Steve Ballmer on the Facts

joining us now from Seattle Washington is the guy who runs this operation um USA facts Steve Balmer you may know him used to run Microsoft owns the LA Clippers uh and we're pleased to have them on so obviously your goal is to try to get information to the American people do you think you're getting through I think there are people with whom we are getting through we have a quarter of million uh newsletter readers we know we're getting millions of people visiting our site over the course of the last five six years very proud of that with that said is the overall theme in the country grounded in numbers no no we're going to work on that we're going to do our part for that but there's so much more work to do all right when you see in your organization USA facts and we want everybody to go there and and check it out for themselves when you see Trump Biden Harris say an untruth I'll give you an example so Biden said when I took over as president the inflation rate was 9% and the truth was it was 1.5% do you take that on because if you do then the Biden people are going to label you a partisan and if you do it to Trump they're going to label you a liberal you see what I mean yeah no I do and we we don't put ourselves in the explicit position of uh factchecking and Reporting on the facts we do report the facts we leave it to others to hold people to account my experience is there's two ways to construe things that are not helpful of course it's not okay to take a number that's incorrect and put it out there the second way and a little bit more Insidious is for people to pick numbers to talk about give them no context and then let people think they are much larger than they might be or much smaller than they might be if you look at in the context of history or um a broader perspective if you will okay so you're going to provide not only the facts but the context which you did in your commercial about undocumented migrants by saying look uh the backlog is now uh 2 and a half million people you can't adjudicate that within 5 years you couldn't it's impossible but the Biden Administration would never tell you that so I'm telling you that um when you do this you are setting yourself up against the corporate media which now traffics in propaganda all day every day and I don't know how much you know about me but we've been doing that campaign now for years and we call them on it all the time and they do it constantly and because there are so many more uh liberal outlets on television and conservative Outlets because conservatives do it too all right that there's this wave this this wave of propaganda coming out and Americans who don't pay close attention they're overwhelmed by it in my opinion they're overwhelmed by it do you see it that way I do I think that we have reduced things to sound bites people will just grab a single number I don't think that's at all helpful uh in the grand scheme of things but whether it's uh folks like you or many others uh including individual citizens here are the numbers we're not going to give you any forecasts any of that we're just going to report what did happen how can that possibly be partisan and then hopefully ground the discussion and debate in those numbers and if you want to use them to fact check great if somebody else wants to use them to make their case about what should happen great if a citizen wants to say you know I'm being uh I'm not being uh spoken to honestly so to speak great then they vote on that basis okay you must have a tremendous research staff to make sure you get it right you may be paying these guys some money to to make to far it out all is BS because it's not easy to do that as you know well we start we only use government data so we start with over 70 government databases to do our work now you could say is the government data accurate I say we have professional people in our statistical agencies we TR choose to trust them occasionally government numbers don't match other uh government numbers we see that particularly when numbers get rolled up from state governments and then we have to you know sort of pick uh which set of numbers to represent that's difficult it is and we footnote it we you know we let people know what we've done we have no interest in hiding the football so to speak and so our core data is government data then on top of that we synthesize we fact check ourselves in fact we're also looking at automated ways to double fact check ourselves some of the AI wow we're not gonna totally trust it but we're gonna let me play devil's advocate here because in the crime area the federal stats coming out of quano Virginia with the FBI Fallen apart Fallen apart you can't trust them anymore because the cities are not required to report so the FBI isn't getting a full picture because most of the crime in this country generated in the cities in urban areas and a lot of cities are going when I send you data so you can't report crime stats meanwhile both parties both Trump and kamla are running wild with not crime went down crime is up crime is it and there's no stats to back it that might be a good segment for you to explain why there's no stats to back it there are let me let me let me challenge a little bit sure most City most cities do report which is great are there common definitions across cities no of of crimes no and that I agree with you what is a violent crime can look different across jurisdictions I agree with you that's exactly what's happening in the nation's largest city New York York where the violent crime is pleaded down to misdemeanors in the majority of cases you you punch somebody in the face Rick Moranis the actor and thousands of others and the thug is charged with disorderly conduct which doesn't even make it into the FBI database so anyway I just want to bring it to your attention I know I'm too I'm too emotional about this final question there are go ahead go there are there are imperfections I'm gonna I'm not disagreeing this is the biggest one though is to attribute oh I can give you I can give you one I can give you ones that I think missing data I can give you you know the fact that we can't totally match up with the state's report uh and what the so what the Census Bureau reports and with the Bureau of economic analysis reports uh on state spending there are definitely things that don't hook up perfectly or or are imperfect come from the states I'm willing to over FS have more tools should the feds have more tools I don't know our next step Bill our next step is to actually go get the crime data from the local jurisdictions and try to normalize it wow we'd like I mean it's a Step Beyond for us right now right that's gonna be hard important it will be I'm not going to Chicago New York and La not going to want to give you those stats you're going to have to break in in the middle of the night and get them or the AI of people final question you're a very successful American obviously in Microsoft and you got the Clippers and you're very wealthy and this country I assume uh has done right by you you right you're a patriot you love the country you understand the opportunity it affords almost everybody I am so Furious about the collapse of the media the corruption in the corporate media I can't tell you how Furious I am but I don't think everybody else sees it the way I do because I've invested my life into this profession and I've watched it go down to a degree now where my operation the most successful Independent News operation in the world we have millions of people depending on me to get them information they cannot get from the corporate media NBC ABC CBS FOX whatever it me they can't get the information because they're all ideologically driven drives me nuts do you feel my pain it drives me nuts too uh I would say depth journalism with numbers and context I just think in today's world people don't have the time we're not given the time and resources to dig in and do things what I might call the right way now I in a way I don't fault anybody because that's the requirements of the business but that's the opportunity we see it's an opportunity obviously that you see is to try to do things with accuracy and depth that is important that people might not otherwise get to yeah you have to have it because we don't we're not going to have a democracy and that it's true not the propaganda stuff all right the website we want everyone to go all over the world because we are all over the world now is USAA it's a.org right usafacts.org org okay that's easy check out Steve's operation you he doesn't he's not trying to sell anything to you you make a determination on whether it's worthy or not really appreciate your time Steve you're welcome got anything new you got anything you want to get out there you let us know okay we do appreciate the time and good luck to you right thank you for watching make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me on X look for at billow rilly