Transcript
Candace Owens (0:00)
All right, you guys, happy Thursday. But also, don't be too happy because Blake Lively's PR team has introduced a new term to the lexicon. It's called toxic positivity. They're using that now in the press to describe the real life horror of what it's like to work for Justin Baldoni. I'm not kidding. He's apparently toxically positive. So lock him up, throw away the key. We're gonna talk about that. Also, the media is catching up to our podcast. Apparently we told you guys over a week ago that Taylor Swift was definitely getting subpoenaed. Everybody IGN that. And now all of a sudden, they're reporting this as breaking news, as exclusive news. Okay, whatever. Plus, in case you missed it, I was able to join Theo Vaughn and Stephen A. Smith on their respective shows. And you know what? It's really great. I'm telling you, it feels like everyone is moving a bit more to the center and it's a good thing for our country. But some people are having a different experience with these sorts of conversations. Some people believe it is, quote, unquote, Satan that is on the march. We're going to discuss that coming from the Babylon be managing editor. All right, guys, let's jump right into it. Welcome back to Candace. Okay, before we get started, I have to vent. I gotta vent about my. My two year old daughter. Bless her heart, you guys. She is two and she has got an imagination. And that imagination is running. And sometimes it is running when me and her father are not there. Sometimes she slides up next to me and really sad, convincing face. And she'll say, you know, mommy, the boys at school are not being very nice to me. And then I have to tell her that she doesn't go to school yet and she's home full time. And she has told us all sorts of things about her brother. She'll. She'll say her brother's sick. Her brother's completely fine. But yesterday she took it a little bit further, okay? She went to ballet class and told the other two year olds that her daddy was in prison. Okay, guys, I don't know. I don't know how to deal with this. I don't know how to deal with how funny it is and to be able to try to tell her why she shouldn't say that. And I don't know where she's getting this stuff from. I presume from her older brother who has an obsession with police officers in jail and prison. Anyways, you guys, I'm just looking for help here as a Mom, help me deal with this. And speaking of toddlers, Blake Lively's PR team has thought up their next attack on Justin Baldoni. And it's brilliant. It's exceptional. They are clearly spending top dollar, as we have learned, using their former CIA agents that they've hired them to convince the public that the real problem in this lawsuit with Justin Baldoni is actually the fact that he's too positive. I gotta tell you, after learning this, reading the articles, reading the Deep Dive, I am in fact prepared to switch teams. And so I want to show you it. Maybe you're going to feel the exact same way. Check out this headline in the New York Post. This is a real headline. Justin Baldoni accused of Toxic Positivity by Former Employees amid Blake Lively Lawsuit. And here's a direct quote. It felt phony. Oh, oh, yeah. And that article is actually quoting from another article which was featured in the LA Times. They're the ones that did the real work, the CIA work, you know, to get to the bottom of this very apparent flaw in Justin Baldoni's character. And I gotta agree, because, like, you know, when I watch his videos, I'm like, my cousin is way too positive. You know, it's toxic. And I never thought that this could be a term that could be used to dissuade the public against somebody. And here's a quotation from that article. It reads, but to some observers, his public gestures, such as filming himself giving clothing to a homeless man, or asking employees to sign their emails with the phrase so much love, it felt performative, aimed at self branding as much as bringing about genuine change. One employee says, off record, quote, it was constant positivity all the time. I would say toxic positivity, end quote, said one former Wayfarer staffer. They continue, quote, I'm always a little bit dubious of people who advertise themselves as disruptors of the status quo or, quote, unquote, good people. It felt phony. Now, obviously, because this journalist is working on this huge, explosive piece about somebody being happy or putting on a happy face at work. They went out to Wayfarer with these claims, and you could imagine this phone call. You come up like, hi, I'm a journalist from the LA Times, and we have some employees that are starting to speak about you off record, and they're telling us stuff about how you act at work, and we are hearing that your happiness feels phony. So what do you have to say to that? Here's what Wayfarer said. They said, quote, there have never been any reported Complaints regarding the workplace culture or any communicated issues regarding the platforms or its founders. If any guidance was ever provided to employees of how to conduct their written correspondence, it was to ensure that the activities of its employees remained professional and aligned with the ethos of the company. Wayfarer believes that joy and positivity are the essence of good work. And they stand by this statement. End quote. I don't know, guys. It's a. It's a hit piece of sorts, right? Like, imagine a world where you can report someone for being too nice. I don't know how the HR department is going to deal with these sorts of complaints. I don't know. I got my job of two years and I suffer from anxiety. I suffer from anxiety because I just think about how nice those employers were. They were so nice all the time. And it felt phony. Yeah, I want to be honest. I think 99 of people are phony at work. That's the whole point. Like, you're even phony when you pick up the phone and it's your boss. You're like, hello? Like. And then if it's your sister, you're like, hey, what's up? You know, that's the point. Like, you're not supposed to bring in your every emotion through the door at work. Actually, they're paying you to be phony. I gotta tell you something. Like, I'm paying you to not bring in the trauma of your life. Everybody has got trauma. We don't need you bringing it into the room. What is he supposed to do? Be like, I just got, you know, got into an argument with a friend of mine and now I'm angry. And then they would have felt what, more grainy? No, they would have complained the other way too. They would have complained. And so we've now moved within this lawsuit, which just shows you how frustrating this must be for the ex CIA team to be like, find. They're like, find me anything on him. Speak to former employees. And one employee is finally like, you know what? That man was so nice, it hurt. Justin Baldoni is so nice, it frickin hurts. Yeah, there he is. Look at that monster of niceness. And I think that is the problem with trying to problematize Justin Baldoni. You just kind of come up looking pretty stupid. By the way, in case you're wondering, I'm all about making sure that we are learning on this podcast. And I was like, what is exactly toxic positivity? Like, definitionally speaking, what the heck is this? And I took to Google so that you didn't have to. Here is the definition straight from Google. It says toxic positivity is the practice of forcing an optimistic attitude even when you're experiencing negative emotions. Yeah, so I do this with my toddlers. I do this with my husband. I. I would call this compromising. So if one thing upsets you, you don't take it out on somebody else. And apparently it's problematic. And so if you're. If you. If there's someone in your life who's just been acting nice and you know that things are not amazing in their life or that maybe got off call, but they're have a smile on their face, you too might be able to file a lawsuit. I just want one of those, those old school commercials, you know? Have you recently been in a car accident? Have you recently had an employee that buttons it up and is always nice every single day to you? You might be. Do some cash. Call Candace. What, a hundred? Candace. All right, anyways, enough about that. Back into the courtroom. We left you guys off with their respective legal teams warring protective order. Now, we covered this extensively, but what it is coming down to is whether or not the judge is willing to limit the case to a standard protective order for all the text messages and emails that are received during the course of subpoenas, which both sides have already agreed to a standard protective order, or whether he will be issuing a rather extraordinary aeo, which stands for Attorney's Eyes Only Protection Order, which in many ways means that Judge Lehman would be removing himself as the judge of what the public should have access to. Right. It would allow the respective attorneys to remove that power from the judge because they could just mark whatever they want. AEO like this is what is allowed to be seen by only the attorneys. And you can't even show Justin Baldoni. You can't show Blake Lively, and we can just mark whatever document we want to. AEO and I have been, I think, rather accurately referring to this as the Taylor Swift protective clause. Right. Well, Judge Lehman, they, while he hasn't made a final decision just yet in this matter, has come out and accurately assessed exactly what this case is. He's calling it a war between PR firms. There's no substance here in my view. There's no assault here in my view. This is a nasty game of public relations which began, in my view, when Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively worked with the New York Times to pretend that they were being victimized by the fact that Justin Baldoni did not want to hand over his movie. Okay, so this morning, the legal teams met virtually in a hearing. And that hearing was open to the public. It was not allowed to be recorded by the public. So we don't have an audio for you to listen to. We can just recap what went down. Blake's team argued, quote, there are 100 million reasons. Oh, that's not. That's not hyperbole at all. There are 100 million reasons for these parties to leak information because the PR value is greater than complying with the court orders, end quote. Okay? So they are basically saying if they're able to access all of this, they might leak it to the public, and you can't trust them to just abide by the standard protective order. Her team also argued that there is, quote, a significant chance of irreparable harm if marginal conversations with high profile individuals with no relevance to the case were to fall into the wrong hands. Okay, we're talking, obviously, we're clearly talking about Taylor Swift. We're talking about celebrities, right? And that is stunning to me. That is just absolutely stunning to me that they are making an argument while also trying to pretend they have no power. They are arguing for power, right? Like, we just should be exceptional here because we are dealing with not regular people, but really rich and famous people, your honor. And so Brian Friedman is coming back, and he sounds like the layman in this case. He says, quote, what the other side is asking for is because there is celebrity, because there is powerful people in the industry, somehow there is a different law that applies to them. And I agree with that assessment. Like, I have so agreed with every argument that Brian Freeman has brought forth. What do you mean? Would you do this if this was just some regular layman lawsuit? Your honor? Because that's. They're basically saying, well, if the public actually learns who we are, it could hurt our careers. Okay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry about that. And remind you, they're not. This is not some, like, they're subpoenaing messages for three years. It's everything that's relevant to this case that can fall within the scope of this case. And judge Lehman has looked at both of these sides. And by the way, in the background, you still have Leslie Sloan pr, begging to be. That's Blake Lively's PR firm begging to be let go of the case. I think actually they may have the worst messages of all because they're just like, please, your honor, we are women. We are women. Why are we here? Your honor, I'm a girl. Please, we're ladies. This is not what ladies do. We don't do loss. I don't even know what they're doing. They're just so deranged. They're like I said, I have to assume everyone in this law firm is just extremely old. And there's running this weird feminist playbook that was just like, we don't care about. We generally don't care about your sex. We want to get to the truth of this lawsuit. And so Judge Lehman came back with all of these arguments going back, back and forth. And he said this, he said, quote, much of this information will become public as the case goes forward. For example, in motions for summary judgment and of course, at trial. He said, he said all this near the end of the hearing. And then he said, quote, there is a public interest in how the courts are being used that the court has to respect. And that's interest is what he's basically saying is this is already a very public lawsuit and you can pay attention to what's happening. Obviously, he's seeing podcasters tick tockers, the press that's following this. And he's recognizing how I behave has larger ramifications. People will think the court is corrupt if I, you know, honor certain things that I wouldn't normally honor. And him just acknowledging that, I think is quite honorable, like saying it's, it's. We just can't be corrupt. We're a court, and we have to do things and make sure that the court is actually respected. And in recent years, I would say the courts have lost a lot of respect for reasons that they've handled cases which people have deemed to be exceptional. And so I think him. Him expressing that is important anyways, the, the press in this matter. And I do want to say this, I am dying to know what is in these messages with Taylor Swift. Like, it's just crazy to me, the length that they are going through to protect these messages. Like, it is indicating that there is something way darker in my view. And again, I did this whole thread over the weekend where I was basically just opening up to you guys or just like, not even opening up, like revealing to you guys a lot of the stuff in Hollywood. It's just not what it seems. And I know this, unfortunately, fortunately, you know, I've been friends a lot of people, a lot of power players in Hollywood. Like, for example, it is 1000% true that there are fake relationships and there are trade ups. I spoke about this on my Instagram, which is to say there are people who date other people because they want to hide the fact that they're gay. That 1000% happens. These beard relationships that are set up by agencies, and it's not because they don't think Hollywood is LGBTQ friendly. If. If you're a part of my book club, we're going to get to. The next book that we read is Hollywood Babylon, which is about the founding of Hollywood. It was. It was always extraordinarily gay lesbian lavender couples, gay men marrying lesbian women so that they could hide that they were gay or that they were lesbians as they began to impact culture. It's a fascinating book that's written by Kenneth Anger. We'll get there. But the reasons why they hide those relationships today is not because they're fearful of coming out of the closet. This is not 1970s. But it's because they're fearful of how it will impact their career, which is to say that if you're a playing a manly man, right, in some capacity, they need to convince you that that portrayal is real. Right. And if you knew that actually, wait a second. This guy's actually quite camp and he's married to another man, that role wouldn't sell for you. Like, when you're in a theater, you want to be convinced by the character. Like, for example, I don't know, Bradley Cooper was like, the most convincing alcoholic ever when I saw him in that movie with Lady Gaga, which is A Star Is Born. And if you. If you know too much about somebody's personal life or if it changes things, like, if I knew, like, Bradley Cooper was actually, you know, married to a man and actually quite camp, maybe I would be like, I don't really know if I buy this role of him and Lady Gaga together. So that's kind of the reason why they put together these lavender relationships. Or there's a trade up. So you have someone like Ami. I mean, Ari. Pardon me, Ari Emanuel at wme. He's got a client that's new on his roster that needs a public relationship to kind of lift him up and which will allow him to get many more sponsorships. That's just, like, an asset that he's trying to build so that he can sell it at a higher price, which is just business. And then he's got someone who's got superstar power, like Taylor Swift, who is maybe willing to do that relationship because it. I don't know. There's like, another album coming out. People want to listen to it more. So it's those sorts of trades that are made. And I was bringing it up on my Instagram over the weekend because, like, a lot of you Guys were emailing me about Jake Gyllenhaal. And it's a well known thing, like, how did you know what was the falling out between Ryan and Jake? And it's a well known thing in Hollywood that it was like a relationship ended between the two of them. There was no nothing else beyond that. There's a lot of bi people in Hollywood doesn't like. I can't. I don't know what his true sexuality is. But it's interesting because I'm wondering if in this severity of this rush to protect Taylor Swift's messages and Blake Lively's messages, there could be something about relationship dynamics that they're fearful of the public finding out, which would actually deliver a very significant blow. Don't forget, allegedly, she's supposed to be with Joe Alwyn. That relationship ends, she comes, she's with Blake Lively. Maybe we're going to find something out about the nature of Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds relationship or Blake Lively and Taylor Swift's relationship. You know, what is the real nature of Taylor Swift? Nobody really knows because she is a brand. You know, she used to date Jake Gyllenhaal. And what, what is this? No one really knows what the nature is. What if you found out that everything between her and Travis Kelce was fake? How would that edit the way that you believe or. Or the way that you deal with Taylor Swift? Like, if you found out and she's just like in a message like, hey, WME is I'm gonna make me date this guy Taylor Swift, you know, this guy Travis Kelsey, like, do you want to go to these games or whatever. Actually, he's dating another guy. But I'm just saying this is like a scenario that could run. How would the public react to that? That is what I think is actually at risk here. There's something big, very, very big in this message, which is why they're asking for this extraordinary protection. Anyways, the press has been essentially behind us on all of these developments. They're acting like the girl from Mean Girls. You remember Karen Smith? Here she is.