MAGA Men Implode as the Manosphere is Deemed the "Gayest Thing" on the Internet

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0:19Welcome to I have news today. I am joined with our warrior, our America's journalist, Don Lemon. He is a little down, but certainly not out. And today we are going to talk about the manosphere. Don, how are you? I'm doing okay. What do you mean I'm not out? I've been out of the closet for a long time. What are you talking about?

0:44You sure have been. Those hinges can't fly. I know. I'm doing okay. How are you? By the way, you look amazing. Oh, thank you. I'm doing really well. I came across this little take on the manosphere. And because the manosphere plays such a huge part in the moral collapse that fuels fascism, I thought you'd be the perfect person to discuss this with. Let me, Kylie, pop this up. okay so this article says sorry but the manosphere is the gayest thing on the internet everyone watching louis thoreau's documentary sees misogyny i see something else misogyny is the brand but the product if you look closely is male longing nothing makes this clearer than one scene in the documentary where one manfluencer shows Thoreau a video of himself receiving a blowjob.

1:48He filmed it during the act. He kept it. And then he played it for another man with the energy of someone showing off a new car. The woman is but a prop. The real intimacy in that moment is between him and Thoreau. His blow job was functionally for other men. All right, Kylie, let's get Don's take on this part before we dive more into this. You and I have had the theory together for quite some time. What is your take on that? I think that that is right. I haven't read the entire article and I don't know if it's 100 % right but from what you read to me it is spot on um i have never my my the manis the people in the manosphere are gayer than my gay friends and they talk about gay sex and penises more than my gay friends and they're obsessed with it and they're obsessed with each other if you look on social media now every not every but many of the videos are about bromances or bro or like uh my bro was acting gay and I had to like, you know, or it's like, it's not gay if.

2:59Yeah, I think it's completely, I think it's right. And why else would you be showing someone yourself getting a blowjob? Of course it's about you. It's about the guys. And, you know, I don't want to see my straight friends having sex. I don't want to see sex with my straight friends. And I don't want to see sex with my gay friends. So the manosphere is gayer than me. I completely agree with this. I, when you see like Joe Rogan's podcast, and it's always, you know, three or four men in there, and they're going on and on. Or when you see the videos of RFK exercising with Kid Rock, and that's, you know, bizarre for a multitude of reasons.

3:37But it's appears that like these, this sect of American culture is happiest in homosocial relationships. And inside these homosocial relationships, there is a lot of talk about gayness and this is gay or that is gay. I saw this weird quote from Andrew Tate. And he was saying like, if you have sex with a woman and not to get her pregnant, that's gay. He basically called heterosexual sex gay. And I'm just like the closet, you can open it, honey. You can open that door right on up and it will solve a lot of these issues. There are, yes. And there are so many of these guys, and we know especially on the, a lot of these guys are on the liberal, excuse me, on the conservative side.

4:30And there are so many guys on the conservative side who are repressed and who are in the closet. And I agree with you. I think they should just let their freak flag fly, let their gay flag fly or their bisexual flag. I think we will all be better off when we realize that sexuality is something that is fluid. It's not 100 % one way or 100 % the other. Some people may be more prone to one sex than the other. But I think when we get out of that sort of mindset, I think everyone will be better. And I think they're doing this because of their repression. I think that they're so obsessed with their bro or their best friend or whatever that it's because it's a latent homosexuality and repression all mixed together.

5:20So, I mean, am I surprised by this article? No, this article is something that you and I have been knowing forever since we became aware adults. I completely agree. I think that there's also a phenomenon where somebody, like, I agree with you, it's fluid. I think there's a phenomenon where, you know, porn is a lot more accessible now and men are watching it. and we're watching it a lot more at younger ages, right at their fingertips. I think there are moments. Yes, they're watching it for the dicks. There's a moment where there's a triple Trumper with this pickup truck. The truck has, you know, pictures of grenades, stickers, God, guns, Trump, stickers.

6:01And he's watching a little porn one night and then he sees a hard penis. And that is when the magic happens. And then afterwards, he's like, oh, my God, I feel gay. And then it starts this whole vicious cycle. And I think what we see with conservative men is they want to be punitive towards the people they fetishize. Abortion laws, draconian abortion laws are nothing more than being punitive to women. So you have a lot of men who were raised in uber religious households that feel like, OK, if I am punitive towards these women, maybe I won't be attracted to them anymore. Then you have the ones that are bicurious and or just straight up closeted gay that want to be punitive towards gay men.

6:46And that's why we have all of this increase in LGBTQ hate legislation. But let's read a little bit more into this article. I have truly met gay men who are not as gay as this. This is what you just said. Go along. many of these man fluencers are infinitely more comfortable performing for men than they are existing near women. That was my next thought. I don't know how much more you have to read, but can I jump in here? No, jump in here. Yeah. And then we'll pull it back up. Okay. Because if you're looking at how people socialize now, the socialization of people, many of these people don't. They're online all the time.

7:30They don't have any interactions with women. They're more comfortable hanging out with their guy friends or their school friends. And so they don't have much interactions with women. And if you look at now, you know, kids aren't having as much sex as we did when we were growing up, right? They're not drinking, they're not socializing, they're not going to meeting in bars. And so that's, I believe that these guys are more comfortable around men. And so they develop these relationships, whether it's romantic or not. And sometimes they're romantic and they don't even realize it. And the person that they are closest to, not necessarily their girlfriends or their families, it's their bros that they hang out with.

8:07And the reason that they're comfortable with it is because they're like them. And I also believe that porn has desensitized people to homosexuality and they may be more open to having sex with each other. And quite frankly, I've heard people say, I'm not gay, but it's easier to have sex with a man than it is to have a relationship with a woman.

8:35Sorry, I'm not gay, but it's easier to have sex with a man. And if a man says that, that's fucking gay. Yeah, but if they're on the receiving end of oral sex, then they're not the gay one. And if someone else is on the receiving end of penetration, then they're not gay. So, you know, it's a weird, weird thing. It's a reach around. And yes, and yes. Yes, and there's a study that shows now, Jen, that people are okay with homosexuality as long as the person is not feminine. If you are a dude, or I keep saying bro, if you're like a manosphere kind of guy like that, they're okay with it. But if you are someone who presents as feminine or effeminate, then that's the gayness that they're not okay with.

9:32So that kind of proves what we were just saying and what you just read. Exactly. Okay, Kyla, let's finish up the article. There's an academic term for when men organize their entire emotional and social world around the approval of other men. Homo sociality. It's not a slur. It's a sociology word. The manosphere is just homo sociality if it was an MLM. I mean, think about it. The lonely 19-year-old watching these videos at 2 a.m. isn't really trying to learn how to talk to women. He's trying to feel close to Andrew Tate. He has a crush. He is being charged for it. I just, I kind of just said something very similar.

10:19You said the exact same thing. You said, yeah. That's what it is. And so just come out already. But they don't even realize it. Like they need a good therapist. I see people all the time and they talk to me and they're, you know, very about things and about gay issues. And I'm like, you're gay. I don't necessarily always tell them. I'm like, you're gay. Why don't you just come out? And I have so many acquaintances and people who are sort of on the periphery of my social circle who don't even realize that they're gay. They can't even fathom that they're gay. And I'm like, you know, and maybe once, you know, when they are 50, 60 years old, they may, you know, realize it and come to terms with it.

11:04But, you know, in the old days, we used to just call that being in the closet and feeling that you had to go along with society and you married a woman, right? Now they just don't even know that they're gay. What do you think moving forward? You know, there's so much we have to move forward with, but we're just going to stick with this issue, the manosphere, which has had a pretty big cultural impact. And it's really impacting men and boys in a negative way. What do you think the antidote to something like this is? Because to me, it feels so regressive. You see polling that men, I think it's under ages like 18 to maybe 28.

11:49It's a 35 % increase that they think women should submit to their husbands. They haven't seen numbers like this since the boomers. And so we're seeing a lot of regressive gender roles take a lead. Do you think this is just the final, like the bubble theory where right before we make a bunch of huge progress, this is the big, you know, we're going to try to cling on and then it bursts. Yeah. What do you think, Don? Well, I think that a lot of this has to do with that sort of Manosphere mentality, which was largely like, you know, Charlie Kirk and those types, Andrew Tate and others.

12:28And, you know, I, how do I say this? This whole, the whole trad wife thing. Right. And so these guys, because they are part of, it's almost a cultish kind of thing. Right. And so they get people to believe these things, whether it's through religion or not, and they pull them into this sort of cult mentality. And we're going to have a trad wife. We're going back to traditional values because they want to control women. A lot of it is about misogyny. And a lot of it, quite frankly, is about young men, again, not socializing, not wanting to put the phone down, not wanting to go out and meet people.

13:07and women are now excelling and outperforming them in every single aspect, so they feel intimidated by women. And if you can get someone, as Donald Trump does, to be aggrieved and to think that someone is taking something away from you, then you try to control what it is. So they're trying to sort of control women. they're looking for validation amongst the manosphere, like paying money for Andrew Tate, because Andrew Tate makes them feel special and like a man. And instead, if they would just go out and hang with a woman and get into a relationship, then they would understand what being a real man is.

13:47And not something that you pay for with a membership online. With Andrew Tate. And we're seeing some of these podcasters that were very intoxicated with Trump after the assassination attempt in Butler. For those listening, I'm using quotations, assassination attempt, and the fight, fight, fight photo. And you're seeing, I think they were all intoxicated with him. You're seeing a big sobering up right now. We're hearing more and more of like Andrew Schultz of a flagrant podcast. He's having some buyer's remorse. I've even heard Joe Rogan with some buyer's remorse and some of the other members of the brosphere because the damage and the wreckage and the shit show that is Donald Trump is so bad that even his most intoxicated, ardent supporters now have buyer's remorse.

14:48And so what do you see with a lot of these people that got the men, the white men on the Trump train, and even a lot of minority men, blacks for Trump, Latinos for Trump, socialized in this internet space. With them starting to have buyer's remorse, what do you think this means for Trump and his base? Do you think they'll still, if there was a fourth term, do you think they quadruple Trump? Or do you think this thing ends? Well, a couple of things. I think if Trump is not there, then it ends. But I think that these people are so uninformed. They're so unaware. And that's the danger of this sort of streaming world that you have these people who have this huge influence on society and culture, and they have no idea what they're talking about.

15:40And so for them not to be aware that Donald Trump was going to do what he's doing, to us, it's just completely ludicrous because, you know, we were, as they like to say, the term they like to co-opt is woke. And woke means being aware of the circumstances surrounding you and the effects that society has on you and who's a power and who's not and who's trying to use you, all of the things. It just means being aware, right, and not having your head, not burying your head in the sand. And that's what woke means. But they co-opted it to mean something that's negative. Okay. So I think these guys are stupid.

16:17I think if they didn't, one, they're stupid. Two, they were chasing clout. They were clout chasing. They wanted to be close to power. And they wanted clicks for their podcasts. And they pretended, and I guess they somehow rationalized that, well, I can put Donald Trump on because he's not going to do all this crazy stuff. And he speaks for me. First of all, Donald Trump is about making people feel like they're aggrieved. And so a lot of these white guys are like, we're aggrieved. Women are taking stuff away from us. Minorities are taking stuff away from us. Donald Trump is going to fix that. At least he's saying the right thing.

16:51And they're stupid because they didn't realize that Donald Trump doesn't give a shit about anybody but Donald Trump. And so he doesn't care. And the same thing with many minorities, especially Latinos. I've seen Latinos say, I didn't think he was going to do this. I didn't think it was going to be us that he was going to deport, that he was going to target. I didn't think it was going to be my workers, who many of them are undocumented, that I needed to keep my business open, that he was going to deport them. And now I'm in bankruptcy. And so I just think that these people get really enamored by proximity to power, proximity, quite frankly, to some of them for whiteness.

17:29and they look at that Donald Trump as daddy and someone who's going to, you know, at least he's saying the right thing, but all the bad things that he's promising to do are not going to happen to me. And so I think that they're stupid. Joe Rogan should have known. Joe Rogan endorsed him and Joe Rogan promoted him. The same thing with Andrew Schultz and all those guys. They promoted him. They laughed about him. They thought he was great. They made fun of Kamala Harris. And now look at them. Now they all have buyer's remorse because, you know, Donald Trump is doing exactly the opposite in many ways of what he said he's going to do.

18:02I'm not going to get you into wars. We're in war right now. I'm going to lower the price of groceries and eggs and gas. Sky high. What are they getting? Nothing. They're not getting any sort of stimulus. They're not getting the tariff rebate that they were promised. They're getting none of it. And they all look like fools. They look like idiots. Yeah. And I think that America, you said it. I think we have a stupid problem. I think that we have a stupid problem. And then when we want to deal with the stupid people, for example, there were signs all over the RNC that said mass deportations. Now, there were hundreds, thousands of signs.

18:39Donald Trump said it over and over and over again. I have a hard time. I have empathy for just about everybody, even triple Trumpers. I want those fuckers to have healthcare, Don. I don't want them to go bankrupt because they have stage four cancer. I don't like them. I don't want to go to happy hour with them, but I don't want them to suffer. But I have a hard time where there's this narrative now that we need to offer these people an off ramp. And I'm like, bitch, please, if you could not read the room, this is exactly what he did in Trump 1.0. And he's done it faster and worse in Trump 2.0.

19:14I am so tired of making an off ramp or an excuse or an exception for stupid people. And it's just, we have a stupid people problem and we need to, I think the Democrats need to start addressing that there is a part of the electorate that they might have buyer's remorse right now. But do you, you know what I think, Don, I think if somehow Trump gets John Roberts in a headlock and, and, you know, and he's like, okay, we've got a fourth term coming up right now, or not for a term, a fourth election. I think Joe Rogan would quadruple Trump. I do. I think he would. You think he would? I do. Yeah. Look, I understand what you're saying about the triple Trumpers and you want this for them.

19:57And now they're the ones who effed around and found out and they want to come back, right? They're doing a 180. I understand what you're saying. And I feel the same way. It's like, why do I need to, you know, cast my pearl before a swine? Why do I need to spend any time? Why do I give you any grace when you voted for this? But here's the thing. I think, Jen, a little bit, that you may have to grin and bear it or hold your nose, or you may just have to fake it to make it. I know. Because, and not to be friendly with them, but use them the way that Donald Trump used them. Use them for the message.

20:37Like a Marjorie Taylor Greene. She's out there talking shit about Donald Trump. I don't believe a word of it. I wouldn't sit and have a meal with her. I wouldn't. Look, if she was on fire, you know, I wouldn't do that. But right. So, but I will be like, ha ha ha. Yeah, she's saying the right thing. I'm going to promote her sound bites. I'm going to say even Marjorie Taylor Greene. So I say use them to the best of the advantage for the outcome that you want in November. Yes. Use your powers for good, Jen Welch. Okay. Speaking of our powers. So there are, you and I get under the skin of the right-wing media ecosystem, the aforementioned manosphere and the internalized misogynist women that traffic in these spaces.

21:22They really, really love to hate us. And here's the thing. I love my haters because to have focused hate with longevity, it takes a lot of energy. You have to nurture that hatred, right? It's easy. Like if I love somebody, it's easy for me to love them, but to hate and stay focused on hate. Well, podcasters have done this. They're having a poll right now and they seeded the bracket. They have a March Madness bracket, Kylie, pop it up. It's called Hack Madness, the seventh annual comfortably smug liberal hack tournament. Number one seed, Don Lemon. number two seed jennifer welch there are 16 people in our bracket so there's a liberal activist bracket you're the one seed i'm the two seed there's the establishment bracket there's the fake news bracket in the way to online bracket and it says ruthless it's like a manosphere we're gonna take down that homosexual black guy don lemon and that fucking crazy liberal jennifer welch commies and so we're going head to head and here's what i have to say here's what i have to say i want to win i want to take out don lemon you do oh yeah i want to take you want to take me down yeah for sure because here's the thing here's the thing don when people have that kind of organized hate like the energy that it takes to do that do you hate anything that much um no i hate what's happening to our country but do i hate anything that much no i don't hate i don't hate anybody that much i don't really have time to hate anybody that much would you make a bracket of the right wing no no that's what i'm saying but you you know this has happened to me before like i've been in there but i don't know i don't know if i've ever been the number one seed you're the number one seed yeah similar i think the arrest propelled you to the number one seed i think had you not been arrested i could have been the number one seed hit hands down i think it's hilarious so when do we know if we win did we already win is that number one no we both advanced to the second round last i heard i'll keep you posted i think what do we get do we get a trophy probably just get trolled on fox this is how to your point where you said, you know, you want to win.

23:53Did you see James Carville when he talked about having Trump derangement syndrome? You have to see that. Oh, yes, I saw. I did see that. You saw it. Yeah, when he's like, I want Trump derangement syndrome to rain down on me, Lord. I want to hate that motherfucker. I hate him. I want, yeah, I have Trump derangement syndrome, and I want everybody to have and hate him so much like that they don't get, you know what I mean, that they don't vote for MAGA in November. So yeah, you know, I, I, I laugh at it. It's funny. I know. I laugh at it too. No, I hope you win. Should we vote? Can we vote in it?

24:28Yeah. I'll have Kylie send you, it's on Twitter. You vote on Twitter. So I think, I don't know who you're up against in the second round. I'll vote for you. Yeah. I think you, I think honestly, because of the arrest, you may be a loser this year, but I agree. I think it's, I think you're a loser. And I think I'll gracefully lose. I'm really, you know, here's the thing, Don, I am a graceful. loser when I play pickleball or tennis. I am a graceful loser. I am the sorest, smug, insufferable winner on the planet. I mean, just an absolute, yes, smug ass winner, but I am so graceful. I'm like, great match.

25:03Way to go. You really, really outplayed me today. And I mean it sincerely, but when I went, I'm like, fucking beat your ass. Can I show you something that I feel the same way about a little bit don't go anywhere okay look at this baby i mean out of my competition was uh michelle obama um uh kiki palmer i mean all people i love um uh what's his name from the formula of the daily show uh like john stewart all of these no no no uh what's his name the south African guy. That guy was Trevor Noah. Like I and I won this thing. And so it's a big deal. So I'm not going to be a gracious winner. I'm like, fuck.

25:50Yeah. No, I love those guys. But this is look at and and guess what, Jen? Three more are coming. I won four swept crazy. Well earned my darling Don, I love you. My listeners love you. Go find Don Lemon. Subscribe to the Don Lemon Show. I am a lemon head. I am a member of Lemon Nation. Don, thank you so much. We'll have you back on very soon. Thank you. And just a little tease. Jen and I, just wait, we got something coming. We have a big announcement coming. We have a little brew going on, babies. All right. All right. Bye.

26:34Thank you.