Remember when Kyle Kulinski said he didn’t think it was worth voting in 2020 during the freaking pandemic’s start when Trump seemed so much worse than Biden? Or when he called the January 2021 insurrection a “diet coup” or Krystal Ball would spend the entirety of “The Hill” trolling Democrats and barely covering Republican/Trump failures? They’ve changed and it seems partly grifting. Kyle’s tweets are smugly anti-MAGA and anti-Rogan and I’m not a supporter of Rogan or anything, but it’s kind of a convenient 180 clearly meant to get more viewers.
Can’t stand Mehdi Hassan, either for opposing any challenger to Biden in the primaries as “spoilers”, including Cornell West and Marianne Williamson and then freaking out at Biden’s debate performance when it was too late (just like Emma Vigeland), and now for going on The Vanguard. Emma and Mehdi are both controlled opposition and claimed to be for ending the genocide, but conveniently supported Biden/Harris at all costs, including the truth.
Back to Krystal. In the last few weeks, she co-hosted with Emma Vigeland, which made my blood boil, and I refused to watch it.
Now I see Krystal being angry at Cenk during a debate for saying we can persuade elements of MAGA to turn against Trump. Why is she angry at that? As he said to Francesca Fiorentini, the left isn’t in power, so we have to work within limits. Cenk isn’t responsible for MAGA’s power. What hope is there when the Dem establishment doesn’t want to stop the wars or end the tax cuts, etc? At around the 17 minute mark, she rude interrupts him with numerous questions and refuses to let him answer and it’s based on stereotypes of what he said. It’s obvious she’s never watched a full hour of TYT. His position is nuanced.
Isn’t the entire basis of Ball’s show with Saagar Enjeti that we can work with the populist right? Heck, she puts up with that wacko Emily Jashinsky who’s pro Canada’s Pierre Pollievre and says he’s a populist, when he’s more dangerous than Trump, I think.
I didn’t watch it yet, but I rolled the first minute and I can see a problem with it right away: it was not moderated by a more neutral party, and mics could get cut off if someone talks out of turn.
I detest such unmoderated talks! The “debate” between Francesca and Cenk degenerated into a royal mess, and I see this one will be too…
That’s exactly what happened. Krystal lays out rules Cenk doesn’t even ask for, saying she’ll debate the first half, then Kyle will debate Cenk the 2nd half, but then she violates her own rules and is extremely condescending to him – much like Francesca – and she and Kyle alternate berating him.
Like Frani, they’re strangely angry with him, blaming him for Trump’s actions. I’ve been angry with Cenk for misleading me or getting my hopes up, as when he said Trump would be out of office before the 1st term was over, but not because I thought he was personally to blame for what happened politically. They actually blame him, which is rich because they were less anti-Trump than Cenk has been for most of history.
He should have only agreed to a neutral moderator setting, mics can get cut if people talk out of turn.
Cenk justifies his blowups by saying: “Well, the issue is really important to me.” That doesn’t matter; you are not winning the minds of people when you let them set you off so easily…
It was hard to watch. I like Krystal but she did come across as immediately on the attack. It seemed she wasn’t interested in hearing Cenk out; she wanted to fight and “be right” and it felt personal / a little bitter. The personal feelings of all 3 were palpable from the get go and it absolutely clouded their ability to make their case well.
They all made reasonable points/defensible arguments. I do tend to agree with Cenk a little more (I find overall he is more pragmatic/strategic while K&K/others on the left are a little more dogmatic), but K&K made good points too. I don’t begrudge Cenk for feeling slighted and becoming defensive, but his emotions got the better of him and in this segment and it definitely worked against him. I love the guy, but his fiery personality can be a double edged sword. Like this wasn’t a debate with with an Israeli propagandist; Kyle used to be a friend and is still theoretically an ally. Even if Cenk’s correct, when he comes across as obnoxious in situations like this, many people listening won’t even hear his point. They’ll just write him off as a jerk and move on. Like he started the conversation by “seeing if you guys are still on planet earth.” That was just rude and insulting. I largely agree with Cenk’s frustrations on TYT’s criticisms, but these kinds of talks/jabs just burn bridges and fester grievances deeper.
Prediction: next week, Francesca, TMR, etc will all do segments coming to K&K’s defense and bashing Cenk/TYT. Won’t be surprised if Cenk gets called a mysoginist cuz he yelled at Krystal. The stupid Vanguard will do their thing and provide “thoughtful commentary and media critique from the left” (lol). Several hundred thousand views later, the bitterness and divide will grow a little deeper. Ugh. What did that accomplish.
Towards the end (the part not on youtube) the temperature cooled a little and Kyle does seem like he’s trying to be pragmatic and hopefully the bridge won’t be burned, but who knows. That would sadden me; I love TYT, Secular Talk & Breaking Points.
this was such an important conversation to have. i’m frustrated that it became as heated as it did because i think getting people to understand Cenk’s strategy is so important.
I think both sides of the debate got heated quick but we can’t blame that on kyle and krystal being bad actors like we have in the past. kyle and krystal don’t have an agenda against cenk to get more clicks. Cenk framing the conversation as i’m trying to see if you are living on planet earth or another planet is inherently insulting and that was the start of the debate. it’s understandable that both kyle and krystal were defensive with that start.
Also cenk was wrong about maga being able to push back enough on elon and trump raising the pentagon budget that it would be able to make a difference. the metric for success cenk set up last time krystal and he debated. that should’ve been easy to admit while underlining that it was still worth doing! it is still worth trying to get maga to hold trump accountable whether it’s always ultimately successful. he eventually made this point but it took him forever to get there.
Both sides were defensive after the start and continued to straw man each others arguments. basically talking past each other the entire debate. Cenk asked to be on and needed people to understand his strategy not the other way around. it was cenks responsibility to keep things civil and keep things from getting heated. starting things in a way that was insulting and disrespectful and then feeding off that coming from the other side was just bad strategy.
it’s especially frustrating since we’ve seen him be incredibly respectful but explain strategy to people he disagrees with on most things like MTG and charlie Kirk. so to see him not have even a quarter of that respect for kyle and krystal was frustrating.
I think this debate was largely counterproductive in massive part because of Cenks disrespectfulness and allowing himself to get as heated as he did. this was an excellent chance to get people to understand his strategy on a platform where people would be willing to listen and it’s incredibly frustrating he fumbled the ball on this one.
Kyle has honorable objectives, but his strategy is lousy. Just recently he maintained that even if you don’t have the votes for impeachment, you should conduct it anyway as a cry of conscience.
Really? How did most Americans take the first two Trump impeachments? Many who weren’t Dems saw them as posturing. Now it’s made it even more challenging to do an impeachment when we direly need it to save all our skins.
For the first impeachments, what they should have done is an informal headcount. Seeing that the votes were not there for it (and I saw that…), the Dems should have issued a public letter to the Repubs saying: when you’ve had enough, we’re ready to impeach. That way you wouldn’t have wasted time with a procedure that you know was going to go nowhere. It’s then on the Repubs! “We’re all ready to impeach! We need X Repub votes to reach out to us to make it happen…”
I just came from getting “quaint” groceries. A $3.25 quart of kefir just went to $4.69. Between the food prices going up and another Iran strike, I know the impeachment votes will be there this time, in spite of a Repub majority; it’s just a question of time. Of course Bunker Boy will be crying that the inflation wasn’t due to anything he did, it was all Biden; but they have been caught with their hands in the tariff side-deals cookie jar.
thank you! I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that!
it seems like the conversation after these debates always centers around how the other people have a vendetta against cenk/tyt and are generally bad actors. which i find especially in this case neither true nor productive.
