Adam Conover Lies about Columbus (and everything else)
https://www.trutv.com/shows/adam-rui...
https://www.trutv.com/shows/adam-rui...

1."Christopher Columbus couldn't have discovered that the Earth was round, because in his time it was already common knowledge." It was common knowldge to intellectuals. Many common folk and layman beleived the world was flat.

2. "My math says the Earth is teeny-tiny and shaped like a pear. And at the top it has a succulent nipple.” In his journal, Columbus says that the earth is “ of the form of a pear, which is very round except where the stalk grows, at which part it is most prominent; or like a round ball, up pon one part of which is a prominence like a woman's nipple, this protrusion being the highest and nearest the sky, situated under the equinoctial line, and at the eastern extremity of this sea.” The source that adam cites doesn’t say anything about him thinking earth was pear shaped, only the thought it was breast-shaped. Many shared his views, and also thought the world was egg shaped.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/...

3. "Fine. Give this slowpoke the bare minimum. 90 dumb men and 3 dumb ships." Columbus was NOT dumb. Too poor to go to school Columbus taught himself reading, writing, arithmetic, navigation, science, philosphy sailing, cartography, and most improtantly theology. He also attended and graduated from the Prince Henry School of Navigation. The reason it took Columbus so long to get ships and money from the Spanish monarchy was because the Reconquest of Iberia from Muslims, not because they weren’t interested.

4. “Sure, he did. If you don't count the quarter million Taino people that lived there already." There is no evidence that that many people inhabited the Island or Hispanolia. Historians like David Henige and Larry Schweikart have shown this. Columbus revealed the exisetnce of the New World to the Old World, created a permanent presence in the former, and his voyages led to others that led to he founding of the U.S.A. Thats what columbus supporters mean when we say he discovered America.

5. "Columbus repaid their kindness by returning with 17 ships and 1,200 men, so he could enslave the Taino and steal their gold. Only one problem: they didn't have any." The source Adam cites doesn’t say anything about him trying to steal their gold. https://books.google.com/books?id=QmOWD...
The source he cites for his next claim clearly says that there WAS gold; belts, ear rings, nose rings, etc. The Taino and Arawak called it Guanin, and it had copper and silver mixed into it. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/columbu...
Columbus did NOT want to enslave the Arawak or Taino. He warned his men, “not to take anything from the people without giving anything in exchange,” and he “recognized that they were a people who could be more easily converted to our Holy Faith by love rather than by force.” Columbus did want to enslave the cannibalistic Carib tribe, which terrorized the two former tribes. The King and Queen gave him specific orders not to harm peaceful Indians and he didn’t. He made friends with the Taino and Arawak, specifically a cacique (chief) named Guacanagri, whose son he adopted as his own. Columbus regularly shielded his friends from the savage aforementioned tribe whose existence Adam omits.

6. "This infuriated Columbus. And soon, he and his crew began to slaughter them." Columbus didn’t slaughter any natives! The only Indians he killed were the human flesh-eating Caribs, as well as Arawak and Taino who killed his men at the La Navidad colony, after they disobeyed his orders to treat the natives with kindness in his absence, and as soon as he left for Spain began to rape, pillage, and slaughter Indians with reckless abandon. 1,500 members of both group were taken as POWS, who Columbus intended to free after they were re-educated.

7.
"Columbus's regime was so senselessly brutal that by 1542, the Taino population on the island had fallen from 250000 to 200." Columbus was even alive in 1542; he died in 1506. He had been removed from office in 1499, thanks to his archenemy Francisco Bobadilla. Bobadilla not only published a evidence-free report against him, but arrested him, stripped him of his governorship and wealth and titles, and sent him back to Spain. Luckily the monarchs realized the report was false, and were outraged that Bobadilla overstepped his bounds(they wanted Columbus investigated not humiliated), freeing Columbus after only six weeks and giving him back his riches and nobility. Unlike Columbus, Bobadilla did nothing to restrain the settlers and in 1502 was recalled to Spain, drownin

8. g on the return trip. Nicholas Ovando started the encomienda system of forced labor and hunted Indians down with dogs and cut off their hands, not the Genoese explorer. While being forcibly returned to Spain, Columbus wrote a letter to Juana De La Torres, comndeming sexual slavery. He said, “A hundred castellanos are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general, and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls: those from nine to ten are now in demand, and for all ages a good price must be paid.
I assert that the violence of the calumny of turbulent persons has injured me more than my services have profited me; which is a bad example for the present and for the future. I take my oath that a number of men have gone to the Indies who did not deserve water in the sight of God and the world; and now they are returning thither, and leave is granted them.”
The source that Adam cites says nothing about him living in 1542 or reducing the population of Tainos to 200. As I said before, this claim has been debunked by Larry Schweikart and David Henige! http://www.csmonitor.com/1992/1009/0913...
In fact it doesn’t claim that he directly killed or ordered the killing of anyone, only that his voyages preceded the Spaniards killing and exploiting natives. The second part of the article argues that Columbus has been judged too harshly.

9. "He just bounced around the Caribbean, slaughtered a bunch of innocent people, and died thinking he had made it to India." As I said, Columbus killed no one except the Caribs and Arawak and Taino who killed Columbus’s disobedient 39 men left behind. The source Adam cites mentions the Caribs, that Columbus fought them, and that they were Cannibals and clearly not innocent!

10. "For centuries, Columbus was a historical footnote. But that changed in 1828, when Washington Irving, the writer of The Legend of Sleepy Hallow and other tall tales, wrote the first English-language biography of Columbus." No he wasn’t a footnote for centuries. Columbus was lauded for centuries by writers like Bartolomeo De las Casas in his Historia La Indies book. His son Ferdinand published a popular biography of his father called ‘The Life of the Admiral Christopher Columbus’. William Hosmer praised Columbus’s autodidactism in his ‘Self-Education: Or the Philosophy of Memtal Improvement’. I almost forgot, Columbus taught himself other languages and clearly wants stupid like Adam Con man game over claims! The explorer was lauded by this magazine: http://google.com/books?id=JA1LAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA401&dq=columbus+taught+himself+science&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiCqoTpx537AhViVjUKHb1_ALcQ6AF6BAgLEAM#v=onepage&q=columbus%20taught%20himself%20science&f=false
And by this academic journal: https://books.google.com/books?id=it0OA...
Ullick Ralph Burke mentions and praises him also in a similarly titled book! https://archive.org/details/ahisto...
Just because someone writes some fiction doesn’t mean everything they write is a tall tale! Adam using The Legend of Sleepy Hollow to discredit all Irving’s writings about Columbus is guilt by association! This is particularly egregious given that Adam complains that people dismiss what he says because he’s a comedian!

“To help prove Italians were a part of the American story, Italian- Americans latched onto Washington Irving's version of Columbus and promoted it like crazy." This statement by Adam is disgustingly racist, as it insinuates that Italian Americans have done their homework and just blindly swallowed lies! This is in fact what Adam and his cult followers have done! Worse than that, Adam fails to mention that the lynching of 11 Italians in 1891 caused the creation of Columbus Day!

#adamliesabouteverything Boycott this bastard!

You’ll notice that Adam cites no primary sources in his video screed, only biased secondary ones! Many, like NPR and Vox and the Smithsonian website are far-left!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/10/10/columbus-day-benjamin-harrison-mob-italians/

https://teachersinstitute.yale.edu/curriculum/units/1998/3/98.03.04/4

https://welcome.topuertorico.org/reference/taino.shtml

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.185547/page/n89/mode/2up

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2513086?googleloggedin=true

https://www.amazon.com/Numbers-Nowhere-American-Contact-Population/dp/080613044X

https://archive.org/details/48liberalliesabo00larr

https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Patriot_s_History_of_the_United_States.html?id=igOXnmTZ_wIC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&gboemv=1#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://ia800208.us.archive.org/1/items/cihm_05312/cihm_05312.pdf

“Everything that those people have, he says, they would give for a very paltry price, and that they would give a large basket of cotton for the tip of a lacing or anything else given to them. They are people, says the Admiral, quite lacking in evil and not warlike; all of them, men and women naked as their mothers bore them.”
“I certify to Your Highnesses that in the world I believe that there are no better people nor better land. They love their neighbors as themselves, and have a speech that is sweetest in the world, and mild and always laughing.”
“for they are the best people in the world and the gentlest; and above all I entertain hope in our Lord that your Highnesses will make them all christians, and that they will be your subjects, for as yours I hold them.”

“…they are so guileless and so generous with all that they possess, that no one would believe it who has not seen it. They refuse nothing that they possess, if it be asked of them; on the contrary, they invite any one to share it and display as much love as if they would give their hearts…”
to the contrary…they are…of a very acute intelligence and they are men who navigate all those seas, so that it is amazing how good an account they give of everything…”
“the handsomest men and most beautiful women.”
“very well formed, with handsome bodies and good faces”
Columbus, as you can tell from the above quotes was prejudiced in favor of the First Americans, not against them!

Columbus wanted gold not because he was greedy, but because he was a relgious zealot! In Christopher’s postilles (annotations) in his copy of Polo’s book, he mentions the Khan no less than eighteen times. In his journals, known collectively as the Diario, the Grand Khan’s forerunners “had [often] sent to Rome to ask for men learned in our Holy Faith” and how Fernando and Isabella “enemies of the false doctrine of Mahomet ... thought of sending me ... to the said regions of India to see the said princes ... and to see how their conversion to our Holy Faith might be undertaken.” Columbus also said, in a December 1492 journal entry that he wanted to find enough gold and the almost equally valuable spices “in such quantity that the sovereigns... will undertake and prepare to go conquer the Holy Sepulchre; for thus I urged Your Highnesses to spend all the profits of this my enterprise on the conquest of Jerusalem.” Another inconvenient fact Adam omits!

Columbus was a VERY devout Catholic, who saw his voyages to what he thought was Asia as a divine mission! https://holyfamilych.org/wp-content/upl...

https://www.amherst.edu/system/files/columbus.pdf

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Columbus_and_the_Quest_for_Jerusalem/9HM1mwEACAAJ?hl=en


Adam attacks Columbus because he knows that if the man who paved the way for this nation is seen as nothing but a violent megalomaniac, then America will be seen as evil from the very start, and people will support a communist revolution in this country! It’s the same thing Mao did!
When Columbus was attacked by the Ciyguayos with arrows, and when women warriors attacked him on Mantinino island, he scared them off with a cannon instead of killing them.