America This Week, June 21, 2024: "Cheap Fakes and Real Mind Games"

And that explains to me all big wobbles in climate statistics, because the Druid gods will not be mocked. They're the ones who control the climate. It's not Jehovah. You know, Jehovah is hands off as far as that goes.

How many, like ancient burial ground movies, are there where you disturb, you know, the sacred whatever and, you know, your curse for the mummy? I don't know, like Raiders of the Lost Ark, right? There's like 9000 of these, aren't there? You don't do this. Yeah.

OK, we get it. We get it.

do protest movements have to convince or persuade to be effective? And there's a there's this new belief that they don't have to. And I'm not sure I understand where that comes from.

Instead, they're going to the heart of their cosmic support and biting and biting the hand that feeds them. This is Lovecraftian horror in the making.

We're just we're raising awareness, but it's negative awareness. It's kind of Bill Maher does this routine all the time about people who block traffic. Does that help a cause or not?

All these people were able to take time off from the jobs they don't actually have in order to do this. And so someone's supporting them. And I'm just not sure who's behind it. Big solar.

I think we have to back up and I don't know, it's not really take a bow, but point out that last week, on this very show, we were discussing this new A.

I. driven game, or this game about A.I. called Haywire, that was designed by In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the CIA. And one of the cards that we showed was one called Mind Games. And it said an easy to use voice model helps create a viral video suggesting that one of the candidates may have dementia.

And in between that moment, actually, it was pretty much simultaneous to when we were cutting that show. Joe Biden was over in Europe and creating a series of videos that went viral. And on Monday.

The White House spokesperson, Corinne Jean-Pierre, had this to say.

They are cheap fakes video. They are done in bad faith. And in some of your news organization have have been very clear, have stressed that these right wing, the right wing critics of the president have a credibility problem because of the fact. checkers have repeatedly caught them pushing misinformation, disinformation. And so we see this and this is something coming from from your, your part of the world calling them cheap fakes and misinformation.

And I'll quote the Washington Post where they wrote. they wrote about this and they said

And I think that it tells you everything that we need to know about how, how desperate, how desperate Republicans are here. And instead of talking about the president's performance and what I mean by that is his legislative wins, what he's been able to do for the American people across the country. We're seeing these deep fakes, these manipulated videos.

you left out part of the shot. So it looks like it looks worse than maybe it really was, but it's real, right? A deep fake is something that's digitally created. It's like an AI generated image. that's fake.

And so she, she went from talking about cheap fakes. And then at the end, she, she, she talks about deep fakes. And this confuses the audience into thinking that what you saw over there in in Europe, where Biden was, you know, variously falling asleep or turning around and looking in the wrong direction or walking off someplace and having to be retrieved by people.

I mean, what do you think about that? But the the brazenness of of of that White House press conference there, that that was striking to me. Well, you're right.

They professed not to have come to these conclusions themselves, but only to be following the press.

It's precious close to trying to melt reality before our eyes, because, you know, the essence of what we're being told is that imagery and video, at least as it reflects Joe Biden's state of mind and body, is unreliable. It was kind of a warning not to pass that stuff around anymore. Exactly. It was a real power move. It was like, you know, from here on out, any of this stuff is suspect and we're going to treat it as fraudulent.

And, you know, and what, and what are people to do? Because now that they've introduced this notion that, you know, video can't be trusted, who, what are they going to do? Are they going to watermark it with the White House initials so that we know what to look at and what not to?

You know, there's a famous quote from Orwell, you know, the party's final command was not to believe your eyes and ears. That's not the quote, but it comes to that. And so now. so now we have this. And, you know, in a world where you, in a world where you're told that what you read on Twitter or social media or whatever might be disinformation, and now you're told what you see might be cheap or deep faking.

What can you do except retire and await instructions? You know, you know, the discernment has now been ruled out. Personal discernment has now been ruled out as a reliable way to. Decide how to vote, whatever.

And if it doesn't get picked up and there isn't a consensus about it, then a feeling of kind of helplessness sets in. after a while. You know, you're not really moving the needle at all. And then meanwhile, they're, they're changing the definitions of things in really important ways, like this whole idea of misinformation and disinformation. They've been subtly kind of, you know, we talked about Stonehenge.

It's like something you can't move, no matter how much pressure you put on it. Well, they've been taking these words that have very concrete meanings, right? Like misinformation, disinformation. They've always had the connotation of something is inaccurate in there, right? Like the.

the only thing that was different about them was disinformation was intentional lies, and misinformation might have been accidental lies. But now they've. now they've added this definition of inaccurate or misleading. Right. Which which could be true things, but, you know, it's leading you to the wrong conclusion, which is the same thing as malinformation, right?

Invented, not invented. now starts to become blurred, and the only thing that you have to rely on in terms of deciding whether or not a thing is misinformation or disinformation is authority, I think. Right. And, you know, that that's deeply disorienting.

For example, she suggested that there is a Republican way of looking at videos and a Democrat way or.

Cheap fake Biden videos and rapture right wing media. So there's two things they're really saying here. They're using cheap fake to kind of, you know, trick your mind into going to that deep fake place. And then they're saying that it's coming from the right wing.

So why make a big deal of it? But as this happens, what I think we're getting is a truly postmodern sense of the news. And, Matt, I think our Jurassic mindset is being, is being highlighted here, because we really are dealing with people who believe that it's just. it's all a war of perception and belief. And it's, you know, belief beats truth.

It's who believes what, at what time, with what intensity, to what end.

The idea that you strike something hard, finally, and you go, oh, I found it, and you pull up the box, and there in it is the truth. Well, you know, for them, there's another box inside that box, and then you can dig again, and you can go forever. But what's the point of that? Let's pull back and decide, was it helpful or wasn't it?

Come on, man.

But, as we all know, and it's funny because probably we all made the same journey in the business. You come up and you realize that objectivity is a very complicated question, because every, every decision that goes into how news is presented means something. You know, you put something on the front page. Do you use big font, little font? Do you?

do you put the scary quote high? Do you put it low? Do you do put in your buried inside? You know, all those things matter.

The the objective truth of the matter, you know, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't. Will this work? Will this push the electorate this way or that way? How helpful is this? It was.

How do we reflect, in terms of our decision making and our editing, the what what we truly believe to be the true proportions and dimensions of the story?

And now, and so there was always an arbiter, a third thing between left, right. Uh, this side, that side, which was. The entity called the story, pull that out, and you just pull that out, you've got a free for all, and what's scary, of course, to everyone who knows where this goes, is that. At that point, it's just who has the bigger megaphone, who can scare the other side into submission, who has the fastest talkers and the best sophistry on their side. And.

Then you go, OK, but what's the point of politics in general? Let's just have a war, you know. Let's just see who wins, because now that it's arbitrary, just get out the pitchforks and have at it. We were supposedly pacified and kept and kept peaceful by acknowledging this outside governing authority of the truth.

But, you know, news organizations aren't compelled to add context to help one side or the other, they may decide to make it hit one, you know. Hit a little bit in one direction more than another, I mean, it depends on how they judge what what reality is. But the reason I bring that up is because one of the things that The Washington Post cited as an example of like missing context was the video of Biden where he's supposedly falling asleep in the middle of I think it was Lapo M an hour ago that he was listening to. And apparently there's a an earpiece in the other ear where he was listening to a translation. And the implication was, well, the video doesn't show the earpiece.

And so you don't realize that he's closing his eyes to listen to the translation.

Like. that's absurd, right? Like the idea that that's somehow hiding context is ridiculous. Now, in another video, there's one where he appears to be like trying to sit down, and it looks really bad if you don't see that there are some other people far down the row in the crowd that are also doing the same thing.

That's a little bit deceptive, I would say.

It's all about appearances. But I have a way to arbitrate that. Find out whether Joe Biden's losing his marbles.

And it's because it is it can be assessed. There are ways of assessing it. And they're not doing them.

there were problems, not just with his ability to remember where he was like, you know, he does this thing where he kind of disappears for a second and then comes back and he's completely mystified as to geographically where he is, but the context of the situation. You know, that's a scary thing. You can see that it's freaking him out behind his eyes. Sometimes he would react emotionally incorrectly, like somebody would ask him a question that was maybe a little bit confrontational, but like, what would come back? would be rage, right?

Or he would be physically poking somebody.

I saw also on Twitter Mark Cuban, the billionaire.

Arguing with people that he'd spoken with Biden, the guy was just absolutely clear as a bell. And how could they do this to him? And. That's unfair to people who have drawn a conclusion from watching these things, because what you're really telling them, you're insulting them, you're, you're saying, you're saying.

I can, let me assure you. So, over and over again, all they've got is. I'm telling you, why? why don't you listen? Why don't you quit this, doing your own research thing or using your own eyes thing and listen to the masters?

Obviously, there is a a story on the other side of what's going on with Trump's, you know, mental faculties. He doesn't seem to be in the same place as Biden at all. You know, vigor wise. But he's. you know, there are things that you notice right after eight years.

He will sometimes grasp for a name and not get it, but he, he moves on. But you have to be, you have to be able to catch those things. But in a larger sense, this is just all kind of the same thing, where we're just told some kind of story that is patently unbelievable and asked to accept it. And it's just happening over and over, and over and over again. And then, if and when truths come out, we're just asked to kind of set them aside and forget it.

So everything from, you know, the Cuban sonic weapon story to, you know, all the different things they told us about covid. Right. This, this will absolutely, you know, if you get the shot, you will not die. You will not transmit it. You know, you must mask.

And now we find out that that was a, you know, sort of arbitrarily decided, the six foot distancing. And I think these are things that are. you know, they've been coded as right wing issues.

And I don't think they really are there.