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Episode One Hundred Eighteen: Rodgers Vs. Kimmel · The Death Of Journalism

• 0:00
  Welcome to episode number one hundred and eighteen of the Death of Journalism podcast.
• 0:04
  My name is John Zigler. I'm your host on today's show. We have
• 0:07
  significant updates on several of the stories we discussed in the last episode of the
• 0:12
  podcast, including the escalation of the Aaron Rodgers versus Jimmy kimmelfeud, and I
• 0:18
  give my official prediction for the upcoming Iowa Republican presidential caucus. I'm known as
• 0:24
  the Dutch Digital marketing Man. I'm a digital advertising SEO and email marketing specialist
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  market Getingman dot com. And hey, thanks for sponsoring the show. We
• 1:03
  begin this episode of the podcast with some updates on what we talked about in
• 1:08
  the last episode of the podcast. There have been several of them. I'm
• 1:12
  going to go through them quickly as we begin, because there's a lot to
• 1:15
  get to in this episode number one hundred and eighteen. I began episode one
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  seventeen talking about the very strange story involving the United States Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin,
• 1:26
  who just disappeared into a hospital in Icee. You and no one was
• 1:32
  informed, including the President of the United States, for several days, maybe
• 1:34
  even a week. When it came to President Biden being informed. Of course,
• 1:38
  with him, you never even know whether he remembers being informed or not.
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  But that's an another story for another day. But Lloyd Austin disappeared,
• 1:49
  and the media, at least on the left wing media, didn't seem to
• 1:52
  be particularly interested in this story, although there were a few voices saying this
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  is unbelievable, this is a massive national security breach. Each and we now
• 2:00
  know a little bit more about what was happening, and that is that Lloyd
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  Austin went to the hospital and apparently found out that he has prostate cancer.
• 2:08
  Now, who knows how serious that is. We don't know any of the
• 2:13
  details, but we have at least a little bit more context for what happened
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  there. But there are still people who are saying that this was a complete
• 2:22
  breakdown in the process of what's supposed to happen in these kind of situations,
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  and I have to say, you know, once again, whether it's relevant
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  or not. Unfortunately, because of the way that the Biden administration has handled
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  DEI and affirmative action, and the fact that Austin is a black man,
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  you have to at least consider. And I hate that we do this,
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  but we have to. Now we have to consider whether or not Austin's race
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  played a role in how this situation has been handled, both from the Biden
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  administration's perspective and people around Austin as well as the news media. We don't
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  know that. Unfortunately. You know, that is a possibility in the world
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  in which we now live, But that's what we now currently know about this
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  mystery involving the US Defense Secretary. I also talked in the last episode about
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  a controversy involving a statue in Philadelphia of the founder of Pennsylvania and of Philadelphia,
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  William Penn that the Interior Department had stated publicly was going to be removed
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  and replaced by a tribute to indigenous people. This by the federal government.
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  That's important to point out that this is federal land. This is where the
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  Liberty Bell is, among other things in Philadelphia. And they rather casually just
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  put out a public comment, you know, request for people to give their
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  suggestions on how they ought to change this welcome square, and they stated,
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  we're getting rid of William Penn's statue. And this caused quite a bit of
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  uproar, outrage and controversy. And in the last episode, I didn't really
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  predict that this wasn't actually going to happen, but I did strongly imply it,
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  and I implied it from the standpoint of I thought, this was a
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  great opportunity for Democratic Senator John Fetterman from Pennsylvania to step in and show,
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  you know, how anti woke is and how this new guy post a stroke
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  recovery has suddenly become very sensible and very much based in common sense, and
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  maybe he was the last rational Democrat left now that Joe Manchin is leaving the
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  Senate from West Virginia. And I thought, because you know, obviously it's
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  a federal issue, and him being a US senator, he was perfectly positioned,
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  obviously being from Pennsylvania to do something about this. Well, my instincts
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  were right that something would be done, but it does not appear as if
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  it was Fetterman. And this is actually maybe I overthought this. I don't
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  know, but weirdly the person taking credit now taking credit for something and actually
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  doing something are two different things. But I've not heard any evidence that this
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  is a false claim of victory. But the person who took credit for this,
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  at least online, was Josh Shapiro, who was the governor of Pennsylvania,
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  and he declared that the Interior Department was not going to be replacing the
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  statue of William penn and he indicated that he had basically made this happen.
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  How he did it, who knows. I mean, he's a Democratic governor,
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  not a federal position, but he's obviously a Democrat, and I'm sure
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  they're going to take his phone call, and he may have giving him the
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  benefit of out. He may have gotten a hold of somebody in the bid
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  administration and said this is a crazy idea. We got to stop it,
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  especially in a presidential election year when Pennsylvania may end up deciding the presidency,
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  and so somebody who knows who made a rational decision and decided that, yeah,
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  we're not going to do this, and Josh Shapiro took the credit.
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  So there's no evidence that John Fetterman had anything to do with it. Of
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  course, it being Josh Shapiro that hit close to home for me because I
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  despised Josh Shapiro since he was the attorney general that put former Penn State President
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  Graham Spaniard in prison unnecessarily in a very clearly vindictive fashion. I mean,
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  no one has ever in modern in the modern era been more vindictively pursued by
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  an attorney general than Josh Shapiro went after Graham Spaniard, and Spaniard still voted
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  for him for governor because Spaniard wanted to prove what a good liberal and what
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  a good Democrat he is. But I have no love or trust in Shapiro
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  at all, And of course I found it to be greatly ironic that here
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  he is saving the William Penn statue. And it is my belief that when
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  Frank o'harris endorsed Josh Shapiro before he died and before Shapiro won the ownorship that
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  Shapiro and Franco had come to essentially a deal that after Shapiro was elected,
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  he would help bring back Joe Paterno statue to the Penn State campus. Of
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  course, Franco unfortunately it died just over a year ago, and I'm sure
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  that deal was no and void. I did tweet at Shapiro's statement about the
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  William Penn statue that Okay, that's great. Now, why don't you fulfill
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  your promise to Franco and help put back Joe Paterno's statue at Penn State.
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  Of course, I have no anticipation that that's actually going to happen, but
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  I did find it to be rather ironic that here it is Shapiro saving the
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  William Penn statue when he should be restoring the Joe Paterno statue, which,
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  by the way, he would probably have more power over directly at Penn State
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  University than he did on a federal parkland that was, you know, obviously
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  under the auspices of the Interior Department of the United States federal government. But
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  it is what it is, and William Penn apparently is surviving, at least
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  for now. I also talk to episode number one hundred and seventeen a lot
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  about the Epstein allegations, and I don't want to go super into detail again.
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  I went due to a pretty deep dive in episode one point seventeen towards
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  the end of that podcast episode. So if you're curious about the subject matter,
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  I urge you to take a listen to that. But I do want
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  to revisit it briefly under the premise that I hadn't in episode one seventeen,
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  which is that a lot of this that is being reported, especially in the
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  right wing media, is based on very flimsy evidence. And I want to
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  make clear because this gets very confusing to people, I guess because they think
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  very emotionally about this topic. I am never, I have never, nor
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  ever will defend Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein is guilty. That's why he killed
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  himself in a federal prison. Okay, So I want to make that exceedingly
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  clear. He is obviously guilty. You know. One of the reasons,
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  one of the thousands of reasons that I believe that Jerry Sandusky is innocent is
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  that not only has he never thought about harming himself or killing himself, but
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  he's treated exceedingly well in all the different prisons that he's been in, which
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  is highly unusual for a very high profile pedophile, because everyone in prison also
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  knows that he's not guilty. But I digress. So the point of this
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  is Epstein is guilty. However, because the story has gotten so big,
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  and because there is such an incredibly large desire among a huge number of people
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  to see this story come out the way that they want it to, especially
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  since they think he was murdered in a federal prison, the media has given
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  it way more attention than it deserves, and they have come to conclusions or
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  at least made implications about very prominent people that I don't believe are remotely fair
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  and not based in evidence. This idea that somehow, if you are associated
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  with Epstein, you're automatically part of a pedophilia ring is just absolutely absurd,
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  especially given the incredibly meager nature of the evidence, and the media never talks
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  about this. But I just had to mention this most recent report that happened
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  after I taped Episode one point seventeen. This one from the Daily Mail,
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  but it mirrors a lot of other similar reports in the media about the Epstein
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  document dump. That has happened over the last week or so. Their headline
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  Epstein victim accused New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, MIT scientist Marvin Minsky, Victoria's
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  Secrets chief Les Wesner, and Senator George Mitchell of sex trafficking her in latest
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  bombshell document dump. Their article began, Several high profile politicians and businessmen were
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  named by Prince Andrew accuser Virginia Geoffrey in a newly unsealed deposition regarding Jeffrey Epstein,
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  which was released this week. They have been made public and include allegations
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  against prominent businessmen and individuals who were tied to the late pedophile meaning Epstein.
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  The trove of documents points at late New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and former Senate
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  Majority Leader George Mitchell, both Democrats who have been linked to Epstein before.
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  MIT scientist Marvin Mitsky and former Victoria's secret CEO Les Wexner, who has also
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  been frequently cited in connection to Epstein, were also named. The documents are
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  related to a twoenty fifteen lawsuit between Geoffrey and notorious Epstein Madam Jiselne Maxwell,
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  who's currently in prison. Having been convicted of crimes related to essentially helping and
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  enabling Epstein in this pedophile ring for which Epstein was charged but never convicted because
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  he killed himself in prison. All Right, So you know, to a
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  lot of people, that's, oh my god, Oh my god, this
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  is unbelievable. All these prominent names associated and being implicated in the Epstein story.
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  All these people are pedophiles. This is unbelievable. Well, isn't there
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  another way to look at this? Isn't there another way to look at this
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  and say, wait a minute, this person, this particular accuser, who's
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  critical to the whole case, especially against Prince Andrew. Maybe she's not credible,
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  Maybe she's making stuff up, Maybe she has a financial incentive to lie.
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  Who knows. Maybe she just has a really bad memory and she's just
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  throwing stuff against the wall. Maybe other people actually abused her, and she's
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  just coming up with names that she's seeing in the media that are connected to
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  Epstein. Who knows, Because some of her descriptions of these people are highly
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  suspect. She has all sorts of credibility problems. She has retract previous statements
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  about their being tapes and then went back again and retracted her retraction. I
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  mean, there's a reason why Epstein was the only person in this so far
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  who was put on trial for actual or wasn't even put on trial. He
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  was charged with actual sexual crimes. And then Maxwell was essentially abling and abetting
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  him. But this Geoffrey is not a perfect witness at all. They are
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  rarely ever going to get a perfect witness. But so much as being put
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  on her, and I mean, here's more from the Daily Mail about her.
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  Geoffrey claimed in twenty sixteen that she was sexually trafficked to a group of
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  powerful business executives and to Mitchell, who's now ninety years old, in New
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  Mexico and New York. She said she could not remember how many times has
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  it occurred, since we were going back a very long time ago, but
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  added that she was roughly seventeen at the time. Now, these people that
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  are named here, many of them are dead. Richardson's dead, the mit
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  professor is dead. Mitchell is ninety years old. So immediately I'm very suspect
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  when you start to go after dead people, because obviously dead people cannot defend
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  themselves. But this feels very much like somebody who was aware of news reports.
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  This was all well documented, especially in the Internet age, and sees
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  who is connected to Epstein, and she has this lawsuit that she's testifying in
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  where she has an incentive to make this as big and as widespread as possible.
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  And so I mean, when I look at I mean, these are
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  democrats I didn't like, and I always thought George Mitchell was highly overrated.
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  I mean, the media loved George Mitchell. Oh my god, they loved
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  him so much because he was seen as a sage and and above the partisan
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  frey and all this. So I have no reason to be defending Richardson or
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  Mitchell. But they just don't seem remotely like the type of people that would
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  be involved in something like this, and the evidence against them is beyond meager.
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  It's one person, and they strongly denied this in Richardson's case before he
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  died. So my major point here is I wish people understand stood, and
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  I wish the media would tell people, Okay, these allegations are nothing more
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  than the word, the very ever, ever changing word and not particularly credible
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  word of one person who seems to have a financial agenda here. But that
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  doesn't get that message doesn't get portrayed, that doesn't get told in the mainstream
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  news media at all. And you know, the right wing media has no
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  interest in this because, you know, especially when people like Bill Clinton are
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  being named, they just love the fact that their enemies are looking bad because
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  they're being associated with a dead pedophile. And I'm somebody, you know,
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  I don't care really about who you are, what your politics are, whether
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  I like you or dislike you. I'm looking for fairness, I'm looking for
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  justice. I'll defend almost anybody if I think they're being unfairly attacked. And
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  I stated in the last episode that I'm not comfortable with the evidence against Maxwell.
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  That doesn't mean she's innocent. I'm just saying that I don't think that
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  in a normal case, Maxwell would have been convicted and sent to prison based
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  upon the evidence against her and the allegations against her. I think it's mainly
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  because Epstein killed himself in prison, and people had a bloodthirst for justice and
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  there was so much political desire for someone else to pay for Epstein's crimes,
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  and she ended up being convicted because of that. But going back to the
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  media, since this is the Death of Journalism podcast, it is just absolutely
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  malpracticed, but so incredibly consistent with how the media handles all allegations related to
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  sex abuse that the way they look at these things is fundamentally broken. They
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  think that if you are a bonified accuser, right, and nobody's claiming that
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  this woman wasn't abused by Jeffrey Epstein, I accept that she was abused by
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  Jeffrey Epstein, right. So once you're a bonafid accuser, then all of
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  a sudden, everything else you say, no matter how crazy it seems,
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  is inherently at least credible, if not gospel. And that's ridiculous. That's
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  not the real world, especially when we already know that this woman has said
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  things in the past that were not true that we're proven to not be true,
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  and where she has retracted her statements in the past. So again,
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  I don't have any desire to get into the fray on this one because of
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  my history with Santotski and Michael Jackson and Matt Lower and a few others,
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  but it just really makes me uncomfortable the way the news media jumps all over
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  these stories and then just presumes that, well, it's an allegation and it's
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  in court documents, So that makes it magic. It must be true even
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  when it's completely I mean, m I T. Professors and George Mitchell.
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  I mean, come on, people, use use your brains. I'm again,
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  that's a lead. That's a lead at best, that's a lead.
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  Give me some actual evidence that even remotely goes in this direction or is remotely
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  consistent with their their behavior and other matters that you wouldn't This wouldn't be an
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  isolated situation. If these people were involved in this particular circumstance. There would
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  be other situations, incidents, allegations, there would be some evidence, and
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  instead there's nothing, and yet to the media, that doesn't matter. Now
• 19:23
  as part of the entire Epstein hysteria, maybe the most significant and certainly the
• 19:32
  most entertaining and fascinating element of this whole thing is that it inadvertently sparked maybe
• 19:41
  the most high profile celebrity feud you know, in decades. I mean,
• 19:45
  I can't even remember a feud that has gotten more brutal, more high profile
• 19:52
  and has more layers than what's going on with Aaron Rodgers and Jimmy Kimmel.
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  And I mean, this is real, amazing, and it has escalated even
• 20:02
  since the last episode of the podcast, in case you somehow have missed it.
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  Essentially, what's happened here is that before the Epstein document dump, Aaron
• 20:11
  Rodgers stupidly, in my opinion, and I'll get more into why I believe
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  that in just a bit, but Aaron Rodgers stupidly essentially implicated Jimmy Kimmel in
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  the coming Epstein document dump. Now, Rogers has been all over this Epstein
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  thing for a long time. He definitely is in the category of people who
• 20:33
  believes that you know, essentially that Epstein was running this massive pedophilia ring for
• 20:38
  high profile and rich people, for which I don't know that there's a lot
• 20:42
  of evidence of any real, significant or credible evidence yet, but that's what
• 20:47
  Rogers clearly believes. And he now claims he was joking. I didn't take
• 20:53
  it as a joke, and Jimmy Kimmel didn't take it as a joke,
• 20:56
  even though Jimmy Kimmel is an alleged comedian. But he essentially said that you
• 21:03
  know, and I don't. I don't want to get this quote Rogers,
• 21:07
  but he effectively implied strongly that you know, Kimmel might be on the list
• 21:12
  of people that were associated with Jeffrey Epstein and that he might be in the
• 21:18
  document dump that comes out. And and by the way, when the document
• 21:21
  dump came out, there was a fake, fake screenshot that went viral on
• 21:27
  Twitter that implicated Jimmy Kimmel, mainly because whoever created it knew that because of
• 21:33
  the Aaron Rodgers statement, that this would in fact get a lot of attention,
• 21:37
  and it did, and it did go viral, but it was totally
• 21:41
  and completely fake. And Kimmel immediately reacted very strongly to what Rogers said,
• 21:45
  threatened to sue him, said he had, you know, had no connection
• 21:48
  to Epstein at all, and you know, it mocked Rogers for what he
• 21:53
  was doing. And Kimmel also went on his television show and did like a
• 22:00
  seven minute monologue ripping Aaron Rodgers to shreds, basically calling him a moron and
• 22:07
  a dumb jock. And most of it wasn't very funny, but you know,
• 22:12
  it was pretty extraordinary on ABC to have somebody go on that long a
• 22:18
  diatribe attacking another celebrity. And I guess ABC gave him a wide leash because
• 22:26
  essentially, you know, Rogers, at least in Kimmel's mind was accusing him
• 22:30
  of being a pedophile. Now again, technically that's not what Rogers did,
• 22:33
  but that was the implication or the joke, And so Kimmel does that.
• 22:41
  And part of this entire feud, and a key part of why this is
• 22:47
  such a fascinating story, is that Rogers is making his statements about Kimmel on
• 22:53
  ESPN, on Pat McAfee's new show, And of course ESPN and ABC are
• 23:00
  both owned by Disney, so that creates an entirely new and different and more
• 23:07
  dramatic dynamic here. It's not like Rogers is just you know, firing off
• 23:12
  Salvo's on his Twitter feed or something. This is on ESPN, and by
• 23:18
  the way, not just on ESPN but their most prominent new show, where
• 23:22
  they've spent a ridiculous, ridiculous amount of money for Pat McAfee and and so
• 23:29
  you know that's causing all sorts of chaos I'm sure within ABC, Disney and
• 23:33
  ESPN from a management standpoint. And ESPN put out a statement basically essentially siding
• 23:41
  with Kimmel and chiding Rogers. But then McAfee didn't back down. McAfee went
• 23:47
  after one of his most prominent bosses on the air and called him a rat,
• 23:52
  and that went in a completely different direction that I was expecting. I
• 23:56
  was expecting, given you know, my college and experience of the way the
• 24:00
  corporate media works, is that they were going to side with Kimmel. Rogers
• 24:04
  is not an employee of THEIRS. Football season for Rogers is over and never
• 24:10
  really even began because he only played four plays for the Jets, But you
• 24:14
  know, we're heading into the playoffs now, you know, I was expecting
• 24:18
  Rogers to be off the McAfee show, maybe for the end of the season,
• 24:23
  because it's a pretty good time to break things off. You could have
• 24:26
  plausible deniability there. And that's not what happened at all. I was completely
• 24:32
  wrong in that gut instinct, and McAfee not only doubled down, but tripled
• 24:37
  down because then he had, you know, Rogers on again and gave him
• 24:42
  wide latitude to go after Jimmy Kimmel in response to the seven minute monologue that
• 24:51
  Kimmel had done on ABC. And I have to say, trying to figure
• 24:55
  out what's going on with McAfee, my guess is one he likes Roy Rogers
• 25:00
  and he's loyal to Rogers. Rogers and he clearly have had a very close
• 25:04
  relationship in their many on air interviews. I think he probably also agrees with
• 25:11
  Rogers, especially on some of this COVID stuff that I'm about to play for
• 25:14
  you, which is where things get really interesting. But I also think that
• 25:18
  McAfee counterintuitively sees this as a great way for him to show his ESPN bosses
• 25:26
  who's in charge. This has now become, you know, basically a massive
• 25:33
  penis measuring contest, and McAfee wants to show everybody how big he is by
• 25:40
  sticking by his buddy Aaron Rodgers, because you know, he could have done
• 25:45
  this in a lot of different ways. I mean, he could have had
• 25:48
  Rogers back on and have him respond to Kimmel briefly and then move on to
• 25:52
  other subjects, or cut him off when you know, he started to get
• 25:56
  into dangerous territory, especially what he starts talking about the vaccines and other things.
• 26:02
  But McAfee does not do that, and you're about to hear that in
• 26:06
  two clips I'm gonna play. But so you know, that's my impression of
• 26:11
  what's going on from McAfee's perspective. But the really significant and important part of
• 26:15
  this is the battle between Rogers and Kimmel, and it's not really over the
• 26:22
  issue of Epstein, all right, that's how it began. But to me,
• 26:27
  where this gets to have importance in a bigger picture is Rogers' view of
• 26:34
  COVID and the vaccines and doctor Fauci and what have you. So I'm going
• 26:41
  to play two clips from this interview on ESPN where Rogers is with Pat McAfee
• 26:48
  and he's responding essentially to Jimmy Kimmel, and you know, he's giving it
• 26:52
  back to Kimmel about as good as Kimmel gave it to him. And in
• 26:56
  this particular clip, he goes after Kimmel for or essentially being supportive of doctor
• 27:03
  Fauci and of the vaccines and how wrong he was on that and that essentially
• 27:10
  he should be taking an l on that entire issue. I guess this was
• 27:15
  kind of in response to the idea that Kimmel was calling Rogers dumb and that,
• 27:19
  you know, Kimmel's on the smart side of things, and Rogers was
• 27:23
  like, dude, you know, look at what happened with COVID. You
• 27:26
  were on the wrong side. So here is a shorter clip of Aaron Rodgers
• 27:32
  on ESPN making that argument. Uh, you know, mentioned Ivermectin being horse
• 27:37
  face and pushed that whole narrative for a long time. He gave a platform
• 27:42
  to one of the biggest spreaders of misinformation during the COVID times, doctor Fauci.
• 27:49
  So in my opinion, you know, he ripped me about ripped me
• 27:52
  about the vacs and and that turns out to be an l on many occasions,
• 27:57
  because the vax was not safe effective like we were told that it was
• 28:02
  in the beginning. There are a lot of injuries now that we've seen related
• 28:06
  to the vaccine. So in my opinion, you went after me. That's
• 28:08
  fine, you're a comedian, go for it. Not offended, but that
• 28:12
  was in hell Now. Obviously, as a COVID contrarian from the beginning and
• 28:18
  someone who still talks about COVID on almost every episode of this podcast, at
• 28:22
  least in some way, shape or form, I am extremely sympathetic to what
• 28:27
  Rogers says there, and I agree with the vast majority of it. Interestingly,
• 28:33
  when it comes to Rogers' view of the vaccines, and Rogers is not
• 28:37
  vaccinated, and obviously, you know he's very proud of the fact that he
• 28:42
  went on to win the MVP as an unvaccinated NFL quarterback and so, and
• 28:49
  his health has never been impacted by COVID to any of our knowledge. I
• 28:56
  am a little bit curious as to why he he's never raised a Damar Hamlin
• 29:02
  issue, because you know, he clearly it's obvious that he believes that the
• 29:08
  vaccines are not safe, that they have caused harm. And it's my very
• 29:15
  strong belief that Damar Hamlin had a cardiac arrest playing for the Buffalo Bills the
• 29:22
  end of last season and it wasn't kommodio cordis. I've talked many, many
• 29:26
  times about how absurd the idea that it could be kmodio cordises, even though
• 29:30
  that's what doctor Fauci immediately decided that it was, never having treated Hamlin,
• 29:36
  and no doctor that ever has treated Hamlin to my knowledge, has ever said
• 29:40
  anything about it being komodia cordis. And so, therefore, logically, the
• 29:45
  only explanation that makes any sense, given the way that the story has gone
• 29:49
  down and the weird interview that Hamlin did with Michael Strahan around the Super Ball,
• 29:55
  that it had to be vaccine related, because that's the only explanation for
• 30:00
  why we haven't gotten a straight story or a story that makes any sense.
• 30:04
  Well, if that's the case, then you know why hasn't Rogers said anything
• 30:08
  about that? And the only explanation I can come up with is only like
• 30:11
  two one, maybe he knows something I don't know and we don't know that
• 30:15
  it wasn't vaccine related, or and I think this is probably the more likely
• 30:21
  scenario. He believes that there's some sort of player's code that that would cause
• 30:25
  too much of a problem with the other NFL players for him if he was
• 30:30
  the one to actually state, Hey, DeMar Hamlin didn't have a cardiac arrest
• 30:34
  because of commodi of Cortez. It was because of the vaccine and the side
• 30:40
  effects of that. So that's probably and that makes a lot of sense when
• 30:42
  you think about it. I mean, that's just too much of a political
• 30:45
  headache for him, especially since he still at least thinks that he's in the
• 30:49
  National Football League, that he would probably lose a lot of the locker room
• 30:55
  if he did that, and so he has not done that. But substantively,
• 30:59
  I mean, exactly right on the fact that the vaccines were not as
• 31:03
  advertised and He's exactly right when it comes to Jimmy Kimmel being on the wrong
• 31:07
  side of that. And that was not all that Roger said about COVID.
• 31:14
  In fact, he said a lot more about COVID. He in a larger
• 31:18
  section of the interview with Pat McAfee, he basically explained why he won't let
• 31:25
  COVID go much like me, I'm certainly in this camp. I mean,
• 31:29
  I'm sure there are people who think the same things. Why won't you let
• 31:32
  COVID go? Well, in my view, COVID's the biggest thing that's ever
• 31:36
  happened in the modern history of America, not just because of the damage that
• 31:38
  it caused, but because of the precedence that is going to set in all
• 31:44
  sorts of areas of life into the future. That we fundamentally changed the country,
• 31:49
  and we let what I perceived to be the Marxists and the fastest understand
• 31:55
  exactly what they could get away with. And trust me, they learned a
• 31:59
  lot and they didn't just forget about this. And we're you know, we're
• 32:02
  already seeing it with regard to just as I predicted, how they're going to
• 32:07
  handle climate change, global warming to restrict our lives Uh, they're not going
• 32:12
  to just say they have a new weapon that they didn't realize they could get
• 32:15
  away with, and they're going to use it whenever it's appropriate or whether whenever
• 32:21
  they think they can get away with it. And COVID proved to them that
• 32:22
  they can get away with a lot. Especially since there's been zero COVID accountability
• 32:29
  and with Ron de Sanders's presidential candidacy looking like it's going to end up in
• 32:34
  flames, there's never going to be any real COVID accountability. There hasn't been
• 32:38
  any at the at the voting booth, and no election results have created any
• 32:45
  real COVID accountability. And that's something that bothers Aaron Rodgers as well. So
• 32:52
  here's Aaron Rodgers talking about why he cares so much about COVID, and probably
• 33:00
  I think the most remarkable element of this clip is that this may be the
• 33:07
  most dramatic COVID statement in the history of the left wing media, which I
• 33:15
  consider ESPN to b that here we have Aaron Rodgers going essentially uninterrupted for an
• 33:21
  extended period of time, making a very coaching argument that you never hear allowed
• 33:28
  to be said on left wing mainstream media and then at the end he ties
• 33:34
  it back to Jimmy Kimmel, who he refers to as that guy on ABC.
• 33:38
  And here's what that sounded like when Aaron Rodgers went off on COVID in
• 33:44
  general, everybody who dealt with the draconian measures. And then that's my last
• 33:49
  point. Then I just want to fucking move on. But it's like people
• 33:52
  are always like, people are always like, you know, why are you
• 33:54
  still talking about COVID? Like once you just move on, it's ridiculous.
• 33:58
  I'm like, well, let's see what happened. They locked everybody up forever
• 34:07
  was supposed to a couple of weeks, right, they locked everybody up.
• 34:10
  Hundreds of thousands of businesses closed and never opened again. Many of dozens of
• 34:15
  people that I know in their thirties, you know, who poured everything into
• 34:19
  these small businesses and restaurants and bars and and never opened again. So they
• 34:25
  lost everything. They're on their ass right, The gap, the wealth gap,
• 34:30
  got even bigger from the haves and have nots. They lied to us
• 34:35
  over and over. They vilified early treatments, They censored legitimate UH doctors in
• 34:43
  the space, liked doctor Peter mccullo, Like Peter Corey, Doctor Corey,
• 34:47
  liked doctor Robert Malone, who allegedly was there in the beginning of the m
• 34:52
  R and A technology, and so many more people than that, Uh,
• 34:55
  the Alex Bearnson's of the world, the Weinstein's of the world, who were
• 34:59
  like writing about this, talking about this Rent Weinstein. Yeah, and it
• 35:07
  hadn't informed and hadn't informed opinion about this. I mean, they were arresting
• 35:14
  people who were surfing in California. They closed the beaches when eighty I mean,
• 35:19
  I don't know what percentage, but probably sixty percent or more of the
• 35:22
  of the country as vitamin D deficient. And you know, vitamin D,
• 35:25
  you know, does well against the common cold, as does vitamin C,
• 35:30
  as does zinc, as does the number of home remedies that we all have.
• 35:34
  But no, stay inside, wait for this vaccine which is one hundred
• 35:37
  percent safe and effective, which they told us. So my whole point is,
• 35:40
  listen, they lied to us many times over. They locked us up,
• 35:47
  they closed our businesses, They increased the mental health issues exponentially, the
• 35:53
  rates of suicide went way up, and they're just like they vilified us,
• 35:59
  the drug cony and things that you know, ridiculous shut down. You know,
• 36:07
  we lost billions. There's no pictures, there's no NFL owners who are
• 36:10
  mad about this. Now that we look back and go, oh, well,
• 36:14
  maybe we could have stopped this with a little like early treatments or like
• 36:17
  not giving rem deesevir and uh, you know, a ventilator to these patients.
• 36:22
  Maybe like uh, you know, treat like the common cold, where
• 36:27
  you you know you have symptoms and you start doing something about it, you
• 36:30
  treat it. And I have a problem with I have a problem with that
• 36:34
  because now people just like just move on, just just just brushing on the
• 36:37
  rug. It's like, well, I had many apologies, not by that
• 36:40
  guy in ABC. Now. I don't agree with everything that Aaron Rodgers said
• 36:45
  there, but I clearly strongly agree with the essence of it, and I'm
• 36:52
  glad that he finally and somebody finally had both the balls and the ability to
• 36:58
  say it on an outlet that you would never dream was possible. I mean,
• 37:02
  ESPN says liberal a mainstream outlet as you can possibly get, and it
• 37:09
  was astonishing and very telling that Pat McAfee let Rogers go off there again.
• 37:16
  For maybe the reasons, maybe there are other reasons that I'm not aware of,
• 37:21
  but the reasons I've already theorized about about his own personal agenda, his
• 37:24
  feelings towards Rogers. Maybe he agrees with him on the COVID issue. Maybe
• 37:28
  he feels that this is a great way of sticking it to his ESPN bosses.
• 37:34
  I'm not sure, but the reality is he let Rogers get away with
• 37:37
  this, and I'm sure it was really a mind blowing experience for a lot
• 37:44
  of people watching ESPN. Now McAfee's audience is maybe a little bit different than
• 37:50
  the general normal ESPN audience, but still nobody has ever seen or heard anything
• 37:58
  like that on ESPN. To be clear, ESPN was a major major force
• 38:04
  when the when the pandemic hit in making sure that there was no opposition.
• 38:09
  I mean, ESPN had a massive self interest in theory in keeping sports going,
• 38:16
  right, I mean, nobody had it more theoretical obvious self interest in
• 38:22
  keeping sports going during COVID that ESPN and ESPN did nothing. They not only
• 38:30
  did nothing, they went in the other direction. They they were intimidating people
• 38:37
  from not having, you know, spectator events, and when masks became popular,
• 38:44
  they made sure that you know, there was no opposition to the use
• 38:46
  of or the mandating of masks. And you know, when it came to
• 38:51
  the vaccines and mandates on sporting teams, they didn't defend those players like Rogers
• 38:58
  or Kyrie Irvin or others who were against the vaccine mandates. They attacked them.
• 39:06
  So, I mean ESPN was a weapon. ESPN was a weapon of
• 39:10
  the Faucis of the world, much like Jimmy Kimmel was a weapon of doctor
• 39:15
  Fauci and others. And so it was absolutely amazing that Rogers did this on
• 39:22
  ESPN. So I am absolutely thrilled that he did it. I respect him
• 39:28
  for doing it. However, here's where I get pissed at Aaron Rodgers,
• 39:32
  and I'm actually angry, and I'm I'm actually angrier at Rogers after he did
• 39:37
  this than I was before. Because if you have that kind of an opportunity,
• 39:45
  and you know, and there's this old saying, you know to whom
• 39:49
  much is given much as expected, right, if you have that kind of
• 39:52
  an opportunity to be the only and certainly the first celebrity to be able to
• 40:00
  make our case on a liberal mainstream outlet like ESPN, then god damn it,
• 40:07
  don't blow your credibility accusing Jimmy Kimmel of being a pedophile when you have
• 40:14
  no damn evidence for at I mean, and I realize that Rogers will say,
• 40:19
  well, that's not what I did. Perception is reality, and the
• 40:23
  implication was there, And you know, I'm not sure Rogers is aware of
• 40:28
  this. I'm going to give him some benefit of the doubt that he may
• 40:31
  not be aware of it. But he's a smart guy. He's well read,
• 40:35
  but he's certainly not He goes out of his way to make it clear
• 40:38
  he's not a maga guy. And so maybe this reality that I'm about the
• 40:44
  state has never gotten in front of him. But there is a very strong
• 40:50
  connection between the anti vax movement qing on and the claim of there being these
• 41:00
  massive pedophilia rings. So when you step into it as a guy who is
• 41:07
  perceived as an anti vaxxer and you start accusing Jimmy Kimmel, even if it's
• 41:15
  a joke or just an implication, or if you're just chiding him whatever it
• 41:17
  is, of being part of Jeffrey Epstein's pedophilia ring, you start sounding exactly
• 41:25
  like QAnon, who are a bunch of fucking whack jobs, and it destroys
• 41:32
  your credibility. You make all of us look like nutjobs because we get associated
• 41:40
  with q and on. And there are already people in the media that are
• 41:45
  doing that, in the sports media and elsewhere. They're attacking ESPN and McAfee
• 41:52
  for having Rogers on his show. The New York Post had a headline,
• 41:57
  Aaron Rodgers has turned Pat McAfee show with eighty five million dollar ESPN disaster.
• 42:02
  I've seen other liberal commentators on other networks bizarrely attacking ESPN but defending Jimmy Kimmel
• 42:14
  on this. And one of the weapons they're using is the perception. I
• 42:19
  don't know if they're actually staying QAnon, but the perception of anti vaxx people.
• 42:24
  And when you make a very erroneous and reckless allegation against the public figure
• 42:32
  and say that they're going to be associated with Jeffrey Epstein and it turns out,
• 42:37
  by the way, they're not even listed in any of the documents that
• 42:40
  got dumped, it destroys your credibility, and it goes beyond this your credibility,
• 42:49
  it goes to all of our credibility. This is part of why it
• 42:52
  drives me crazy when Tucker Carlson dives for almost any conspiracy theory. Now,
• 43:00
  whether it's aliens or Epstein was murdered, or Obama on gay sex, or
• 43:07
  embracing Alex Jones or January sixth didn't really happen, you know, or JFK
• 43:15
  was killed by the CIA. That destroys your credibility in the mainstream on any
• 43:22
  other issue. Trump was the same way, because Trump had no credibility on
• 43:31
  anything in the mainstream, but especially on science issues. And when he got
• 43:37
  accused of saying we ought to inject ourselves with bleach to kill COVID again,
• 43:42
  he didn't say that, but that's how it got proceeded, and the media
• 43:46
  ran with that. So it destroyed the entire anti mask movement because we were
• 43:53
  associated with Trump, and Trump's the one saying we ought to inject ourselves with
• 43:58
  bleach. He doesn't know what that all he's talking talking about, so therefore
• 44:01
  he must not know what he's talking about on masks. By the way,
• 44:04
  you know, he was pro mask as often as he was anti mask,
• 44:07
  but his supporters became associated with the anti mask mandate movement and the anti vaccine
• 44:15
  mandate movement, which is ironic since Trump is, of course still this day
• 44:19
  taking credit for the vaccines as being his baby. But these things matter when
• 44:24
  you have very few people who have the ability to get a message into the
• 44:30
  mainstream to people that haven't heard it before, especially on major liberal outlets,
• 44:36
  you must protect your credibility in other areas because that's how they will destroy you.
• 44:43
  That's how they will try to cancel you, and that's how your argument,
• 44:46
  which can be very cogent, very real, very powerful and needs to
• 44:52
  be heard, it will just be disregarded. Oh you know, that's the
• 44:58
  guy that said Jimmy Kimmel was pedophile. Aaron Rodgers has lost it, So
• 45:04
  you don't make their job easier. You have to understand your responsibility if you're
• 45:08
  Aaron Rodgers, that you have this amazing opportunity, this remarkable platform that for
• 45:15
  some bizarre reason, Pat McAfee is willing to give you, and Rogers blew
• 45:21
  it in large degree. Now, you know, are the are the people
• 45:24
  that are already on his side super excited about the things that he was able
• 45:29
  to say on ESPN. Yeah, of course, and again I'm I'm glad
• 45:32
  he said them because they need to be said, but I really wish he
• 45:37
  had not gone down the path of accusing or even being perceived as accusing Jimmy
• 45:43
  Kimmel as a pedophile, because it destroyed his credibility on the larger issue,
• 45:47
  and it gave Kimmel a weapon. And and this feud between Kimmel and Rogers,
• 45:54
  especially when you consider the ABC Disney ESPN angle, is is really remarkable.
• 46:01
  And I don't know what is going to happen when it comes to the
• 46:05
  issue of ESPN, but there is clearly turmoil going on at ESPN because of
• 46:12
  all of this at the corporate level, I'm sure, and you know,
• 46:15
  whether this fades away, I don't know how it can fade away. I
• 46:19
  feel like there's going to be another shoe to drop at some point. I
• 46:22
  don't know what it's going to be, but I feel like we have not
• 46:24
  heard the end of this particular story. Now. After we initially ended the
• 46:30
  recording for this episode number one hundred and eighteen of the Death of Journalism podcast,
• 46:37
  the Pat McAfee show made a rather dramatic announcement regarding Aaron Rodgers, and
• 46:45
  it dovetailed with what I thought was going to be the initial reaction to Aaron
• 46:51
  Rodgers getting into a feud with Jimmy Kimmel, and I'm not one hundred percent
• 46:57
  sure exactly how this transpired, although I have some theories. But Pat McAfee
• 47:01
  went on his program and essentially basically threw Aaron Rodgers under the bus, which
• 47:08
  is completely inconsistent with the way he has treated Rogers throughout this entire saga,
• 47:16
  and is at least consistent to me with someone who was read the riot Act
• 47:21
  by his bosses that enough is enough, knock it off. Rogers is no
• 47:27
  longer going to be on your show, and that now McAfee must embrace that
• 47:31
  in order to protect his own brand. So none of what you're about to
• 47:36
  hear, in my view, is consistent with the way that McAfee acted,
• 47:40
  because if it had been consistent with the way McAfee acted, he would have
• 47:45
  at least interrupted Rogers and tried to get him off the subject matters that he
• 47:52
  took on, including obviously COVID and what have you, But that did not
• 47:55
  happen. So to me, this is a dramatic turn that is related to
• 48:00
  someone deciding that, okay, it's no longer in my self interest career wise
• 48:05
  to go down this path. But this is Pat McAfee on ESPN announcing that
• 48:09
  the Aaron Rodgers segment of his show has now been discontinued. What we do
• 48:15
  know is the guy who stopped by yesterday cause quite a conversation. Well yeah,
• 48:20
  now usual not like that. So Aaron Rodgers Tuesday Season four is done.
• 48:30
  There would be a lot of people that are happy with that, myself
• 48:32
  included, to be honest with the way it ended, he got real loud
• 48:36
  and real loud. I'm happy that that is not gonna be my mentions going
• 48:40
  forward, which is great news. We're a conversation show. People are having
• 48:45
  conversations. We live in a country that has freedom of speech. But also
• 48:47
  you're going to have to deal with the consequences of your freedom of speech.
• 48:51
  So what I'm saying is we've given a lot of people who've been waiting for
• 48:53
  us to fail, a lot of AMMO and things to attack us for over
• 48:58
  the last week, and we would to get back to the point where we
• 49:01
  just move on and continue to silence all the haters over here who can't negotiate
• 49:06
  as good as I can, all the people over here who can't create a
• 49:08
  show as good as us, and all the people up here who just can
• 49:12
  always be here and they're gonna hustle and do their thing, which I respect.
• 49:15
  But we need to do that and that is our focus, that is
• 49:16
  our goal. And Aaron Rodgers is a Hall of Famer, He's a four
• 49:21
  time MVP. He's a massive piece of the NFL story. Whenever you go
• 49:24
  back and tell it, he will be a huge part of it. We
• 49:27
  are very lucky to get a chance to chat with him and learn from him.
• 49:30
  Some of his thoughts and opinions, though, do piss off a lot
• 49:32
  of people people, and I'm pumped that that is no longer going to be
• 49:37
  every single Wednesday of my life, which it has been for the last few
• 49:42
  weeks. On Friday, obviously, I threw us into the fire as well
• 49:45
  forever stand by that. Everything else though, like just can't do that and
• 49:50
  not what we want to be known for. And I'm also pumped, and
• 49:52
  I have to do these types of talks earymore so. With that being said,
• 49:55
  sports are alive right now. Speaking of ESP obviously, they just carried
• 50:00
  the college football National Championship Game where Michigan defeated Washington. I was happy to
• 50:07
  see Michigan win. It's a remarkable story when your head football coach Jim Harball
• 50:12
  is suspended for half the season for two different alleged violations, and by the
• 50:17
  way, that hardly ever gets mentioned during the two playoff games that are broadcast
• 50:22
  on ESPN, and then you end up winning your first national championship of the
• 50:25
  millennium. I mean, that's an incredible story. I think that the lesson
• 50:31
  from Michigan is that it shows what happens if you don't lose your balls in
• 50:37
  a crisis and you fight back. And I have no real knowledge as to
• 50:44
  how guilty Michigan was and the whole sign stealing scandal, it's clear that they
• 50:47
  must have been at least somewhat guilty. They essentially pled guilty, and they
• 50:52
  allowed Jim Harball to take a three game suspension at the end of the regular
• 50:55
  season when they were playing some key games. But you know, for this,
• 51:00
  you know, putting aside the guilt of Michigan, I have great respect
• 51:06
  for how they handled it because the general the way things happen in academy is
• 51:12
  to curl into the fetal position. As I learned very much in the whole
• 51:15
  Penn State Joe Paternal Jerryson Dusky scandal. And so the fact that Michigan has
• 51:20
  apparently learned those lessons, and even their their president fought back and had the
• 51:25
  back of Jim Harbaugh, and Jim Harbaugh's interim coach had his back, and
• 51:31
  they stayed together as a team, and they overcame enormous adversity, losing one
• 51:36
  of their best offensive linemen, among other things, going undefeated winning the national
• 51:40
  championship. And it's you know, it's amazing how fast things have changed at
• 51:46
  Michigan. In twenty twenty, during the pandemic, nobody had their program more
• 51:52
  decimated than Michigan. I mean, they played hardly any games. There wasn't
• 51:57
  even an Ohio State Michigan game that year. They only won two games during
• 52:00
  that shortened COVID season. You know, it was during that time period when
• 52:06
  there was an alleged sex scandal going way back to the boath shem Beckler days
• 52:12
  at Michigan, which I think was trumped up and was a copycat of what
• 52:15
  happened at Ohio State wrestling and with Penn State at Jerry Sandusky and Michigan State
• 52:22
  with their gymnastics coach. You know, this this big ten contagion. I've
• 52:27
  talked about before where people started to understand, you know, former players just
• 52:30
  realized they could make a lot of money from old allegations against doctors who were
• 52:35
  dead, and both schen Beckler got wrapped up in that. There was there
• 52:38
  was talk of canceling bo scham Beckler, and Jim Harbaugh stood up for schaen
• 52:43
  Beckler for whom he quarterbacked. And so, I mean, Michigan was in
• 52:46
  complete disarray just a few years ago and now here they are at the start
• 52:52
  of twenty twenty four going fifteen to a winning a national championship. So,
• 52:57
  you know, kudos to to Michigan for that. I thought that was great
• 53:01
  and they were clearly the best team as far as the ratings were concerned.
• 53:06
  I found it very telling that the ratings for the National Championship Game, well
• 53:12
  great, were not as good as they were for the Rose Bowl, which
• 53:16
  is the semi final game, the game between Michigan and Alabama. About two
• 53:22
  point seven million people fewer. There were two point seven million fewer viewers of
• 53:29
  the National Championship Game then watched the Rose Bowl game, the semi final between
• 53:35
  Michigan and Alabama. Now, you would never in a million years have that
• 53:39
  happen in the National Football League where a conference championship game got a bigger rating
• 53:45
  and had more viewership than the super Bowl. Now there's a big reason for
• 53:50
  that. I mean, the Super Bowl has become a social event, almost
• 53:52
  a holiday. But just using that as a comparison, that's a pretty remarkable
• 53:58
  stat and I think it goes to a couple of things. One, I
• 54:01
  think it goes to the power of Alabama and an overtime game where Alabama loses.
• 54:07
  I also think New Year's Day still has power and magic. I think
• 54:12
  the Rose Bowl venue still has some power magic to a certain demographic. And
• 54:17
  so I think you have that game on New Year's Day in the Rose Bowl,
• 54:22
  perfect weather, and an overtime game against Alabama, you end up with
• 54:25
  a larger viewership than you do for the National championship game. But I did
• 54:30
  find that to be interesting. One other football note when it comes to television,
• 54:37
  a couple of episodes ago this podcast, I predicted that there was going
• 54:39
  to be an uproar over what NBC was planning on doing with regard to one
• 54:45
  of their wild card playoff games this weekend, And as it turns out,
• 54:52
  that game that is only going to be on Peacock, their streaming service,
• 54:55
  So it's not going to be available on regular NBC CA or over the air.
• 55:00
  Now. I don't know whether or not. I gotta believe it's going
• 55:04
  to be available to the local NBC affiliates in Kansas City and in Miami.
• 55:08
  I can't verify that, but just I find that impossible to believe that they're
• 55:13
  going to get away with not allowing local television in the markets of the two
• 55:16
  teams that are playing. But from a national perspective, this is going to
• 55:22
  be a big story. I think people have still not comprehended how much outrage
• 55:28
  there's going to be that this probably the most premier game of Wild Card weekend,
• 55:34
  a game between the Chiefs, the defending champions, the Dolphins, one
• 55:37
  of the sexiest teams in the league, on a night where it's supposed to
• 55:43
  be about zero degrees and possibly snowing, and presumably Taylor Swift is going to
• 55:49
  be in the audience for her boyfriend Travis Kelcey. And this game is not
• 55:53
  going to be available on national television unless you've purchased the Peacocks streaming service.
• 56:01
  That's going to cause a problem. How big of a problem I don't know,
• 56:06
  but it's also you know, I always say it's a lot like COVID.
• 56:10
  This is a situation where NBC is trying to see what they can get
• 56:15
  away with because they want this to be the future. They want pay perview.
• 56:22
  Pay per view is the ultimate goal here, because that's where you make
• 56:27
  the real money. If you can create a situation where you can get NFL
• 56:30
  playoff games that we pay perview, you know, my god, the NFL
• 56:35
  is already swimming in money, but that'll be off the charts. And so
• 56:39
  this is really a key moment in that battle as to whether or not even
• 56:47
  NFL playoff games remain available to the general public essentially quote unquote for free.
• 56:54
  And so it's going to be very very key, very telling this see how
• 57:00
  much reaction there is to this, and what the reaction is, and whether
• 57:05
  or not NBC gets away with putting the Chiefs and Dolphins on Wildcard Weekend only
• 57:13
  on Peacock, their streaming service. I don't know what the outcome is going
• 57:15
  to be of this, how much outrage there would need to be for this
• 57:21
  to never happen again, but I can guarantee you that on Saturday Night on
• 57:25
  Twitter This is going to be a major, major topic of controversy and people
• 57:31
  are not going to be happy about it. One other football note before I
• 57:36
  get into the Iowa Caucus and my predictions for what's going to happen next week.
• 57:43
  I have been stating on this podcast, probably more than anybody else has
• 57:46
  that I'm aware of in any form of media, that tackle football is on
• 57:52
  its last legs. The Taco football will not exist as we currently know it
• 57:58
  in ten to fifteen years in America. And this week there's another kind of
• 58:05
  like what's happening with NBC and Peacock, there's a key moment to see what
• 58:08
  they can get away with and stop me if you've heard this before, It's
• 58:13
  happening here in California, just as I have predicted many many times before,
• 58:17
  the California Legislature is going to be debating this week the banning of tackle football
• 58:25
  before the age of twelve. Now this has come up before, but now
• 58:32
  you know it's being tried again. This is the way liberals do these things.
• 58:37
  They keep trying to keep trying, and eventually opposition wears down. You
• 58:42
  become desensitized to it. And since there's only one party rule in California.
• 58:46
  They almost always eventually get exactly what they want. It may take them a
• 58:51
  few cycles to desensitize people and to get people accepting the idea that something that
• 58:58
  seems crazy is something that's perfectly legitimate for a state government to do. I
• 59:02
  don't know whether or not it's going to pass this time. I have to
• 59:07
  say that this is going to sound so weird but so typical of modern America
• 59:14
  and our politics and screwed as screwed up as it is. But I really
• 59:17
  think that the key person in all this is going to be Snoop Dogg.
• 59:22
  And you're probably like, what, zig, what are you talking about?
• 59:25
  But Snoop Dogg, uh, the you know, obviously the rapper. I
• 59:30
  guess I don't even know what you call him now. I mean, he's
• 59:31
  a pitchman, commercial pitchman, but you know, still very well known,
• 59:36
  very prominent. Snoop Dogg has been huge in the youth football movement in Los
• 59:42
  Angeles for many years, and most of those kids are under the age of
• 59:49
  twelve, and so I look, I was wrong about John Fetterman saving the
• 59:53
  day when it came to the William Penn statue, But I'm looking at Snoop
• 1:00:00
  to see what he does on this issue, and if this becomes something that
• 1:00:05
  looks like it might actually happen, they're gonna have to go up against Snoop
• 1:00:08
  Dogg. In my opinion, and I've stated previously that this is one of
• 1:00:14
  those situations where as long as the black community is still in favor of something,
• 1:00:21
  and obviously Snoop Dogg is black, it's much more difficult for even liberals
• 1:00:25
  in California to get away with something like this. If it was only white
• 1:00:30
  people that were playing football under the age of twelve tackle football, then this
• 1:00:35
  would be a no brainer. They would do it. But I do think
• 1:00:37
  it's going to be more difficult because of people like Snoop Dogg. Now,
• 1:00:43
  the cynical part of me says, well, wait a minute, you're saying
• 1:00:45
  the California is going to ban tackle football under the age of twelve. Based
• 1:00:50
  upon what I've seen watching Pac twelve football over the last several years, I
• 1:00:54
  thought California had already banned tackle football under the age of twenty two twelve,
• 1:01:00
  But bump bum I mean, but I'm semi serious about that. There is
• 1:01:05
  no tackling in California. I've stated that previously many times than in California high
• 1:01:10
  school football, there's no real tackling, so the idea that the state might
• 1:01:15
  ban it may not make much difference. I mean, not only semi facetiously.
• 1:01:20
  The reality is that the idea that a state government as big as California
• 1:01:24
  is even thinking about banning tackle football under the age of twelve is insane.
• 1:01:30
  It's insane simply from the standpoint of government's role. That this is not government's
• 1:01:37
  role. But if they were to do this, and I think they could
• 1:01:40
  get away with it. I like, if there is no opposition from Snoop
• 1:01:44
  Dogg or from the black community, they could get away with this. Much
• 1:01:47
  like it's a very similar strategy to what we do here in California with regard
• 1:01:53
  to taxing the super rich. Right, this is how you get your nose
• 1:01:59
  under the ten. Oh, well, we're just gonna tax the super rich,
• 1:02:02
  the billionaires. That's another proposal on the table right now for the insane
• 1:02:08
  Marxist California legislature. We're just gonna create a new tax, a wealth tax,
• 1:02:14
  which even Newsome's against. But this is being proposed again, a wealth
• 1:02:17
  tax not on your income but on your assets, which is as socialist as
• 1:02:22
  it gets. But the point of this is they always throw out, we're
• 1:02:28
  just gonna attack, We're just gonna tax the super rich. Well, therefore,
• 1:02:32
  very few people are gonna be opposed to that. I mean, philosophically,
• 1:02:37
  they might not think it's a great idea, but no one's gonna go
• 1:02:39
  to the mat to try to keep billionaires from being taxed a bit more.
• 1:02:45
  And they know this, So this is how they start the slippery slope.
• 1:02:49
  They get their nose underneath the tent, and then it's just a matter of
• 1:02:52
  defining what super rich is. You keep defining super rich, you know,
• 1:02:57
  further and further down, and that slippery slow, and before you know it,
• 1:03:00
  you're actually getting the real people. That's how they work with this.
• 1:03:05
  It's a slippery slope. Well, the same thing would happen with regard to
• 1:03:08
  banning tackle football under the age of twelve if they got away with it,
• 1:03:14
  which they could, because politically there's not going to be all that much opposition
• 1:03:19
  to it, even though it's insane for a state government to be doing this.
• 1:03:22
  But once they did it for under twelve, what's to stop them from
• 1:03:25
  saying, well, we decreased football injuries among kids by twenty three percent.
• 1:03:32
  They can come up with some number out of their ass and say, well,
• 1:03:36
  why don't we extend that age to fourteen, and people go, yeah,
• 1:03:40
  it worked for under twelve, let's let's do for under fourteen. And
• 1:03:45
  then you know, slowly but surely, you've destroyed tackle football because it can't
• 1:03:51
  just shift from flag football to tackle football at the age of fifteen or sixteen
• 1:03:58
  and have it wor you just can't do that. I've seen this firsthand in
• 1:04:03
  my experience as a high school coach. There's just no way to do it.
• 1:04:06
  If it's not in the bloodstream, if it's not in the culture by
• 1:04:11
  the age of ten, eleven, twelve, it's not going to happen.
• 1:04:14
  And by the way, for the record, there are very very few injuries
• 1:04:18
  in tackle football under the age of twelve because they're not large enough or fast
• 1:04:24
  enough to create injuries when they're wearing pretty safe helmets. So the idea that
• 1:04:30
  somehow, you know, ten or eleven year olds are getting concussions in CTE,
• 1:04:35
  you know, there's no evidence or logic to back that up, but
• 1:04:39
  that doesn't matter to the California legislatures. So, as I have stated,
• 1:04:43
  many times. The death of football tackle football is well on its way,
• 1:04:47
  and of course it'll be California, as it often is, that starts that
• 1:04:51
  ball rolling in a very significant fashion. It may be happening this week right
• 1:04:58
  now. I want to turn to political matters, and first with regard to
• 1:05:02
  Donald Trump and the hearing that occurred this week regarding whether or not he is
• 1:05:08
  immune from federal charges and the trials against him because of the fact that he
• 1:05:15
  was president of the United States. There was a hearing regarding this, an
• 1:05:18
  appeal hearing. And look, I don't think that the president of the United
• 1:05:23
  States is totally immune from prosecution. I don't think that Trump can or should
• 1:05:29
  or will win on the immunity issue. It feels to me as if this
• 1:05:34
  is simply a delay tactic. It's, by the way, it's smart move
• 1:05:40
  by his lawyers. It's almost a you know, you can't lose. If
• 1:05:43
  you happen to win and they declare that you're immune, well, obviously that's
• 1:05:46
  a grand slam. If you lose, then you can appeal to the Supreme
• 1:05:49
  Court, and you're going to delay the start of this the federal trial in
• 1:05:55
  d C which is supposed to be in March, but is not going to
• 1:05:58
  happen. There's no way that's going to start in art because of this very
• 1:06:00
  issue about which I'm talking. The delay is inherently good, especially if you
• 1:06:05
  might end up being president in November or elected president in November. So delay
• 1:06:12
  is inherently good for the Trump team. But there are two things that got
• 1:06:16
  reported out of this hearing that I wanted to address. They're not big deals,
• 1:06:23
  but maybe it just to prove my objectivity on Trump and the fact that
• 1:06:27
  I don't have Trump derangement syndrome. But also because I can't stand it when
• 1:06:30
  the media reports things in a way that is not accurate and creates a very
• 1:06:35
  false impression. There were two stories out of this hearing that were just wrong,
• 1:06:42
  and the one is this one got a lot of attention that somehow Trump's
• 1:06:45
  lawyers argued that Seal Team six he could that he could order Seal Team six
• 1:06:56
  to assassinate his political opponent as president, and he would have immunity from prosecution
• 1:07:04
  for that. That headline was widespread. Trump team argues that he could order
• 1:07:11
  Seal Team six to assassinate is the political is political opponents, and he would
• 1:07:16
  have immunity from prosecution under the Constitution because he was president of the United States.
• 1:07:24
  Now technically that's not inaccurate, but that's not really what happened in the
• 1:07:30
  hearing. Because I saw that headline, I'm like, what that sounds off
• 1:07:34
  the rails even for Trump and his attorneys, And sure enough, my BS
• 1:07:40
  detector was dead on, because that's not what occurred. What occurred was that
• 1:07:45
  one of the Biden appointed judges realized, Now this is my interpretation, but
• 1:07:51
  this is pretty clear what happened. Realized that the Trump team was making the
• 1:07:58
  blanket immunity argument, which again I don't agree with, but that's the argument
• 1:08:03
  they were making. You can't go after the president for anything under the Constitution.
• 1:08:09
  He has blanket immunity for anything. So seeing that that was the Trump
• 1:08:14
  team argument, the Biden appointed judge basically made a play. And I don't
• 1:08:20
  know how much they thought this through, whether they were this smart, whether
• 1:08:26
  this is just something that happened organically, I have no way of knowing,
• 1:08:29
  But for all intentsive purposes, they created a headline because they were the ones
• 1:08:36
  who asked the Trump lawyers about the Seal Team six assassination scenario. The Trump
• 1:08:45
  lawyers didn't get in there and say, your honor, we believe that Donald
• 1:08:50
  Trump could have ordered Seal Team six to assassinate his political opponents, that he
• 1:08:57
  should not and would not be allowed to be convicted or tried because of presidential
• 1:09:03
  immunity. That's not what happened. It was in the exact opposite direction.
• 1:09:10
  It was the Biden appointed judge that asked the question, to which that Trump
• 1:09:15
  lawyers had no choice but to say, we believe that the immunity is blanket
• 1:09:21
  protection. So it wouldn't have mattered what scenario that Biden judge came up with,
• 1:09:27
  they would have given him the same answer. And my guess is the
• 1:09:30
  Biden appointed judge knew that and realized that he could make or they could make
• 1:09:33
  I don't even know it was a male or female, probably a male based
• 1:09:36
  upon the nature of the question, that they could make the Trump team look
• 1:09:43
  silly, or they could provide the media with a great headline, which is
• 1:09:46
  exactly what happened, but it's not based in what really occurred in that hearing.
• 1:09:51
  The second story deals with another event that got a bit of publicity.
• 1:09:59
  I saw this online in a few different places where the headline was media members
• 1:10:04
  joke about Trump being assassinated at his hearing regarding presidential immunity, And I'm like,
• 1:10:14
  okay, you know, because this was hot one of those hot mic
• 1:10:16
  stories caught on hot mic media members joking about Trump's assassination. And once again,
• 1:10:24
  that's not what happened. Not that I'm ever going to defend media members
• 1:10:29
  or and I have no interest in certainly defending Donald Trump. But here's what
• 1:10:32
  really happened. It appears as if the two media members were photographers setting up
• 1:10:39
  to try to get a shot of Trump coming into the courthouse, and they
• 1:10:43
  were having some difficulty. It appears as if they were having some difficulty getting
• 1:10:48
  to where they felt like they would get a good shot of Trump, not
• 1:10:51
  obviously a rifle shot, but a camera shot of Trump. And so they
• 1:10:58
  started talking to each other what kind of a car Trump would be in and
• 1:11:02
  whether or not he would have the window open to try to get this camera
• 1:11:06
  shot, and one of them brought up the idea, well, what if
• 1:11:10
  he's in a convertible, and the other one then alluded to JFK being in
• 1:11:15
  a convertible when he got assassinated. Was that was it? It was more
• 1:11:19
  of a joke about you know JFK riding in a convertible allowing him to be
• 1:11:26
  assassinated, than it had anything to do with you know, the media laughing
• 1:11:30
  it up about gee, we hope Donald Trump gets assassinated on his way to
• 1:11:34
  this court hearing today. That's not what happened, but that's the way it
• 1:11:39
  was portrayed in the clickbait media. All right now, as far as what's
• 1:11:45
  happening with regard to the Republican nominating process, I would say right now,
• 1:11:50
  if there is a story, it's once again Nicky Haley weirdly seemingly making a
• 1:11:57
  run in New Hampshire. There's at least one one poll, a CNN poll,
• 1:12:00
  that indicates that Nicky Haley is within shouting distance of Donald Trump in New
• 1:12:06
  Hampshire. I've always said that two things about New Hampshire. One, DeSantis
• 1:12:11
  has no chance for a number of reasons, including his six week abortion band.
• 1:12:15
  So I've been saying for many, many months, DeSantis needs to get
• 1:12:18
  the hell out of New Hampshire. No one believed me, no one listened
• 1:12:21
  to me, and it's going to end up being a disaster if DeSantis is
• 1:12:24
  still in the race in New Hampshire. But I've also said that Trump is
• 1:12:29
  not that popular among those who vote in the New Hampshire primary, and we're
• 1:12:34
  seeing that when it comes to the fact that Nicky Haley is at least within
• 1:12:42
  shouting distance. I mean, there's one pole that has her, you know,
• 1:12:45
  a little bit outside the margin of error, another pole that has it
• 1:12:49
  more like fifteen points in favor of Trump. These are the most recent polls
• 1:12:55
  out of New Hampshire. Bottom line, though, is this, if Chris
• 1:13:00
  Christie was not a big, fat fraud and a selfish sob, which I
• 1:13:04
  believe him to be, and if he really wasn't doing this simply for his
• 1:13:09
  own selfish purposes, which I believe are to extend his media career, probably
• 1:13:14
  at ABC. If he really was what he claims to be, which is
• 1:13:18
  this crusader to make sure that Trump is not the Republican nominee in twenty twenty
• 1:13:24
  four, if that was even close to the truth, Chris Christie would get
• 1:13:28
  his fat ass the hell out of New Hampshire right now, because if you
• 1:13:32
  combined Christie's support with Haley's support, now that's easier said than done. But
• 1:13:39
  I don't think that's a stretch I mean, obviously, the Christie support is
• 1:13:44
  very much anti Trump, and you know, those are people that are very
• 1:13:48
  likely to vote for Haley, especially since the governor of New Hampshire and anti
• 1:13:54
  Trump for himself Republican, has endorsed Haley. So that's hardly a stre But
• 1:14:00
  if you combine Christie's support with Haley's support, I mean we're talking about a
• 1:14:05
  neck and neck race depending on the poll. If you take the averages which
• 1:14:10
  I've done of the most recent polls in New Hampshire, and you combine Haley
• 1:14:14
  and Christy, Trump is only up by a couple of points, well within
• 1:14:18
  the margin of error. And you know, it would not be a stretch
• 1:14:24
  that Haley could beat Trump under those circumstances. If right now, right,
• 1:14:29
  if this is not gonna happen, But if Christy dropped out and DeSantis finished
• 1:14:34
  second in Iowa and remained viable and stayed in to New Hampshire, and I
• 1:14:39
  believe that the Santiss votes would largely go to Trump if he dropped out.
• 1:14:44
  So if Christy got out and the Santa stayed in and was viable after a
• 1:14:49
  decent performance in Iowa, I think Haley might beat Trump in New Hampshire.
• 1:14:55
  Now it would be very close, but that is a scenario. It is
• 1:15:00
  very real. Now would it matter, Probably not. It probably wouldn't matter
• 1:15:06
  in the long run anyway, but it would be glorious to see Trump lose
• 1:15:13
  the New Hampshire primary. I don't think there's any chance Trump again, as
• 1:15:17
  I always say, barring death or incarceration, loses the Republican nomination. And
• 1:15:25
  there's a new poll out just this morning as I'm taping this that further proves
• 1:15:30
  that there is a poll out and this is not a poll of your actual
• 1:15:33
  prefer or the day they did take your preference. But the element of this
• 1:15:36
  pole that I found to be most important was not presidential preference, but who
• 1:15:44
  do you think will win between Trump and Biden? And what's really amazing about
• 1:15:49
  this is that the perception in the country as well as state by state,
• 1:15:57
  is very much on the side that Trump is owing to beat Biden. Even
• 1:16:01
  in this particular poll where the actual preference between Biden and Trump was split fifty
• 1:16:08
  to fifty. I think it was forty three forty three. So you have
• 1:16:12
  a poll where Trump is not beating Biden. But when they ask the question,
• 1:16:18
  who do you think will win. Trump trounces Biden about two to one.
• 1:16:25
  By a two to one margin, people think nationwide that Trump is more
• 1:16:30
  likely to beat Biden than vice versa. And when you ask Republicans, Republicans
• 1:16:38
  who will win between Trump and Biden, this is a stunning stat Only eight
• 1:16:46
  percent of Republicans believe Trump will lose to Biden eight percent. And remember,
• 1:16:58
  this is a matchup we've you've already seen before. Trump already lost the twenty
• 1:17:03
  twenty election fairly significantly. It was somewhat closer in some ways than some people
• 1:17:10
  remember, but from a popular vote standpoint and an electoral college perspective, the
• 1:17:15
  final tallies were not close. And this was Trump as an incumbent running against
• 1:17:23
  an old challenger that nobody really liked, and he lost. And only eight
• 1:17:30
  percent of Republicans currently believe that Biden would beat Trump eight percent. I think
• 1:17:38
  eighty two percent believe Trump would win. The rest are undecided, which is
• 1:17:43
  amazing that only a small percentage. You're undecided, But you can't lose the
• 1:17:47
  nomination when you're a former president. You have all the celebrity, you know,
• 1:17:54
  your alleged billionaire, the medium, the vast majority, and the right
• 1:17:58
  Wing is on your side. The perception is that you're winning the nomination,
• 1:18:02
  and almost everybody in the party believes you would beat Biden. So even if
• 1:18:09
  somehow all the stars aligne and Trump loses New Hampshire barely to Haley, the
• 1:18:15
  only real significance of that is that it would you make the South Carolina primary
• 1:18:20
  more interesting, but it would probably eventually force Trump to pick Haley as his
• 1:18:26
  vice presidential candidate. That's really the only thing that would matter in all that.
• 1:18:30
  But I would still love to see it. And from the standpoint of
• 1:18:33
  Chris Christie, it really exposes what a fraud Christy is, because if Christy
• 1:18:39
  was really about the cause, he would get the hell out because we now
• 1:18:44
  have somebody who has a chance to beat Trump. I'm not a huge Haley
• 1:18:47
  fan at all, of huge problems with her, but I would take her
• 1:18:51
  over Trump, and I would take her over Biden, and she's the only
• 1:18:56
  one right now that has a chance of winning any primary against Trump, because
• 1:19:00
  it does not appear as if Trump is going to lose Iowa. But if
• 1:19:04
  Christy was for real, he would get out, and the fact that he
• 1:19:09
  probably won't should expose him as the fraud that he is now as far as
• 1:19:14
  Iowa is concerned, that caucus is next week. By the way, we're
• 1:19:17
  going to adjust our schedule for releasing this podcast slightly because normally we tape on
• 1:19:25
  TES on Monday morning, we release on Tuesday morning. That would make a
• 1:19:29
  lot of sense with a Monday night Iowa caucus. And so basically what we're
• 1:19:33
  gonna do is we're gonna tape it at some point after the Iowa caucus results
• 1:19:40
  are in, and so we won't be out as normal early on Tuesday.
• 1:19:45
  It'll probably be late in the day on Tuesday. How late, I don't
• 1:19:47
  know, but hopefully at some point on Tuesday, the next episode of the
• 1:19:53
  podcast will be out with a full analysis of the results of the Iowa caucus.
• 1:19:58
  Of course, remember last time around in twenty twenty, there wasn't any
• 1:20:03
  results from the Iowa caucus. I do find it a bit odd that,
• 1:20:09
  you know, the Desanders campaign and I understand this strategy one hundred percent,
• 1:20:14
  have put everything they have into Iowa, when in twenty twenty we never even
• 1:20:18
  got any results from Iowa because there was a catastrophic meltdown of the entire electoral
• 1:20:24
  process, and caucuses are inherently weird to begin with, you actually have to
• 1:20:30
  show up that night, you know, at your local school or firehouse or
• 1:20:35
  sometimes even a neighbor's house, and you have to vote in person, and
• 1:20:41
  depending on how it's done, you know, sometimes you have to even make
• 1:20:45
  it clear who your preference is. Although my understanding is on the Republican side
• 1:20:49
  it is basically, you know, anonymous vote. But there's there's still a
• 1:20:55
  social aspect to the Iowa caucus which I think influence when says the vote there
• 1:21:01
  and and so predicting the Iowa caucus has always been inherently difficult. I mean,
• 1:21:09
  how do you determine who's going to show up in person on a cold
• 1:21:14
  night in January in Iowa. And by the way, it's gonna be freezing.
• 1:21:18
  I mean, it is going to be really really cold in Iowa on
• 1:21:24
  Monday night. We're talking about maybe minus three degrees as the high temperature.
• 1:21:30
  I was checking out some of the major cities in Iowa and that's the that's
• 1:21:35
  the highest temperature I could find for the entire day on Monday was minus three.
• 1:21:41
  That's the high for Monday in Iowa. Now that's that is going to
• 1:21:46
  make a difference, and I realize Iowans are hardy people, but I'm sorry,
• 1:21:51
  you know that is that's some real, real, significant freeze. And
• 1:21:57
  it's gonna be hilarious to watch the New York Times report on how the cold
• 1:22:02
  weather is impacting turnout in Iowa, when three weeks before they were doing major
• 1:22:08
  stories on how the mild winter in the very same portion of the country was
• 1:22:15
  showing the climate change is real and the Christmas is not white anymore, and
• 1:22:19
  that people are wearing short sleeves in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I mean, this
• 1:22:24
  is a real story by the New York Times somehow proving that climate change,
• 1:22:28
  global warming is real. Now Here three weeks later, they're going to be
• 1:22:31
  telling us about how turnout of the Iowa caucus is down because it's minus three
• 1:22:38
  degrees or colder in Iowa. So you have this weird process. You've got
• 1:22:44
  really cold weather. You also have a debate that is going on the night
• 1:22:50
  that I tape. I tape this on Wednesday morning. Wednesday night, January
• 1:22:56
  tenth, there's a debate between Nikki Halley and Ronda Santa in Iowa. It's
• 1:23:00
  the only quote unquote Iowa debate interrational world. Donald Trump would be punished for
• 1:23:05
  not showing up, but he hasn't been punished for any other situations where he
• 1:23:11
  didn't show up for debates. So I think even Iowans are desensitized. I
• 1:23:15
  mean, that's one of those things where in the old world, in the
• 1:23:18
  pre Trump era, not showing up for any debates and not showing up for
• 1:23:23
  an Iowa debate that would be verboten. That would be something that you would
• 1:23:27
  be punished for significantly, if only for breaking tradition. But we don't seem
• 1:23:33
  to live in that world anymore, especially when it comes to Donald Trump.
• 1:23:36
  But we have this Hally Desanders debate, which could theoretically influence who comes in
• 1:23:43
  second, and so that's kind of a caveat for my prediction. I mean,
• 1:23:46
  it is possible that something semi significant could happen in that debate between Desanders
• 1:23:51
  and Haley that could change things, because that is really the big battle.
• 1:23:58
  As I see it, it is very clear to me that Donald Trump is
• 1:24:01
  gonna win the Iowa caucus. Now, there are DeSantis people who are still
• 1:24:08
  this moment in my view, night Eve to an extreme degree, who have
• 1:24:14
  put together the following scenario, which I understand in their minds is not totally
• 1:24:20
  irrational. Right. Here's here's the super optimistic, almost delusionally optimistic Desanti's narrative
• 1:24:29
  slash scenario one. The polls are wrong, that Trump is overpolling and that
• 1:24:35
  his support is actually soft, and that they're not going to get their butts
• 1:24:40
  out on a cold winter night in Iowa, and that the DeSantis camp is
• 1:24:45
  more organized, they're more motivated. They don't think, you know, they're
• 1:24:49
  not over confident, that the Trump people are over confident. They're just gonna
• 1:24:54
  decide. You know what, it's it's minus five degrees out, Trump's gonna
• 1:24:58
  win the caucus anyway. I'm I'm not going to bother showing up. And
• 1:25:01
  the Desanda's team has thrown everything into Iowa and they have these somewhere between forty
• 1:25:09
  and sixty thousand. I've heard all sorts of different numbers, forty to sixty
• 1:25:13
  thousand quote unquote commitment cards from people who have committed to show up and caucus
• 1:25:18
  for Ronde Santas. And I just think this is adorable, right, I
• 1:25:21
  mean, this is so cute that in twenty twenty four we still think that
• 1:25:26
  someone sign signing a commitment card means anything. I mean, we're living in
• 1:25:30
  a world where marriage commitment means nothing. College football commitment means nothing. But
• 1:25:35
  somehow you're going to bank on the idea that someone's going to sign their name
• 1:25:40
  on a commitment card to show up for caucus. You know, when months
• 1:25:44
  ago, Desanta's had a much better chance of winning. Now it's clear that
• 1:25:46
  Trump's going to be the nominee, and oh, by the way, it's
• 1:25:48
  going to be minus five degrees out. You know what, I don't think
• 1:25:53
  my commitment really matters. I mean those commitment I mean, I can't tell
• 1:25:56
  you how many people on Twitter tell me about the the Santa's commitment cards,
• 1:26:00
  because if you really do, like just so you understand the math of this,
• 1:26:03
  Like, let's pretend that the Santa has had fifty thousand people or sixty
• 1:26:08
  thousand people who had signed commitment cards who were compell or high water, their
• 1:26:13
  commitment matters, and they're going to show up at caucus for Ron DeSantis.
• 1:26:16
  Right. If that actually happened, especially on a cold night with seemingly low
• 1:26:21
  turnout, De Santas would have a hell of a chance of winning the Iowa
• 1:26:26
  caucus. He might even be certain to win the Iowa caucus based upon past
• 1:26:30
  turnout. But in my view, that's not going to happen. I don't
• 1:26:33
  think those commitment cards mean shit. I mean, it's sad, but that's
• 1:26:36
  that's the world we now live in. I don't think that that is something
• 1:26:40
  that the the Sandas people should be banking on. And I also think that,
• 1:26:45
  you know, a lot of this is trying to deal with a conclusion
• 1:26:50
  that the Desantas fan can't understand, which I relate to, because the DeSantis
• 1:26:58
  fan thinks, well, there's no question and DeSantis is a better camiate.
• 1:27:01
  Iowa is a very conservative voting base. The people that show up at caucuses
• 1:27:06
  are very conservative. They're very pro life. DeSantis is the pro life guy.
• 1:27:13
  You know. Trump is has basically dissed Iowa by not showing up in
• 1:27:16
  any of the debates, including the the Iowa debate that's taping letter later tonight.
• 1:27:23
  You know. So there's all sorts of rational reasons to believe that Iowans
• 1:27:28
  are going to see through the crap and they're gonna, you know, shock
• 1:27:31
  the world by making DeSantis the winner of the Iowa caucus. And to be
• 1:27:38
  clear, many many months ago, back when I still thought DeSantis had a
• 1:27:41
  prayer. This was the strategy that I was promoting, mainly because it was
• 1:27:46
  the only one that was remotely viable, because I knew DeSantis was done in
• 1:27:50
  New Hampshire for a whole series of reasons. And I've turned out to be
• 1:27:55
  one hundred percent right on that. De Santas isn't even going to get into
• 1:27:57
  double digits in New Hampshire, assuming he's still in the race. But even
• 1:28:01
  if the Santas were to win the Iowa caucus, which is not going to
• 1:28:04
  happen unfortunately, I don't even think that would matter. That's also another naive
• 1:28:10
  te among Desanta supporters. That's an antiquated world that somehow winning the Iowa caucus
• 1:28:18
  would change everything. Now absolutely, Trump's ara of invincibility is an important part
• 1:28:27
  of this equation. I stated that last spring that that needed to be broken.
• 1:28:32
  There needed to be blood right off the bat, but the blood had
• 1:28:38
  to be followed up with some other attacks. You can't just have a you
• 1:28:43
  know, throw everything you have into Iowa, get a miraculous win there,
• 1:28:48
  but then have no game in New Hampshire and no ability to win South Carolina.
• 1:28:54
  Since Nikki Haley is still in the race, and she's the former governor
• 1:28:58
  there, so any momentum you yet out of Iowa is going to be erased
• 1:29:01
  almost immediately. By the way, if it ever were to happen that de
• 1:29:05
  Sandis pulled the magic upset in Iowa, Trump would immediately call the entire caucus
• 1:29:12
  system rigged, that it's a BS way of determining a nominee. No one
• 1:29:18
  believes in caucuses. The history of the Iowa caucus is terrible when it comes
• 1:29:24
  to determining the nominee. By the way, he would be accurate in saying
• 1:29:29
  that. That would be an argument that his base is already very vulnerable to
• 1:29:34
  lapping up because everything's rigged against Donald Trump. The governor of the state,
• 1:29:40
  Kim Reynolds, endorsed ron de Sandis, so you know, in the Trump
• 1:29:44
  mind, oh, she rigged the entire process for her boysandis desandas is just
• 1:29:50
  an establishment rhino. So none of this would matter, And we don't live
• 1:29:55
  in a world where people change their minds anymore. That might be the fundamental
• 1:30:01
  reason why I have been so convinced that Trump was going to be the nominee
• 1:30:05
  for so long, because I think that I have adjusted to the new rules
• 1:30:12
  more quickly than most other people have the post Trump world rules, and those
• 1:30:17
  post Trump world rules are dictating this process in numerous ways, but one of
• 1:30:23
  which that no one ever mentions is that the whole concept of Iowa New Hampshire
• 1:30:29
  is based on a reality that no longer exists. In a pre cable news
• 1:30:36
  world, people didn't think about presidential politics twenty four to seven, seven days
• 1:30:45
  a week, twelve months a year, even in non election years. So
• 1:30:48
  it wasn't until January of election year came around that all of a sudden people
• 1:30:55
  said, Oh, I wonder who might be running for president? I wonder
• 1:31:00
  who I might support. Why I haven't had a chance to really look into
• 1:31:02
  this deeply? Oh what are the people in Iowa saying? What are the
• 1:31:06
  people in New Hampshire saying? Oh? Okay, so these are the candidates
• 1:31:11
  that I should consider. And you know, if you won Iowa or you
• 1:31:15
  won New Hampshire, Wow, this person, they seem really popular. Maybe
• 1:31:18
  I should support them. I mean, And that's an oversimplification, but that's
• 1:31:25
  why Iowa and New Hampshire had power, because we were living in a world
• 1:31:31
  that was completely different from a media perspective and where people because they weren't thinking
• 1:31:38
  about this all the time, because they weren't bombarded with political news all the
• 1:31:42
  time, they were much more open minded. That is maybe the most important
• 1:31:49
  element to understanding why I have made the predictions that I have and why I've
• 1:31:54
  been so confident about this, and why I've constantly said you can't let Trump
• 1:32:00
  break containment, because you know, back at the beginning of twenty twenty three,
• 1:32:05
  when this was a semi close race and Trump was only beating the SANDUS
• 1:32:09
  by five or ten points nationally, and the are of invincibility was not really
• 1:32:14
  there, you had a situation where a lot of Trump people had changed their
• 1:32:19
  minds, at least for the time being. But once they changed them back,
• 1:32:26
  once you go back to Trump, there's no getting them to change their
• 1:32:30
  minds again. You had a limited window to get people to get off of
• 1:32:36
  Trump, get off the Trump train, to move on. But once the
• 1:32:42
  conservative media and Tucker Carlston and Glenn Beck and Megan Kelly and others all basically
• 1:32:48
  said, now, let's let's stick with this one because it's good for business
• 1:32:53
  and it's good for me personally, and people came back home to Trump.
• 1:32:58
  There's no way to get them back, because they're having that opinion constantly reinforced
• 1:33:05
  with social media and news media and opinion media that did not exist in the
• 1:33:15
  past. That's why people don't change their minds, because they're having the opinion
• 1:33:18
  they want constantly reinforced, because they get to choose their own media, and
• 1:33:26
  so for a whole slew of reasons, it's incredibly difficult for someone to change
• 1:33:31
  their mind, especially when Trump is involved. In a very short period of
• 1:33:36
  time, you get a very limited window to do that, and that window
• 1:33:41
  was lost largely because the Santas hadn't announced yet, and then when his announcement
• 1:33:45
  came, it was botched thanks largely to Elon Musk and Twitter and some very
• 1:33:49
  bad strategy, and then all sorts of bad things happen from there. From
• 1:33:54
  a strategic standpoint, but the bottom line is people don't change their minds,
• 1:34:00
  especially when a cult leader is involved, and once they've gone back to Trump,
• 1:34:06
  and once you've lost the ability to be seen as eye to eye with
• 1:34:11
  him. I always said the sand has had to attack Trump when he was
• 1:34:15
  at his level. Once he's clearly the very obvious underdog and has no real
• 1:34:23
  chance of winning the attacks don't work. You can only attack Trump from strength.
• 1:34:30
  You cannot attack Trump from a position of weakness. And so you know,
• 1:34:36
  I understand my fellow Desanta supporters clinging to hope. Look, I'm someone
• 1:34:43
  who clings to hope under often delusional circumstances until you know there's zero percent chance.
• 1:34:49
  But once it's zero percent, I'm out. If the cause is good
• 1:34:54
  enough. At one percent, I'm still all in. At zero percent,
• 1:34:57
  i'm out. And I hit zero basically for intens and purposes. In September
• 1:35:02
  when I called this race for Donald Trump that he would be the nominee and
• 1:35:08
  that Ron DeSantis was not going to be the nominee. Now, I'm still
• 1:35:12
  a de Santa supporter. I've still been rooting for DeSantis because I still think
• 1:35:15
  it's important that DeSantis campaign not end in ruins, that not be seen as
• 1:35:19
  a total humiliation, if only for the cause of the history of the COVID
• 1:35:25
  panic, I think that is critical. It's vital that Dessandas somehow saved some
• 1:35:30
  semblance of faith not only for that issue, but for the future, because
• 1:35:34
  I'd like to see him remain somewhat viable, potentially for twenty twenty eight even
• 1:35:40
  though I think there are major major problems with that, because either Trump wins
• 1:35:44
  and Trump's vice president is the heir apparent, or Trump loses and he runs
• 1:35:47
  again in twenty twenty eight. So I'm not sure there's a scenario other than
• 1:35:51
  Trump dying where DeSantis is in any better position in twenty twenty eight than he
• 1:35:58
  was in twenty twenty four, especially with COVID being ancient history by that point.
• 1:36:02
  But I understand the desire for DeSantis to not be humiliated and to somehow
• 1:36:12
  get through this without being embarrassed, still being viable in the future and doing
• 1:36:18
  as well as he possibly can. So I do think the results in Iowa
• 1:36:23
  are important. I am rooting hard for DeSantis, and so when I make
• 1:36:29
  my prediction for what's going to happen here, I'm actually trying to be as
• 1:36:33
  optimistic as possible, which always makes me very nervous because that's pretty much the
• 1:36:40
  only time I'm ever really wrong on these matters is when I'm being some level
• 1:36:44
  of optimistic. But as I preface my ultimate prediction, I want to make
• 1:36:48
  it clear I'm hopeful that DeSantis is going to do better than expected, better
• 1:36:55
  than the current polls indicate that he will. Right now, based on the
• 1:37:00
  holing alone, you can make a good argument that Nicki Haley's gonna finish second.
• 1:37:03
  It would be very very close. But you know, that's what the
• 1:37:06
  polling currently indicates, and it seems as if the momentum is on her side.
• 1:37:12
  Now. I don't even know who these people are that are Iowa caucus
• 1:37:16
  goers for Nicki Haley. I mean, she had to cancel an event earlier
• 1:37:20
  this week when she found out that no one was going literally no one was
• 1:37:24
  going to show up at a local restaurant. Now, that kind of thing
• 1:37:28
  happens in Iowa a lot because of the nature of the Iowa caucuses. But
• 1:37:32
  it's not as if, you know, Haley's going around and this is like
• 1:37:35
  Obama two thousand and eight and all of a sudden the crowds are coming out
• 1:37:40
  of nowhere to support Nicki Haley. There's no evidence of that at all,
• 1:37:44
  and it could possibly be and this would be certainly consistent with the way that
• 1:37:48
  the DeSantis fan is rationalizing things that you know, the Trump support is soft
• 1:37:54
  and that the Nicky Haley support is purely you know, people telling a poster
• 1:37:59
  on the phone that they are going to caucus for Nicky Haley, but they
• 1:38:02
  never actually show up because they're not very passionate about it. Passion really really
• 1:38:08
  matters in a caucus, which of course, you know, would play into
• 1:38:12
  Donald Trump's hands because his cult members are as passionate as they come. I
• 1:38:16
  do agree that the super cold weather may not play into Trump's hands that way.
• 1:38:24
  I mean, Trump's voters tend to be older if they think that Trump
• 1:38:28
  is going to win anyway, they voted for him many times in the past.
• 1:38:31
  You might have, you know, the second or third tier Trump cult
• 1:38:34
  member decide, you know what, he doesn't need me tonight. I'm going
• 1:38:39
  to stay home and stay warm. I think that's possible, but I don't
• 1:38:43
  know that that's nearly enough for it to make a difference in the ultimate result.
• 1:38:47
  Nor do I think that the polling error is going to be large enough
• 1:38:51
  for it to make a difference in the end. People wrongly think that I,
• 1:38:57
  you know, have this religious belief in polls. I don't. I
• 1:39:01
  was briefly a polling analyst many years ago for Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. I've
• 1:39:05
  commissioned three major polls that have made national news. Myself so I you know,
• 1:39:11
  I'm pretty well steeped in knowledge when it comes to polls, and I
• 1:39:15
  don't have a religious belief in their accuracy. However, when you combine all
• 1:39:24
  the polls together, they're not going to be catastrophically off. They may be
• 1:39:30
  significantly off. They may be off by five, ten, maybe even fifteen
• 1:39:34
  points, but they're not going to be off by thirty thirty five points,
• 1:39:40
  which is what you would need right now for Donald Trump to lose the Iowa
• 1:39:45
  caucus. So, with all that being said, here's my actual prediction.
• 1:39:50
  And again this is on the optimistic side. I would actually be pretty happy
• 1:39:57
  with this outcome, which tells me it's probably not gonna happen, because I'm
• 1:40:01
  very rarely happy with anything that happens in today's society, and for unfortunately good
• 1:40:08
  reasons. But here's my official prediction. I think that Trump is gonna end
• 1:40:13
  up with forty nine percent of the vote. Now I realize I'm again trying
• 1:40:17
  to prove how optimistic I'm being here. Him not being able to hit fifty
• 1:40:23
  would be symbolically important. I think that that would be a moral victory for
• 1:40:30
  you know, the the what's left of the essence of the Republican Party.
• 1:40:33
  If Trump did not hit fifty percent, the polls currently indicate he will get
• 1:40:38
  over fifty percent in Iowa, but I'm predicting officially he gets forty nine percent
• 1:40:44
  of the raw vote now the way they do the CAU because it's weird.
• 1:40:46
  There's the raw vote and then there's the delegates, and no one's going to
• 1:40:50
  care about the delegates. The raw vote is the only thing that people are
• 1:40:54
  going to care about. So I'm going to peg Donald Trump at forty nine
• 1:40:58
  percent of that raw vote. I'm gonna give Ron de Santus twenty three percent,
• 1:41:03
  which is higher than what the polls currently indicate that he'll get twenty three
• 1:41:09
  percent. I'm gonna give Nikki Haley twenty percent for fake Obama Swami, I
• 1:41:14
  think we'll get seven percent, and then Fatso Chris Christi will get one percent
• 1:41:19
  because I think. I don't think even though supposedly he has about three or
• 1:41:24
  four percent of support in Iowa, but I just think on a cold night,
• 1:41:29
  anybody that is gonna do that is probably gonna end up voting for Haley.
• 1:41:32
  If you're in the Christie camp anyway, and you're not going to go
• 1:41:36
  out and caucus for Chris Christy when you know there's zero chance of him even
• 1:41:42
  really showing up, but he'll probably get somewhere in the one percent vicinity.
• 1:41:45
  So that adds up to one hundred percent of the vote. So for the
• 1:41:49
  record, Trump forty nine to Santus twenty three, Haley twenty fake, Obama
• 1:41:56
  Swamy seven, and Christy basically one percent or negligible. Now, if that
• 1:42:02
  in fact happens, Trump is the nominee. You know, because again,
• 1:42:09
  unless Christy gets out and DeSantis stays in, I mean, you know,
• 1:42:14
  I should I should make a caveat here under my scenario that I just concocted,
• 1:42:20
  which is the optimistic scenario in my view. Under that scenario, Christy
• 1:42:26
  may decide to get out and DeSantis would be viable enough to go on to
• 1:42:30
  New Hampshire. I mean, winning second place at this point with twenty three
• 1:42:33
  percent of the voter thereabouts, that does get you a ticket to New Hampshire
• 1:42:36
  if you want to go to New Hampshire if you're on de Santis, and
• 1:42:40
  I think that the Santas staying in and remaining viable and Christy getting out is
• 1:42:45
  a path for Haley to maybe beat Trump Intow Hampshire or at least be very
• 1:42:50
  very competitive, depending on you know, how that the last days of that
• 1:42:55
  campaign went. So that is a possibility, but that doesn't change Trump being
• 1:43:00
  the nominee because H'll have one Iowa. So he's invincible. He's the favorite.
• 1:43:06
  It's been validated, the polls have been validated that he really is this
• 1:43:11
  popular still among the Republican Party. If he were, if everything I just
• 1:43:15
  stated happens in New Hampshire and he either loses or barely wins, you know,
• 1:43:20
  will some of that invincibility be punctured. Yeah, But at that point
• 1:43:26
  it's Trump versus Haley, and by all accounts, Trump would beat Haley even
• 1:43:31
  in South Carolina, and she may be smart enough to get the hell out
• 1:43:34
  at that point, depending on what she thinks her chances are for the vice
• 1:43:39
  presidential nomination, because I mean, the reality is you can't lose your home
• 1:43:44
  state head to head against Donald Trump and have any chance of being the nominee.
• 1:43:49
  This is something one of the reasons why I was sure that the Santas
• 1:43:54
  had no chance, because I warned very early on, look at the vote
• 1:43:58
  in Florida. I think that Florida is going to decide to go for Trump
• 1:44:02
  over to Santas because they're gonna think they can have their cake and eat it
• 1:44:05
  too. They're gonna have DeSantis as their governor and Trump for one term as
• 1:44:10
  their president. And that's exactly where the polls in Florida ended up going.
• 1:44:14
  It went from Desanta's leading in Florida to the Santa's now getting smoked in Florida
• 1:44:20
  by Donald Trump. Would that theoretically change if somehow Santa's won Iowa and did
• 1:44:26
  way better than expected in New Hampshire. Maybe, but I don't think you
• 1:44:30
  could win the state now, especially with Trump being the presumed nominee, And
• 1:44:34
  the same thing would happen in South Carolina. So if my prediction holds true,
• 1:44:39
  it may create a little bit of drama in New Hampshire, but it
• 1:44:43
  will be faux drama. And Trump is going to be the nominee. Trump
• 1:44:47
  is going to be the nominee, and the last chance for there to be,
• 1:44:54
  you know, an exit ramp from this, this Trump Mania will be
• 1:44:59
  over. And I was not messing around when I said that Ron De Santis
• 1:45:04
  was the last hope for America, not because Rondo Santis is amazing or awesome
• 1:45:11
  or perfect. No, he's a human being. He did amazing work during
• 1:45:15
  COVID. He's the most conservative governor of a large state in the modern history
• 1:45:19
  of the country. He's a far better person to be president for a number
• 1:45:27
  of reasons than Donald Trump, if only because he can serve two terms,
• 1:45:30
  and he's younger, and he's more effective, and he's smarter and all these
• 1:45:34
  reasons. But I understand he's not perfect. But the reason why I said
• 1:45:42
  he's the last hope is because that was the last chance for the Republican Party
• 1:45:45
  to get beyond Trump. And unless the Republican Party gets beyond Trump, there's
• 1:45:51
  no hope for the future path of the country. I was not messing around
• 1:45:56
  when I said that. It's a large part of why I planned to end
• 1:46:00
  the podcast after the Super Bowl and drop out of public life. There's no
• 1:46:03
  hope at that point, barring Trump dying, there's no path because once you
• 1:46:10
  get Trump Biden too, there's no good outcome there for many, many reasons,
• 1:46:15
  some of which I've stayed in the past, and I'm sure I'll stayed
• 1:46:17
  again before we end the podcast. But that wasn't hyperbole when I said DeSantis
• 1:46:25
  is the last hope. This was the last hope, this was the last
• 1:46:29
  chance to save the situation, and Republicans, clearly, if I'm even close
• 1:46:35
  to being right, have decided, eh, no, thanks, let's ride
• 1:46:40
  this ride again. Let's try this one more time, and it's not going
• 1:46:44
  to end up well. By the way. Trump may win. I still
• 1:46:47
  don't believe that he will beat Biden, but you know, Biden's poll numbers
• 1:46:53
  continue to get worse. It is unbelievable. I mean, I've watched pulling
• 1:46:58
  my entire life, and there has never been a situation like this for an
• 1:47:02
  incumbent president who's not embroiled in even a major scandal. I mean, yes,
• 1:47:09
  in the right wing you got the Hunter Biden stuff, and yesterday,
• 1:47:13
  as we're taping this, Hunter Biden showed up briefly to Congress, and you
• 1:47:17
  know, there was a whole chaotic mess that that created. Both sides are
• 1:47:24
  going to take advantage of from a partisan perspective, but I don't think in
• 1:47:28
  public perception, Joe Biden is embroiled in a real significant scandal. He obviously
• 1:47:34
  hasn't been impeached, but his numbers from both an approval rating standpoint as well
• 1:47:42
  as against Donald Trump continue to go in the wrong direction. If you're Joe
• 1:47:47
  Biden, particularly in Michigan. It is absolutely stunning to me what's happening to
• 1:47:56
  Joe Biden in Michigan. Trump is winning all almost every poll out of Michigan,
• 1:48:02
  sometimes outside the margin of error. Now, Michigan is a place that
• 1:48:09
  Trump won in twenty sixteen. It was part of the inside strait that Trump
• 1:48:15
  pulled to pull off the miracle against Hillary Clinton Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
• 1:48:19
  If Trump does that again in twenty twenty four, he will be the
• 1:48:23
  president of the United States again, and Michigan is a key component to that.
• 1:48:28
  I mean, they've got a governor, Whitmer, who was one of
• 1:48:30
  the worst governors when it came to COVID. She's a liberal nut, she
• 1:48:35
  won reelection by ten points, She's very popular, and yet somehow Biden is
• 1:48:43
  currently getting spanked by Trump in Michigan. When Biden beat Trump in Michigan by
• 1:48:50
  three points in twenty twenty, I don't get it. I mean, it's
• 1:48:56
  got to be the black vote. It has to be, given the nature
• 1:49:00
  of Detroit and why anybody would change their votes from twenty twenty. I am
• 1:49:04
  not someone who believes that this narrative that Trump is suddenly gonna win thirty thirty
• 1:49:10
  five percent of the black vote makes any sense. It's possible that right now
• 1:49:14
  there are some black voters that are basically playing with the idea of voting for
• 1:49:19
  Trump and it seems cool right now, counterculture, and you know, he's
• 1:49:26
  the guy that the man's after. So I'm gravitating towards Trump, and my
• 1:49:30
  life was better in you know, the twenty sixteen to twenty twenty era than
• 1:49:34
  it is after that. I mean, I guess there's some of that,
• 1:49:38
  but it is amazing to me that right now, if the election was held
• 1:49:43
  today, even Democrats in Michigan are fully admitting Trump would win Michigan. Now
• 1:49:48
  that doesn't mean he would win the election. There are only six states that
• 1:49:53
  matter. Six. That's how partisan we have become. And you argue that
• 1:50:00
  the last few elections have been you know, similar to that, but this
• 1:50:03
  time around, based upon the current landscape. No, no, no,
• 1:50:09
  there are only six. I mean, even semi swing states like you know,
• 1:50:14
  North Carolina or Virginia or or you know, states like that are no
• 1:50:18
  longer really all that competitive. I mean, they're still semi competitive, but
• 1:50:24
  it's clear who's gonna win them, and it's gonna be the same person that
• 1:50:28
  won them in twenty twenty. The only six states that are really up for
• 1:50:30
  grabs as of right now are Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona,
• 1:50:36
  Nevada. That's it. The entire election comes down to those six states,
• 1:50:42
  and Trump needs to win at least three of them. Now, there
• 1:50:45
  are combinations where he can win three and not win the presidency. Obviously,
• 1:50:51
  if he wins Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania again, he would win the
• 1:50:56
  presidency. But you know, so basically he needs to win at least three
• 1:51:00
  of those six. If he wins four out of those six, he's in.
• 1:51:04
  I'm still not convinced that's gonna happen, because I think November twenty twenty
• 1:51:09
  four is you know, it's obviously still ten eleven months away from people actually
• 1:51:14
  voting. But I am I'm open to the idea. I think it's possible
• 1:51:19
  that Trump wins, mainly because Biden's numbers are catastrophically bad and it's almost all
• 1:51:29
  about his age, which they can't do anything about. They can't do anything
• 1:51:33
  about his age. It's clear as day everyone has had this. I've always
• 1:51:40
  said this. This is why it's such a dangerous issue for Biden and Democrats,
• 1:51:44
  because this is not an issue the media can really spin. Every single
• 1:51:48
  voting age human being has had an experience with someone in their eighties and they
• 1:51:56
  know, they know that person should not be president of the United Slate States.
• 1:52:00
  And Joe Biden is eighty one and not a particularly mentally fit eighty one,
• 1:52:06
  and he's going to be eighty five, almost eighty six when this is
• 1:52:11
  all said and dynam he's reelected. Nobody wants that, and you know,
• 1:52:16
  it's clearly hurting Biden in the polls, and people are now even willing,
• 1:52:21
  at least in what they tell pollsters to vote for Donald Trump. Now,
• 1:52:26
  to be clear, Trump's still not getting over fifty percent of the vote in
• 1:52:30
  any of these polls, and a lot of this is going to depend on
• 1:52:33
  what third party candidates get on the ballot. It's becoming more and more obvious
• 1:52:39
  that third party candidates like RFK Junior and a couple of others who all tend
• 1:52:45
  to be liberal. This is pretty common sense and logical, but the data
• 1:52:48
  was not supporting this until recently. It's becoming more and more clear to me
• 1:52:54
  that these third party candidates are hurting Biden because when you take the match up
• 1:52:58
  between Trump and Biden, Trump actually does less well than he does if you
• 1:53:03
  add in these third party candidates in most of the most recent polls. And
• 1:53:09
  so Biden is in big trouble. He's not done, but that age thing
• 1:53:14
  is something you can't get around. I still believe that when all is said
• 1:53:18
  and done, the cavalry is going to come in. And you know,
• 1:53:21
  even if Trump is able to avoid any criminal convictions, and to be clear,
• 1:53:27
  a criminal conviction is death for Trump, even against Joe Biden. He's
• 1:53:30
  not going to beat Biden if he is convicted of a felony between now and
• 1:53:34
  the November election. That's clear from the polling. But I actually am presuming
• 1:53:39
  that that's not going to happen, if only because of delays. But you
• 1:53:44
  know, Biden is in big, big trouble even without, especially without a
• 1:53:49
  conviction of Trump of a felony in any of these cases that he's currently facing.
• 1:53:56
  Doesn't mean he's done. But I've always felt like this cavalry from the
• 1:54:00
  media and from the Obamas and Taylor Swift and the attacks on Trump that they're
• 1:54:08
  going to be able to carry Biden over the finish line, because you know,
• 1:54:11
  when I look at the geography and the electoral College, it's still an
• 1:54:15
  uphell climb for Trump. I mean, he's going to reverse Georgia, he's
• 1:54:18
  got to reverse Arizona. Things are looking pretty good for him in Nevada right
• 1:54:23
  now. And I want to make something clear one more time. If the
• 1:54:27
  election was today, I believe Donald Trump would narrowly beat Joe Biden. That
• 1:54:33
  would be today, But by the time November comes around, I think it's
• 1:54:40
  possible that that very slim victory that would happen today turns into a slim victory
• 1:54:45
  for Joe Biden again, presuming no criminal convictions of Donald Trump. But these
• 1:54:49
  numbers for Biden are so bad that it's increasing the speculation that Biden will not
• 1:54:58
  be the candidate. I think it's too late for that, because it's obvious
• 1:55:02
  Biden is too stubborn to pull out, and unless he has a major medical
• 1:55:08
  situation that forces him to, which is certainly still possible, especially at his
• 1:55:13
  age, I just don't see this scenario where that makes any sense. And
• 1:55:15
  I've talked often about how the Kamala Harris problem basically prevents Democrats. That puts
• 1:55:21
  them in a box because they can't go to Harris and they can't bypass Harris.
• 1:55:27
  Well, there's one theoretical scenario that's been tossed around, especially by conservatives.
• 1:55:32
  Megan Kelly is the most recent to do this. The scenario that's being
• 1:55:36
  tossed around in a somewhat conspiratorial fashion, is that Michelle Obama will be the
• 1:55:44
  person who comes in to save the day, and that she will be the
• 1:55:46
  Democratic nominee. I see this on social media a lot. A lot of
• 1:55:50
  people just presume that Michelle Obama, who these same people don't even aren't really
• 1:55:56
  sure as actually a woman, which is ridiculous. Just kind of shows you
• 1:56:00
  the insanity that pervades right wing social media these days. But the point here
• 1:56:05
  is that Megan Kelly, among others, is now promoting this idea, especially
• 1:56:11
  given a recent interview that Michelle Obama did where she talks about this next election
• 1:56:15
  and how fearful she is of the results of it, that she's going to
• 1:56:19
  be the Democratic nominee. I don't see it. I don't see it from
• 1:56:24
  the standpoint of how they get rid of Biden. I don't see it from
• 1:56:28
  the standpoint of how they get to bypass Harris. Although I acknowledge that Michelle
• 1:56:33
  Obama being a black female and being obviously Michelle Obama being Barack Obama's wife,
• 1:56:41
  and so you're even more connected to Barack Obama than Joe Biden was as his
• 1:56:45
  vice president. That's a theoretical possibility you could thread that needle if Harris was
• 1:56:51
  somehow convinced to go along with it. I still think it's difficult because why
• 1:56:56
  would Harris go along with it? But okay, but I just don't think
• 1:57:00
  Michelle Obama has any interest. And when I saw that same interview that Megan
• 1:57:03
  Kelly was using as evidence that Michelle Obama is going to be the Democratic candidate,
• 1:57:10
  I don't see a person who wants to run for president at all.
• 1:57:13
  Could I be wrong about that, I guess, but I just don't see
• 1:57:16
  it. My blink reaction is I just don't think that this is even being
• 1:57:20
  thought about in serious circles, and that this is just another right wing conspiracy
• 1:57:28
  and it's going to be turned out. It's going to turn out to be
• 1:57:30
  false, and then when it's false, no one's ever going to go Hey,
• 1:57:32
  remember when you told this Michelle Obama was going to be the Democratic presidential
• 1:57:36
  nominee. Whatever the hell happened with that. No one will ever do that,
• 1:57:39
  which is why why conspiracies continue to be touted by the right wing media,
• 1:57:43
  because there's never any accountability, and occasionally, you know, one of
• 1:57:46
  the one or two of them turns out to be right and you go,
• 1:57:49
  aha, See, conspiracies are always right. And that I hate that theory.
• 1:57:55
  I mean the idea that because a few conspiracy theories are things that got
• 1:57:58
  called wrongly, conspiracy theories like related to COVID turned out to be true,
• 1:58:02
  that doesn't mean all conspiracy theories are true. It's not the way this works
• 1:58:08
  except in the very, very broken right wing media in twenty twenty four.
• 1:58:12
  By the way, I got to end the podcast with speaking of COVID,
• 1:58:16
  with a note on Howard Stern. Howard Stern, former radio legend who's turned
• 1:58:23
  into a complete fraud in so many different ways, and who I hate because
• 1:58:28
  of things that I have learned related to his relationship to my friend Matt Lower.
• 1:58:32
  You know, he has been among the worst of any major celebrity when
• 1:58:36
  it comes to COVID. I mean, just completely delusional, deranged, mentally
• 1:58:43
  ill, off the charts covidiot to the extreme, and he expressed this weak
• 1:58:49
  dismay and confusion as to how it is that he is now tested positive for
• 1:58:56
  COVID despite all of his VA vaccines and all of his boosters, and all
• 1:59:00
  of his masking and all of his avoiding of all people, He's completely baffled.
• 1:59:08
  He has no idea how he possibly could have gotten COVID because he's been
• 1:59:12
  a good boy for all these years and followed all the rules, and yet
• 1:59:16
  he somehow got COVID. And it probably will never occur to him that,
• 1:59:21
  g maybe all those things I was doing had nothing to do with why I
• 1:59:26
  wasn't getting COVID before. Now that just happened to be the luck of the
• 1:59:30
  draw. Because we can't control a virus. It's going to get you.
• 1:59:34
  When it's going to get you. Can you do certain things, I guess,
• 1:59:39
  maybe to increase your chances on the margins, sure, But by and
• 1:59:44
  large, everything that we did that did very very very little on the positive
• 1:59:50
  and did a whole hell of ale out on the negative for which we will
• 1:59:54
  be paying for the rest of our lives and the rest of our children's lives.
• 1:59:57
  But it was pretty hilarious to see Howard Stern be completely flow mixed and
• 2:00:01
  baffled as to why he got COVID despite all these years now of obeying all
• 2:00:08
  these insane rules. So I kind of got a kick out of that,
• 2:00:12
  And that's the most positive way I could possibly end this episode of the podcast,
• 2:00:16
  given the nature of the news. Yes, it's somehow positive that Howard
• 2:00:19
  Stern got COVID, because of course I'm sure he's going to be fine,
• 2:00:23
  because COVID is not nearly as deadly as it used to be or was ever
• 2:00:28
  perceived to being, even for old people like Howard Stern. As I've mentioned
• 2:00:31
  before, we're going to change the release schedule of this podcast for our next
• 2:00:38
  episode so that it can come out after the results, hopefully of the Iowa
• 2:00:43
  caucus are known. We'll see whether that they match up with my prediction.
• 2:00:46
  I'm hoping that they will, because again, my prediction is actually fairly optimistic,
• 2:00:50
  even though it has Trump winning Iowa by a fairly significant margin. Until
• 2:00:56
  then, thanks so much for listening. This has been episode number one eighteen
• 2:01:00
  of the Death of Journalism Podcasts. My name is John Zigler.