominently in damn near every war movie (Inglourious Basterds, Schindlers List, Indiana Jones, to start) and anybody with military background habitually notes uniform insignia.
Just think it’s way down the hypothetical guessing hole at that point. He was the one who reported it, got it covered up, and although there’s plenty of other “colorful” stuff in his history there’s nothing to suggest he’s Nazi sympathetic.
First primary poll came out yesterday and he’s up 34 points on the sitting governor who is 77 years old.
He was absolutely not the one who reported it. The oppo was going around DC circles earlier in the week. He only admitted to it when Pod Save America asked him about it. By his own admission:
“It was not until I started hearing from reporters and DC insiders that I realized this tattoo resembled a Nazi symbol,” Platner said in a statement to POLITICO on Tuesday.
I guess my definition of “reported” is when something is in the press/podcast world as public information. The first time I was made aware of it was from him in an interview, if there was an earlier article or post or whatever maybe I missed it. I’m way way outside of any DC circle.
Again he got it covered up and either people here will let it slide or kick him to the curb. Past experience with Nazis in Maine, and yes there are real ones on occasion, has been that they usually don’t immediately ditch all their ink as soon as someone points out that it’s offensive.
I'm more concerned he's a not so secret Commie
Yeah there’s plenty of policy space to go after him but that’s not what the DNC or Schumer’s Senate PAC is doing right now. It’s all mean tweets and tattoos. Maine is 90% rural, most jobs don’t offer health insurance, we’re losing hospitals all over so a lot of the messaging resonates. I’m sure he has plenty of dumb ideas but what it feels like is all of DC being freaked out that normal people might figure out we can run for Congress.
Didn't some one (anonymously mind you) who was his drinking buddy in his DC days say he was very aware of what it was.
A self identified “acquaintance” happened to tell one Politico reporter, anonymously, that he would joke about it often. A campaign staffer who quit, well known as a political consultant around here and probably just looking for another client, also swears he “for sure knew” but doesn’t offer any proof of that. First poll came out today shows him up on the Governor by 34 pts. Doesn’t mean anything but funny if nothing else.
MSNBC headline: “Maine, majority Nazis”
The proof is the testimony of the person which would hold more weight if they weren't anonymous.
I don’t know if “testimony” and “proof” are the right words for a one off unanimous source for Politico in the middle of oppo season. More people could come forward in the future I suppose.
I agree, 99% of people would look at that tattoo and not realize it’s a Nazi symbol, but oh well, there have been several other symbols tangentially related or less well known that have been used to tar Republicans as proof of being Nazis so Idgaf, turnabout is fair play and all that.
It was Split. I’m a hack journalist.
Extremely true!! https://michaelmohr.substack.com/p/ink
I definitely have a large diesel locomotive tattooed on one shoulder that DHS now thinks I can get deported for….
Genuine question on the political violence question, how in gods name do people count this stuff?
I keep hearing everywhere that right wing violence is more than left throughout the year, and I get that in the sense of individuals you can name potentially. As in Timothy McVeigh, headline names that people remember (although I think his politics are much more complicated than just “right wing”).
However, why is it that outside of Jan 6th, which was one day, like 99% of political movements/protests that turn violent are left wing? Like 2020 George Floyd protests had 100+ straight days of outright riots around the country. Police getting hit by bricks/debris, storefronts being smashed and goods stolen, people beaten up in the street, etc. The 60s and 70s had like a decade+ of this sort of violence. 2010s had years of it with Michael Brown/Treyvon Martin/etc. Ferguson still has not recovered from all the damage done 11 years later. 1992, LA Uprising (Maxine Waters), 63 killed, 2,300+ injured, $1B+ in damages, etc.
Genuinely, what is the right wing version of those examples? This is not to score points, it is an honest to goodness question because I simply do not understand how these stats are ever calculated.
The only thing I can think of is if there is mass rioting under a left wing banner, statisticians just don’t count all of the looting, stealing, terrorizing of neighborhoods, etc. because they couldn’t track each individual perpetrator down and ask them if they had a political philosophy. Which to me entirely misses the point.
That, or the statisticians are all doing the “fiery but mostly peaceful” calculation and suddenly throwing a brick through a window and stealing an individuals entire livelihood is not violence.
Again, I get the right might have the headline individual names. Those individual names did absolutely awful things singularly. There is no world in which those individuals singularly did more violence than the violence of millions (tens of millions) of people rioting over years in the aggregate.
Lastly, Michael brings up Islamic violence, which is a great point. Ideologically the individuals I 100% agree are “right wing”, POLITICALLY in the USA? Unquestionably “left wing”. I mean for everyone who disagrees, how do you hold the position Trump wants to throw out all the Muslim people, before that the right wing over and over has tried to tighten immigration and limit these people getting into the country, separately the crazy right wing is trying to limit Islams influence in schools, separately crazy right wing is trying to limit Islamic social practices (burkas, etc) in public, meanwhile the left wing has been pushing for more open borders and acceptance of everything above, promoting Islam. The most stringent Muslims in Congress are all on the left wing, but Islamic Radicalism is “right wing” violence. Again, I get why ideologically on paper the individual who is a religious zealot is classified as right wing; however, politically meaning as a political issue and where it finds support/dissent in the US landscape, it is unquestionably a left wing political issue.
Seems like there is a ton of fuckery going on with the numbers. Yet Toobin seems overly confident. So maybe I am missing something huge.
You said it better than I could. I agree, it seems like it’s almost always the left that’s doing the violence. You laid it all out, same reality I’ve lived (and read about, for the stuff that predates my birth). So yeah I don’t get it. Also I suspect it’s why the left is so fixated on Jan 6. It’s the only big example of the right rioting, and it deflects from the “summer of love”.
Sooo…did he or didn’t he start furiously masturbating after the interview was over?
I know I did
That's only available on the Fifth's Onlyfans.
In polite company we just call it a Toobin Tug
I just watched the 30-second cold open. There is no possible way that Moynihan aced the comedic timing that perfectly. It had to have been scripted and rehearsed.
He's just that good.
The thing he says about the Trump trials annoy me, enough where I have to do something I hate, which is throat clear and say "I don't like Trump" but the powers that be were definitely trying to find anything that will stick to throw him in prison for "reasons." And this guy is like "this all seems legit" is just annoying. Like, wasn't it that the crimes were misdemeanors that they just made felonies because they could? I'm pretty sure I heard that on this fine podcast.
I believe the stat that Toobin references about “right wing violence” levels, the 75% number of “right wing violence” either excludes Islamic terrorism, or includes it as “right wing”. In other words…it’s useless.
Hang on - wait - so in sidestepping the charitable framing Moynihan offers when asking if cable news incentives him to turn more partisan, Toobin counters with a mistake that im boiling down to "we were too fair and balanced in service of fairness and balance, and I'm sorry I ever participated in that" ???
Real "I am divorced now because I loved her too much and my dong was too big" energy from the Trouser Snake here.
"I know my rights man. I wanna fuckin' lawyer, man. I want Bill Kunstler man or....Ron......Kooby."