What's up guys and welcome back to the Reagan Faulkner Show. So I know that a lot of y'all know what propaganda is. We all learned about it in high school.

We all probably touched on it in middle school. We talked about the Cold War. We talked about World War I and World War II.

We should be very familiar with the idea of propaganda and to a degree how to identify it. But in today's day and age propaganda looks a lot different than it did a hundred years ago. So today we're going to discuss modern-day propaganda and kind of what's going on in our society, what's going on in America, and why we're really seeing such a broad contrast between what conservatives believe and what members of the far-radical left believe in today's day and age.

I'm sorry for that misspeaking. So we obviously have the midterms coming up and as campaigns are happening and things are going on on social media and we're trying to talk about the candidates that we support, the policies that we support, it's almost like talking to a brick wall I found. You're trying to talk to people and you're trying to say things that you know are true.

These are things that are either backed by studies, they're backed by just obvious fact that you don't even need to cite, or they're backed by statements and press releases from the White House or from specific portions of the government, specific departments, and so forth. But again, you're citing these details, you're explaining these policies, you're discussing these basic facts, and it's like talking to a brick wall as I said before. There's just, it's not, it's not clocking.

People are like, no that's just wrong. So today we're going to dive into really the root of that and it all boils down to modern-day propaganda. So the definition of propaganda, just the straight Google definition if you look it up, is information especially of a biased or misleading nature used to promote a particular cause, doctrine, or point of view.

So with this definition, it's extremely obvious that we are in a digital war. We are in a social media war, television, every media outlet that you can think of is at war with the actual truth. We see it in very basic things.

You want to do a 30,000 feet overview, we're at war with the idea that there are only two genders. We're at war with the fact that men cannot become women and women cannot be men. These are truths, these are facts that people want to deny and want to debate.

So when we lose our ability to identify fact and those extremely basic concepts, then where do we even retain the ability to discuss fact in way more nuanced items? So when we talk about social media, it's extremely unique. It forces Americans to, for lack of a better term, rot in their self-made echo chambers. So this kind of boils down to how the algorithm operates.

The algorithm forces more and more and more content of the type that you have been liking and that you've been engaging with, you've been commenting on, you've watched multiple times, or maybe you saved it or reposted it, and it reacts to that and it pushes more and more and more of similar content, whether that be content with a similar discussion. Let's say you're really into history, it'll push you more history content, or if it's a specific person. Personally, I watch Brett Cooper on YouTube, so I get a lot of Brett's content on my social media.

So that's how the algorithm operates. Now, whether or not the information is factually correct, this is the really important part of talking about the algorithm, whether or not this information is factually correct, the algorithm continues to push it. It continues to push content that elicits emotion or that drives more engagement, and thus that content that may not be factually accurate gets pushed further and further and further down the throats of users.

And this is extremely dangerous. As I'm sure you can tell, you're probably thinking, oh gosh, that's not good. Yeah, it's not good.

Now, before I continue, I'm not vying for any of the policies under the Biden administration of fact checkers and misinformation and blocks. I don't vie for that at all. What I'm vying for, what I'm advocating for, is more of a conscious use of social media.

Instead of believing everything that you see, you need to really think about it. But we'll go into more into that later. This is extremely dangerous, as you can tell.

And as many people go onto social media, they only have a few minutes. They go on, they check the news, or they really just want to entertain themselves real quick. They want to know what's trending.

Maybe their friend said something. They're like, oh, I need to go look at that real quick. I wonder if that's on my social media.

And they only have a couple of minutes. I think there is a study, and I don't have it pulled up or anything. I'm just thinking about it now.

But there is a study where I think the average person uses social media in like two to 10 minute increments. So you're really, it's like split second dopamine hits. So oftentimes people are either too busy to research or to look into whatever they saw in that brief two to 10 minutes.

Or quite frankly, they're just too lazy. They're like, oh, I'm going to trust that influencer. They have 115,000 followers.

Why would they lie to me? And they just see these stories. And they see these situations that influencers are ranting and raving about. And they just move on with their day.

And subconsciously, it's going to stick with you. Subconsciously, anything like that that elicits a degree of emotion is going to stick with you. So there's absolutely no accountability out there for people who abuse social media and their status and just spread lies and falsities.

And again, I'm not saying that people should get knocked off social media, because that's a really dangerous precedent that can be used against anybody in the future if we start it now. But just know that it's out there, that there are people that are just vehemently lying to you because they can and because they want engagement. They're getting paid.

Most of these influencers are getting paid. And they just want the algorithm to keep pushing that content. And it's eliciting emotion, which means it's getting more clicks, which means it's getting more views, which means it's getting pushed further and further and further down the pipeline of content.

So let's kind of dive into this going on in full force. This concept is in full force in our media right now. When we talk about the extreme partisan divide and the extreme ideological divide of our party system right now, it really is the consequence of social media and the consequence of unvetted propaganda being pushed down the throats of people who don't even recognize it.

So I'm sure everybody's heard about the five-year-old that was detained by ICE, quote-unquote detained by ICE, which is completely not true. But the story goes the media, the leftist influencers, and all of the gullible sheep out there that believe this story and don't want to look into it use the image of the little five-year-old in the blue kind of toboggan cartoon looking hat with the ICE agent holding his backpack. And it is just this picture of this big man holding the backpack of this little kid.

And he just kind of looks not really even scared, just kind of like just dazed would be the best way to say it. It's great propaganda. It is great propaganda.

It is just this still shot. If you haven't seen it, look it up. It is on the front page of every single news website that you could imagine.

If you look it up, you'll see it. You'll see the picture. Amazing propaganda.

And it's just being pushed, pushed, pushed on Instagram, on Facebook, through the media, through on TV. It's everywhere. So fact check, fact check, this kid was not being detained by ICE.

He was not being baited. He was not being abducted by ICE. The child's father, whose name was Alexander Canejo Arias, hopefully I pronounced that right, was, he was, he was here illegally, and he abandoned his child as he fled from federal ICE agents.

So they were attempting to detain the father. He fled, and he abandoned his child. So what the ICE agents did was they, they picked up the child because it was Minnesota.

It was during that spell where it was extremely cold, if not in the negative temperatures. A five-year-old obviously could not survive that in a little cartoon toboggan and a coat and his backpack. So they picked up the child.

They played his favorite music. They even got him McDonald's. They took extremely good care of this young boy.

But when you look this up on the internet, they talk about how he was, he was stolen. He was detained. They're trying to deport a five-year-old on his own without his dad.

They sent him up the steps of either his mom or his dad's house, and they were, they were trying to use him as bait. None of this is true. None of this is true.

If you go on the government websites, they describe this. It's either ICE.gov or Border Patrol or, um, yeah, again, it's really easy if you look it up and you look up, like, the government's response to it. They describe exactly what happened, that the father abandoned him, that he was picked up, that he was taken care of, and that, that's the whole story.

There was no sinister plot. There was no propaganda. They were taking care of a five-year-old boy, which I believe is extremely admirable.

But again, when you search it on the internet, almost every single media site and outlet discusses how the child was detained, how he was used for bait, and it's blatantly false. It is wrong. It is inaccurate.

It's a lie. So now let's jump into another story that tugs on our heartstrings, that's meant to make everybody hate ICE and feel so bad and just wonder what they're even thinking, and that's the baby that got teargassed by ICE. Now, this story is a little bit more on the down-low, but still extremely popular.

If you go into the comments section or if you post anything on social media, you're sure to get a comment or see a comment with this exact story. So there is a family. The parents were Sean and Destiny Jackson, and their claim was that their car was teargassed as they were driving home from their son's basketball game on the evening of January 14th.

Now, with this sob story, and they went on the news and they talked about it, and now they're on a press tour, they've raised over $170,000 on GoFundMe. Obviously, this is terrible. Nobody would want an infant to get teargassed by ICE.

The mom talks about trying to perform CPR on the child. It's devastating, right? Well, not if we dive into the reality of what happened. Obviously, any child getting teargassed and getting CPR is devastating.

It's not the child's fault that the parents made a bad choice, but let's look into the actions of the parents first. So it's been uncovered. Allegedly, the parents were seen protesting an entire 50 minutes prior to the teargas being deployed, and their children were left in the car unattended.

So there was somebody out that was live streaming the protest, and you can see two individuals that are very, very similar to the individuals that are making these claims wearing sweatshirts or jackets from the school that the basketball game was at from their son's school, and on the backs of it, one says Mr. Jackson and one says Mrs. Jackson, and they remained in the area of the protest even after protesters began lighting off fireworks which were exploding. So it might just be me, but in my opinion anyway, this looks like putting your children in danger, in a dangerous situation on purpose. You're leaving them in a car.

You see that the protest is getting violent. You see that things are exploding. Obviously, this is going to antagonize agents.

Obviously, they're going to utilize teargas if explosives are being used upon them to try to disperse the crowd, and they refuse to leave when this spiral starts happening. This obviously looks like a case of parents being neglectful, at least in my opinion. Now, I do empathize with the child that was teargassed.

I mean, that's tragic in any case. I think it's horrible, but they left their children for 50 minutes, and they watched a protest spiral out of control. First of all, don't leave your children in a car during a protest.

Second of all, when things start spiraling out of control, maybe leave if you know that you have an infant in the car. I think that's absolutely wild to just keep protesting and then to blame it on ICE. That is a natural consequence of you leaving your children in a car during a protest that's becoming non-peaceful.

Now, because we need to keep going with the propaganda to really get to the root of how deep and how sinister it is, on January 17th, Dean Withers removed a video where he demanded justice for a child predator. Now, this child predator was also an illegal immigrant, and he had had inappropriate relations with a girl who was under the age of 11 years old. His name was Geraldo Lunas Campos.

He was 55 years old. He died in an ICE detention facility in Texas on January 3rd of 2026. Now, if you watched, well, I guess Dean's video is gone now, so you can't watch it, but if you have seen this video, he basically said that this man was begging for his medication and that ICE just put him in a chokehold and killed him, and all he wanted was his meds, and it was a tragic case of murder, and it was horrible, and everybody needs to see this, and ICE needs to be held accountable.

Well, actually, what happened, and this came out after, of course, he posted his video, which he deleted. Basically, the gentleman, the man, the illegal immigrant, was in line for his medication, and he became disruptive while he was in line for this medication and then refused it. And he was sent into confinement.

He was sent into solitary confinement, where he then tried to kill himself, and the ICE agents got involved. They obviously tried to prevent him from killing himself, and he began becoming violent with the ICE agents. He began resisting very violently, very aggressively, and that's when he was put into the chokehold, and then he did die.

He did die, and it has been ruled that he died as a result of his asphyxiation from the chokehold. That is a matter of fact, at least right now, from the media outlets. Now, there's a little bit of conflict there, but right now, that looks like the most likely way that he died.

So anyway, Dean never mentioned that he was trying to kill himself. Dean never mentioned that he was a convicted pedophile. Dean never mentioned that the ICE agents were trying to save him or that he got violent and aggressive with said ICE agents who were trying to save his life.

He deleted the video after multiple people called him out. He apparently, allegedly, apologized on his live stream, but he never posted an actual apology video or follow-up on his actual social media platforms, and this video had hundreds of thousands of views and thousands of interactions and comments and likes and reposts, and he never, he never posted an apology. Obviously, these hundreds of thousands of people don't watch his live streams.

They don't go back and re-watch every second of them if they're uploaded. They just don't do that. They watch a brief video like we're talking about, and they don't do the backup research that's necessary, but he never did a follow-up on that story for all the people that don't do their own research, and now you have hundreds of thousands of people running around thinking that this dude was refused his medication and murdered on the spot, when in reality, he was a convicted pedophile that was trying to kill himself and then aggressively resisting the ICE agents trying to save his life.

Now, not to mention, this isn't really a portion of the story, but I think it's important to note that this isn't unique to an ICE detention center. Inmates in American prisons are treated drastically different by both inmates and guards if they are convicted pedophiles and if they, if people know that they were abusers of small children. So, again, not justifying that he died or saying anything to that degree, but we can't just blame this on ICE because people in standard prisons in America that are legal are treated very similar if they're convicted pedophiles.

Now, one last example to really top all of the propaganda off, to really shed light on it, I think this almost might be the most important one. Now, all the other ones are extremely politically important. This one is important for society and kind of for our understanding of how the propaganda operates, but the 2026 Grammys, oh gosh, let's just dive right into that one.

On February 21st, 2026, this year's Grammys were hosted in Los Angeles, and as, if you watch the Grammys, I personally don't, but I saw enough videos about this that I really had to look into it and find out. So, all these celebrities showed on these itty-bitty ice out pens. They were white pens with black letters that just said ICE OUT, and one specific person, his name is Justin Vernon, he is the lead man for Bon Iver, the band.

He even wore a bright orange whistle on the opposite lapel from his ice out pen, and it resembled what protesters use, and he goes and he talks about how brave these protesters are, how peaceful they are, they have their little whistles, he's standing in solidarity with them, with his little whistle too, and his little ice out pen, and then we've got Billie Eilish, pop star Billie Eilish, who dedicated her entire acceptance speech to saying, no one is illegal on stolen land. Such a profound statement, no one is illegal on stolen land. It really shuts down any educated debate or nuanced conversation that you could have, doesn't it? And also F ICE, but she used the full word.

That was also another eloquent line from Miss Billie Eilish. Now, we also have Bad Bunny, you know, your Super Bowl favorite, halftime favorite coming up. He got up there and could barely speak English well enough for an acceptance speech.

He got up on stage and literally said, before I give thanks to God, I'm gonna say ICE out. And then he proceeded to discuss how immigrants are humans too, but he really failed to talk about the the nuance and this really key detail that ICE is targeting illegal immigrants, not just any immigrant. Illegal immigrants, undocumented immigrants, you might say.

So now, fan favorite Olivia Deen was also at the Grammys and got an award, and she spoke about the importance of immigrants in society and immigrants in American society and really what their place is within America. And it was, it was a good speech. I'm not gonna lie, it was a good speech.

We do know that America was built upon immigration on the backs of immigrants. The left really won't stop saying that, but similar to Bad Bunny, she really failed to express and discuss and identify the nuance and key point that the immigrants that built America were extremely different from the illegal immigrants that are coming here and they're murdering and raping people and committing property offenses and felonies. They're two very different people.

So the immigrants that she talks about came in and worked in New York and they wanted the American dream, and then the group that's being defended right now were illegal immigrants that are coming into the U.S. again murdering people like Lake and Riley, raping people, selling fentanyl, which is going to kill more Americans and further our drug crisis. Those are not the immigrants that we should be defending and comparing to the American patriots that immigrated here with the hope of the American dream, and they assimilated and they built this country up and grew our economy. Very, very different groups that we're talking about here and that not only Bad Bunny but also Olivia Deen really failed to discuss, identify, and express the nuance of.

Now, we all know that this is just performative empathy. It's performative politics. Why am I even talking about this? Because we all know it's fake.

It's fake, and these people are extremely rich. They really probably don't care, and they could definitely do something about it if they wanted. They could start a non-profit.

They could do almost anything. I mean, obviously they can't stop ICE because they're not politicians, but they could even run for office if they really care this much about it. So why am I spending and wasting my breath talking about celebrities and their political views? Well, it is an absolutely insane degree of propaganda that's being spewed at an event that's just meant to recognize music.

It's peers that are supposed to be supporting other peers in the music industry, but instead they're using it to propagandize Americans. And what about those people that don't know? What about those people that don't know that it's performative politics, that don't know that it's performative empathy, that don't know the truth of the other three stories that I told you about Deen, about the tear gas with the infant, about the five-year-old that actually wasn't detained about ICE. What about those people that don't know? Many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, or students have absolutely insane class loads.

They're just fighting to get A's. They're not even A's. They're just fighting to pass their classes.

Some families have multiple kids. They're single parents. They're single moms.

They're single dads. They have family tragedies. They're visiting people that are in the hospital that they know have mere hours or days left in their lives.

They're people that work over 40 hours a week. Maybe they work 60 hours a week. And quite frankly, they don't care about politics.

They don't have time in their lives to care about politics. Even if they do care, they just, they can't. They can't look into it.

They can't do this research. They turn the Grammys on for five minutes, and it's ICE out, ICE out, ICE out. And they're like, oh gosh, I guess ICE just did something really bad.

They opened Instagram. They're like, oh my gosh, a five-year-old was detained, or this horrible thing happened, and they don't have time to look it up. Or you have the other group that they just don't care to look it up.

They just, they don't. They don't have the time or the care, and they don't know. And then they, they have the time barely to watch a few minutes of the Grammys or to watch a couple of Instagram reels, and they are just completely convinced or subconsciously believe that ICE is doing some terrible thing instead of performing mass deportations on terrible people that are trying to hurt America, that are trying to induce a further drug epidemic, and that are trying to kill and hurt U.S. citizens.

These people just flip on the TV, and they watch the Grammys. They see headlines. They scroll, and the propaganda is about fake victims of objectively false stories, and they don't question these things.

They don't look deeper. They don't do independent research. They might not even know how to conduct said independent research.

They might not know where to look or what to trust. People think that they can trust influencers and celebrities because they're famous, and why would they lead them astray? But they just don't look into it, and these people are profiting off of leading people astray. They're pushing their own narrative.

So as conservatives, what can we do to stop this or to recognize it or to help in some way, because it seems huge and unstoppable? So really, first of all, we have to be aware that the propaganda exists. We have to understand that things like the Grammys and the Oscars and everything on social media and honestly probably everything in Hollywood as well, except personally not, not sponsored or anything, I'm starting to really really like Angel Studios. They're putting out some really good stuff.

But we have to really recognize that almost everything around us is some form of propaganda, or at least is working to make us feel some sort of way, even if it's not completely unequivocally a lie and misinformation. Really hate that word, but that's what it is. Now, this is coming from both the right and the left, so once we identify that probably everything around us is propaganda, then we must do our independent research before reporting it, posting it, making statements, and I would argue that if you're one of the people I talked about where you don't have time, you're working over 40 hours a week, you're a single parent, you have a family tragedy, whatever the case is, you don't have to do the independent research, just, you know, keep it in the back of your mind that that post was meant to make you feel some type of way, and think about that before you make a statement on it or anything.

And before you enter into a debate with someone that's spewing radical leftist propaganda, try to educate them on the reality of the story if you know it, because they genuinely might not know that they were propagandized, they might really believe, and once you show them facts, maybe they will, you know, think a different way, maybe they won't, maybe they're absolutely radical and they're going to go crazy and they're going to hate the facts and tell you that they're fake because the Trump administration put them out, that's a very real possibility, but also maybe they'll realize that they were wrong and that they were led astray by an influencer or a celebrity. Now, with the digital age, we really do have a brand new information war, we have AI, we have fake news, we have the manipulation of influencers that want to sell you on their version of the truth, they want more sponsors, more clicks, more revenue, but what we need to do is speak the truth boldly, we need to refuse to let them spew their lies and their hateful rhetoric and their just objectively false rhetoric, and prevent them from influencing the opinions of fellow Americans. It is midterms and y'all know what that means, it's a whole different breed of propaganda and manipulation and the whole nine, so what Republicans and conservatives really need to do is push for full transparency, this goes to our elected officials and it goes to people like you and me that can have their own platform and push the facts of what's really going on because if people believe the lies, then we're not going to win and 2026 is going to not go well in November, so thank y'all so much for joining me on today's episode of the Reagan Faulkner Show, remember if you want more, check us out on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook at the Reagan Faulkner Show or at the Wilmington Standard on all of the same except for TikTok, remember to check us out on reaganfaulkner.com and thewilmingtonstandard.com, I can't wait to see y'all on the next one.

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