Mediaite70%
Dave Portnoy Baffled by Socialists in US Who Came From ‘Disaster’ Countries 66%
By Sean James72%
7/15/2026, 1:03:57 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 30 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Representativeness Heuristic, and Confirmation Bias, with Hasty Generalization as the most egregious example at 34.4% saturation with 189 hits. Analysis detected 1,226 faulty-reasoning hits from 550 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 60.7% and a BS Rank of 66% (5,493 of 15,884 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 65.40% of the article peer group.
Barstool Sports CEO Dave Portnoy said he’s confused by socialism’s surge in the USA — especially since those who back socialist candidates and policies all seem to have moved from countries that are “disasters,” he said on Tuesday.
Portnoy vented that he has been baffled by voters who have embraced socialism — as well as anti-Israel views – as their top priorities during an interview on Adam Carolla's podcast.
“It's like when people say the word ‘genocide.’
The Jews want to live in peace, I do believe that.
If they weren’t protecting themselves, they’d get wiped out in Israel, and there’s not that many of ’em,” Portnoy said.
“So it's crazy times, it's a complicated thing — you want peace out there, but how that has become the No. 1 campaign issue basically across the country, that I don't know.”
He continued, “How we've gotten to socialism is somehow seen as this thing that's gonna fix the United States, and by the way, the people who are saying it, have all migrated from countries that are disasters to come to the United States!
To get away from their country to fix the United States, the country that everyone wants to migrate to.
It's a very confusing time.”
Carolla agreed, saying “professional agitators” have hijacked many of the political discussions in the U.S.
He said they’re just interested in complaining, rather than fixing any problems.
“They want grievance — whatever it is they say they want, they don't want,” Carolla said.
“Whatever the f*ck their ‘Free Palestine’ is, they don't even know what that is.
But if you did it, rest assured they’re still going to hate you and the Jews.”
Portnoy added there is another thing that confuses him about socialist candidates and advocates: They don't seem to have jobs.
“I don't know what these people organizing these causes do, because they don't work.
They seem to be from rich families,” he said.
“A lot of the people getting these candidates elected, they're professional agitators-organizers, but they have time on their hands!”
Portnoy and Carolla vented after socialists have had a strong run in the U.S. recently.
Democratic Socialists of America member Zohran Mamdani (D) was elected mayor of New York City last fall, and a handful of democratic socialist candidates won Democratic primaries over the last month.
Two of those candidates in New York — Darializa Avila Chevalier (D) and Claire Valdez (D) — are card-carrying DSA members, just like Mamdani; the mayor backed both Chevalier and Valdez in their primaries.
Both agree with Mamdani that ICE needs to be abolished.
Beyond its socialist economic agenda, the DSA website said it is against President Donald Trump’s “racist immigration policies” and America being allied with Israel, which it said has committed a “genocide” in Gaza.
Portnoy seemed to be thinking about Mamdani when he made his comment about socialists coming from rich families and other countries.
Mamdani was born in Uganda — where his family still rents out a “breathtaking” villa on Airbnb — and became a U.S. citizen in 2018.
Watch above.
New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting.
Subscribe now!
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.