You're A Table Full Of Pimmels

Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George Washington Broadcast.

Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty arm Strong and Gatty and he Armstrong and Yetty.

Germany is cracking down. We were with the German police as they conducted early morning raids on citizens who had been accused of hate speech, threats and inciting violence online.

In the United States.

A lot of people look at this and say, this is restricting free speech.

It's a threat to democracy.

Free speech meets boundaries.

Wow, and yeah, you throw in the German accent and that's really something that's from that's from sixty minutes Sunday night, coming on the heels of jd Vance giving Europe a lecture about censorship and be an anti free speech over the weekend.

And as we will discuss, the sixty minutes report was gleefully, weirdly, troublingly positive about the idea of restricting free speech if it's the wrong speech. Made even more notable their awful attitude by the fact that it occurred on the same day as this clip Margaret Brennan talking to Marco Rubio on.

Face the Nation, he was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to kentuct a genocide, and he met with the head of a political party that has far right views and some historic ties to extreme groups.

Margaret Brennan attempting to suggest that JD. Vance shouldn't have advocated free speech because free speech is what led to the genocide in Germany against the Jews, which is almost hilariously idiotic and so wildly inaccurate. It's barely worth the time to describe how incredibly inaccurate it was free speech under Hitler. When was that exactly, asks every historian on Earth.

I know, I'm mister hyperbole, but I feel like that's one of the craziest things I've ever heard. One of the major Sunday Show anchors say it is Jada Advan Questionably, Jade Evans was standing in Germany where the rise of fascism having in a genocide and they weaponized free speech. What are you talking about? Oh my god, Yeah, she's nuts. I'm so lost on this. I don't understand their worldview. I guess we'll learn more of this. Well I do.

I can describe it to you exactly. It's the lust for power. If you control speech, you control everything else.

But how does that work in a democracy, don't you The other side gets to do it too when they're in charge. Again.

I hate even going to that argument because then it makes it a conditional thing. Well, for practical reasons, I guess you're right. I won't limit free speech. I don't even want to go there, right, It's horrific, horrific, and how you get there in a democracy. The other thing is you declare an emergency. Happens all the time both parties. This is Trump's doing it right now, and I don't

It's six oh one on a Tuesday morning, and we were with state police as they rated this apartment in northwest Germany.

Just to put it inside them at the moment hum of the.

Eden inside, six armed officers searched to suspects home, then seized his laptop and sell phone. Prosecutors say those electronics may have been used to commit a crime, the crime posting a racist cartoon online at the exact same time across Germany, it's.

All the online as Unsas for Newborn hold.

More than fifty similar raids played out, part of what prosecutors say is a coordinated effort to curb online hate speech in Germany.

And the one guy points out, maybe it will be in one of these clips, the seven thousand cases or something that they investigated last year. Wow, that's a lot in a country much smaller than the United States. Imagine what that would look like in the United States. And hate speech, of course, the one of the problems with hate speech being who's determining its hate speech, who's making the judgment on that? Yeah, Sharon Alfonsi very helpful.

He just saved us the trouble and told us the cartoon was racist, putting aside whether you know you should limit free speech on the basis of quote unquote racism anyway, but yeah, what did it say?

In what sense? Was it racist? Who is it racist against?

What?

Give me the specific fixed you're asking for the right to censor me, and you just say, take my word.

It was terrible. This part is amazing.

Wasn't the typical reaction when the police show up at somebody's door and they say, hey, we will leave.

You wrote this on the internet, they say.

In Germany, we say that's what my mos off, my zogenduff. And so we here with crimes of talking posting an internet and the people are surprised that this is really illegal to post these kind of words.

They don't think it was illegal. Oh, they don't think it was illegal.

And they say, no, that's my free speech, and we say no, yeah, free speech as well, but it also has limits.

I don't see. I don't, I can't. I've got to accept that. It's just true that obviously, smart people in charge of things can say words like that. How can you sail it? Free speech has its limits, Well, then it's not free speech. You just nullified the first part of your sentence. What the second part of the sentence.

Everybody understands that there are certain limits, but they are extremely limited limits. The people like this just say, hey, because there are limits, there there can be more limits, and I will decide what limits there are.

Control your soul's desire for freedom. Yeah, that's which I respond. No, you don't get to decided. No freaking way control your soul's desire for freedom, they say in China. This part amazed me. I was unaware of this.

It's a legal to display Nazi symbolism, a swasika, deny the Holocaust.

That's that's clear.

Is it a crime to insult somebody in public? Yes, yes, and it's a crime to insult them online as well.

Yes.

The fine could be even higher.

Yeah, if you insult someone in the internet, why because in Internet it stays there. If we are talking at face to face, you insult me and sold you okay, finish. But if you're in the internet, if I insult you or a politician, that.

Sticks around forever.

Yeah.

So she says to these three people, it's a fine, there's a fine two in if you insult someone, and they'll just say yeah, like you know, of course what and what defines an insult?

And folks keep in mind, remember we're still in the era certainly on university campuses and in government in some other places where if you are insulted that's proof that the other person is done wrong. You remember, I didn't mean that to be racist. It doesn't matter what you meant, it's how I received it, So you give the person receiving it the carte blanche to declare whatever they want to be insulting or hurtful, or racist or abusive, Islam or whatever, and therefore that falls within.

Well, that's hate speech.

Sorry, we're going to take away your right to say any to make any criticism that anybody could even implausibly claim is insulting.

It's horrible.

So somebody posts the Chancellor is a moron, I assume that would be a crime. Maybe you didn't post it, maybe you just did this.

If somebody posts something that's not true and then somebody else reposts it or likes it, are they committing a crime.

In the case of reposting it as a crime as well, because the reader contistinguished whether you just invented this or just reposted it.

That's the same for us.

So when I was listening to that one, I was thinking about it was an official Biden Harris campaign ad that way we had playing in the United States. Donald Trump threatens a bloodbath if he loses, which was absolutely a lie in misinformation on the side that sixty Minutes is on. Would you consider that a crime or only when it's coming from the other side. See that's that's where the rubber meets the road on this whole thing and it gets, you know, unworkable.

Yeah.

I happen to have a couple of articles, think pieces, etc. That point out how incredibly one sided this is. It's just a lust for power the other thing that really and it's funny, we're talking about one of the most fun ndamental human rights that any human beings ever enjoyed. But you know what annoyed the crap out of me was when they're and I'm not sure if we have these clips, but they were talking about the fines, which are fairly heavy. I mean it's thousands of dollars in

They don't get them back.

And Cheryl Fonsi said, your phone, wow, because everything's on there.

That is tough.

And she was amused at the idea of these people who indulged in what the Germans are calling hate speech getting their devices taken away and not getting access to them anymore.

She thought that was funny, an insensitive joke. They come and take your laptop and your phone and you don't get it back, and to a certain crowd, that's awesome. This story I found amusing, but it.

Was a twenty twenty one case involving a local politician named Andy Grot that captured the country's attention. Grow complained about a tweet that called him a pimmel, a German word for the mail, anatomy that triggered a police rate and accusations of excessive censorship by the government. As prosecutors explain to us, in Germany, it's okay to debate politics online, but it can be a crime to call anyone a pimle,

Exactly. Yeah, commen's like your son of a bitch. Excuse me forward. This word has nothing to.

Do with a political discussions or a contribution.

To a discussion.

But that's amazing.

It's one of the great canards that sensors use. Here's an example where I'm censoring something reasonably right, and then you're supposed to extrapolate from there therefore, I trust you to censor whenever you want. F you know, and you are a piml a table full of pimbles, right.

I kept thinking that as they used various examples. I thought, yeah, it'd be nice if you could censor that and not other stuff. But once you open the door, then you start making choices, and who's making those choices? And he gets out of hand really really fast.

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We'll have to play some more of this from the sixty minutes when we come back, some more amazing stories. But we all lived through this in the United States, so we know how off track this can get so fast. When it was basically against the rules to say, you know, I think the virus probably came out of that lab, you couldn't say it for a couple of years.

Yeah, or you would be punished, maybe not by law enforce in the ways we're used to. But you would be punished by proxy by the government.

And CBS, it would seem, and many others. A lot of college professors want it to be against the law to post misinformation and again.

Misinformation like if you get the inoculation, you can still get COVID and you can still spread it.

That is dangerous misinformation. Wow, it's scary. One true, they're so enthusiastic about it there in Germany, and then we got and then CBS is enthusiastic about it too. That is freaking frightening. We got a lot more on the way.

I can show your soul's desire for freedom.

SNL fifty anniversary special that I watched the whole thing on Sunday night. I was highly amused.

I had to stop, like a lot of people after an early sketch. I went back to it later, but it was incredibly annoying.

I couldn't believe the star studded audience. Oh my god, that was That was quite the collection of famous people in one room. We're focusing a little bit on sixty minutes from Sunday night because it was one of the more astounding things I've ever seen and I've watched practically every Sixty Minutes episode of the last forty years. That was just crazy CBS's enthusiasm for cracking down on free speech,

I would characterize it as sixty Minutes gets an enthusiastic lesson from the Germans on how to crack down on irresponsible speech.

There's a little of German authorities laying out how it works.

Josephine Ballone is a CEO of Hate eight, a Berlin based human rights organization that supports victims of online violence.

In the United States.

A lot of people look at this and say, this is restricting free speech. It's a threat to democracy.

Free speech needs boundaries, and in the case of Germany, these boundaries are part of our constitution. Without boundaries, a very small group of people can rely on endless freedom to say anything that they want while everyone else is scared and intimidated.

In your fears that if people are freely attacked online that they'll withdraw from the discussion.

This is not only a field, it's already taking place.

Already.

Half of the Internet users in Germany are afraid to express their political opinion and they rarely participate in public debates online anymore, half of the internet users.

I'm honest to god, I was listening to this in my car. I had to pull over my car and replay that. I was so amazed at what that woman just said. So first of all, she says, without boundaries, a small group of people could control the conversation, and with boundaries, a small group of people controls the conversation. And I mean, come on, obviously, And then she says, uh, what did she say? It lit it on my mind was the next thing she said. Damn it. I got

Oh.

The second part was if you have there are people out there that are intimidated to put things online because somebody will say something mean to them. So you want rules where everybody's intimidated to say what they think because they'll Linda find her in jail. What are you talking about? Yeah?

And just as an American the history of who gets ruined and run out of their career and harassed and docked because they made a politically incorrect comment many years ago.

Yeah, it cuts both ways, doesn't it. And then fine, and then this little part here where this politician was talking about how she had been in online or wronged online and how she handled it, the little one ady the b This court said, in case of.

Public servants which have public offices and jobs, it's public interest that their personal rights are protected, because otherwise no one would go for these jobs. You know that wore tom democracy.

After all this, are you seeing less hateful comments now on your social media feeds?

Yes, there are less hateful comments. And there was one tweet which says, don't say that to her, she will take you to court.

You might sue them.

I might sue them.

And the cherway of Ponzi was just, oh, yes, you might sue them. Isn't that great? Somebody said something negative of you about you online and you'll sue them. That's fantastic. JD.

Vance's fabulous speech in front of the Euros. In a related story, stay with US Armstrong and Getty in Munich.

This week, Vice President JD.

Vance stunned America's European allies by saying it is their governments and not Russia or China that represent the biggest threat to security in the region.

The threat that I worry the most about visa the Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.

Yeah, we're going to get a little more of what JD said in Europe, and he is talking about this free speech stuff. We're talking a lot about it this hour because it's well one, it's a really, really big deal, and Joe and I are really into it. But I continue to be shocked. We got a text from somebody who said, yeah, I saw the promos for sixty minutes and I just assumed they were going to take a somewhat adversarial approach as a news outlet to what they're

More analysis of the back and forth to come. But let's get jd Vance in his own words. First ball, flesh out the thing you already heard ninety two.

Michael, The threat that I worry the most about visa e Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.

Well, that just added one half a sentence. Sorry, next clip.

And speaking up and expressing opinions isn't election interference, even when people express views outside your own country, and even when those people are very influential. And trust me, I say this with all humor. If American democracy can survive ten years of Thunberg scolding you guys can survive a

Yet, I remember if he said it in a speech or just an interviewed afterwards, the rise of some of these parties on the right is because they're not getting that their voice is not heard in any way.

Right, Yeah, Indeed, that was the point I was going to get to a little more of JD. If you were afraid of the voices, the opinions, and the conscience that guide your own people, then there's nothing America can

I'm going with that party. Yeah, but they're neo Nazis. I don't care.

They're the first party that says what I feel. If you want extremism, suppress people's speech, tell them what's not accept to say. That's how you get That's how you get extremism.

Well, to a certain extent. That's how Trump got elected. I mean the people that vote for him despite you know, the flaws that they don't like. It's like, uh, you constantly see reality not being your reality, not being expressed in mainstream media. It's very angry.

So in response to what Vance just said and more that we hadn't played, the German Defense Minister said that Vance's words were quote not acceptable, which beautifully made Vance's point. There was the VP of the United States arguing that the Europeans had become far too comfortable telling people what they could and could not say, and instead of developing a counter theory, the first official the issue or a

One of my favorite pundits said, in Europe, especially in Germany, you have basically two choices. Either you agree with the prevailing narrative on issues like COVID, climate, immigration, Trump, in which case you are a responsible, kind, democratic and all the other approving adjectives and everything is fine in your life. Or you question or disagree with the direction on any of those things and think that your leaders might not be getting it right, in which case you're a populist

So Marco Rubio was interviewed on Face the Nation by the absolute idiot Margaret Brennan. That would get me a jail time in Germany.

For no, it's.

Astonishing her lack of wisdom. It's like a some girl who was raised in the woods like Nellen doesn't have the power of speech. She appears to be a normal intelligence, but is so completely blind to the realities of the world. She just doesn't make any sense. But she interviewed Marco Rubio and I want to get to her most influenced I'm sorry infamous in the idiotic clip. But first this about the speech in general ninety four, I.

Want to ask you about what happened in Munich, Germany. At the Security conference, Vice President Vance gave a speech and he told us allies that the threat he worries about the most is not Russia, it is not China. He called it the threat from within, and he lectured about what he described as censorship, mainly focusing though on

What did all of.

This accomplish other than irritating our allies, Well, why would.

Our allies there anybody be irritated by free speech and by someone giving their opinion. We are, after all, democracies. Thesic Munich Security Conference is largely a conference of democracies. In which one of the things that we cherish in value is the ability to speak feely and provide your opinions. And so I think if anyone's angry about his word, they don't have to agree with him, but to be angry about it, I think actually makes this point.

Whether it's the American left or you know, in the past, the right, or the Europeans. It's like talking to somebody who doesn't understands steam. There's a boiling pot and there's steam pouring out of it, and they say, don't worry, I'll take care of this steam. And they clamp the lid down, and then they're astounded by what happens next. Unbelievable lack of wisdom. And then Jack, unless you want to jump in there, this which should go down and broadcast in for me for the rest of time.

Yeah, I was just going to point out. Jonathan Turley wrote a great column in The New York Post yesterday, Vance rightly excoriates europe what values are we defending and compared the speech to Reagan's mister Garbichev, tear down this wall speech, and it's possible importance for the culture of

And Vance's greater point geo politically speaking, was that, hey, dudes, you're not listening to your people.

That steam is building up.

It's expressing itself in whether the AfD in Germany or whatever parties that you marine La penn in France in ways that you don't like. So how about you let people release that steam and you listen to your people. Otherwise you are going to crumble and we will not have you as allies anymore because you have crumbled.

So it's a very very practical strategy.

It's not just like he was making a rhetorical argument because he likes to argue. He sees our allies falling apart. And then this again, this moment. You know, if I was going to limit free speech, I would revoke CBS's license to broadcast based purely on the sheer stupidity of clip ninety six.

He was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide, and he met with the head of a political party that has far right views and some historic ties to extreme groups. The context of that was changing the tone of it.

And you know that that.

The censorship disagree with you specifically about the right.

Now I have to disagree with you. The free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews, and they hated minorities, and they hated those that they had a list of people they hated, but primarily the Jews. There was no free speech in Nazi Germany.

There was none.

There was also no OP position in Nazi Germany. They were a sole and only party that governed that country. So that's not an accurate reflection of history.

A phrase weaponized free speech is something well and tag me Marco, I want to jump in here. Far from being an example of free speech weaponized to conduct a genocide, Germany under Hitler was engaged in precisely the sort of democratic authoritarianism that Vance was condemning. It was exactly the opposite of what the ninny Margaret Brennan suggested. He was standing in a country where a free speech was weaponized to commit a genocide. Good lord, what an ignoramus. Uh.

What Jonathan Turley calls the haymaker from Vance's speech is when he said, if you're running in fear of your own voters, there's nothing American can do for you. Nor, for the matter, is there anything you can do for the American people that elected me and Donald Trump. If you're running in fear from your own voters, there's nothing America can do for you. And that's what they're doing

Their inability to deal with steam, as I described it before, is partly practical because the steam is rising because of their policies, namely rampant immigration, open immigration from the Muslim world especially, and also economic policies.

But the other part of it is ideological.

They are so intensely uncomfortable with the conversation about, Hey, we've let all these people who do not share our values, They do not share our culture. In fact, they despise our culture, and they've been tasked with overturning it in the name of Sharia, for instance.

This is not good.

They are so intensely uncomfortable with that for political correctness reasons to use the cliched old phrase that they I can't even permit it, and so they cheerfully inform a cheerful share in ALPHONSI on CBS that, well, free speech has its limits.

We must we must correl.

It, so nobody says anything rude and we will just clamp that lid on and that'll get rid of the steam.

Well, good luck, And let me guess you could say practically anything about people on the right and that wouldn't be considered rude or an attack or anything like that.

That just facts, just facts. Oh yeah, it's entirely one sided.

That is really something. What a very very frightening weekend from the standpoint of free speech.

But you know, getting back to Reagan's mister Garbachev's speech, I think Turley's not overstating how important it is to go to their homes say that out loud in front of the world. Y'all are committing suicide because you don't listen to your people.

If you had any comments on that, you could Our text line is four one five two nine KFTC.

Fun fact, a person born during the first season of Saturday Night Live could today be easily dead of natural costume.

Now you're going to see a lot of familiar things.

Tonight, musical guest sketches, cameo appearances, the news, and this is the monologue, traditionally the weakest part of the show. Yes, the monologue is like a rent controlled tenant.

It's not going anywhere, even though it stinks. I thought the Saturday A Live Show is really, really entertaining. I really enjoyed it. I thought it was the opening. So they opened with Paul Simon and a musical thing with the hot it girl of the time, that Sabrina Carpenter Werman who shows up everywhere. It's funny how the whole it girl thing is is for real. Save your money, dear, you can yet up kidding because there'll be another hot

I was shocked if you didn't see at the extent to which it was new comedy. Yeah, with just zillions of I assumed they'd be a flashback show, and it had some, but it was mostly newly produced stuff and a lot of it was really good. A lot of it was not, but that's the nature of you know, that sketch comedy. Yeah, that was a lot of the more famous sketches, like the the being abducted by alien stuff and just you know. Anyway, they displayed Kneed Meryl Streep as guests star.

Yeah, pretty funny. I thought, Eddie Murphy doing Tracy Morgan's standing next to Tracy Morgan was pretty dang hilarious. Yes, that was very funny. And Ken Topson say you too, you could be related, and Tracy Morgan says, I don't see it. Oh, I left so hard at that show.

Let me acknowledge briefly the infamous Dug thing where the punchline of the black Jeopardy sketch was that a Trump supporter is such as stupid racist he won't even shake the hand of a black man, right, at which I turned it.

Off for a while. I was like, no, sorry, you don't want me okay, bye. So a different topic here came across this on the NPR feed. So I don't use emojis, but the rest of you people do for some reason. And apparently if you do a thumbs up, there are six different skin colors you can choose for the thumbs up. There used to just be yellow, but now there's yellow, I don't know, slightly, tan, more tan, even more tan, Brown, and black are your choices, and

And everything is based on race all the time, so you need to pick an accurate skin tone and then acknowledge your white thumbs up supremacy. You know what, you people, you had your day and you're still having it in government to some extent and on campuses. But we're coming for you.

We had this story a couple of weeks ago. It's obvious, but I hadn't thought about it before. But now I think about it every time I hear academics say or experts say. I got to remember that academics and experts are like, depending on the uh, what their expertise is, one hundred percent of them are progressives. Sometimes it gets down to as few as ninety eight percent of them are progressives. But so if you go to experts, they're

If an expert's quoted. There's a good chance that is a professor. Professors are the media's favorite experts, and if it's a professor, it's going to be a progressive person almost always.

So yeah, you're incredibly one side. Experts think this is dangerous. Okay, so you ask progressives and nobody else. But that's hilarious. You're showing your white privilege if you don't, if you if you use the yellow thumbs up. So think think about that throughout the day. I just like the Simpsons. You evil be funny, racist bastard. N PR has that been defunded yet? Please not yet Doje's working on it. We got a lot more on the way and some