Exposing the Truth with John Stossel (rumble.com)
rumble.com/v3atsw6-exposing-the-truth-with-john-stossel.html
Doug Truax: Hello and welcome to the First Right podcast, a weekly conservative news show brought to you by Restoration of America. I’m your host, Doug Truax, founder and president of Restoration of America. Today we’re blessed to connect with seasoned investigative reporter and 19 time Emmy winner, John Stossel. John has left mainstream media to educate the public through his own brand Stossel TV. Well, hi John. Thanks so much for coming on, and great to have you here.
John Stossel: Good to meet you.
Doug Truax: So huge fan. You are always my favorite part of 2020 and love the, the parts of exposing the bad guys and getting the truth out, and that’s how you, you know, created this distinguished career that you’ve got. So exposing the truth, not so popular nowadays. So, so just explain this transition, how it’s happened in your own mind from what you’ve always done to, wow, we live in this strange time where maybe the truth isn’t so welcome anymore.
John Stossel: I can’t explain it. I’m bewildered. I thought, I mean, I was, I grew up as a liberal and then was mugged by reality and discovered free markets. And I thought, well, when I explain this to people that these examples, everybody will get it. But my own wife, after 40 years of marriage still, it’s just in her to balk, you know? What do you mean the New York Times is wrong? What? What do you mean you don’t need government to control that?
Doug Truax: Right. It is hard to explain even in your own family. I get it. I get it. Well, the one thing too that you went through is this, with the climate change piece and the, you know, climate change, it’s an interesting term. It’s, you know, I call it weather, you know? Right. The, it gets cold, it’s climate change, it gets warms, it’s climate change, everything. So you’ve got this video, are we doomed it Was it on Facebook? And so what happened there? They say they stifled that. Right?
John Stossel: Well, they were late to stifle that. It got 25 million views. But then they’re fact checkers, which are partnered with these climate alarmist groups, censored it. They, it Facebook’s tricky. They don’t totally censor, they just keep you from sharing it and they cut off its distribution. And now Facebook does that to all my videos because the, their climate zealots got to that one. And look, I, I mean, climate change is real and man, I think is contributing. It’s what’s smart people seem to say. And I was wrong about it originally. I mean, so much of my 2020 career and my early career was, you know, covering sc scares, this is gonna kill you. The killer bees are gonna fly up from Mexico and red dye number six is causing cancer and cell phones. And, you know, it was only because more people use cell phones and they weren’t getting brain tumors that the scare went away. But climate change, it’s harder to measure and so it’ll take longer to get away. I must have covered 400 scares during my career, and two of them I was wrong about. I poo-pooed covid when it first came. And climate change, which I think is real and is a problem, but not this ridiculous crisis that these people claim. It’s,
Doug Truax: Yeah. And that’s so, it’s so important too because people make these big choices in their life sometimes about, you know, what they’re gonna do for occupation and, and you know, these kids
John Stossel: Not having children.
Doug Truax: Right. The eco anxiety and not having kids in this younger generation. And so, you know, how do you see this playing out because it, because this, the propaganda and the alarmism have got, has gotten to such a level. Do you see this kind of coming back and, and, and moderating over time? How do you see this playing out in the coming decade or so?
John Stossel: I hope it moderates. I I’m reluctant to predict anything because future is unpredictable. Yeah. But right now we’re spending gazillions of taxpayer dollars on pointless stuff that mostly helps the politically connected. And of course that’s how most of government works. Right. But it’s really destructive in the climate case. ’cause it’s just all that money could be left in taxpayer’s hands and useful things could be done with it.
Doug Truax: Yeah, yeah. It’s a shame. I just can’t believe how far it’s come and the impact it’s having on the young people in particular. No, it’s, it’s, it’s rough. So back to the
John Stossel: Yeah, look at, go ahead. When I say it’s not a crisis, look at Holland. A third of Holland is below sea level. They built those dikes in the fifties and before with old equipment that it’s much harder to build dikes to hold water back then. Now we could do it much more easily. We can adjust to climate change.
Doug Truax: Right. Yeah. You’ve got time, even if something is moving around and Yeah. It doesn’t have to be this alarmism and, and you know, I see it from a political standpoint. It’s like, well vote for me and I’ll fix it all. It’s like, well, you know, I don’t know about that either. Right. So, but it’s just, but there’s just so many, there’s so many people out there now who their income and their, their future wellbeing is tied to making sure this doesn’t go anywhere other than up as far as the propaganda level. That’s, that’s the hardest part about it, I think. So, yeah, we’ll see how it goes. So I was gonna ask you too, so with all your news journalist buddies that you had from all back in the day, like when you’re thinking about, Hey, I’m a journalist, I’m gonna go find the truth and I’m gonna like really drill into it.
And I’ve had John Solomon on here before too, and he talks about the day that Scooter Libby got, got indicted and there was cheering in his newsroom, and he was like, wait, what a minute. I, I thought that we were supposed to be, you know, he, that was his day when he thought, this is going the way it’s supposed to go. What do you think with these people that you knew back in the day that were committed to the truth? And then over time they’re just like, no, I’m not gonna worry about it. I’m gonna, I’m gonna go along with whatever, you know, like you said a minute ago, sometimes the New York Times, right. It’s gonna push some lie. Did they have a moment, do you think, where in their mind they’re just like, yeah, I used to be in the truth, but now I’m just gonna like, do whatever the guys at the top tell me to do and, and push the propaganda.
John Stossel: I have no insight on that. I, I don’t presume to predict what goes on in people’s minds.
Doug Truax: Do you think that, you know, ever get outta this place where journalists are not telling the truth or they, you think that we’re,
John Stossel: I I don’t think many journalists lie. They, they really believe in the nonsense they push. If you’re on the scare beat, you interview the scientists who is starting brain cancer and cell phones and he really believes it and he’s scared, or Y two K or the flesh eating bacteria, it’s like, oh my God. And then you’re alarmed and you wanna warn people about it. It yeah. Takes some perspective to realize that most of this stuff is
Doug Truax: That’s right. And they don’t dig into the data too. I mean that’s the, that’s the number one thing. I, I feel like where we got to as well, you know, tell me your thoughts on this is like, it feels like the scientists got into marketing where they just, it wasn’t so much about the scientific method as it was about convincing people that, you know, this thing that you think you’ve discovered is real. And then when you get asked, well, could you prove that? It’s like, well, maybe, maybe not.
John Stossel: Well, it’s hard to prove things and I mean, they mostly genuinely believe that and they believe in scientific method. But the climate change is a good example because the I P C C was not created to study climate change. It was created to study the problems of climate change. Right. The people who started it were anti-capitalist and they hated the oil companies and they wanted to find bad stuff about them. And they did. And then the feedback loops go on because if you do a study and says, you know, this is so bad you don’t get funded. Right. And the people in government do the funding, the people you don’t get published and the people, the activists who capture the science journals, they’re not gonna publish you if you say, well, we really don’t know enough to say this is a problem. They’re gonna publish people who say, this is gonna kill you.
Doug Truax: That’s right. I’ve had Tony Heller on here many times, I dunno if you’ve seen some of his stuff about, he just compares the daily weather data from the satellites to, you know, well that’s the reality. But you can see how in the models they build in the, the trend lines that basically just do what you just said. It’s like, this is, gives us, this gives us the story that we want to, to share. And so they’re constantly just looking for the thing that reinforces the propaganda they’re pushing all the time. So yeah, it’s a, it’s a bad situation, but I, I just, you know, like I said, I feel mostly bad for the young people that are growing up in it and, and thinking that, you know, the sky’s gonna fall any minute now. So yeah. I just, I just hope that we’re headed to a better day and appreciate all you’re doing with the educational channel and everything too. I mean, this is really, I think we’ve got reached this place where our education system’s letting us down too. So people like you have gotta really, you know, get, get the videos out there, get the views. I know you got a lot of videos that a lot of different viewers on your videos and I, and I, I really appreciate that too. And, and what, what do you see with the future on that too, as well as, you know, basically parents just kind of giving up on these guys aren’t telling my kids the truth.
John Stossel: Well, I started this charity years ago called Stossel in the classroom because people, teachers would say, oh, I wish I had recorded that 2020 piece. I’d like to play it in class. It would make for good discussion. And so we started soling the classroom and now we have about a hundred thousand teachers who use them. I wish it was all the teachers, but it clearly isn’t. Yeah, yeah. The union teachers are reluctant, but Right. It’s all we can do is keep talking about what we think is reasonable and countering the stuff that’s not true and hope that eventually the people who make the decisions get it.
Doug Truax: Yeah, that’s right. I think the teachers unions has turned into a major problem. I’m here in Chicago and you know, they, they’re the reason we got the new mayor and, and they just have their agenda and, and a lot of times it’s not aligned with even their own members. Like the, it’s the union leaders off, you know, at times that are pushing this stuff and their own, the teachers, they just don’t, they don’t go along with it either. Well, they don’t want to go along with, but they have to. So, but I hope we’re, we’ve got a better day somewhere out there. I appreciate all that you’re doing and we’ll make sure that people know about Stossel TV and all this stuff and, and we got all, we got a pretty good reach and, and our viewers will, I know, I know. They totally appreciate all you’ve done in your career and hope, hope the hope for the best for you and all this stuff you’re doing. So thanks for coming on today, John.
John Stossel: Nice to talk to you. Bye.
Doug Truax: Alright, have a good one. Alright, that’s our show for today. Thank you so much for tuning in and for supporting conservative media. Don’t ever forget that by working together and staying diligent, we conservatives can bring our country back to true greatness. Until next week, let’s all keep praying that God will continue to bless America.
