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Episode Seventy Nine: No One Ever Listens To Zig · The Death Of Journalism

• 0:00
  Welcome to episode number seventy nine of the Death of Journalism podcast. My name
• 0:04
  is John Ziggler. I'm your host on today's show. Ron Des Sanders changes
• 0:08
  as campaign manager Donald Trump, goes off in various telling ways some remarkable developments
• 0:15
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• 0:19
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• 0:25
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• 0:58
  That's the Dutch Digital Marketingman dot com. And hey, thanks for sponsoring the
• 1:03
  show. During this past year, much of this podcast has been documenting the
• 1:07
  twenty twenty four Republican nominating process for president and basically the battle between Donald Trump
• 1:15
  and Ron De Santis. And I have made no secret about the fact that
• 1:19
  I am a big Ron De Santis supporter and a very strong critic of Donald
• 1:25
  Trump, which I have been since the very beginning of his presidential aspirations back
• 1:29
  in twenty fifteen. And I have taken an enormous amount of criticism from people
• 1:34
  who should be on my side, fellow De Santis supporters, for being,
• 1:40
  in their view, far too pessimistic about the prospects for Ron De Santis to
• 1:46
  defeat Donald Trump, as well as my interpretation of how things are going that
• 1:53
  I have been mister glass is half empty, and I have been very pessimistic,
• 2:00
  and basically, you know, online, I get mocked all the time
• 2:05
  for being the guy who will always see things too pessimistically and doesn't understand that
• 2:12
  this is too early in the process and that eventually the voters are going to
• 2:15
  come to their senses and that the better man is going to win this and
• 2:20
  it's not even going to be close in the end, that the Santists will
• 2:22
  be the matinee. And I have constantly been saying, wait a minute,
• 2:27
  guys, this is not going well. And here's why it's not going well,
• 2:30
  and at every step of this process, I think I've been way ahead
• 2:35
  of the game and not just evaluating what was happening, but predicting where things
• 2:39
  were heading. And that's been very unfortunately the case, because nobody's been rooting
• 2:45
  harder for rond De Santist to defeat Donald Trump than me, because I believe
• 2:49
  that the entire future of the country likely depends on this very long shot possibility
• 2:55
  of Ronda Santis defeating Donald Trump for the twenty twenty for Republican presidential nomination.
• 3:02
  Well, recently, the evidence has become more and more overwhelming that I have
• 3:07
  been correct in my perceived pessimistic evaluation of things. And for the record,
• 3:14
  I say this all the time. Whenever someone calls me a pessimist, I
• 3:17
  generally say, oh, so, you mean that I'm right, because frankly,
• 3:21
  the only time I'm wrong is when I'm too optimistic. My percentages for
• 3:25
  being correct are far better when I'm pessimistic than when I'm even remotely optimistic.
• 3:31
  And that has definitely been the case with regard to the twenty twenty four Republican
• 3:36
  nominating process. Well, there has been a development in recent days that is
• 3:42
  a sure sign that in fact, things are not going well for the De
• 3:46
  Santist campaign, and that is that they have changed campaign managers. Now they've
• 3:52
  changed campaign managers in a way that really wasn't that dramatic. The woman who
• 3:55
  had been running the De Santist campaign, woman by the name of Genera,
• 4:00
  has been replaced. She has not been fired. She's apparently still on the
• 4:04
  campaign, but she's been replaced as campaign manager by a guy been by the
• 4:09
  name of James uth Meyer. Now I don't know James muth Meyer at all.
• 4:14
  He happens to be a fellow Georgetown University graduate. I have no idea
• 4:18
  whether it's a positive or negative. He has no parent experience in campaigns.
• 4:23
  There are a lot of De Santa's supporters online who seem to be very excited
• 4:27
  about him, but he's been De santiss chief of staff. I see no
• 4:31
  reason to believe that this is going to be a magic bullet. But it's
• 4:35
  clear that jennera Peck did not know what she wanted to do. It is
• 4:42
  possible that you remember many months ago seems longer now that when we had Steve
• 4:47
  Cortez, who works for Never Back Down to De Santis Political Action Committee.
• 4:54
  On this program, we talked about how Steve and I had come up with
• 4:58
  this potential strategy that I thought was a winner and potentially the only path to
• 5:03
  defeat Donald Trump, which was to tie Donald Trump to Joe Biden and the
• 5:11
  entire liberal, woke establishment, which might seem like a difficult thing to do,
• 5:17
  but I think it's based in reality, and if it was ever successful,
• 5:20
  it would put a stake through the heart of the essence of Trump's popularity,
• 5:26
  at least with a majority of Republican voters. And Steve really liked this
• 5:30
  idea, and he pitched it to jennera Peck and she seemed to be interested
• 5:36
  in this idea, but it never got off the ground for whatever reason.
• 5:42
  And when the campaign finally did announce very poorly on Twitter, and there was
• 5:47
  nothing remotely close to that vision or that narrative that was pervasive within the campaign
• 5:56
  messaging, I started to become rather despondent because I did not believe that whatever
• 6:02
  whatever the strategy was, and I couldn't quite figure out what it was.
• 6:06
  But whatever it was, whatever the plan was, it was not one that
• 6:10
  I thought I had a real chance of working. And I want to make
• 6:14
  something clear, Steve Cortez never ever, ever, in any way, shape
• 6:19
  or form, connected me to Genera Peck. I got Genera Peck's email from
• 6:25
  a completely different source. And the reason I mentioned that is because I want
• 6:29
  to share with you to me emails that I sent to Genera Peck. And
• 6:34
  this is consistent with mymo. If you followed me at all, you know
• 6:39
  that I don't just commentate publicly. If I feel very strongly about something,
• 6:44
  I will often at least try, usually very unsuccessfully, to influence events behind
• 6:50
  the scenes to whatever small degree I can. You may recall I tried to
• 6:55
  do this with Tucker Carlson many months ago, back when he was still the
• 7:00
  Fox News Channel with regard to his treatment of Donald Trump, which I think
• 7:03
  correctly proceed was going to help Trump in a very very dramatic way, and
• 7:09
  I was trying to guilt Tucker Carlson into potentially changing his ways. While I
• 7:15
  was very unsuccessful in that, largely because he got fired from Fox News Channel
• 7:19
  soon after that, eliminating any chance that that was an effort that was ever
• 7:24
  going to be successful. But that's just an example of what I try to
• 7:28
  do. I don't know why I do it. Because like I said,
• 7:30
  I'm very rarely ever successful, but I did try to do it with Genera
• 7:34
  Peck, and I have not publicly divulged these emails until now because she's no
• 7:41
  longer the campaign manager, and I felt like this is probably as good at
• 7:45
  time as any, especially given the crisis point of this campaign, to share
• 7:48
  with you exclusively on this podcast. Although I did tweet out some of what
• 7:55
  you're about to hear, not all of it. But these are the emails.
• 8:00
  I sent two emails to Genera Peck over the last several months about the
• 8:05
  state of the De Santas campaign, where it was and where it was heading.
• 8:09
  And the first one I sent was on June fifteenth. Again, wasn't
• 8:15
  that long ago. It was basically about two months ago, but in terms
• 8:20
  of the campaign, that was forever ago. This is just after the announcement,
• 8:22
  and it's clear the announcement at this point was not successful and that the
• 8:28
  theme of the campaign was not at all in keeping with what I had been
• 8:31
  hoping for. And as I commented on this podcast, there were several things
• 8:37
  happening specifically with regard to Trump and Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsome and a debate
• 8:43
  proposal at that time that was put forward by Sean Hannity on Fox News Channel.
• 8:48
  Now since then, just this past week or so, that De Santas
• 8:52
  campaign has officially accepted that debate proposal, although I'm still skeptical as to what
• 8:58
  that's ever actually going to happen. It's currently tentatively scheduled for November. I
• 9:01
  commented about that in episode seventy eight of the podcast. But with all that
• 9:07
  set up, here is the first email that I sent to Genera Pec,
• 9:11
  then the campaign manager for Ron de Santos, on June fifteenth of this year.
• 9:16
  The subject line of the email was if you aren't considering changing the campaign's
• 9:22
  course yet, you really capital letters should be dot dot dot, and then
• 9:26
  I wrote, Genera, I doubt you know me, but I introduced myself
• 9:31
  as a commentator podcaster scene on News Nation blah blah blah. And then I
• 9:37
  write, if your goal is simply to remain viable for twenty twenty eight,
• 9:41
  assuming Trump loses and then dies before then, then what you are doing makes
• 9:46
  some sense. However, if your goal is to actually win, then you
• 9:50
  have no choice but to tie Trump to the liberal establishment by exposing how often
• 9:54
  he has sided with Biden and Newsom and Cuomo, especially on COVID, and
• 10:00
  to not be so supportive of Trump on the indictments. People need to be
• 10:05
  forced to consider what his second term would look like, especially with no credible
• 10:09
  people willing to work for him. I am totally baffled by why you appear
• 10:15
  to think the COVID issue, which is why you are a campaign in the
• 10:18
  first place, is not to be used in the campaign itself, even with
• 10:22
  Newsom and Cuomo practically begging you to do so. In my view, if
• 10:28
  you keep going down this path, you are now far more likely to eventually
• 10:31
  lose your firm grip on second place than you are to actually win. In
• 10:37
  fact, I myself can now envision quote unquote unendorsing de Santis out of a
• 10:41
  belief that he is not really who I thought he was, which a month
• 10:46
  ago would have been inconceivable. Not to be clear, I've never done that,
• 10:50
  still not planning on doing that. I think he's shifted his messaging a
• 10:54
  little bit recently, which gives me more confidence than who he actually is.
• 10:58
  It's just a matter of campaign strategy being completely flawed. But I finished this
• 11:03
  email to generic Pack by saying My experience with political operatives is that you generally
• 11:09
  don't want to ever admit that the quote unquote plan is wrong. But for
• 11:15
  the record, you need to know that this one really is not capital letters
• 11:20
  working. I wish you the best and hope that you take this message in
• 11:24
  the spirit in which it was intended best John Ziggler. Again, that was
• 11:28
  June fifteenth, just two months ago. Well, then I got no response,
• 11:35
  which didn't surprise me. I mean, a rational world, I would
• 11:37
  have gotten a response. But I had no confidence into the Santa's campaign at
• 11:41
  this point, so I was not surprised at all that the campaign manager did
• 11:45
  not respond to me. And then in July, once I really started to
• 11:50
  realize that, okay, there's no plan here. These people don't know what
• 11:54
  they're doing, and the ship is sinking, partially out of frustration, partially
• 12:00
  because I just wanted to make it very clear to a genera peck that where
• 12:05
  things were heading. I didn't want there to be any ambiguity whatsoever. I
• 12:09
  said an email that had no ambiguity. That's kind of in retrospect. Well,
• 12:16
  you can determine for yourself how to how to look at what I wrote
• 12:22
  in this second email. But my second email to Genera Peck was as follows,
• 12:28
  I emailed you this red alert a month ago. In other words,
• 12:33
  I'm responding to the email that I already sent to her. So I'm referencing
• 12:37
  below in the email. Hey, I sent you this email a month ago.
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  It was a red alert and didn't even get a response. I knew
• 12:46
  then the campaign was doomed. Now it is too late to do anything about
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  it. I hope that for the rest of your lives, you morons will
• 12:54
  feel the guilt of blowing the last chance to save the country. That result
• 12:58
  would act a be a punishment far less than you guys deserve. My children
• 13:03
  and I are very capital letters. Sorry you were not up to this task.
• 13:09
  John Ziegler. That was back in the middle of July, So two
• 13:13
  months ago I sent the original email. Then I sent the you know,
• 13:18
  thanks for nothing. You screwed up your this is over email. And then
• 13:22
  a month later, Jennera Peck is no longer the campaign manager for Ron de
• 13:26
  Santis. So gee, I wonder if I knew what was going on.
• 13:30
  I knew. I wonder if I was ahead of the game. I wonder
• 13:31
  if my alarms were based in reality. Well, whether or not I'm just
• 13:37
  a hopeless or pep pessimist. Gee, I wonder which one that was.
• 13:43
  Of course, no one ever fucking listens to me, but I will,
• 13:46
  you know, continue to be right and no one will care. And it's
• 13:50
  by the way, I don't care about being praised for being right, although
• 13:52
  it'd be nice once in a while someone acknowledged it. It's a matter of
• 13:56
  no one listening to me while there's still as to fix the goddamn problem.
• 14:03
  That's the issue, and I don't know whether or not James ruth Meyer will
• 14:07
  be able to fix anything. Like I said, I'm more pleased with the
• 14:11
  messaging in recent weeks, but I do think it's probably too late. I
• 14:16
  mean this. I know that the Santis people hate me for saying this,
• 14:20
  but you know, we are very very far along in this process, very
• 14:26
  far along. And I have not officially called the race for a number of
• 14:31
  reasons, mainly because things are so crazy with the indictments, and we haven't
• 14:35
  even had the pseudo debates, which Trump's probably not going to participate in yet,
• 14:41
  and we are still in theory several months away from actual voting. I
• 14:45
  get all that, but when you go down the checklist. When you go
• 14:48
  down the checklist of the things that we did not know for sure back in
• 14:52
  November twenty twenty, after RHNDE Santas won a twenty point victory in Florida in
• 14:58
  the midterm elections and Trump's can it's all got swamped. If you go through
• 15:01
  down down that checklist, I'm very confused as to what else it is that
• 15:07
  we need to still know. I mean, it's Trump running. Check.
• 15:11
  Is the cult still with him? Check? Is the right wing media still
• 15:15
  with him? Check? Is the crowd? Is there going to be a
• 15:18
  crowded field? Check? Is is he going to attack the Santist Check?
• 15:24
  Are those attacks gonna work? Check? I mean, how how are his
• 15:31
  legal troubles going to impact him? Are they gonna Is he gonna be helped
• 15:35
  by them? Check? I mean, there's really very little at this point
• 15:41
  that still needs to be determined. Is he going to get a big lead
• 15:45
  in the polls and become the alpha? Check? Is he going to be
• 15:48
  able to bail from the debates without any blowback or any criticism from the right
• 15:54
  wing media apparently? Check? So what else is there? What is he
• 16:00
  doing better in the polls against Biden? Again than the Santis is unbelievably and
• 16:04
  probably not realistically check. So I still I'm more than open minded as I
• 16:11
  always am. But somebody please tell me what it is that we don't know
• 16:17
  yet. I mean, I have people on Twitter tell me all the time,
• 16:21
  Oh, this is still the preseason. Now it's not. It's not
• 16:23
  the preseason. If you want to put this in football terms, you know,
• 16:27
  in an NFL season, which is now seventeen weeks, we're probably in
• 16:30
  week thirteen and and we're getting close to this thing mathematically being over. And
• 16:37
  again I'm not saying it's mathematically over yet because we haven't even started voting and
• 16:41
  things are so crazy with Trump and you never know. But I would just
• 16:47
  love for someone to tell me what it is that is the scenario. I
• 16:49
  mean, we just had episode seventy eight of this podcast was referencing the black
• 16:55
  Swan event that just occurred with the third indictment and its former attorney gen role.
• 17:00
  Bill Barn's former vice president, Mike Penns absolutely eviscerating him over what is
• 17:04
  alleged in the third indictment involving January sixth, and there's absolutely no evidence that
• 17:11
  that's going to harm him at all at all. And now there's a chance
• 17:15
  he's going to be indicted. He might be even indicted before you get a
• 17:19
  chance to listen to this podcast because we're on Indictment Watch number four in Georgia,
• 17:25
  also related to the twenty twenty election, and Trump knows now it's very
• 17:30
  clear that these indictments are doing basically his bidding for him. They're the best
• 17:36
  thing that ever happened to his campaign. He was barely leading this thing before
• 17:40
  he started getting indicted, and now he's way ahead by every single measure.
• 17:48
  And in New Hampshire the other day, Trump bragged about this. He literally
• 17:52
  bragged about being indicted and it's impact on his campaign with regard to pull And
• 18:00
  here's what that sounded like. And in the morning consult that just came out,
• 18:06
  I wanted to see because you know, every time you get indicted,
• 18:07
  I like to check the polls, because one more indictment that I think this
• 18:11
  election's over. One more. I mean, there's so many remarkable elements of
• 18:19
  that short clip you just heard from Trump. Number one is that he actually
• 18:22
  believes in polling. Now, miss the guy doesn't even believe election day polls.
• 18:27
  But if the polls, the theoretical polls often done by Trump friendly pollsters,
• 18:36
  fit what he wants reality to be. All of a sudden, they're
• 18:38
  you know, their gospel. And I get criticized a lot from a lot
• 18:44
  of people because I have this view of where we are in this campaign,
• 18:48
  and fellow De Santa supporters are very, very upset with me. I get
• 18:52
  criticized for seemingly thinking that polls are infallible. No, I don't think polls
• 18:57
  are infallible at all. I've worked for a polling institute in a long time
• 19:02
  ago Quinnipiac University, very briefly as a polling analyst. I've been following polls
• 19:07
  my whole life. I've commissioned three major polls on my own, So I
• 19:11
  mean I'm not I wouldn't call myself a true polster, but my level of
• 19:18
  knowledge with regard to polling is in the nine point nine percent dial. And
• 19:25
  I don't believe that they're infallible. But they don't need to be infallible.
• 19:29
  They just need to be remotely close for the reality that I'm talking about to
• 19:33
  be based in truth. And more important than that, it's almost not relevant
• 19:37
  whether or not they're accurate the perception that they are creating in this race is
• 19:44
  manifesting reality. I can't say that enough. Because they have created this perception
• 19:51
  that Trump is winning big. It gives him all sorts of leverage, whether
• 19:56
  it's about not attending the debates, which will get to momentarily once again,
• 20:00
  or whether it's how the right wing media treats him like when he gets indicted.
• 20:06
  I cannot say this enough. Either if Trump was still tied we were
• 20:10
  close to tie with the Santas, or if he was behind the Santis at
• 20:12
  this point and was not the clear alpha male and he was getting indicted,
• 20:17
  those indictments would be seen and portrayed completely differently by the right wing media,
• 20:22
  completely differently. But because he's way ahead now, nobody in the right wing
• 20:26
  media wants to take any shots from the core consumer base by having the audacity
• 20:33
  to point out the reality of how awful some of these allegations are. Which
• 20:38
  I outlined in episode seventy eight, were regarding the third and most recent indictment
• 20:44
  federally on charges related to conspiracy to essentially overturn a legitimate election. And so
• 20:52
  these polls matter, and it's absolutely hilarious and telling that Trump now suddenly believes
• 21:00
  in polls. But he's right, He's right that each indictment seems to strengthen
• 21:06
  him further because largely, in general, this narrative that I've mentioned many many
• 21:11
  times before that I saw from a mile away as being very, very dangerous,
• 21:15
  that was planned by Tucker Carlson and Glennbeck and others on the right in
• 21:21
  the right wing media, that because of what the left was doing to Trump,
• 21:25
  if we don't nominate Trump, they will have won, they will have
• 21:27
  taken the country, we have lost the Republic. And of course that's bullshit,
• 21:33
  and it's it's incredibly dangerous. You can believe two things simultaneously. Two
• 21:38
  things can be true that Trump is being partially persecuted because he's a Republican and
• 21:45
  would not be charged in the same way if he was a Democrat, which
• 21:48
  is probably true. By the way. I acknowledge that that doesn't make the
• 21:52
  indictments illegitimate, but I acknowledge that that's the world we live in, and
• 21:56
  certainly the media would be be be certainly depicting these situations vastly differently. If
• 22:03
  Trump was a former Democratic president, then he is as a Republican president.
• 22:07
  But you can believe that he's being treated differently or unfairly because of his political
• 22:15
  beliefs, whatever the hell they actually are, and still believe that he's not
• 22:18
  the right person to be the Republican nominee in twenty twenty four, especially when
• 22:22
  there is a fantastic alternative named Ron De Santis, governor of Florida. Those
• 22:27
  two things, to me, it's not a complicated situation to believe in those
• 22:32
  two things simultaneously. But apparently for the average Republican voter that's too much to
• 22:37
  ask for. And as far as Trump's analysis of the Polly impact of his
• 22:42
  indictments, I believe he's accurate, and the polls are horrific. The polls
• 22:48
  are horrific, and increasingly so on the Republican side. There's a poll out
• 22:55
  of New Hampshire just this week that now shows the Santis in single digits at
• 22:59
  nine. I predicted many months ago that New Hampshire was a hopeless cause for
• 23:04
  De Santis, especially once Chris Christie took the anti Trump lane, which exists
• 23:11
  there for a number of reasons. One because you can be an undeclared voter
• 23:17
  and vote in the Republican primary in New Hampshire, and because the new Hampshire
• 23:21
  governor there is an anti Trump Republican and so Chris Christie stole that lane.
• 23:27
  And Vaveg Gramaswamy, who is essentially a surrogate for Donald Trump, a complete
• 23:33
  fraud and a guy who gets to have a free pass because no one's going
• 23:38
  to attack him. He's never held elected office. The media loves him,
• 23:42
  he's a good talker. I predicted very early on he was going to be
• 23:45
  a big problem for Ronda Santis. I actually underestimated how big of a problem
• 23:51
  Vavegu Ramaswamy was going to be. But it must be nice. It must
• 23:55
  be nice to be able to say whatever the hell you want with no accountability,
• 23:57
  knowing you're never gonna win, no record because you never held elected office.
• 24:02
  You can just erase your recent history by paying Wikipedia to do so.
• 24:07
  The fact that you were a covid idiot a covid idiot doesn't matter because you
• 24:11
  know that's been erased, and the media won't mention it because you're not You're
• 24:14
  not a front runner, so they don't give you any scrutiny. So you
• 24:17
  get all the benefits of of getting media coverage with none of the drawbacks,
• 24:22
  and nobody who matters wants to attack you because then it looks like you're dignifying
• 24:29
  of a vague Ramaswami's candidacy. And you know, so Desanders isn't a no
• 24:33
  win situation there. If he goes after Vavag, he looks small. If
• 24:36
  he doesn't, Vavak continues to grow. And Trump's loving this because, as
• 24:41
  I've said, Vegas a Trumps surrogate. It's going to be in the debates
• 24:45
  purely for the purposes of promoting and defending Donald Trump, as well as his
• 24:51
  own selfish purposes, whatever they are. Whether it's working for Trump, should
• 24:55
  Trump win, or having a media career in the future, Who the hell
• 24:57
  knows. But that's the reality. And you know, one poll doesn't mean
• 25:03
  anything in in this situation, but every poll is similar. Right now,
• 25:07
  nationally, Trump is winning big. He's got over fifty percent in the state
• 25:12
  polls. He's still winning big, usually in the forties somewhere. But it
• 25:15
  doesn't matter that he's only in the forties, sometimes the low forties, because
• 25:19
  the field is too crowded. And the most important thing and why these polls
• 25:23
  matter is that now that the Santists has lost his commanding lead over the everyone
• 25:30
  other than Trump. In other words, he's no longer you know, killing
• 25:34
  it when it comes to second place, is the second place lead is now
• 25:38
  dwindled at times to single digits. Now, all of a sudden, the
• 25:42
  vague Ramaswami and Chris Christie and Mike Pence and Nicki Haley and others have no
• 25:48
  reason to get out of the race. I mean that was That's probably the
• 25:52
  first and most prominent, most obvious mistake to the scant that the Santist campaign
• 25:57
  made. The first thing you have to do in this race is you need
• 26:02
  to clear the field of non Trump candidates. And in order to do that,
• 26:07
  you needed to make it clear you were the anti Trump candidate and the
• 26:11
  anti Trump contingent of the Republican Party. As as someone who's been in that
• 26:15
  contingent since twenty fifteen, I know better than anybody. Is not large.
• 26:22
  Now. It's larger than it was in twenty fifteen, but it's nowhere near
• 26:25
  large enough to win the nomination. And I think that the Santa's campaign took
• 26:30
  people like me for granted that we will gravitate towards you automatically. So therefore
• 26:36
  you don't need the pander to us, and then you can go after the
• 26:38
  middle group, which is the people who like Trump but are open to another
• 26:44
  alternative. Well, they didn't nail down the anti Trump people. They allowed
• 26:48
  Chris Christie to get an attraction, especially in New Hampshire, and the people
• 26:55
  who like Trump but could would like to see someone new, they're now gravitating
• 26:59
  towards Ervake Ramaswami and Mike Pennz has his religious right element, and Nicky Haley
• 27:07
  is the only female in the race. So even though these are small percentages,
• 27:11
  these are people that have no need to get out of the race,
• 27:14
  at least until after New Hampshire. And in the modern media aids, they
• 27:18
  don't need that much money. They'll continue to get enough media coverage they'll be
• 27:22
  able to get on whatever debate stages there are, assuming there are debates,
• 27:26
  when Trump decides for sure he's not going to participate in any of them,
• 27:30
  He's clearly not going to participate in the first one. And so I don't
• 27:34
  see how it is that Trump doesn't win with forty percent is going to be
• 27:40
  plenty under these circumstances. And if he wins, Iowa, New Hampshire this
• 27:44
  thing is over, period and of sentence, because there's no possible way to
• 27:48
  stop that momentum, and he's got such huge majorities in so many states.
• 27:53
  I mean, there's so many of these states, especially through the South and
• 27:57
  Appalachia and in the Southwest, where I mean, his leads are just so
• 28:03
  massive and his cult so strong that there's just no way to reverse any kind
• 28:11
  of momentum. And obviously, you know at that point there's all going to
• 28:15
  be all sorts of other problems after if Trump were to win Iowa and New
• 28:19
  Hampshire. So again, I'm still holding out some semblance of hope that some
• 28:25
  miracle is going to occur, but that we're basically in miracle territory here.
• 28:30
  And one of the other things that I have talked about how Trump's problems actually
• 28:36
  blow back on the Santis more than they blow back on Trump, is because
• 28:41
  the news media, and I have said this from the beginning, especially the
• 28:45
  mainstream news media, but even the right wing media are very much invested against
• 28:49
  Ronda Santis, largely because of the COVID response. And I referenced the COVID
• 28:55
  response in my email to Genera Pack and I get some criticism and for this
• 29:00
  too, well, John, COVID is not a potent issue anymore, and
• 29:04
  again I acknowledge that that's clearly the case. However, if that is indeed
• 29:11
  the case, if we don't know that one hundred percent because it's never been
• 29:15
  fully tried, But if that really is the case, then they say it
• 29:18
  just never should have run in the first place. I mean, that was
• 29:22
  my philosophy and that email to Generapec, which is, you know, you
• 29:26
  dance with the girl you brought, right, I mean, that's how you
• 29:32
  got to be a presidential candidate to begin with. If the COVID response truly
• 29:37
  is not a legitimate issue, even within a Republican primary, I fully acknowledge
• 29:42
  it clearly doesn't help in a general election in most states in the nation.
• 29:48
  However, if it doesn't even help in a Republican primary, then there's no
• 29:51
  hope anyway that this was all pointless. And I am becoming wedded to this
• 29:59
  I idea of this theory that you know, weirdly, Trump benefits from the
• 30:04
  fact that his COVID response was so awful, so terrible, He shit the
• 30:10
  beds so badly that Republicans don't even want to think about it. They don't
• 30:15
  even They don't even want to be forced to think about it because their hero
• 30:21
  came up tiny, their hero shit the bed, their hero exposed himself as
• 30:27
  not being who Republicans thought that he was. And so the right wing media
• 30:33
  has no reason to revisit this because it makes Trump look bad, and the
• 30:37
  left wing media has no reason to revisit this because it makes them look bad
• 30:41
  if they do it honestly, because they were wrong in most part. The
• 30:45
  Santis was right in most part, especially after the first couple of months,
• 30:49
  and so nobody in the media has any incentive to relitigate at all this incredibly
• 30:56
  massive thing we just went through for three years, probably the most impactful thing
• 31:00
  that's ever happened in the modern history of America, you know, for most
• 31:03
  impactful thing that ever happens in certainly World War Two with regard to the lives
• 31:10
  of Americans, the day to day lives of Americans. And yet we're going
• 31:12
  to just pretend it never happened. And I do think there's another element to
• 31:17
  this that I didn't fully understand, and I think it exposes a mistake by
• 31:22
  the Assantis campaign. I think they thought that attacking Faucci was all that it
• 31:27
  was going to take you. If you attack Faucci, you're not really attacking
• 31:33
  Trump. Everyone on the right hates Fauci, and that people will therefore make
• 31:37
  the connection, Oh, well, Trump didn't fire Faucci. Trump put Faucci
• 31:42
  on television, made him a superstar, which is a point that's not made
• 31:45
  nearly enough, because I think that was the real sin that Trump committed there,
• 31:48
  and one he should have known better because that's his expertise, is how
• 31:52
  the media works and how celebrity works, and how celebrity gives you power.
• 31:56
  But I think that, as Santa's campaign thought, if we just attack Fauci,
• 32:01
  then we are effectively attacking Trump's response to COVID. But that's not what's
• 32:07
  happened. I think there's now a mindset among the majority of Republican voters that
• 32:13
  attacking Faucci actually gives Trump an out, that it actually alleviates the blame for
• 32:22
  Trump because you're putting it on Faucci and not on Trump, that Trump gets
• 32:27
  a pass somehow. I mean, it's insane, but this is the mindset.
• 32:31
  So attacking Faucci actually bizarrely helps Trump because it gives him an excuse for
• 32:39
  why the federal response was so horrendous to COVID from a conservative perspective, and
• 32:45
  and of course you know that's all you need when you're running a cult.
• 32:50
  Is any any theoretical excuse for why your cult leader didn't didn't turn out being
• 32:55
  as great as you'd hope or expected them to be. So I acknowledge that
• 33:00
  the COVID issue is problematic, but if it wasn't going to work, then
• 33:04
  there there was no need to even run this race, even though I think
• 33:09
  it was imperative that somebody run against Donald Trump because Trump being the nominee in
• 33:15
  twenty twenty four is so devastating to the future of the country. But back
• 33:21
  to this issue of how everything blows back onto the Santis and how the media
• 33:25
  uses it to blow back on the Santis. This entire indictment bringing back up
• 33:31
  the issue of twenty twenty in the election, it's just astonishing to me that,
• 33:36
  you know, the Republican primary is going to be more about the twenty
• 33:40
  twenty election, whether or not was stolen, then whether or not we responded
• 33:45
  properly, or who responded properly or improperly to the COVID pandemic, because obviously
• 33:50
  the COVID pandemic impacted way more lives in a dramatic way than than what happened
• 33:57
  with the twenty twenty election. But Trump cares about the twenty twenty election because
• 34:00
  his ego was on the line. It's all about him, And so now
• 34:05
  the Santist asked to answer questions about who won the twenty twenty election, which
• 34:10
  for Trump doesn't have any negative blowback associated with it at all, because all
• 34:17
  of his people believe that the election was stolen or rigged, but the Santists
• 34:24
  won. I'm sure has some obligation internally to tell some semblance of the truth,
• 34:30
  but politically he's in an impossible situation because this mythology has been created,
• 34:36
  enabled by the right wing media, that a huge portion of Republicans not only
• 34:40
  believe that the twenty twenty election was stolen, but believe that if you don't
• 34:45
  believe that that you're some sort of rhino kuck who has no business being the
• 34:50
  Republican nominee. So there's no benefit at all. There's no good answer that
• 34:54
  the Sanders can give to this question. There's no good answer politically, and
• 35:00
  he has tried to thread the needle, and I give him some credit for
• 35:02
  doing the best that he can. Well, here is NBC News, in
• 35:07
  an interview with Rhonda Santis, doing exactly what I would expect them to do,
• 35:12
  which is to put the Santis in a trap. Again, this is
• 35:16
  a you know, a network NBC that, through MSNBC and all their mainstream
• 35:22
  NBC News reporting, would give you the impression that Donald Trump's nomination is a
• 35:27
  grave threat to democracy. Yet here the only guy that can potentially stop his
• 35:30
  nomination from happening. They're going to purposely put into a trap using Trump's own
• 35:36
  talking points. As insane as this is, but here's once again the Santist
• 35:42
  being forced to take a position that cannot possibly be helpful for him in a
• 35:47
  way that the news media is only thrilled, thrilled to trap him on because
• 35:53
  they don't want him to be the nominee. Yes or no, did Donald
• 35:58
  Trump lose the twenty twenty election. Whoever puts their hand on the Bible on
• 36:01
  January twentieth every four years is the winner. But respectfully, he did not
• 36:07
  clearly answer that question. And if you can't give a yes or no one
• 36:12
  whether or not Trump lost, then how of course he lost? Trump lost
• 36:17
  in twenty twenty election. Of course Joe Biden's the president. But the issue
• 36:22
  is I think what people in the media and elsewhere they want to act like
• 36:25
  somehow this was just like the perfect election governor. Now, to me,
• 36:30
  that clip right there is emblematic of just one of an impossible situation to the
• 36:36
  Santa's campaign is in and has always been in and why this was probably always
• 36:44
  a fool's aaron that this was. You know, this was again I want
• 36:46
  to make clear I support the effort. I would have done the effort differently
• 36:52
  because it had to be done and the Santis was the only person that had
• 36:55
  a realistic chance of pulling this off. But I think when this is all
• 37:00
  said and done, when it really is done, as opposed to just looking
• 37:02
  like it's done right now, I think we're going to be able to look
• 37:06
  back and go there was never any real chance that the deck was just too
• 37:09
  stacked against the Santis, and this is a great example of that. And
• 37:14
  I predicted this where everyone's incentives are such that they are incentivized to attack the
• 37:22
  Santis and not really attack Donald Trump. Everybody, right wing media, left
• 37:30
  wing media, you know, never Trump conservatives or alleged Conservatives, the bogus,
• 37:35
  fraudulent Lincoln Project group, obviously Trump's supporters, I mean everybody. Democrats
• 37:44
  are far more incentivized to attack the Santists than they are Trump because they actually
• 37:49
  want Trump to be the nominee. It's just an almost unwinnable battle and being
• 37:55
  forced because of Trump, because of Trump's selfish pursuits, whether it's staying out
• 38:01
  of prison or you know, having his ego be massage, because he didn't
• 38:07
  really lose the twenty twenty election. This is the blowback, This is the
• 38:12
  negative elements of this, and every single senatorial candidate and congressional candidate is once
• 38:19
  again going to have to answer this question in twenty twenty four, and in
• 38:22
  a Republican primary, you have to answer the question with something along the lines
• 38:27
  of yeah, I guess the election wasn't really legitimate, and then that's going
• 38:30
  to hurt you in the general election. And the news media knows this.
• 38:35
  And this is all because it's Trump's selfishness, and this is the cost of
• 38:38
  Trump even running. This is why Trump should not even have run if he
• 38:42
  gave a crap about the country of the Republican Party, which obviously does not.
• 38:47
  Now, I have been predicting for a long time, longer than anybody
• 38:52
  else. I know that Trump was not going to do the first Republican debate,
• 38:58
  and that he might never do any debates. And then if he does
• 39:00
  any debates, they're not going to be real debates. They're going to be
• 39:02
  incredibly stunted in his favor. Because he now has having broken contentment, he
• 39:07
  now has the leverage to do whatever the hell he wants. I mean,
• 39:10
  the Republican Party essentially puts on these debates and they are not going to,
• 39:16
  you know, if they do anything that Trump doesn't want them to do.
• 39:20
  Trump isn't going to participate. He doesn't have to because he's got a massive
• 39:22
  lead, and because the Republican right leaning quote unquote conservative media has already shown
• 39:30
  that it's not going to criticize Trump for not taking part. We saw a
• 39:35
  dress rehearsal for this in the Blaze Tucker Carlson event several weeks ago, where
• 39:40
  Trump did not participate and there was no criticism of him. What's soever for
• 39:46
  that. Excuses were made for why he was not at that event, and
• 39:52
  you know that only furthered my conviction that clearly Trump isn't going to do this.
• 40:00
  He doesn't need to do it. He would be idiotic from a strategic
• 40:04
  standpoint to do it. And Trump knows this. And at the same event
• 40:08
  where we just heard from Trump a few moments ago in New Hampshire, Trump
• 40:13
  even raised the issue himself and asked the crowd whether or not he should do
• 40:19
  the debates, which is a classic classic Trump tactic, because you know,
• 40:24
  he can interpret. He knows the crowd's going to give him the response he
• 40:28
  wants, right because they're a cult. And then he can claim, well,
• 40:31
  I'm just doing what the people want, or in this case, not
• 40:35
  doing what the people want. I shouldn't participate in the debates because my people
• 40:39
  are telling me that I shouldn't. And so, in classic Trump fashion,
• 40:45
  here is Trump asking his cult in New Hampshire whether or not he should do
• 40:50
  the debates. Was so far above everybody else in the polls. They're all
• 40:53
  saying, is he going to go into the debate? And I said,
• 40:57
  I don't know. If you're leading by fifty and sixty and seventy points,
• 41:00
  do that or not? I don't know. Should I? Okay, you're
• 41:02
  ready, Paul, We take a free Paul. Should I do the debate,
• 41:15
  Well, maybe we'll do something else. You know. See, some
• 41:17
  people say yes, but they hate to say it because it doesn't make sense
• 41:22
  to do it if you're leading by so much, but they like it for
• 41:24
  entertainment value, because there's selfish. They're selfish. So if there was any
• 41:31
  question previously that whether or not Trump was going to do the debate at least
• 41:37
  the first debate later this month, that has now been settled. Donald Trump
• 41:42
  is not going to do the debate the first debate. He has absolutely no
• 41:45
  reason to. And what's going to happen in all likelihood is that he'll suffer
• 41:50
  no blowback for not doing that debate. That and I have been saying for
• 41:53
  many months that those who think that this will somehow backfire on Donald Trump are
• 42:00
  delusional. It's not going to backfire because nobody is going to go after Donald
• 42:05
  Trump when he's not there. That will be seen at somehow bizarrely as inappropriate
• 42:12
  and cock behavior and cowardly, even though Trump's the guy who's the coward for
• 42:16
  not showing up and not facing real questions. No, the coward will be
• 42:22
  the people if it was the Santist, especially if he goes after Trump when
• 42:25
  Trump's not able to defend himself. That would be awful. And by the
• 42:29
  way, Vegue Ramiswamy would make sure that he grandstanded on Trump's behalf. If
• 42:36
  Trump ever did get criticized in one of these debates, I mean, you
• 42:38
  can take that to the fricking bank. I mean, if the moment that
• 42:43
  the Santist tried to start criticizing Trump without him being there, Vvegue Ramiswamy,
• 42:47
  as I predicted many months ago, would jump out of his podium to get
• 42:55
  in front of that bullet because he would he would get a huge cheer from
• 43:00
  the audience. And you know, whatever crowd was, whatever audience was watching
• 43:06
  at home, which will be much smaller without Trump, would cheer, and
• 43:08
  the conservative media would cheer him. So there's no chance that the Santist is
• 43:15
  going to be able to criticize Trump with Trump not being there. That's the
• 43:21
  biggest problem. Number two is that guests who is going to be attacked,
• 43:27
  as I've been predicting for many months, not Trump but de Santist, because
• 43:31
  Desantist is the only person that's going to be there with anything to lose,
• 43:37
  because nobody else on that stage will have anything else to lose. They're all
• 43:40
  in the single digits. But Desantists will be seen as the person holding on
• 43:45
  to second place. And if you get second place in this race, that
• 43:51
  has value. It has value number one from a media standpoint, because the
• 43:55
  media will cover that person very significantly, at least New Hampshire and maybe South
• 44:00
  Carolina. But number two, because Trump is so unstable, it has all
• 44:07
  these indictments, that he's older. You never know what the hell's going to
• 44:09
  happen with Trump, So second place has more value than it would in a
• 44:15
  normal Republican primary situation. So DeSantis is going to have a target on his
• 44:22
  back. And I'm not just this is not just me theorizing. We now
• 44:25
  have proof of this. Here's an article in Routers headline does Santas faces major
• 44:32
  test in first twenty twenty four Republican debate. Now, this is my first
• 44:38
  problem here. We have just skipped over. This is classic Trump. This
• 44:45
  is the genius of Trump, because he planted these seeds months ago that he
• 44:50
  wasn't going to do the debate. We've now just skipped over the part about
• 44:52
  Trump skipping the debates and being a coward and not facing real questioning, being
• 44:59
  afraid aid of Ron de Santis. That ought to be the narrative Trump is
• 45:04
  terrified of facing the Santis, But we just skipped right over that. We
• 45:08
  went from oh, so Trump's not going to do the debate and he gets
• 45:13
  to get this goes back to why those polls matter because he's winning by such
• 45:17
  a large margin. That's how the media can rationalize, oh, well,
• 45:21
  it's perfectly acceptable for Trump not to debate because he's winning by such a huge
• 45:25
  margin. And by the way, that gets further by the fact that it's
• 45:29
  a margin it's very, very similar to what Biden is beating R. K
• 45:32
  Junior by, and Biden's not going to debate. By the way, I
• 45:37
  don't even think there's going to be general election debates that I am. I'm
• 45:39
  not ready to make that as one hundred percent prediction, but I think that
• 45:43
  we're setting some precedents here that Trump isn't gonna like that. There won't be
• 45:47
  any debates in the general election either because the Democrats aren't debating and the Republican
• 45:53
  front runners not debating. So anyway, that's another story for another day.
• 45:58
  But we've just skipped off or the part about Trump being a coward. We've
• 46:00
  gone right to the Santis faces a major test, and in this article on
• 46:07
  re Reuters there are two very telling paragraphs. An advisor to NICKI Haley,
• 46:12
  the former US Ambassador to the United Nations, who is also seeking the nomination,
• 46:16
  said the field is likely to treat Trump quote unquote gingerly unquote and instead
• 46:24
  train their fire on does Santis, who was expected to occupy the center slot
• 46:30
  on the stage. Quote the guy on the stage. This is the Haley
• 46:36
  advisor. The guy on the stage on the number one spot is probably going
• 46:40
  to be taking more heat than the others, said the advisor, who request
• 46:45
  an anonymity to discuss internal campaign. Man, it matters. Now again,
• 46:51
  this isn't shocking. I've been telling you this for quite a long time.
• 46:54
  But it verifies my theory that at best, at best, this Republican debate
• 47:01
  is going to be a wash for DeSantis, and it has all sorts of
• 47:06
  peril. Any kind of screw up by DeSantis is going to basically end any
• 47:12
  chance that he has. And I don't see any scenario where he makes significant
• 47:17
  progress in trying to catch up to Trump. I don't know how you can
• 47:21
  do that when Trump's not there. You can't criticize Trump. Everyone's going after
• 47:24
  you. At best, you're gonna show, you know, whatever small audience
• 47:30
  there is, that you can take the heat, that you're better than these
• 47:34
  other candidates. But even in that scenario, I really think it's just going
• 47:38
  to keep the status quo, which is DeSantis is a distant second place with
• 47:43
  a significant but weakening lead over all these other single digit challengers. But DeSantis
• 47:50
  has to do the debates, I guess. I mean, I would actually
• 47:52
  consider not doing them if I were him. I mean, that would probably
• 47:58
  not work because I don't know. I don't know. I'd have to think
• 48:01
  about how that would work out. But at this point, if I was
• 48:05
  somehow clearly, very clearly, especially giving those emails to the general peck not
• 48:09
  part of any discussions within the de Santas campaign, But if I was,
• 48:15
  I would at least be considering the idea of putting the spotlight on the fact
• 48:22
  that that Trump is not debating by deciding, you know what, this is
• 48:25
  not a legitimate debate. The Trump is the clear front runner, and and
• 48:31
  you know, if Trump's not going to debate, I'm not going to debate
• 48:35
  either, Because at that point, you don't have a you have no audience.
• 48:38
  I mean, no one's going to give a shit about all these single
• 48:42
  digit candidates, and it'll be a joke, and all these these other candidates
• 48:45
  will be seen as even smaller than they are. I mean, that's my
• 48:51
  biggest concern if I'm the de Santas campaign, is I'm going to be brought
• 48:53
  down to the level of the vague Ramaswami and other candidates, some of whom
• 48:59
  people don't even know who the hell they are. And so if you decide
• 49:04
  that you're not going to do the debates in a weird way, you're putting
• 49:07
  yourself on Trump's level as opposed to the level of these these single digit wannabes.
• 49:14
  I'd have to think that through more. And obviously it's not going to
• 49:15
  happen. But I think that's a that's a scenario that the DeSantis campaign should
• 49:22
  have been and maybe still should be considering, because I don't see this as
• 49:27
  a situation anything other than no lose for Trump and maybe no win for DeSantis
• 49:32
  or a very very small chance for a win for DeSantis. While there's enormous
• 49:37
  peril if something goes wrong and basically your entire campaign implodes, If if you
• 49:43
  don't clearly make yourself the dominant force in this debate that doesn't have Donald Trump.
• 49:49
  So well, that's going to be something that will happen in the next
• 49:52
  couple of weeks. Obviously we'll cover it on this podcast. In episode number
• 49:57
  seventy eight, I did go into great detai about this remarkable situation involving the
• 50:02
  US women's soccer team losing in the round of sixteen in the World Cup,
• 50:07
  and I mentioned at the time that I really thought, bizarrely that this was
• 50:14
  going to help Donald Trump in a weird way. You know, it should
• 50:17
  help to Santist because he's the anti woke crusader. But Trump has perceived this
• 50:22
  way, and interestingly, Trump jumped all over the USA teams lost. Now,
• 50:29
  my basic take on this is I get why a lot of conservatives,
• 50:32
  especially Trump fans, were rooting against the US women's soccer team. I was
• 50:37
  thrilled that they were going to lose, that they lost in the way that
• 50:39
  they did, in heartbreaking fashion, with Megan Rapino being the goat in a
• 50:46
  situation she should never have been in, probably even on the team at the
• 50:50
  age of thirty eight, but she is this super woke lesbian hot dog egomaniac
• 50:58
  who you know is a basically a left wing politician and has been praised constantly
• 51:02
  by the news media for being super woke and left wing, and she blew
• 51:08
  the game. Well sure enough, Donald Trump took advantage of this opportunity this
• 51:14
  divide that I don't think it's very healthy for America at all that somehow we
• 51:19
  now have massive portions of Americans rooting against major United States athletic teams because largely
• 51:25
  of political reasons. And I want to make it clear, I don't support
• 51:30
  what the US women's soccer team did at all, and I think they're the
• 51:32
  responsible party for this, and I think the media enabled it all. So
• 51:37
  I'm not blaming those Americans who were rooting against them. I'm just saying that
• 51:40
  this is a very unfortunate reality and one that is not indicative of a healthy
• 51:47
  country. And it's maybe unprecedented because I don't recall, at the age of
• 51:52
  fifty six, I mean followed sports basically fifty years of my life. I
• 51:55
  don't recall to this degree this many Americans openly rooting against a major United States
• 52:02
  athletic team and being thrilled when they lost in heartbreak and fashion. But Donald
• 52:07
  Trump jumped all over this. He posted untruth social quote. The shocking and
• 52:14
  totally unexpected loss by the US women's soccer team to Sweden is fully emblematic of
• 52:20
  what is happening to our once great nation under Crooked Joe Biden. Many of
• 52:24
  our players were openly hostile to America. No other country behaved in such a
• 52:30
  manner or even close. Woke equals failure in capital letters. Nice shot,
• 52:37
  Megan, the USA is going to hell. Exclamation point, exclamation point,
• 52:43
  exclamation point, Maga Mega, make America great again. Those are the words
• 52:47
  from the forty fifth president of the United States, Donald Trump. Nice shot
• 52:52
  Megan. And I gotta tell you, I'm sure that his fans love this.
• 52:57
  I mean even I found it to be amusing. It's bizarre coming from
• 53:00
  a former president who is taking glee in an American team losing, mainly because
• 53:07
  that American team was very anti Trump. I mean, you know they won
• 53:12
  the World Cup, well Trump was president, and I don't even know if
• 53:15
  they visited the White House. I know Megan Rapino said she wasn't going to
• 53:19
  visit the White House, but they made it very clear that they were very
• 53:22
  anti Trump and you, but as a leader, you probably should. I
• 53:30
  mean, Trump has just destroyed all the normal rules of engagement. I realized
• 53:34
  that sometimes there's good in that, but I would like to believe that a
• 53:39
  former president would have a little bit more class than that, even if I
• 53:43
  agree with a lot of what he said. And as far as the reaction
• 53:46
  to Megan Rapino, it was basically exactly as you would expect in the liberal
• 53:52
  sports media. And this is part of a larger phenomenon that I think is
• 53:58
  really corrosive to sports. I mean, look, the essence of sports is
• 54:02
  you win, you get praised. You lose, you get criticized, especially
• 54:07
  if the expectations are high, especially if you're a favorite. That's the way
• 54:10
  it's always been. But in recent years, if you fit the criteria for
• 54:16
  the left wing media to support you in a loss, you will get that
• 54:21
  support. And this is, like a lot of things in our society and
• 54:25
  our culture, this is been a long time in coming. This this mitigation
• 54:30
  of the cost of losing or the cost of choking, and you know,
• 54:36
  like a lot of things, it started I think somewhat well intentioned and may
• 54:43
  have even had a good element to it. I mean, in my recollection,
• 54:46
  and this may not be accurate because I haven't gone through and you know,
• 54:52
  thought about it for a very long time, but in my gut reaction,
• 54:54
  okay, when did this start? The first time I remember this fine
• 55:00
  aminon of trying to mitigate massive chokes and losses occurred in the nineteen ninety six
• 55:06
  Masters Golf tournament when Greg Norman lost the biggest lead in the final round of
• 55:12
  the Masters ever to Nick Foaldo in humiliating fashion, and Norman at the time
• 55:17
  was probably the number one player in the world, are close to it,
• 55:22
  and had never won the Masters, and he completely collapsed it took a six
• 55:27
  shot lead and lost by five shots, lost by eleven that day to Nick
• 55:30
  Fouldo, and it was just horrendous. And I remember there being a media
• 55:37
  narrative of even though Norman lost, that he actually is now more likable that
• 55:45
  in his defeat he handled it with such grace that he really deserves credit for
• 55:51
  that, and that we really shouldn't destroy him for this massive choke. And
• 55:57
  I thought, okay, fine, but you know, he did just massively
• 56:00
  choke. I mean, he's a guy with who with every advantage in the
• 56:05
  world and a lot of bravado and ego, and I mean, this is
• 56:08
  as bad as it gets. We shouldn't lose, at least lose sight of
• 56:13
  the fact that he did choke, and you deserve some criticism for that.
• 56:16
  But I remember that being as a very significant moment in this evolution of the
• 56:22
  media's reaction to massive chokes or you know, heavy favorites losing sporting events that
• 56:30
  they shouldn't lose. And now we fast forward to, for instance, the
• 56:36
  Olympic Games, the last Olympic Games, where Simone Biles is the most celebrated
• 56:44
  athlete in the entire United States Olympic team, the gymnast and and you know,
• 56:50
  all these commercials and endorsements and everything, and you know, she effectively
• 56:55
  quits citing mental health issues, and instead of getting absolutely destroyed by the sports
• 57:07
  media, which absolutely would have happened a couple of decades ago, even though
• 57:10
  she's a black female, she got embraced. She basically became a hero,
• 57:19
  a hero for quitting because of mental health issues. She became a heroine for
• 57:23
  the cause of mental health. And so we've gone completely too far in the
• 57:28
  other direction. I talked about the pendulum effect all the time, where you
• 57:31
  know, maybe at one point we destroyed people too much for losing and failure,
• 57:36
  and now we're actually supporting them too much in failure. And that's what
• 57:42
  happened with the ESPN, at least in Megan Rappino. Now she's gotten a
• 57:46
  lot of criticisms, especially on the right, but ESPN went out of their
• 57:51
  way and there's a short snippet that was shared on Twitter by Clay Travis.
• 57:57
  Out Kick, a guy who I've been critical of in the past, asked
• 58:00
  because he has refused to have a conversation with me about the Penn State Joe
• 58:04
  paternal Jerry Sandusky case, a case that he is completely totally wrong on,
• 58:07
  but he shared this short clip from ESPN where they went out of their way
• 58:15
  to try to rationalize how and why it is that Megan Rappino became a lightning
• 58:21
  rod for this political reaction to the USA women's soccer team losing. And here's
• 58:25
  what that sounded like. Her patriotism is what has driven her to lend her
• 58:34
  voice to those who need it. When she started feeling to protest racial inequality
• 58:37
  in the United States, she did it because she loved America. I believed
• 58:42
  it could be a better version of itself. Now that should be seen as
• 58:45
  part of the for the course for ESPN because they feel like they need to
• 58:52
  rush to the defense of anybody who is on their team politically. And the
• 58:57
  reality here if ESPN was doing real sports news and then they really wanted to
• 59:02
  talk about the political nature of this instead of rationalizing that she's actually anti American
• 59:07
  because she loves America. Look, I get that in concept, but in
• 59:12
  reality, that's not what she was doing. She was doing this out of
• 59:15
  ego. It was in her self interest. She became a celebrity. She
• 59:17
  probably made a lot of money out of this. She became way bigger deal
• 59:22
  because of her woke politics, which the news media amplified and loved her for.
• 59:28
  The whole reason why she was on the team at thirty eight years old
• 59:32
  was because of her woke politics. That's the only reason. It was her
• 59:37
  celebrity and her woke politics that put her on a team she had no business
• 59:40
  being on. It wasn't just that penalty kick. She was awful through the
• 59:45
  entire tournament and had no business being in that position, But she was there
• 59:51
  because of the media adulation and celebrity that was created out of her woke politics,
• 59:58
  which, of course ESPN would never even consider discussing an affair fashion because
• 1:00:05
  ESPN is not an actual sports news organization. They are the woke sports entertainment
• 1:00:13
  arm of the Disney Corporation. That's what ESPN, unfortunately has become, and
• 1:00:17
  they have suffered greatly in their business model partially because of that. Now,
• 1:00:23
  one of the things that has happened, because ESPN has become such a joke
• 1:00:29
  over the years is that other alternative, independent sports outlets have come to fruition.
• 1:00:36
  I mentioned out Kick, which was founded by Clay Travis. But another
• 1:00:40
  one, which I don't even know. I would call it conservative, I
• 1:00:44
  would certainly call an anti establishment, is called Barstool Sports. And something really
• 1:00:49
  amazing has happened in the last couple of days with barstool Sports. Now,
• 1:00:52
  bar Stool Sports is a complicated and today I feel conflicted about them. I
• 1:00:59
  like some of the things they do, I hate some of the other things
• 1:01:00
  they do. A lot of things they do is are just stupid there,
• 1:01:05
  you know. But they appeal to a younger, dumber I guess demographic.
• 1:01:10
  And they're founded by a guy by the name of David Portnoy, and David
• 1:01:14
  Portnoy is a guy who, again I'm not sure how I would characterize him
• 1:01:20
  politically, certainly not liberal, he's very anti woke, he's not classically conservative,
• 1:01:24
  but he has said nice things about Donald Trump. He certainly has a
• 1:01:29
  very trumpy attitude, and to me, he's a bit crass and again not
• 1:01:34
  very in my view, not very smart. But he's very anti establishment and
• 1:01:38
  he's been accused of a lot of things. He's even posted porn videos of
• 1:01:43
  himself online to try to get out of sex abuse allegations which appeared to be
• 1:01:47
  false against him, and that was an effective strategy, but it was certainly
• 1:01:52
  unorthodoxed. But anyway, the reason why I'm mentioning David Portnoy and Barstool is
• 1:01:59
  that Barstool Portnoy sold the controlling interest of Barstool to a casino company called pen
• 1:02:07
  a few years ago. And what's interesting about this from a media standpoint is
• 1:02:14
  that at the time everyone thought, well, that's perfect. I mean barstool
• 1:02:17
  and you know a gambling company. Gambling company is not going to care about
• 1:02:22
  political correctness, right They're barely on the edge of legality as it is,
• 1:02:27
  and so you would think that that would be a marriage that would make sense.
• 1:02:31
  But the left has gotten and the PC crowd has gotten so good at
• 1:02:37
  being able to define the vulnerabilities of any media company that whenever Barstool did something
• 1:02:45
  that was particularly politically incorrect or upset the woke mob, they knew to go
• 1:02:50
  after their corporate entity, PEN and they did so in ways like negative media
• 1:02:57
  articles in The New York Times hurting Pen's doc price or going after Pen from
• 1:03:02
  the standpoint of state regulators, and all they have to do is, you
• 1:03:07
  know, start investigating your gambling license. And that's a death sentence for your
• 1:03:10
  business. And so any corporate entity is going to be super sensitive to that,
• 1:03:15
  and they're going to not give a shit about free speech, and they're
• 1:03:19
  going to curtail what the content is in order to keep their business afloat.
• 1:03:24
  And so Barstool's entire narrative, their entire brand, was, you know,
• 1:03:30
  we don't give a shit and we'll say anything we want. And that was
• 1:03:32
  starting to be eroded because that was not the case when they were owned by
• 1:03:37
  Pen. Well, just a couple of days ago, Portnoy, out of
• 1:03:42
  the blue, announced that he had purchased back the controlling interest of barstool from
• 1:03:49
  Pen and at first I thought, wow, Okay, here's a guy who
• 1:03:52
  put his money where his mouth is good for him, kind of like Elon
• 1:03:57
  Musk buying Twitter or x whatever they call it now. And this is the
• 1:04:00
  only way to save free speech is you have to basically be the owner.
• 1:04:04
  I mean, unless you're the owner and you don't give a damn. And
• 1:04:08
  you know, generally individuals are the only people that could be in this category,
• 1:04:12
  because if you're a corporation, inherently you're going to be whussified. It's
• 1:04:15
  just the entire corporate environment for reasons I've already stated specific to Pen. And
• 1:04:23
  so whether you're Elon, you know, you basically have to be a super
• 1:04:26
  rich guy like Elon Musk, or in this case, a lesser rich guy
• 1:04:29
  like David Portnoy who just doesn't give a damn in order for free speech to
• 1:04:33
  be salvaged. And there's some semblance of reality to that narrative, but it
• 1:04:38
  now appears, having investigated it a little bit further, that what really happened
• 1:04:43
  here is that Pen is now engaged in a relationship with ESPN, and that
• 1:04:49
  ESPN probably wanted nothing to do with Barstool, and that Barstool was actually an
• 1:04:55
  identity that was small enough for pen to just get rid of as a headache,
• 1:05:00
  and they gave Portnoy a sweetheart deal to give him back his company.
• 1:05:05
  Now the result is still the same, free speech, at least at Barstool
• 1:05:10
  will will be enhanced and salvaged. And this is unfortunately what it takes in
• 1:05:15
  this day and age for free speech to be defended some remarkable circumstances. But
• 1:05:19
  I'm not sure that I'm willing to give Portnoy nearly as much credit, because
• 1:05:24
  it seems like he just basically got incredibly lucky and because of circumstances beyond his
• 1:05:29
  control. It was in the self interest of Pen to get rid of bar
• 1:05:32
  Stool and be done with the headache. And it's also interesting to show what
• 1:05:36
  a joke ESPN has become because ESPN now has to sell out to sports gambling
• 1:05:45
  in such a huge way because their business model is broken, and of course
• 1:05:49
  because free speech doesn't mean anything in ESPN and journalism doesn't mean anything in ESPN.
• 1:05:55
  This is a relationship that I'm sure they are confident can work between Pen
• 1:05:59
  AYESPN. So I found that to be an interesting victory for free speech,
• 1:06:03
  but it was probably more to do with corporate circumstances and luck than it really
• 1:06:10
  was. This remarkable stand by David Portnoy. Now, also within the realm
• 1:06:15
  of free speech and sports, I guess you would call it sports casting.
• 1:06:20
  A remarkable thing has happened with the Baltimore Orioles baseball team, and as of
• 1:06:27
  this taping, their primary broadcaster, they're played by plague. Guy by the
• 1:06:31
  name of Kevin Brown, has been suspended from the team. Now, this
• 1:06:36
  happens periodically, and it's always usually an older white guy, but it's always
• 1:06:42
  a white guy who generally when you hear about these things, Oh, some
• 1:06:45
  play by play announcer got suspended or fired. It's generally for saying something politically
• 1:06:49
  incorrect, and not always, but oftentimes it's something that was either misinterpreted or
• 1:06:56
  greatly exaggerated and did not deserve any sort of firing or suspension. But we
• 1:07:00
  now live in the super PC era, and if you don't have any cards
• 1:07:03
  to play, if you're a straight white male, and you know, let's
• 1:07:08
  be clear, play by play announcers don't have nearly the leverage or the cache
• 1:07:15
  or the celebrity that they used to. I mean back in the day,
• 1:07:17
  especially in baseball, when everyone listened to baseball games on the radio, you
• 1:07:23
  know, you had a lot of power. Everyone in town knew who you
• 1:07:26
  were. You were a massive celebrity. There was a connection between you and
• 1:07:30
  the fan base. But now this guy was on television. But there's the
• 1:07:34
  audience percentages have gone way down, and you know, while you still might
• 1:07:39
  be beloved among the Rabbit fan base, you don't have nearly the celebrity,
• 1:07:45
  the cache, the connection to the community. You're not nearly as big a
• 1:07:48
  deal as a baseball broadcaster as you used to be, say, twenty thirty,
• 1:07:54
  forty fifty years ago. So when news broke that Kevin Brown, who
• 1:07:58
  I'd never heard of before, got suspended, of course I wanted to listen
• 1:08:01
  to the tape or here watch the tapes. What did he do? Now?
• 1:08:04
  What happened? Now? What bolt crap was this? I'm always prepared
• 1:08:08
  for this to be bullcrap, but I was not prepared for what this was
• 1:08:12
  about, because this had nothing to do with political correctness at all. This
• 1:08:16
  had to do with Kevin Brown simply stating statistics, absolutely factual statistics, about
• 1:08:25
  how poorly the Baltimore Orioles baseball team had done against their opponent that they were
• 1:08:30
  playing that night. And it wasn't even done in a snarky fashion. It
• 1:08:34
  wasn't done in a disrespectful way. It was more like, hey, folks,
• 1:08:39
  you know, the Orioles are playing a team that they haven't done very
• 1:08:41
  well against in recent years, and hopefully they'll turn it around tonight. I
• 1:08:46
  mean, that was basically the narrative that Kevin Brown was creating, and he
• 1:08:51
  got suspended indefinitely by the team for this. Now, this was shocking even
• 1:08:59
  by today's stand But here's what's interesting, and in a little bit of way,
• 1:09:02
  like David Portnoy, where there's hope for free speech. Here the reaction
• 1:09:09
  by the baseball community, not by the Orioles, at least not yet,
• 1:09:13
  although I suspect that eventually the Oriels are going to have to cave, if
• 1:09:15
  they haven't already by the time you listen to this. The reaction of the
• 1:09:18
  baseball community has been exactly as it needs to be, and that is that
• 1:09:27
  almost every I shouldn't say everything, but many prominent baseball play by play announcers
• 1:09:31
  have proactively come out and defended Kevin Brown and the Orioles. Crowd in a
• 1:09:40
  home game at Camden Yards even started chanting free Kevin Brown. And to me,
• 1:09:45
  this is the only path. This is the only path that works.
• 1:09:48
  Humiliation is the only way that this is ever going to be fixed. This
• 1:09:53
  is the only thing these people understand is for the Orioles ownership to be humiliated
• 1:10:00
  and for everybody else in the industry to stand together. And I'm always depressed
• 1:10:04
  because it seems like people in broadcasting are so terrified for their own gigs that
• 1:10:10
  they never support anybody else, and they never realize that their own self interest
• 1:10:14
  is at stake here where If this can happen to Kevin Brown, then why
• 1:10:17
  can't it happen to me? Well, in this case, because it was
• 1:10:19
  so over the top and so obvious and so dramatic, it appears as if
• 1:10:24
  people in the broadcasting industry and baseball have realized that their self interest is on
• 1:10:29
  the line here. And the support he has gotten, at least so far,
• 1:10:32
  has been overwhelming. And I do expect and I'm hopeful that eventually this
• 1:10:38
  is going to be fixed because it's an absolute joke. I mean, it's
• 1:10:42
  absurd that a baseball team could do this, and it's I think important.
• 1:10:47
  Here's why it's important. It goes to show how incredibly powerful corporate interests,
• 1:10:54
  even absurd corporate interests like don't criticize our baseball team are what you hear and
• 1:11:00
  see and read in the news media, whether it's the sports media or the
• 1:11:04
  news media, or any kind of information that you get, it is invariably
• 1:11:12
  being impacted by corporate interests. And this kind of thing has a massive chilling
• 1:11:17
  effect because people don't want to lose their jobs, obviously, especially in the
• 1:11:23
  media era, where getting new jobs, especially good ones, is very,
• 1:11:28
  very difficult, and your job is everything in your existence. Without your job
• 1:11:31
  as a broadcast you're you're literally a nobody. I mean, there's only very
• 1:11:35
  few of these jobs that ever come open, and they're incredibly cushy gigs,
• 1:11:41
  their dream jobs, and nobody wants to do anything to threaten those, so
• 1:11:45
  that inherently curtails free speech. And if Kevin Brown's suspension stands without being immediately
• 1:11:51
  reversed in an apology, then basically you play by play broadcasting is dead in
• 1:11:59
  every single sport because that will have a massive chilling effect. If ownership can
• 1:12:03
  get away with suspending a person simply because they stated facts that weren't favorable to
• 1:12:10
  the team. Then it's over. And I'm telling you this kind of thing.
• 1:12:14
  You might think, well, John, who cares about the Baltimore Oils
• 1:12:16
  baseball team? Now, No, this is much bigger than that is.
• 1:12:19
  This is the way this works in the modern media era, especially when we
• 1:12:25
  have a corporate interests as pervasive as they are, and we see it all
• 1:12:30
  the time. We see that, we see this happening on a consistent basis.
• 1:12:35
  I want to go through a couple of other quick stories that involve news
• 1:12:42
  media and evidence of just how incredibly powerful the woke mob is, and as
• 1:12:48
  well as a couple of stories involving race and the don't want to get to
• 1:12:51
  this crazy story that I referenced at the very beginning of the podcast. Then
• 1:12:57
  there's the issue of race, a couple of issues regarding that I wanted to
• 1:13:00
  talk about in this in the time we have left in this podcast. Jamal
• 1:13:05
  Hill Jamale I think it's that's you said of her first name, Jamali Hill.
• 1:13:12
  She's a former ESPN Sports I guest quote unquote reporter or columnist. She
• 1:13:16
  now works for The Athletic and she chimed in on this case out of Alabama
• 1:13:21
  that I've not mentioned this podcast where a woman by name of Carly Russell faked
• 1:13:28
  to her own kidnapping. It was an obvious fake. I didn't even mention
• 1:13:30
  it on the podcast because it was so obviously a hoax, and there were
• 1:13:35
  a lot of people that called it out as a hoax. Candas Owen,
• 1:13:40
  who is a black female conservative commentator, She's was probably the most prominent to
• 1:13:45
  come out and say this is a hoax. But it was obvious that it
• 1:13:48
  was a hoax, and it was found to be a hoax. Well,
• 1:13:53
  Hill is now being criticized because she's saying that the legal treatment of Carly Russell,
• 1:14:00
  the kidnap hoaxter, is racist, that she's being treated in a racist
• 1:14:06
  fashion because she happens to be a black female, and that if she was
• 1:14:10
  white, this would not be the way that she would be treated without any
• 1:14:14
  evidence whatsoever. And I think it's emblematic of this reality that we've now created
• 1:14:18
  in the news media where no matter what bad happens to you, even when
• 1:14:23
  you screw up, it's inherently racist. And as a black female, Hill
• 1:14:28
  is allowed to do this and we'll get nothing but praise from she might a
• 1:14:31
  criticism on social media, but I'm sure she gets nothing but praise from her
• 1:14:34
  employer, her very woke employer, the athletic And the reality is that guess
• 1:14:41
  what, sometimes, especially when you screw up and you get punished, your
• 1:14:45
  race or your gender has nothing to do with it. It happens to do
• 1:14:47
  with what you did, which was wrong and caused an awful lot of problems
• 1:14:53
  and sets a horrible precedent if it's not properly punished. But this is the
• 1:14:58
  world we now live in. These are the people that are elevated in the
• 1:15:01
  woke media world and what they really believe. And similarly, the La Times,
• 1:15:08
  this is extraordinary. This is like a parody. The La Times did
• 1:15:12
  a story about in person working. In other words, you know, post
• 1:15:17
  COVID people getting back into the office, which is happened at a remarkably slow
• 1:15:25
  rate in some industries because people like working from home, especially lazy people like
• 1:15:30
  working from home for whatever reason, or antisocial people like working from home.
• 1:15:34
  I mean, I've never understood it. To me, it's inherently inefficient and
• 1:15:40
  indicative that some people really liked the whole COVID lockdown, which was an underrated
• 1:15:45
  element of why COVID policies did not have nearly the blowback that they should have.
• 1:15:51
  But the LA Times has decided that in person working is now effectively inherently
• 1:15:59
  racist. Here's the headline from the Los Angeles Times. Remote work gave them
• 1:16:03
  a reprieve from racism. They don't want to go back now. The reason
• 1:16:13
  why the LA Times did this story about remote work and apparent black hesitancy to
• 1:16:19
  go back to in person work is that there was a study in twenty twenty
• 1:16:25
  one that just three percent of black white collar quote unquote knowledge workers whatever the
• 1:16:31
  hell that is, wanted to return to full time in office work compared with
• 1:16:36
  twenty one percent of white ones. And this apparently was a is a significant
• 1:16:44
  difference. I mean, twenty one percent versus three percent, that is very
• 1:16:47
  significant difference, although the numbers should in both should have been much higher in
• 1:16:53
  twenty twenty one. That's to me the bigger issue. But okay, that's
• 1:16:57
  a big disparity between white people wanting to go back to work or not wanting
• 1:17:00
  to go back to work, and Black people not wanting to go back to
• 1:17:04
  work. Now, you could come up with all sorts of possible explanations for
• 1:17:10
  that, but the La Times believes that they have the actual explanation. It
• 1:17:15
  must be racism that by not having to go in person and going into the
• 1:17:21
  office, this was a reprieve from inherent racism. It's inherently racist the corporate
• 1:17:30
  office. And so that's the reason why more black white collar workers don't want
• 1:17:36
  to go back into the office than white white collar workers. Now there's no
• 1:17:44
  logic, there's no evidence to this, but this is the prism through which
• 1:17:46
  the La Times and the mainstream news media sees everything. Whenever they can see
• 1:17:51
  race, they see race. And by the way, this has devastating impact
• 1:17:56
  because it teaches people to see everything through the prism of like Jamally Hatton,
• 1:18:01
  Jamally Hill, who you know, sees somehow Carly Russell being treated in a
• 1:18:09
  racist way in Alabama because she's a kidnap hoaxer. I mean, so this
• 1:18:15
  has implications and we've seen it throughout society where when we teach people through the
• 1:18:19
  media to see everything through the prism of race, and every indignity, every
• 1:18:26
  wrong, anything that bad happens to you is because of your race, when
• 1:18:30
  it's not there's no evidence for that. That's especially for younger people that's how
• 1:18:35
  they learn the world. And that's why younger people think bizarrely that we live
• 1:18:41
  in a more racist society than older people do. I mean, because younger
• 1:18:46
  people have nothing to compare this too, and they're just buying the bull crap
• 1:18:51
  when we live in the least racist society we've ever lived in in American history.
• 1:18:57
  So everything is upside that everything is the opposite of the way they are
• 1:19:01
  in reality. And then the media facilitates these false narratives, and then sometimes
• 1:19:09
  we have situations where this impacts real life. It's not just in theory.
• 1:19:14
  You know. It's some article in the La Times saying, well, here's
• 1:19:16
  why black people don't want to come back to the office more so than white
• 1:19:19
  people do, because obviously the corporate office is racist. There's this situation that
• 1:19:26
  happened here in California involving an eleven vigilante. You may have seen this situation
• 1:19:34
  in Stockton, California. The video went viral where there was a guy who
• 1:19:40
  happened to be black, which is important to the narrative, I think,
• 1:19:43
  in the media's eyes, stealing a bunch of stuff from a seven eleven and
• 1:19:49
  he got warned and he didn't take the warnings. We've seen all sorts of
• 1:19:54
  videos now where people just brazenly shoplift all over the place because they have no
• 1:19:58
  fear of any sort of repercussions or accountability, because, especially in big cities,
• 1:20:02
  we just let this happen now, especially if the person happens to be
• 1:20:04
  black, because you know that would be racist. I guess to punish them
• 1:20:09
  for stealing, bizarrely, and so this video when it happened, the reason
• 1:20:15
  why it went viral was because there was a guy who was wearing a turban
• 1:20:20
  who appears to have been from behind the counter at the seven to eleven,
• 1:20:26
  which fit a lot of people's stereotypes, especially if you ever watched the Fox
• 1:20:30
  cartoon The Simpsons, where the guy with the turban is running the seven to
• 1:20:33
  eleven and he comes out with a stick and starts beating the crap out of
• 1:20:38
  the guy who was shoplifting. Well, when as soon as I saw the
• 1:20:42
  video, I'm like, oh, you know, thank goodness, this guy's
• 1:20:45
  wearing a turban, because at least that gives him some level of political correctness
• 1:20:49
  protection. If he was a white guy, this guy would be for sure
• 1:20:54
  in jail immediately, and the media would destroy him for you know, overreact,
• 1:21:00
  digging in their minds to a shoplifter. Well, the turban apparently has
• 1:21:03
  not provided complete protection from media criticism, because here's the Modesto B and their
• 1:21:11
  take in an opinion column on the seven eleven vigilante headline, Stockton seven eleven
• 1:21:17
  clerks went too far in viciously beating brazen shoplifter, and they write in the
• 1:21:26
  Modesto B. Police in Stockton are busy with weighty matters, as they are
• 1:21:31
  in Sacramento, Modesto and elsewhere. Petty theft often doesn't get the cops attention,
• 1:21:39
  and if a thief is arrested, the punishment handed out in court typically
• 1:21:45
  is light. But thrashing the guy with a big rod viciously and repeatedly is
• 1:21:51
  not a lawful response. The bystander recording this display of vigilanteism saw the beating
• 1:22:01
  for what it was and tried to intervene, verbally asking the clerks to stop
• 1:22:08
  and ushering the bruised man toward the door. Before exiting, the shoplifter asked
• 1:22:15
  for a soda, calling into question his mental state. I don't even know
• 1:22:19
  what the hell that means. At no time did he appear to pose a
• 1:22:24
  physical threat to the clerks. Street justice may be popular in movies or among
• 1:22:31
  frustrated citizens, but it has no place in a society governed by the rule
• 1:22:39
  of law. And you know what, I actually I don't agree, but
• 1:22:43
  I sympathize with a lot of that. Except for this, there is no
• 1:22:48
  rule of law anymore. It does not exist. If there was a rule
• 1:22:56
  of law, this was not systematic. If this was not happening because of
• 1:23:00
  a fundamental change in the way that our society views, for instance, shoplifting,
• 1:23:06
  at least in big cities, then I would agree with the Benett Modesta,
• 1:23:13
  be the Modesta newspaper, I would agree with them. But we don't
• 1:23:18
  live in that world anymore. So you can't have it both ways. You
• 1:23:23
  can't claim this is against the rule of law and not be in favor of
• 1:23:28
  making sure that people who do this kind of stuff are punished an accountable.
• 1:23:33
  And so if someone and I'll be the first acknowledge, you know what,
• 1:23:36
  he probably could have stopped a little sooner with the beating than he did,
• 1:23:41
  and the fact that he didn't is partially why in conservative circles this guy is
• 1:23:45
  a hero. But I mean this is someone's taking from his store and was
• 1:23:53
  told to stop. It's not like this. There was no warning and I
• 1:23:58
  can totally understand the action. Now, my fear is that because of political
• 1:24:02
  correctness being what it is and the meeting narrative being what it is, that
• 1:24:06
  we're gonna have another situation where someone intervening ends up getting in more trouble than
• 1:24:12
  the person who created the situation to begin with, who perpetrated the original crime.
• 1:24:18
  And the core problem here is the core problem is this, there is
• 1:24:23
  no rule of law, and largely there's no rule of law because the media
• 1:24:29
  has created these rules where if you have a certain level of political correctness protection,
• 1:24:35
  it's very difficult to go after you if you fit a certain demographic,
• 1:24:41
  which many of not most, or all of these perpetrators do. And so
• 1:24:46
  a lot of this goes right back to the media. There's a lot of
• 1:24:48
  other reasons, as this article indicates. You know, police are busy,
• 1:24:53
  there's all sorts of other things they got to worry about. This is deep
• 1:24:56
  prioritized. But when you've got video of people raisingly shoplifting all over the place,
• 1:25:01
  this goes right at the heart of who we are as a society.
• 1:25:05
  And something's got to be done, and this person decided because society is not
• 1:25:11
  going to help, the police aren't going to help, the media is not
• 1:25:14
  going to help, I'm going to take this into my own hands. And
• 1:25:18
  you know, I'm very curious to see what's going to happen to the people
• 1:25:23
  who did this, especially the guy in the turban, because I fear that
• 1:25:27
  this is going to be another situation where the person who tried to correct the
• 1:25:31
  situation is punished more than the person who created it. And that's the upside
• 1:25:35
  down world in which we live now. I want to finish this podcast in
• 1:25:42
  a little different way than I normally would with a story that I think is
• 1:25:46
  important. It doesn't have a direct media element to it, but it has
• 1:25:53
  a media element to it, and it's involving the world of golf. And
• 1:26:00
  by the way, let me reference as a way of getting into this kind
• 1:26:03
  of I've talked a lot about the whole PGA Tour Live controversy, and one
• 1:26:09
  of the predictions that I made when word broke of this alleged merger between the
• 1:26:14
  PGA Tour and Live Golf, which I'm not sure is ever really going to
• 1:26:17
  happen, one of the predictions I made was that Tiger was would eventually come
• 1:26:23
  out strongly in favor of the PGA Tour side of this equation in this debate,
• 1:26:30
  and that he would side strongly with the Commissioner Jay Monahan, and that
• 1:26:34
  he's been silent for a long time because he's been out with an injury and
• 1:26:39
  or surgery ever since the Masters Golf Tournament in April, and that when he
• 1:26:43
  eventually did a press conference about this, that he would basically provide a mic
• 1:26:47
  drop for the PGA Tour in a very significant way, that it would have
• 1:26:53
  a lot of political power behind it. Now the press conference part has not
• 1:26:58
  yet happened. However, recently, Tiger Woods was named to the PGA Tour
• 1:27:02
  Policy Board, which shocked a lot of people and really is a signal that
• 1:27:09
  I was right about this, that Tiger Woods is completely on board with what
• 1:27:14
  the Commissioner, Jay Monahan is trying to do with regard to the lib Golf
• 1:27:18
  merger. And I'll be very curious to see what Tiger Woods ends up saying
• 1:27:23
  about this, but it has become very very obvious that Tiger is on team
• 1:27:29
  Monahan and is very much in favor of this proposed merger if it happens under
• 1:27:35
  the right circumstances. Now, I did an episode of the podcast a few
• 1:27:40
  weeks ago where I expressed great pessimism surprise, surprise for me to be pessimistic.
• 1:27:45
  I know that because all this is now way too public, that getting
• 1:27:49
  a final deal is going to be very, very difficult. I do not
• 1:27:53
  have a lot of optimism unless Tiger can work some magic, because it's obvious
• 1:27:57
  that the Saudist covet Tiger woods involvement. So unless Tiger can work some magic,
• 1:28:02
  I do not believe we're going to get a real, legitimate, quote
• 1:28:08
  unquote merger that is in the PGA tour or best interest to or in the
• 1:28:12
  best interests of the game of golf, which is very depressing to me.
• 1:28:15
  I'm still hopeful, but I am pessimistic about those possibilities. But I did
• 1:28:19
  want to mention that Tiger Woods has made a major stap in the direction that
• 1:28:25
  I predicted that he would now with regard to golf. In the story,
• 1:28:29
  I'm going to tell you a little bit of background. I'm fifty six years
• 1:28:34
  old. I've been a tournament golfer most of my life. I played golf
• 1:28:38
  at Georgetown. I've played in three national Amateur championships, including a Britishman Amateur.
• 1:28:43
  I've won four club championships. Not nearly as good as I used to
• 1:28:47
  be. I'm about a one handicap thereabouts. I still try to play in
• 1:28:51
  tournaments, you know, generally now as a senior, because I'm eligible as
• 1:28:57
  a senior golfer in the amateur world at the age of fifty five, and
• 1:29:02
  I play in a lot of these qualified the qualifiers for national amateur events.
• 1:29:11
  And I do that partially because I play in some tournaments to get ready for
• 1:29:15
  other tournaments. Because I actually play very very little golf. I practice a
• 1:29:20
  lot, but because I've got two young kids, and because of the nature
• 1:29:24
  of my scheduling, and because of our economic situation, all sorts of other
• 1:29:28
  reasons, I probably play fewer rounds of golf than anybody who tries to play
• 1:29:31
  at the national amateur level that I know of, and it's probably not even
• 1:29:35
  close. So when I get the opportunity to play a tournament round, I
• 1:29:41
  will take it, if only for preparation for other tournaments where I actually think
• 1:29:45
  I have a chance to qualify, specifically for senior events and the biggest national
• 1:29:53
  amateur championship in the world is the US Amateur. Tiger Woods won it three
• 1:29:57
  times. Anybody who's ever been anything in golf, Jack Nicholas, Phil Mickelson,
• 1:30:02
  and everybody has won the US Amateur at some point. It's the biggest
• 1:30:06
  amateur event in all of golf. So a couple of weeks ago, it's
• 1:30:11
  about the start. I think in the next few days. The Women's Amateur
• 1:30:15
  is actually happening here in Los Angeles as we speak, but the Men's Amateur
• 1:30:20
  qualifying takes place for a month or so before the tournament, and a couple
• 1:30:26
  of weeks ago, as a way of preparing for other tournaments, I signed
• 1:30:31
  up for the US Amateur Qualifier. Now every year I think this is going
• 1:30:34
  to be the last time this happens because I'm too freaking old. Because the
• 1:30:39
  US Amateur Qualifier is thirty six holes, which is a very long day,
• 1:30:45
  and getting a caddy in most areas in the southern California Los Angeles area is
• 1:30:49
  either impossible or extremely expensive. And you know, for a fifty six year
• 1:30:55
  old guy who's not in fantastic shape to walk carry his own bag for thirty
• 1:30:59
  six holes, playing against young kids, it's basically impossible. But I really
• 1:31:03
  needed a tournament round, so I signed up for the US Amateur qualifier.
• 1:31:10
  I've never qualified for a US Amateur. I've qualified for US Mini Amateurs,
• 1:31:13
  which is for twenty five years and older, but never for the most prestigious
• 1:31:17
  event, the US Amateur. It's always been long ago. That was my
• 1:31:21
  ultimate goal in golf. I long ago realize it's never gonna happen. Although
• 1:31:26
  I came fairly close slashed year because I played really well and had a caddy
• 1:31:30
  and a course that was short enough for an old guy to play. But
• 1:31:33
  this year, the options were very poor, and basically my only option was
• 1:31:39
  to play one of the toughest courses in all of southern California, if not
• 1:31:43
  the state, in a place that was too remote to get a caddy.
• 1:31:46
  But I decided, you know what, I'm gonna play because I need a
• 1:31:50
  tournament round, and if I don't make thirty six holes, I don't make
• 1:31:55
  thirty six holes, you know, and you know it's not unusual for people
• 1:31:59
  to withdraw at or eighteen or twenty seven or whatever, and that was my
• 1:32:02
  basic plan. I'll get an eighteen hole round in for sure, and if
• 1:32:06
  everything goes well, maybe I'll finish thirty six and it'll be good exercise and
• 1:32:11
  it'll be brutal, but I'll get through it. Trust me, Folks.
• 1:32:15
  This story as a point that's nothing really to do with golf, has to
• 1:32:17
  do with where we are as a society, and especially this younger generation,
• 1:32:23
  because this is really astonishing what transpired. And this has been bothering me for
• 1:32:30
  several weeks, and I now have some freedom to finally talk about it.
• 1:32:33
  There's actually been two stories in my life that have been weighing on me in
• 1:32:38
  a very very dramatic fashion. One has been weighing on me for over a
• 1:32:44
  year now, especially the last six or seven months, that I cannot talk
• 1:32:46
  about yet. I'm hopeful that eventually I'll be able to tell you the story,
• 1:32:51
  and it's going to be a doozy that's going to knock your socks off
• 1:32:55
  if I'm ever able to tell the full story of it. But that has
• 1:32:58
  been weighing me down dramatically, especially not being able to discuss it, and
• 1:33:02
  that has much more to do with the professional realm. Well, this story
• 1:33:06
  has been bothering me for several weeks, and so if only for cathartic reasons.
• 1:33:11
  I want to tell you what happened at this US Amateur qualifier, and
• 1:33:15
  I think you're also going to find this to be really telling about where we
• 1:33:18
  are as a society. So I happen to have the first tea time at
• 1:33:24
  this US Amateur qualifier, and normally you play three guys in a group,
• 1:33:30
  but unfortunately, as often happens because it's a thirty six sold qualifier, which
• 1:33:33
  is a huge commitment, we get to the first tea and there's only two
• 1:33:38
  of us, so someone has not shown up. They've basically withdrawn before they
• 1:33:43
  even start. Now, normally that wouldn't be that big of a deal,
• 1:33:45
  but I'm immediately thinking, oh shit, that means we're toosome, which means
• 1:33:50
  it's going to be more awkward for me to withdraw if I withdraw after the
• 1:33:56
  first round or say sometime in the second round of this thirty six old qualifier,
• 1:34:01
  carrying my own bag as a fifty six year old guy who's not in
• 1:34:04
  fantastic physical shade. So that's already weighing on my mind. And the guy
• 1:34:10
  I'm paired with is a teenage kid. Now I'm not going to say his
• 1:34:15
  name I've thought about whether or not I should say his name. I'm not
• 1:34:17
  going to say the name for reasons that will become clear as I tell the
• 1:34:23
  story. But this guy, this kid has a caddy, an older gentleman
• 1:34:28
  who was a friend of his family and his father, And this is important
• 1:34:31
  for the story. This kid's father is also a player, a prominent player
• 1:34:36
  who's also prominent in the golf world. In fact, he has a pretty
• 1:34:41
  strong connection to Tiger Woods and a very strong connection to Fred Couples, who
• 1:34:45
  if you're a golfer, you know who Fred Couples Isn't Fred Couples and Tiger
• 1:34:48
  Woods or our best buds. They even do commercials together. So I didn't
• 1:34:54
  know who this kid was, but I was vaguely aware of his father.
• 1:34:59
  And and you know, these kids today are just amazing players. I mean,
• 1:35:04
  people have no idea who are not golfers they have. It's just a
• 1:35:08
  night and day difference. Teenagers today are white years ahead of where teenagers were
• 1:35:15
  when I was a teenager in golf for a number of reasons. Part of
• 1:35:18
  its technology, part of it's the number of kids playing, part of its
• 1:35:21
  attitude. I mean, they have no fear at all. They hit the
• 1:35:26
  ball a mile. I mean, it's just extraordinary. I mean it used
• 1:35:29
  to be that experience in golf was an advantage. I now actually think experience
• 1:35:32
  and golf is a disadvantage, and the inexperience and having no scar tissue is
• 1:35:36
  actually an advantage in the modern game, partially because of the nature of very
• 1:35:42
  forgiving technology. Anyway, So we're playing the first round of this thirty six
• 1:35:46
  old qualifier and this kid's pretty cocky, but all kids that are at this
• 1:35:51
  level of golf are very cocky, and I'm getting along with this caddy.
• 1:35:56
  Fine, I'm not really liking the kid, and you know, we're playing
• 1:36:00
  basically the same level of golf. And we finished the first round. I
• 1:36:05
  finished badly. My putting sucks, but I end up the way this works
• 1:36:13
  is you basically have to make sure that you shoot a certain score at least
• 1:36:17
  in one of the two eighteen whole rounds, so that you don't get prevented
• 1:36:23
  from being allowed to qualify in the future. Again, I don't want to
• 1:36:26
  get into all the details, but basically I had shot below that score,
• 1:36:30
  had I had shot seven over par with pathetic putting on this very very difficult
• 1:36:34
  golf course. So I basically, in my mind, had accomplished my goal
• 1:36:40
  for the first eighteen holes. I wasn't going to get prevented from qualifying in
• 1:36:44
  the future. I had broken eighty, I hit the ball decently, putted
• 1:36:47
  like crab, but at least I knew what the hell was going on with
• 1:36:51
  my game. And the kid, I think he ended up shooting three over
• 1:36:57
  par, so you know, he beat me by fours in the end.
• 1:37:00
  And this is very difficult golf course, so he was still in theoretical contention
• 1:37:05
  to qualify should he shoot a fantastic ground in the second eighteen. Normally you
• 1:37:13
  got to shoot in the sixties to qualify in both rounds for US Amateur.
• 1:37:16
  But this is a very, very difficult golf course. We're literally maybe the
• 1:37:20
  most difficult golf course being used in the entire nation for US Amateur qualifiers.
• 1:37:27
  So I realized that, okay, there's not much chance I'm going to get
• 1:37:30
  through the second eighteen, and so I go to the guy who's running the
• 1:37:34
  tournament, who I know a little bit, and I say, look,
• 1:37:36
  if I have to withdraw in the second eighteen since we're only a twosome,
• 1:37:42
  because I remember we only started as two instead of three, and I'm keeping
• 1:37:46
  my playing competitors scorecard. I'm assuming what I do is I just signed the
• 1:37:53
  card to whatever point we're at, and then I give it to him and
• 1:37:57
  then he'll fall back to the group behind us. Is that what we should
• 1:38:00
  do? And the guy in charge says, yeah, that's fine, And
• 1:38:03
  in fact, you're lucky because the group behind you also had a withdrawal,
• 1:38:08
  so there're only a twosome. So that would be fine because then he'll be
• 1:38:12
  playing in a threesome. And I'm like, that's fantastic because I don't want
• 1:38:15
  to cause the kid any problem, and you know, and that way I
• 1:38:20
  can withdraw, I can go home, and you know, nobody's harmed by
• 1:38:26
  my presence. So we start the second eighteen, and I'm actually playing a
• 1:38:30
  little bit better than I did in the first eighteen, but there's you know,
• 1:38:32
  I'm not lighting the world on fire. But the kid is actually starting
• 1:38:35
  to play really well. And in fact, we had a the head golf
• 1:38:41
  coach from Texas Tech for some reason, was here in California recruiting and he
• 1:38:46
  was following the kid, who was a teenager in high school for a couple
• 1:38:51
  of holes. I thought, Wow, Okay, this kid's even more well
• 1:38:55
  known than I realized that the head coach at Texas Tech is is following us
• 1:38:59
  around, and and I'm like, okay, you know, I'm still thinking,
• 1:39:03
  I'm gonna get through the first nine at least and play twenty seven.
• 1:39:08
  And then we turn, you know, back in the direction into the wind,
• 1:39:13
  and we play a tough couple of very difficult holes, and I make
• 1:39:16
  a triple bogeye on on this particular hole number six that now I know I'm
• 1:39:24
  completely out of it. So now I'm I'm thinking, all right, do
• 1:39:29
  I go through nine holes and quit? Or do I withdraw and let this
• 1:39:32
  kid fall back. I'm trying to figure out the best way so that this
• 1:39:38
  kid is not hindered because he has just made a couple of birdies and he's
• 1:39:43
  almost on the cut line here. Only four I think, actually two,
• 1:39:45
  Only two people actually qualify out of the out of a field of like eighty
• 1:39:49
  or ninety or whatever it was, and then you have two alternates. But
• 1:39:54
  because this course is so difficult, the scores are high, and I know
• 1:39:58
  that he's he's got a chance, he's still in the ball game. I'm
• 1:40:00
  not he's still in the ball game. So I'm trying to figure out,
• 1:40:03
  even though I don't really like the kid, how can I get out of
• 1:40:06
  this without causing him any problems. So I, as we're playing number seven,
• 1:40:12
  I tell the kid, all right, I'm just gonna play in here
• 1:40:15
  as your marker. In other words, I'm withdrawing, but I'll keep your
• 1:40:20
  score through nine and then you can fall back to the group behind us,
• 1:40:26
  and you know, and I'll be gone and everything will be fine. And
• 1:40:30
  I can tell he doesn't like that idea. So we've finished the seventh holl,
• 1:40:34
  the seventh holes up on a hill, and we see the group behind
• 1:40:39
  us that is still several hundred yards you know, behind us. It's gonna
• 1:40:45
  take a while to get up the hill, play the seventh hole and get
• 1:40:48
  up to the eighth t which is on the top of a hill. And
• 1:40:53
  and I say to the kid, and you know, I'm gonna keep going.
• 1:40:57
  Are we gonna keep going? Here? He goes, why don't you
• 1:40:59
  go ahead? The kid tells me, why don't you go ahead, I'm
• 1:41:02
  just gonna fall back now since you've withdrawn, And he had just bogie the
• 1:41:08
  last two holes. So I thought Okay, maybe he's pissed, maybe somehow
• 1:41:13
  blaming me. I don't know, but he's you know, he's clearly not
• 1:41:17
  in a good mindset because now he's kind of outside the cut line, and
• 1:41:23
  so I don't want to cause him any problems. And I was a bit
• 1:41:25
  myth because I'm like, well, I don't know why you want to stop
• 1:41:29
  playing and have me go ahead, but fine, if that's what you want,
• 1:41:31
  I'll do that. So I took his scorecard and I signed my name
• 1:41:38
  or my initials under the seventh hole to signify that the first seven holes of
• 1:41:44
  our second round I was authorizing as the correct scores, and I handed him
• 1:41:50
  the scorecard. I said good luck, and I just basically played in by
• 1:41:56
  myself, just for the sake of having something to do. Was I was
• 1:41:59
  walking in to the clubhouse, and he stayed and joined up with the group
• 1:42:04
  behind us, and I didn't think much of it other than it was weird
• 1:42:10
  that this kid really wanted me to move on and not play with him through
• 1:42:15
  the nine holes. So I drove home. I went in. I said
• 1:42:19
  I'm withdrawing. They said, no problem. I told him. I gave
• 1:42:23
  him the scorecard to my playing competitor and that he had fallen back to the
• 1:42:28
  group behind us. And so I drove home and it's like a two hour
• 1:42:31
  drive home from where this course is. And I get home and I'm kind
• 1:42:38
  of tired and depressed whatever. But as I normally do, I checked the
• 1:42:42
  scores on the app. There's an app that has all the scores, including
• 1:42:46
  hole by hole, because I'm curious as to how the rest of the field
• 1:42:50
  is doing. I know a couple of people in the tournament. And as
• 1:42:55
  I'm looking at the scores, I noticed that the kid I played with is
• 1:42:58
  still in contention to get a spot in the USA Haven't your Golf Championship.
• 1:43:02
  And I'm like, wow, what the heck did he do? You know?
• 1:43:06
  After I left, because he only had you know, eleven holes left.
• 1:43:12
  And so I look at his score and on the app they have the
• 1:43:15
  hole by hole scoring, and much to my shock, I look at the
• 1:43:21
  first seven holes that I had been responsible for. I had been keeping his
• 1:43:27
  score four and they are wrong. And they're not just a little bit wrong,
• 1:43:33
  They're totally wrong. In fact, holes number six and seven, which
• 1:43:39
  I had marked as bogies one over par on each of those holes were marked
• 1:43:45
  as pars par five and a part four. So I had written down a
• 1:43:49
  six and a five, and on the APP was a five and a four,
• 1:43:56
  So he was doing two shots better than I know he actually did.
• 1:44:01
  Now, sometimes the app is not accurate, sometimes there are mistakes made,
• 1:44:08
  but I'm thinking this is really odd. And now he is in contention,
• 1:44:12
  he's about to finish up. He's in contention to win a spot in the
• 1:44:15
  US Amateur Golf Championship. So I call the golf course and try to speak
• 1:44:21
  to the person in charge. Eventually they call me back and I explain the
• 1:44:28
  story. I say, I just got to tell you this. Those scores
• 1:44:33
  on the app, are they right? And the guy goes, yeah,
• 1:44:38
  I'm looking to the scorecard and that's that's what is the official score for the
• 1:44:43
  kid. And I said, well, I'm telling you that's not what he
• 1:44:46
  got on those holes. On holes six and seven, he made bogey.
• 1:44:50
  He did not make part. And I explained, you know, every shot
• 1:44:55
  that he hit and how I was positive that was bogey, and that I
• 1:44:58
  had signed off on those being bogies, and that I assure you that this
• 1:45:05
  is what happened. This is wrong, and something's got to be done about
• 1:45:09
  this, and so the person in charge then said, okay, fine,
• 1:45:15
  we'll do what we can do and thank you for calling. Well, incredibly
• 1:45:20
  long story short without getting into all the details. This then facilitated a very
• 1:45:29
  long, drawn out, excruciating investigation where I had a conference call with the
• 1:45:38
  people who in charge of the Southern California Golf Association. They sent me the
• 1:45:43
  scorecard for this kid, and the scorecard was absolutely hilarious. This kid had
• 1:45:49
  erased what I had marked down on hole's six and seven and written in incorrect
• 1:45:57
  scores. And when he had written in incorrect scores, it actually used a
• 1:46:00
  version, a version of the number four that I don't use. In other
• 1:46:06
  words, he made a four with the triangle at the top instead of right
• 1:46:10
  angles. And elsewhere in a scorecard you see that I write fours with the
• 1:46:15
  right angles and not the triangle, and I mean so, and then you
• 1:46:19
  could still see the six and the five that I had written on the scorecard.
• 1:46:25
  He didn't even do a good job over racing, and then he did
• 1:46:28
  all sorts of other crazy things with the scorecard. And when I was sent
• 1:46:30
  the scorecard, I thought, Okay, this is as open and shut as
• 1:46:34
  it gets. This guy ought to be suspended for an extended period of time
• 1:46:40
  from being allowed to play in any events. Obviously he should be disqualified from
• 1:46:45
  this event itself. It turns out that he almost qualified. He was tied
• 1:46:49
  for an alternate spot, which is a big deal, as it turns out,
• 1:46:55
  with his fake score. And and I thought, Okay, this is
• 1:47:00
  this is going to be open and shut, no big deal, no problems.
• 1:47:03
  I'm actually feeling a little bit of sympathy for the kid because he's young,
• 1:47:08
  he's you know, made a stupid mistake, and I'm not wanting to
• 1:47:11
  destroy his life and his career and his college aspirations and all that. Turns
• 1:47:15
  out the kid blatantly lied when they asked him what happened on those holes six
• 1:47:21
  and seven, he just completely lied, And and so the SEGA didn't know
• 1:47:27
  what the hell to do. Like it was somehow, he said, he
• 1:47:30
  said, And I'm like, this is not a he said, he said,
• 1:47:31
  this is this is as clear as day as it gets it supposedly with
• 1:47:34
  the scorecard. So I'm not getting any movement at all on some accountability for
• 1:47:42
  this as blatant and brazen and cheating that I've ever even heard of. I
• 1:47:46
  mean, there's a similar situation that happened recently on the Canadian Professional Golf Tour,
• 1:47:51
  but that was taken care of pretty quickly and the person was disqualified.
• 1:47:57
  Well, because I'm not getting any satisfaction, I just Okay, maybe I
• 1:48:00
  need to go to the media on this. And so I contacted a guy
• 1:48:04
  in the in the sports golf media, specifically the golf media, who has
• 1:48:10
  kind of become a specialist in these stories of golf cheating, because apparently this
• 1:48:15
  is like an epidemic at non major golf tournaments, and I can understand why,
• 1:48:20
  given the changes in our culture, especially among younger kids, where they
• 1:48:24
  don't seem to give a shit about cheating, where this sports golf reporter has
• 1:48:30
  become known for this kind of thing and gotten a lot of credibility within the
• 1:48:33
  golf media for stories that he's done about golf cheating. So I had a
• 1:48:39
  long conversation with him. I explained the whole thing to him. I sent
• 1:48:42
  him the scorecard, and he was completely on board, like, Okay,
• 1:48:45
  I'm busy for the next few days, but I will do a story on
• 1:48:48
  this if you want me to. If they haven't done anything to correct this.
• 1:48:54
  So I'm I'm constantly Now now I'm basically telling the SEGA Look, you
• 1:49:00
  know, I don't know what the delay here is, but I got to
• 1:49:02
  warn you that I'm in contact with a very prominent member of the golf media
• 1:49:08
  who's very interested in this story. This is all going to turn out much
• 1:49:11
  worse for the kid and his dad and everybody else involved in this unless you
• 1:49:15
  guys do something. And I could see on the app that he still had
• 1:49:18
  not been disqualified well eventually just a few days ago, which is why I'm
• 1:49:26
  talking about it now. I looked on the app. They never even informed
• 1:49:29
  me that they were doing this under the guys that you know, an investigation
• 1:49:33
  has to be confidential. Blah blah blah. They finally disqualified the kid and
• 1:49:40
  he's gone from being tied for an alternate spot to now being dqed. Now.
• 1:49:44
  I have no idea what if any other punishment there was involved in this
• 1:49:49
  situation. I would like to believe there was some. I am skeptical that
• 1:49:55
  because of the influence of his father, who I know the person at the
• 1:49:59
  seg A has had a long relationship with and maybe things were not done as
• 1:50:04
  fast or as dramatically as they could have been. I don't know that.
• 1:50:08
  I'm hopeful that that's not the case, but I had to tell you,
• 1:50:11
  and maybe this is the dinosaur in me. I honestly thought, not only
• 1:50:15
  would the reaction be swifter and more dramatic by the authorities, and I get
• 1:50:19
  being deliberative, but this was way way too deliberative. This took weeks when
• 1:50:24
  it should have taken a couple of hours tops, But I gotta tell you
• 1:50:28
  the dinosaur and me thought, I honestly thought that I was going to get
• 1:50:30
  a call from the father or from the kid apologizing for what happened, because
• 1:50:36
  basically I was being called a liar. The kid called me a liar on
• 1:50:42
  the phone. He lied about the whole thing, and effectively by not acknowledging
• 1:50:48
  what happened, the only other option here is that I'm a liar, that
• 1:50:53
  I made a false allegation about cheating, and so I felt like my integrity
• 1:50:57
  was being attacked and that my reputation was being besmerged. And I honestly thought,
• 1:51:04
  I honestly thought that worst case, I was gonna get a call from
• 1:51:09
  the dad apologizing. In the best case, the dad was going to force
• 1:51:14
  the kid to call me to apologize. I've gotten nothing, nothing at all
• 1:51:19
  like that. And this is again, a very prominent person in the golf
• 1:51:23
  world. This is a kid with a legitimate high school and apparently college career
• 1:51:28
  coming in the world of golf, a kid who on paper came close to
• 1:51:33
  qualifying for the US Amateur Golf tournament. And I gotta tell you, I
• 1:51:39
  think this is emblematic of something much bigger, That something is broken among our
• 1:51:45
  nation's youth, among especially teenage kids. And for this to happen in golf
• 1:51:49
  where this used to be completely verboten, unheard of, death penalty type stuff.
• 1:51:56
  I mean, it's different than you know, taking a bad drive or
• 1:52:00
  you know. I mean, there's all sorts of ways people try to cheat.
• 1:52:03
  But the brazenly and blatantly they're race scores from a scorecard and then scribble
• 1:52:10
  in very in artfully bogus scores in a US Amateur Golf championship tournament is just
• 1:52:16
  so mind blowing to me. Is to be outside of any concept of rationality
• 1:52:24
  or something I can even conceive of being possible. And I didn't even get
• 1:52:30
  an apology, and I don't even know for sure that the kid really got
• 1:52:33
  punished, and maybe only a couple of people are ever gonna notice that his
• 1:52:38
  score went from being tied for an alternate spot to being disqualified, And and
• 1:52:44
  for this to happen in golf. I go back to this all the time.
• 1:52:46
  I realize that these stories don't make, you know, don't don't seem
• 1:52:49
  to be that significant, because it's just golf. I'm telling you, to
• 1:52:54
  happen in golf, where this was always re boting that this was this was
• 1:52:58
  sacrilegious, and for it to happen at this level of golf is an indication
• 1:53:02
  to me that something much more fundamental is broken throughout our society. And I
• 1:53:09
  realize you can't paint an entire generation based upon one stupid golf story, but
• 1:53:14
  I'm telling you, I gotta tell you there is something wrong. There is
• 1:53:17
  something very very wrong with our society in general and with that generation in particular.
• 1:53:24
  So I appreciate you allowing me the catharsis of telling this story that has
• 1:53:29
  been bothering me for a very very long time. Hopefully I'll be able to
• 1:53:32
  tell you the other story that's been bothering me for even longer, which is
• 1:53:35
  a way, way even better story. Believe it or not, but I
• 1:53:40
  don't know exactly when n f I'll be able to do that. Stay tuned
• 1:53:43
  to the podcast and as soon as I can, I promise that I will.
• 1:53:46
  That'll do it for episode number seventy nine of the Death of Journals and
• 1:53:50
  Podcasts. This is always the case. Please remember to subscribe, rate,
• 1:53:54
  and review this podcast shared with others, word of mouth, social media.
• 1:53:58
  If you do shared on social media, please tag me. I'll be happy
• 1:54:00
  to share it as well with my Twitter followers and Facebook friends. Until next
• 1:54:04
  time, thanks so much for listening. This has been the Death of Journalism
• 1:54:08
  podcast. My name is John Zigler.