 Fox News decided to bring on a liberal. Now ask yourself, why would they bring on a liberal? There's really only a couple of reasons why they'd invite a liberal on their program. One would be to basically shame them for being a liberal. Two, perhaps you bring on this liberal as an example to your conservative audience as to why liberals are so unreasonable. But it's neither of those two reasons, which means that the only other reason why Fox News would want anything to do with a liberal who went viral on TikTok is because they're going to use said liberal as a useful idiot for right wing propaganda. And that is indeed what happened. So I don't really need to describe the TikTok because they show it to you in this clip. But let's go ahead and wash. And let me just preface this video by saying that I'm going to shit on this guy. Okay, like I'm just gonna we'll get that out of the way. I'm going to shit on the liberal here relentlessly so. But I don't necessarily believe that this is a bad person. I think that probably his intentions are pure. That being said, though, what he does here is be the unwitting idiot for the right. They're making an example out of him to prove how good they are, and he doesn't even realize it. So let's watch our next guest is a liberal who is going viral for reaching across the aisle to make new friends at a Trump rally. I'm a liberal and I went to a Trump rally to see if there was common ground. Going in, I was expecting aggression, but I actually experienced a lot of kindness. Do you want to be friends? Of course. Love to everybody. Sure. I'm going to get a hug. Sure. Yes! That last clip was Holly, and she invited me to a woman's Bible study. So Malika and I went to see a mule. What if Holly's friends? Hello. Again, to be experienced, incredible kindness. They're a fun group of people. I'm a liberal and I want to- TikTok user 100 new friends, a.k.a. Samuel Donner joins us right now from L.A. Samuel, good morning to you. Good morning. How you doing? I'm doing okay. Great to meet you. We saw this. We thought we got to talk to this guy. So the idea was you wanted to- you wanted to go to what you, as a liberal, thought would be a hostile environment, a Trump event. And have that turn out. It actually was much more friendly than I was expecting. We- I mean, as growing up in L.A., you think that these events are going to be, like, very aggressive. And also, I was kind of just saying that I was a liberal, but I was absolutely, like, baffled that people wanted to talk and would actually be friends with me when I asked, want to be friends? And they said yes. That's right. So ultimately, I think what you found is that it is easy to find common ground with people you do not agree with politically, right? Yeah, I think that's what, like, 100 new friends in Jubilee is about. That's the company I'm working with is we're just trying to find common ground between humans. And I think, like, at the end of the day, humans have a lot more common ground than we're led to believe. All right. Let's take a look. Here's another clip. You trying to find common ground with more humans. What does that mean? Well, that means that we are very much against what our current socialist president is doing. We have a tremendous racial problem. We don't have to be part of that. We're not a part of that. We support people of all races. And so anybody that says that Republicans and racists are absolutely incorrect. So, Samuel, after you made these videos, have you told your friends, hey, you know, I went to this Trump rally and people were friendly? And what has their reaction been? I mean, some, like, a lot of, well, when I was actually going over, they're like, you're going to, like, Memphis, the one of, like, the, like, homicide capitals of the world and of the country. And, like, there's a lot of gun violence over there. And then you're going to a Trump rally on top of that. It seemed fairly scary. And I think that's honestly what I wanted to test, like, can I go into what I thought was the most hostile environment I could. But when I went, I, you know, I told them, like, it was actually fairly friendly. And I think, again, like, it's just about starting those conversations. If you can start those conversations, you can actually understand where that common ground is, where it starts, and maybe where it ends. And even where it ends, you can discuss with each other, like, hey, like, let's find that common ground. Okay. So I think that there's probably a sizable portion of you all who watch that and think, Mike, what's the problem? You're proving Fox news, right? That maybe it's, you know, the left, they're the ones who are unreasonable. If you have anything to say about this wholesome content, okay, hear me out here. Okay, folks, just hear me out for a second. So I don't believe that it is impossible to get along with people who have different ideological beliefs than you have. But the entire premise of his TikTok is critically flawed. And it makes this whole argument fall flat. Because, well, let's just look at what he said here. So at the beginning of his TikTok, he says, I'm a liberal and I went to a Trump rally to see if there was common ground going in. I was expecting aggression, but I actually experience a lot of kindness. Okay, well, that would be really surprising if you engaged with conservatives about their extremist beliefs and conservative beliefs. And they were cordial and polite. I think that's probably possible. But the questions that you asked were, quote, do you want to be my friend? So stop for a moment. Let's just think about this here. Why would they just immediately be rude to you if you ask them a question like that? Furthermore, even if they shot you down and they said that they didn't want to be your friend, even if they're conservatives, I don't think that that necessarily means that they're inherently more aggressive, because just asking an adult randomly, if you want to be their friend, that's kind of weird. Like, I don't think that that's a good gauge to determine whether or not somebody is reasonable, because if somebody came up to me with the microphone and camera and they were like, hey, do you want to be my friend? I'd probably be like, who are you? Maybe if we get to know each other, like friendships usually happen more organically. I mean, perhaps you can become friends with someone if you ask them that question. But I think that most people would view that as a little bit strange. So what he's doing is he's taking that and conflating it with this idea, and he's priming you to think this by the way it's not explicit, that conservatives must be reasonable because half of them didn't shoot you down when you ask them if you wanted to be friends. Okay, but that doesn't really prove your point. Do you understand? Like, I feel like I shouldn't have to explain this to liberals. They should be savvy enough because they're more reasonable than Republicans because they're not Republicans. But I have to explain this. Okay, if you just talked to Republicans about ice cream, you can find a ton of common ground, right? If I talk to Steven Crowder, somebody who I am opposed to vociferously on probably 99.9% of issues, but we just talked about cookies, we limited the discussion narrowly to cookies. I think that we'd find a lot of common ground and technically, I'm finding common ground with Steven Crowder. I mean, if you sat Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas in a room with a trans person, I think that if you narrowed that conversation down to video game preferences, perhaps assuming Greg Abbott plays video games, you know, they might find some common ground. Maybe they both like JRPGs, first person shooters, but that's not how you gauge whether or not somebody who has an ideological position is aggressive because you're not actually asking substantive questions. You're asking benign questions. So if you were to ask a Republican, hey, what do you think about trans people? Odds are that's going to warrant a completely different response than simply asking them whether or not you want to be friends with them. Do you understand? Like, do you see why that's a problem here? Like he talks about how he was invited to a Bible study. Okay, they were very kind to you. Great. But what would happen if you tested their kindness and you asked them whether or not they believed that gender affirming care should be provided to trans youth because it is medically necessary? What would they say? Odds are maybe they'd say it in a polite way, but my bet would be that they would deny that trans people should have access to this lifesaving medically necessary care. So that's the problem with this TikTok and why it's inherently flawed. You're not asking political questions. So of course they're not going to be aggressive because you're a liberal. If you're asking them, if you could be their friend, like if you go up to somebody and say, wow, well, what do you think of the weather? Oh, it's beautiful. Well, that person had a mega hat on and he said the weather was beautiful. Didn't even, you know, call me a fuckhead or a libtard for being a liberal. Well, yeah, that's because you didn't bring up politics. It's so it's so weird that this is supposedly a persuasive point. And then Fox News brings him on because, you know, you see the point of what he's trying to do. And they say, oh, well, you know, this basically proves in fact, what Ducey said was, ultimately, I think what you found is that it is easy to find common ground with people. You do not agree politically, you do not agree with politically, right? And again, you can find common ground with people who you disagree with politically on non-political issues. But whether or not you can find common ground is a different question when politics comes up. And so the reason why, like I want to talk about this is because there are some political issues, some politicians that conservative support, where it is impossible to find common ground. These differences between the left and the right, these are irreconcilable differences. You can't convince me that a trans person who is fighting just to exist and survive in the United States is going to be accepted by a Republican who votes for politicians that demonize them, that want them erased out of existence, that pens legislation, that detransition trans youth. So there are some individuals where Republicans inherently do not see them as equal. They view them as inferior. So for this dude, presumably a white cis straight dude, it's tone deaf for you to be like, oh, well, these conservatives were lovely to me. Maybe there's misconceptions about how aggressive they are after you literally just ask them, do you want to be my friend? It's just deeply stupid. Now, to be fair to him, okay, because I have shit on him, so let me be a little bit fair to him. This TikTok was based off of a lengthy video posted on Jubilee, August 12th, those when this came out. It's about 22 minutes long. And he does ask a little bit more political questions once he kind of disarms them and talks to them. He asks, well, do you think that Trump is sexist? Do you think that he's racist just a couple of times, not necessarily representative of all of the interviews that he did, but he asks like slightly better questions there. But overall, it's still flawed, because this is the ultimate conclusion that he comes away with after you saw, you know, a good portion of the interviews that he conducted, like the main question that he asked, which was, will you be my friend? On this journey, we connected with so many people that didn't share our politics at all. And that left me wondering if this divide, Trump versus Biden, red versus blue, Democrat versus Republican, is a way of thinking that doesn't serve anyone. So do you understand now why this is tone deaf and spoiler alert, by the way, if you're planning on watching that video, sorry. His conclusion was we connected with so many people that didn't share our politics at all. And it left me wondering if this divide, Trump versus Biden, red versus blue, Democrat versus Republican, is a way of thinking that doesn't serve anyone. That's your takeaway. Do you understand why Fox News brought you on? This is why they brought you on, because you reduce politics down to this exchange, this conversation of basically small talk. And then based on that, you extrapolate and claim, we'll see Republicans aren't that aggressive. Meanwhile, they elect politicians that support aggressively, violently anti-trans legislation. They support legislation that restricts women's bodily autonomy. So you can't come to this conclusion based on the analysis, if we want to call it that, that you conducted. You have to go deeper, right? And I'm not saying that you can't be friends with conservatives. I certainly cannot. I cannot support anyone who votes for politicians that think that I am inferior to them and want to take away my rights as a member of the LGBTQ plus community. However, I'm not saying that you can't be friends with a conservative or you're a bad person. If you're friends with a conservative and you put aside political beliefs, but to essentially argue implicitly, right? To be fair, that Republicans aren't super aggressive in spite of them supporting aggressive politicians and hostile politicians, because you had a nice little 10 second exchange with them when you asked them whether or not they want to be your friend. It's just, it's flawed. It's stupid. And this is why people on the left like myself criticize liberal so much, because I get that you see the division in the United States. It makes us all feel uncomfortable. Hyperpolarization is a real strain on our democracy. But the goal is not to try to meet those people who are doing the harm halfway. And to be clear, when I say those people, I'm disproportionately referring to Republican politicians, but still the people who vote for them who attend the rallies, especially like the biggest Kool-Aid drinkers, they're definitely part of the problem not to vote shame, but kind of am, ain't I? They're part of the problem if you vote for these racist, sexist, transphobic politicians. So to go up to them and essentially sanitize their image and claim they're so nice because they said they want to be your friend. Okay. But that doesn't erase the bad things that they do, the policies they support, the politicians that they vote for. So, you know, if this wasn't propaganda for Republicans, Fox News would not have brought on this liberal.