>> Conservatives are intentionally pushing a false narrative about a new Netflix film
that actually denounces the hyper sexualization of young girls. And the reason why they're
intentionally spreading disinformation about the film is because it's not a secret. They're
trying to rile up QAnon conspiracy theorists who are honestly an ever growing presence
within the Republican electorate.
And so QAnon, for those of you who might not have been following the story, has this ridiculous
conspiratorial ideology alleging that there is a cabal of satanic or satan worshippers,
who also happen to be pedophiles running a global sex trafficking ring involving children.
These pedophiles are also allegedly trying to plot against Trump.
Now they're being provoked by these prominent conservatives, including Ted Cruz, who claimed
that Cuties is promoting pedophilia. Now according to The Verge conservative provocateurs like
Steven Crowder and conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones dedicated videos to calling out
the leftist media that praise Cuties. Writers and personalities from conservative publications
like The Daily Caller and Breitbart also criticize the film's content.
Now again, let me reiterate, the whole point of the film is to draw attention to, and to
condemn the hyper sexualization of young girls, and that context certainly matters. But of
course, conservatives leave that context out, and make it appear as though, this is nothing
more than a film that's just attempting to sexualize children and lure in pedophiles,
that is not the case.
Now Ted Cruz for instance, one of the right-wingers who tweeted about this said, Netflix is trying
to profit from the sexual exploitation of young children through its latest film Cuties.
That's not right, as a parent, I find it disturbing. Then, you have another right-winger Tulsi
Gabbard tweeting, Cuties will certainly whet the appetite of pedophiles and help fuel the
child sex trafficking trade.
1 in 4 victims of trafficking are children. It happened to my friend's 13 year old daughter.
Netflix, you are now complicit, #CancelNetflix, she then later said that she cancelled Netflix
herself. But here's the problem, most of the people who have these criticisms haven't actually
watched the film. So Cenk, let me give you a little bit of background and then we'll
bring you in.
Cuties is a French movie that critiques society's sexualization of girls. The movie follows
an 11-year-old Senegalese girl living in Paris, who dreams of joining a local dance clique.
She decides to protest her parents' strict household and join the other girls in dancing
their way through competitions, trying to make a name for themselves.
Cuties uses uncomfortable images to provoke a serious conversation about the sexualization
of girls, especially regarding girls of color, the policing of girl's sexuality, double standards,
the effect of social media on kids and how children learn these behaviors. And that was
actually a review written by Monica Castillo on RogerEbert.com.
And so Cenk, I wanna get your thoughts on all of this.
>> All right, so first of all, there is no legitimate Republican Party anymore. So if
you catch any so called reporter talking about, mainstream Republicans, they're basically
lying to you, which mainstream republicans? Doing what? Ted Cruz is a bastion of the Republican
Party, he's a United States senator from Texas.
He's not alone, all these guys are glaring Trump, part of the Trump family, are going
in and campaigning with people who say 2000 Muslims, that isn't enough and we're looking
forward to another 2000 more. These are total lunatic so in this case, the film is against
sexualizing young kids, but they don't care about what's true.
All they care about is probably they know that their lies will be aided and abetted
by Fox News. Ted Cruz goes on with Maria Bartiromo, she helps him, they both pretend the movie
is child porn. It's like one of the most outrageous accusations I've ever seen. And, then they
play the clip of the movie that Ted Cruz claims as child porn on the interview.
So even if you believed in Ted Cruz's ideology, and you thought it was child porn, well then
Maria Bartiromo and the executives at Fox News should be arrested because it just showed
the same exact thing. >> It's just so transparently disingenuous,
and we actually have that clip which we'll get to in just a minute.
And what's also important about that clip is it's just jarring in how transparent it
is in making it about this election. And that's how you know, they're trying to rile up QAnon
conspiracy theorists, which is dangerous. Because these are the types of people who
walk into random pizzerias in DC that they're accusing of running child sex trafficking
rings with no evidence whatsoever.
Someone could have gotten killed when that happened a few years ago. So there are actual
ramifications and consequences to this, but they don't care. They're gonna go ahead and
you do the dog whistles, they're gonna rile up some of the most unhinged individuals in
this country, knowing full well how dangerous that could really be.
And in the very, very beginning, there actually was some legitimate criticism, but it wasn't
toward the film, it was toward the way Netflix was promoting the film. So for instance, if
you're in France and you come across any type of promotion of the film, you might come across
this movie poster.
And so it shows the young girls, they're on the street, they're dancing, they look like
they're having a good time. When Netflix promoted it, they used this imagery and they honestly
misrepresented what the film is really about in the texts included in the tweet. So they
said something along the lines of Amy becomes fascinated with a twerking dance crew.
No, but that's not what the movie is about, and if you see that imagery and you see those
words, then yeah, you're gonna be super suspicious about this movie. And so there was, I think,
justified criticism toward that and Netflix apologized for it. But it's not in any way,
representative of what the film is actually about.
Now I wanna talk about the hypocrisy, cuz that's the most important part of all of this.
So these QAnon conspiracy theorists think that Donald Trump is the savior. That he's
the good guy who wants to do something about child trafficking, he wants to do something
about pedophilia. He wants to do something about young girls being hypersexualized.
Except Donald Trump has profited handsomely off of hypersexualizing young girls. And in
fact, at one point, it was revealed that when he was running Miss Teen USA, he would just
walk into the dressing rooms where underage girls were naked in a lot of cases to inspect
the situation.
The Rolling Stone article, Trump entered the Miss Teen USA changing room where girls as
young as 15 were in various states of undress. Maria Balado actually talked about this, she
was Miss Teen Vermont in 1997. And she says, I remember putting on my dress really quick,
because I was like, my god, there's a man in here.
Miss Arizona, Tasha Dixon also said she experienced similar behavior by Trump when she was a contestant.
He just came strolling right in, there was no second to put a robe on or any sort of
clothing or anything, some girls were topless, other girls were naked. Our first introduction
to him was when we were at the dress rehearsal and half naked, changing into our bikinis.
And by the way, Trump even confessed to this in 1997, let's take a listen to that.
>> And everyone's getting dressed and ready and everything else, and given no men are
anywhere, and I'm allowed to go in because I'm the owner of the pageant and therefore,
I'm inspecting it.
>> Like, what are you inspecting? But no, no, no, yeah, the lunatics think that that's
the savior who's going to uncover and stop child sex trafficking in this country. And
then here's Ivanka Trump at 15, this is a 1997, dressed very similar to how the girls
in Cuties are dressed.
So if they have a problem with the way the girls are dressed in that film, I wonder if
they have a problem with the way Ivanka Trump was dressed, in 19, what was this? 1997.
>> Yeah, so some of the Miss USA pageant contestants said Donald Trump would keep asking how hot
do you think my daughter is?
And for the Miss Teen USA, four different contestants confirmed he walked in when they
were half naked. And Trump joked about this with Howard Stern all the time, and he joked
about sleeping with the contestants. Now remember there's a couple of different pageants there,
I hope he was talking about the adults.
Even that is terrible when you just barge into the dressing room of adult women, and
then say hey, this is my pageant, and you should sleep with me that's already horrible.
But when you do it with people who barge into the rooms of Miss Teen USA that are as young
as 15, it's beyond horrible.
But look, if you say hey, he's joking around about sleeping with 15 year olds, okay, I
don't know that that makes it that much better but if that get you to sleep at night. But
remember, there was a 10-year-old he met, this is on tape, he said in 10 years I'll
be dating her, who says that about a 10-year-old?
What kinda monster does that? But, how about the most famous child trafficker in the news,
certainly in recent memory, Jeffrey Epstein. Trump was great friends with him, used to
party with him all the time, went to his parties. Not only that, he said, wow, that was a long
time ago, he didn't like him any more.
I don't know if they had a dispute about who should get what girl or whatever it was. Well,
Ghislaine Maxwell, his coconspirator, FCS coconspirator was just arrested. Trump repeatedly
said no, I wish her well, I really wish her well. She's a child trafficker, he's wishing
a child trafficker well right in front of your eyes.
And you go well, how about that movie that's against sexualizing children. I'll pretend
that's the real problem and that Netflix is working with a cabal of politicians and we'll
have congressional hearings over it. And that Ted Cruz will apparently lead and we'll have
Fox News all pretend that Netflix is in favor of pedophilia when the guy who's in favor
of the child trafficker, who wishes or well is actually your leader.
So that's what the right-wing has devolved to in this country, and if you're still a
part of it. >> Yeah, it's awful, and today, I wish we
could've used this video on the show but we couldn't due to copyright issues. There was
a local news report out of Salt Lake City, there was a small group of right-wingers who
were livid about the fact that there's a mask mandate.
Because Coronavirus is still killing an average of thousand people every single day. And so
one of the protesters, this elderly woman was like, molesters love masks, that's why
I'm against it. Which by the way just clarified further that for QAnon conspiracy theorists,
I have trouble believing that they actually genuinely believe what they're saying.
I think that they're using accusations of pedophilia and some of the worst, like the
worst accusations imaginable. The worst kind of false thing you can accuse someone of,
they're using it whenever they want to reject either a person, a politician, a proposal,
a law, whatever it is. No, no I'm against it because pedophiles like it, I'm against
masks because molesters like it.
Okay, so I guess that's just the go to a reason for being against something now, it's just
crazy. And then finally, I wanted to talk about Michael Cohen's daughter because this
part grosses me out even further because both Trump and Michael Cohen are super questionable.
Trump apparently hit on Michael Cohen's daughter when she was under age, and Cohen wrote about
it in his book.
His daughter further confirmed what happened during an interview with CNN, let's take a
quick look at that video. >> And you were playing tennis and you came
off the court, and here's how it was written in Vanity Fair. Somehow Trump's attention
was diverted to another skirt, walking off a tennis court, quote, look at that piece
of ass.
Cohen recalls Trump saying as he whistled and pointed out, quote, I would love some
of that. It's so happened that Trump was referring to Colin's then 15-year-old daughter, Samantha.
Do you remember that moment? Because it goes on to write that after that you came over,
he wanted you to give him a kiss.
And he said, when did you get such a great figure?
>> So, as I told Emily, the story is a little bit less clear to me, I'm sure many women
can relate. You become desensitized to men making these kinds of comments to you and
you allow them to go over your head and you kind of tune out the noise.
But what stood out to me in that moment was he said to my dad, well, there's no way that
she got her looks from you, thank God you married a beautiful woman.
>> It should be noted that Michael Cohen continued working for Trump after that whole exchange,
which is why no good guys in that part of the story at all.
But going back to Ted Cruz, Ted Cruz makes it clear so does Maria Bartiromo that this
whole narrative is about scaring suburban women and helping Donald Trump with his reelection
campaign. >> I guarantee you every pedophile in America
is gonna watch this movie and that Netflix is sitting back fat and happy making money
on it, that's not right.
>> Unbelievable, and you would think that suburban house women would be with you on
that as well, by the way, going into this election.
>> They don't even hide it Cenk, they don't even hide it, they don't even hide it. They
accuse people of the worst things for political purposes, it's insane.
>> I'm really glad you brought that up, this was originally in all right trick, and they
proudly bragged about it about five, six years ago. They would say, look, let's just go around
smearing people as pedophiles, it doesn't matter if it's true or not. It'll be the first
thing that shows up in their Google search, and their lives will be ruined.
So we get to ruin the lives of our political opponents, and it's a great trick it and it's
the hardest thing in the world to fight. And then no one wants to just think, in cases
of 1% chance that it's true, no one wants to defend you, perfect way to do political
assassinations.
And so now they've taken that to a meta situation, where they're just not doing it one by one,
they're accusing anyone they don't agree with, Netflix, democrats, Tom Hanks, it doesn't
matter. They're accusing Dr. Fauci, Bill Gates, it doesn't matter, they're accusing all of
them of pedophilia. And they're saying, so the only way you could make sure that you
protect the children.
And hears that Trump said, no I hid the Coronavirus facts because I didn't want people to panic,
then he goes pedophilia, pedophilia. No, the whole point is to create fear and panic and
to destroy their political opponents. It's the sickest, most craven strategy I have ever
seen in politics.
And so, that's why I said, look, this is not normal times. If you're still a republican
and you're part of that party, who are you? What kind of grotesque thing have you signed
up for? And if you're part of the media, and you're still not calling out this phenomenon,
you're not a real reporter.
You just do political correctness, you're a news actor, it's sick. By the way, in that
story about Michael Cohen's daughter, he says those comments about the 15-year-old, Michael
Cohen says, no, that's my daughter. At that point, Trump then when she comes by, asks
for a kiss. Now you've seen him say on tape, I just kiss them without their permission.
In many other instances he talks about, and by the way, the pageant contestants also said
the same thing, he'd just come in and kiss us on the lips without asking. And Michael
Cohen knows that, and so knowing that Michael Cohen knows that, he tells him, now that I
found out is your 15-year-old daughter, let me kiss her.
God dammit man, they're the sickest people alive. And then they turn around and they
accuse other people of this stuff. So, their strategy is crystal clear, and Maria Bartiromo,
what do suburban housewives have anything to do with the policy issue at hand? Nothing,
she's saying now remember suburban housewives, vote against all democrats because of pedophilia,
wink.
>> Yeah, well, I mean that disinformation campaign is specifically targeted toward mothers
living in suburban areas. And so, the QAnon, part of the reason why it's so successful
and spreading is it uses these innocuous hashtags like Save the Children. And they really bring
people in without them realizing what they're actually about.
And slowly but surely people get radicalized into conspiracy theorists, it's actually pretty
terrifying. So that's what we're dealing with now, which is why it's important not to empower
these people in any way or embolden them. And so yeah, we need to get Trump out.