*Update*
Whilst making this post, Tim's child is being born, so we are spared his presence on Thursday & Friday's shows:
(
archive)
& speaking of the pains involved in the act of creation, clipping this episode was a serious headache.
Tim had Chloe Cole, a detransitioner & advocate against troonery, as the guest.
Elad, Phil, & Raymond were the co-hosts.
Because Chloe is an activist focused upon troons, you know how Tim handles the episode format. It was not until 56:17 that Tim brought up how newly-confirmed HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defined woman as an adult human female. Chloe did get a fair bit of time to talk about her life, being talked into transitioning, learning what a mistake it was, etc. She gets around 19 minutes of generally uninterrupted space to speak, which was nice.
Unfortunately, this nice bit of guest airtime is undone by 35 minutes of the show's 120 being consumed by an asinine argument over progressive taxation between Elad, Phil, & Tim.
Clip Collection:
-Supposed sycophantic super-fan Raymond cocks up his introduction by forgetting Tm's favourite rooster:
-Elad complains about having to pay taxes in multiple states, due to working under contract in West Virginia, & living in New York. Tim almost goes off on a tax tangent, opining that the government "is broke" & must want money. Shocking that
one of the poorest states in the Union may be desperate for revenue:
-Elad tries to argue for changing the tax code to address CEOs,
using Jeff Bezos as an example, taking low salaries, but still receiving stock as compensation, which goes untaxed, calling this "a loophole". Tim & Phil disagree, leading to all three having an argument over this. The neo-con correspondent begins to offer a steel-man for progressive taxation, but Phil & Tim seem to not understand, shrieking at Elad about how wrong he is. Throughout, the beanie boy deploys
DARVO, claiming that Elad is ranting & interrupting, all whilst ranting & interrupting:
Tim begins calling out Elad's lack of knowledge regarding corporations, & tax law, which is hilarious when you recall that Tim says he does not know how his own company operates,
leaving it up to his wife to manage. It degrades into a back-&-forth, with each participant magnifying the worst aspects of the other:
Elad tries to change the topic towards the differences in media coverage of what programmes DOGE is cancelling, only for Tim to circle back & present a graph made by ChatGPT to prove his point on taxes. The DARVO continues, with Phil claiming that Elad is the one interrupting, & making no sense, despite he & Tim doing likewise. Tim finally cuts this off by moving to another news story, but not before launching a few more barbs at Elad:
I just feel bad for Chloe, in all this. She comes on to a big show, expecting to talk about the abuses of the troon-medical complex, & what strides are being made in the new administration, only to be forced to sit & listen to three morons bleat at each other about how wrong the other is. The camera only cuts to her, briefly, so I punched in on it. She is just rotating back & forth, trying to show interest in the debate, as Tim squalls about how he is right:
-In a bit of irony, Tim claims West Virginia is attempting to squeeze "blood from a stone", all while continuously going back to his tax woes with the state, wringing it for every droplet of content he can. The beanie boy says that he is in communication with the governor, asking for the law to be overturned. But due to feeling "disrespected", he is leaning towards simply leaving, rather than fighting to fix the issue:
-I can appreciate Phil actually trying to get Chloe to talk about her experiences, instead of sidelining her to have spats with the other co-hosts:
-The great thing about
IRL is having a guest pour their heart out about their traumatic experiences, & while everyone else is comforting the guest, Tim is compelled to move to the next segment:
-After a series of super-chats criticise Elad, this re-ignites the debate over taxation. This manages to interrupt the super-chat segment, so the two can argue for twenty more minutes. The best part was Tim having the temerity to claim someone else was "
gish-galloping", when that is practically all Tim can deploy in his discussions. Elad tries to explain that the argument is merely going in circles, but Tim persists:
Tim accuses Elad of being a socialist for supporting a progressive tax system which would see someone relinquish control of their company to pay taxes. Elad pushes back upon this as being a very loose usage of the term, citing
Nordic nations as not being socialist despite having high taxes on the wealthy. Tim simply declares Elad "wrong", & continues to use socialist for wanting to tax higher income earners. The beanie boy contends that it would force people, like Bezos, to relinquish control of their companies via selling off stock. This would be seizing the means of production to him. Tim continually stops Elad, mid-thought, claiming he is using
the Socratic method to prove Elad is wrong. He even claims that Elad was the one going in circles, & no one can understand what Elad is saying, without Tim doing this:
Tim continues to argue that taxing unrealised gains would result in seizure of a company's assets, due to the likes of Bezos having so much net worth tied into stocks. Elad retorts that he wants "a mechanism" to prevent CEOs taking a very low salary & sequestering their wealth into stocks that are untaxable. Tim tries to compare possessing a rare comic book to having a large amount of stock in a company, both being unrealised wealth. Elad's use of the phrase "abundantly clear" sets off Phil, whom claims it is "an emotional argument". Tim now denies ever calling Elad a socialist, but claiming he was using a "socialist concept, & I'm not calling you that". This was only five minutes after explicitly saying he was:
Elad pushes back, saying it is a liberal argument for a progressive tax rate, but Tim does not accept this. The beanie boy claims that liberals want to tax wealthy people to pay for programmes, or control the money supply, while socialists want to tax the wealthy just to address income inequality. By doing this, Tim implicitly implies that Elad is a socialist. Tim tries to move on, but Elad decides to be a masochist & expose himself to some of the super-chats degrading him. Tim tries to end this discussion by weaving it together with threats of killing billionaires:
