 Yeah, absolutely. So recently Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted something. So of course that meant that Fox News had to do an entire five plus minute segment on it. Because that's what they do. If she farts, they cover it because that gives them the opportunity to call her a hypocrite because she claims she wants to cut greenhouse gas emissions. And here she is farting, contributing to the warming of the planet. Of course I'm being hyperbolic, but that's essentially what has become of Fox News since she was elected. She's this big, bad socialist boogeyman and she's great for the ratings. So whatever she does, Fox News is gonna be right there like stank on shit to cover it and try to make her look bad. The supposedly serious news organization is going to cover a tweet that really, I doubt she put much thought into. It's seemingly benign, but nonetheless, here's the tweet in question that was so controversial according to Fox News. Croissants at LaGuardia are going for $7 apiece. Yet some people think getting a whole hour of personal dedicated human labor for $15 is too expensive. I can't believe she'd say this. AOC? I mean, what was she thinking? Fox News is killing me. They're killing me, man. This is so insignificant. The fact that they'd cover this is mind boggling to me. And really, I think that she's making a good point. I mean, if we're going to be charging $7 for a croissant, if prices are going to go up, that I think it's reasonable for us to assert that the people in this country deserve to have a living wage, deserve to make a living wage, so that way they're able to keep up with the rising costs. But nonetheless, this is the way that they decided to spin this to make her look like the devil. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is annoyed at having to pay $7 for a croissant at LaGuardia Airport. All right, here's the tweet. I'll give it to you. Oh, no, we don't, I don't have it. She's saying, look, why do I have to pay $7 an hour for a croissant at LaGuardia? Right. Why can't you pay $15 an hour minimum wage? All right, fair question. I want to bring in Justin Haskins. He's executive director, editor at the Heartland Institute. What does the price of croissant have to do with the $15 an hour minimum wage? I don't see the point. Well, the point is, I guess, to show that if a croissant can cost $7, and I guess we should be able to pay people $15 an hour and that that somehow is going to be a better living wage for those people. It's totally ridiculous. The reality is this, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders and other democratic socialists, they have no idea how markets work or they know how they work and they just don't care. The truth is, is that in capitalism, capitalism is all just about freedom. That's all it's about, right? I have property rights, you have property rights, and we can freely exchange a property between us and money is just a medium for doing that. If you're against capitalism, then you're just against freedom. And that's really what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants is to get rid of freedom in the economy so that she and people like her can decide what croissants cost, what labor is worth to people. And how does she know that? She wants legislated wages. So she can say, you got to pay this, this and this all over the place. Now, Justin, I want to get your opinion on what Bernie Sanders said in an NPR interview. I'm going to quote now. What I mean by democratic socialism is that I want a vibrant democracy. Seems to me that those two may be opposite ideas. What say you? Yeah, absolutely. Bernie Sanders is trying to reposition what socialism means, because he knows that according to a Fox News poll in February, only 25% of Americans have a favorable view of socialism, older people, the people who are most likely to vote, they don't have a favorable view of socialism. So he's trying to redefine socialism to mean a $15 minimum wage and single-payer healthcare and that's it. But that's not what Bernie Sanders really wants. I mean, those things are bad ideas in and of themselves, but that's not really what Bernie Sanders is after. He is after completely fundamentally transforming the economy so that it's more like the Soviet Union of the 1970s and 80s and closer to Venezuela, not what we have in the United States. That's going too far. I mean, he's not a communist for heaven's sake. He's a democratic socialist and Europe is his model. I mean, you could say that Sweden, Denmark, Norway, they are essentially socialist countries and they have conferred prosperity on the vast majority of their people. You could say that is democratic socialism and it works. Yeah, that's the argument that Bernie Sanders makes all the time, but it's actually not true. If you look at the analyses that have been done by the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation, they show that in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, et cetera, their economies are actually freer than ours in many areas. In other areas, they're not as free and the people are not really better off there. The point is that they have market-based capitalistic economies. They have some aspects of their economies that are socialized that don't work particularly well like single-payer healthcare. We're seeing that now in Finland, for instance, where the system is just collapsing, but these are not socialist utopias. They have a broad-based tax system. Even the poorest people in society pay a huge part of the tax burden. They have very few business regulations compared to some parts of the United States. These are not socialist utopias. They have balanced budgets. I mean, is Bernie Sanders calling for balanced budgets? Of course not. That's not what Bernie Sanders wants. He wants to control the entire economy. That's the goal that Bernie Sanders and Alexander have. Is the Democratic Party, in your view, now a socialist party? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I hate this. Just without pause, he responds, yeah, absolutely, to the question as to whether or not the Democratic Party, a center-right neoliberal party, a pro-markets party, is socialist. Really? Do you not know anything about politics, dude? You're gonna say the Democrats, by and large, are socialists. When there's like what, two, maybe three tops that identify as democratic socialists, when in actuality, they're not even true democratic socialists. They're more comparable to social Democrats and more comparable to party members in social Democrat parties that we see in Europe. I mean, it just goes to show you that anything can pass as intellectualism and insight when you go on Fox News, so long as you express whatever you're saying in a confident manner. If you go on Fox News and you declare that the sky is purple, as long as you say it confidently, you're gonna be taken seriously, which is sad. And look, I know you're all thinking it, so I'm just gonna say it. Why does the guy that Stuart Varney was interviewing look like a 14-year-old with a comeover? I mean, what's going on here? Am I allowed to say that? Like, I don't like to resort to ad hominem attacks, but I kind of feel like I'm justified in doing so because since they're being so stupid and petty, I'm allowed to be equally stupid and petty. But I mean, come on, we were all thinking it. But okay, getting to the substance of what they were talking about, not that there was much there, but let's assume that they're making a serious argument. So they're implying that AOC should not have made this tweet and made this comparison about the cost of the croissant and the cost of labor because really a croissant has nothing to do with the minimum wage. But I personally don't think that they are the ones who should be determining what is and isn't irrelevant, seeing that they were talking about the minimum wage and at the bottom lower third, you can see this subheader that reads socialism on the rise. But what is anything that she had to say about the minimum wage and a croissant have to do with socialism? She's talking about labor and a just compensation for labor within the confines of our capitalist system. There's nothing inherently socialistic about that. But because they have deemed her the great socialist boogeyman, then they make sure that they go out of their way to deem any and everything that she does as socialist. Again, going back to the fart analogy, if she farts, she didn't just make a fart, she made a socialist fart. That's essentially the level of just insanity that we're seeing. Anything she does is socialist because they wanna communicate to you that socialism is bad and prime you to believe that whatever view she has that you may or may not disagree with, it is catalyzed by her dim-witted socialistic brain. That's what they're trying to convey to you, the Fox News viewer. Now, this is what the 14-year-old Comover guy said. Capitalism is all just about freedom. I have property rights, you have property rights, and we can freely exchange property between us, and money is just a medium for doing that. If you're against capitalism, then you're against freedom. Ha, got him. I mean, what an intellectually lazy argument because I could just as easily flip it. I could say if you're against socialism, you're against freedom because you're opting for a different form of enslavement. So rather than having the government lord over you, what you're in favor of, what you're opting for is large multinational corporations to exploit our labor and pay us barely enough to survive. So that may be pro-freedom for these large multinational corporations, but it certainly doesn't make us more free. So you're not inherently pro-freedom if you're pro-capitalist. And he also says that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to quote, get rid of freedom in the economy so her and people like her can decide what croissants cost and what labor is worth to people. Now, I need you to understand what he's saying here because by talking about getting rid of freedom in the economy, what he's really talking about here is deregulation. He wants to deregulate these large multinational corporations and imbue them with the power to do whatever they want. He wants to increase freedom for them or maximize freedom for them. But what he's not telling you or what he's not realizing is that when you maximize freedom for large multinational corporations, you inevitably decrease freedom for everyone else because if you, let's say, give farmers more freedom to not test the water that they use to clean the lettuce that they sell to us and that leads to a nationwide E. Coli outbreak, then obviously that impeded the freedom of people who got sick. If you give Wall Street the freedom to be irresponsible and crash the economy, if corporations are free to exploit workers, you're giving them the freedom to harm us, which in turn stifles our freedom. So you're not being pro-freedom, just at large by saying we need to give the economy as much freedom as possible and allow the markets to do their work and self-regulate. What you're saying is really one type of freedom is more virtuous than the other. Freedom for large multinational corporations is better and more valuable intrinsically than the freedom that we get by being protected by their freedom. And there's a reason why we all don't have unlimited freedom. There's a reason why my right to swing my fist stops at my neighbor's nose because if I exercise absolute freedom, then that harms others and in turn diminishes their freedom. If I decided to steal that nerd's glasses and shave off that bird's nest that he has on his head, I would assume he'd take issue with that. But then I could say, well, you're just impeding on my freedom to do that to you. But then obviously he'd argue, well, you don't have the freedom to do that to me. I have the freedom to resist that. So he's not telling you. He's being intellectually dishonest and quite frankly disingenuous by assuming that by increasing freedom, everyone's freedom will rise equally and be maximized when that's not true. By increasing the freedom that large multinational corporations have, you are by definition decreasing our freedom. And you may disagree with that, but you're just opting for one type of freedom over the other. Because if you think that telling a corporation that they're not allowed to include a harmful chemical or whatever in the food that they sell to me, if you think that that's limiting their freedom, then I'm sorry, you've got a few screws loose. But really the reason why this 14 year old with a comb over his argument is incredibly dishonest and disingenuous is because if we extrapolated that argument, that freedom argument that he uses to defend freedom for large multinational corporations, then I should be able to use my quote unquote freedom to steal from him. But of course he wouldn't support that. So there's limits to freedom. He's just saying we shouldn't limit the freedom of large multinational corporations. So understand that freedom is a very loaded term. It's not as simplistic as a lot of people like to make it out to be. It's not as just virtuous in and of itself without explaining it because yes, freedom by and large, it's good, it's a good thing. We wanna increase freedom of everyone, but we have to draw the line at increasing someone's freedom if they're gonna have the ability and the freedom to hurt other people, therefore impeding on their freedom and it's stifling freedom for everyone else overall. Now they move on to Bernie Sanders of course, and the guy who has the comb over who looks like he's 14 years old, he dropped an intellectually sound proof argument that nobody can rebut. He dropped Venezuela on us. Venezuela. Just look at Venezuela. What country is this Venezuela? They're gonna be the left of Venezuela. Venezuela. Venezuela. Venezuela. Venezuela. Venezuela. Venezuela. Venezuela. Venezuela. Venezuela. Venezuela. Now I love how Stuart Varney knew that he had to reign in his guest because the minute you start dropping Venezuela on us, we're gonna make fun of you because obviously that's an intellectually dishonest argument. It's a straw man because you argue that we want the United States to look more like Venezuela and then you argue that we shouldn't look more like Venezuela when in actuality, that's not our argument. What we're opting for is a Scandinavian type social democracy. So Stuart Varney then tries to reign in his guest and then he tries to argue that even if we look at Scandinavia, that's not ideal because if you look to these right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation who are totally unbiased, they're gonna show you that these Scandinavian countries aren't actually socialist after all. They, like us, have market-based economies although some areas have been socialized. But the problem is that where they have socialized when it comes to healthcare, for example, it's just not working out for them. And he says with regard to Finland, quote, their system is just collapsing. That's your argument. You're gonna argue that Finland's healthcare system is collapsing when just last year, a global burden of disease study found that they have the best healthcare system in the world better than ours and that they're improving the most. They have improved the most in recent years and they also beat us when it comes to infant mortality. The United States has one of the worst infant mortality rates in the developed world when Finland is number one. So you're honestly with a straight face going to say that in the areas where these Scandinavian countries have socialized such as healthcare, it's not just bad, but the system is collapsing. I mean, that is fundamentally untrue and it's not just factually incorrect. The opposite of what he stated is actually true. They're not collapsing. They're doing phenomenally well. If you wanna look at a system that's currently collapsing with regard to healthcare, you can look at the American system because healthcare costs are going up and the uninsured and underinsured rate is rising and we have some of the most expensive prices. So the fact that this dweeb would make such a bold and untrue claim with a straight face, it boggles my mind. And let's kind of try to step back and look at this entire segment and take it all into perspective. They're originally basing all of this off of a tweet that AOC put out about croissants. It started out talking about croissants and it escalated to Finland's healthcare system is collapsing. I don't know if they recall, but just a couple of weeks ago, former UN ambassador Nikki Haley attacked Finland's healthcare system and told people to talk to Finns about just how much they love their healthcare system, expecting them to say our system is terrible and we wanna be more like American system. And she got embarrassed, but yet he's trying to do that again. Unbelievable. I mean, Fox News, it's like a self parody. If I had to construct a parody segment on the humanist report where I make fun of Fox News, that's essentially what it would look like. But of course, there's no room for nuance. They don't wanna tell you what freedom really means. They don't wanna actually highlight what we believe. And if they do, then they're just gonna lie and say, well, you know, Scandinavia, it's not all peachy keen. Look, the fact of the matter is the one kernel of truth that we can extrapolate from that segment, specifically from the 14 year old with the come over is that by and large, a lot of these Scandinavian countries, they do have market-based economies because they're social democracies. They have mixed economies. Parts of their economy has been nationalized, such as healthcare, where you wanna remove that profit motive so that way doctors and healthcare companies are more concerned with the delivery of healthcare and not profits, but they also allow for a free market when it comes to just goods that are not basic necessities, such as clothing. But I mean, you can't expect nuance or an honest conversation about anything in Fox News because it's Fox News. And by definition, their one goal is to do propaganda on behalf of the Republican Party. And currently, they really like talking about whatever Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez does, so I'm excited to see what they cover next. Maybe she'll make a tweet about drinking coffee or something, or maybe she will, I don't know, make a tweet about watching fucking Umbrella Academy and then they'll attack her for it. Either way, it's gonna get even more ridiculous and every time I say that the attacks against AOC and Bernie Sanders by Fox News hosts are getting more dumb, I think they're probably taking what I'm saying as a challenge to outstupid their own segments. It's like they're in competition with themselves. The hosts are trying to be the dumbest and most disingenuous when it comes to socialism. And it's just, it's absurd. If you watch Fox News unironically, please stop doing this to yourself because it's making you misinformed. And this is why a study show that people who watch Fox News, it's not just that they are not informed about issues but they have less knowledge than people who watch no news because that's how bad Fox News is.