A recent New York Times hit piece is a perfect example of why many Americans no longer trust the newspaper. Glenn compares the piece, which criticizes “The MartyrMade Podcast” host Darryl Cooper’s revisionist history, with the New York Times’ own “1619 Project,” written by Nikole Hannah Jones. Glenn disagrees with both people about major historical events. But the Times, with its elitist hypocrisy, pushed Jones’ attempt to frame America as a racist nation since its inception as unquestionable truth. “I’m not defending [Cooper or Jones],” Glenn says. “I’m defending the idea that We the People decide what’s true, and that takes work and curiosity…The minute you let somebody else decide what you’re allowed to hear, you have already surrendered your freedom to think.”
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: I want to take on something else that I don't know. Maybe I should just keep my big, fat mouth shut.
Because I think this one will piss off everybody. But it's the truth. There was a story in the New York Times. The podcaster asking for you to side with history's villains. It was in the New York Times. Let me read something.
Darryl Cooper is no scholar. But legions of fans, many on the right, can't seem to resist what he presents as hidden truths.
All of a sudden, everyone was coming for Darryl Cooper. There were the newspaper columnists. The historians. The Jewish groups. Repugnant says the chairman of Yadveshev (phonetic), Israel's Holocaust museum in a statement.
Even the Biden White House released a statement, calling him a Holocaust denier who spreads Nazi propaganda. So it was for a time for Mr. Cooper. One of the most popular podcaster in the country, to do what he does best. Hit record.
In a special on his history program, Martyr Made. Mr. Cooper addressed the controversy, which had exploded out of September 2nd appearance on the Tucker Carlson Show.
The podcast started by the former Fox News host. At first, Mr. Cooper, a gifted historic storyteller, but not a trained historian, defended the claims he had made on Mr. Carlsen's show. One that Winston Churchill was the chief villain of the war. Ridiculous. Not by implication. Adolf Hitler.
The two -- and two, that millions had died in Nazi-controlled Eastern Europe because Nazis had not adequately planned to feed them. Okay. Not true.
He then said, the story goes on to say, I don't know if we retracted some of that stuff. This emotional ventriloquism is part of Mr. Cooper's approach and appeal. On TikTok, a fan praised him as one of the best historians of our time, because he tries to go out of his way, to understand the perspective of everyone involved in a situation.
These critics have probably helped make Mr. Cooper bigger than ever. He's been the most subscribed to history newsletter on Substak. One spot ahead of the evident economic historian, Adam HEP Toos in the wake of the Rogan interview. Martyrmade. Blah, blah, blah.
Okay. So they go on and on and on. To talk about how this just can't stand. I mean, we've got to -- there's got to be some sort of filter. And, you know, Joe Rogan just can't have on, whoever he wants to have on. That's the problem!
Is it? New York Times. Is that the problem?
Hmm, that's really interesting.
Now, let me just look and -- and let me just look in the past here, and see if we've had this exact same problem, with anybody else. Because the person that came to mind was not Darryl Cooper, but Nicole Hannah Jones. Because I think those two are the same coin, and the coin is counterfeit.
Just opposite sides of the same coin. The martyr made podcast spins a tale of grievance and distrust. And it's wrapped in enough fact to keep it plausible.
But there are some facts in there. Okay.
Jones, she did the 1619 Project.
She did the same thing in reverse. Except, I think she's actually worse.
I mean, because I think she made up almost everything in that. She recasts American history. As racist from the very inception of the country.
Neither one of them is telling the whole truth. Neither one of them. Neither wants to, I think. They're both in the business of narrative, and not history.
So am I. But I tried to be fair.
The real problem is not these two.
Honestly, it's the New York Times.
Because in their Sunday styles, write-up on Cooper.
The Times poses as a concerned observer.
Wary of growing influence among the disaffected right.
Why are we disaffected. Why is the right disaffected?
We're disaffected because you have tried to take our country from us.
Everything that we believe. Our history.
Our values. Our traditions. And you've tried to denigrate them. And destroy them, every step of the way.
And you've done them with one lie, right after another.
Okay?
Why are they framing him. Not with facts. But with suspicion.
Not because he's -- dishonest or not dishonest. But because he's popular. They clutch their pearls, because he has an audience. And only the New York Times can have that you audience.
But where that was concern, when they did -- when they gave an audience to Nicole Hannah Jones.
And gave her a Pulitzer for a project now so discredited by the very historians that are now talking about Cooper!
Where was the caution when they declared that 1619, not 1776, was the true founding of the nation? They didn't question her authority. They didn't say, well, she's not a historian. They printed it. In fact, they taught it, and endorsed it. They platformed it in schools!
That's different than anything that Joe Rogan is doing. They platformed it in schools.
So let's be clear. Okay?
I think both Cooper and Jones are wrong.
They may have points worth considering.
But I think that they get it fundamentally wrong, in a few places.
They are looking at facts to sell the story.
And not necessarily reveal the truth.
Now, maybe I'm being too cynical.
But that's the way I see it. And I'm not condemning either one.
I'm condemning all of those on the left, or the right, that are now doing the same thing that the New York Times did with -- with Cooper, but didn't do with Anna Nicole Jones. Only one of those two was lauded by the New York Times, as legitimate. And a necessary corrective, even though, it was all a lie! Made up!
So that's what -- when I'm -- I'm reading that op-ed in the New York Times.
I can't take the -- oh, my gosh. The hypocritical nature of it. Just, blood shoots out of my eyes.
Because that's what the New York Times is actually saying. Don't you little people understand. We must decide what stories are acceptable. Not you!
Not somebody like Joe Rogan. We will decide. Which distortion are his virtuous and which ones are dangerous. Not you.
We get to choose the false prophets that get a column, which -- and which ones are called conspiracy theorists. We, at the New York Times, we in the media!
And athat is the problem! This isn't about the authors. Okay. First Amendment gives him a right to say whatever they want.
You may not like. You don't like it, stop listening.
Well, but other people might listen. Yeah. Well, other people might listen.
Maybe we should pay more attention to our education in our schools. Maybe we should pay more attention, so we don't become somebody that is a dummy, themselves. And are -- because this is the problem!
We don't have a press that exposes lies anymore. We have a press that curates the lies.
I really think this is why I started collecting -- you know, we have now, the third largest collection of founding indictments, in the American journey experience.
Along with David Barton's wall builders.
It is -- it's only behind the national archives. And the library of Congress.
Most people don't know it. Because, you know, we don't talk about it yet.
Beginning in '26. We will be making a big deal out of it.
We also have the largest collection of pilgrim era artifacts and documents in the world.
The largest. So I can tell you what happened in Jamestown in 1619.
I can tell you this, the ship that Hannah HEP Nicole Jones talks about. There were no slaves on that ship.
How do I know?
We have the manifest!
No slaves. Hmm. That seems problematic, doesn't it?
And the Mayflower did not launch a system of slavery.
In fact, they fought against it.
We -- this is so crazy.
What the Pilgrims did against slavery was remarkable.
Remarkable. When a slave shipbuildingsly gave into their port, it was -- slavery was against the law. They called it man stealing.
It was against the law. As soon as the slave came into port. You could smell the slave ship. They knew exactly what it was. They marched and up arrested the captain of the ship.
They put anymore irons. And put him in jail.
And these people, who were already paying 15 percent of everything they make. These poor people.
15 percent of everything they make, to a king they can't be they despise. But they paid it, because they wanted to just stay alive.
They took up a collection from each other. Not outside. From each other.
Got a new captain. Refueled. Restocked the ship. And sent those people. Those slaves back to Africa, so they could be free!
That's who our pilgrims were. Don't believe me? You don't have to take my word for it.
We have the evidence. Please, you know, the longest running treaty with Native Americans happened with our Pilgrims. And you know who broke it? Not the white man. It was the Native Americans! And you know why?
Because after years and years of the Pilgrims and the Native Americans getting along, Christianity was starting to seep into their culture. And they needed to go to war with the tribe. And the war that the way they used to fight it, the Native Americans, it was okay to enslave your enemy.
In fact, you needed to.
You could torture them, after you won!
Just to make a point. And then you would enslave anybody you wanted.
And Christianity said, no. You can't do either one of those things.
And so the native Americans, that were part of this tribe, that were and friends under this treaty, with the Pilgrims. They started telling their chief. You know, we can't do these things.
And the chief got so pissed. Because he was like, we're fighting a war.
We fought it like they always fought it.
That they broke the treaty. Did you know that?
No. They were just horrible. We stole the land.
Ay-yi-yi. Did America live up to its ideals?
No! Has anybody, ever?
Have you? Has the pope? Has anybody really lived up to their ideals all the time?
No! But you have ideals, and that's what matters.
By the way, on the other side, I also happen to own a few original Nazi documents, from the actual perpetrators. I've got documents from the engineer that actually calculated how much Zyklon B it would take to murder a room full of Jews, okay?
It wasn't because they didn't want to -- they didn't have enough food.
This was calculated. I have the final prescription signed by Dr. Mengele, for a thousand liters of lumen that will for the so-called children's hospital. That's how the right was killing the undesirables in the children's hospital.
They didn't do it in a frenzy. It wasn't a riot. It wasn't out of desperation. It was silence out of lab coats, and beauracrats and experts signing off, and the press like the New York Times refusing to say a word about it. The scariest people are not the ones in the streets. They weren't. They were the ones with titles. With offices, with press credentials.
They were the ones with the doctorates.
They were the people who decided what could be published.
Who could be punished. What could be known? What could be said?
And that's the danger that we're staring down, right now. Not from cringe theorists on a podcast. Not even from overzealous academics with a Pulitzer.
But from the institutions that bless one distortion, and condemn the other.
Not based on truth. But based on usefulness.
Is it useful to our side?
I just want you to know. This is my stance on this. and make this very, very clear.
The First Amendment does not exist to protect comfortable speech. It doesn't exist to protect Cooper, as opposed to Jones. It exists to protect both of them!
It protects uncomfortable points of view.
Things you do not like to hear. And disagreement. It protects people who are absolutely wrong, and even those who are lying!
It protects the process, so you can figure it out. There is no licensed priesthood in our country.
You know, that are -- the priesthood of truth-tellers. No official ministry of facts.
That's where countries go wrong. The Times should be exposing both sides of these stories.
Just like I'm doing.
The distortions of the right, and the left.
But instead, they become exactly what they've warned us about.
A newspaper that prints dogma, and not dialogue.
And the real problem here: No.
The real solution here is you. Jefferson warned that a man who reads nothing but newspapers.
Sorry. A man who reads nothing is better informed than a man who only reads the newspaper. Okay? I would say, the newspaper is today's social media.
Man who reads nothing is more well-educated than a man who just only reads social media.
But today we might say, better to be ignorant than confidently misled by trusted media.
They see themselves not as a watch to go. But as a shepherd. And we are the sheep.
So I am not defending either one.
I am defending the idea that we, the people. Not the institutions. Not the elites. Not the New York Times.
Not Joe Rogan.
You decide what's true. And that takes work and that takes curiosity. Maybe the other guy is wrong.
I don't know. Maybe I don't have the whole story either. I don't know.
Look it up. Because the minute you let somebody else decide, what you're allowed to hear, you have already surrendered your freedom to think!