Christmas Tree Wars, CBS Censorship, Epstein Files | Filtered with TJ Walker

Merry Christmas. If you're watching this today, it is Christmas time. I'm TJ Walker, this is Filter. Thanks for joining us on your holidays because, hey, maybe the cooking's done. Maybe your guests haven't arrived yet and you want to just think about a few other things. I appreciate you joining me. Big question I have for you. Do you have a Christmas tree? If you celebrate Christmas and if not, that's perfectly okay. If you have a Christmas tree, is it a real tree or is it an artificial tree? Now the, the growers of Christmas trees in America have been hurting lately. That's kind of an understatement. America's Christmas tree farmers are losing ground, according to the New York Times, to import artificial trees. And the industry's tiny marketing board is trying to win shoppers back by by branding live cut trees as real and plastic ones as fake. Their big break this year, a Home Depot national TV ad campaign. I'm going to show that to you in just a minute. They spent about $10 million airing the ad a thousand times. They're trying to generate interest in live trees. I want to show you this ad and comment on it because I do think it, it is interesting for a couple of different reasons. Let's take a look right now and we can analyze it together. Again, this is courtesy of Home Depot in an ad that is getting nationwide play. So it certainly has that gauzy look, that all American look, the, the little boy and the, the morning sun there see the whole family going to pick out their live Christmas tree and it does evoke nostalgia. And I will confess to you it makes me feel a little sad. I will cop to it. We do have an artificial tree in my household growing up. Not something we did. We bought real trees and I'll tell you where in just a moment. But let's look at this admore. So here's the little boy looking around and while he has a full head of hair, he does remind me a little bit of Charlie Brown. And those of you who have ever seen the Charlie Brown Christmas special, remember he went, was given the charge by his classmates to pick out a great Christmas tree and pick the smallest, most spindly tree. So it's evoking images of that a little bit for me anyway. No, doesn't like that one. Now clearly he sees one he likes. I mean, it's hard for me to imagine anyone cynical enough to not have that sort of warm their heart every holiday. You've got the light snow coming down. The Home Depot works with family farms to help the right tree find you. Now you see a little boy, he found the tree he loves. They've obviously brought it home, giving it some homemade decorations now. So I have to tell you, I think that's a pretty effective commercial. It makes you feel warm and tingly. And it does make you question your practice. It's making me question. I don't know how or when exactly, but somehow we got an artificial tree for our family. And I was thinking back, seeing that commercial, reminding me, what did I do as a kid? Well, this may or may not shock some of you. Every Christmas, I worked on a Christmas tree lot. It was with my father. It was something we did together. His men's organization called the Optimist International, every year they did this for decades and decades in Charlotte, North Carolina, would sell Christmas trees with all of the proceeds going to help young kids. And I think it was even targeted to boys. But youth, it was for helping youth. Actually, it wasn't just for boys. It helped all boys and girls. Various charitable organizations. And I remember so many good times and memories. We would have, I think, an oil burning fire. We'd stand around the fire and we would sell Christmas trees. And the people would come, they would feel good about the fact that their money was going to help needy children. I was. There was a lot of camaraderie. It was, again, it was a men's group. So all the people working there were in fact, men. There was an old trailer that would be brought out and you had that smell of the fresh pine, the Fraser fir. There were the long needle ones. And it was something I associated with Christmas. And then we would, in fact, we didn't get a free tree for working there. We bought a tree, but it was a lot less expensive then. We didn't have $100 trees as far as I remember. You could have like a $25 tree, a $35 tree. Last time I checked, trees were hundreds and hundreds of dollars. So I do sympathize for a lot of Americans who say, TJ, I can't afford a real tree. I can get this artificial one and it's good forever. Or I can spend hundreds of dollars every year for something that's going to throw away. So I have some sympathy for that. But I also have sympathy for Christmas tree farmers in America because they're a small group. What they're trying to do is essentially act together as an industry and do some promotion. The way the Got Milk campaign popularized milk for a lot of people. The California Raisins Trade association got together and did Claymation ads that got a lot of attention a number of years back. So it is a challenge for commodities. And a Christmas tree is a commodity. A raisin is a commodity. You can't trademark it very easily and distinguish it in the eyes of a consumer. So same with milk. And that's why sometimes they get together and they advertise and promote full disclosure. I have worked with American Dairy Council and the New York Dairy Council for them, helping to promote their messages as well. I've never worked for the Christmas tree or any Christmas tree organization. Here's what I don't know. Environmentally, there's pros and cons to both. If you plant, if you plant a tree and it's, you know, it's producing oxygen that's good for the environment. But if you're cutting it down, transporting it all the way across country, having to pay for the gas of a truck, how bad is that for the economy? Especially if you're doing that every year versus making something, let's face it, probably in a factory in China with a lot of metals, plastics, shipping it from the other side of the world, there's an environmental impact there as well. But presumably you can reuse it. You can recycle that tree every year for, well, really indefinitely. Now I have read research showing that a lot of Christmas trees, artificial trees, just end up in dumps every year. So if you're buying a new artificial tree every three years, I can't imagine that not having a much more negative impact on the environment. If you know the answer to this, I couldn't find it in my own research. What is really better for the environment? The so called real tree or the artificial tree? And what do you have? The other thing as when I was a kid, the artificial trees looked horrible. I mean, they really looked kind of tacky in an eyesore back in the 60s and 70s. These days artificial trees look fantastic. I mean, a lot of times you just can't tell until you get up and you try to pull on the needles and realize it's not coming off, it's an artificial tree. So kudos to the artificial tree manufacturers for really upping their game regardless of whether you have a so called real tree. Oh, the other trees that we did get one year was one that still had the roots. Arguably that would be the best thing for the environment because you put the tree and it comes with a big burlap bag wrapped around it and you put it in your house, it's covered up so there's not dirt getting around but then after the Christmas holidays, you take it outside, you dig a hole in your backyard or your front yard and you plant the tree. That is something my family did a number of times. I still remember once waking up the next morning and seeing the tree was gone. A motorcyclist had had an accident in the front of our street on Brook Crest Drive in Charlotte, North Carolina. And someone had some kids apparently had put trash bags full of grass clippings across the road, thinking it would give a car above. Well, it put a motorcyclist airborne and it chopped our Christmas tree in half. This was after Christmas. It had already been planted, so I don't really see people doing that very often anymore. If you have bought a live Christmas tree that came with its roots, let me know. I'd love to hear from you. Regardless of whether you use a live tree, artificial tree, a tree with its roots, no tree at all to celebrate whatever you want. I'm wishing you Happy Holidays today. Sad News for the National Park Service According to the New York Times, Betty Reed Suskin, the nation's oldest active park ranger, has passed away earlier this week at age 104. Now, she didn't start working at the National park service till age 85. She used her own experiences with segregation during World War II to teach visitors about the overlooked roles of women and people of color on the home front. Her lifespan went from slavery's legacy, Jim Crow's desegregation and the presidency of Barack Obama. And she, as part of her job, told history the entire truth again. 104 years old. Didn't start the job till she was 85 years old. She worked at the Rosie the riveter park around 2007. She was a union worker back in 1942. During World War II, she was assigned to a segregated auxiliary unit. She was black, African American. She owned the first black owned record store in Berkeley way back in 1945. She had survived burglaries when she was 95 years old. She did have a stroke in 2019, but went back to work. She had met President Obama and actually published her memoirs in 2018. Here's one of her memorable quotes. She said, I never had a sense of being anyone other than pushing papers, meaning she didn't think of herself as special or fancy or elite. In some ways she just showed up for work. I find this heartwarming and inspirational. We so often think, well, you know, if you want to be 100, you have to be like Brian Johnson and spend $2 million a year on all Sorts of pills and potions and supplements and infrared treatments. Turns out for her anyway, it was working. Finding purpose in life, being helpful to others, overcoming discrimination, other, other challenges. So I do think she's quite inspiring. I wanted to give her recognition because quite often people like this who just show up and do the work don't get a lot of attention. Now she is getting attention in part because she just did it a lot longer than anyone else. Getting to be 104 years old now. I've had the privilege of working with a lot of park rangers over my own career. I used to do all of the media training for the National Park Service, the northeastern region that included some Delaware Water Gap parks, things like that, parks in Long Island. But also the Statue of Liberty is a national park. And what I found was universally all the people I met at the Park Service were really committed to America, to history, to helping citizens better understand it. And we now live in a time where a lot of these Park Service people don't feel especially appreciated. Especially when the government sort of willy nilly shuts down and says, you're not really important, you're useless, just you're furlough, we're not going to pay you. And they just have to sit at home sometimes month at a time, no pay. And you know what? Pretty much all of them show up day one whenever the government shutdown ends. In my own experience, the park rangers really loved public service. They saw themselves as true stewards of not just the land, but the traditions of America. Because there are some parks like Yosemite, Grand Canyon, gigantic park, obviously, other parks like Grant's Tomb and the Statue of Liberty, not particularly large in terms of acreage, but large in the minds and the spirits of Americans of who we are, what we're about. And I do see a lot of the true patriots and yes, government workers, and yes, if you want to call them bureaucrats, you can do that. There is bureaucracy in any organization that has more than one person in it because people have to get organized. But the bigger lesson I see from her is, and forgive me for seeming like a nag, don't retire. I don't mean you have to work at a boring job you don't like that's physically laborious and draining you of energy. And never travel or spend time with your kids or grandkids or the community. What I do mean is find something of purpose. Because as much as your kids and grandkids love you, they don't really want to see you 18 hours a day. There's time to do both. And again, if you are a renowned spinal surgeon and you feel like I've done every spine spinal surgery I want to do, it's time to do something. Okay, maybe you become a park ranger or a community volunteer. But I do think it's crucial if you really want to have longest and happiest life, to be like Betty Reed Soskin, have a purpose, show up, have a job. It doesn't have to be a paying job, but have a job. And it could be simply taking care of five kids in your neighborhood, babysitting and not even charging. Or maybe you do charge. It could be rather than a park ranger for a giant park, maybe it's taking care of of an abandoned lot at the end of your street so that neighborhood kids have a place to play. I don't know what it is, but what I do know is, and there's a great article in the Atlantic just this week about the problem of senior citizens having a cell phone retirement where all they do is sit around and look at their phone, look at Facebook, maybe look at pictures of their grandkids, rather than spending time with their grandkids looking at the news and complaining about politicians. It's an awful retirement, and I don't think that's the way to get to 104. So, Betty Reed Soskin, we salute you in a life well lived. And I'm hoping that I can get to 104 as well. And I'm hoping any of you watching do too. According to the Daily Beast, CBS is aggressively issuing copyright takedowns to suppress a leaked 60 Minutes news segment it pulled at the last minute earlier this week. Despite the report already airing internationally, the segment documents alleged brutal abuse of Venezuelan migrants deported to El Salvador's Sicat prison. And its correspondence says the decision to kill it wasn't editorial, it was political. Now, we talked about this earlier in the week. CBS, 60 Minutes. For most of my life, probably the singularly most respected journalistic entity, not just a part of CBS News, but CBS, 60 Minutes, that was the gold standard. When they did an investigation, you knew they had spent months and months, sometimes years, documenting it. When they caught a bad guy, you believed it was a bad guy. And when they canonized someone like Katherine Hepburn, you believed she deserved it as well. They're also known for extraordinarily positive profiles of famous celebrities. So this was a story that made a certain someone in the White House look bad. And he now has allies. One of his buddies, Larry Ellison, gay, who's depending on the time of the Day is either the richest or one of the five richest people on planet Earth. He gave his son, a failed actor, tens of billions of dollars to play with. And that son bought CBS and its parent company and then they installed a henchwoman to enact a political agenda. So apparently she's now doing her job. They're getting her money's worth. I'm talking about Barry Weiss. They bought the free press for $150 million and made someone without a single shred of TV editorial experience the head of all of CBS News. And she said, oh, apparently here's a story makes my guy, my team, Team Trump look bad. I see that you've been investigating this story for weeks, months. I see that is been vetted by our standards and practices not once, not twice, not three, but five times. I see that our lawyers have said it's correct. I see that it's scheduled to air in a few hours. I don't think so. I'm going to push the edit delete button. Those are the allegations of the correspondent who was responsible for this story. Now, here's what's happened since the segment was 15 minutes long again, it was pulled three hours before broadcast. It aired on Canadian global television. How that exactly happened, I'm not sure. Clips of that got onto YouTube and X. CBS issued copyright takedowns. I mean, they, they brought their lawyers out full force very quickly. The video is preserved via Internet archive. Now, I would show it to you, but I'll be honest with you, I have better things to do than go to court against CBS and to fight nuisance charges. I could certainly make an argument that I'm giving commentary on. I can have my face next to the story, but CBS could still strong army use intimidation. And it's all well and good to say I'll never be intimidated. Well, sorry, in this case, I was intimidated. I don't want to have to come up with a whole bunch of money to hire lawyers to defend me for a case where I know I would win because I would be giving commentary on the piece, which is protected speech. It's considered fair use. But that's why I'm not showing it to you. It's not because I think it is disingenuous or bad journalism, but if you search for it, I think you will be able to find it. Because once something's on the Internet, it's very hard to scrub it completely. And it is in various Internet archives. Now, the deportees were sent to and forgive me if I'm not pronouncing this right. Cecot prison, the migrant claims, no criminal record and everything was checked, double checked, triple checked, except for the final check, which is now apparently a thing at cbs. Does this story make somebody we like who's powerful and orange and Washington unhappy? If the answer to that question is yes, then we don't air the show, apparently. Now here's what the Venezuelan asylum seeker Luis Munoz Pinto said. There was blood everywhere, screams, people crying. They beat me until I bled. This was a part of the story. Barry Weiss, the editor in chief, says holding stories that aren't ready happens every day in every newsroom. But this one was ready. This one was fact checked, approved, vetted five times. Lawyers looked at it. You had the entire 60 Minutes editorial apparatus at your dis, at your beck and call. Here's what they reporter, the 60 Minutes correspondent said. Sherry Alfonso Pulling it now is not an editorial decision. It is a political one. This is in fact, what everyone feared. This is what I fear now. It's one thing to have cable television networks that have a lot of talking head content, Fox News, msnbc. Regardless of what you think of those, nobody's really fooled if Sean Hannity is on the screen, just saying, well, this person's a Democrat, therefore they're a socialist, therefore they only want big taxes and to ruin our society. Nobody's really fooled into thinking that took months and months and months of investigative journalism. This is new information. No one's fooled by that. For that matter, if Rachel Maddow is on Ms. Now saying she thinks Donald Trump is morally bankrupt and is corrupting our nation by selling off pieces of the White House and auctioning off the White House, people might agree or disagree with that. But no one thinks that that's the result of months and months and months of serious investigative journalism. They think that's the result of her forming opinions based on what's reported in every news, every major news publication. There is something different about serious investigative journalistic organizations in any democracy. And the 60 Minutes was certainly one that was considered a paragon of nonpartisan objective journalism in America, respected until recently by people all across the spectrum. Republicans, Democrats, liberals, Democrats, conservatives. It was respected. Not anymore. Let's put a little more historical context into this now. US Media consolidation does increase political vulnerability. That's why a lot of people, regardless of where they are on the spectrum, do not like these mergers. They like keeping as many voices small and independent as possible. Now, network news once aired stories about Vietnam atrocities and they weren't taken down. And now they can't even talk about migrants who were thrown into prison unlawfully. International broadcasters are now publishing what US Media. Well, there was a time when people in repressive societies like Russia, like China, had to sneak out and look at what other media were saying around the world to find out what's really going on in their country. Or these days, they get virtual private networks so they can gain access to the New York Times or CNN to find out what's really going on in their country. Sadly, it sounds like that's what's going to happen in America. People who wanted to find out this story had to go to Canadian media. And it's kind of a shame. It does strike a lot of people as ironic that those who bray the loudest about their love of I'm a free speech absolutist. Oh, those awful people on the other side of the spectrum are trying to deplatform us and are trying to shut us down and censor us. Suddenly, they're very quiet about this. Suddenly, it's quite all right for a story that cast this administration in a negative light to be censored. Suddenly. Now, that's okay. Nationalism seems like it's excusing human rights abuses as long as the politics are aligned. Hey, our guys in power, forget this human rights nonsense. Let's spike the story. So, a bit troubling if you care about freedom, if you care about a free flow of ideas in a democracy, if you're worried about censorship, it's a big, big problem, ladies and gentlemen. And unfortunately, the people who claim to have the greatest love of free speech in America, again and again and again, I'm seeing they only like a certain kind of speech. They like free speech as long as it attacks their enemies. But if it's anything that makes them look bad, wow. They love censorship more than anything in the entire world. The Justice Department has released another huge, huge batch of documents from the Epstein file, and they contain hundreds and hundreds of references to Donald Trump. Now, this follows an earlier release from a few days ago that focused heavily on former President Bill Clinton. Now, when the articles and the documents, the photos of Bill Clinton were released, it generated tremendous amount of attention. MSNBC talked about it, CNN talked about it, and tons and tons and tons of conservative influencers had a field day. They were all over it. They talked about it. Look at how awful Bill Clinton is now. We'll talk about Bill Clinton in just a minute. But here's the interesting thing. When the new documents came out about Trump multiple times, including details about a lot more flights on Epstein's plane than anyone had ever thought before. Many of those same influencers, very quiet, maybe they decided to take an early Christmas vacation. They couldn't seem to be interested in that. So what's going on here? Look, everyone has biases. I have biases, you have biases. But when the Department of Justice releases photographs of Bill Clinton with Epstein, it was everywhere. It was on mainstream media, it was on so called liberal media. It was everywhere. And a lot of people talked about. Now, when they looked at the facts, what they did in fact find was that contrary to what President Trump has said repeatedly about Bill Clinton going to Epstein island, in fact, there's zero evidence that Bill Clinton ever went to Epstein Island. And in fact, Donald Trump's own chief of staff has publicly stated that Trump is just lying about that. Bill Clinton cut himself off from, cut off all ties with Epstein before he was ever convicted of anything and had not had any contact with him in decades, that apparent. But did spend time with him, there's no doubt about it. And that got a lot of coverage. And a lot of people had a lot of fun with the images, the photos that came out of Bill Clinton in a pool with Ghislaine Maxwell. And it looked like there was another woman in there whose, whose face was blotted out. So that got a lot of attention. Not saying it shouldn't. It's interesting, there's no doubt about it. But here's what's kind of bizarre. So many more damning articles have come out, documents from these Epstein files from Trump's own Department of justice have come out. And all of a sudden we see almost complete silence from many on the right. Let me share with you some of Laura Loomer. You may have heard of her before. She's one of Trump's confidants, very active in social media. And so Saturday she was very quick. Once there was a Clinton story out, it's pretty rich. The Democrats falsely accused President Trump of being a pedophile. We don't know if it's false yet or not, but that's what she put only for the Trump DOJ to release Epstein files that show Bill Clinton skinny dipping with a pedophile in the pedos pool. Well, it is. That part is fair because Bill Clinton was with Ghislaine Maxwell. We often think of her as simply an accomplice. Well, no, she was a pedophile too. She was involved with the physical or sexual abuse of these children. It's not, she wasn't just there as the assistant. So that part is Fair. But as reported by the New York Times, Laura Loomer had nothing to say with all after the initial hours of the release of all these new files implicating Trump many, many years after Clinton had disassociated himself from Epstein. And again, there's just, look, if you want to attack Bill Clinton and say he's not the perfect moral guy, okay, I'm not going to fight you on that. But the idea that he was one on one socializing with Epstein and having parties with Epstein at place like Mar a Lago with just him and a bunch of beauty pageant contestants, there's simply no evidence to suggest that certainly no serious person has suggested there was a close personal friendship between Clinton and Epstein the way there was with Donald Trump. Those are in fact established facts. You don't have to believe in any conspiracy theories. That has been extraordinarily well documented and Donald Trump has attested to that, talking about how much he likes hanging out with Epstein. Great guy. They both have a love of the young ladies on the younger side, the pretty ladies. This is all documented. There's no quote of Bill Clinton saying anything like that other than the fact that he appreciated Epstein helping him with charity ventures, going to on human rights missions to Africa where he was on Epstein's plane. So again, nothing from Laura Loomer Rogan Handley of D.C. drano says new Epstein files show Bill Clinton shirtless in a hot tub with a female that is not his wife, Hillary Clinton. All true. But again, in the the immediate hours after the new dispatch of all these files from the Epstein family file with hundreds of references ties to Donald Trump, nothing. It's quiet. Benny Johnson, another right wing influencer, he's littered all throughout it, talking about Clinton photos showing him at Epstein's pool with Ghislaine Maxwell and a potential victim. Deeply disturbing. Okay, but yet somehow Benny Johnson is not disturbed by the hundreds and hundreds of references to Trump in the most recent dump that have come out in the last 24 hours. And I should note that I'm recording this the day before Christmas at noontime on December 24th. And I just want to share with you something because I well remember certainly a few days ago when the, when all the Trump, when all the pictures of Clinton came out, I saw those everywhere on cnn, MSNBC and elsewhere and it was talked about, it was considered a news story. I do want to show you what is currently on Fox News website. We have a story about a white conservative Christian man who won a lawsuit against his HOA so he can display his wow, it looks pretty tacky too. His big Christian display of lights in his community. Okay, that's their top story on the foxnews.com website on December 24th. That's the top story. The next story is a story about Stephen Miller, the White House aide saying he now wants 60 Minutes CBS Barry Weiss, his ally, to fire every reporter who dared say something negative about Trump in the deportation segment that he did, that Stephen Miller did get spiked. Then we have stories about golf. And then here's one popular with a Fox gender secrecy. No more in California schools after. So anything you can do to talk about gender, certainly not about Trump or Epstein. Here's a story about violent criminals always plays well with the right. Some sports stories. Here's a story that gives them an opportunity to show scantily clad women on the website. A story about Hooters. And then here's a story about Pete Hegseth and a story giving the White House spin that somehow there are a bunch of states with really low inflation. So what we don't see anywhere is what is the lead story pretty much everywhere else in America about all of these new documents coming out from Epstein with hundreds and hundreds of references to Donald Trump. And again, the mainstream media I'm seeing playing it pretty fairly because there is a letter, I reported on this yesterday. There is a letter that was purporting, purported to be from Epstein that was essentially confessing that he was about to off himself and talking about how the President shares fondness with the person he was writing to or young lady, underage girls and young ladies. And I've seen the media handle this very responsibly. They have, they have pointed out that it was the FBI's belief that this was a fraudulent letter for some obvious reasons. It was sent three days after Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. It was sent from Maryland and Epstein wasn't in Maryland and it had a return address, a different prison that he wasn't in. So it was pretty clearly obviously not a real letter. And every so called mainstream media organization I've seen, USA Today, the Atlantic, even the Drudge Report did show, in fact why this should not be considered legitimate. They didn't just play it up to get more clicks. Some like the New York Times didn't even mention it 24 hours later. The New York Times didn't even mention that because I think it didn't pass their smell test as real. So they figured why waste the time of the audience. There was also documents showing that someone had called the FBI with a tip, supposedly Someone who'd been in a car overheard someone else, a young woman, say that Epstein and Trump had raped her. But again, no evidence, no corroborating evidence is just someone calling, saying they heard someone else say someone else committed a crime. Well, that can't be the standard. And that's typically why, frankly, investigative organizations and police and Department of Justice and your local police station, they don't just reveal everything they have. It's not about some massive cover up. It's because there's a lot of nonsense out there. Certainly if you are well known as celebrity, whether you're the local mayor or the President of the United States or a famous Hollywood star, there's all sorts of kooky people who just make up allegations that you've done things. You know, there are people who live on the other side of the world who've never met a celebrity and claim that celebrity is the father of their child when it is just clearly nonsense. So there's a lot of nonsense in any big FBI file involving famous people, which is why traditionally files like this, investigations are not released and just dumped everywhere. But let's not forget who was it that was pushing so hard in the last four or five years for this to come out? Oh, yeah, it was Donald Trump was the one pushing for this to come out because his QAnon supporters, other supporters wanted it. Now, my point of course here is that the so called mainstream media, which Trump thinks is awful and evil, they've handled this responsibly. They pointed out that there is in fact no evidence that this tipster calling the FBI, claiming that Epstein and Trump raped this young woman who then apparently, according to the tipster, killed herself. There's no evidence, there's no proof whatsoever that it's valid. And so most mainstream organizations didn't even report. If they did, they pointed out, just as I did, in a responsible way. There's not a single shred of evidence that this is true. But it is true that there is a document in the Epstein files documenting that someone called with this tip. So my point is we have a so called mainstream media that is constantly mocked as lame and is somehow biased reporting these facts in a straightforward, fair way. And yet the media that is most respected by a certain segment of our political population is practicing bias in the most extreme way possible. Anything negative about an ideological enemy is pumped up, promoted, given giant spotlight. Anything that's negative for our team, for our guy, is buried, as I just showed you, on that front page of you know who. So yeah, there is such Thing as bias. All media have some bias, but not all bias is created equally. Our question of the day comes from Michael, who is a student in my course, the Complete Storytelling Course for Speaking and presenting. Michael asked what strategies can ensure your story leaves a lasting impression on the audience. He's, of course, referencing the fact that I recommend anytime you're giving a speech, a presentation or a talk, illustrate your key points with a story. If you want insurance, I've got a way to give it to you, and it's ironclad. It's test. If you have got a story you're going to share with a keynote audience of 500 people on Thursday, Test your story to a couple of colleagues who have similar mindset, similar interests as your audience. Test it on Tuesday. Deliver your story, deliver your presentation. Then when you're done, don't say, what'd you think? How'd you like my story? They'll say, oh, it was great. No, ask them, what do you remember? And if they say, oh, yeah, I remember your story about, and it reminded me of that, and then they tell you the message of the story, you know, that it works. That's how you can ensure your story work. Test it, prove it. I can't build a bridge. I can't call myself a successful civil engineer, build a bridge, and just hope that cars don't crash. I've got a test along the way. I need to have evidence that this bridge works. I can't just build a bridge out of straw, out of a gut impression. Too often people tell stories or they give presentations and they have no more evidence than someone building a bridge made of straw. It's pretty flimsy. It's going to fall apart. Now, I do want to save you time because I'm assuming if you're taking this course and writing to me, you are a serious, active professional or aspiring professional, and I'm not calling you lazy, but I do want you to be lazy in this regard. Recycle your stories. If you have a story you've told, one colleague in your industry, a co worker, even a friend, and they're like, oh, wow, now I get it. That's fascinating. That's interesting. I can relate to that. And it relates to the point you want to make in a speech. Use the same story, reuse it, because you've already tested it. You know it works. Many years ago, 30 years ago, I was talking to a friend of mine, Jim Bohannon, who's a nationally syndicated talk show host, and he was telling me he used to work in the same office with Larry King, who's now no longer with us, a well known radio and TV talk show host. And Jim was saying, well, T.J. i used to get to hear Larry give speeches all the time. We worked out of the same office. And I said, really, Jim? That must have been fascinating. I hear he's great. What was it like? And he said, TJ it was so awful. It was boring. I'd go to the back of the room, find a table, crawl under it, take a nap. So, Jim, that's kind of disappointing. Would have thought Larry King would have been a better speaker. Hey, I'm just curious. What was the reaction from the audience? He said, TJ the reaction was always the same. Laughter, tears, cheers, lots of applause, standing ovation, and his $50,000 check on the way out. I said, wow, that's kind of a contrast. I don't understand why such an extreme difference in their reaction versus yours. He said, TJ he gave the same darn speech every time he told the same stories. Larry King understood that it wasn't television, it was a live audience. And for those people, it was often the only time they would ever see him in real life. So he gave them his very best stories that exemplified the ups and downs and the lessons he learned from his career. He retold, he recycled his stories, and people loved them. So he didn't have to guess about the next national convention of watermelon growers or wherever he spoke, whether his stories would work. He knew it because it worked before. And that, Michael, is how you can ensure your stories will be successful and leave a lasting impression with your audience. Hey, I want to thank you for joining me today. Thank you, Michael. Thank so many of you for leaving comments and being regulars here. And I do want to be especially thankful on this day, regardless of what holidays, cultural holidays, religious holidays you choose to support or celebrate, or perhaps none at all. I do want to take this time to say happy holidays to you. I'm wishing the best to you and your family. And Merry Christmas for those who celebrate that. I'm T.J. walker. I'll see you tomorrow.