Could An Asian Replace Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon?

The media superstars of the right wing and the left wing just got fired. Now, what does this mean as far as making space for maybe an Asian political pundit? And also, does this mean that we're just going to see some more balanced news coverage in the future? Yeah, we got to talk about it. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of internet comments across all platforms talking about this right now. Andrew, Tucker Carlson just got fired from Fox News on the same day Don Lemon just got fired from CNN. So those are your big dogs on each side in terms of the most well-known political pundit on each side. Obviously, you could argue Tucker Carlson was like more at the top of his game. Don Lemon may have been in slow decline for the last like five or seven years. But this is a big deal. We got to talk about how this opens up space potentially for Asians. And is this finally the end of lopsided mainstream political media? I don't know, man. Everybody, please hit that like button and check out other episodes of the Hot Pop Boys as we talk about this. All right, real quick. Let's just cover a lot of the reasons why people believe Don Lemon and Tucker Carlson got fired. There's no like official report. There's just obviously a long list of things that they might have done that added up to this. Right. And we may never know what goes on on the watch work behind the watch face. But there is some information out there. Let's just go through it. Andrew, apparently Don Lemon did not get along with his female co-host, especially white women. And he had like recently lost his own show a couple years ago. So he was on a mixed show now. And there was a lot of like catty moments where he was just like beefing with people, even within his own party, sort of unnecessarily. Right. Yeah. And he started to offend a lot of different people, even within the party. And basically, I feel like he just stopped being as sensitive. But I think if you're representing what he was representing, which is like the liberal left progressives, you have to be more sensitive. And he was basically being offensive, whether it's like taking away the color of certain like people of color candidates or like calling out Nikki Haley's age, saying she's over the hill. She's too old. So that was like ageist in a way. And then basically, there was also a lot of like viral embarrassing clips of Don Lemon on his own show, getting clowned on and getting schooled. So I feel like that was causing the ratings to kind of go down. Yeah, there was this clip on Neck Shark of him questioning the minority status of Republican presidential candidate Ramaswamy. And I think a lot of people were like, oh, yeah, I mean, like that's a brown Indian guy. But you're sort of saying that he's not a POC. And obviously, I do think that that is like in a weird way a debate, but it's not a debate you can have on CNN. Yeah. And I think Don Lemon overall was losing some likability. And I feel like at this point, he was essentially being becoming close to replaceable. Yeah. And some people were saying also CNN's new leadership wants to bring in more balanced perspectives. A lot of people on the left right now are at least left leaning media institutions. Even SNL was trying to become more balanced. Andrew, do you think there is a move from liberal media institutions to be like, all right, guys, we got to be more moderate, maybe? Yeah, I think that's how it feels. And, you know, I just feel like people are leaning back into it a little bit, just seeing as like maybe going too far left didn't work or it started to hurt their pockets. You know, it could be money motivated or some ideologic, you know, reasons, too, because just feeling like the world just can't be on these two super far spectrums all the time. Yeah, I mean, I think that over the past five, seven years, maybe Don Lemon's stock kind of dropped even on the left because he was like getting drunk with Andy Cohen during the New Year's Eve thing. For me, I personally thought it was a little unprofessional. I'm just throwing it out there. But yeah, moving on to the Tucker Carlson situation. This one, in a way, Andrew is more explosive, right? Because he was bringing in most of the ratings to Fox News as far as a mainstream media right wing thing goes. And I believe they lost like a billion dollars off their market cap the day they announced he was firing because it shows some internal turmoil within that. But some people said it was because he made Rupert Murdoch mad for professional and personal reasons. So the professional reasons is he's causing some lawsuits, right? And then also on the personal side, apparently somebody said that Rupert Murdoch's former fiance was like too big of a fan. I don't know, man. Like I said, I don't follow either of these things. I'm just reading what I'm reading. There's a reason for Tucker Carlson, a guy who wears a bow tie to get fired for. But there was also things like the whole with the Dominion voting system lawsuit, right? Where Fox News was pushing that it was voter fraud for a really long time, right? But then as it turned out, they lost that lawsuit. You know, now they have to pay like almost $800 million. And you know, the craziest thing is Rupert Murdoch is a huge owner of BlackRock. BlackRock is invested in both Dominion and Fox News. So that's like your own baby companies suing each other. That's like your own children suing each other as like an investor. Yeah, I think at some point, Tucker Carlson was basically kind of going rogue and doing his own thing. And he wasn't as much of a team player for Fox News because there was also text messages that leaked that said that he was calling out saying, yo, Fox is deceiving the people. Why are we saying this? Like we shouldn't be saying this. So he was kind of going more for the audience and the people versus playing for team Fox. You guys are more capitalist than true like evangelical Protestant Christians. Like what I'm representing. Some people also said he was going at the military industrial complex and big pharma. Where theoretically, if you're a right wing team player, Andrew, you're supposed to be pro pharma, pro military industrial complex. You know, people selling missiles and bullets and vests and things like that. One theory I saw that was interesting is someone said that they think Tucker Carlson might run for president for the Republicans because now he gets to run on the basis like, well, you know, Fox didn't let me speak the truth. So now I get to speak the truth to you as I know I'm running for president. I don't know if he is, but obviously that's a theory. I think that it is both of them in different ways. They almost like overgrew their squad. You know what I mean? Like they thought one, the lead singer was bigger than the band. And then the band bites back, right? Yeah, the band is still bigger than the one single person. So but David, I guess what's something that they have in common, right? They're both guys. Obviously, Don Lemon is a gay black guy. And then there's Tucker Carlson, who is a heterosexual white guy, like an Anglo guy, just represent the two opposite. I'm not going to lie. As an Asian guy who is zero percent theoretically related to either of them, it does seem like very archetypical or stereotypical, right? If you have the Anglo-Saxon guy promoting like, I guess, Anglo ideals in a conservative way, and then if you have the a black American guy always representing the liberal progressive view, right? Yeah, yeah. Isn't that like kind of like what you would imagine as a foreigner or something? But you know what's funny, man? All these people that are on TV, whether it's the right or the left, a lot of them, pretty much 90% of them come from super prominent, rich, wealthy families. Yes, they do. On the left and the right. Yeah, TV and movies. But even these TV political pundits, Andrew, they're not from blue collar families. Tucker Carlson is from a very prominent family. Don Lemon is from a prominent family. Anderson Cooper is from a very wealthy family. Almost like I would say maybe nine out of 10 on both sides. Both sides are from very old money families. So I don't know. That's one thing that they have in common. So I don't know if that's like, you know. Which sort of leads us to our next point about like, are there any Asians that can emerge as political pundits for either side or as a moderate or a no side person? Well, David, seeing as that Asians don't have those legacy families and don't come from prominent, wealthy families that have been here for six, seven, eight generations, then maybe maybe there won't be any Asians. Yeah, by the way, I want to acknowledge that there are really rich old money Asians in America now, but they are fobs or immigrants. So necessarily their connections like Andrew, let's say, for example, me and you are both Chindo billionaires that those connections from Jakarta do not transfer over to America. Yeah, right. Like it's not going. Yeah, our family might have been rich for like four generations, but it doesn't transfer to any sort of political power in America. But yeah, I mean, most Asian Americans are just regular, you know, just like us. We're just we're just like our parents are immigrants. They came here. They kind of build up their connections and wealth from zero. To be honest. Let's move on. And Lisa Ling versus Michelle Malkin. Lisa Ling, a friend of ours is would definitely represent the left. Michelle Malkin and also an Asian girl, both, you know, pretty, both smart, both whatever she would represent the right. I think a lot of people watch that show. I think that would be a highly rated show. I'm not going to lie. I would say Lisa is considered much more, I guess, advanced in her career or more like successful than Michelle is. Oh, yeah. Lisa Ling is probably more respected, especially as like kind of a commentator, like World Explorer journalist. Shout out to Lisa. Moving on. We got Andrew Yang, Kenny Hsu. This is interesting because these are two guys, right? Two Chinese guys. One's Taiwanese, one's mainland Chinese, I believe are American. Both are still American, though. Andrew Yang would be considered middle left, like a moderate left. And Kenny Hsu would be a moderate right. Yeah, I mean, I guess to be honest, there's not too much Asian representation in the political sphere. Obviously, there are some Asian politicians, but as far as pundits, people speaking up and commentating constantly, there's actually not that many. So it'd be tough to imagine there be an Asian pundit that becomes a star on either side. Right. And right now we're talking about media pundits more than politicians. But I do think if they were going to start like a middle of the road, like a super center, you know, left or right type of show, I think an Asian could easily fit on that show. Um, what about Tammy Duckworth on the left versus Elaine Chao on the right? These are not media personalities. These are actual hardcore high ranking politicians right now that are both Asian. I think it would be really cool to see politicians regularly debate, regularly debate, like constantly on like a... Right, and not just the party lines either, right? Not just the bullet points. It's so boring now. Um, moving on. Andrew, let's get to our takeaways. Do we think that there needs to be a show like Around the Horn where literally our sports analysis in America is so nuanced? It's so 50-50, point, counterpoint, point, counterpoint. And literally, why is political discourse literally so unbelievably lopsided and divisive? Yeah. No, there is no balanced show. I mean, if you look at this media bias chart, there obviously are more like center of the road news sources that you guys can follow instead of going left, super far left, super far right. But what I would say is like, man, there needs to be shows like First Take where you got two pundits who are equally representing each side and maybe a third side that are just going at each other. And then there's also this show BBC puts on in Britain. It's called Question Time where it even gets the audience involved where it's a selected audience that are very smart and involved. And then they ask questions and there's a panel of five people, each of them represent a different party of the UK and there's a elected official in there too. Dude, they should have that. They should have that for America. America needs to learn some things back from the British, guys. I know that we don't want to be British anymore. Our system worked without them. But let's go backwards now and see what they got going on. I know in Canada, for example, you're not allowed to run negative campaigns. You can only say how good your politician side is and note the benefits, but you cannot really hardcore diss the other side. Andrew, our parents actually like to watch a lot of news from Taiwan. They use a ton of CGI infographics and a lot of pros and cons charts and a lot of like political heat maps and quadrants and graphs and a lot of advanced math to show where different people feel, right? Because at the end of the day, every side has pros and cons. You're more pro-economic than you're not as focused on this. You're more focused on this. You're less this. Like everything is like it's a whole system of like pulleys and levers, right? How come other countries seem way better at just being honest about that? I think the reason is, and this is the last thing I'll say on this, man. I do think it goes back to capitalism. Not saying capitalism is all bad and stuff, but what it does do is makes people only focus on profit. So what's more profitable is to find your niche and hammer home at that niche. That's it. And focus on your group and extract revenue from your audience. So don't appeal to anybody else. Don't spread yourself thin because that doesn't make you strong in anything. So financially, it doesn't make sense. So basically, you follow the money, it's going to tell people to go extreme. But it really needs to be more balanced. So there does need to be some billionaires, whether it's Mark Cuban, Elon, or whoever else it is. They need to come together and create an actual like balanced like 50-50 news network. Yeah. And I think that they need pundits that are debating and acknowledging the other side might be making solid points too. Because at the end of the day, if you really understand the nuts and bolts of like different political opinions, Andrew, it actually comes down to priorities. It's not about demonization. No side is evil. No side is good. It's like they have different priorities. Yeah. And different like self-incentives, their pocketbook is positioned differently. Naturally, that's just what it is in a diverse society. What do you think ultimately needs to happen? Because even if people debate, Andrew, these real issues, do people in America even care about the real issues anymore? Or is everybody sort of caring about these other things that are more frosting and toppings instead of the actual cake? Because me and you, we're talking about a station funded by Elon or Mark Cuban or who else that's like very balanced and acknowledges both sides. But would people even want to watch that? Because nowadays, people are caught up in the frosting and not the cake that actually makes up a society. You know, you guys let me know in the comments down below what you think about this. But I think overall people, if they watch the debate, yeah, it doesn't change everybody's mind and it doesn't change policy. But it doesn't care. But what if people are focused on the frivolous things? So even if you have a great edifying pros and cons debate about the cake and society that people don't even care. And I don't know, guys, you let me know in the comments down below. I do not have a great answer for you right now, David. But maybe I will have one later. Or maybe someone in the comments down below has a great answer for you. Hey, guys, let us know. Keep it civil. Like we said, Andrew, me and you have not been watching these channels for like, I don't even know, 20 years. I just see the clips and the clips are usually making them both look stupid. So anyways, you guys let me know in the comments down below what you think about all this. Does it matter to you or not or whatever? Let me know in the comments. Until next time we out. Peace.