>> The New York time has been dealing with a bedbug infestation.
Much like the Trump Doral property in Miami.
Now, they put out a statement to their employees, just to make sure everyone knows about it.
And there was something published online and there were a lot of like snarky comments in
response one of those snarky comments which I enjoyed came from an associate professor
at George Washington university.
He had tweeted the falling the bedbugs are a metaphor.
The bed bugs are Bret Stephens, now who is Bret Stephens?
He's a conservative columnist at the New York Times.
He's one of these individuals who's targeted college students for safe spaces.
He's talked about the importance of free speech.
>> He's also published some climate change denialist crap, let's keep it real, and so
I can understand why people have some negative feelings toward him.
Now, let me just say, the tweet got nine likes, zero retweets.
And at that point, Bret Stephens sent an email to this individual to basically call him out
and, you know
>> Show how upset he was at being called the bedbug.
So let me give you a portion of the email he writes, I'm often amazed about the things
supposedly decent people are prepared to say about other people, people they've never met
on Twitter.
I think you've set a new standard,
>> Really, that's the new standard of loners, okay, all right.
>> I would welcome the opportunity for you to come to my home, meet my wife and kids,
talk to us for a few minutes, and then call me a bedbug to my face.
>> That would take some genuine courage and intellectual itergrity on your part.
Now, the provost of the university was included in this.
Email, okay?
So there's Bret Stephens.
>> Go ahead and cry about it.
And so this story is incredible for so many different reasons.
First of all, I mean, I can't help but think about it and react to it from my own context
because we know what it's like.
I mean, just last week, I had to ask one of my male colleagues to start my car for me
outside, so I could run from inside the studio straight to my car so I can get out of here.
Because of the severe threats I've been getting, right.
I don't wanna waste time being out in In public one second longer than I needed to be.
That's the world we're living in, right?
But Bret Stephens is out there crying because someone called him a bedbug.
In fact, he went on a little press tour to talk about it.
I want to go to that video in just a second, but first you.
>> Yeah, actually, the worst part of this story is that included the provost and that
email, so obviously trying to get the professor fired or in trouble.
It is institution okay, so it's one thing to get all emotional and catch feelings over
being called a bad bone.
That's just amusing.
But when you try to get the guy fired for saying, calling your bedbug, I mean that is
literally the smallest insult.
Again, literal, that I have ever seen on Twitter.
And when Anna's right is particularly galling for those of us on the left that have to deal
with non stop threats, including death threats, from the right wing, non stop, basically,
trying to terrorize people on the left, and then this guy gets tweet, tweet.
The guy didn't even say at Bret Stephens, right?
So I don't we don't even know how he found it.
And this thing that got zero retweets as small as a bedbug, and he's like, I hate your free
speech.
I'm gonna try to get you fired.
So now let's see him try to explain it away.
>> Deactivated your Twitter account after a controversy that involves someone calling
you a name?
>> I think Twitter it tends to bring out the worst in its users.
So I wrote him a personal email.
I didn't go to Twitter.
I wrote him a personal email which I think was very civil.
Saying that I did appreciate it.
I also copied his provost.
On the note people are upset about this.
I wanna be clear.
I had no intention whatsoever to get him in any kind of professional trouble.
But it is the case that the New York Times and other institutions that people should
be aware manager should be aware of the way in which their people their professors or
journalists Interact with the rest of the world.
All I would say is that using dehumanizing rhetoric like bedbugs, or, you know, analogizing
people to insects is always wrong, we can do better.
We should be the people on social media that we are in real life.
>> I would agree with that final statement for sure.
Is that the worst thing that you have ever been called on social media?
>> I love Jesse asking that question.
So let's keep it real.
Everyone doesn't matter where you are on the political spectrum.
You know, when he says I wasn't trying to get him any kind of professional trouble,
I just thought his manager should know, You know that that's not true, right?
Well, why are you telling his manager when you don't know his managers, not like he's
managers, you're drinking buddy, and you're just telling them for no reason?
No, you're doing it to get him in professional trouble.
>> Right.
>> There's no question about that.
So that was actually the worst and most disingenuous part of this whole thing.
>> So he talks about, like look we need to be civil.
We need to speak to people in a professional way.
Let's not use social media to attack people, but he uses his position as a columnist at
the New York Times.
To put out insults that are far worse, and actually have negative impacts on people's
lives and well beings.
So I'll give you examples.
He called the campus rape epidemic an imaginary enemy, okay?
He's also written that antisemitism was, quote, the disease of the Arab mind.
>> Well.
>> So that's who Bret Stephens is, and that's just a little sampling, like a little nibble
taste of the kind of stuff he puts out there.
I would argue far more insulting than being called a bedbug especially if someone, again,
who has some following, who has some power, who has the ability to really focus the conversation
on various issues, and this is the way he does it.
He also likes to give speeches on college campuses about the importance of protecting
freedom of expression.
Take a look.
I've been thinking a lot about safe spaces lately.
Once you designate some spaces as safe, you imply that the rest are unsafe.
It follows that they should be made safer.
That is an important insight It shows how easily an impulse to shield and protect the
vulnerable quickly becomes a desire and then a demand to impose a particular concept of
safety on others whether they want it or not.
Instead of wanting to emerge at last from the cocoons of their safe spaces.
They want to extend the domains of those spaces into the next stages of their lives.
We live in a world that makes it easy to continue inhabiting these safe spaces, so here is my
advice to you.
Get out of your own safe spaces.
Narrow your criteria for what's beyond the pale.
Safe spaces, physical and intellectual, are for children.
>> He has also published pieces titled, Free Speech and the Necessity of Discomfort.
>> Now is cover bedbugs, real helpful.
>> And here is a tweet before he had deactivated his account over his feeling.
Or nation cannot maintain its culture of free speech if we continue to reward to who speak
to destroy careers rather than rebut ideas and he is quoting David French there, he says
David French, as astute as usual.
>> Yes, now when you email somebody's provost and their manager to try to get them fired.
That would seem to be just trying to destroy their careers.
But hey that was you who's offended not someone else.
So look last thing on the cocoon of the save space that Bret Stephens would like to live
in.
I'm not against people being civil online I would love it it would be an enormous relief
right?
But you can't have it both ways.
You can't say these stupid left wingers just when we say racist things to them all of a
sudden they need a safe space.
We need a cocoon just because we're racists and bigots.
And by the way, when you talk about how antisemitism is the disease of the Arab mind or however
you phrase it is you just heard.
That's racist period.
I know in Washington they think, you can insult Arabs and Muslims all day long.
That doesn't count.
I don't know why that doesn't count who they make it sound like only?
Well, he literally said it, as if only Arabs who are antisemitic Pretty sure the Arabs
didn't do the Holocaust.
But if he had written in the New York Times it was Christians who did the Holocaust, which
is an indisputable fact, he actually would've gotten in trouble for saying something that's
true.
But saying something bigoted, not in trouble.
But then if you're offended by that, you go says safe space, Arabs are the worst.
The antisemites no one else what if you're offended by?
Are you crying?
Hey listen, it seems like you're a bad but My God someone criticized me.
You guys are such snowflakes and hypocrites.
Look, anyone who can't see how the right wing is monumentally full of crap he just isn't
paying attention.
They never mean anything they say, and Bret Stephens go ahead, you could email my manager.
Yes.
I called you full of crap.