Latest / The Death Of Journalism / Episode Sixty Five: The PGA Crap Sandwich and an Interview with Karol Markowicz

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Episode Sixty Five: The PGA Crap Sandwich and an Interview with Karol Markowicz · The Death Of Journalism

0:00
Welcome to episode number sixty five, The Death the Journalism Podcast. My name
0:04
is John Zigler. I'm your host on today's program. Shocking news from the
0:09
world of golf which could have an impact on the Republican presidential race. CNN
0:15
gets rid of its CEO, ABC announces its team for presidential campaign coverage and
0:22
hilarity ensues. And a great interview with my favorite political columnist, Carol Markowitz.
0:29
I'm known as the Dutch Digital marketing Man. I'm a digital advertising SEO
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and EMMO marketing specialist that also happens to be a big fan of John Ziggler
0:39
and the Death of Journalism. Do you need help preaching your target audience?
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Let me help you develop the right messaging and confaded message in the best channels
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Digital marketing Man dot com. If you want to grow your business, Peter
1:02
can help. That's the Dutch Digital marketing Man dot com. And hey,
1:07
thanks for sponsoring the show. When I decide what to talk about on the
1:11
Death of Journalism, it's a very complicated process. But one of the stranger
1:18
elements of it is that I have this tendency that if I am extremely interested
1:23
in a particular topic and it's not obvious that the audience would be interested in
1:29
it, I'm actually more hesitant to talk about it because I don't trust my
1:33
judgment and whether or not the audience cares about the subject. Well, that
1:38
is certainly in play in this episode, because I'm going to start with a
1:42
topic that I am extremely interested in, because I am a lifelong golfer,
1:48
a competitive golfer, played in national amateur championships, won several club championships,
1:53
and I even once, very briefly a long time ago, was the full
1:57
time employee of the PGA Tour. And I'm referring to the massive news story
2:04
that broke this week about a merger between the PGA Tour and the so called
2:08
Live Golf Tour. Now, normally I would at least downplay how much I
2:15
was going to talk about this subject, because again, I know I'm very
2:19
interested in it, I don't know whether or not the listeners of this podcast
2:23
would be interested in it. However, I've gotten so inundated with people,
2:29
both I guess publicly as well as privately wanting to hear my thoughts on this
2:35
that it appears as if there is some desire for my input on this,
2:40
my analysis of this situation. So I'm going to start against my better judgment
2:46
this episode of the podcast talking about this subject, because I do think I
2:51
have some unique insight on this. I could be wrong, but I definitely
2:55
have a take on this situation that is not being shared by the majority,
3:01
especially the majority of people on social media, and I may have some insight
3:07
and expertise that gives me the ability to be right when many other people are
3:12
wrong. I don't know that this is a situation that is evolving and ongoing,
3:16
and there's still a lot that is not known as of this taping.
3:21
But here's my basic assessment of the situation. First, let's go back for
3:24
those that are not that familiar with what's been going on with this story that
3:30
hit like an earthquake this week, the PGA Tour was threatened over the last
3:36
couple of years has been threatened by this entity called the Live Golf Tour or
3:40
Golf series that is funded by the Saudi Arabian government directly by the Saudi Arabian
3:47
government and against all odds, largely because they had an unlimited checkbook, they
3:54
were able to sign a lot of major stars from the PGA Tour to play
4:00
on this live golf series, including Phil Mickelson and Brooks, Kapka, Bryson,
4:05
d Shamboo, Cameron Smith, Dustin Johnson, a lot of more big
4:11
names than a lot of people, including myself, thought was likely when this
4:15
idea first became public. But when you have that much money, when you're
4:19
really to spend billions of dollars on an entity that is unlikely to make any
4:26
money itself and you don't seem to care, then that gives you a lot
4:30
of flexibility. So you know that clearly was a success by Live when it
4:36
came to buying talent now, it costs them a ridiculous amount of money.
4:42
They overpaid exponentially for every single one of these names to an absurd level,
4:50
and nobody watched. I mean literally nobody watched. They couldn't get a TV
4:58
contract for their first season. This second season they got a quote unquote TV
5:02
contract with the CW, which was an absolute joke. It was such a
5:09
joke that one of their major events and then in the playoff and most of
5:13
their affiliates didn't even carry the playoff. It was such a joke that they
5:16
didn't even continue to report their own ratings information which they said that they would,
5:24
because the ratings were so pathetic. I mean literally nobody was watching on
5:29
the CW. It was embarrassing and it didn't get, in my opinion,
5:34
enough media coverage. But when they threw up the white flag and said,
5:40
okay, we're not even going to report our own ratings anymore, that should
5:44
have been an indication that this entity was not long for this world, at
5:49
least not in its current format. And so they were very successful when it
5:55
came to getting talent, and that talent at least a couple of players did
6:00
very well in the first two major championships of this year, the Masters and
6:04
the PGA, with Brooks Keepka coming in second of the Masters, and Phil
6:09
Mickelson did very well with the Masters and Brooks Kepco winning the PGA Championship.
6:15
Now, the tour players didn't do that well from top to bottom, but
6:20
we live in a world where winning is all that matters. Perception is reality,
6:25
and the narrative was out there that, boy, these lived players are
6:29
just as good as we're better than the PGA Tour players because brooks Kepa just
6:32
won a major championship while playing on the tour series. And I have been
6:39
very outspoken throughout this entire process, which I guess is why so many people
6:44
responded to me. Again, I was shocked by the number of people that
6:46
wanted my opinion on this over the last couple of days. But I've been
6:49
very outspoken as being anti live and I think I have some credibility on this
6:57
topic because, as I've already stated, I have no love for the PGA
7:00
Tour. I've been fired many times in my career. The first real firing
7:08
that I would I would call a real firing of my life was when I
7:12
worked full time for the PGA Tour back in I think nineteen ninety. This
7:16
is forever ago. I worked for PGA Tour Productions. I moved down to
7:19
Jacksonville, Florida, which is where their headquarters is. I love Jacksonville,
7:24
but I was only there for like less than two months because I knew on
7:28
day one. I knew on day one this was not going to work.
7:30
I called my father from the office. I said that this is not going
7:35
to work. There's no way that I'm going to be able to work here.
7:40
You know, in either direction, They're not gonna want me and I'm
7:42
not gonna want them, because it was so obvious that my mentality was incompatible
7:47
with the mindset of the PGA Tour, which was basically you were part of
7:55
a cult. It was almost like the Third Reich, I mean, and
8:00
certainly what I was doing was I was being naive thought I was working for
8:05
an outlet that was going to be covering golf as a sporting news story,
8:11
when in fact I was part of a propaganda unit. That's what PGA Tour
8:16
Productions was. It was the pr arm of the PGA Tour. And so
8:22
that didn't work out, and I went on to become an on air TV
8:26
sportscaster in Ohio and an NBC affiliate, which is where I met Lisabeven.
8:30
Of course, then the rest is history with our other podcasts with the benefit
8:33
of hindsight, but that's another story for a whole other day. So I
8:39
have no love for the PGA Tour. They literally were the first company to
8:43
really fire me. However, I have been very much against live and I
8:50
have not been against live, and it's amazing how you know, people believe
8:54
whatever they want, and perceptions become reality somehow. Because the narrative was out
9:00
there that the knock against Live was because the Saudis were behind nine to eleven,
9:05
and that if you're in favor of Live, you're against the nine to
9:09
eleven victims families. And I never bought into that. That was not the
9:15
reason for my objections to Live Golf. I think, and I thought at
9:20
the time, and I know now it was a major mistake for the PGA
9:24
Tour to hang their hat on that argument. I think they fell into and
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I don't know whether or not they got some you know, pr advice or
9:33
what it was, whether they got some media coverage on this, and they
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just were desperate and they latched on to this idea that this was the way
9:43
to attack Live from a morality standpoint. Look, I believe in principle of
9:48
morality, I think as much as anybody. But I just didn't think that
9:52
was a particularly potent issue to me as a golf fan. The problems would
9:56
live or much deeper had much more to do with golf than they had to
10:01
do with morality and where the money was coming from. Now, I do
10:05
think, and I've stated this previously that Donald Trump has a major conflict of
10:11
interest when it comes to being paid directly by the Saudi Arabian government, which
10:15
is basically at times an adversary to the United States, especially when it comes
10:20
to the supply of oil, where he's getting paid underneath the table, not
10:24
transparently, for the use of his golf courses on live events. I've addressed
10:28
that previously on this podcast, but that's a separate issue. The issue about
10:33
whether or not live is good or bad for the sport of golf, to
10:37
me was clear cut. One, it was fragmenting the game by taking away
10:41
some of the biggest stars. But also what they were doing was not real
10:46
golf. They were playing fifty four holes with a shotgun start. It was
10:50
based mostly in team play, these ridiculous sounding team names, and there were
10:56
no cuts, and the players all got paid an enormous amount of money up
11:01
front, which was killing the whole meritocracy angle of the whole thing. That
11:05
just wasn't interesting to me. Well, there's no drama, if you know.
11:09
If it doesn't really matter to the players how they finished, why would
11:13
I care about how they finished. Plus I thought the broadcasts were terrible they
11:16
seemed much more like NASCAR races with the graphics than golf. And look,
11:22
I get, I'm an old fart now, I'm fifty six. I'm all
11:26
for innovations, but I just didn't find anything all that interesting about what they
11:31
were doing, and it all felt very contrived. And I clearly wasn't alone,
11:35
because as I've already stated that the TV ratings for this were just absolutely
11:39
awful. Now it had been my assessment, and I'm trying I get called
11:46
a pessimist all the time, even though I think I'm in times a delusional
11:48
optimist. I had been somewhat optimistic that the PGA Tour had weathered the storm
11:56
and that eventually they were gonna win this battle, that Avenge Live was gonna
12:01
basically wither on the vine, because what was going to happen was that these
12:05
players on the Live Tour, We're gonna lose so many world ranking points that
12:09
they would stop being being eligible for the tournaments that actually matter, which,
12:16
of course, of the four major championships. Now some of them would be
12:18
exempted to most of them forever because they won them. They won major championships.
12:24
People like Phil Nicholson and Brooks keepka, but the majority of them,
12:28
they were gonna no longer be eligible in a year or two for the biggest
12:33
events, and therefore they were going to be out of sight, out of
12:35
mind. They were going to lose their relevance, and since they didn't have
12:39
a major TV contract and no one was watching to begin with, this thing
12:43
was going to be a complete disaster. And I was actually looking forward to
12:48
the day where a lot of these lived players were going to finally have to
12:50
eat it for having sold out for the money. Some of these players even
12:56
admitted that they sold out for the money. Some tried to pretend that they
12:58
was about growing the game, which was just a bunch of bullshit. But
13:03
there were so many elements of Live that I despised, And the main thing
13:05
I despised was that it was hitting at the heart in the essence of the
13:09
sport of golf, not just from a fragmentation standpoint, but also from the
13:13
perspective of the influence of money. Now you know, my wife will be
13:18
the first person to tell you that from her perspective, Unfortunately, I've never
13:24
been motivated very much at all by money, for better for worse. I
13:28
think money really is the root of all evil, and I think it has
13:31
destroyed the essence of a lot of things in sports, but specifically golf.
13:37
So that was where I stood before this shocking announcement that occurred earlier this week,
13:45
where out of the blue and with no preparation, no rumors, no
13:50
nothing, all of a sudden after the PGA tour wages war against live under
13:58
the banner of morality, with their main argument being that if you take Saudi
14:03
Arabian money, you are in league with the terrorists who did nine to eleven.
14:09
That was basically almost word for word their mantra on this All of a
14:13
Sudden on CNBC is a an interview with both the head of the PGA toward
14:22
Jay Monahan and the guy who runs the fund put together by the Saudi Arabian
14:30
royal family that it gives the money to live golf into other entities that Saudi
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Arabians have gotten into all sorts of sports, soccer and race car race car
14:46
driving Formula one, but in this particular situation, they have this fund that
14:52
was the source of all the income or outgo for live golf, and the
14:58
guy in charge of that fund was sitting there right next to Jay Monahan in
15:03
a live, shocking interview on CNBC, and the tone of the whole thing
15:11
was very much that Live was almost taking over the PGA Tour. That's what
15:18
it felt like. And the headline was PGA Tour and Live announced a merger.
15:26
And this was shocking to virtually anybody in the golf world, including those
15:31
in the golf media, who were completely taken off guard by this. I
15:37
was as stunned as anybody watching this. I just could not believe that,
15:43
even in the world where hypocrisy runs rampant, that Jay Monahan could sit there
15:48
and smile and you know, glad hand and compliment the very same people that
15:56
he was equating with terrorism and in morality for the last two years, and
16:03
you know, he seemed to be perfectly fine with it. And from a
16:04
body language standpoint, it seemed to me that he was in the beta position
16:11
here, that it was the Saudis who were in the alpha position. And
16:15
I think that all created a perception that Live had really won this battle,
16:22
that the PGA Tour had surrendered, and that Live had overtaken the PGIA Tour.
16:30
And I bought into this to a certain degree. And the details were
16:37
very, very hazy and if not nonexistent, And I think what happened at
16:42
least for me, and this happens a lot when whenever you get shocked by
16:47
something, you get shocked and then you kind of take a step back,
16:49
and then you reevaluate and you say, Okay, once the dust settles here,
16:53
what do we really have here? What's really going on? And as
17:00
I have evaluated it further and again, the details of this matter greatly,
17:04
and they are unknown largely at this point. I'll get to those in a
17:10
second, but I've kind of shifted my position on what really happened here because
17:15
I don't think Live won this at all. Now, there are players on
17:22
the Live Tour who will make out very very well here, There's no doubt
17:26
about that, But those are only going to be a handful of players.
17:32
The players that will still have status and exemption status on the PGA Tour will
17:37
have been paid lots of money for a fairly short period of time. They're
17:41
gonna be able to have their cake and eat it too, and they'll come
17:44
back and play the PGA Tour. Now, what they're gonna have to do
17:47
an order for that to happen is uncertain. There's talk of some fines,
17:52
but you know, the big name players, the guys I think like Phil
17:56
Mickelson or Brooks Keepka, Cameron Smith, Dustin Johnson, They're going to be
18:00
able to do that in some way, shape or form. The other guys,
18:04
I'm not quite so sure about. They might might be in a really
18:10
bad situation if I'm right about what's really going on here, Because as I
18:15
look at this from you know, a step after taking a step back,
18:19
and again, I don't think this is wishful thinking because I have no love
18:25
for the PGA tour and I'm pissed at Jay Monahan for being such a hypocrite
18:30
on this issue of morality. And I think actually it was a dumb strategic
18:34
move. I've always felt it was a dumb strategic move. And I consider
18:38
Jay Monahan to be a very smart guy. There's no question he's very intelligent.
18:45
And it is that is the basis for a part of my analysis for
18:48
what is really going on here, because when I look at this, I
18:52
say, well, wait a minute, so is this a merger or is
18:56
this live actually folding but doing so in a way that allows the Saudis to
19:03
save face. Well, let's look at what we know. The first thing
19:07
we know is that this entity is going to be called the PGA Tour.
19:11
Now there's going to be it gets complicated. There's going to be the charity
19:14
of the PGA Tour and then there's going to be the for profit PGIA Tour.
19:18
There's will be the two different entities with two different governing bodies. But
19:23
Jay Monahan is going to be the CEO of this new entity. He's currently
19:29
the commissioner of the PGA Tour. It's going to be called the PGA Tour.
19:33
Greg Norman, the guy who was essentially the commissioner of liv Golf,
19:37
was not even part of these discussions. He was apparently informed what was going
19:44
to happen one minute before the NEWSS were released publicly. I mean, this
19:48
is I'm sure he's getting paid to go away, but this is humiliating for
19:53
Greg Norman. Greg Norman will have no say in this at all going forward.
19:59
He is a effectively been fired. So Jay Monahan is the CEO,
20:04
it's called the PGA Tour. Greg Norman is out, and there's no indication
20:12
at all that you know, we're going to have you know, golf tournaments
20:18
called the Live series where PGA Tour members are now going to be part of
20:23
these teams that Live talked about so much. See, that was the business
20:27
model that was I think inherently flawed of Live Golf. They they sold this
20:33
idea that these four man teams were somehow going to be worth money, and
20:41
that if you had equity in your own team, that this is going to
20:45
be like owning a professional sports franchise. It would be worth tens of millions
20:51
of dollars into the future. But no one gave a crap about these teams
20:56
because there was nothing that was that held them together. There's no history.
21:02
I think they thought they were recreating the Ryder Cup. But the reason that
21:04
people care about the Ryder Cup is because it's the United States against Europe,
21:08
so there's an inherent rooting interest. There's no rooting interest for these these manufactured
21:15
teams of people making ridiculous amounts of money and don't really seem to care very
21:19
much about the outcome. So you know, again the details are important here,
21:27
But what are the Saudis providing. The Saudis are providing apparently a crapload
21:33
of money, probably into the billions that's gonna go to this new entity called
21:37
the PGA Tour and are they going to be running it? Well, it
21:42
certainly doesn't appear that way from what I can tell. They get at least
21:48
one seat on the board. But again and they get they get a guy
21:52
who appears to have mostly a you know, a perfunctory position as the head
22:00
of the whole situation. So they get a lot of prestige, They get
22:07
the save face for this failure that was Live Golf, They get respect,
22:12
and they get an investment in an entity that might actually make money, which
22:18
is a new PGIA Tour where the stars are now united and where the business
22:26
model may have just been fixed and in a huge injection of cash just came
22:30
in when it was needed because the PGIA Tour was in a vulnerable position,
22:37
one because they had just come off a COVID which cost them a whole heckup
22:40
a lot of money, and because they had to raise all of their purses
22:47
in order to compete with Live So the PGA Tour was in a financially weakened
22:52
position. That gets fixed. So if you look at this from Jay Monahan's
22:57
perspective, that gets fixed. The financial situation now for the PJA Tour is
23:03
much better. Live goes away, the Stars come back. Golf is no
23:11
longer nearly as fragmented. Oh, by the way, the star players lose
23:18
almost all of their leverage because now there's not a place they can go to
23:22
at the drop of a hat if they're pissed off at something the PGA Tour
23:26
does. So now the PGA Tour gets far more control over their star structure
23:33
than they had. And also, which is really important, they get rid
23:40
of all the litigation. And it was obvious that both sides didn't want the
23:44
litigation. It's very expensive, it's potentially damaging from a pr perspective, I
23:49
even think that the specter of the Fox News dominion voting systems lawsuit may have
23:55
played a role in how this went down, and specifically the revelations about Tucker
24:00
Carlson. I'm sure that both sides, especially the PGA Tour, we're very
24:04
concerned about how discovery was going to go and what was going to be learned
24:10
and what news stories would be created out of that, plus just the inherent
24:14
expense of litigation at that level. So from a the PGA Tours perspective,
24:21
this seems very much like a win win win, win win, except for
24:26
the shit sandwich that Jay Monahan had to eat when this story broke. And
24:34
at first I thought, well, if Jay Monahan is willing to is being
24:40
forced, he has to be being forced to eat this shit sandwich, right,
24:42
No one would want to eat this kind of shit sandwich. I mean,
24:47
after spending two years attacking these people for basically being immoral and being in
24:52
bed with the terrorists, especially specifically nine to eleven terrorists, and now all
24:56
of a sudden, you're going to take the very same money that you've been
25:00
decrying for two years. I mean, that is a giant shit sandwich that
25:06
you have to accept on national television. Well, the first reaction to that
25:12
is, no one would do that unless they were forced to do it at
25:18
gunpoint, and the other side had so much leverage in the negotiations that you
25:25
had no choice. And that was kind of my gut level reaction at first.
25:30
And then I thought, well, wait a minute, when I'm looking
25:33
at this from the bigger picture, and I thought about some of the things
25:37
I've already outlined about how Live is basically folding now and the BJ tour is
25:45
getting a lot of things that they want out of this. Maybe the eating
25:49
of the shit sandwich wasn't a flaw in this, It was actually a positive.
26:02
From the standpoint of Jay Monahan. What I'm saying is the shit sandwich
26:08
was not actually a sign of capitulation. It may have actually been a feature
26:17
of the deal that the Saudis made. Now you probably want to what do
26:22
you mean by that, John Well. I think one of the major problems
26:26
in all of this and how people have perceived what's going on, is that
26:30
people don't understand the saudis very perverted incentive structure. I talk about incentive structures
26:37
all the time, and the media is terrible at understanding incentive structures. And
26:41
because we have our you know, normal view of money, I think that
26:48
we have a very difficult time most people do understanding the Saudi's incentive structure.
26:55
Here money doesn't have the same value to them because it literally doesn't grow on
27:03
trees, but it grows in the ground for them, especially with the current
27:08
price of gasoline, so it doesn't really matter to them. And that was
27:14
the big threat to the PGA tour was that you're fighting a war against an
27:19
enemy with unlimited ammunition that doesn't care how much they're losing. They were losing
27:27
massive amounts of money on live, but they didn't care because money to them
27:33
has very little value. But you know what does have value to these people?
27:41
Respect has value to these people. Saving face from a disaster has value.
27:52
Being given credibility has value. Being attached to a major American institution has
28:02
value. The perception of having one has value to the Saudies. And I
28:11
am now the opinion, and I don't want to give Jaymonahan too much credit
28:15
here, especially before all the facts are in, but I now think it
28:18
is possible that Jay Bonahan ate this shit sandwich in exchange for a hell of
28:29
a deal that the Saudis because those are the things I just stated that they
28:34
value. It's hard to buy them. Well, jay Bonahan gave those things
28:41
to the Saudis by effectively pretending that he lost this. He allowed the perception
28:48
and the media ran with it. Not in all cases, but in most
28:52
cases, that the PGA tour lost here, and I found it very telling
29:00
that there was no pushback. See if this was a real battle for a
29:04
narrative over who won and who lost, Jay Monahan would have had numerous people
29:11
in the golf media that he could have you under the cover of darkness or
29:17
as a background or an anonymous source said, let me tell you what's really
29:22
going on here. And I watched the Golf Channel for hours yesterday and have
29:27
been searching golf media on Twitter for a long period of time during the last
29:34
thirty six hours or so since this story broke, and I gotta tell you,
29:38
I've seen nothing close to that that has purposely not happened. So what
29:45
I perceive is happening. Because if that wasn't happening and there wasn't an argument
29:51
to be made, I would say, well, the PGA Tour lost.
29:55
But there's clearly a strong argument to be made here that the PGA Tour actually
30:00
one. And the fact that that argument is not being made really in the
30:04
media is certainly not attached to Jay Monahan tells me that effectively, Jay Monahan
30:10
took a dive. He took a dive to give the Saudies what they really
30:15
wanted. But in the long run, the PGA Tour one here, Big
30:22
Live is going away. There's a couple of analogies that I came up with
30:27
here. I don't know how good they are, but I'll share them because
30:30
I love my analogies. Number one is in the Christopher res version of Superman,
30:40
there's a rather famous scene where Superman is thought to have lost his powers
30:45
and he is forced to kneel before Zod. And in this analogy, you
30:52
know, Superman is the PGA Tour and Zod is the Saudis, right,
30:56
and so there's this public spectacle of where forces Superman to kneel in front of
31:03
him, and then the reversal happens afterwards when it turns out that Superman has
31:11
his powers and Zod doesn't. And I think that there's potentially something to that
31:18
here where in the initial stages of this it looks like the PGA Tour is
31:23
kneeling to Zod the Saudis, but they're really only doing that to facilitate the
31:32
deal that is going to be very much to the benefit of Superman in the
31:37
long run. Again, I could be wrong about this, but I'm reading
31:40
the tea leaves and it seems almost obvious to me that something like this is
31:45
happening. The second analogy I have, which is a little bit more concrete,
31:49
when it comes to sports mergers. Let's pretend that back in the nineteen
31:55
eighties, when the USFL was a really viable alternative foot ball league. I
32:00
mean, the USFL was a great league. And despite the fact that Donald
32:05
Trump was one of the owners he owned the New Jersey Generals, but I
32:07
mean he had herschel Walker on his team and Doug Flutie, and there were
32:10
some really great players and great games. I loved the USFL. But let's
32:15
pretend in the eighties that the NFL, faced with the challenge of the USFL,
32:22
had decided to merge leagues, kind of like they did with the AFL
32:28
back in the Joe Namath era. So let's pretend that there had been an
32:32
NFL USFL merger, which there wasn't. There was a lawsuit which the USFL
32:38
one, but they only got famously one dollar, which was the subject of
32:42
an ESPN thirty for thirty documentary, which, frankly, that documentary alone should
32:47
have kept Donald Trump from being the twenty sixteen Republican presidential nominee. But I
32:52
digress. So let's pretend that there was a merger, and under the terms
33:00
of that merger, the following things happened. Donald Trump had to pay the
33:07
NFL if he had it, which he doesn't say. A couple of billion
33:12
dollars in exchange. Trump gets a seat on the NFL board, which they
33:17
don't really have. I guess they have the ownership, but let's pretend there
33:20
was a small board that ran the NFL. Or Trump get to call himself,
33:27
you know, co commissioner, right to try to use this analogy as
33:30
ascinctly as possible, But he has he has no majority on the board,
33:36
so he's just one vote that nobody really respects. So he pays the NFL
33:40
a ton of money. He gets the prestige of this seat on the board.
33:45
None of the teams from the USFL actually get incorporated into the NFL,
33:52
but the NFL is forced to adopt a few of the more popular rules that
33:58
the USFL came up with were gimmicks, and they have to agree to play
34:02
some games in the sites of former USFL cities or something like that. And
34:07
they decide they're going to play a few of these games in Saudi Arabia to
34:09
make the analogy maybe even more cogent. So you have the situation where there's
34:16
a merger, But what would the NFL beginning there. They'd beginning a ton
34:21
of money either getting rid of the USFOL, they have a headache now in
34:23
the form of Donald Trump, who will at least pretend to have some say
34:28
in the matter, But they have the votes to do pretty much whatever they
34:34
want. Assuming that all goes as planned and they give up very little,
34:38
the game doesn't change very much. The NFL under those circumstances would have been
34:44
considered to be the clear victor. The US would have gone away. Well.
34:50
I really think that's pretty much what's happened here. So the media largely,
34:54
not entirely. There were a few people in the sports media who got
34:58
this, but by and large, people and especially on social media, I
35:04
gotta tell you, I can't believe how many people despise the PGA Tour on
35:07
Twitter and love Live. I gotta believe some of these people are being paid
35:12
by Live or we're being paid by Live, and boy, they are they
35:15
in for a surprise, because I don't think that's going to be happening for
35:19
much longer. So what I think is going to happen here is that the
35:22
twenty twenty three seasons going to play out, and in twenty twenty four there's
35:28
gonna be no real live golf, and the PGA Tour will have their stars
35:32
back and what it's exactly going to look like. Nobody knows the key question.
35:37
And I do think that this is going to be a challenge for Jay
35:39
Monahan because I don't understand how you do a framework deal and not get the
35:46
details agreed to, and then you have this massive news story where the bargaining
35:52
leverage kind of shifts once the story becomes public because Live is being perceived as
35:58
the winner, Monahan's being perceived as a loser. So it puts more pressure
36:01
on Monahan to really win when it comes to the details. And I think
36:06
that that is a potential just looking at this a big picture, that is
36:09
a potential problem for this deal actually going through. Now it's so big at
36:15
this point, it's got to go through, I think, but there's going
36:17
to be some major challenges there because Monahan has no choice but to win on
36:22
the details. You know, if you use the war analogy, there's the
36:28
brokering of the general piece a cease fire, and then there's you know,
36:31
going to Malta like they did after World War Two and breaking up Europe into
36:37
little pieces and who gets what, and those details really matter. Well,
36:42
Monahan better win on that because if he doesn't he's going to have a major
36:45
revolt, and specifically on the issue of Okay, how many of these lib
36:49
guys are gonna be allowed to play the PGA Tour and take jobs away from
36:52
PGA Tour guys that were loyal to you. That's going to be a massive,
36:54
massive problem. But as far as the media coverage, I have to
36:59
say, well, I do think that they got it wrong in large party,
37:06
I think the Golf Channel did a remarkably good job of allowing their commentators
37:13
the freedom to express their true opinions, which I was shocked by because the
37:17
Golf Channel the is emblematic of just why we have the death of journalism.
37:22
I mean, there's so many conflict of interest there. They are literally the
37:25
partner of the PGA Tour. So you would have thought that the Golf Channel
37:30
would have done a couple of different things. One, they would have censored
37:35
their top commentators, guys like Brandy Shambilee, who have been very very critical
37:39
of live from criticizing this deal from the PGA Tour's perspective, and that they
37:44
would have basically been putting lipstick on the pig saying oh no, the PGA
37:49
Tour. One this is awesome, We're just gonna this is gonna We're gonna
37:52
go all George orwell on you and pretend that the last two years never happened.
37:55
The Golf Channel did not do that, and again, well, I
38:00
think they got it kind of wrong in the big picture, weirdly against their
38:04
own self interest. I was impressed and unpleasantly surprised that they were willing and
38:09
able to tell it like they thought they saw it. And I thought that
38:15
was a good sign because if there was ever a situation where the corporate interests
38:20
were gonna trump free speech and free expression, this was it. Because the
38:25
Golf Channel is basically the PGA Tour. And I know it's going to sound
38:30
contradictory. Well, John, wait a minute, So how is it if
38:32
the PGA Tour won, that even the mouthpiece for the PGA Tour, the
38:37
Golf Channel, was making it sound like the PGA Tour lost. I really
38:42
think that was all not part of a conspiracy. I think that was part
38:46
of what Jay Monahan wanted, because that's what the Saudis were buying. They
38:53
were buying the perception. They were buying this notion that they had won this
39:00
battle, that they had avoided the ignominy of this horrendous business venture that was
39:07
tanking dramatically, and they are given now respect and credibility, and they have
39:13
now a major stake in an entity that is viable from an economic standpoint.
39:20
They may actually make money on this going forward because there's a product that actually
39:25
has a business model that works. And so that's probably more than you needed
39:30
to know about the the PJ Tour Live Golf merger. But you know,
39:37
I know a lot of people that were asking for my opinion, and there
39:40
it is. So I basically think that while I hate the whole thing,
39:45
I wish none of this had ever happened. I do think that there is
39:49
a scenario where this is not the worst thing that's happened to golf. Unlike
39:52
what Randall Shambili said, it was the darkest day in the history of golf
39:57
or something like that, But it might have been the darkest day in history
40:00
of his career, but I don't think it was the darkness day in the
40:02
history of golf. If this turns out the way that I think that it
40:06
will, I mean Greg Dorman is gone, which is right there a good
40:08
thing for the game of golf and appears as if Live is going to be
40:14
gone and the fragmentation is going to be gone, and so I think that
40:20
there's potential here for this actually being good. Not to be an optimist,
40:22
because I always get burned when I'm too optimistic, but that's where I currently
40:27
am on this. Now. As far as how this may impact the presidential
40:32
campaign, I do think it may have a small impact. And that is
40:37
Donald Trump predicted this merger. He was pro Live all along. I mean,
40:43
because he was being paid by Live. He's hosting three live tournaments this
40:47
year. He was admonishing the PGA Tour players to take the money and run
40:54
because there was going to be a merger and that they would all regret this.
40:58
And now, of course his fans think, oh my gosh, it's
41:00
another just another example of where Trump was right, everyone else was wrong.
41:05
Trump's a genius. When I look at it, I go, Okay,
41:07
he was right. He deserves some credit for that. He's wrong about who
41:12
won, in my opinion, But it also shows the way that Trump looks
41:15
at the world, where where principle and loyalty and right and wrong mean absolutely
41:22
nothing, unless, of course, it means him criticizing Ron de Santis for
41:29
some help, being disloyal for running against him. That's another story in Trump's
41:32
world, But I do think that this forwards the narrative that Trump's on the
41:37
winning side. Trump is right, and you know, it's not a huge
41:42
issue, but I do think that that's just another day of the news cycle
41:45
that goes in Donald Trump's direction. As far as the issue of golf,
41:50
golf has become a bit of a presidential campaign issue, not just because of
41:55
living the PGA tour, but Joe Biden decided, or at least his people
42:00
did that coming off of his fall at the Air Force Academy commencement address last
42:06
week, he needed to show some vigor. So what did he do.
42:08
He went out and played golf, and I gotta tell you it was not
42:14
effective. I don't know how many people are even aware that this happened,
42:20
but the video of Biden golfing, which to my knowledge is yet to go
42:24
totally viral but it should, is really more troubling than maybe even the fall
42:31
at the Air Force Academy commencement address. I mean, Biden is basically doing
42:37
an impression of the old couple from Caddyshack. I mean, it looks almost
42:43
exactly like that. I mean, the guy could barely swing the golf club.
42:46
And there was even one video that I shared on Twitter where he's trying
42:52
to chip the ball into the green and he and he hits a rock in
42:57
front of him. The ball literally pops over his head and goes backwards,
43:00
and he seems cold, totally confused by the whole thing. I mean,
43:04
if that how that doesn't go viral, I have no idea, but I
43:07
mean that's a campaign ad as far as I'm concerned. I mean, even
43:12
Trump could use that to contrast the vigor that Trump has on the golf course.
43:15
By the way, with regard to Trump and his golf game, I
43:19
mean, he's a notorious cheater, but he is at least a decent golfer,
43:22
although I will say that even his swing is showing some signs of aging.
43:27
It's definitely been shortened in the last year or two, but it still
43:30
kicks the crap out of Joe Biden's golf game. That's for damn sure.
43:35
So that's the issue of golf. We've done forty minutes on the issue of
43:38
golf and how it might relate to the presidential campaign. That's probably enough.
43:44
Now, as far as the presidential campaign and the media coverage of it,
43:47
something really fascinating, enlightening, and I think hilarious occurred earlier this week because
43:55
ABC News announced it's team of produce us and reporters for this upcoming presidential campaign.
44:05
And when they announced it, they put out a tweet, and they
44:08
put out a photo of all sixteen people who have been chosen to be their
44:15
presidential election campaign producers and reporters with their headshots all in one tweet. And
44:23
this tweet went super viral. At last check, there were I think seven
44:28
or eight million views of this tweet. It might be much more than that
44:31
by now. And it didn't go viral because the story was particularly interesting.
44:37
It went viral because people were mocking this, and rightfully so. I talk
44:43
a lot on this podcast about how the left and the media have changed the
44:50
definition of equality to make it into equity. The equality of opportunity has become
44:57
equity of outcome. In other words, everything is seen through the issues of
45:01
race and gender and sexuality, and it's not about merit. But I've made
45:08
the argument that it's even worse than equity. Equity would be bad on its
45:14
face because you know, you're not judging who should get a job based upon
45:20
merit. You're judging it based upon making sure that you have the proper percentage
45:25
of each gender, each race, each sexuality, what have you. Well,
45:30
it's even worse than that. I mean, that would be bad because
45:36
the reality is in certain endeavors, certain genders and races and sexualities are going
45:42
to do better, and certain genders and sexualities and races are going to do
45:45
worse. It's not racist or sexist to say that, it's just reality.
45:51
It's obvious reality and certain endeavors. But that would be bad. But what
45:58
this ABC News to is emblematic of is their version of equity. Doesn't mean
46:06
thirteen percent of black people and sixty seven percent of white people and ninety percent
46:13
of heterosexual people and a non existent number of truly transgendered people. No no,
46:20
no, no, no, no no no no. What they're going
46:22
to give you is their version of equity, which is basically equity on steroids
46:30
or affirmative action equity. And this tweet proves that because there were sixteen people
46:37
who got this job at ABC News, there were I guess eleven who will
46:42
be the full timers, and of five alternates. I'm not sure what that
46:45
means. It sounds like a golf tournament, but there are five alternates.
46:50
So for the purposes of this discussion, I'm going to use all sixteen because
46:53
all sixteen were in the tweet, and there were sixteen beautiful headshots of these
46:59
people who have gotten this gig to cover the presidential election for ABC News,
47:05
and the best that I could tell here was the breakdown. And again,
47:08
this is the way we have been taught to look at these things. And
47:13
I guarantee you it's why they put out this tweet with the sixteen headshots,
47:16
because they wanted to signal their virtue on the breakdown when it came to gender
47:22
and raise and everything else. So here's how it all came down. Of
47:28
the sixteen people, three are clearly men. Three out of sixteen. I
47:37
mean, right there, that's a massive problem, right, I mean,
47:40
especially when you consider when it comes to presidential politics, there's a huge gender
47:47
gap. So women are already inherently far more likely to vote Democratic in a
47:54
presidential election than men are, or to have that be their predilection philosophically and
48:00
politically, so inherently that's biased towards liberals. Just you know, if you're
48:06
just picking names out of a hat, if you're picking a jury, if
48:09
you will, if you have three men out of sixteen, that's incredibly biased
48:15
towards liberals and Democrats. So of the rest, twelve are clearly women.
48:22
One appears to be transgendered, but of course you can never tell. But
48:27
that's I'm guessing based upon the fact that they wouldn't put sixteen photographs up there
48:31
in this environment without somebody at least being plausibly transgendered. So it appears as
48:37
if three men, twelve women, one apparently transgendered. From a racial standpoint,
48:44
six of the sixteen would be quote unquote black. Six Again, we're
48:51
a country where black people make up twelve or thirteen percent of the general population.
48:55
So six out of sixteen just happened to get this job as producers and
49:00
reporters on the presidential election for ABC News. One Hispanic, one Asian.
49:07
Eight were plausibly white. I'm guessing that a couple of them probably don't really
49:13
call themselves Caucasian because there's no benefit in doing so. But if you just
49:16
look at them, and you look and you read their names, it's possible
49:21
that they would call themselves Caucasian. Again, that's fifty percent, which always
49:24
makes me suspicious because that's their view of equity. Well, half white and
49:30
the rest are whatever races we find or we decide to favor on that particular
49:36
day. Again, it should be pointed out that even that's not equity.
49:40
About two thirds of the country still considers themselves to be Caucasian or white,
49:45
but at ABC News it's fifty percent. But to me, the most important
49:52
element of the demographics here is that all of them appeared very much to be
49:57
under the age of thirty, all of them. Now. I realize that
50:00
part of that is the nature of the job, because there's a lot of
50:04
travel involved, it takes a lot of energy, but come on, all
50:09
sixteen are from the same young generation that is super woke and super liberal,
50:16
every single one of them. There's not one of them that's clearly over the
50:22
age of thirty. I would say the average age looks to be about twenty
50:23
six or twenty seven, So there is no chance. I mean, if
50:30
you took a poll anonymously of these sixteen people, I would be shocked if
50:38
one of them even considered voting for Donald Trump in the last election. That's,
50:45
by the way, presuming that they were all eligible to vote. I
50:47
think they probably were, but there's no chance that more than one or maybe
50:52
two even thought about voting for Donald Trump out of sixteen. And again,
51:00
you know they wouldn't do it publicly, I don't think, because it would
51:01
be considered against whatever rules there are, or whatever rules may still exist when
51:07
it comes to network journalism. But privately, I guarantee you every single one
51:15
of these people is some variation of liberal or woke or both. And ABC
51:21
was proud of this. They were bragging about it. And if you go
51:24
to the tweet and you read the comments, it's hilarious because the comments were
51:30
scathing, and there's a reason why the tweet went viral because it was so
51:35
obviously virtue signaling, and it was so obviously an indication that ABC News is
51:40
bragging about the fact that they have put together a team to cover this presidential
51:45
election, then in no way, shape or form is emblematic of America or
51:52
representative of America or even the journalism industry, and is obviously going to be
51:58
extremely biased towards the Democratic side. That's not surprising, But when it becomes
52:04
so obvious and a news organization is bragging about it because they want the virtue
52:09
signaling points. I think that's significant and that's why I pointed it out.
52:15
Now. As far as the presidential polling is concerned, I have been outspoken
52:19
that the first couple of weeks after Rhonda Santis announced, we're going to be
52:22
key in determining the shape of the entire Republican race. And while I don't
52:29
want to come to any conclusions yet, the initial indications are not good in
52:36
my opinion. Yes, there is some indication that RHN de Santis's butchered announcement,
52:43
thanks to Elon Musk and Twitter, has had some positive impact. For
52:47
instance, the DeSantis pack never backed down put out a poll indicating some movement
52:52
in his direction in Iowa, which is obviously going to be extremely key for
52:57
the de Santis campaign. However, buy and large, what I'm seeing is
53:01
a small, it's discernible, but a small movement towards Ronda Santis thanks to
53:08
the fact that he's now officially in the race. I do not see anything
53:14
close to a dramatic shift as of yet, certainly nothing that would be in
53:19
the realm of magic. And this is consistent with what I had been warning
53:22
about all along. There were so many De Santis people saying John be patient,
53:25
he's not officially in the race. Once he announces he's in the race
53:29
and people know that he's actually running, it's now real and people will then
53:32
be able to make up their minds and they will choose him over Trump.
53:37
Well, there's very little of any evidence of that. The reality is that
53:43
Trump is still very much in command of this race. That there is small
53:47
movement towards the Santist It's early yet, this takes time to trickle through.
53:52
Even though we live in an age of instant information, I'm fully aware that
53:58
there's a lag time, so I'm not coming to any conclusions yet. But
54:00
the initial indications are not great at all. They're not terrible at it's just
54:06
not in the opposite direction. But the movement is not to the point where
54:10
I would say, Okay, De Santis is back in the ball game,
54:15
and now he can start to go after Trump on equal footing and Trump can't
54:20
get out of the debates. No, We're in no way, shape or
54:23
form in that place as of yet, and I'm not sure how in the
54:28
next couple of weeks you get there, because those decisions are going to start
54:31
to be made, and the first debates are going to happen in the summertime.
54:36
It looks like early August, so we're in people of course two and
54:39
out in July. So it's going to be a very difficult road to hoe
54:45
here, and I'm disappointed, although not surprised with the first stage as the
54:51
polling when it comes to the post Ron De Santis announcement environment. There is
54:57
one one element of hope though when it comes to the De Santist campaign,
55:01
and that is that I have theorized that the only way maybe for the Santists
55:08
to get back into this thing is for him to get indicted in San Francisco,
55:14
ideally for something COVID or transgender related. Well, there's no indication that's
55:20
going to happen, but our governor here in California, Gavin Newsom, is
55:23
threatening to basically do the next best thing. He's threatening to charge somehow the
55:30
Santist with kidnapping for sending migrants to California, which, by the way,
55:36
he had their agreement to do that, he had their approval to do.
55:40
So there's there's no legal basis for this, or even philosophical basis for this.
55:46
This is Newsome, you know, just being someone who who the Santis
55:52
has really gotten under his skin. I mean, DeSantis lives rent free in
55:55
Newsom's head, and Newsom is now publicly threatened to charge the Santist with kidnapping.
56:01
So my reaction to that is, please please please charge the Santist.
56:07
Was something this would be fantastic if not in the realm of covid or transgenderism.
56:13
I'll take immigration because that might be the only way to get the Santist
56:16
back into this race. If if the Santis can be indicted in California,
56:22
that might even trump Trump being indicted in New York for paying hush money to
56:29
a porn star in a presidential election. And I'm only being slightly facetious here.
56:34
I think that there's there's actually some truth to this, as insane as
56:37
this world that we're now living in. One other note, Chris Christie has
56:42
announced that he is officially in the race, and the initial signs indicate that
56:47
he's willing and able to go after Donald Trump. So I don't have quite
56:52
as much ire for Christy as I as I do for like Vavague Ramaswami or
56:57
at this point Nicky Haley, who are basically just apping votes from de Santis
57:01
and attacking DeSantis on Trump's behalf. Chris Christie is not going to be the
57:07
nominee. I think Chris Christie, I would hope, is smart enough to
57:09
understand he's not going to be the nominee. If he's into debates and he
57:14
goes after Trump, can that be helpful? I guess. I mean he
57:17
fashions himself as the guy who took out Mark or Rubio, which helped seal
57:22
the deal for Trump in twenty sixteen. So I don't fully trust Christie at
57:25
all, and I don't think he's nearly as smart or as effective as he
57:29
thinks that he is. But I know he's not going to get any real
57:32
support and him going after Trump isn't the worst thing. But the bottom line
57:37
is there's too many damn people in the race and that plays right into Trump's
57:42
hands, and everybody in the media knows it, Trump knows it, and
57:45
yet it still happens as we continue to repeat the same mistakes. At twenty
57:49
sixteen. In the last episode of the podcast, I mentioned that Chris Lick,
57:54
the head of CNN, was in big trouble and it certainly looked rather
57:58
obvious that he was on his way out, and boy to that escalate quickly.
58:02
He is now gone. He has been fired from CNN. I have
58:07
to give a shout out to John Nikosia, who is my former editor at
58:13
Mediaite, who we interviewed at the end of last year on this podcast,
58:16
because he had been making a lot of predictions about what was going to happen
58:22
at CNN, And while it has taken a little bit longer than I think
58:25
John thought, he has been once again vindicated. He told me privately earlier
58:31
this week and also tweeted publicly that Lick was going to be gone very shortly,
58:37
and sure enough, that's exactly what has happened. I indicated to you
58:42
previously on this podcast that there's a lot going on at CNN. I wish
58:46
I can be totally transparent about my level of knowledge about it, but I
58:51
cannot be at this point. I am uncertain as to what the next step
58:55
is going to be at CNN, but I can assure you that it is
58:59
going to be radic based upon what I'm being told, and it might surprise
59:04
some people, but I do think that Chris Lick got a bit of a
59:08
raw deal here because I think he tried to do the right thing, he
59:14
just didn't do it very effectively, and the media basically put him in an
59:19
impossible situation and kind of is an indication that CNN is in a tough spot
59:25
because you know, when Lick tried to drag CNN towards the center, he
59:34
didn't get any love from the right and he got attacked on the left.
59:37
So then how do you do that? I honestly don't have an answer to
59:40
that unless you have an enormous amount of support from upper management and an entire
59:45
philosophical change that that's the way you're gonna go. You also have to get
59:52
rid of a lot of people who are from the former Jeff Zucker regime because
59:57
they're going to fight tooth and nail to keep going down the saint path that
1:00:00
they were going on. So CNN has got a lot of problems, but
1:00:05
there's a lot of stuff going on there, a lot of intrigue. Will
1:00:07
continue to tell you about it, and as soon as I'm able to be
1:00:10
more transparent, I will be. But once again, kudos to John Nakoshia
1:00:15
for nailing it, because his sourcing appears to have been very very good,
1:00:20
and what's really going on at CNN. In a similar vein Tucker Carlson,
1:00:25
former Fox News host, who is doing his best to destroy the entire world
1:00:32
of cable news by now taking his show to Twitter. With the help of
1:00:37
Elon Musk, who helped promote Tucker's first video on Twitter, which occurred earlier
1:00:43
this week, Tucker, without any sort of fanfare, just posted a video
1:00:47
that looked very much like his normal opening monologue from his Fox News show,
1:00:53
and the production value was very rudimentary. Some people were even mocking him for
1:01:01
doing his own teleprompter, which I didn't think it was a big deal.
1:01:05
His studio didn't look very good because Fox News apparently had torn it down and
1:01:10
so it hasn't been fully restored to what it was. But it was the
1:01:16
content of his video, which it should be noted, went viral. Now
1:01:21
how much of it went viral because of what he said and how much it
1:01:24
was just because his firing got so much coverage that anything he puts out is
1:01:30
going to get curiosity seekers. I don't know, but it got millions and
1:01:34
millions of views. I was not impressed by the video. It didn't really
1:01:39
matter to me. The production quality, that's not that big of a deal.
1:01:44
But to me, it just didn't have the same pizzazz, the same
1:01:47
energy, the same magic as Tucker had when he was on Fox News Channel.
1:01:53
Also didn't have the same humor. But the part of it that bothered
1:01:58
me the most is the part where Tucker Carlson very casually simply states that,
1:02:06
oh, by the way, we now have proof that we've been visited by
1:02:10
aliens from another planet, and the media is covering that up and instead focusing
1:02:16
on the war in Ukraine. And I have been outspoken as someone who has
1:02:25
been somewhat friendly with Tucker in the past, worked for him, briefly texted
1:02:30
with him, occasionally expressed my outrage over the way he handled the Donald Trump
1:02:34
interview earlier this year. I have been outspoken about how concerned I am that
1:02:42
Tucker Carlson is not just obsessed with conspiracies, but seems to be able to
1:02:49
be duped into believing almost anything based upon the word of one person. I
1:02:53
mean, he did that with the Kennedy assassination. He had one unnamed person
1:02:59
tell him that the sea killed Kennedy, never even told his audience who this
1:03:04
person was, or why they were credible or what their evidence was. And
1:03:07
he just started saying, matter of factly, oh yeah, the CIA killed
1:03:12
John F. Kennedy, Like, what are you talking about. That's not
1:03:15
the way this works. And he's done the same thing with nine to eleven
1:03:19
conspiracies and Jeffrey Epstein conspiracies. Well, there was this story where a whistle
1:03:29
blower from the government task force on UFOs stated that quote, we are not
1:03:36
alone, and that the United States has retrieved craft from quote non human origins
1:03:44
according to this whistle blower. So you know, there's no way, no
1:03:47
physical evidence of this. This is just one person who you know, is
1:03:52
getting now a lot of attention because they have made this statement and somehow this
1:03:58
is proof that soccer Carlson and to other people. By the way, Matt
1:04:01
Walsh either was joking or was serious. I can't tell, as fans tell
1:04:06
me he was joking, but he also jumped on this same bandwagon that now
1:04:12
the evidence is overwhelming that we've been visited by aliens amount space and you know,
1:04:17
people need to get on board and believe this. I'm like, Okay,
1:04:21
first of all, it's one person with no physical evidence, and you
1:04:27
know, they may have an agenda, they might just be screwing with us.
1:04:30
They could be delusional. There's all sorts of potential explanations. But here's
1:04:35
what I would ask, And this is very, very similar to the Jeffrey
1:04:40
Epstein didn't really kill himself people, which I have a huge problem with.
1:04:45
With the Jeffrey Epstein story, I simply say, Okay, who killed him?
1:04:54
Give me the name of a suspect. That's all I ask. Just
1:04:58
tell me who killed Jeffrey Epstein. It should be very easy because when you're
1:05:01
in a federal prison, we know the names of every single person who was
1:05:06
in that building at any given time. We know exactly what section of the
1:05:10
building they're in. It's a matter of clear record. There's no ambiguity about
1:05:15
this. It's an incredibly small number of people that would have the opportunity to
1:05:18
kill Epstein. So give me the name of a suspect. Tell me the
1:05:21
name of the person who had the access to do this, and you know,
1:05:26
ideally we'd be able to show me some evidence that their bank account suddenly
1:05:30
exploded, or they quit their job and you know, went to the Caribbean
1:05:34
or something, or bought suddenly start to buy all sorts of real estate,
1:05:39
because they came into a mountain of cash, because they pulled this this murder
1:05:45
off for hire, because that's the only reason why you would do it,
1:05:48
right, not to mention the massive cover up that would have to ensue afterwards.
1:05:51
It would include the Attorney General of the United States and President Donald Trump,
1:05:56
and because it's a federal prison and all that. But I'm all a
1:05:59
mass is give me the name of a suspect. No one can never do
1:06:02
that because it didn't happen, because if it had happened, to be the
1:06:06
easiest crime to solve an history. Well, similarly, when it comes to
1:06:11
aliens and outer space, all I ever ask is this, Okay, tell
1:06:15
me what planet they came from. I mean, we have, you know,
1:06:20
mapped out the galaxy to an extraordinary degree. Tell me what planet they
1:06:27
came from, because there's no planet anywhere remotely close to us the sustains the
1:06:34
type of life that would be required to make the trip here incognito, undetected.
1:06:44
And then, by the way, never never tell us that they made
1:06:45
contact. They go to all this trouble and then they never tell us that
1:06:49
they made contact for some reason. But I don't even that's kind of like
1:06:53
the cover up of the Epstein situation. All I ask is tell me what
1:06:57
planet, because there is no planet they could theoretically sustain life where we haven't
1:07:01
already examined the planet well enough to know that there is no high level of
1:07:06
intelligence, and so therefore I need to know where's the planet? What's the
1:07:14
planet? Where do these people? Where do these aliens? What do you
1:07:16
recall them? Where did these aliens come from? And the reason why this
1:07:20
is so important is not just because we have I have never identified a planet
1:07:26
that could theoretically have sustained the type of life that could visit us. We
1:07:30
now know how long it would take from any of the planets we haven't visited
1:07:39
yet for some entity to get here, because we know the speed of light,
1:07:45
and there's no place that's within a zillion light years of us that we
1:07:51
haven't yet determined doesn't have this type of life. This is not difficult logic,
1:07:58
folks. So it's very much like the Epstein situation. If you believe
1:08:01
that Epstein didn't really kill himself, give me a suspects name, just one,
1:08:09
give me a suspects name. You got nothing. And if you believe
1:08:13
We've had aliens visit us from outer space, tell me the planet, just
1:08:17
tell me where they came from, And no one will do that either because
1:08:21
they can't because there's no place that makes any goddamn sense. So I'm concerned
1:08:29
about Tucker. I don't know how successful of this Twitter venture is going to
1:08:32
be, how you're going to monetize it. You know, he's a very
1:08:36
very talented guy. There's clearly an interest for it. Elon Musk seems to
1:08:42
want to make Twitter into basically a competitor of cable news, which I think
1:08:47
might actually work depending on how you're able to monetize it. But I really
1:08:51
have a problem with how conspiratorial Tucker Carlson has become. One other story I
1:08:59
want to mention be what we get to our interview with Carol Markowitz, and
1:09:01
it it kind of dovetails with the interview because Carol talks a lot in her
1:09:08
book about wokeism and the agendas, and she and I kind of get into
1:09:15
this game of mystery of how the hell did this happen? And we don't
1:09:20
talk about it specifically in the interview, but how is it that corporate America
1:09:26
has bought into wokeism so much, and specifically when it comes to transgender issues.
1:09:31
And I had a listener asked me to reference this story on the podcast,
1:09:36
and since I occasionally take requests, especially if they're good requests, I'll
1:09:42
do so now, though I'm not sure I have any special insight, but
1:09:45
I do think this story is worthy of mentioning a podcast called The Death of
1:09:49
Journalism. The New York Post a few days ago had a story with the
1:09:54
headline x Ann Heiser Busch executive reveals how lefty investment firms pressure companies to go
1:10:01
woke. And this is an issue that I have never thought about, and
1:10:05
I think really has a lot of merit, and a lot of it goes
1:10:10
back to the power of California to dictate the politics of the rest of the
1:10:15
country in ways that you never even think about and never get talked about.
1:10:20
Specifically, what this is referencing is that these corporations are now beholden to these
1:10:30
massive financial services firms, these investment firms who control an incredible amount of their
1:10:40
stock because of things like California's pension fund. And so when it comes to
1:10:48
the issue of these companies and their political views and their actual actions on issues
1:11:00
that become political. It's not really about like an Anheuser Busch's situation. It's
1:11:05
not really about making a decision that we're going to offend our target audience,
1:11:12
or we're going to appeal to transgender people by hilling by hiring a transgender spokesperson.
1:11:18
It's about fear of their own stockholders. And because largely of pension funds
1:11:27
and index funds, there are these investment firms that have way way more influence
1:11:35
than they should have if, for instance, each individual person had a certain
1:11:43
number of shares of stock in the company, because they're effectively bundling at all,
1:11:48
and this then gives them incredible leverage when it comes to corporate policy and
1:11:56
so and again, anything that California touches. We've seen this in college sports.
1:12:00
It's very similar to the college sports phenomenon where California and this has not
1:12:04
gotten nearly enough attention. Gavin Newsom in California have single handedly destroyed college sports
1:12:12
because they're the ones that changed all the rules when it came to name,
1:12:15
image and likeness, and they're now trying to change the issue with regard to
1:12:20
whether or not athletes or employees and whether or not you're actually forced to pay
1:12:27
athletes. I mean, that's the next proposal that's out there once California adopts
1:12:31
something. California is so influential and has, you know, obviously major institutions.
1:12:38
So if USC and UCLA all of a sudden get a competitive advantage because
1:12:42
of rules being passed by these nut jobs in California, guess what's going to
1:12:46
happen across the rest of the country. They're going to pass the same laws
1:12:50
because they don't want to have a competitive disadvantage, and so then whatever California
1:12:55
does, the rest of the country does well. Similarly, when it comes
1:12:58
to this situation, when you have this much money in these public sector California
1:13:03
pension funds that are all being controlled by investment firms and index funds and not
1:13:10
by individual stockholders, these people have an outsized influence over corporate policy, and
1:13:18
that really is driving the bus apparently in a lot of ways that I never
1:13:24
really considered before this article in the New York Post, and I think it
1:13:28
is worthy of your attention, so that's why I mentioned it now. So
1:13:31
now I want to get to this interview that we did with Carol Markowitz.
1:13:35
Carol Markowitz is probably my favorite political columnist. She is a columnist for the
1:13:42
New York Post and Fox News, and she has a new book called Stolen
1:13:45
Youth. How radicals Are erasing innocence and indoctorate aning a generation. And I
1:13:53
want you to listen to this interview not just because Carol is great, but
1:13:56
because, even though she and I agree on probably ninety five percent, of
1:14:00
this interview gets a bit contentious, especially towards the end, which is something
1:14:04
I think she and I both enjoyed. So here is my interview with Carol
1:14:09
Markowitz. Joining us now is Carol Markowitz. She's a columnist for the New
1:14:13
York Post and Fox News and co author of a new book, Stolen Youth,
1:14:16
How Radicals Are raising innocence and Indoctrinating a generation. Carol, So nice
1:14:23
to finally meet you. I've been a fan from AFAR. Welcome to the
1:14:26
Death of Journalism podcast. Hi, John, Thanks so much for having me
1:14:30
so so much to talk to you about. I think we generally agree on
1:14:33
most things, but I'm most curious about this book, which obviously has extraordinary
1:14:41
timing and is particularly topical given the fact that we are now in this news
1:14:46
cycle of Pride Month, tell us about how, how and why this book,
1:14:51
which you're the co author of, Stolen Youth came about. So my
1:14:57
co author, Bethany Mendel, and I both moms, we are both conservatives,
1:15:02
We've been in conservative conservative opinion journalism world for a very long time,
1:15:10
and we sort of write on similar trajectories. And the thing was for us
1:15:15
that even though we live very different lives. I had three children in New
1:15:19
York City public schools. She now has five kids, all of whom she
1:15:23
homeschools. We kept running into the same issues, and we saw that this
1:15:28
woke assault on children was happening really in every facet of their life. So
1:15:32
she wasn't able to, for example, as much as she does opt her
1:15:36
children out of our insane society, she can't do it completely. And so
1:15:43
while she homeschools, she still takes her kids to the library, she still
1:15:45
takes her kids to the pediatrician. And it's impossible to just step out of
1:15:50
this and say this is not going to affect my kids. And for me,
1:15:56
we had been laying the foundation at home about all this woke nonsense,
1:16:00
but again we kept seeing that it kept going over our wall. No matter
1:16:04
what we did. And so we decided that we needed to tell the story
1:16:09
to American parents about what was happening, what they were noticing but couldn't quite
1:16:15
put together themselves the picture of what was happening to their kids and what was
1:16:18
happening in our society in general. And I think that the book really came
1:16:25
about when we started thinking about all the different paths that this takes, that
1:16:30
it is a cultural revolution. It's not just you know, one random teacher
1:16:35
or one pediatrician, it's all of them. It's everything, and it's all
1:16:41
being aimed at children. And there's a lot to unpack there. I'm sure,
1:16:47
I'm guessing at least I'm pretty sure that a large part of the motivation
1:16:51
here had to come about during COVID, where children were obviously a target,
1:16:57
but it is now this issue is now more into the issue of transgenderism.
1:17:02
So so kind of take us through that evolution of of COVID too. What's
1:17:08
happening this month with Pride month? Right, So the book opens with a
1:17:14
COVID chapter, which we talked about a lot because we realized, you know,
1:17:17
by the time the book came out, hopefully these issues COVID issues would
1:17:23
be behind us, but we felt like, actually, sorry. The book
1:17:26
opens with a history chapter with a look at all the tatalitarian societies that have
1:17:31
targeted children in similar ways, and then we go right into COVID because we
1:17:36
felt like that was for a lot of us, the starting point of really
1:17:41
seeing what was happening. It was the first time parents saw over their kid's
1:17:44
shoulders what the kids were learning in school and didn't like it at all.
1:17:47
And then there was the tatalitarian aspect of it, where kids were just either
1:17:54
an afterthought or specifically targeted for these measures that everybody knew were necessary. There
1:18:00
was nobody who thought that children were particularly susceptible to this thing. We knew
1:18:04
that in March twenty twenty, and yet kids were treated as if they were
1:18:11
the disease vectors to end all disease vectors. And we saw how this was
1:18:16
affecting children, how it was affecting families, and that this was the way
1:18:21
that they were ushering in this cultural revolution. They were making it so they're
1:18:28
able to get like the curriculum that they want into schools while nobody's paying attention,
1:18:31
or they you know, push this kind of thing through medical licensing through
1:18:38
the transgender stuff, for example, but not just transgender stuff. They do
1:18:42
a lot of woke insanity in all of these places that isn't specific to transgenderism.
1:18:48
And COVID was the eye opener, and it was for me too.
1:18:53
I Look, I lived in Brooklyn my whole life. I'm a lifelong I
1:18:57
was a lifelong new Yorker. My husband was a life long new Yorker,
1:19:00
lived in a superliberal area, and we were planning to raise our children there
1:19:03
and we thought that would be fine, and it was fine until it wasn't.
1:19:10
Now. I am an anti conspiracy person, and I don't think that
1:19:16
liberals are particularly you know, I wish they were nearly as good at governing
1:19:20
as they are at destroying things. And so I don't really buy this notion.
1:19:26
I'm not saying this is where you're going, but I'm asking the question
1:19:29
as to the motivation. I don't buy that this is all part of some
1:19:32
grand plan, because I don't think the liberals are smart enough to figure this
1:19:36
out or to pull it off. But it is remarkable how this has all
1:19:41
happened in a remark, in an incredibly short period of time. What is
1:19:45
your view, Carol, on, for lack of a better term, the
1:19:48
conspiracy element of this, How much of this is thought out? How much
1:19:53
of this just sort of happened because of bizarre perverted self interest or maybe other
1:19:58
explanations that I have and thought about. What is your answer to that.
1:20:01
Before we started writing this book, I could not have been more optimistic and
1:20:09
just about everything about American society. I'm an immigrant. I was born in
1:20:15
the Soviet Union. I came to the US as a small child. I
1:20:16
grew up very grateful every single day that I live in this amazing country.
1:20:20
I really do think about it, you know, a few times a week,
1:20:25
about how lucky I got. And before I started writing this book,
1:20:28
I would have said, absolutely, John, there is no conspiracy here.
1:20:30
There is. It is just a coincidence that every single institution and organization and
1:20:36
corporation and educational facility, they all happened to lean in the same direction.
1:20:42
It's not it was an ideological capture of all of these institutions. They marched
1:20:47
through our institutions and we let it happen. And is there like is George
1:20:53
Soros like controlling the whole thing? No, But there are a lot of
1:20:58
actors in this who are pushing a very leftist ideological agenda, and they have
1:21:03
managed to, you know, get into these institutions and force change. So
1:21:10
one of the things, and one of the more hopeful things in our book,
1:21:13
is how deeply unpopular leftism is. Like seven percent of the country identifies
1:21:17
as very liberal. And I'm sure if you took that number and broke it
1:21:20
down to what is a woman? Do you believe in this such a thing
1:21:24
as a woman, I think we would see even even an even smaller number.
1:21:29
So this is really unpopular. So they have to do it through force.
1:21:31
They get there, they get into these uh, you know, positions
1:21:35
of power, and they force the change. And this is exactly the kind
1:21:40
of thing that has happened into talitarian societies of the past, which is why
1:21:43
it was so important for us to tell the story like that, It's not
1:21:45
just happening here. Yeah. Well, let's I want to push back a
1:21:53
little bit. And because I want to, I want to break this down
1:21:55
a little bit further and maybe separate COVID from transgenderism. So let's deal with
1:21:59
the two issues separately. Let's let's start with with COVID and I this is
1:22:03
an issue that I like yourself dealt with, you know, on a daily
1:22:08
basis, because I have two young daughters, and you know, I will
1:22:11
never forget or forgive what was done during that time period ever. But but
1:22:17
I guess my first question about you know, this being part of a unified,
1:22:23
concerted effort is one and again I questioned the competence lee the competency of
1:22:28
liberals to be able to pull something like this off. But how would the
1:22:31
liberal establishment have known that there wasn't going to be any blowback? That's the
1:22:36
part of this that is the most disturbing to me that this all happened.
1:22:43
We now fully acknowledge, at least most people do, that it didn't need
1:22:46
to happen. And yet in the twenty twenty two mid term elections, there
1:22:50
was zero other than Florida, there was maybe Long Island. There was zero
1:22:58
indication in the entire country that voters were moved by this issue. I mean,
1:23:03
there were many people, even non conservatives, that were predicting that,
1:23:10
you know, you don't mess with with parents, kids, They're going to
1:23:13
punish you for this, and nothing happened. How did they know they were
1:23:17
going to be able to get away with it? Carol, I have a
1:23:20
couple of answers to this. So, first of all, the thing that
1:23:24
ties COVID and CRT and tangenderism and all of these things that we're seeing coming
1:23:31
from the left is that you're not allowed to question any part of it.
1:23:35
You must parrot their language, you must use the words that they want you
1:23:40
to use to describe this. You know, there was like when I was
1:23:44
living in Park Slope, I think that it's a very left part of Brooklyn.
1:23:47
There was clearly like an immigrant family who put a sign in their window
1:23:51
all Lives Matter. They meant they meant to support Black lives matter, but
1:23:56
they put all lives matter because they just didn't know the right terminology. And
1:24:00
it was like two days later that sign came down and I knew what had
1:24:01
happened. Somebody had said to them, like, you used the wrong language.
1:24:05
And that's the kind of thing that the left manages to do. Now,
1:24:09
why wasn't their blowback. That's a great question. Which of the candidates
1:24:14
that lost ran on the issue of punishing people who forced this kind of thing
1:24:20
on children. I think any candidate that ran on it won on it.
1:24:25
And Rond de Santis is a great example of that. Of course, but
1:24:29
there were other examples. You're right that, you know, Long Island was
1:24:32
so angry about what was done to their kids during COVID. That is a
1:24:36
suburban, you know, moderate to left leaning area, and they voted overwhelmingly
1:24:46
Republican because they were forced to keep their kids in masks even though they didn't
1:24:51
want to, and it was coming from the top. It was at the
1:24:55
time Governor Kathy Hokel of New York forcing their kids to stay in masks,
1:24:59
like well past the time that anybody even halfway believed that masks made a difference.
1:25:03
So I think that the candidates that ran on this issue one and the
1:25:09
candidates that didn't didn't. I think that's a little too optimistic of you.
1:25:14
I mean, to me, this is something that people would have figured out
1:25:16
on their own. I mean, I agree with you that many Republicans made
1:25:20
a mistake of deciding that, you know what, this is an issue we
1:25:25
don't need to campaign on because the people who get it already get it on
1:25:28
their own, and and and we don't have to, you know, make
1:25:30
ourselves vulnerable to any blowback. But I mean, for instance, you know,
1:25:35
there's a lot of examples, but to me, the number one is
1:25:39
the Senate race in Georgia. Not that herschel Walker was a great candidate,
1:25:43
but it's freaking Georgia. I mean, how this is? This is a
1:25:45
state that opened up before Florida did, and and and their governor was right,
1:25:51
they've you know, they reelect their governor. But they but they but
1:25:56
they defeat herschel Walker twice within a couple of month period of time. How
1:26:01
do you explain that? I mean, what I think, what I'm saying
1:26:05
is that I don't remember herschel Walker talking about the damage of lockdowns, and
1:26:11
in fact, I'm struggling to remember what he actually ran on. Campaigns matter,
1:26:16
and the thing is that Republicans need to understand. And to my background
1:26:19
is actually in campaigns, and I was a pr person before I got into
1:26:25
being a columnist. Words matter, saying what you believe matters, all of
1:26:30
this matters, you can't run. There was a point in um last summer
1:26:35
where I looked at the campaign websites for a number of candidates and it was
1:26:41
all biography. And I said at the time, to my you know,
1:26:46
I know everybody has a group chat, but to my you know, politically
1:26:48
active group chat and I said, they're all running on their biography and who
1:26:54
they are, and no one cares who you are, nobody's nobody votes for
1:26:58
anybody because of who they are. They vote for them based on what they're
1:27:01
going to do for them, what they believe in. And I wasn't seeing
1:27:04
that from the candidates that lost at all. And I like them. I
1:27:08
like Blake Masters. I thought herschel Walker was far better than Warnuck. It
1:27:12
wasn't a difficult Paul for me. I think Oz was. I mean,
1:27:15
look, whatever you think of Oz, he's a gazillion times better than the
1:27:18
Speederman right. Yet they all ran on this is where I came from,
1:27:25
this is my background, No one cares, and so I guess I can
1:27:30
see your argument because it kind of goes to this idea that the left had
1:27:34
intimidated even people on the right from making this a major part of their campaign.
1:27:41
You're not allowed to go there, You're not allowed to talk about the
1:27:45
worst elements of this. I don't know that that's necessarily true. I think
1:27:48
these people decided not to run on this issue because it is backward looking.
1:27:53
It was a question for us whether we include this chapter in our book because
1:27:56
it is backward looking. It's not like you can now fit say it or
1:28:00
you could do something about it. It's only to never repeat it. And
1:28:03
it was important for us to include that because we felt like, look,
1:28:06
there's there might be another pandemic in your life. We might be going into,
1:28:10
you know, COVID thirty two, and we don't want to make the
1:28:13
same mistakes that we made. Well, now, what you just said there
1:28:16
is a little bit shocking to me because and I get I get what you're
1:28:20
saying. I think there's unfortunately accuracy to it that to a large part of
1:28:26
the population, they have moved on from COVID. Yeah, I find that
1:28:30
just stunning that so many people have apparently moved on. This was the biggest
1:28:34
thing that's ever happened in the modern history of America. It was a catastrophe
1:28:39
on so many different levels. There was enormous amounts of damage. Whatever happened
1:28:43
to accountability and punishing people who did these wrongs to make sure that it never
1:28:49
happens again. And by the way, not just with regard to a pandemic,
1:28:53
Carol, I think they're doing the same thing with climate change, global
1:28:57
warming, I think and so this is an ongoing situation. COVID not only
1:29:02
is still killing people today, but the legacy of COVID is going to be
1:29:06
felt for generations. I believe in this country, well, I think that
1:29:11
if you want to be a candidate, you know who runs on this,
1:29:14
the proposals that you have have to include that accountability. I don't think that
1:29:18
Americans don't care or that they Yes, a lot of people have moved on.
1:29:24
It is the human way to move on from bad things that happened to
1:29:27
you or bad things that happened to your family. It is. But the
1:29:30
idea that we haven't held anybody accountable should really bother people. And politicians can
1:29:36
speak to that issue. They can say, look, nobody has been held
1:29:40
accountable, not a single person. The CDC handed over policymaking to teachers unions
1:29:47
and not one person has been fired over this. So the idea and look,
1:29:51
and it came from the Biden administration. So if you want to hold
1:29:55
somebody accountable, it is the Biden administration that you ultimately have to hold accountable
1:29:59
on stuff like that. But nobody's running on that, and campaigns really do
1:30:03
matter. I always say this, but you know, voting is hard,
1:30:05
vote leaving your House. What if it's raining going to wait on a line
1:30:10
unless you feel something for this candidate, unless you really matter that this candidate
1:30:14
wins over the other candidate, unless they paint the picture for you how it's
1:30:17
going to matter. I think people just don't bother and a lot of the
1:30:23
time I don't blame them. Well, to me, that's if true,
1:30:27
and it may very well be that's a recipe for destruction of the United States
1:30:31
because politicians respond, like all humans, to stimuli, and if they're not
1:30:38
punished for something that they want to do, they're going to do it again.
1:30:41
And when we have a situation where I mean, look, you know,
1:30:45
if Joe Biden were to decide not to run for reelection, the two
1:30:48
people most mentioned on the Democratic side or Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer, who
1:30:54
were the two worst lockdown governors probably in the entire country. I mean,
1:30:59
so right there that that is a very depressing reality, is it, not,
1:31:04
Carol? It is. But so let me ask you this. Let's
1:31:09
say let's say that Biden doesn't run, which I think he's running. I
1:31:13
think, I'm I'm I know, I've been I've been on this from the
1:31:15
beginning I said it's going to be Biden running, Like, stop imagining that
1:31:19
they're going to replace him. I agree, I agree with you, by
1:31:23
the way. Okay, but let's say let's say tomorrow he has a really
1:31:26
bad you know, I wish him well, but I imagine he has a
1:31:30
bad fall, something happens. Whatever he's out, Let's say it is Gavin
1:31:33
Newsom. Regression Whitmer the candidate on the Republican side really matters. Look taking
1:31:39
out Ron De Santis for a second, because Ron de Santis would run on
1:31:42
closures, which of the other candidates would even hit them on closures? I
1:31:45
don't even think Donald Trump would. And I don't I'm not saying Donald Trump
1:31:49
wanted to close down the country. And in fact, we talk about him
1:31:53
in the book and we say that it was because he wanted schools to open,
1:31:57
that the left so badly wanted to keep them close. It was like
1:32:00
a reaction to his wanting to push forward on schools. So but looking at
1:32:05
a campaign, I don't even think Donald Trump would run on Look, these
1:32:10
people ruined the lives of so many people. These people caused all of this
1:32:15
economic destruction and all this educational destruction. Can you see him including that in
1:32:19
his campaign, I kind of can't. And then the rest of them,
1:32:23
the Nicky Hayley's and the Tim Scotts and the rest, Mike Pence, they're
1:32:28
not running on closures. They're not running on what Gavin Newsom did to his
1:32:31
state during COVID. They're not. And that's again that matters. That matters
1:32:36
to the conversation. If you say people aren't voting for it, it's because
1:32:40
no one is running on it. Well, but maybe no one's running on
1:32:44
it because the focus groups and the polling indicate that it won't work. I
1:32:47
mean, yeah, but I think even if the polling was saying that for
1:32:53
Ron de Santis, I think a presidential candidate Ron de Santis would still absolutely
1:32:58
run on it. I know it matters to him. I know, you
1:33:00
know, he takes it very seriously, and I know I know that's part
1:33:03
of his just reason for running, and it's you know, it's crazy to
1:33:09
imagine that the rest of them don't see that. Well, we're going to
1:33:12
address more specifically the desantist Trump situation in a minute, because you are uniquely
1:33:16
qualified to talk about that given your residency situation. But just for the record,
1:33:21
on that. You know, I have been very critical of the desantist
1:33:25
campaign for I think not fully taking advantage of Trump, uh, you know,
1:33:29
claiming that New York was was better than Florida. But let's let's let's
1:33:32
hold on off of that for just a second, because I don't want to
1:33:36
skip the transgender element of this. Because because as baffled as I am of
1:33:42
the about the politics of locking down kids and masking kids in schools and and
1:33:48
all that which obviously talk about in your book Stolen Youth, I may be
1:33:51
even more flummixed by the idea that somehow it is a politically viable idea to
1:34:00
be in favor of some of the things regarding transgenderism that the left appears to
1:34:05
be in favor of. Can you explain this to me, Carol, because
1:34:09
I honestly don't get it. Yeah, it's really all one thing where they
1:34:15
police the language and the thoughts of people, and there's only one acceptable position
1:34:21
on transgenderism right now, and the left will not allow any deviation from that.
1:34:28
If you're like her name just escaped me, but Harry Potter writer JK.
1:34:35
Rowling, If you're JK Rowling and you are by all measures you're pro
1:34:41
transgender. She has never said a word that said, you know, she
1:34:45
was anti transgender in anyway. She says things like women's spaces should be for
1:34:49
women and things like that, and she believes in the existence of women,
1:34:55
and that makes her anti trans even though she has but she's fully on board
1:34:59
with people being able to transition and etc. But they have made it so
1:35:04
you're not allowed to step out of line at all. And when it comes
1:35:08
to kids, they have perfected the argument that if you don't want this,
1:35:14
if you don't let this kid who thinks that they're the opposite gender transition,
1:35:17
then you're setting them up for suicide. That you know, do you want
1:35:21
a live boy or a dead girl? Is stuff like that. It really
1:35:25
does resonate with parents. And where I think the Conservatives have made a giant
1:35:30
mistake is not providing a solution to parents whose kid comes home and says,
1:35:35
I'm actually I'm a girl, I'm not a boy. Conservatives just generally say
1:35:40
say no, no, tell them no, you know, but that's not
1:35:44
enough. And if a parent has this situation in their home, they need
1:35:47
resources. There are none. There are no psychologists that we can send them
1:35:50
to that will say look, this is just a phase you're going through,
1:35:55
or you know, no, you shouldn't get on puberty blockers. The medical
1:35:59
stablishman is lined up to absolutely push this agenda, and they have to.
1:36:04
A doctor can lose their license if they don't. It's all very much from
1:36:09
the top. Medical licensing is something that you know, one of the ways
1:36:14
that they have captured this. And in order to get your medical license,
1:36:17
you need to parrot the exact lines. You now in order to apply for
1:36:23
medical school, have to parrot the exact lines, and if you don't,
1:36:26
then you're not getting in. And so conservatives have to provide some sort of
1:36:30
alternate path for parents who are dealing with this, and if they don't,
1:36:34
they just they risk them having to go to the left, having to go
1:36:39
through this process with them and go through puberty blockers. And maybe even more
1:36:44
because if parent has a situation with their kid and they have nowhere to turn,
1:36:47
and one side is saying, look, this doesn't exist, just get
1:36:50
over it, and the other side is saying, we love your kid,
1:36:54
here's how to make sure they don't kill themselves. The parents are going to
1:36:57
go towards that. But Carol, how did this happen so quickly and so
1:37:02
dramatically. This was not even a thing, at least in my recollection before
1:37:10
the last couple of years. It certainly wasn't a political issue. And you
1:37:13
know, obviously human beings have existed for a very long time, and now
1:37:16
all of a sudden we're having We're having a ten, eleven, twelve,
1:37:20
thirteen, fourteen year old kids decide that they're the wrong gender and that they
1:37:25
need to do something about this medically, and that people are in some people
1:37:29
are in favor of this. I mean, this is an extraordinary radical change
1:37:33
to have occurred in a very small period of time. So how did that
1:37:39
happen? It's two separate things. One thing is that we've started in the
1:37:45
last decade to really value victimhood and to say to people, if you have
1:37:53
these victim points, then you know you're a better person. White man John,
1:37:58
Sorry, you're out. You don't have a victim point. But you
1:38:00
know how you can get some really quickly is if you declare yourself non binary,
1:38:04
and you say, actually, I'm neither male nor female, I'm non
1:38:09
binary, I'm queer. You don't even have to do anything. You could
1:38:12
stay looking exactly how you look, dressing how you dress, and declare yourself
1:38:15
non binary, and suddenly you have the victim points. That's very powerful for
1:38:20
a teenager. I say this a lot, but I know if I were
1:38:25
a teenager right now, Oh, I would be living it up with this
1:38:28
whole thing. I would make my teachers call me like pronouns that I made
1:38:31
up that morning. I would be on board with it. Tree user,
1:38:38
I would that would be me. Why not? It's so much power for
1:38:41
a kid to be able to control what the teachers call them, what other
1:38:45
people call them, to get people in trouble for not calling you the right
1:38:47
thing. Oh, that would so many kids. I could see where they
1:38:51
do it. And the other thing is it's a social contagion. So in
1:38:56
our book, we have, for example, a girl Scout troop where like
1:39:00
seven of the girls come out as trans. That's not possible, that's not
1:39:03
possible by any mathematic measure, and yet it happens because they follow each other
1:39:10
down this path and they see that the praise and the glory that comes with
1:39:14
it that you've decided that you're trans, and now everybody's like, yeay,
1:39:18
you're trans, and they support you, and you're amazing and you're different and
1:39:23
you're unique, and they're like, wait, I want that. And again,
1:39:27
you can take the next steps and get hormone blockers or you know,
1:39:30
chop off body parts. Sure, but you could also just stay yourself and
1:39:34
say the words and get the praise and not do anything. So we've once
1:39:41
we've given points to the oppressed, to the victims, and we've said here,
1:39:46
we treat you better than we treat other people. Obviously obviously teenagers,
1:39:51
kids, they're gonna see that and fall into it because it's so easy.
1:39:56
Carl, that's by far the best answer I've heard on this top. I
1:40:00
will though, say that even though I'm a white male with no victim points,
1:40:03
I've never understood that as a married white male, I don't get victim
1:40:08
points for being a eunuch. That has always been confusing to me. I
1:40:12
feel like I should get something in return for that. But now, politically,
1:40:17
though, as baffled as I am, that COVID other than in Florida
1:40:23
and Long Island didn't resonate as an issue, what do you think is going
1:40:28
to happen? Because it's really you know, even in twenty twenty two,
1:40:30
I don't think this issue was as forefront in the news cycle and in people's
1:40:36
the average person's mindset as it is today. So we're kind of heading into
1:40:41
our first election cycle where this is as big an issue as it is.
1:40:45
Do you think this is going to be like like COVID or do you think
1:40:48
this will have more potency from a political standpoint. I think that the liberals
1:40:54
love that conservatives have taken up this issue because they hope that the Conservatives win.
1:41:00
When you look at Europe and you have Britain and Sweden and these other
1:41:04
countries deciding not to pursue any kind of transition for children, not to have
1:41:11
any gender clinics or any of that, that's they're on the left. Those
1:41:15
countries are left leaning countries, and the liberals here would love to follow them
1:41:20
down that path, but they're afraid of this left wing that they have who
1:41:26
do not let them do that. So I think that people need to be
1:41:30
explained what's going on. So a great example is I have I'm friends with
1:41:35
this couple who are like moderate Republicans in Brooklyn, and they were like,
1:41:41
what's the big deal about drag Queen story hour. I was like, well,
1:41:44
you know, it's not drag queen story hour anymore, it's now a
1:41:46
drag queen tworking hour. I haven't seen a drag queen hold a book,
1:41:50
And when's the last time we saw a drag queen read a book in any
1:41:54
of these videos? Right, But they hadn't realized that it had progressed from
1:41:59
a drag queen reading a book in a library to a drag queen having dollars
1:42:03
put in their g string by children. And so you need to kind of
1:42:08
again, when you're having a political campaign, you cannot assume that people are
1:42:12
on Twitter all day like me and you are and know every story and hear
1:42:15
every reference and see all the videos. You need to tell people what's going
1:42:20
on, and a lot of people simply don't know. So if I were
1:42:25
advising a campaign, I would say provide examples, show evidence, tell the
1:42:30
stories of real people. I mean, Chloe Cole is a kid who you
1:42:35
know, she's a girl, she transitioned, they cut off her breast at
1:42:39
like sixteen. She's a very powerful example, but there's so many others.
1:42:44
It's not just her that this happened too. It's not just her who got
1:42:47
basically convinced by a bunch of adults to do something insane. And I think
1:42:54
that the more stories that a political candidate can tell about this kind of thing,
1:42:58
especially if you're running, like for a Senate or a governor seat,
1:43:00
and you're telling the stories about what happened in your own state, I think
1:43:03
that's powerful. I'll have to tell you that with this book, what I've
1:43:08
seen and this is really wild to me. But Red States don't think this
1:43:13
is happening to them. They do not think that. They think that this
1:43:16
is still a coastal issue. They think and look, when we lived in
1:43:20
New York City, my now thirteen year old daughter, we moved when she
1:43:24
was twelve, had I don't even know transgender friends, ten friends who had
1:43:30
declared themselves either trans or non binary or something. And in Florida, what
1:43:33
a coincidence she doesn't have any. And it is sort of a regional thing
1:43:39
still, but Red States have to know it's coming, it's coming, and
1:43:42
it's coming fast. Well, I'm glad you said that, because one of
1:43:46
my mantras whenever I do interviews around the country and I live in Los Angeles
1:43:51
area, is I think that one of the great most dangerous canards in the
1:43:59
conservative movement or side of things is that the idea that somehow New York and
1:44:03
Illinois and California are unique and that can't be where we are. This is
1:44:10
not going to come to where we are. And I keep screaming and yelling
1:44:13
if you don't hold the line, if you don't nip this in the bud.
1:44:15
There's nothing unique about New York, Illinois or California other than demographics,
1:44:21
and the demographics are changing everywhere that this is going to happen in your neck
1:44:27
of the woods too, And Ronda Santis understands this better than anybody, which
1:44:31
is why he's going right to the root of all that. And we're going
1:44:34
to get into him in the GOP campaign in just a minute. But there's
1:44:39
one last element on this I want to get your take on, because obviously
1:44:42
this is a podcast called the Death of Journalism, and we really haven't talked
1:44:45
about the media's influence on this, and I do think that there is a
1:44:49
very similar, if not identical, dynamic going on when it comes to both
1:44:55
COVID and the issue of transgenderism, where the media, the mainstream news media,
1:45:00
is lock step with liberals in not allowing the other side to even have
1:45:06
a fair shake. Would you agree with that assessment? Absolutely? And you
1:45:11
know what the worst part is. The worst part is that they know we're
1:45:14
right. And I know that they know we're right because they were in my
1:45:16
DMS during COVID saying, I love your work, You're doing amazing stuff.
1:45:21
I wrote a ton about schools and that was really like primarily my beat during
1:45:27
COVID, and I had all these liberal journalists who live in New York City
1:45:30
and send their kids to public school just like I did, saying thank you,
1:45:33
thank you for speaking up. Obviously I couldn't possibly speak up, but
1:45:36
thank you for speaking up. And I haven't like named them or called them
1:45:42
out, but I'm embarrassed for them because how you just sat back and let
1:45:47
me take the heat for wanting the most obvious thing in the world. I
1:45:51
wasn't asking for anything crazy. I was saying that if your grandma's eating in
1:45:56
a restaurant, then maybe my seven year old shouldn't be eating on the ground
1:45:59
outside of public school and masking between bites. And yet they didn't say a
1:46:03
word. These weak, you know, scared, just just terrible people who
1:46:10
absolutely have no bravery and no sense of doing the right thing. The media
1:46:15
is absolute trash. I have no respect for almost any of it, and
1:46:21
it just you're you're right that they are not gonna break. They're they're not
1:46:27
gonna Look what happens to the New York Times. They get such insane pushback
1:46:30
for saying the most you know, tiny tiny, tiny truths on transgenderism.
1:46:35
And the thing is that I think for a lot of people look back ten
1:46:40
years ago, did you care one bit that they were adults who called themselves
1:46:44
transgender, who transitioned. No one cared. It was when they came for
1:46:48
the kids that we all were like, wait, this can't happen. And
1:46:53
that's the media can tell that story, and they don't. So I don't
1:46:58
trust them at all and I have no respect at all for them. Here
1:47:02
here my view, Carol, on why this is the case. It's obvious
1:47:08
that number one is the people that control most of the media are liberals,
1:47:12
right, and they're all living in this club that they don't want to get
1:47:15
kicked out of. But most important to that is I think the root cause
1:47:20
here is that the business model in the news media has broken, which means
1:47:26
that there is no job security for anybody in the media, and it's very
1:47:30
very difficult to get another gig if you get fired. And once an issue
1:47:35
becomes a third rail, whether it's COVID or transgenderism within the left, no
1:47:41
one has the courage, as you say, to touch it because it is
1:47:45
something over which you could get fired. So this is why we see the
1:47:47
same kind of groupthink on racial issues, transgender issues, COVID issues. Once
1:47:53
the left asides, we all must be on the same side here, and
1:47:57
don't you dare go outside the herd, because we will run you over once
1:48:01
that happens. And once that message is sent, the media is dead because
1:48:06
inherently, I mean, one of the reasons why journalism has died is because
1:48:13
in order to be a journalist, you have to be willing to do things
1:48:15
that will make you unliked or sometimes even hated, because that's the nature of
1:48:21
the truth. So what do you make of that assessment? That's absolutely right,
1:48:26
And what I would say is read the history chapter and stolen youth,
1:48:30
because this is not the first time that the left has done this. This
1:48:33
has happened in so many different societies where they have policed the language and they
1:48:39
have made it so you cannot speak the truth. And if you do speak
1:48:43
the truth, there are repercussions, and people will say to me, like,
1:48:45
oh, but America is not like the Soviet Union. It's not like
1:48:47
China, it's not like Kembodia. It's not like all these other places that
1:48:49
we talk about in the history chapter. Okay, maybe it's not. But
1:48:54
what people need to understand is that in the Soviet Union, for example,
1:48:58
yeah, there was you know, gulags and the secret police and all of
1:49:01
that, but for a lot of it, it was your neighbors policing what
1:49:04
you were allowed to say. It was your neighbors who pressured you. It
1:49:09
was them who said, we're going to get you fired from your job,
1:49:12
from your you know, comfortable life if you don't parrot the line that we
1:49:15
want you to parrot. It's in a lot of these societies, it was
1:49:20
not necessarily the government shutting down your speech. It was your friends and neighbors
1:49:25
and colleagues. And that's what I feel is happening in America today. Now
1:49:30
let's transition to the Republican race for the presidential nomination, and I want to
1:49:35
start with a subject I've already alluded to that I think you're particularly credible on
1:49:42
because you've lived it, and recently, you know, Donald Trump, I
1:49:46
think made a massive mistake. And when after Rhonda Santis on this biggest issue
1:49:54
of COVID, and not only when after De Santis but sided with Andrew Cuomo
1:49:58
and New York's response to COVID and said that that was somehow better than Florida's
1:50:03
response. And here you are a lifelong almost lifelong New Yorker, I guess
1:50:08
who who decided to move to Florida where you now currently are. So take
1:50:14
us through Karl Barkowitz's assessment of that particular issue, both politically as far as
1:50:19
from a reality standpoint. Yeah, Donald Trump says a lot of things,
1:50:25
and there's plenty of video of him praising De Santis's response, So it is
1:50:30
obviously a political calculation just to hurt the Santis on his absolute best issue,
1:50:36
which is that he saw what was the right thing to do on COVID far
1:50:41
before a lot of people did, even people on the right, and he
1:50:47
absolutely stood by that decision. At no point did De Santas Waver. I
1:50:53
think one of the things that I enjoy pointing out, and I traced this
1:50:57
timeline in the book, is that when people talk about schools being closed.
1:51:01
For example, they're talking about school year twenty twenty, so September twenty twenty,
1:51:08
So okay, schools closed Spring twenty twenty. In September twenty twenty,
1:51:12
they open up in places like Florida and Iowa, and eventually in Texas and
1:51:16
another places across the country, but they don't open in any of the blue
1:51:19
areas that are controlled by teachers unions. So the schools eventually open at the
1:51:25
end of school year twenty twenty one. At that point, Biden has already
1:51:29
become president, but they still are opening at a trickle. They finally open
1:51:33
like in May June twenty twenty one in New York City, and they don't
1:51:36
open at all in places like Chicago, in La etc. School Year twenty
1:51:41
twenty one comes September, and the teachers unions try to pressure schools to close
1:51:46
for another year. It's not like, Oh, everybody realized what a disaster
1:51:51
we just went through keeping these schools closed. And if you look at summer
1:51:56
twenty twenty one, you have all these media outlets, and again it's all
1:52:00
related having these stories, these headlines like teachers Die, four Teachers Die,
1:52:04
is Ron de Santis plans to open schools, like you know, and it's
1:52:09
all like and what they don't what they never say, of course, is
1:52:13
those teachers were on summer vacation. Schools hadn't even opened yet, so the
1:52:15
fact that they were teachers was irrelevant. And you have just this pressure on
1:52:21
Ron de Santis to keep schools closed for the next year and keep masks on
1:52:26
kids, and he says, absolutely not open schools, no masks. That's
1:52:30
it. And it was not an easy thing to do. It was not
1:52:34
an easy thing to do. Everybody could pretend now that we all by twenty
1:52:38
twenty one, sure we all knew. No. If you look at all
1:52:41
the media and all the teachers union comments, they were trying to keep schools
1:52:45
closed for a second year, and Ron de Santis stood in the way of
1:52:49
that. And for me, that was all I needed to see to get
1:52:53
my family out of crazy New York and move them to Florida. And I've
1:52:57
met so many people who basically moved around that same time twenty twenty one.
1:53:02
Where we were trying to wait out New York, we were trying to wait
1:53:05
out places like Chicago in LA and look, I don't know about Chicago,
1:53:09
La but New York was an amazing place to live. It was fantastic.
1:53:12
I loved it. I loved it so much. I was a New York
1:53:15
supremacist. I Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg had done a fantastic job, and Mayor
1:53:21
BILLD. De Blasio had even managed to kind of skate on it for a
1:53:25
long time because things were so good that it was hard to ruin. And
1:53:29
then of course COVID hits, and it exposes all the problems that New York
1:53:31
has and that New Yorkers are just unwilling to deal with. And I had
1:53:35
to get my family out, and Florida was the obvious choice. Before I
1:53:41
get into the polling data on this, which is fascinating, I want to
1:53:45
allude to something you already mentioned, but maybe from a slightly different perspective,
1:53:49
and that is you made an incredibly important point which I make at every opportunity,
1:53:55
because this has been put down the memory hole and never thought of it.
1:54:00
And that is in the summer of twenty twenty, when Donald Trump comes
1:54:04
out in favor of opening schools, and they and the Pediatrics Association favors that.
1:54:15
But then after Trump comes out and says this is great, they reverse
1:54:19
themselves, and the entire medical establishment, in a overtly political cave, decides
1:54:28
that they can offend their liberal friends and they can't be seen as helping Donald
1:54:31
Trump's reelection campaign. So they reverse themselves on whether or not schools should be
1:54:36
open, and by and large, schools stay closed in the fall of twenty
1:54:42
twenty. Now, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but
1:54:45
you implied giving Trump some credit for that, for that effort, I look
1:54:51
at that differently. I look at that as proof of the inherent toxicity of
1:55:00
Donald Trump, that he is so toxic, that he is so hated,
1:55:05
that he has a reverse Midas effect where where everything he touches turns to crap,
1:55:14
and that if you did not have a president that was hated by fifty
1:55:16
five percent of the public and they came out in favor of schools opening in
1:55:20
that situation, it might have actually helped other medical experts come forward and saying,
1:55:27
Yep, this is right, we got to do this, And it
1:55:30
certainly would not have had them feel so vulnerable to criticism that they reverse themselves
1:55:38
and decide that we're no, We're going to keep him shut. So what
1:55:41
do you make of my take on Donald Trump actually deserving not credit but scorn
1:55:47
for what actually happened there. He's to blame. The thing is that I
1:55:51
can't blame Donald Trump for that. I can't. I think that people lost
1:55:56
their minds over him, and that can't be his fault. We're going to
1:56:00
see them lose their minds similarly over Ron de Santis, Like, prepare for
1:56:04
that, because they already are. I've already seen the Trump is. You
1:56:10
know, Ron de Santis is worse than Trump articles. I don't know the
1:56:15
fact that the left manages to keep their institutions and organizations on such a tight
1:56:21
leash. I just don't think that we can blame that on Trump. And
1:56:26
I remember the same arguments happening in Florida specifically, but they were against A
1:56:31
Santis and the teachers Union sued to santiss in Florida. I don't know.
1:56:39
I get what you're saying. And it's funny because you know, Donald Trump
1:56:43
obviously does make people behave in kind of insane and irrational ways. But can
1:56:50
we really blame Donald Trump for the American Medical Association and the Pediatrics reversing the
1:56:58
years and years decades long research that kids need to see faces when yes,
1:57:04
yes, you asked a question. Can I blame Donald Trump for that?
1:57:08
And yes, I blame them first of all for being from political whorerors,
1:57:14
but I blame Donald Trump. And here's why, Carroll, and then I'll
1:57:17
leave this point. We'll go on. But I do want to push back
1:57:20
because Donald Trump made a thousand decisions before that that left himself vulnerable to this.
1:57:30
He governed in a way when he did where he did not give a
1:57:34
crap that fifty five percent of the public hated him. And I and I
1:57:40
said, and I said, time and time again, what happens in a
1:57:43
crisis? What happens in a crisis. That's fine, when everything's going great,
1:57:47
the economy is running fantastically, you can get away with just appealing to
1:57:51
your core, But as soon as a crisis hits, you're screwed. And
1:57:57
it is because of Donald Trump, Carol. Is because of Donald Trump that
1:58:01
my kids' schools were not just closed, but when they opened, they were
1:58:05
still all masked. It was all because he made liberals lose their goddamn minds.
1:58:13
And I am going to disagree. Okay, So here's the thing.
1:58:16
Yes, he made liberals lose their minds absolutely, and he made a large
1:58:19
portion of the right lose their minds, whether you know, towards him or
1:58:24
against him. But the thing was with him that he was so non ideological
1:58:30
as a president that the liberals could have worked with him, and so many
1:58:33
liberals figured that out. And that's not good for the right. I'm not
1:58:36
saying that was a positive for us, but they absolutely could have worked with
1:58:42
him on a variety of issues. He was open to it. He would
1:58:45
have taken meetings with Nancy Pelosi and anybody else. So the fact that they
1:58:50
wanted to gin up their base and to say, look, we hate this
1:58:55
guy. He's just he's a fascist, He's the worst, and really make
1:58:58
them angry. It worked for them politically, and I don't see how we
1:59:01
can blame Donald Trump for that. Okay, well we're going to disagree on
1:59:05
that because I think I think that you are responsively what they wanted from him,
1:59:11
and I agree. I agree with you on that, Carol so much.
1:59:15
I agree with you on that, Carrol, But that's just that's to
1:59:17
me, is a separate issue. To me, you take the good with
1:59:20
the bad, and when you make a decision that you're going to govern in
1:59:25
a way where fifty five you knowing you aren't you were fully aware his personality
1:59:30
that they objected to you so much, like which part of his governing was
1:59:35
really like abrasive to them? I mean so much of it. I feel
1:59:41
like what didn't go didn't do any of the right wingy stuff that he said
1:59:45
he was going to do. Um Again, I think that the left could
1:59:47
have worked with him in a way that they're going to be incapable of working
1:59:50
with other Republican presidents, and they chose not to because it was politically advantageous
1:59:57
to them to make their base despise him. And so at that point,
2:00:00
I don't see that like the American Medical Association turning itself into a joke to
2:00:05
oppose him is his fault, all right, But I like the disagreement,
2:00:11
you know, I don't think they don't think they would have had the courage
2:00:16
or the cowardice, depending on your perspective, to do the same thing to
2:00:19
a president that wasn't hated by fifty five percent of the American public. I
2:00:24
think if you, if you had, if George W. Bush had been
2:00:28
president, for all of his faults, he was never at the very end
2:00:31
he was hated because of the Iraq War. But right, but but it
2:00:35
was a different kind of of hatred. And now if you if if Nancy
2:00:43
Bush Hitler was such a common thing, I understand it. I'm talking about
2:00:45
the first four to five years of the George Bush presidency, before the Iraq
2:00:50
War went south. There's no way in hell that the same thing would have
2:00:56
happened to George W. Bush. They would not, they would, they
2:00:59
would, I'd have had the audacity to do it. And that's because George
2:01:02
Bush tried to govern no understanding that the people in the middle matter. Trump
2:01:10
didn't give a crap about the people in the middle. He only cared about
2:01:13
his base. And when it came when the rubber met the road, when
2:01:16
when the heat was on, when it really mattered most, he got hosed
2:01:21
over that. And that's his fault, because that's his decision in the in
2:01:26
the way he chose to not just govern but also portray himself to the public
2:01:31
in a way that allowed or caused an enormous number of people to hate his
2:01:35
guts. All right, but his bass would say he didn't deliver, he
2:01:40
didn't govern towards them at all. I mean, the the Kim Kardashian,
2:01:44
you know, Bill and all of that, and just lack of action on
2:01:47
immigration, almost going towards an amnesty proposal from him, and wanting to legalize,
2:01:54
you know, some large number of people who were here already. I
2:01:58
feel like the base would say he did not governed towards them. I agree
2:02:00
with you. I remember the Bush years. They despised him, they hated
2:02:05
him so much. I just remember every time he did anything I was worried
2:02:10
about, like protesters. I remember the first pitch after nine to eleven,
2:02:14
and it's such an iconic moment now and he throws George Bush throws a perfect
2:02:18
strike. I remember thinking he's going to get booed. September, you know,
2:02:23
a few days after nine to eleven, and I remember thinking, he
2:02:25
is going to get booed. They despise him so much, he's going to
2:02:28
get booed at this moment. And then you know, all right, well
2:02:30
this alright, this time, though, Carol, we have the option to
2:02:35
not pick someone who is as of yet nearly as toxic as Donald Trump.
2:02:40
And so let's get back. Let's get back to this Trump. The Santa
2:02:44
situation, and the polling on this was extraordinary. I saw you tweeted this
2:02:48
out, and I talked about in the last podcast where ninety two percent of
2:02:53
Republicans would have preferred to live in Florida versus New York when it came to
2:02:58
COVID, and seventy eight percent of New Yorkers even would have preferred to live
2:03:03
in Florida over New York. And I found that number to be particularly extraordinary,
2:03:08
not just because they're they're New Yorkers, but you got to remember there's
2:03:10
a lot of Carol Marco witches who left New York to go to Florida,
2:03:13
and they're not being polled, so that number is probably even higher than seventy
2:03:17
eight percent. What did you make of that particular poll. I can't believe
2:03:23
it was so low ninety two percent. What were the other eight percent thinking?
2:03:26
Like, what could they be thinking? Were they thinking that the masks
2:03:31
were important? Were they thinking that kids needed to be kept home. It's
2:03:36
baffling to me that it's even ninety two percent. It should be a hundred.
2:03:40
But look, I think that it was clear that Florida did the right
2:03:45
thing. I think it was clear that Ron de Santis did the right thing.
2:03:47
And the thing is that like the overwhelming number of people in Florida who
2:03:53
care so deeply about the COVID years are the new arrivals, because the people
2:03:59
that were here thought that the normalcy that they were living through was happening everywhere,
2:04:03
and the people who arrived here, like I did, knew that that
2:04:08
was not the case. They had no idea, Like just we actually did
2:04:12
like a test run because we never thought about leaving New York ever. Ever,
2:04:15
so we in twenty January twenty twenty one, we live in we end
2:04:19
up moving to Florida for a few months so our kids can go to school
2:04:21
and we could sort of test it out. And my daughter plays in a
2:04:25
softball league, which at the time in New York they're still wearing masks outside
2:04:30
to play all the sports. Parents have to wait outside of the fence because
2:04:33
you can't have too many people outside for playing softball. You can't have too
2:04:38
many people inside the fence, I mean insanity. And then her team wins
2:04:42
the championship. We were living in a place called pom Beach Gardens that I
2:04:45
never even heard of before, and her team wins the championship, and the
2:04:48
girls all hug and I tears in my eyes watching this because I know it's
2:04:55
going to be at least another year at least before New York gets back to
2:04:59
this kind of thing. And I don't know if they ever will. They're
2:05:02
jumping and hugging, maskless. And then a few days later, Ron de
2:05:06
Santis post a picture on his Twitter and he's posing with a little league team
2:05:11
and none of them are wearing masks and they're all close together. And he
2:05:14
gets so much blowback for this, And I know that how that normalcy was
2:05:18
just everything down here, and how it was amazing and none of those kids
2:05:24
got sick and none of those kids died, and we knew that that was
2:05:27
going to be the case already, and he was doing the right thing,
2:05:30
and he was showing what normal could look like, even when it was deeply
2:05:33
unpopular in other places. So does that performance during COVID, as well as
2:05:40
being to the right of Donald Trump on transgender issues, get Ron de Santis
2:05:45
Carol mark Witz's support and in the Republican primary process. Well, I you
2:05:51
know, I'm not officially endorsing anybody, but I'm a big fan of Ron
2:05:55
de Santis. I things like, you know, there's a lot of conversation
2:06:00
conservative world about pull your kids from government schools. Well, the fact that
2:06:03
my kids are in public school here in Florida. I have a kid in
2:06:09
private school, in two in public, and the public school is just so
2:06:12
much safer ideologically here in Florida because I don't have to worry about a lot
2:06:16
of the woke nonsense that I did in other places in New York and etc.
2:06:20
Or in private schools in Florida, because private schools can do what they
2:06:24
want, but the public schools are under his control. And he pulls math
2:06:29
books that have CRT questions hidden in it, and it's just it's a level
2:06:33
of competence and security that I think a lot of Americans don't even know that
2:06:40
they should expect from their elected leaders. But yeah, I'm obviously a huge
2:06:44
roun De Santist fan, and I think that he's just his amazing competency is
2:06:49
everything for me. The fact that he gets stuff done, the fact that
2:06:54
you know when there's a problem, he's going to solve it. I've never
2:06:57
lived anywhere where it can count on leadership like that. So I'm curious,
2:07:00
Carol, from a media perspective, you're an opinion columnist, why the hesitation
2:07:06
to endorse somebody for the Republican nomination. I don't know. I don't does
2:07:13
my does my endorsement matter? And you know, I don't know. Yeah,
2:07:15
I just let me, let me, let me Carol, Carol,
2:07:19
Carol, Carol, let me stop. Let me stop you there for a
2:07:21
second. You know, does my endorsement matter? Um? Individually, No,
2:07:27
mine doesn't. Yours doesn't. I mean, how hardly anybody's does.
2:07:30
Okay, Yeah, but I think that from a narrative standpoint, if people
2:07:35
like Carol Markowitz are hesitant to be overt about their support of Ronda Santis,
2:07:42
that it doesn't help the cause of Ronda Santis being the nominee. I'm not
2:07:46
on the campaign, and so I want to be able to say positive things
2:07:50
about other candidates. I want to be able to write positive things about other
2:07:54
candidates if I feel that, um, I don't want to be tied to
2:07:58
supporting just one candidate. I yeah, you know, even if I feel
2:08:03
like people know how I feel about Ron de Santis and they know what I
2:08:07
think about his performance in Florida, and they know what I think about Casey
2:08:11
de Santis. I wrote a profile on her recently. She's fantastic does that
2:08:16
mean that I want to be precluded from being able to compliment policies of other
2:08:22
Republican candidates. I'm not on the campaign, and I don't want to be
2:08:26
limited to what I can say about other candidates because oh, you endorsed this
2:08:30
candidate and that your support should be for them. Okay, that's that's fine.
2:08:35
I guess this gets me to a larger issue than I want to get
2:08:39
your take on, because to me, you are and I'm not criticizing you
2:08:43
for this, but you are looking at this as if it is a normal
2:08:48
situation, a normal campaign, And I'm going to hold my fire and I
2:08:52
want to be credible in talking about other candidates, and there might be other
2:08:56
candidates that that I want to compliment, and I want to be taken seriously.
2:09:01
All that, in a normal set of circumstances would make sense, and
2:09:05
I would applaud that. I'm in the camp of we are in an emergency.
2:09:11
We are in a situation where there are only two people who can be
2:09:15
the Republican nominee in twenty twenty four You, okay, I agree. I
2:09:18
agree it's going to be the Santist or Trump. I mean, I okay,
2:09:22
absolutely Okay, So so if you if you follow my logic, there's
2:09:26
only two options here. So anything anything that distracts from that, anything that
2:09:33
and every candidate that gets into the race other than the Santist, every every
2:09:39
compliment that has thrown their way is actually helping Donald Trump be the nominee.
2:09:45
And everybody knows this. Everybody knows. Well, let me ask you this.
2:09:50
What about Chris Christie? He got in, He looks like he's going
2:09:54
to be an attack dog on Trump. Is that going to help? You
2:09:56
know? If I if I compliment what Chris Christie is saying, is that
2:09:58
going to help Donald Trump? I just I don't want to be a circuit
2:10:03
I guess is the thing for me, and I want to be able to
2:10:05
say what I see truthfully. Well, here's another question for you. If
2:10:09
you endorse a candidate as an opinion columnist, are you then allowed to like
2:10:13
criticize their strategies? Are you allowed to say, well, I don't think
2:10:18
this can absolutely, I do it all, Carol, you probably aren't aware
2:10:22
of this. I mean, obviously I am. I have publicly stated that
2:10:24
I am a huge DeSantis supporter. I am I get ripped by the DeSantis
2:10:28
people all the time, privately and publicly, because I have been incredibly critical
2:10:33
of the strategy is especially regarding COVID. I mean, you know I on
2:10:39
Twitter that pro de Santis. People don't even like me because I've been so
2:10:43
doubting you. No, it's hard to believe, isn't it, Because I
2:10:48
am so downcast on the prospect of winning here. I mean, I think
2:10:52
I actually think Carol, and this is I guess this gets to the bigger
2:10:56
issue. And I'm not criticizing you for your decision. That's perfectly fine.
2:10:58
I think your decision, though, is emblematic of a lack of urgency that
2:11:05
I perceive across the board. See, I my hair is on fire because
2:11:09
I think this race is I think this race is almost over as we speak,
2:11:15
and and and the fact that okay, see I understand that you don't,
2:11:20
but but I believe that we are a couple of weeks from Trump declaring
2:11:22
he's not doing the debates, and then he's going to get away with that.
2:11:26
He's going to get away with that because his lead is going to be
2:11:30
large enough to where he's going to be bad. How is that bad?
2:11:33
For descends? He It's horrendous runner on the stage. No, it's horrendous,
2:11:37
Carroll, five dollars right now, Donald Trump's doing the debate. Okay,
2:11:43
Okay, fine that I but here's the thing, and I'll be happy
2:11:46
to pay you. But if he doesn't, if I'm if I'm advising Trump,
2:11:52
I would never under the current polling situation, allow him to do a
2:11:56
debate because because Carroll, think about what happens in this situation where he decides
2:12:03
not to do a debate. So here's what happens. So there are seven
2:12:09
people or so on the stage not named Donald Trump. The audience size is
2:12:15
cut in half. Those that are that decide to participate are called the seven
2:12:20
dwarfs. This is this is a second tier debate. De Santis then gets
2:12:26
into a situation where who is everyone incentivized to attack Ron DeSantis? De santisim
2:12:35
that no, DeSantis himself will not be allowed to go after Trump because that
2:12:39
would be unfair because Trump's not there. I don't think you you you are
2:12:43
giving enough credit and you're not alone here. I'm having this argument with lots
2:12:48
of conservative media people who don't seem to understand the full context of what's going
2:12:52
to happen here. Trump gets to play this game by different rules than what
2:12:58
should be the case or what would be the case for any other other human
2:13:01
being, largely because he has this cult that the conservative media is terrified of
2:13:07
offending. So therefore he will get away with not doing these debates. He
2:13:13
will put the Santis in an untenable situation. Dan Toby does, Dan Toby
2:13:18
doesn't. If he goes to the debates, he looks small. He's the
2:13:22
one that gets attacked, and these these things are raiding disasters. Trump will
2:13:26
mock them from afar. And then once there's no debate, Once there is
2:13:31
no debate, then there's a real debate with Trump versus the Santis. What
2:13:37
is the scenario where there's there's an event where there's enough attention where Trump could
2:13:43
ever lose the essence of his support, which is now over fifty percent nationwide.
2:13:50
What's the scenario where that happens. Let me lay out my thinking on
2:13:54
this is. Donald Trump's absolutely going to do the debate. He does very
2:13:58
well in debates. He is able to talk over other people, he's able
2:14:01
to be funny, he's able to be um, really commanding, and I
2:14:09
think that that would be crazy for him to skip a debate. So I
2:14:11
already think he's going to do the debate. But let's say he doesn't.
2:14:15
Okay, but you just don't like hold on, let me stop you there
2:14:16
for a second. You just outlined which, by the way, I agree
2:14:18
with that in a multi person debate, Trump's gonna win anyway, because the
2:14:24
rule the rule. So why wouldn't he do it? I mean, I
2:14:28
think that if the Santists can land some blows on him during a multi person
2:14:33
debate, and again the Chris Christie or whatever, you know, I don't
2:14:35
necessarily trust. I think he'll go after de Santists also the way he went
2:14:39
after let's say Rubio. But there will be people, I mean, you
2:14:43
know, the nicky Haley is in the Vivex or whatever who all seem to
2:14:46
kind of just not attack Trump at all, will still not attack Trump,
2:14:50
I imagine. But I think even if he skips a debate, I think
2:14:54
that immediately elevates the Santists to front runner status on that stage. The other
2:15:00
thing is, I don't think debates matter all that much. I think then
2:15:03
what does? So then what does matter out out working out working on the
2:15:07
other side. If Desantists can outwork Trump in Iowa and New Hampshire. We
2:15:13
have a new ball game. And I think that that again, if I
2:15:18
were advising the campaign, and I think that this is what they're doing anyway,
2:15:22
I would focus on those two states, run away with it, hopefully
2:15:24
in those two states, and make it a game where Trump has to catch
2:15:31
up to De Santis. That's the only way to do it. You're saying
2:15:33
that this is of normal times. The thing is that it is of normal
2:15:37
times. But the primary schedule still pretty normal, still standard. Yes,
2:15:43
Trump was able to do things that we didn't see before in twenty sixteen,
2:15:46
but just because he did it once as not me and he could do it
2:15:48
again. And I think we're repeating, Carol, We're repeating all the same
2:15:52
mistakes. Carol, we're repeating all the same mistakes at twenty sixteen, there's
2:15:58
gonna be there's gonna be too many. In twenty twenty. This is a
2:16:01
different Donald Trump than it was in twenty sixteen. He's not having these giant
2:16:05
rallies. You barely see him. It's it's well the same. I agree
2:16:11
with that, but he he wasn't president yet in twenty sixteen. He hadn't
2:16:15
defeated the wicked witch of the West. Yet in twenty sixteen, twenty and
2:16:20
he's still lost. Well, but he and but we're talking about a Republican
2:16:22
primary. There was no Republican primary in twenty twenty, Carroll, I mean,
2:16:26
so he's not the obvious winner from twenty sixteen. He's the guy who
2:16:31
lost to Joe Biden, who campaigned from his basement in twenty twenty. And
2:16:35
explain to me, Carroll, Explain to me this, because you're You're definitely
2:16:39
in the in the lack of urgency crowd. That drives me crazy, because
2:16:41
because I think we are very close to this thing being over um and it.
2:16:46
But explain to me, if if this, if if if Trump's support
2:16:50
is soft and it's it's you know, it's possible to knock him down and
2:16:56
win in both Iowa New Hampshire and then somehow ride that wave to the of
2:17:01
the primary season and the and the nomination. And then, by the way,
2:17:05
that doesn't get to the issue of what happens in the general election,
2:17:07
because Trump will sabotage the Santa Cify wins the nomination. That's a different question.
2:17:11
You know that I probably agree with you one. Well, then then
2:17:16
all of this is pretty much academic. But but but, um, under
2:17:22
under the scenario that that you're outlining, see, I don't even think that
2:17:26
even if that happens. See even if even if if de Santis wins in
2:17:31
Iowa, which I agree, you can outwork somebody in Iowa that buys you
2:17:35
a week and a half, oh yeah, and then you come out of
2:17:39
Iowa with a win. I think New Hampshire is probably easier for the Sands
2:17:45
to pick up than Iowa. I think, no, no, you're now
2:17:48
that's that's inaccurate, because I think New Hampshire is going to be harder for
2:17:52
a couple of reasons. Um, you know. Number one, I think
2:17:56
I think Robert Kennedy Junior is going to cause it. De Sanda is a
2:17:58
major problem in New Hampshire because, for my understanding, there's going to be
2:18:03
a mock Democratic primary in New Hampshire, which is going to give a whole
2:18:07
bunch of people who should be to Santis voters the opportunity to symbolically vote for
2:18:11
Robert Kennedy Junior. They will pick him over to Santis every single day of
2:18:16
the week because of his his stance on vaccines. I think that you know,
2:18:22
Trump won New Hampshire in twenty sixteen, and he did not win Iowa
2:18:26
in twenty sixteen. I think Trump is very vulnerable in Iowa, even though
2:18:30
I hate the caucuses. The caucuses are very much aligned with a cult.
2:18:35
But I think De Santis has a shot in Iowa. But I don't see
2:18:39
how you get beyond that. But let me go back to my last Goodness,
2:18:43
I we're running out of time, but I want to ask this last
2:18:45
question because the reason why I am in the contrarian view amongst the Santa's supporters
2:18:50
is that I see the polling a little bit differently. See if Trump's support
2:18:56
was soft, if if if Trump had been and where he currently is for
2:19:01
the last six months since the midterms, I would say there's an argument to
2:19:05
be made that he's a paper tiger. People aren't paying attention. Once this
2:19:09
becomes a real race, then people are going to rethink it and maybe they
2:19:13
decide that the Santis is a better option. But something different than that happened,
2:19:20
Carol. This was a tide race at the beginning of this year,
2:19:24
and then the indictment happened in New York and Tucker Carlson reversed the narrative on
2:19:30
January sixth, and you know the term report and all you know, it
2:19:35
seems like every single news cycle favored Trump among his base. And this went
2:19:41
from a basically tiede race before the Santist was even announced to now Trump winning
2:19:46
by thirty thirty five maybe forty points nationwide. How did that happen? That?
2:19:52
The fact that that happened to me shows that the entire premise the people
2:19:58
like you have about the state of this race is wrong because people are paying
2:20:03
attention. If they weren't paying attention, Trump, yeah, wouldn't have exploded
2:20:07
in his support in the last three months. Well, So, one thing
2:20:11
I would say is that during that time, and I was traveling a lot
2:20:13
for the book, I kept hearing people say things like, oh, Desantists
2:20:18
is not going to get in, So they did move towards Trump while they
2:20:22
thought that Desantists might not be running. So many people thought that Desantists Trump
2:20:28
would be a ticket together. Like I knew that that was never going to
2:20:30
happen. Um, I think that that's sort of what has moved support to
2:20:35
Trump. I do not think that Trump has a forty percent lock on you
2:20:41
know, forty point lock on the numbers, I don't. I think that
2:20:45
that those numbers are movable, and I do think that again, it's it's
2:20:50
Donald Trump's race to lose. I think it's crazy to assume that it's not
2:20:54
going to be an uphill battle for any candidate. But I think that desantists
2:20:58
potential strategy of having a solid ground game, sticking to the message, not
2:21:05
getting distracted by nonsense and the fact that Donald Trump is has these indictments going
2:21:09
on. Look again, we're not seeing him nearly as much as we were
2:21:13
seeing him in previous races. Maybe that'll change, but so far, he's
2:21:16
running his campaign, you know, from from the Marilago basement. And whether
2:21:22
or not that's going to change, we'll see. Maybe he feels like he
2:21:24
doesn't have to, but the numbers could turn around at any moment, and
2:21:26
I think that the Trump campaign should be maybe ready for that. Well.
2:21:31
I wish I shared your optimism, and um, I really do, because
2:21:35
I think this is very, very important, and I think you know,
2:21:39
it's a long way away. I think we're not. We're not. We're
2:21:43
not We're not. We are not a long way away. And the reason
2:21:46
why we're not a long way away is because Donald Trump has already been president
2:21:50
of the United States and that has never happened before in the history of presidential
2:21:56
primaries. And so the idea that people are still looking at that is like
2:22:00
he's Herman Kane or Michelle Bachman or Jeb Bush, is just infuriating to me.
2:22:07
It is this is not the Jeb Bush, Michelle Bachman or Herman Kane
2:22:11
leading for fifteen minutes and people just haven't decided where they are. People know
2:22:16
who Donald Trump is intimately. Intimately they either hate or love him. And
2:22:22
the fact that the Santists now, even after his announcement, which I've addressed
2:22:26
earlier in the podcast today, it's now clear from the polling just out in
2:22:30
the last few days, the announcement was not magic. There was no magic
2:22:35
to the idea. There's no magic bulle pulled on a second, Carol,
2:22:39
you said a lot of people weren't convinced that the Santist was running. Now
2:22:43
he is running, so then there should there should be magic in that.
2:22:46
Where's the magic. I don't believe in magic bullets. That's actually on campaigns
2:22:52
that I've been on, that's been the motto of so many of them.
2:22:54
There is no magic bullet. You have to wake up every day and you
2:22:58
need to work, and you know who, I see a Ron de Santist
2:23:01
team that is willing to do that. So without my endorsement, I think
2:23:07
that I see a path for the Rohn de Santists win, and I can
2:23:11
see how they get there through actual work, through running a good campaign,
2:23:16
through sticking on strong messaging. And you know, we'll see how this turns
2:23:20
out. But I do think this still a long way away. I don't
2:23:24
think people are paying the kind of attention you think they are. I agree
2:23:28
that people aren't paying full attention, but they're paying enough attention for Trump to
2:23:33
all of a sudden come out to a thirty forty point lead when he was
2:23:35
tied a few months ago. So something has happened. Well, look,
2:23:39
I Carol, no one would be happier for you to be right and for
2:23:43
me to be wrong than me. So I want to go on record as
2:23:46
far as as concerned. I also want to thank you very much for your
2:23:50
time. You're awesome at what you do. Carol Mark Witt's columnist for The
2:23:54
New York Post and Fox News, co author of the book Stolen Youth.
2:23:56
How Radicals Are erasing innocence and actor dating a generation. Thanks so much for
2:24:01
your time, Carol, Thank you, John. Thanks so much again to
2:24:05
Carol Markwitz for her time. Make sure you read her columns in The Post
2:24:09
and on Fox News and get her new book if you're interested in it.
2:24:13
That'll do it for this episode of the Death of Journalism. Please remember to
2:24:16
subscribe, rate, review, and share it with others. Share it on
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social media to make sure you tag me, and I'll be happy to share
2:24:22
it with my followers as well. Until next time, thanks so much for
2:24:26
listening. My name is John Sickler. This is the Death of Journalism podcast.