Point of View January 9, 2025 – Hour 2 : The Millennial Round Table

[00:00:04] Across America, Live, this is Point of View. And now your host for the Millennial Round Table, Chelsea Yeoman.

[00:00:22] Welcome back to the Millennial Round Table, our first round table of 2025. We're so excited for the show we have with us today.

[00:00:30] We have brand new panelists again this next hour. We had an incredible last hour with Petrina Mosley,

[00:00:37] and we also had Tiffany Duncan from First Liberty Institute for the first time providing just an outstanding First Amendment legal analysis, which I threw a lot at her.

[00:00:46] So go back if you have not been listening to our last hour. Don't forget to check in there. We also had some fun coverage on President Trump's remarks,

[00:00:54] really worldwide about Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal, which I really appreciate that discussion. So go back and listen.

[00:01:01] But joining us now for our second hour, we have Ethan Watson. You remember him from last month. He is the Young Voices contributor and student at the University of Kansas.

[00:01:12] A very bright mind. Thanks for joining us today, Ethan.

[00:01:16] HAPPY TO BE HERE. Thank you for having me.

[00:01:18] Always. And of course, we have joining for the first time ever, Alyssa Sonnenberg. She is the Executive Director of the Illinois Family Institute,

[00:01:26] and she is our I'm sorry, Executive Assistant to the Director of the Illinois Family Institute.

[00:01:32] And she's also the host, writer and manager of the Self Evident Podcast. Thanks for joining us today, Alyssa.

[00:01:38] Thank you so much for having me.

[00:01:41] I'm glad you guys could be with us. We're going to turn now to a continuation of our discussion on Mark Zuckerberg's big announcement this week.

[00:01:49] I'm going to take a different viewpoint of it now. I want to turn and discuss maybe this idea, this question.

[00:01:55] I'm going to put it to both of you. But we've been discussing how Mark Zuckerberg made a big announcement.

[00:02:00] He said, wow, after the election, culture has changed a lot.

[00:02:04] And because of that change and perhaps maybe even a little bit of a fear of the next administration coming in, he's decided, even though he spent $400 million donating and helping the DNC to now say they're going to remove and revoke all the algorithms that fact check and censor his users, his consumers.

[00:02:23] And I want to start here because I think that this is going to be a theme throughout our show today with a few of our topics.

[00:02:29] But this deeper question of is cancel culture dead? It really ran a large course.

[00:02:36] I mean, we could argue, arguably, it's been a 10 year course.

[00:02:39] If you start with some of the love wins mantra hashtag that began in 2013 and 2014, if you guys remember that, where you had people being fired when I worked at First Liberty Institute.

[00:02:52] We represented many, many, many, many people who are fired for espousing their Christian views on traditional human sexuality, traditional marriage, you know, traditional sexual orientation, biological reality of male and female.

[00:03:06] You know, you could be not just publicly doxed. That's one cancel culture form.

[00:03:10] But lose your job. And many did for that.

[00:03:14] And then you kind of fast forward through the public, the Me Too movement, which we'll talk about with Brett Kavanaugh and some news coming out of some regret that journalists are expressing over the way that they publicly doxed Kavanaugh without all the facts for his, you know, nomination at the time.

[00:03:32] You've got the Me Too movement where it was Believe All Women.

[00:03:34] You had the BLM movement, which could not be questioned, which later found out to be, you know, allegedly in the throes of lots of financial fraud and harm to black communities.

[00:03:45] So if you just look at the progression of all these versions of cancel culture where you fall in line or there's a militant public doxing, I wonder if Mark Zuckerberg is putting the nail in the coffin of some of that by this decision.

[00:03:59] I'm going to start with you, Alyssa.

[00:04:02] Yeah, short answer. I don't believe personally that cancel culture is dead now.

[00:04:07] What I do believe is that cancel culture is no longer in power.

[00:04:11] And I was actually listening to your last segment with Katrina, and I 100 percent agree with what she had to say as it regards Mark Zuckerberg, that I don't think that he's had a genuine change of heart.

[00:04:23] I mean, if we look back in February 24 when he was apologizing to families before Congress and we watched that whole segment play out, we saw how loathe he was to admit that Instagram, that social media causes real harm to children.

[00:04:38] Children were being exposed to horrible content online, things that I don't even want to talk about on radio.

[00:04:45] And he was fudging around that issue.

[00:04:48] He wasn't really saying anything until Ted Cruz told him that the victims of the families were sitting right behind him.

[00:04:53] And you just saw his face go white.

[00:04:55] And he stood up.

[00:04:56] He gave that pathetic apology.

[00:04:58] So, no, I don't think he's had this change of heart.

[00:05:01] I don't think cancel culture has gone away.

[00:05:03] I think it's just gone back into the closet for now.

[00:05:05] So that's that's an interesting point back into the closet for now, because you still do have the algorithms where people can kind of find their own silos.

[00:05:14] If you're thinking of X, where you're following people that affirm what you say.

[00:05:18] But I do think there's been a boldness.

[00:05:20] You know, I say courage begets courage.

[00:05:22] I think I've seen a little bit more boldness coming into effect culturally because President Trump won.

[00:05:29] And I think people, again, when you look at the polling, you know, were quieter about their support of him.

[00:05:33] But it's almost like I do think that there's maybe a wearing off of there's only so many times you can name call someone before, you know, that tide turns and the public is worn out from a PR standpoint.

[00:05:47] You know, you have a new cycle for a reason where the public says, all right, we're no longer going to buy all these lies about President Trump.

[00:05:52] And we're they voted for him by by over seven, I think, 78 million votes.

[00:05:59] But go ahead. I'd love to get, Ethan, your take on this idea of cancel culture and where you think that is.

[00:06:05] Is it at a pause or we had a change in culture? And we're just, you know, feel free to give your opinion.

[00:06:11] Absolutely. So I think Alyssa was entirely right, saying that Zuckerberg is not some hero of free speech all of a sudden.

[00:06:17] I mean, he's just kissing the ring, right? He knows who's empowered.

[00:06:20] He knows who's running the show and he wants to make sure he keeps his.

[00:06:22] But like Milton Friedman said, the way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.

[00:06:29] So I actually don't really care what's going on in the cockles of Mark Zuckerberg's heart.

[00:06:32] I'm just happy he's doing the right thing here.

[00:06:34] And I do think cancel culture is receding.

[00:06:37] I don't think it's quite as grim just because even though you can still put yourself into these silos on Facebook or Instagram,

[00:06:44] I wrote about this in the past, how within these silos there was no breath of fresh air.

[00:06:48] There was no light of truth shining in and giving people an alternative viewpoint.

[00:06:52] A lot of those pages that are posting the oversimplification about Donald Trump is a rapist, for example.

[00:06:58] That was the most common one.

[00:06:59] They turn off comments so no one would even have the chance to run across contrary information.

[00:07:04] But if these meta community notes function like they do on X, where they slap a note right on there, right on the post, you can't miss it,

[00:07:12] providing context and not alerting the user that this might be wrong or misinformation,

[00:07:17] then we are sort of building a pathway to the truth for these people that are still in the silos.

[00:07:22] And it's shrinking, and I think we're starting to poke holes in that patina of truth and moral high ground that these people have seized with really no reason to.

[00:07:29] So that's interesting that you're talking about contrary information, because I also think it's led to increased information.

[00:07:37] When people, for instance, when we look at, we're not going to get into all this today,

[00:07:41] but the terrorist bombings that happened in Las Vegas or when you look at what happened in New Orleans,

[00:07:45] and now you have citizen reporting where everybody has a camera on them and cell phones on them,

[00:07:50] even President Trump's assassination attempts, that horrific event in Butler,

[00:07:54] where because of citizens being able to say, look, this is where the police were told on camera that there was somebody on the roof.

[00:08:01] This is where you saw a delay in a sniper response on camera.

[00:08:07] You know, the media doesn't does no longer control and have that monopoly over the information flow.

[00:08:14] And social media has been a big part of that for good and bad.

[00:08:19] I'm not going to make a moral statement on it.

[00:08:21] It's just a little bit of a factor.

[00:08:22] People are having, you know, a free market flow of access to information.

[00:08:27] Some might be true.

[00:08:29] Some might be doctored.

[00:08:30] I think that people hopefully continue to try to seek out the truth for themselves,

[00:08:35] which is what this show is all about.

[00:08:37] So go to pointofview.net.

[00:08:39] Read up on this article.

[00:08:40] Don't go anywhere after this break.

[00:08:58] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson.

[00:09:04] The incoming Trump administration seems dedicated to reducing the size of government.

[00:09:09] What about reducing the size of the American waistline?

[00:09:12] Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders sent a letter critical of the food stamp program

[00:09:17] to Trump's nominees to head the Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services.

[00:09:22] When the food stamp program was launched, it was intended to address the issue of hunger in America.

[00:09:27] While it is still true that some pockets of hunger remain, the bigger program is that Americans are, well, bigger.

[00:09:34] The government argues that the food stamp program is one reason for obesity in America.

[00:09:39] She laments that this nutrition assistance program is undermining the health of millions of Americans

[00:09:44] on the taxpayer's dime by encouraging families to eat highly processed, unhealthy junk food.

[00:09:50] The governor is asking for a waiver from the current federal guidelines.

[00:09:53] Jack Butler, in a recent commentary, quotes Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute,

[00:09:57] who documents that nearly a fourth of the food stamp benefits go to such items as sweetened beverages, salty snacks, sugars, and candy.

[00:10:06] Edwards argues that even though we keep hearing the word nutrition used for food stamps,

[00:10:11] much of the food consumed is not nutritious.

[00:10:13] Butler also notes that Senator Marco Rubio last year sponsored a bill that would have required the Department of Agriculture

[00:10:19] to collect data on health effects of the food stamp program to see if the program could be improved.

[00:10:25] Senator Rubio argued in the midst of America's obesity crisis,

[00:10:29] taxpayer dollars shouldn't be spent on junk food.

[00:10:32] Changing the food stamp guidelines makes sense if you want to make America healthy again.

[00:10:38] I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my point of view.

[00:10:47] For a free booklet on a biblical view of Israel, go to viewpoints.info.israel.

[00:10:54] Viewpoints.info.israel.

[00:10:58] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth.

[00:11:04] Well, thank you for joining us for the Millennial Roundtable today,

[00:11:08] where we are discussing Metta's decision, or Mark Zuckerberg's decision, maybe I should say,

[00:11:14] to change the algorithm where they're going to quit fact-checking in the same ways as they did.

[00:11:20] I wanted to put together a short list here with Ethan and Alyssa,

[00:11:24] things that we think that Mark Zuckerberg, we said, you know, a little bit the last segment.

[00:11:29] We know that this isn't a change of heart for him.

[00:11:31] It's a change in practice, right?

[00:11:34] Because he donated $400 million to the DNC and helped really sway the 2020 election results,

[00:11:41] which there's been polling on that.

[00:11:44] The fact that he buried certain stories about Hunter Biden in his laptop, which weighed public opinion.

[00:11:49] That's all election implications, which in the social media world,

[00:11:54] our regulations haven't caught up with on the electioneering side of things.

[00:11:57] But I want to turn now to talk about things that we think he should be censoring,

[00:12:00] because you made such a great point earlier, Alyssa, about some of the horrific things that are allowed to continue

[00:12:08] while they're burying conservative voices and truthful Washington Post and other media news outlet,

[00:12:15] the certain media that is critical of the left.

[00:12:18] And they're, by the way, been used by the federal government to do that bidding and that censorship,

[00:12:23] which the Supreme Court declined to take up recently or grants her on that case challenge.

[00:12:29] While they've been doing all of that, they've failed entirely to protect children and the public

[00:12:36] from actual violence and criminal activity, haven't they, Alyssa?

[00:12:41] So on my list, I'm going to put things that we would like to demand as consumers, you know,

[00:12:46] meta from allowing to be promoted on their channels, things like terrorist extremism.

[00:12:53] We know that a lot of Al-Qaeda uses X and social media.

[00:12:59] They have their own groups, their own forums, not only to conduct terrorist attacks and activity,

[00:13:05] but also as a creating extremists.

[00:13:09] They use that.

[00:13:10] I've got on my list explicit content.

[00:13:12] We all know that predators use their online platforms and forums openly.

[00:13:18] They have their own groups where they are openly predators and they have their own names for themselves.

[00:13:24] It's something that the FBI created a list for like a predator, how you know someone's a predator.

[00:13:31] It's symbols and emblems that they're using online.

[00:13:33] And then also on my list is just explicit content in general related, you know, to sexualizing children.

[00:13:41] So that's going to be on my list.

[00:13:43] I would love, Alyssa, to get your take on things that we should be having social media be more proactive about.

[00:13:50] I completely agree.

[00:13:52] That's top on my list.

[00:13:53] You know, my husband and I, we're currently expecting our first baby girl in the summer.

[00:13:57] And I can tell you right now that she will not be getting any type of social media.

[00:14:01] Instagram isn't what it was when I was 13, let alone what it's turned into nowadays.

[00:14:06] And the risk of her having social media, of her even being on social media, is too great a one for me and my husband to risk.

[00:14:15] For the content that she's going to be exposed to, eating disorders go up when girls are on Instagram at younger ages.

[00:14:21] They start comparing their bodies to other women and Photoshopping themselves and becoming more promiscuous to get boys' attention.

[00:14:29] Those are things I'm not willing to risk.

[00:14:32] In addition, like you were saying, the predatory activity, one of the top hashtags that predators will look for is hashtag baby, which absolutely turns my stomach.

[00:14:43] So definitely that's top on my list.

[00:14:46] And in addition to that, it's restitution for people that have had their accounts banned for pro-life messaging.

[00:14:53] This happened a lot in the past couple years.

[00:14:55] I'm thinking of Dr. Steven Ertlett, who posted a video of a C-section where the baby actually grabbed the doctor's finger.

[00:15:02] And he captioned the video, quote, an unborn baby can't be just a clump of cells when he or she is grabbing the doctor's hand.

[00:15:10] And, of course, Facebook takes it down because it's child sexual exploitation, which, of course, it's not.

[00:15:16] Abby Covington, a mother of three, was promoting adoption for her family.

[00:15:22] She got taken down.

[00:15:23] Her Facebook account was banned.

[00:15:25] She was demonetized.

[00:15:26] So having that restored as well is top of my list.

[00:15:31] Love, love the list.

[00:15:32] Super important that you brought those things up.

[00:15:34] You know, I couldn't even get an account on X for my first – I've been at Human Coalition, a pro-life organization, for five years.

[00:15:40] And they always had a reason.

[00:15:41] I could not have an X account.

[00:15:43] And then finally our comms manager figured it out.

[00:15:45] So I'm new to X.

[00:15:47] I'm supposed to follow me, Hugo, at Hugo Chelsea.

[00:15:50] But it's, you know, it's not just Facebook, is it?

[00:15:54] Now, Ethan, I'd love to get your short list before we move on to talk about news about Kavanaugh's hit pieces.

[00:16:01] Absolutely.

[00:16:01] Well, I think it's really important to recognize that censorship in and of itself is not a bad thing, right?

[00:16:06] Censorship just means removing some things from the public scene because they're contrary to the public good.

[00:16:12] It's just about what we do decide to censor.

[00:16:14] And I think you covered most of the highlights.

[00:16:16] I'd just like to add in really any strong rhetoric that seems to be anti-West, anti-Western culture.

[00:16:22] So things like very radical Islamism or even, you know, strongly advocating, like, communist ideals that would actually kind of bring about the collapse of the system that allowed us to have free speech in the first place.

[00:16:33] That doesn't seem like it's serving a purpose.

[00:16:35] And as far as explicit content goes, I think that's the most pernicious.

[00:16:38] I mean, Instagram is full of borderline sexually explicit content that tries to funnel people onto other sites where they can view even more of that sort of, you know, demeaning content.

[00:16:48] And that preys on young people especially.

[00:16:50] It gives them weird ideas about relationships, and it just messes with their brain chemistry.

[00:16:55] And I'm going to go quote the Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart when it comes to identifying obscenity is that I know it when I see it.

[00:17:01] We all know what obscene content looks like, and I think that we should be able to take a stronger position in limiting that.

[00:17:07] And one last thing, I want to draw a distinction between explicit material that is intended for adult consumption, such as like a romance novel or rated R movie promoting that, and explicit content that is targeted towards children in particular, right?

[00:17:21] Like the genderqueer novel that shows up in school libraries.

[00:17:24] One is acceptable, I feel, and one is absolutely not acceptable, and you shouldn't be allowed to target children with this sex ed stuff on social media.

[00:17:32] I think those are really important points to raise, Ethan and Alyssa, because we can be principled originalists in the Constitution.

[00:17:40] I'm a First Amendment attorney, litigated those cases where we say we are very pro-free speech.

[00:17:47] We're about to talk about free media in just a moment.

[00:17:49] But there are these outer bounds of speech that are harmful to the public and public safety, and anything that involves sexualizing children or getting on those lines of things or public safety, those are categorically under the law treated different than mainstream opinion speech, right, or political speech.

[00:18:09] And so we're talking about a different category of speech, so we can be principled, we can say we are free speech advocates, and we can also say that there are outer bounds and lines for society of what is not healthy, productive, or good, and worse than that, what is against public safety and abusive and exploitative.

[00:18:28] They're different categories.

[00:18:29] So I wanted to point that out, because we're also going to go talk now another First Amendment category about free media, because we have this article on pointofview.net that talks about a New York Times reporter saying he regrets his treatment of Kavanaugh and his reporting, and he said, I learned some lessons on his hit piece for the New York Times.

[00:18:48] I want to talk about this.

[00:19:24] I want to talk about this.

[00:19:47] We actually, as human beings made in the image of God, we have the reason and logic to discern the truth for ourselves.

[00:19:52] And I always think, when I think about the death of the mainstream media, I think about what Elon Musk tweeted out the night of the election.

[00:19:57] He said, you are the media now.

[00:20:00] And that's exactly right.

[00:20:01] Everyday citizens, we can determine what is truth.

[00:20:04] We can parse information effectively.

[00:20:06] And this Kavanaugh example is just another example of times when the media lied to us, and now it's coming to bear.

[00:20:13] Absolutely.

[00:20:14] Absolutely.

[00:20:14] Truth does have a way, I always say, of rising to the surface.

[00:20:16] Sometimes it just takes a long time, which can be hard for me.

[00:20:19] Don't forget to go like us on Point of View Radio on Facebook.

[00:20:23] We are talking about Facebook, so they can't censor us anymore, guys.

[00:20:26] So go like us on Point of View Radio.

[00:20:28] Go to pointofview.net where you can read our articles today or more.

[00:20:31] We're going to continue this article on the New York Times reporter regretting how he treated the Kavanaugh reporting, because I think it's hopefully indicative of a new tide turning.

[00:20:42] We'll see.

[00:20:44] It also involves what we discussed a little bit earlier on this segment.

[00:20:47] Cancel culture was at its prime during this season.

[00:20:50] The Me Too movement, Believe All Women, which really culminated in a lot of what I would say in the court of public opinion, it didn't matter whether there was evidence.

[00:21:00] In the court of public opinion, he didn't get a jury to decide based on the evidence what was truth and what was false.

[00:21:09] And in the court of public opinion, he came out losing.

[00:21:13] He and this person who wrote this article on ChronicleMagazine.org.

[00:21:18] So we're going to discuss that and break it down with Alyssa and Ethan after we get back after this break.

[00:21:31] The Bible tells us not to worry.

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[00:21:44] God gives us a next step.

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[00:22:48] Point of View will continue after this.

[00:22:51] You are listening to Point of View.

[00:23:02] The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station.

[00:23:10] And now, here again, Chelsea Yeoman.

[00:23:14] Welcome back to Millennial Roundtable, where I am discussing an interesting article about New York Times reporter who covered the Kavanaugh case with Alyssa and Ethan.

[00:23:25] And really, I'm just going to start at a high level.

[00:23:28] We are seeing a little bit of a trend here where journalists, and I think it's not ironic that the timing is after President Trump's election, where journalists are starting to take a second look at some of their integrity, their practice.

[00:23:44] I don't know what we call it, the truthfulness of their reporting and their reporting standards.

[00:23:51] And we have seen a case now that President Trump settled with ABC for millions of dollars over defamation.

[00:24:00] We've seen several other cases pop up.

[00:24:03] And one of the journalists previously with The New York Times named Enrich, he has a new book coming out called The Murder of the Truth, Fear, the First Amendment and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful.

[00:24:16] I thought that was an interesting title for his book, because, of course, what we have is much wringing of hands out of the media that President Trump is going to strip them of their media credentials and instead give independent journalists media credentials, which is not denying the press, the freedom of the press to access to the White House.

[00:24:36] It's just giving it to others who are not legacy media, because, frankly, legacy media has, in my opinion, we all know, done a lot on the misinformation side.

[00:24:47] And it was ironic to me that the author of this book, he spoke to – when he responded to an email where he said,

[00:24:58] I regret that I – how I treated the Kavanaugh case when he was a New York Times journalist, that he didn't do the deep dive he should have.

[00:25:07] He didn't fact check the witnesses as he should have.

[00:25:09] Don't forget this was peak of the Me Too movement.

[00:25:11] Believe all women.

[00:25:12] He didn't ask hard questions and, frankly, have enough evidence.

[00:25:15] I don't want to relitigate the Kavanaugh situation because there wasn't, after all, a jury on that.

[00:25:21] But, Alyssa, I want to start with you.

[00:25:23] I think this is an interesting trend, and I'm hopeful that the media is going to take more seriously the accountability that they should have to provide truthful information to the public.

[00:25:35] I absolutely agree.

[00:25:36] And I think you're right that this is a growing trend.

[00:25:39] I think the media is starting to get the idea that they are not as popular, not as voiceful as they once were.

[00:25:46] And we saw this, obviously, on election night of how the ratings continue to drop, especially after Trump was declared president.

[00:25:53] The ratings continue to drop.

[00:25:55] The views continue to drop.

[00:25:56] The view show itself has very low viewing.

[00:26:00] There's talk that it's going to have to be canceled or moved to a different slot.

[00:26:03] So those are just examples where people are getting the message that they're not as important as they thought they were.

[00:26:09] And in addition to this, Mark Judge, who is actually the author of this Chronicles magazine article, he notes that there is a rise of high-profile lawyers that actually enjoy suing journalists.

[00:26:20] And that maybe this is another reason why journalists are starting to take another look at how they conduct themselves professionally, what they say, what they write about.

[00:26:29] Because if you just think back to the Russia collusion, to the Hunter Biden laptop conspiracy, all of those things, the media pushed a certain narrative that was obviously untrue in the light of true evidence.

[00:26:43] And, again, just to reiterate, I think the media is finally getting the idea that they're not as popular as they once were.

[00:26:50] And in addition to this, they have lawyers that are actually enjoying suing them.

[00:26:56] That's absolutely true.

[00:26:57] And the standard from a legal perspective, by the way, is the hardest categorically to win.

[00:27:03] When you're suing for defamation, libel, or slander against the press because of the First Amendment, we do want the press to have protection and insulation.

[00:27:11] We want them to be criticizing.

[00:27:13] The entire purpose of the First Amendment in this regard is to enable and empower a brave and courageous press to question specifically politicians.

[00:27:23] That is what our founding fathers and the Federalist Papers, if you have ever read them.

[00:27:28] You know, the principle here is we want our politicians to be questioned because politicians are politicians and lie.

[00:27:34] And we want them to be held into account for their actions.

[00:27:37] We want transparency.

[00:27:38] We want to shine light.

[00:27:40] But what we've had in turn, Ethan, is legacy media actually ostensibly just a branch or an arm of politicians from the DNC.

[00:27:51] And because of that, instead of asking the hard questions we want them to be asking, it's turned into a lot of hit pieces, a lot of misinformation.

[00:28:01] And they're really getting hammered with the hardest category of defamation you can get hammered with, which tells me a lot, Ethan.

[00:28:08] Absolutely.

[00:28:09] And, you know, I think this is definitely a step in the right direction.

[00:28:11] It's nice to hear a retraction or not a retraction rather, but at least an acknowledgment that it was wrong.

[00:28:16] But I'm not sure I'll be satisfied until there's broader retractions like they made those ladies on the View read when they were talking about Pete Hegstead.

[00:28:23] I'd like to see some more of that because this type of reporting has convinced large swaths of the population, especially people me and Alyssa's age, that Republicans are just a den of, you know, rapists and woman haters and all these things.

[00:28:36] And now I get to defend myself on that front every time I say, hey, you know, I like Donald Trump's economic policy or I like his foreign policy.

[00:28:42] I get hit with, well, how can you vote for a rapist every time I say that?

[00:28:45] And then that puts me on my back foot.

[00:28:47] So I'm still a little bit, you know, miffed about the lies that have come out.

[00:28:51] And I'm not totally sure Mr. Enrich gets it because if you look at the quote from his book that's cited in this Chronicles article, he's saying that Trump was the one relentlessly demonizing the media, that Trump was the one convincing the public that the media is untrustworthy.

[00:29:05] And I would just say to that, no, you did that, right?

[00:29:08] Because when you told us that, you know, Clarence Thomas was a rapist and Greg Kavanaugh was a rapist and Donald Trump was a rapist and Pete Hegstead was a rapist, like you're the one that lost your own credibility.

[00:29:15] Donald Trump is a symptom, not a cause of the American people's lack of faith in the media establishment, government establishment, education system, all of it.

[00:29:25] Trump is not the cause.

[00:29:27] Trump is the symptom.

[00:29:29] I think that's I'm so glad you pointed that out, because I was also going to discuss that, how, you know, he can still acknowledge that he was not as forthcoming as maybe he should have been or had as high journalistic integrity as they should have had in vetting these cases.

[00:29:44] But these are, after all, still legacy media is still in New York.

[00:29:48] They're still there's humans, right?

[00:29:50] These are human individuals living in their silos, living in their echo chambers of constant reaffirmation and, you know, selecting and picking and choosing which facts they like, which they don't.

[00:30:02] They have their own narratives.

[00:30:03] And so I do I do think it's impossible for media to be completely unbiased.

[00:30:07] And I don't expect that they're going to go that direction.

[00:30:10] But I think what they're seeing is a referendum from the consumer, us, the American public.

[00:30:16] Forget about trying to blame President Trump.

[00:30:18] It's not that he convinced us of anything.

[00:30:20] It's that we saw and lived with our own eyes false reality being.

[00:30:26] Think of COVID.

[00:30:27] COVID could be a great example.

[00:30:28] Media initially reported that the infection came out of Wuhan, China.

[00:30:34] They initially reported that ivermectin was helpful medically if you if you got COVID.

[00:30:43] And then when the spin master happened, they thought we were all going to forget that they were the ones that initially told us that.

[00:30:49] And then that all became conspiracy theory.

[00:30:51] So we've been gaslit as an American people by our own media for so long.

[00:30:56] There has been a referendum.

[00:30:58] And that's through viewership.

[00:30:59] We as consumers competition in the marketplace is my favorite because we as consumers can opt out of these media channels.

[00:31:06] I'm going to end on this note about this topic.

[00:31:08] You know, I even personally, my organization, you know, we we spent weeks with New York Times, who was supposed to be saying, we're going to do a deep dive on services to pregnant women in need who are seeking abortion.

[00:31:19] We want to know how you care for them.

[00:31:21] We want to know how you love them.

[00:31:22] They they might be up and follow me around for days at the March for Life.

[00:31:25] And instead of reporting any of that, they didn't report anything that they got from us content wise.

[00:31:30] They went with some bogus consumer issue and never questioned us about it.

[00:31:37] And so I personally have seen and felt for years how media operates.

[00:31:42] And I'm hoping that there will be a change, at least a standard of vetting the facts.

[00:31:47] We are going to turn now to talk about this.

[00:31:51] Musk Ramaswamy sparked a lot of debate over the H1B visas.

[00:31:56] I think you guys have probably heard of this.

[00:31:59] I wanted to hear from you, Alyssa.

[00:32:01] What we have is these tech billionaires who rely on these visas, which allow it's a program that allows hired workers from out of the country by minimal restrictions.

[00:32:14] Really, if they if they're professionals to work and it's some self-serving information that I think that the tech industry is trying to protect, you know, what I would call cheap labor, Alyssa.

[00:32:24] So I'll give you just a minute, a brief minute or two real quick and see.

[00:32:27] I'd love to get your thought on the debate that's erupted the last few weeks after their statement.

[00:32:32] Yes, I agree with you that it's not so much to get high profile workers or high intelligent workers or high talented workers to come to the United States to work for these different companies.

[00:32:44] When we look at the reality of who is actually coming over on this visa, it's janitors.

[00:32:50] It's people that are not as technologically intelligent as people want us to think.

[00:32:56] They're taking more low profile jobs, which, again, I'm not saying is a bad thing.

[00:33:00] I'm not saying the janitor or being anything similar to that is not worth doing.

[00:33:05] We are to do all that we do to the glory of God, whatever station he puts us in.

[00:33:09] And yet the function of this visa specifically is for the purpose of finding high qualified people from other countries to do a job well.

[00:33:17] And that's not what this visa is being used for.

[00:33:20] And many conservative outlets have talked time and time again on why this visa needs to be changed, et cetera.

[00:33:27] So Elon Musk, they need to they need to get their heads in the right place here.

[00:33:31] Yes, it represents the first divide in MAGA that we're seeing.

[00:33:35] It's a good debate and one we're going to have after this break.

[00:33:38] You're listening to Point of View, your listener supported source for truth.

[00:34:01] Welcome back to the Millennial Roundtable, where we are discussing really what I would call the first debate within the MAGA crowd, the conservative movement on immigration.

[00:34:14] And it's an in-house debate between those who think that HB1 visas should be continued to be allowed.

[00:34:21] As a little bit of background, because I was not as familiar with these visas, the U.S. caps the number of H-1B visas at 65,000 each year.

[00:34:30] That's new visas.

[00:34:32] And they allow an additional 20,000 to be granted for those who have a master's degree or higher.

[00:34:38] And then they also allow visa extensions by three years at a time.

[00:34:42] So totally, I think that in 2023, the agency greenlit more than 300,000 requests for continuing under the visa program.

[00:34:49] So we're talking, you know, hundreds of thousands of immigrants coming to this country, which is great, using visas to work.

[00:34:57] The debate is around this idea that it allows some loopholes for companies to essentially use this and abuse it for cheap labor.

[00:35:06] And that those jobs, instead of being created in the United States and our employment rates being helped,

[00:35:12] instead, it just allows cheap labor for engineers, master degree professionals.

[00:35:18] And the tech billionaire bros, you know, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, they love this program.

[00:35:24] They want it to stay.

[00:35:25] They utilize it.

[00:35:26] It really helps their coffers to be able to rely on, you know,

[00:35:30] essentially paying for the same types of engineers and tech professionals for cheaper rates out of the country.

[00:35:39] I want to turn to you, Ethan, to get your initial thoughts on this.

[00:35:42] And then I want to talk about a specific statement that Vivek Ramaswamy made.

[00:35:45] So go ahead, Ethan.

[00:35:46] Tell me your initial thoughts on this program and the debate that it sparked.

[00:35:50] I think it's healthy for us to debate policy issues, and we can do that as grownups.

[00:35:54] So go ahead, Ethan.

[00:36:00] Well, I'm not sure if he's still with us.

[00:36:02] Alyssa, did you have any additional thoughts before I talk about Vivek Ramaswamy's statement on the issue?

[00:36:37] Sure.

[00:36:42] We have a lot of people going to lower-income jobs that Americans can currently use.

[00:36:47] And in addition to this, we have people that are going into jobs that they've been told that they're going to get with engineering, et cetera,

[00:36:54] and yet they're getting a cheaper salary than an American would get.

[00:36:58] So there's a lot of issues with this visa.

[00:37:01] There are a lot of loopholes that are being used and abused.

[00:37:05] Yes.

[00:37:05] Ethan, did you have anything you wanted to add?

[00:37:09] Ethan.

[00:37:09] Yes, of course.

[00:37:10] So I think it's important to note that this is a really good distinction between the side of the MAGA movement that is conservative

[00:37:15] and the side that is libertarian.

[00:37:17] So let's pretend for a second that Americans, no matter how we work on our education system,

[00:37:21] they just cannot be the, quote, unquote, best and brightest, which I don't think is true at all.

[00:37:25] But let's pretend that's the only way we can achieve maximum economic output and innovation.

[00:37:29] If we have to do that by importing a massive foreign-born labor force and changing the face of our culture,

[00:37:35] which I quite like and I think is not crazy to say that I like that, I'm not going to take that bet.

[00:37:40] But I don't think the solution is importing people that are just here to make a quick buck

[00:37:46] and squeeze some efficiency out for large companies.

[00:37:50] America is not an office park, as I saw Jack Posobiec say on Twitter.

[00:37:53] We are a country, and so we welcome people that want to come and become Americans

[00:37:57] and take on the rights and the duties and the norms that come with that.

[00:38:02] But this idea of economic migration, purely just to squeeze out a little bit more innovation efficiency,

[00:38:07] is something that I'm not okay with, which is why I have such a problem with the H-1B visa program.

[00:38:12] Yeah, and I have a problem because I think these tech billionaires are pretending that that's what this is about,

[00:38:19] is just the highest level of engineering and professional employee workforce that they're talking about,

[00:38:25] and they're not.

[00:38:25] They're taking advantage of this program for cheap labor, and that's something I actually never thought.

[00:38:30] You guys, I never thought I would say this.

[00:38:32] I agreed with Bernie Sanders.

[00:38:33] I think they're taking advantage of it, and that's one of the reasons they're so defensive of the program.

[00:38:39] And so to the extent we can talk about meaningful reform, which should always be what our goal as an American society is

[00:38:46] and the policy realm is where can we reform this to make it a little bit better now that we've seen it in action.

[00:38:52] If it is working, it's not.

[00:38:53] We don't have to throw out the entire program, which is what liberalism wants to do all the time.

[00:38:57] It's how can we make a meaningful reform here?

[00:38:59] And it would be by saying what you're alluding to.

[00:39:02] We're not going to allow a full workforce to be brought in and then underpaid and undervalued for that.

[00:39:10] We're going to say let's have good competition.

[00:39:13] We're going to allow people with the highest professional degrees, and then let's make sure they're getting paid fairly.

[00:39:19] Fair wages I think is really important.

[00:39:21] I want to talk specifically, guys, about Vivek Ramaswamy's tweet that was heard around the world.

[00:39:28] It really irked me, so I just feel I'm going to try my best to be neutral here, guys.

[00:39:32] But he was talking about the reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born and first-generation engineers over Native Americans,

[00:39:40] Native, in quotes, Americans, isn't because of an innate American IQ deficiency, which is true, a lazy and wrong explanation.

[00:39:47] A key part of it comes down to culture.

[00:39:50] Tough questions demand tough answers.

[00:39:52] And if we really want to get serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the truth.

[00:39:55] Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.

[00:40:00] This is what he's saying, not me, at least since the 90s.

[00:40:03] And he goes on to just talk about we celebrate the prom queens over the math Olympians and the jocks over the valedictorians,

[00:40:12] and that's why we don't produce the best engineers is what he says.

[00:40:16] And we venerate, you know, Corey from Boy Meets World.

[00:40:19] And he goes on to make this massive statement about friends and culture when instead of TV,

[00:40:24] we should be doing more math tutoring on the weekends and science competitions, and he goes on and on.

[00:40:29] My problem with this, guys, is that he turned around and tried to gaslight all of us

[00:40:33] and pretend that he wasn't attacking aspects of American culture and high school culture

[00:40:39] and instead said, well, you know, we're doing drag queen story hour later.

[00:40:43] And that's not what he said.

[00:40:45] He wasn't saying we need to get away from LGBT curriculums and drag queen story hours

[00:40:50] and all the things that education reform should be about right now.

[00:40:53] And instead he kind of came for some core Americana, which got him in a lot of hot water.

[00:40:58] So, Alyssa, I'd love to start with you.

[00:41:00] I don't know if you have a thought or an opinion on his statement or any reactions, but go for it.

[00:41:05] Yeah, you know, culture's differentiation in culture is what makes the human race so beautiful,

[00:41:11] how God designed us, that everyone has, each culture has their thing, so to speak.

[00:41:17] So for America, baseball is America's pastime.

[00:41:20] So we're a big sports country.

[00:41:22] We love football.

[00:41:22] We love baseball.

[00:41:24] We love hockey.

[00:41:24] We love basketball.

[00:41:25] And we're kind of known for those things.

[00:41:27] And that's not a bad thing.

[00:41:29] And then you go to Japan, and Japan is known for their K-pop music and their anime.

[00:41:33] And then you go to another country, like the Asian countries, and they're known for their math.

[00:41:37] They're known for their doctors.

[00:41:39] That's okay.

[00:41:40] It's okay to have those differentiations.

[00:41:43] And like what I was talking about earlier, that's what makes true diversity so beautiful

[00:41:47] when you have America as this melting pot of all these cultures that bring their strengths

[00:41:51] and their differences.

[00:41:53] And yet we're all united under the foundation of we're Americans.

[00:41:56] And that's what makes America beautiful.

[00:41:58] That's what makes America great.

[00:41:59] No other country is like us.

[00:42:01] So for him to kind of come for that idea that America can have our own culture, it's kind

[00:42:07] of sad to me.

[00:42:08] I thought so, too.

[00:42:09] I thought he tried to walk it back, Ethan.

[00:42:11] But more than that, I was a little bit offended because the connotation when I read his statement

[00:42:18] was not just, I understand what he's saying.

[00:42:20] If we want to argue that we need stronger academia, we can all agree with that and meaningful

[00:42:25] education reform.

[00:42:26] But what he was also saying was, we can't find intelligent enough professional class citizens

[00:42:33] in the U.S.

[00:42:34] We have to outsource it.

[00:42:35] That's what I heard when I read his statement.

[00:42:37] And I'll put up any engineers in the United States.

[00:42:40] I don't think America has an IQ deficit.

[00:42:44] No, absolutely not.

[00:42:45] And like, exactly.

[00:42:46] I was with Vivek when he's saying that there are some aspects of our education system today

[00:42:50] in the year 2025 that need to go, right?

[00:42:53] Like the critical theory that teaches people just to criticize and deconstruct rather than

[00:42:56] create.

[00:42:57] But he's attacking the wrong aspects.

[00:42:59] Those aspects are what made America great.

[00:43:00] And we should keep those.

[00:43:02] Thank you, Ethan.

[00:43:03] Thanks for joining us.

[00:43:04] Don't forget to go to pointandview.net and see where you can follow Ethan Watson and

[00:43:07] Alyssa Sonberg.

[00:43:08] Great show today, guys.

[00:43:09] Thank you for joining us.

[00:43:11] Have a great week.

[00:43:12] It almost seems like we live in a different world from many people in positions of authority.

[00:43:17] They say men can be women and women men.

[00:43:20] People are prosecuted differently or not at all, depending on their politics.

[00:43:26] Criminals are more valued and rewarded than law-abiding citizens.

[00:43:30] It's so overwhelming, so demoralizing.

[00:43:33] You feel like giving up.

[00:43:35] But we can't.

[00:43:36] We shouldn't.

[00:43:37] We must not.

[00:43:39] As Winston Churchill said to Britain in the darkest days of World War II,

[00:43:43] Never give in.

[00:43:45] Never give in.

[00:43:46] Never, never, never.

[00:43:47] Never yield to force.

[00:43:49] Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

[00:43:53] And that's what we say to you today.

[00:43:56] This is not a time to give in, but to step up and join Point of View in providing clarity in the chaos.

[00:44:03] We can't do it alone, but together, with God's help, we will overcome the darkness.

[00:44:10] Invest in biblical clarity today at pointofview.net or call 1-800-347-5151.

[00:44:19] pointofview.net and 800-347-5151.

[00:44:27] Point of View is produced by Point of View Ministries.