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Given the significant interest around the 2020 stolen election claims (definitely my favorite hobby horse topic), and the serious accusations that I have been weakmanning the overall category of election fraud claims, I would like to extend an open invitation to anyone interested in exposing the errors of my ways to a real-time discussion for a Bailey episode.
Here are the conditions I would suggest:
Are any of the above unreasonable or unfair? Do you have any suggested additions/changes?
I've been trying to set a conversation like this for years but haven't found any takers. @Dean, @jfk, @motteposting are the ones I know are sufficiently motivated and informed about the topic, and whom I'd most look forward to dissecting this topic with. Feel free to nominate anyone else you think would be good.
What benefit would anyone gain from going on your show to talk about the 2020 election? It looks like all downside to me at the moment man, you need to sweeten the pot a little.
You have home ground advantage and podcasting experience, you get a great episode (at least conceptually, I would love to listen to motters argue) and a very positive spin on a potential mea culpa (I know it's unfair to imply you are working an angle and I apologise, but it is a positive thing you'd get.) Meanwhile they get a potential embarrassment and have to expose their identity.
Also it's @jkf, I used to catch on that too.
Huh? You're talking about having to expose their voices? I don't think that really constitutes "expose their identity".
I think part of the point is, people will have to come out and identify as election deniers. The next thing, they're being accused of supporting the Jan 6th coup, wanting to overthrow the legitimate government, and being a fully-signed up fascist.
This podcast is probably okay if nobody except the likes of mottizens are going to listen to it, but it's a real possibility that someone might listen to it and decide to out the fascists getting ready to support Trump in his second attempt to impose totalitarian dictatorship. Look at all the alarm and disquiet over Project 2025 from sober reliable sources.
(Yes, that last was tongue-in-cheek). Everyone from "women and minorities most affected" to "climate change denialism" to "concentration camps for gays and forced pregnancy!" just in that random sampling.
There's plenty of election deniers who openly admit to it and would probably have no problem with it even in conversations with strangers. What has happened to them that is bad?
Fox news was sued and lost almost $800 million.
Am I misremembering, or was this the one in which Fox was shown to have peddled the idea that Dominion's voting machines were rigged but not even the hosts saying it believed what they were saying?
That's not what the lawsuit alleged. It said that hosts were allowed to make claims that executives believed were false, and that guests were brought on and made claims that the hosts believed were false. I don't think there were any claims that were (provably) disbelieved by the person who made them. The argument was that executives/hosts had enough control over the claims of hosts/guests that allowing those claims to be made was tantamount to making them directly.
But in this case that means the podcast itself would be analogous to Fox executives/hosts, and the motte members would be the hosts/guests, so it's not a direct example.
Okay, yeah, this is the case I was thinking of. I recall going through the evidence brought against them and I found it fairly convincing that Fox had no reason to believe what they were peddling and also didn't believe it themselves.
The actual proof can be found in the pdf at the bottom of this article. It's 192 pages, but it's either screenshots that can quickly be read or large font question-answer segments. I think it clearly indicates that the people at Fox didn't believe what they were saying, because their own research team was telling them there wasn't any evidence, and it notes that Fox believed executives had an obligation to correct people from stating falsehoods on their own network.
Ultimately, what did Fox in wasn't the view that the election was stolen. It was not believing their own public statements.
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