Bolsonaro Jailed for Coup Plot

Brazil jails Bolsonaro for plotting a coup. Nepal's social media ban backfires into a discord revolution. Paramount makes a play for Warner Brothers discovery and venture capitalist Ben Horowitz rewrites Adam Newman's WeWork scandal. And finally, Trump twists the Charlie Kirk assassination into a weapon. All that and more today. Get ready for fun. Welcome to Filtered with TJ Walker. Hi and welcome. This is Filtered. I'm TJ Walker, want to say hello and good morning to you. If you're watching us live, we are in for a fun, fun show today and a special hello to our new friends joining us on TikTok. TikTok is a platform that we've been streaming to live just through a cell phone. And now we're doing an experiment here today to have it part of the main feed. So we're coming to you Today live on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch and a handful of others, including TikTok today. So hello to our new viewers and thanks so much for joining us. If you're new to this show, here's what we're all about. We look at the top business stories, technology news and culture stories of the day. And we filter it through the lens of communication skills and personal development skills, all with the goal of helping you improve to be more successful in your personal life and your professional life. Let's dive right into Story one. Bolsonaro Sentenced in Brazil coup Plot Former President Former Brazilian President Yahya Bolsonaro has been sentenced to 27 years in prison for orchestrating a coup attempt after losing the 2022 election. According to the New York Times, Brazil's Supreme Court found that Bolsonaro and his inner circle sought to annul election results, dissolve the courts, empower the military, and even plotted to assassinate President elect Luis Lula da Silva. Four of the five justices voted to convict Bolsonaro and seven allies, including his defense minister and Navy commander, Justice Alexandre Moraes, said that evidence showed Brazil had come dangerously close to a dictatorship because of a political group that doesn't know how to lose an election. The conviction makes Bolsonaro ineligible to run for office again and represents the first time Brazil has criminally punished leaders of a couple of While Bolsonaro denies involvement, this ruling is being hailed as a landmark moment for Brazilian democracy and, I might add, for democracy worldwide as well. Okay, what's the real message here? The message is there are some places in the world that still respect democracy. Congratulations, Brazil. You have a president who doesn't respect democracy, tries to stay in office by forming a couple. He Gets punished for it exactly as he should. He gets banished from ever holding government office again. Exactly as it should. I'm wondering if there's another quasi democracy that could learn from this. Okay, let's dig a little deeper here. What does this really mean? It's frankly humiliating and embarrassing to America when they are put to shame by Brazil teaching us how to conduct a democracy. Yes. When you have somebody who refuses to play by the rules, who foments insurrection, who says, I don't care what the voters say, I'm going to do what I want. That's a huge, huge problem. And it deserves punishment. It doesn't deserve to be swept under the rug. So I. I have to congratulate Brazil for what they're doing here, especially given the fact that the current administration in Washington has threatened to punish Brazil for simply following their own laws, for enforcing laws within their country with. It's extraordinarily unprecedented what this administration has tried to do to coerce Brazil into letting this criminal off easy. I mean, that's exactly what's happened. Let's look a few more of the facts. Bolsonaro sentenced to 27 years in prison. The court found that he was guilty of scheming to create a coup and plotting to assassinate the rightfully elected president. Four justices voted to convict. Bolsonaro's own allies also found him guilty. If you're, if you're thinking, wow, this sure sounds familiar. Where have I heard something like this before? You're right. You're not crazy. It happened right here in the United States, only with very different outcomes. Here we've seen a complete erosion of the rule of law. So a lot of people who claim they believed in the rule of law and justice and the Constitution have said, okay, it just doesn't apply to someone we like. Which of course, is the very definition of not the rule of law, not democracy, not stability, but that's the rule of autocracy. That's the rule of mobism. And that, unfortunately, is what we have now. Both the similarities are overwhelming. Both spread widespread fraud allegations once it became obvious that they did not win enough votes. Both encouraged mobs to storm their respective capitals. Both leaders of each of these countries sought the military to stay in power. But only one country ultimately did the responsible thing and held every person accountable, regardless of how popular they were, regardless of the political rank they had and their title they had. So this really is a lesson for the world and especially a lesson for the United States. If you believe in democracy, you have to enforce laws uniformly. It just doesn't matter if you are a former president. You don't get a get out of jail free card. You don't get to trample on constitutional provisions. You don't get to simply invalidate election results because you don't like them. And if you do that, especially if you foment a coup, spread disinformation, try to assassinate people, you deserve to go to prison. So I want to really say hats off to Brazil, the government of Brazil, the legal system and political system of Brazil, for not buckling under the pressure of Bolsonaro's minions and henchmen. But even more impressively, they're not buckling under the pressure of the current administration in the United States, which is attempting to coerce the this country into essentially ending their democracy. Because that's what the administration in Washington, D.C. has done is saying we're going to give you more and more penalties, more and more tariffs, unless you take your constitution, treat it like an old Kleenex, tear it up, ball it up and throw it in the garbage can. That's what the government of the United States is asking Brazil to do. And they're not doing it, at least right now. So I want to really congratulate Brazilians for at least somebody in north and South America still believes in democracy and the rule of law. Lots more to come. Today we have not one, not two, but five issues, as we always do every day right here on the program. Back in a moment.

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Foreign. We are back. I am TJ Walker. Thanks so much for joining me again. If you're new to this show, we look at the top five stories of the day, a mixture of national, international, business, technology, culture, news, and then filter it through the lens of communication skills. Issue 2 Nepal's Discord politics. Nepal's government tried to outlaw the biggest social media platforms in the world, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and X, accusing them of spreading information, misinformation and fueling unrest. According to the New York Times. When the ban went into effect last week, the backlash was immediate. Protests erupted in Kathmandu. More than 30 people were killed in clashes. The prime minister resigned, and parliament was set on fire. With the government collapsed and soldiers patrolling the capital, Nepalese turned to a platform the authorities hadn't blocked, Discord. Originally built for gamers, it has quickly become the country's digital town square. More than 145,000 people now gather there to argue, vote in polls, and even nominate candidates for interim leader. This week, the server rallied around former Chief Justice Susheela Kharki, whose name was passed to the army and president. For now, Nepal's next chapter is unfolding not in parliament, but in a chat room. Okay, so what's the real message here? The genie is out of the bottle. Human beings around the world want to communicate. They're communicating on social media. And when the government tries to say no here, no here, no here, they're playing whack a mole and another one's going to pop up. So if you are a repressive regime, it's simply not going to be possible for you to stamp out people's desire to communicate. We're seeing it at Nepal right now where the whole country has essentially shifted to a relatively undiscovered platform known as Discord. And we may see an actual government formed not in parliament, not in a town hall square, but in Discord. And this is truly transformational. Okay, let's dig a little deeper here into this story, because this is fascinating, and I'm not one who says more communication is always better, because as I pointed out in the the news read there, people died. People are so upset and angry. 30 people were killed in clashes. And social media does a great job of getting people angrier and angrier and angrier. And we've seen that here in the United States, people get angrier and angrier until the point where they feel like, I don't want to talk anymore. I want to talk with what comes out of this thing where I pull a trigger. And that's when democracy unravels. That's when the rule of law unravels and you have utter chaos. And social media, let's make no mistake about it, has been guilty at fomenting these rages, at fomenting civil wars, ethnic cleansing, murders Rapes. Social media has added fuel to the fire. But now what do you do? You had a country saying, let's try to just keep people from killing each other and hating each other as much. So they did put a ban on social media, but it's very hard to shut down the entire Internet. And that is exactly what happened here, is they shut down part of it. But Discord, which is a platform I've used before, I think I have a profile on it, but I'm not active on it regularly. So let's look at the facts again. The ban affected Facebook, YouTube, TikTok X. The ban created a protest of young people on the streets. 30 were killed. The prime minister was forced to resign, but Discord was not touched. I guess the people, the old, the old people like me running the government had not heard of it before and boom, more than 100,000 people of the citizens in a small nation went right there. And they've been nominating judges, they've been debating how to really structure their country. Here's what I don't know. Let's just think this through together. Is it possible for citizens to meet online in a place that isn't completely ruled by hatred and passion and the loudest voice? Because that is historically the problem with anything in social media. All the algorithms are geared towards getting more exposure, more air, more fuel to whatever generates the most engagement. The easiest way to get engagement, emotion. The easy way, easiest way to be really emotional is to hate someone and to get other people to hate. So on its face, Discord, Facebook, any of these communities are really not very ideal for thoughtful, reflective town hall meetings or country meetings where people can get together and deliberate the way a jury might. Can it be structured in some way? I'm hopeful, but it has to be by design. And the problem we have now with all of these social media platforms is they're designed to maximize profit for the owners and the investors. And the easiest way to do that is to simply amplify anyone who's spreading anger, hatred, because that generates more and more attention. Someone who says on social media, hey, that's a good point. I hadn't thought of that. Let's reflect on that. And maybe I should change some of my position on this is never going to get any retweets and refollows and a thousand quick thumbs up and likes because it's boring, it's bland. Unfortunately, if you actually want stable democracy in the United States or Brazil or Nepal, that's what's essential. That is the lifeblood of democracy, thoughtful, reflective contemplation, exchange of ideas, exchange of facts, putting facts into the discussion that can be objectively determined as fair and real and truthful by all parties. Now, that's not the way social media is constructed today, but it could be. But it's not going to happen without government regulation. Now, am I here to tell you, government's always the solution. No government can mess things up, as we're seeing every day in Washington and a lot of places. Government regulation can make things worse, but it can make things better. I'm a capitalist. I believe in capitalism. But I can tell you right now, I've experienced it myself. The capitalistic motto for social media is wildly destructive to democracy because it simply rewards hate. It amplifies hate. And before you know it, everybody hates everybody else and things devolve into chaos. And as we saw in Nepal this past week, a lot of death. 30 people dead. And that may be a very, very small taste of what is to come. Sorry to be the dark this early in the day on a Friday morning, but this may be a small taste, especially once AI gets a hold of things. Because imagine an AI agent told do whatever it takes to get maximum attention from, let's say, tj, let's say me. And it does nothing but bombard me with stories that drive me crazy where I think somebody in a political party I already don't like, somebody who already has beliefs, let's say religious beliefs, I already don't like. And they're sending me messages all day long telling me how this person has done something worse than I've ever imagined. And then another horrible thing. And then it somehow convinced me that they've committed war crimes and atrocities. It's going to get me angrier and angry and angrier. Well, what if an AI is doing that to every single person online? Where does that put us? It could be a wildly, wildly dangerous, destructive time. We're going to be looking at this. Following up, I try to and full disclosure. Bias. I have a bias. Everyone has a bias. I do look at a disproportionate number of stories based in the United States, but we do try to look around at the rest of the world, whether it's Brazil, whether it's Nepal or anyplace else. Back in a moment.

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Wanna support the show? Skip the ads and buy me a coffee. That's buymeacoffee.com tjwalker Foreign. Welcome back to Filtered. So happy you're here with us today. If this is your first time, welcome. We are only in week two of this show and this is a video and audio podcast. It's on pretty much every social media platform and every single podcast platform. So if you hear anything you like, please leave a comment. If you're on a platform that leaves a comment, you can always come over to our YouTube page, our community page at TJ WalkerSuccess and leave comments or leave a comment on this show as well. But if you're listening on a podcast platform, please follow us subscribe on that platform. Leave a review. It is very much appreciated. Let's dive right in to issue three Paramount Plans a Bid for Warner Brothers Discovery Paramount, freshly under the control of billionaire David Ellison, is preparing a bid to buy Warner Brothers Discovery. According to the Times, the deal would unite two Hollywood giants, putting CBS News and CNN along with two of the most powerful movie studios under one roof. Warner Brothers Discovery, valued at $41 billion but carrying $35 billion in debt, owns HBO, CNN and some of the most valuable franchises in entertainment, from Harry Potter and Batman to Game of Thrones. Ellison's plan is to acquire the entire company in a mostly cash bid backed by the vast fortune of his father, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, who recently was named the richest man in the world. A Paramount Warner combination would reshape both the film and news industries, but it would also face intense regulatory scrutiny, especially given the merger's political implications. For now, Wall street is watching closely as Warner stock soared 27% on news of the possible takeover. Okay, so what's the real message here with Paramount possibly taking over Warner Brothers? Well, prediction. It means no more Bill Maher Real Time on hbo. Because if it's one thing we've seen from these new media owners is they want to tiptoe very gently around anything that could criticize Dear Leader, the great orange one in Washington, D.C. so, Bill Maher, get ready to do Your podcast full time, your days could be numbered. And, and the entire new staff of CBS or cnn, one of you, you're going to be out the window. That's the sort of duplication that mergers like to delete. So the profits go to the bottom line. Okay, let's go a little bit deeper here. I can't really make the case that from a regulatory standpoint this should be stopped because it's not 1985. In 1985 the whole media world was very, very focused and it was very much concentrated. You had three TV stations in most markets, you had seven or so movie studios and that was about it. So a handful of companies really did control everything these days. You've got 16 year old kids nobody's ever heard of and they're getting a billion views and they're making tons of Money on their TikTok channels, their media companies. So it's hard for me to really make the case that the regulators in Washington D.C. should prevent any merger in the media world because the media world is so incredibly fragmented these days, it's splintering. And the big incumbents, the CBS stations, the CBS networks that used to get 25 million viewers in prime time 20 or so years ago are now happy with 2 million or 3 million viewers. So they're hemorrhaging market share essentially. This is more and more consolidation. But I still have to mourn this if it does happen because one of my favorite shows is Real Time with Bill Maher. The comedian has been doing this in some version or another for more than 30 years. His show started off as Politically Incorrect on the Comedy Central network, then moved to abc. Then because he offended the tender sensibilities of certain Republicans. After 911 he lost his show on ABC, but ABC. But HBO picked it up and he's been there ever since. And he routinely pokes his finger in the eye not only at Trump but but Democrats, liberals, progressives, the so called left and everyone else. But that's a show that's going to be canceled, believe me like that if this merger goes through. Because Ellison and the new management at Paramount have made it very clear. Whatever you want, dear leader in Washington, you want us to give you a check for $16 million because we hurt your feelings? Okay, you want us to appoint right wing hacks to control CBS News? Okay, we'll do whatever you want. I don't even think the Trump administration would have to pick up the phone and call Paramount if this merger goes through. I think it'll be and say cancel Bill Maher because It'll be so obvious, it'll be pre pandering. It won't be just giving him what he wants. It won't be bowing down to extortion. It'll just be, I better do this to please dear Leader. Now, let's not feel sorry for Bill Maher. He's fabulously wealthy, influential. He'll be doing stand up as long as he lives. His podcast will continue to be seen around the world. He doesn't have to worry about corporate overlords for that. But I do think we're going to see fewer and fewer legitimate news sources. And apologies. I know some of you watching on social media say, tj, how dare you say that CBS News is legitimate? While they once said something bad about George Bush and therefore they're completely, oh, get over yourself. There is such a thing as real journalism where people go to journalism school and learn how to ask tough questions and fact check and put together real stories and vet it and have it approved and vetted by editors. Where people, it's not that they don't have political opinions, but their primary objective is to present some slice of the truth. And we're already seeing that whole realm of journalism being hollowed out in community after community, mid sized city after midsize city in some large cities in America because newspapers can't afford to pay journalist salaries anymore. So what you get, unfortunately, is more people like Alex Jones because his research budget is zero. His fact checking budget is zero. Now you could say, well, T.J. aren't you the same thing? Well, it is true that I'm not doing investigative journalism here on filtered, but what I am doing, I'm filtering this show at several levels. I'm filtering the news through the filter of communication skills and personal development skills. But I'm also filtering it. And then I really vet my sources. I'm only using sources that have serious journalists. And this is across the spectrum. I routinely bring to you stories that were broken by the Wall Street Journal, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, the same, you know, Murdoch who owns Fox News Channel. But it's a separate journalistic operation. They don't simply just make up facts at the Wall Street Journal. They don't have front page headlines that say, hey, we did a poll of our readers and they would like Trump to have won the 2020 election. So we're just going to put a headline up that says Trump won more votes and won the Electoral College. They don't do that at the Wall Street Journal. They do that at the Fox News Channel. So that's a difference in actual quality of news. So my fear is this is going to be another stake in the heart of the real world of journalism. And to be clear, you can be a conservative and be a good journalist. You can be a libertarian, you can be a right of center. What you can't do is simply make up stuff because it makes you feel good. That's not journalism. That is demagoguery.

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Issue 4 Today Horowitz Defense Adam Newman According to the New York Times, Ben Horowitz, the billionaire venture capitalist who has invested in Adam Newman's new real estate startup, is painting a very sympathetic picture of the disgraced WeWork founder. In interviews, Horowitz describes Newman as someone who merely endured bad things happening around him, rather than as the architect of one of the most notorious corporate implosions in modern history. Adam didn't take money from WeWork. Horowitz insisted he was treated unfairly. But the record tells a different story. Newman repeatedly misled investors, hyped impossible growth, and cashed out even as we were collapsed. While SoftBank and other backers lost tens of billions of dollars, Newman walked away with an exit package worth more than a billion dollars. Critics say Horowitz framing turns a calculated manipulator into a victim. The facts show Newman was not an unlucky bystander. He was the driver of the WeWork disaster. Okay, what's the real message here? When the venture capital community turns around and gives a known con man like Adam Neumann hundreds of millions of dollars for his next investment, even though his last big venture lost billions of dollars for everyone other than himself, it sends a clear message. And it's not that women, minorities, you don't count, we'll never fund you. But it does send the message that, hey, if you're a white guy and you're kind of like us and you're bold and you have swagger, we're going to cut you a freebie. We're going to cut you some slack. We're going to have our own affirmative action program. But not for these DEI types. But for people like us, you get a pass and anything bad happens, we'll blame it on someone else. This, let's dig a little deeper here. This is infuriating. I mean, if you've seen any of the great documentaries or movies about Adam Newman, and we were. It really is an atrocity. A guy basically had a very simple concept. Okay, some people need office space. They don't want to rent the whole office. They may need space just for themselves. And it would be more efficient to have a place to go work rather than working from home. Nothing wrong with that. There have been plenty of companies like that all around for a long. I've used them myself when conducting media trainings and public speaking trainings in other cities all over the world. Shared executive space, workspace. It's a pretty simple, plain vanilla concept where the market valuations for any company that went public was pretty ho hum. Adam Newman came around and spun this nonsense. Oh, we're creating a new way of living. We're creating a new existence. We're going to have transformational places where people are going to get to nirvana and work and make money. And it was just all complete nonsense. And he continually misled. Now let's be clear. He. He never was officially indicted, arrested convicted of absolute fraud charges. So he apparently was able to escape that line. He didn't end up in Elizabeth Holmes territory. How he dodged that, I still don't really know. But here's the complicated part. It is true that a lot of people toss around the label of, oh, I'm a victim of racism, I'm a victim of sexism, I'm a victim of classism, and they don't really know. Sometimes you just don't get what you want. Sometimes you're fired because everybody thought you were incompetent, had nothing to do with your race or gender. So I will readily admit that we do live in times where sometimes people are a little too quick to just proclaim something discriminatory. Bias, racism, sexism. However, this case to me is a perfect example of the real discrimination in our society. And it's not that there are so many evil rich white people twirling their mustache saying, wow, we hate black people and minorities and women and trans, and we're going to do anything we can to ruin their chances of that. That's not it. That's the cartoon version. But what is real is if you're a white guy who's already rich as Adam Newman is because he got a billion dollars out of that failed Weworks disaster, other rich white guys give you a pass. You're a part of the club, and you can essentially do no wrong. You get a second chance and a third chance and a fourth chance and a fifth chance. Whereas if you are a minority, let's say you are any minority in America, and you somehow mortgage your home to get a loan to start a restaurant. That's your dream business. And the business goes belly up. And now you've lost your house and your restaurant, but you got another idea for an even better restaurant, what's going to happen to you as a minority? You can go to banks, you can go to venture capitalists, you can go to angel investors. And here's what they're going to say to you when you ask for money for your new venture. Hahaha. They're gonna laugh you right out of the room. Adam Newman doesn't get laughed out of the room. He's seen as a sensitive type. Oh, we have to be sensitive to Adam Newman. He's like us. We've all had failures. Okay, so he lost billions and billions and billions of dollars. Look at how big the scale was. It's not like he lost $500,000 on a restaurant. That's. That's peanuts. He must be a big time guy, if he's already lost billions and billions of dollars, therefore, we're going to learn from his mistakes. He's going to learn and it's going to benefit all of us. That's kind of the mentality. And to me, that's a far more insidious form of discrimination and bias in our society. So let's go over the facts again. I'm just struck by how Ben Horowitz and his whole organization, Marc Andreessen especially, that they become the poster boys for attacking woke, for attacking dei, and yet they're doing the same thing. They're essentially saying, if you're a white guy who's already raised billions of dollars, you need to be handled with kid gloves. You need a special sensitivity. Oh, bad things happened around Adam Newman. Wasn't it unfortunate the way other things happen to we? What? He was running the whole show. He's the only guy who made a fortune out of that. He conned people out of billions of dollars and they're acting like he's a victim. Now, conservatives have rightly complained about this cult of victimization in America for years, for decades, and claiming that progressives, Democrats, liberals, feminists are guilty of saying, of taking away the individual individuality of a person, of saying, don't judge them by their actions. They're just victims in society. Oh, he robbed a 711 store. He's a victim. You shouldn't punish him. That's been the conservative critique. And yet they are doing far worse right here. They're saying, we can't hold Adam Newman accountable. He was just a victim of other people taking advantage of poor billionaire Adam Newman. They were taking advantage of him so awfully, they ended up losing billions of dollars and he ended up a billion ahead. Let's look more at the facts of this Adam Newman. And I would urge you watch the the feature movie about him. Watch the documentary. It is a fascinating story of the excesses of capitalism and frankly, something that leads to what I do. It does show how if you speak with confidence, if you're a commanding figure, people will give you money and buy into your story. So some more of the facts here. Newman personally sold $700 million in his stock at WeWork before it went public. So he cashed out and eliminated his own risk. But some of the things he did, he would fund private jets, lavish lifestyles, all sorts of drugs, partying on investors money. And now an investor says, oh, I want to give you more money with that track record, I'm telling you, if you are a black entrepreneur, a Woman, a minority. And it came out that you wasted millions, billions of dollars partying, drugs and flight. No investor would say, hey, we want to value. We value your expertise and experience. Let's give you more. Hundreds of millions of dollars. It wouldn't happen. He charged. This is one of the worst scam. He charged WeWork $6 million for trademarking the name We. Typically, you're a founder. You're asking people to give you money. The intellectual property goes into the business. You're not constantly doing all of these side deals and benefiting from a conflict of interest against your own company. But he did that repeatedly, again and again and again. He claimed that we work would elevate world consciousness. Really? And people bought it. WeWork's valuation was $47 billion. At one point, it collapsed. It lost 37 billion in that in valuation. The IPO filings exposed massive losses, governments, issues. But he walked away with nearly $2 billion. Okay, let's step back a minute here and do what I told you at the beginning of the show. I do here, which is try to learn from the stories and say, how does this have an impact on you and me? To me, Adam Neumann is a perfect example of the power of public speaking, the power of confidence, the power of storytelling for ill and for good. He was able to raise billions and billions and billions of dollars based on his ability to. To tell a story in an engaging way with confidence. Am I saying that's a good thing? Obviously not. I wasn't an investor in WeWork, but it's obviously not a good thing for capitalism. It's not a good thing for investors to be sucked into that. But I do want you to realize the power of being a persuasive speaker and painting a vision about a better world. Now, I happen to think his whole concept of WeWork is going to elevate world consciousness to be complete utter bs And I was not swept in by it. But then again, he didn't meet with me and give me a pitch, so who really knows? I do want you to think about this. If you have a business and you're actually doing good work for people and you're actually helping them, and you're making yourself money and making other people money, then maybe the missing ingredient is you need to speak with more confidence. You need to retool your story to make it even more powerful and resonate. But don't lie. Don't just make up stuff. I don't want you to be Elizabeth Holmes, and I don't want you to be Adam Newman, I do want you to craft the most compelling story you can about your existing business, if you have one. If it's a startup, I need you to let people see the possibility, but be honest with them. Give them an honest assessment of the risk. And don't take an old idea like we're going to do shared office space and paint it as something completely new. That's, in my view, complete fraud. But you can paint a positive picture of what you're doing, and I believe you can do it honestly, I. And ethically. And yet, you may have to spend some time thinking about the showmanship. Adam Neumann famously had his own music come on as he entered his workplace. Now, that may be a little bit rich, that may be too much, but he did spend a lot of time thinking about how to communicate, how to project confidence, how to, how to be essentially a messiah for his own employees and his own. Now, he betrayed them, believe me. He did not die for their sins, they died for his. But he gave a lot of thought to how he communicated and constantly filling his own employees, his vendors, his suppliers, his stakeholders, certainly investors, with confidence. And he's doing it again. To me, that's a real flaw in capitalism. Capitalists are spiritual, supposed to be hard nosed, bottom line oriented. And the thing about this firm, Andreessen Horowitz, they're almost thumbing in, they're almost saying, founders are great. We deserve to live in a world where there's no democracy. The world is just run by billionaire founders of companies. They are the great men. Believe me, it's men in their view. We need to have a society run by great men. And if they fail, they just deserve another bite at the apple and another bite and another bite and there's nothing left for you or me. Tough luck. Hey, if you're enjoying this kind of take and want to hear more stories filtered through the lens of communication, make sure you're following the show, whether you're watching or listening.

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There's a little notification option where you are now. Go ahead and, and turn it on. It helps you stay in the loop. Okay, welcome back. That leads us now to issue five. We typically do five stories every day right here on Filtered. And I'm reluctant to talk about this story for a lot of reasons. I'm talking, of course, about what happened to the right wing pundit, political organizer Charlie Kirk earlier this week. There's been a lot of hot air, a lot of demagoguery, and this show, this channel, this podcast is not Primarily a political podcast. I'm a sensible centrist and I have in fact voted for people of different political parties in the United States. So I'm trying to be. Everyone has biases and opinions. I'm no different. But what I'm trying to do on this program is bring to you an objective sense of what's going on in the world and then filter it through the lens of communication skills and personal development skills so we can all get better. So with that throat clearing, let's dive right in. Trump and the Charlie Kirk assassination. The killing of right wing activist Charlie Kirk remains unsolved. We don't know who did it or why at this moment, but what we do know is that President Trump immediately seized on the tragedy to inflame partisan divisions rather than calm them. In a speech, Trump declared, we have radical left lunatics out there and we just had to beat the hell out of them. He went further, saying, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism we're seeing. According to the Atlantic, Trump promised his administration would find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity, effectively treating his political opponents as accessories to murder. Without evidence, Paul Krugman notes, no prominent Democrat has celebrated Kirk's death or called for violence. Meanwhile, studies confirm most political murders in the United States. Let me restate that and I'll go over the facts in a moment. Most political murders in the United States in recent decades have been carried out by right wing extremists. So what's the real message here? There was a tragedy in assassination. It was a moment for a president to speak to the better angels of all of us. Instead, this guy went the low road once again. He should have done what the Republican governor of Utah did, which is say, let's all calm down a moment and speak with love for our fellow American. But that's not what he did. He instantly said this was left wing extremist, when at the moment there is zero proof of that. What there is proof of is the vast, vast majority of all political assassinations in the United States for decades has been done by right wing political extremists. Let's dig a little bit deeper here. So Trump, typical Trump, he said we have to beat the hell out of them. He claimed it was the radical left. We don't know yet who did the killing. There were some markings on the bullets, talking about being pro trans. And that may be just, you know, an attempt by the murderer, the assassin, to make Someone else look bad, I can tell you. Right. And I don't know who the killer is. I can tell you the pictures of the number one suspect that the FBI is putting up doesn't look like any radical leftist. I know it's a young white man with a T shirt that had some sort of a flag emblem on it. We'll find out more. I don't want to rush to judgment there, but we just don't know who the murderer was. According to the ADL, 75% of political murders in the United States happened by right wing actors. Doesn't mean they were head of the Republican party for a major state. But they identify as right wing actors. Let's go back in history. I will remember. In fact, I was broadcasting the day it Happened Live. In 1995, the Oklahoma, Oklahoma City Bombers. A far right militia extremist did that. 2011, Gabrielle Giffords, the congresswoman, was shot, nearly murdered, Far right militia extremists. 2015, the Charleston massacre, a white supremacist. Again, I'm going to be fair here. In 2017, Republican Congressman Steve Scalise, he was shot. He was not killed, thankfully, that was a left wing extremist. So it's not all one side. But to immediately say here was a killing, I'm gonna automatically not just assume, but say it's my political enemy is the definition of demagoguery and the definition of not being a leader or a a good leader. Let's look more. 2018, Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, far right white nationalist. 2020, attempted kidnapping of Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a militia plot from right wing extremists. 2022, an attack on Speaker Pelosi's husband, Paul Pelosi, a right wing conspiracy believer. And 2024, the CDC headquarters shooting, an anti vax extremist. And we didn't even talk about the killings in Minnesota. So. Look, we live in a violent nation. There's no doubt about it, there are extremists on both sides. But let's forget all the games of a false equivalency. It's not that the country is overrun with left wing murderous extremists and zealots, as was intimated by the President of the United States. It is primarily the problem of political assassination in America in recent decades is primarily driven by right wing extremists. So if you want to go after anyone, how about going after right wing extremists? And if the left is so evil, as we're told again and again by this current administration, then why is it the left wants to, in your words, ban all guns because they wouldn't be able to kill anyone if you just did what they asked you to do. So I know you don't want to go there, and I don't want to turn this into a whole tedious, boring gun control debate, because that debate has essentially been lost in America. But you know, you can't have it both ways. You can't say the left is running around shooting everyone and the left is so awful because they want to take away their guns. It just doesn't really add up. Okay, that concludes the main portion of our show. But what I like to do on days like this is sometimes there's too many interesting stories and we have to go to sort of a truncated grab bag section. So that's what we're going to do right now. But before I do, I want to thank you for joining me, especially if this is your first time. So please leave a comment on any platform where you're seeing this. You can always go to my YouTube channel and go to the Community section, the community tab on YouTube, and leave comments. I do read and respond to every comment. If you are listening to this on a podcast platform, please feel free, follow the show and also subscribe to it if it gives you the option. You don't have to pay for anything. It's free. And please leave a review. If you're on any other platform like a YouTube or Facebook that allows you to like it, follow it, sign up for notifications, subscribe. Then please do that as well. Okay, let's hop right into the grab bag section. Soran Mandami to apologize for 2020 New York Police Department Remarks New York City mayoral nominee Zorant Mandani says he will apologize for calling the New York Police Department racist, anti queer and a major threat to public safety in 2020. He now calls police Critical Partners and vows to keep staffing at 35,000 officers. Apology forthcoming okay, so this has become an issue, but surprisingly it does not seem to have hurt Mamdani with voters at this point. He's still slated to win the general election coming up in just a few months. And it is a little bit different. I mean, a lot of candidates, once you are perceived as being anti police, especially in a major city like New York City, it's often the kiss of political death. There is something about this guy who I think is unique talent that I think is unique talent. He always has a smile on his face. He does not seem to appear to be hateful. Now I can't read his mind, his soul. He may be the most hateful person in the world, I don't think so. But the way he comes across to voters every time he's on tv, every time he's on social media, every time people see him on YouTube or TikTok, he just seems warm, he seems inviting, he seems likable. And those things all help when you're trying to apologize and get yourself back into good graces with, in this case, police officers. Now, I do want to dissect one thing that kind of sticks in my crawl here. We are told, first of all, I support police. I personally have had nothing but good interactions with police in my entire life. Anytime I've dealt with the police, they have always given me the benefit of the doubt. Do they do that with everyone? I don't think so, but I don't really know. All I can tell you from my own experience, but I happen to think partially it's because they look at me, and especially these days, I kind of look like someone who might be a campaign contributor to their boss's boss. So they give people like me a lot of deference. I've been stopped by the police and told, hey, be careful next time. I had been accused of a crime while I was 10 years old and the police came to the door and asked my father, let me see, do you have any teenage sons driving? We've had reports that you stole a street sign, that your son stole a street sign. Well, I was the only son and I was 10. And it was discovered that someone saw my father and me trying to fix a street sign. We had found a street sign in another part of our community for our own street. And my father got on my back or I got on his back. We tried to put the street sign back. We didn't fix it and we just left it there. So when the police came, everyone was polite, everyone was nice, and we all had a good chuckle over it. We weren't afraid to open the door. They were comfortable talking with us. I've had countless interactions. Once I accidentally slapped a police officer. I didn't mean to, I was gesturing. It was Puerto Rican Day parade and I was in Central park and I was telling the officer, I'm trying to get out over here. And I accidentally slapped a police officer. And you know what happened to me? The police officer apologized to me for getting in the way of my hand. Had I been a minority, someone who maybe didn't look like a law abiding citizen, in their view, maybe I would have been down on the ground and handcuffed, I don't know. But when someone says maybe some of the police sometimes are occasionally racist, anti queer, threat to public safety, isn't that true of everyone and anyone in any group? I mean, you could say that about lawyers, you could say that about CEOs. So here's what I resent. I certainly resent those who want to trash the police all the time. And then there's a break in, in their house. Who do they call? The police. I resent that. But I also resent this idea that police officers who are frankly tougher and braver and stronger than I am are so weak and timid that if anyone ever criticizes them, it's going to hurt their feelings and they're not going to be able to do a job and they're going to have to have a mental health day. Because that's the sentiment we hear again and again and again from the political world of any politician, typically a Democrat, if they ever voice any, any criticism of a police officer. And that's too extreme too. We hear all the time that, you know, this side goes too far, this side goes too far. You know, the anti woke left has gone too far once again. But there's also this sense that you can, you know, you can criticize big business, you can criticize Democrats, you can criticize lawyers, but all police officers are beyond criticism. That's a, that's something that gets us into a lot of trouble. And it relates to another story that happened this week. Revelations that there are countless police officers in New York City who routinely drive drunk, trash their cars, hurt people, hurt themselves, hurt passengers never seem to get a ticket because of professional courtesy. When their fellow police officers come, it's just like, oh, you're one of us, we'll drive you home. Don't tell anyone. That's a huge problem. And it's a part of this culture that says once you wear the badge, you don't deserve any criticism. So am I saying Mandani should have made a blanket statement in the heat of the moment saying that the police department as a department was racist, anti queer and a major threat? I'm not endorsing that statement. But more important, he's now recanting that statement. He said it was said in a moment of passion right after some crises happening in the United States. He's apologized for. I mean, that's what you want. You want people to occasionally admit they're wrong. That's a sign of growth. That's the sign of it being an intelligent person. Unlike, for example, every major economist in the world a couple of years ago who all predicted we were going to have a huge, huge recession. 20, 23 and 24 never happened. Did any of them apologize or admit they were wrong? No, they did not. So that's it for the grab bag today. We have more stories today, but I don't have time for. We're going to have to sign off for today. I really want to thank you for spending time with me. I'm TJ Walker. This is filtered with TJ Walker. If you heard anything you like, please post your comments. Follow us like us Share with your friends thanks. See you next time.