Speaker 1: Many of you said that it is an absolutely must watch episode
of Bill Maher's Club Random podcast because right wing grifter Candace Owens appeared
on his program. I checked it out. And indeed, there is a lot to glean and much to learn from
this appearance. We let's just jump right in. Candace Owens is the right wing darling who by
all accounts has sort of constructed this right wing character and now appears in lots of places,
making really bad right wing arguments about stuff. What's really interesting about this
appearance is that on the one hand, on some issues, Bill Maher makes a lot of sense. On
the other hand, Bill Maher also contributes to the disinformation. I've talked about Bill
Maher right often and wrong often. So let's get right into it. The first subject they tackle is
climate change. Take a listen to this. Speaker 2: But don't you not believe in
the moon landing? So I'm supposed to believe you about climate?
Speaker 3: I think it's so funny how people take that. Well, first off,
I know what I'm talking about with the climate stuff, so I'm just going to go ahead and promote.
Speaker 2: You're not the only one. Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean,
I think you should probably real. Speaker 1: By the way, Candace does
this weird thing where she doesn't even look at Bill. She's just looking into the middle
distance. It's a really strange personality trait, and I'm not you know, it can be connected
to a lot of different things, which I won't diagnose here. It would be inappropriate, but
it's really weird how she's just staring into the middle distance. She's not looking at Bill Maher.
Speaker 3: I like that there is in the same way that there are narratives,
I think you're now more awake to the climate hoax as one that finds trillions of dollars and okay,
we are not running out of space. You could fit the entire world if you stacked it like New York
City in Dallas. So rich. Speaker 2: I just said.
Speaker 3: Are you sad about. But at the point I. Speaker 1: Notice that she's now talking
about overpopulation, which is a different issue than climate change.
Speaker 3: Is, is that that hurricanes are down. The whole idea that every time it rains,
it's because, you know, something bad is happening is like it's it's okay.
Speaker 2: What I will agree with you on is this The environmentalists do often lie because they
have this idea. This issue is so important. And by the way, it is so important that it's okay
if we shade the truth to get people on our side. And I don't agree with that. I'm all.
Speaker 3: Right every time. Speaker 2: But. Well, not every time.
Speaker 3: What was your climate disaster growing up? Mine was mine was global
warming. They don't even say it anymore. Speaker 2: They don't say global warming.
Speaker 3: They don't know. They say climate change. They they
went from global being your body. Speaker 2: What in the world they.
Speaker 3: Do, don't They went from global cooling to global warming.
Speaker 2: They never were in global. No one was every time it was one. That's such a stupid
talking point that you keep repeating. It's a zombie like it was one article in one magazine
in one day, one week in Newsweek or something. No. Speaker 1: Okay. So Bill Maher here is generally
right. It is true that as we have learned more about climate change, we know that there can be
an overall warming, but that in localized areas it can actually mean lower lows and higher highs,
more extreme weather events, record warm temperatures, record cool temperatures.
It's much more complicated. And what they consider the smoking gun, which is you used to only call it
global warming and now it's climate change. That's a way to hide the fact that you were
wrong. It's actually that there was even much more to it. Then we get to another conspiracy theory,
I guess, of Candace's, which is not her own. It's that we never really went to the moon.
Speaker 2: Okay. But just to be clear, like people did land on the moon.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Speaker 2: Okay. There we go. I don't.
Speaker 3: Know. Speaker 2: I do know.
Speaker 3: I just want to know why we didn't go back.
Speaker 2: We did go. Speaker 3: Back. What did we go back to?
Speaker 2: The moon? Speaker 3: We. We people on the moon?
Speaker 2: Yes. Okay. Speaker 3: I'm asking the question. When
when did we want to be on the moon? 69. Okay. Speaker 2: July 20th,
1969. Yeah. We went back like ten more times. Speaker 3: Went back. Who walked in the moon?
Speaker 2: America, You. Speaker 3: Know, what were
the astronauts names? Educate me. Why? Speaker 2: Remembers what the astronauts
names were then Then. Speaker 3: That's a
pretty big deal to walk on the moon. Speaker 2: The first guy. And then after that.
Speaker 3: Yes, they I've on it. Speaker 1: I. All right, So this is
this is there's a lot here. This is very dumb. There were a number of Apollo missions which
involved astronauts landing on the moon. And you can just look it up. They just don't really seem
to know. But this is the sort of endless, cynical skepticism in which if you weren't there yourself,
you can just doubt whether it happened. We know, of course, that various third parties,
including the space agencies of other countries, which they were able to track and confirm the
Apollo missions, the Soviet Union, if this were fake, there would be so many countries with the
motivation to expose it as fake. And this is the way they so doubt about other things. It's not
consequential. Like if you don't believe we went to the moon, it's kind of dumb,
but it's not consequential. But the fact that anything can be doubted becomes consequential.
When you're talking about actionable things like climate change or whatever the case may
be. Now then we get to Bill Maher. And Bill Maher also often says when it comes to medical stuff,
Bill Maher says weird things. The topic of vaccines comes up. Here we go.
Speaker 3: For parents and kind of giving them a no.
Speaker 2: No, I'm with you there. Okay? Speaker 3: I wasn't sure about that. And I
do. I produced an entire separate series talking about vaccines and sort of the increase and well,
I don't know, I was a kid. Speaker 2: I don't think
vaccines are a hoax or anything, Right. I just. Speaker 3: Not a hoax. Okay. But how do you know?
What do your kids need from 1980? Speaker 2: No, they don't.
Speaker 3: 6 to 75. You know. Speaker 2: I mean, my view,
just to be clear. Vaccines are a tool in the medical kit, just like antibiotics. Right. And
just like antibiotics. I wouldn't want to be told everyone's taking them, so you have to try to.
Speaker 3: Yeah. One size fits. Speaker 2: All. If I decide I need one
for a certain pathogen and I'm at a place in my life where I think that playing the odds, which is
what medicine always is, that would be the smart thing. Okay. But forcing it and and in children
who never needed it for this. Yeah the least like. Speaker 3: And they're so sick the kids have
never been sicker and that. Speaker 2: Right never.
Speaker 3: Got my my series my asking these kids have never been more vax for the most
vax century in the entire world. You know, we have these high infant mortality rates
when weighed against third world countries. And you're being told that this is because
we're super healthy. You got kids 75 vaccines. When I was a kid, it was it was 12, you know,
and there's been an explosion. People even know anything about diseases. It's just these constant
fear campaigns. And then on top of that, in states like L.A., you can't opt out, you know, So these
are things that parents have to think about now, where you're literally raising your kids.
Could you go to prison for saying that I don't want my child referred to as different gender.
Speaker 1: All right. And then we're going to get to that. So, you know, this whole thing about high
infant mortality, it's a mishmash of issues. Let's deal with it one by one. They love to mishmash
issues. Since the introduction of vaccines, many life threatening diseases, polio, measles,
whooping cough, dramatic reductions in prevalence, these diseases use to cause significant morbidity
and mortality in children. So this idea that we're sicker than ever because of vaccines,
it's not borne out by the science. Now, are there other issues like, for example, at one point it
was thought that if you keep kids away from food allergens, they'll be less likely to develop food
allergies. Wrong. That makes them more likely. So now we're looking more at like the Israeli model
of introducing peanuts early and this sort of thing when it comes to the the infant mortality,
when you look at infant and maternal mortality on average in the US, it is worse than in so many
other countries. And it's worse because so many people, thanks to right wing health care policy,
don't have access or can't afford, don't have access to or can't afford good health care.
And in fact, if you divide the country up into the wealthier part and the less wealthy part,
the driver of the high infant and maternal mortality is in the poorer areas that are
under-resourced. Thanks to Republican policy, the numbers in the wealthy areas are as good
as any of those European countries. And so it's thanks to the policies of people that Candace
Owens supports, that that's the case. Bill Maher then says on trans issues that Candace
is saying a lot of really interesting things. Speaker 2: When I did my editorial about trans,
which, you know, I feel like again, a great demarcation between what liberal
is old school liberal and woke liberal believes trans is of course a real thing and they should
be protected and respected. Woke is like well before they can like tie their shoe, we tell them
they very likely might be in the wrong body. Speaker 3: I ran your segment on my podcast,
actually, it was right on real time. You did the segment talking about, okay, this is a real thing.
Speaker 2: Why is it regional geography? Why is it regional really important? That's what I
was saying. Why is it really regional? What is it? The water here in Canada? For you?
Speaker 3: I might. Speaker 2: Be. I've been to dinner parties
more than one where there's 12 people and they're all talking about their trenchcoat. They're
all there. It's almost like that's the norm. Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the idea here is that there is a social contagion, that trans is a fad. There's
a legitimate conversation to be had here. It's important to know many ancient cultures understood
gender that went beyond the male female binary. The hijra people in South Asia to spirit people
in many North American indigenous cultures. For a fact, Vinay I don't know if I'm pronouncing that
correctly in Samoa and Katori in Thailand. This stuff goes back a long way. What has changed is,
number one, the medical understanding, the language we use to describe trans
experiences. The terminology has changed. Medical and psychological professionals have been aware
of people whose gender identity doesn't align with the sex assigned at birth. That's not new. We know
that strong societal pressure and stigma can keep trans people from saying, Hey, I'm experiencing
this. And so it makes sense that in areas where the perceived consequences of saying I feel X
would be higher, right? If you feel there's more risk, the saying that you'd be less likely to be
willing to publicly say, this is how I identify. And then also it's important to consider that
the percentage of trans and non-binary people who are availing themselves, for example, of surgical
interventions is no higher now than it used to be. And so, sure, there is like a conversation,
I guess, to be had here. But the truth and the reality of it is that it's a conversation most
of these folks aren't having in good faith. All right. Last topic that they dealt with is January
6th. And it actually got kind of contentious. Speaker 2: On this can.
Speaker 3: Definitely show we around. Speaker 2: Us about, you know, trying
to overthrow the government in the United States. Speaker 3: You're just not like you're not a weak
enough person to really like I don't buy this this I think you I think you dance this way because you
think you have to placate. Speaker 2: Okay. First
of all, I just want you to educate me. Speaker 3: You almost lost America on January six.
I just don't buy that you that you're that song. Speaker 2: Yeah, I do. I'm just to educate you a
little on this. I was saying this for five years when everyone was laughing at me for saying this,
that Trump would never concede the election and he would never go away. I was all alone on a raft.
Speaker 3: But I mean, you saw BLM riots, right? Yeah. The summer leading up to this,
right where like you, I lived in D.C. at this time where you couldn't go outside. Cars were flipped,
things were burned. People were boarding up their windows. But you thought the end of democracy,
you could say it was meaningful because it happened when people above the age of 65
stormed the Capitol like you thought. That was the worst thing you've ever seen in American politics.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, what was the worst scene? That was a small part of a bigger picture, the
worse the worst thing was that finally we had a president, after all this history that we've had,
nobody ever did this, not Al Gore and not Nixon, who probably didn't actually lose their elections.
They allowed this peaceful transfer of power to happen. We finally had a guy who decided,
of course, because he's insane, decided that no matter what happens, I won this election,
there's only two things that could possibly happen. I win the election. Or if I don't win
the election, there must have been some cheating. It was looked at by his own people around him,
including the Homeland Security Department, including the director of National Intelligence,
including every court, federal and state, including his own lawyers, his daughter,
Bill Barr. Everybody told him you lost this election. They looked at this over and over
again. Even the Republican vote counters like the one he called who said, find me 11,000 more
votes. Even those people told him so plainly. He did not accept losing the election. And then he
tried to put in a bond. This is why he's. Speaker 3: Just it's not their money that
that that day, as the media were saying, talk about media hoaxes.
Speaker 2: I just I give you my answer. It's not just that day,
although that was part of the scheme. I mean, it's not a coincidence that they
showed up on the very day that they were certifying the vote at the very place they
were doing it, to stop that from happening. Speaker 1: So you get the picture. Candice
just doesn't want to accept that there's no real risk. It wasn't really a threat. A lot
of the rioters were old, by the way. If you look at the hundreds and hundreds that were indicted,
it does not skew 65 plus. So that's also a lie. They seem unwilling. They're essentially saying,
fine, they may have wanted to do an insurrection, but it was too incompetent and carried out
by people. I guess too old and weak is what she's saying, to really do it, even if true,
the idea that that. Makes it less dangerous is, of course, ridiculous. So Candace Owens saying
some ridiculous things, Bill Maher saying a few ridiculous things. But at the end of the day,
it is free speech, right? That's that's they they chat and they talk. And then we try to figure out
whether we can make heads or tails out of it. Let me know what you think. Curious to hear from you.