The Press Unfairly Criticizing Trump Over Chloroquine w/Dan Crenshaw | Joe Rogan

Yeah, we, you and I, um, privately had this conversation through text messages about the way reporters are using this moment to criticize Trump with, in ridiculous ways. And one of them was this, uh, questioning of whether or not he should describe these drugs that have some promise, which many doctors are describing. C-chloroquine with a Z-pack and zinc apparently is a combination that keeps getting brought up and there's a doctor that has been using this to some reported success in New York City. Um, but what drives me crazy is that these are rare opportunities that someone has to talk to the president and they're using it to chastise him for bringing up drugs that do show promise and hope. He's not telling people to go take it. He's not advocating it. He's not pretending that he's some sort of medical professional. He's just talking about some things that show promise in the medical community. You know, what, what is your take on all this? Cause this is a, it's a weird situation that he finds himself in with the press. This very strange, uh, and antagonistic position. Yeah. You know, the press needs to figure out who they want to be. And uh, it's actually like chapter two in my book. It's called who is your hero. And that, and that conversation is about who we think we should be. Like what, what kind of people do we think we should be? What does it mean to be a good American, a good citizen? The press believes it is their duty to only be adversarial to, to politicians, mostly conservative politicians. They don't treat Democrats the same way, but, and that is their job. Okay. I wish they would treat all, all, all politicians the same. And to an extent that is their job to be adversarial to question what is coming out of government. But I would argue that their main purpose is to simply educate the public, educate the public with full. That's a facts full context, a full understanding of what's going on. I think on that point, they're utterly failing and to a huge extent. I think they've been failing for a long time, but in a time of crisis where it's so important that they actually do that, that, that more important thing of informing the public, they're really failing and they do that. They completely waste time. I mean, how many reporters actually get access to the president? I bet there's hundreds of thousands of reporters out there, good ones who would, who would love to be able to be in that press briefing room and actually ask legitimate questions that would inform the American public, but, but they don't, they play these gotcha games. You know, the last question is like, what do you want to say to people who are upset with you right now? It's like, what, how is, how is that a good question? How's that news? Right. I mean, I mean, it was, it's so utterly absurd and unnecessary. I actually have a list of questions. I don't want to read them all, but they're, they're, they're a complete waste of time and I think they're failing us miserably. And then there's the opportunism that occurs. Like, listen, there's, if you're writing an op-ed, if you're a journalist writing an op-ed, we'll say an opinion journalist, especially, I, I fully understand why you might, you might say you might write in your report, okay, the president said this today, but three weeks ago they said this. So there's been a change. That's fine. That makes total sense. That provides context to the reader even, it might be biased and that whatever, but, but, but to, but to, but to only do that indirect questioning with the president, just to try and play this gotcha game, I, it's not helpful. It's not helpful at all. And it's not informing anybody in the least. You know, you mentioned the, the president talking favorably about the chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine and you remember the, the couple that ingested that out in Arizona because that I, something, something similar to, I think it's a chloroquine phosphate or something like that. It might be misspeaking, but that's an, yeah, it's an ingredient on fishbowl cleaner, fish tank cleaner. And so they saw it and they ingested it, which was obviously a terrible idea. Nobody would, nobody told them to do that. And then the media, the media, instead of saying, wow, this is a shame that they, that they did this, they blame the president and they blame the president for talking about what is a, at least anecdotally a proven way to, to combat this disease. We don't know through clinical trials, whether in mass it'll actually work, but, but to express optimism over it, it doesn't seem to be a punishable offense, but the outrage mob is, was fully invested in this kind of outrage reasoning to, to, to tear down the president over this. And it just, it just feels so unnecessary. I mean, that's right. That's why I wrote this book. The book is about outrage culture and our, and our like this sort of weird new cultural need to just go after each other in the worst of ways. Well, there's a, there's a new ability to do that. I mean, this is what it is with these new tools that people have through social media and through making these viral video clips, which is what each reporter is hoping is they're going to accomplish by being combative with the president and trying to catch him on something. They're hoping that they're going to create this viral video that's going to accelerate their career. It's, it's very self aggrandizing. It's, and it's disturbing that there's, there's not someone who stands out that does these sort of press junkets that doesn't do that. Yeah. And I actually write about that exact point in my book, like this, what we've begun to do is reward this sort of, I would say overly passionate emotional behavior. So we, we, we've replaced sophisticated reasoning with outrage. You know, we, we, we started to change who we actually viewed as heroes. This is how I describe it. We all have hero archetypes. Okay. And we grew up this way and there's, there's like fictional characters like the Jedi, like it's a, that's like a hero archetype or Superman. We kind of look up to this person or, or like, or like real characters like Rosen Parks or Jesus. Like there's, there's people that we actually look up to and we identify with and there's certain attributes that we use and we say, I want to be like that. And so when I act in public, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to access that attribute. I'm going to be better and according, according to that archetype. And we've sort of turned that on a Ted and in our, in our current outrage mob culture, like we see somebody who plays the victim and we cheer them on when reality, what we used to do is see somebody who overcame adversity, who was a true hero. And then we cheered them on. We totally reversed that. Yeah. And like, so, and so, and so you actually get more points if you're more snarky, if you're meaner, if you're, if you're, if you're playing this kind of cheap shot game. And like in my book, I use this example of like these, these, this group of veterans, they were waiting for me outside of my office. I was going to vote and I knew something was off because veterans my age, they, we never wear the, like the ball cap, you know, like with the gold letters that say veteran on it. We never wear that, but these guys were wearing that. So that was, that was my first sign that something was different about these guys, but they just asked for a picture and I figured that was it. And then we'd keep going. But the second thing that was off was like, they, they weren't, they weren't looking at the camera. They were fiddling as, as I was like posing for this camera for this photo. And I thought that was strange. And it turns out they were just getting their own video camera ready to record. And then they start following me and like, just go nuts. Like they lose their minds. Talking about Trump and, and, you know, betraying the country and just all this nonsense. And so they were just trying to have a gotcha moment with you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is what they do. They're a, they're an activist group and they'll, they'll corner people like me and try and get like a viral video going. And then, you know, it's up to me at that point to just like understand what's happening and just kind of walk silently. And I kind of engage with them in some funny ways, but they were, they were becoming extremely emotional. I mean, their voices started to crack. It was, which was, you know, what were they saying about you or to you? Oh, how, how could you, how could you let, how could you betray the country by supporting the president? I mean, things like that. Mostly slogan hearing. Like this wasn't like a deep conversation by any means, but, but that's the point. The point is, is that they're rewarded for that, like overly emotional, um, in motion, like, you know, filming while, while walking type of type of scenario. And then they like, and then there's this whole deal where I have to get in the elevator because that's how I get to the votes. Like I, I leave my, my office on the fourth floor in cannon. I take the elevator down to the basement and I walk across like that. That's just my route. And so, but what they do is as I get into the elevator, they're like, Joe, he's hiding from us. He's away from us in the news week. Like writes up the same story. Like there's this, there's this entire culture behind this notion that you, that, that you, that you have to use as much emotion as possible and as an express your anger in the most exceptional of ways. Otherwise it's not worth listening to, but we haven't stopped as a culture and we have to stop rewarding it. And that's what I talk about. We have to stop rewarding that kind of behaviors that it actually ceases to control us that way. And so we have to accomplish what they wanted to do. We're talking about them right now, although you didn't give up their name. Good for you. But you, you, you talked about them and that's what they wanted. I mean, there's so many groups out there that are, I don't even know if they have an end game. The, the end game seems to be just get attention and, you know, and shine the light on these atrocities or whatever the, whatever they feel like is an atrocity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 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