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Episode Eighty Nine: Weekend At Bernie’s & Cenk Uygur · The Death Of Journalism

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Welcome to episode eighty nine of the Death of Journalism podcast. My name is
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John Ziggler. I'm your host on today's show. Republicans in the House begin
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an impeachment inquiry of President Biden. The sports media is in crisis after the
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giant Aaron Rodgers flame out, an update on my possible jfk assassination vindication,
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and a truly unique interview with prominent progressive commentator Jank Huger. I'm known as
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the Dutch Digital marketing Man. I'm a digital advertising SEO and email marketing specialist
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the Dutch Digital Marketingman dot com. And hey, thanks for sponsoring the show.
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Well, House Republicans have finally started their long awaited impeachment inquiry of President
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Joe Biden centering around the allegations of bribery and influence peddling involving his son,
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Hunter Biden. And as I've said many times before, I hate this story
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because nobody has the incentive to tell the truth. Everyone has a perverse incentive
1:34
to lie or just about everybody, or to at least shade the truth in
1:38
their direction. This includes all elements of the news media, all elements of
1:44
our political class. It's very difficult to tell fact from fiction. There is
1:49
clearly a lot of smoke. And I am obviously not naive in general,
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and I'm not naive about Joe Biden and Hunter Biden. Biden is a first
2:00
class dirt bag and his father may be far more corrupt than the perception that
2:07
he and the media have created for him. However, I'm all about evidence,
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and I will acknowledge that the liberal narrative on this situation has changed rather
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dramatically from in twenty twenty, Joe Biden saying in multiple debates he had nothing,
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absolutely nothing to do with no knowledge of his son's business operations, and
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that his son did not profit from foreign countries like China or the Ukraine,
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and that's turned out to be clearly not true. I'm also, you know,
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somebody who wants there to be this direct evidence that the Liberals are now
2:49
saying they've gone from nothing here too, there's no direct evidence of crimes or
2:53
bribery or influence peddling. And I understand the concept of direct evidence, and
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I would like there to be direct evidence. There ought to also be some
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focus on the fact that the story is changed rather dramatically and that the bar
3:09
has been set in a completely different place. However, for my Republican friends
3:15
or my former Republican friends, I will say that I am in the camp
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that I've not seen yet direct evidence of clear cut bribery or influence peddling by
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the Bidens. Now, a lot of conservatives or Republicans think that's crazy because
3:35
they see all this smoke. But a lot of this smoke is conjecture.
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A lot of this is presuming the absolute worst based upon the information that we
3:45
have. That doesn't mean it's wrong. That just means that it hasn't reached,
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in my view, the threshold you would normally need, especially for an
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impeachment inquiry into the president of the United States. And by the way,
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there is at least one Publican congressman who hasn't lost his mind comin and him
4:02
Ken Buck, a Republican congressman who went on CNN with Anderson Cooper just yesterday
4:09
and he acknowledged he has not yet seen direct evidence to indicate that there were
4:15
crimes that rose to the level of impeachment. Now, is it possible that
4:20
an impeachment inquiry will find that direct evidence? If that's the real purpose of
4:27
this, and a lot of Republicans are saying that that is indeed the goal
4:30
here, then okay, I'm not sure that's the appropriate method to do it.
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By the way, it might not be legal. It's possible that the
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Trump Department of Justice basically set a precedent that you need to have a vote
4:47
from the House of Representatives to even begin an impeachment inquiry. And it's clear
4:53
that Kevin McCarthy, the Speaker the House, is trying to avoid such a
4:57
vote because he has such a thin majority in the House and there are still
5:01
districts where Republicans hold office that an impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden might not be
5:08
helpful and in fact might be politically harmful going into the next election, so
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he wants to avoid that vote. I don't know, honestly, it's not
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my area of expertise whether or not this is legal or not legal. Whether
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as far as the impeachment inquiry itself, there are those who believe that the
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inquiry will allow more information to flow and that if this evidence exists, it
5:31
will come to the forefront. I'm all in favor of transparency. I want
5:36
the truth to come out. I have suspicions like everybody else, but I
5:42
personally am just not there yet. As with regard to the level of proof
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that exists in comparison to what should be needed for what used to be a
5:51
sacred process of impeaching the president. I mean it used to be up until
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Bill Clinton changed the world that impeachment was never even thought I've never even talked
6:02
about. And then Clinton beat impeachment, and then obviously Trump was impeached not
6:09
once but twice, including actory had lost the election. And in none of
6:14
those situations were those impeachment inquiries ever really a threat to remove the president.
6:21
None of them came that close to actual conviction. They came fairly close,
6:27
but there was never any real threat that this was going to result in the
6:30
conviction of the president or the removal of the president, especially since in Trump's
6:34
second impeachment he was already leaving office to begin with. So I'm concerned with
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what has happened to impeachment. Then impeachment has now become routine, and we've
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kind of seen that with the media coverage of this, where this used to
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be huge news and now it's a little bit more than a ripple when the
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party who was controlling the House of represent Senatives is saying we're beginning an impeachment
7:01
inquiry. Also, let's be very very clear about this. This is obviously
7:09
a political side show. This is obviously a political weapon. And for those
7:15
who say, well, the left has done it and so the right should
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as well. You know, I used to think that two wrongs don't make
7:19
a right. And also I do get the idea that if this is the
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only way to get the evidence you need. Okay, maybe that makes some
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sense, But we're heading into a presidential election year. The Democrats control the
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Senate, the House majority is minuscule. When it comes to, you know,
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the margins that Republicans have. There is literally no chance zero based upon
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what we currently know, there is zero chance that Joe Biden is going to
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be impeached and removed from office. And by the way, Republicans may not
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even want that because that would then make come Harris the incumbent president running for
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not really re election, but she will be running for president as a historic
8:09
incumbent president, which I've always said makes her a very different person than she
8:13
currently is. She's already a different person than she was when she disastrously ran
8:20
for president in twenty twenty. A lot of Republicans are way over confident when
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it comes to Kamala Harris. I realize that she is an idiot, and
8:28
she's incredibly annoying, and that she talks like a kindergarten teacher. Let's be
8:33
real about this, The average American voter isn't that much above the level of
8:37
a kindergarten student. Number one and number two. The media, should she
8:43
become president, especially, is going to give her the Miny Obama treatment because
8:48
she's going to be historic and incumbency matters. But none of that's going to
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happen. The only way Biden isn't going to be president when this election is
8:58
going on, as if he dies or if somehow his health gets so bad
9:03
that he decides to resign from office. I don't see that as a likely
9:09
scenario, but it's at least theoretically possible. It's not going to come from
9:13
impeachment. So this is a full hearty effort. The nation does not support
9:18
it, and the law doesn't seem to support it, the politics doesn't support
9:22
it, and it's really just a way to massage the right wing and show
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Trump supporters effectively that the House majority really is on their side and willing to
9:35
fight the good fights. That's really what this is. It's all an act,
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it's all a play, and so in general I'm not in favor of
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it unless somehow this really is a vehicle to get real hardcore evidence of actual
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crimes and malfeasans, whether it's bribery, influence peddaling, or whatever. I'll
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say one last thing, and it has always been one of the reasons why
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this is the story bothers me is the blatant hypocrisy when it comes to Republicans
10:07
who are Trump supporters, Because in watching a lot of the Republicans who are
10:11
in favor of an impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden, it almost sounds like they're
10:16
talking about Donald Trump. I mean, we're just gonna pretend that his son
10:22
in law, Jared Kushner didn't get two billion dollars for his hedge fund from
10:28
the Saudi Pif that just didn't happen, I guess two billion dollars. And
10:35
by the way, he's not even a hedge fund guy. He's a real
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estate guy. And two thirds of his fund is from money from the Saudi
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Arabian royal family. And I've gone through many, many times about how you
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want to talk about money launchering. What Trump himself is doing with live golf
10:54
in the Saudis is classic, classically set up to be money law. Can
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I prove it? No, But I mean it's so obvious. It's right
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out there in the open one. It's the way that the Saudis do business,
11:07
especially when it comes to live golf, and certainly consistent with the way
11:11
Trump would view things. And also even just the scheduling adding a fourth event
11:16
late in the summer, for four times in one year, Trump is hosting
11:20
a live golf event where I'm sure he's being paid way way over market prices
11:26
for the use of his golf courses to be used in these these live team
11:31
events that are put together and paid for by the Saudi Royal family. That
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to me is at least as bad as what we are being told to believe
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based upon the smoke that surrounds Hunter Biden and Joe Biden. Again, two
11:48
wrongs don't make it right, but it certainly is awfully hypocritical based upon the
11:54
way I view reality. So in a sense, basically, I think everybody's
11:58
wrong on this Biden impeachment situation. The Republican House is wrong, the White
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Houses wrong, They're lying, The liberal media is defending Biden too much.
12:09
The right wing media is pretending that this case has been proven, and it
12:13
has not, in my opinion, yet been proven. And as I said,
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Republican Congressman Ken Buck seems to agree with me on that. So I
12:20
don't have I'm not room for anybody in this except for maybe the truth to
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come out. I would like there to actually be truth to come out,
12:26
as if that still matters in twenty twenty three. Now, as far as
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President Joe Biden is concerned, boy did he have a heck of a nine
12:35
to eleven situation. Obviously, it was the twenty second anniversary of nine eleven
12:39
earlier this week, and when I had taped episode eighty eight, I did
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so before several things that Biden did surrounding nine to eleven were known. First
12:50
of all, he was not there at ground zero, as has been the
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case for the previous twenty one years of commemorants of nine eleven. Not only
13:01
wasn't he there according to some news reports. Now this came from Fox News
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Channel, so you know, who knows whether or not it's one hundred percent
13:09
accurate, But apparently the White House explanation as well, twenty two years after
13:15
Pearl Harbor, the President wasn't still going there to commemorate the attacks. And
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number one, that's a weird you know, that's a weird thing to say.
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It's a weird comparison to make. But also apparently it's not even accurate,
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because it took a very short Google search for people to realize that John
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F. Kennedy in nineteen sixty three, which was the twenty second anniversary of
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the Pearl Harbor attacks, did in fact visit of the site of the Pearl
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Harbor attacks in Hawaii, which is obviously way more difficult for especially in nineteen
13:52
sixty three, for a US President to do than being in New York City
13:56
is in twenty twenty three, So that was a lie. And then there
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was another more blatant lie that we can clearly prove, where Biden, when
14:07
he did give his address regarding nine to eleven the day before nine to eleven,
14:11
said that he could still remember being there the day after at ground zero
14:16
in somewhat vivid detail. And that turns out to be another classic Biden lie
14:22
that didn't happen. He wasn't there. That's easily proven. Now. Is
14:26
that you know, to me, that's not one of the worst stories that
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Joe Biden has made up. That that's something that can easily be an earnest
14:35
and sincere misremembering of the situation. I mean, that's especially at his age,
14:43
that's not unusual. And to say the day after as opposed to the
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day that you finally were there on ground zero, whatever day that was,
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I'm not sure that really matters very much. Is not a consequential lie.
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But I do think it's it's interesting one that this he keeps happening, and
15:01
two that he did get called out even in the liberal media. CNN called
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Joe Biden out for this lie. About where he was the day after nine
15:09
to eleven, and I think that's a change in the way that these stories
15:13
that Biden is prone to telling are being handled in the liberal media. But
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it didn't stop there. So Biden wasn't there at Ground Zero for the ceremony,
15:24
the annual ceremony in New York City, but he sent Kamala Harris,
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and Kamalala Harris was there giggling during the ceremony, which certainly was highly inappropriate.
15:35
And then later in the day the Biden administration traded money for hostages with
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a run. Now, Ron didn't have anything to do with the nine to
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eleven attacks, as far as we are aware, there's no evidence of that
15:50
at all, not even any theory that they were, but they certainly are
15:52
a sponsor of terrorism, and it certainly seemed rather weird and inappropriate to be
16:00
doing this on nine to eleven, to be trading money and assets back to
16:06
Iran and exchange for American hostages. So that was all just basically one day
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within a twenty four hour period regarding Joe Biden and nine to eleven, and
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none of it is good for Joe Biden. And I've mentioned several times on
16:22
the podcast that I've been looking for prominent people and entities and outlets on the
16:27
left to step into the fray put their toe in the water of its time
16:33
for Joe to go. We just can't risk this. And I think I
16:37
correctly predicted that the first domino to fall here was CNN's Van Jones. I've
16:44
said several times, and there's been numerous examples now where Van Jones continues to
16:49
beat this drum and he has protection because of his persona and who he is,
16:56
and plus I think he has the kind of gumption and the guts and
17:00
seems to actually care about things, and at least I believe he cares about
17:04
even though he's wrong about a lot of things, I think he actually cares
17:07
about the truth in general, and he cares about the country. And so
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I correctly pointed the Van Jones as the guy to watch for that he would
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be the first if there was going to be a domino effect here. Well,
17:19
Jones clearly has gone down that path of strongly suggesting that it's time for
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Joe to go, and we have a second domino. The Washington Post published
17:32
an op ed piece saying that Joe Biden should not run for president in twenty
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twenty four, and this, you know, in the olden days, this
17:40
would have been an earthquake. I don't even know if it's a tremor today
17:44
because the media landscape has changed so much, and everything is so much more
17:48
partisan and fragmented, and each individual media outlet has so much less power and
17:53
influence than they used to. But in the olden days of like the nineteen
17:59
eighties or the nineties, the Washington Post putting out an outbed that Joe Biden
18:04
shouldn't run given all the other circumstances, might further create a domino effect.
18:11
But we clearly have at least a brush fire here. Van Jones started a
18:15
brush fire. We might be up to a one or two alarm blaze at
18:21
this point, still you know, under control, but it's clearly there.
18:26
There's clearly a movement among some liberals to get Joe Biden not to run.
18:30
And if that's the case, my question has always been, all right,
18:36
you can want in theory Joe Biden to not be the nominee. That makes
18:40
sense. I mean, he's in his eighties, he's clearly not in great
18:42
health mentally, and he's not exactly doing a great job as president. The
18:48
country's got a whole hull of a lot of problems, and he's not popular.
18:52
His approval ratings hover around forty one percent, maybe a little bit higher
18:57
depending on what's going on at the moment. There are a lot of reasons
19:02
on paper to get rid of Joe Biden, and it wouldn't be completely unprecedented.
19:07
In nineteen sixty eight, Lyndon Johnson, who was a narcissistic asshole,
19:11
was willing to put the country ahead of his own political interests and decided not
19:17
to run for reelection when he almost certainly would have been the nominee if he
19:22
had decided to run in nineteen sixty eight. And so, but it would
19:26
still be very unusual for an incumbent president who's at least theoretically healthy to not
19:34
run for reelection. But as I've said many times, and I'm going to
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continue to say this, all right, so in theory, you don't want
19:41
Joe Biden to be the nominee. What's your plan? Give me how this
19:48
is going to work, because I don't see how it works. So,
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first of all, you got to convince Joe not to run, which seems
19:56
almost impossible. It's it's obvio is that he clearly still wants to be president,
20:03
and he's stubborn, and the people around him of course want to be
20:07
him to be president because their jobs are potentially at stake, And and you've
20:11
got a vice president who's not particularly popular at all in Kamala Harris. So
20:18
what are you gonna do here? First you got to convince Joe not to
20:21
run. Then you have to deal with your Kamala problem because her running as
20:27
a vice president, so Biden would still remain president under the most likely scenario
20:33
should anything happen in this regard. So Harris is running for president as a
20:40
vice president. That's not a great scenario for Democrats either, because she doesn't
20:47
have the aura of incumbency. She's no more likable. It feels if Biden
20:53
does this as if the Democrats are acknowledging they got a problem. And so
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you know, to me, if I was a Democrat, I wouldn't feel
21:03
any better about that scenario than I would about having Joe Biden just ride it
21:08
out and win. I mean, if you know, and I've said this
21:11
predicted it, many other people have echoed this prediction. If you're a Democrat,
21:15
the best scenario here is you do weekend at Bernie's and you get Biden
21:22
reelected, and then you somehow get him through the first two years of the
21:26
next term, and then he resigns and allows Kamala Harris to be president where
21:32
she can still run for two more terms, so she gets the best of
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all the worlds, so she gets incumbency, but she doesn't use up one
21:40
of her two terms under the constitution. Maybe they don't think Joe can last
21:45
three years from now. It's actually a little bit more than three years it
21:48
would take for Biden to get to that finish line to where Kamala Harris would
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have the opportunity to do what I just suggested. I don't know. I
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mean, you know, three years is a pretty long time, especially when
22:03
you're under the stress of the presidency. Now. Of course, there are
22:07
a lot of people say, well, it's not going to be Biden or
22:10
Harris. Even though we're getting very late in the game here. We're in
22:12
mid September. You know, it's a couple of months now from when the
22:15
primaries and caucuses begin. You got to do things like get on ballots and
22:19
get slates of delegates and all that, and then, by the way,
22:23
there's also Robert Kennedy Junior sitting right there. So so you know, if
22:29
Biden wereked to withdraw at this point all of a sudden, he might get
22:33
a lot more momentum and he might even theoretically in some situations be the only
22:37
person on the ballot if you didn't do this, if you didn't do this
22:41
quickly or efficiently enough. But there are a lot of people who think that
22:44
Gavin Newsom is the person. And you know, obviously as someone who despises
22:48
Gavin Newsom probably more than any other politician currently in our world. I mean,
22:56
I really have that much loathing for him. My kids referred to him
23:00
during COVID and still do occasionally as Governor Poossom. I mean, he is
23:04
really loathed in our family, largely not entirely, because of how he handled
23:11
COVID. And it's interesting that he did an interview with Chuck Todd of NBC
23:18
for the final episode to Meet the Press, where Chuck Todd was the host,
23:23
and I want to go into that slightly or not not slightly. I
23:27
want to actually go into that fairly extensively, because there was a lot to
23:32
it well before I do I just want to set this up that among people
23:37
I see online, it's almost an assumption that people have that Newsom is going
23:42
to be the guy who replaces Biden. And I have always asked, okay,
23:48
so tell me how that works. So Biden resigned or withdraws from the
23:53
race, He's not going to resign from the presidency. Kamala Harris obviously would
23:59
run, right or at least somehow. How are you going to figure out
24:02
a way to not have her run? How's that possible. She's not going
24:06
to just sit there and go, oh sure, you know, as a
24:10
woman of color, just go ahead and take my spot, take my place
24:14
in history. That's not gonna happen. There is just no way, shape
24:18
or form where Kamala Harris is gonna go, oh sure, no problem.
24:22
She's at least going to run. Now, she's going to expect that she
24:27
not even have opposition, because that's the way things would normally work under a
24:33
circumstance that would be pretty extraordinary like this, But she would expect to be
24:37
handed the nomination, especially given her special status as potentially the first female president
24:44
and a woman of color. And that's the way things work on the left
24:47
now. So You're not going to get Kamala Harris to not run unless unless
24:52
there's something that I'm completely missing. I mean there're people think, oh,
24:55
she'll be paid offul What are you gonna do and pay her actual cash money.
25:00
I just don't see it. I don't see how you stop her from
25:03
running. And if she runs, then going against her would be unbelievably risky,
25:11
especially for someone like Gavin Newsom. Maybe it's they're from the same state,
25:15
Kamala Harris. What's the senator from California? So I just don't understand
25:22
how Newsome would do this. Now, could he beat Harris with RFK Junior
25:30
also running in the same I mean, that would be a three way race,
25:33
right boy? The media would love that. You know, Harris,
25:37
RFK Junior and Gavin Newsom. You know who would win that race? You
25:44
know what, I'm not sure. I don't know who would win that race
25:47
because because historically you can't win the Democratic primary without the black vote. The
25:55
black vote has always been eventually monolithic. You know, they're in two thousand
26:00
and eight. You know, it was split between Hillary and Obama for a
26:03
while, then Obama showed he was real, and then all of a sudden,
26:06
Obama got almost all the black vote, and that's why he ended up
26:10
being the nominee. In twenty twenty, Joe Biden was going nowhere until in
26:15
South Carolina the black vote flipped in his direction and then he was almost immediately
26:22
the heavy favorite to be the nominee. So how does Gavin Newsom win the
26:27
black vote? And Gavin newsome a super spoil spoiled elitist, you know,
26:34
with the greasy hair and super polished look and no natural ties to the black
26:41
community, How in the world from California does Gavin Newsom connect with black Democratic
26:48
voters in the South, especially against a woman of color like Kamala Harris and
26:56
Robert Kennedy from the Kennedy family, which has traditionally had a very strong connection
27:03
to the black community. I mean, so, how does that happen?
27:06
That doesn't mean it's impossible, it's just to me it was gonna It would
27:11
take a series of circumstances that would be beyond extraordinary. And maybe I'm being
27:18
overly optimistic. I think, you know, I talk about this all the
27:22
time, but the only time where I'm really ever very wrong is when I'm
27:26
too optimistic. And the idea that Gavin Newsom can't win, or wouldn't win,
27:32
or wouldn't run to be the Democratic nominee in twenty twenty four. Maybe
27:36
I'm being too optimistic. I mean, it's certainly theoretically possible, and it's
27:41
obvious he wants the gig. That is very very clear, and it couldn't
27:45
have been more obvious from the way that he did this interview with Chuck Todd
27:51
on NBC. I mean, this to me was the clearest sign yet that
27:55
Newsom is trying to set up the possibility of a twenty twenty for presidential run.
28:02
Here's how the interview was reported in Politico, and then we'll play a
28:07
large clip from the interview itself. But Politico's headline and a lot of this
28:14
interview with Chuck Todd dealt with COVID, So obviously I was very very interested
28:18
in this because this is one of the very few times that Gavin Newsom has
28:22
ever been even remotely confronted on his tyrannical COVID response, which was, in
28:30
my view, was by far the worst in the country, and it led
28:36
much of the country down a completely wrong path. And the media here in
28:41
California has never even remotely held him accountable in any way, shape or for
28:45
him. They kiss his ass because there is no real journalism in the country.
28:52
But there's certainly no journalism when it comes to California media. And it's
28:55
just a complete and total joke. They're not just liberal, but they all
28:59
just want to be his friend, and there's just no space at all for
29:03
actual, difficult questioning or real journalism. But in this particular case, Todd
29:10
at least somewhat confronted Newsome on his COVID response. And here's how Politico reported
29:18
on a headline, quote, we would have done everything differently unquote, Newsome
29:25
reflects on COVID approach. California's Democratic governor says, quote, we're all geniuses
29:33
now in hindsight on the pandemic. Really really wow. Now, now that's
29:45
what you're gonna go with. You're gonna go with. We didn't just know
29:48
at the time. We're all geniuses in hindsight. The article talks about this
29:56
really got me about how Newsome is so said about how the COVID response has
30:02
become partisan. And here's what political wrote at the same time. Newsom bemoaned
30:07
the partisan nature of the pandemic and how every decision by he and counterparts in
30:14
other states and the White House, we're all viewed through a partisan prison,
30:19
saying, quote, it should be alarming to all of us that all of
30:23
us sudden health became partisan, Newsom said, And that's something we're going to
30:30
pay a big price. You're right going forward, but it won't break us
30:33
because we're remarkably resilient. Give me a fucking break. This is like the
30:41
kid who kills their parents and then complains about being an orphan. That's what
30:49
Newsom is doing here. Newsome is the one who made this partisan. In
30:55
twenty twenty, Newsome is the one who shut down the country. It wasn't
31:00
really even Trump, although Trump went along completely. It was Newsome. Newsome
31:07
sent letter a letter to Donald Trump in March of twenty twenty, Let's never
31:11
forget this, never forget this, claiming that twenty eight million Californians, well
31:19
over fifty percent of the population of the state. By the way, he
31:22
got the percentage wrong, so his math wasn't even right. He claimed it
31:27
was fifty six percent of the state. That's not fifty six percent of the
31:30
state. But he claimed twenty eight million Californians we're gonna get COVID in eight
31:37
weeks. In eight weeks, which, if that had happened, would have
31:41
been beyond the catastrophe. I mean, if you know, that's hundreds of
31:45
thousands of people dying, based upon even the most optimistic death rate projections at
31:52
the time. And I wrote a column the next day for Mediaite saying this
32:00
is ridiculous, this is absurd, The math doesn't work. It's all based
32:06
upon this absurd idea of never ending exponential growth, which is at the heart
32:15
of so many things that liberals get wrong. I don't know whether or not
32:19
there's something weird about the liberal mindset, or whether or not they just use
32:22
it as a vehicle to make it seem like they're being scientific, but they
32:28
all, whether it's climate change or whether it was COVID, it's always about
32:32
never ending exponential growth as opposed to cycles. There's no such thing as never
32:38
ending exponential growth in anything. But that's what it would have had to have
32:43
happened for there to be anything close to twenty eight million people getting COVID in
32:47
eight weeks. We didn't even come close to that. In the next eight
32:52
weeks. I think there were a couple of hundred thousand people in California that
32:57
actually got COVID and News a letter asking for a military ship to come to
33:02
the port of Los Angeles to be used as an auxiliary hospital. It was
33:07
never used. It was never used. And it's my opinion that Knews completely
33:16
overstating the case, and the reason why he did it was, here's my
33:22
view of what really happened. Okay, is it possible Knews really believed we
33:25
were heading for an unprecedented catastrophe. Maybe, but he exaggerated the hell out
33:31
of the numbers so that he could justify doing this unprecedented thing of shutting down
33:38
the country's largest state population wise. That's what he did. It was political
33:45
in nature, and of course he knew we were in the middle of a
33:49
presidential campaign, and he knew that if California shut down, that meant New
33:54
York was gonna have to shut down, and all the other Blue states were
33:57
gonna have to shut down, and then the Purple states which shut down,
34:00
and you know, in all likelihood eventually most of the Red states would shut
34:02
down. Especially was since Trump was being such a woosie and what was going
34:07
to happen then to Trump's reelection campaign. I mean, Newsom is not a
34:13
complete imbecile at times, He's actually fairly smart. Unfortunately, he had to
34:19
know that this was going to be a major blow to Trump's reelection, major
34:24
blow. And this is something he would never have done if Hillary Clinton was
34:29
running for reelection, no way, because to take that first dive, he
34:36
would have been destroyed in liberal democratic circles. The media would have attacked him
34:42
because everyone would have said, my god, what are you doing. This
34:45
is not American, this is against freedom and liberty, and oh, by
34:47
the way, you're gonna kill Hillary's chances of being reelected. So it was
34:52
inherently partisan. What Gavin Newsom did not to mention it was totally wrong.
35:00
And nobody has ever called him on this. I mean, even even on
35:04
the right, I hardly ever get this. You know, I've hardly ever
35:08
see anybody attack him on this. And this is why when he praises Donald
35:14
Trump for how Trump responded to COVID, I think this ought to be a
35:19
deck now to Trump's campaign and it doesn't even have an impact for whatever reason.
35:25
And I guess because I honestly, I'm guessing that most Republicans not in
35:31
California. Don't even fully realize one how bad it was here and too how
35:38
much impact that had throughout the rest of the country. It was all about
35:45
Newsome, and he was totally wrong and against what he's trying to say that
35:50
Chuck Todd, it was obvious because even I knew. I knew the next
35:54
debt, I knew that night, and I wrote about it. I took
35:59
a big risk to write that in Mediaite. You think Mediaite wanted to publish
36:05
a story about how the math of the guy who was shutting down the country
36:09
was completely wrong. I had to fight for that column. I got,
36:13
of course, no reward except for the ability to say, see, I
36:16
told you so, because it never even got close. Not three years plus
36:23
later, we're not even anywhere near close to that number. And of course
36:28
he'll claim, well, that's because of all the restrictions that we had.
36:30
Bullshit. We know that's not true, because we have Sweden, we have
36:35
South Dakota, we have Georgia, and we have Florida and other places that
36:39
did when they either did nothing and their results were not outside the norm,
36:45
or they stopped doing restrictions and their results didn't significantly change at all. So
36:53
Chuck Todd, who was going out as the host of Meet the Press,
36:58
who used to be at least somewhat fair. He's clearly a liberal like all
37:01
these people, but he likes to at least pretend that he's fair. He
37:06
pushed back on Newsom, ever so softly. I mean, this is just
37:12
to say that this is confronting Newsome on his COVID responses is really an affront
37:17
to the idea of confrontation. But I guess that's where we are in twenty
37:22
twenty three because we really have seen the death of the confrontational interview, because
37:27
there's no need for newsmakers to go and do interviews with somebody who might be
37:34
confrontational with them. They have so many other outlets, there's so many When
37:38
you're a celebrity, you have so many other options, Plus you have your
37:42
own social media outlet to get your message out. There's really no need to
37:47
ever make yourself vulnerable to difficult questioning, which, by the way, is
37:52
partially why I think the debates are now dead. I think we're gonna see
37:58
in twenty twenty four no general election debates, especially if it's Trump versus Biden,
38:04
and I don't think Trump's ever going to do any of the Republican debates
38:07
based upon the way the polling is, just as I've predicted many, many,
38:10
many times. So we're in a very dangerous situation where now it is
38:15
incredibly rare for a newsmaker to put themselves in a situation where they face legitimate
38:22
questioning. And part of it's because journalism is dead and nobody on the left
38:27
wants to ask tough questions of somebody who is also on the left. But
38:31
this was a rare situation because it was the last episode for Chuck Todd.
38:36
Newsom is so enamored with his own intelligence that he's willing to go on with
38:40
Sean Hannity for instances. Not that it's difficult to beat Sean Hannity and anything,
38:45
because handed he's an idiot, but Newsome is confident enough to go on
38:50
with Chuck Todd. And I do think that this is an indication in many
38:53
many ways that Newsom is eyeing what happens if Joe Biden is not going to
39:00
be the nominee in twenty twenty four for the Democratic Party. So I'm going
39:05
to play this clip for you, and it's very long by our standards,
39:08
is about four minutes long, and I want you to notice a few things.
39:12
Number one, how soft Todd's questioning is the idea that he's focusing on,
39:20
you know, the handling of the movie industry as opposed to religious services.
39:24
I guess that's an interesting way to enter into the topic. But there's
39:29
so many other issues related to Newsome's COVID response that to me, are far
39:34
more outrageous and worthy of questioning. But okay, but notice how very slippery
39:42
Newsome is. He doesn't give any specifics on anything other than maybe the idea
39:50
that, well, gee, in retrospect, maybe we should have made a
39:52
greater distinction between indoor and outdoor. And that's just a cop out, because,
39:58
first of all, everybody with a half a brain knew that outdoor was
40:02
the place to be, that outdoor transmission was going to be far less than
40:07
indoor transmission. That closing the beaches, as Newsome did continually and you with
40:14
an iron fist, I mean, he basically targeted Orange County because they tried
40:20
to keep their beaches open, and he vindictively targeted them because he didn't want
40:23
pictures of people enjoying themselves in the middle of an alleged unprecedented pandemic. Everybody
40:31
knew that outdoor was the place to be, and Newsom was apparently either too
40:36
stupid to understand that or refused to understand it because it was going to be
40:39
a loophole that was going to kill a lot of his restrictions. And my
40:45
view is very partisan response to this whole thing. But other than that,
40:50
he gives basically no specifics on Okay, what is it that you did wrong?
40:54
What would you do differently this time? He doesn't do any of that.
41:00
He does what Trump does. You know, Trump and Newsome are actually
41:04
remarkably similar. It's not a coincidence that they compliment each other. It's probably
41:08
also not a coincidence that Newsom's ex wife is now the fiance of Donald Trump's
41:14
favorite son, which I do think has a major role in their relationship.
41:20
But what Trump does, especially when it comes to COVID, is that he
41:22
gives his supporters options. He has so many different positions that you can just
41:30
basically all a heart, choose what you like and discard what you don't.
41:35
And so now Newsome, potentially to prepare for a twenty twenty four run,
41:40
is saying, well, you know, I'm acknowledging that we learned from some
41:44
of our mistakes. I'm not going to tell you what those mistakes were,
41:46
and I'm not going to tell you really what we would do differently when it
41:50
comes to the next pandemic. And I'm by the way, I'm going to
41:53
decry partisanship, even though I'm the one that made this partisan to begin with.
41:58
And oh, by the way, I'm going to mention Ron Santus in
42:00
ways that I don't even understand what the hell he's saying. I honestly don't
42:02
know. I cannot figure out. I've listened to this three times what he's
42:07
trying to say about Ron de Santis. But De Santis has been living rent
42:09
free in his head over the COVID response for the last couple of years.
42:15
But here is Gavin Newsom with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press for four minutes,
42:21
and to me, this is really indicative of a lot of things,
42:24
including the media response to our COVID situation, how we're now going to adopt
42:31
this new narrative of well, we just didn't know at the time, which
42:36
is totally bullshit, how slippery Newsome is, and how clearly he's trying to
42:40
set the stage for a potential national presidential run in twenty twenty four. Here
42:47
is what it sounded like Chuck Todd and Gavin Newsom on Meet the Press this
42:52
past weekend during COVID, You were pretty strict with the lockdowns here and it
42:59
was an interesting peace. And Harper's that sort of was critical of your decisions
43:05
from this perspective. You found a way to allow the motion picture industry and
43:10
South and the and the sort of the movie industry to get back to work,
43:14
but she didn't allow people to grieve together at funerals or at churches,
43:19
and that it sort of and then this may be why there's such a polarized
43:22
disconnect. What what you prioritize? Right? This is this anger between the
43:27
populace and the elite. Supposed here you prioritize this industry, but you know
43:35
you were tougher on those that just wanted to go worship. What do you
43:38
say to that, christis, I think there's a lot of humility, and
43:40
we didn't know what we didn't know, and it was hardly I who was
43:44
we collectively I think all of us, in terms of our collective wisdom,
43:49
we've evolved, We didn't know what we didn't know. We're experts. In
43:51
hindsight, we're all Jesus. So think about what we what you ended up
43:54
collectively prioritizing. You're prioritizing in industry, you know, and one specific one,
44:00
but then didn't prioritize maybe one that who's maybe values you didn't connect with.
44:06
I don't think it's a binary. There was iterations within that theme.
44:08
There was there was fits and starts. There were regional frameworks that had impacts
44:15
more broadly defined. There were more industry specific frameworks. All of us went
44:20
through a process. I mean, there was few states that didn't go on
44:22
aggressive lockdowns, including Florida's Rondo say, I understand that, but it was
44:27
more but within the framework of the door. It's what industry got leniency in
44:32
which which is all of it is legitimate in terms of reflection, all of
44:37
its legitimate in terms of processing lessons learned. We went through a process.
44:40
I actually had its Sunny lens, which is the Camp David on the West
44:45
coast. We brought together experts across the spectrum, people that supported our efforts,
44:50
people that opposed them, international experts, and we spent three days really
44:53
reflecting stress testing, what we did right, what we did wrong. We're
44:57
actually putting out a report as it relates to our own lessons learned. I
45:00
think this country would do well to advance a similar construct, not through the
45:04
lens of prisms of an ideology, but through the almost like a nine to
45:08
eleven commission on what lessons learned from this pandemic. There's been versions of that,
45:14
but they're immediately dismissed within the prism of our partisan frame, and so
45:16
I'm at least trying to work across that and in context of all you do
45:22
differently, well, I think we would have done everything differently because we understood
45:25
we would understand outdoors as example nature, you're going to shut schools down to
45:30
try to figure out how to maybe have outdoor classrooms. Well, now you're
45:35
going. But I think the nature of the spread early on, and understanding
45:39
epidemiology that's spread, understanding the spread in the context of how it spread very
45:45
differently indoors than outdoors, is one perfect example what a lot of us would
45:50
have done differently, including again in states Red states that shut down their beaches
45:54
in the early part of the pandemic. I think a deeper understanding of round
45:59
massin mask wearing and ninety fives Ken ninety fives. You go through a process
46:05
across the spectrum in terms of being prepared, issues related to how we fundamentally
46:10
address the distribution of vaccines and the prioritization. You want to talk about prioritizations
46:15
early on because those vaccines. You go through a series of things, and
46:20
there's so many things we could have done differently. You think this country can
46:23
handle another pandemic or do you think it would break up? I think we
46:25
have to. We were resilient country, so it wouldn't break us. But
46:30
I'm not convinced we've learned the lessons from the last one. And I think
46:32
science took a big hit. I think the health read the history book from
46:36
nineteen eighteen. We're still trying to figure out. Yeah, no, and
46:38
but but that's I mean, that's alarmed divide people, that's alarming. It
46:42
should be alarming all of us that all of a sudden, health became partisan,
46:46
and that's something we're going to pay a big price. You're right going
46:50
forward, but it won't break us because we're remarkably resilient. I know that
46:53
clip was long, but I felt like it was important enough to play all
46:58
of it for the kid text. And my greatest takeaway there is Okay,
47:04
that's clear that Newsom is preparing himself in case Biden doesn't run, because as
47:12
big as Newsome's ego is and as many chips as he put down on his
47:15
COVID response, for him to be willing to acknowledge essentially that mistakes were made,
47:21
we would do things differently, although without specifics. That's extraordinary and the
47:25
only thing that would motivate him to do that because there's no pressure for him
47:30
to do that in California at all. The only way he would do that
47:34
is if he thought he was going to be on the ballot in places other
47:36
than California in the near future. And so now I am convinced for the
47:42
first time really that Newsome is one hundred percent trying to make himself viable.
47:50
Now, that still requires a whole bunch of other things to occur, but
47:54
it's clearly his intent, and it's the only way to make that interview make
48:00
any sense. And then from a substantive standpoint, I really can't believe,
48:04
although I guess it's the case that we're going to buy that this is the
48:07
new narrative that is acceptable, that this is the new liberal media narrative about
48:13
COVID. Well, we just didn't know at the time. We were all
48:15
sincere, and some mistakes were made. We never dealt with us before.
48:21
Complete bullshit, complete bullshit. How is it that people like me and I
48:27
was hardly alone, but we were censored in large park. Knew that outdoor
48:32
transmission was going to be basically impossible, knew that masks were not going to
48:37
work, knew that the projections for how many people were gonna get COVID in
48:42
eight weeks put out there to justify an unprecedented state lockdown. We're totally and
48:46
completely wrong. How did we know that? How did we know that closing
48:52
schools we're going to cause massive damage to the kids and to the future with
48:58
regard to truancy and all sorts of other things, as well as prevent something
49:04
that wasn't even a danger to kids. How did we know that? How
49:08
did we know that? If this was something that we just didn't know that
49:12
was unknowable. We're all geniuses now, No, a lot of us knew
49:16
it at the time. Not because we're geniuses, not because we're experts,
49:22
but because we used our goddamn common sense, and common sense went out the
49:29
window and it was replaced by panic, insanity, virtue signaling, and partisanship.
49:37
And so for this to pass, as you know, confrontational journalism and
49:45
getting accountability is just a fricking joke. I mean, that was pathetic in
49:51
comparison to what it should have been. And not even any discussion really of
49:55
Newsome saying he was gonna mandate vaccines for school kids to be allowed to attend
50:01
public school. That just got dropped by Newsome, but he was doing that
50:07
well into how much we knew about the vaccines. We knew the vaccines were
50:14
not doing what we were told they were going to do, long before Newsom
50:20
quietly finally said yeah, never mind on that, because we're not going to
50:23
do it, because it was clear one that it wasn't justified, it wasn't
50:28
gonna work, there was no need for it. But also there was going
50:31
to be some pushback among parents, and hal Newsome ever got away with that
50:37
is about the most mind boggling thing that happened in the entire pandemic, because
50:44
that was unbelievable that he I mean, he literally threatened every single parent and
50:52
child who goes to public school in California, with the fact that they were
50:57
going to have to take a shot they didn't need in order to keep going
51:01
to public school. And then he dropped it with no accountability, and frankly,
51:07
there was never even any real news coverage. And we got huge news
51:09
coverage when he said this was his intention, and then no news coverage went
51:14
oops, never mind, let's forget about that. Let's move on because he
51:19
was wrong, but he never even had to admit it, and he's not
51:22
even getting confronted about it. I mean, there's so many sins that he
51:24
committed. There's not even enough time for Chuck Todd to in the rare interview
51:30
that knew some gibs, to get to the bottom of any of this.
51:32
Now, there's more COVID related news that I want to at least mentioned briefly,
51:37
because it's not just the health element of this that we blew. We
51:43
blew the economic part of this equation, at least as badly as we did
51:49
from the standpoint of restrictions and lockdowns and mandates and what have you. And
51:53
this does not get enough attention even on this podcast. But the Washington Post,
51:59
to its Credit did a story about the amount of fraud related to COVID
52:06
unemployment benefits headline fraudsters Fraudsters may have stolen one dollar of every seven dollars in
52:15
COVID jobless aid. Watch dog finds one in every seven dollars in COVID jobless
52:24
aid may have been taken by fraudsters. The post goes on to say fraudsters
52:31
may have stolen as much as a hundred and thirty five billion BABA billion dollars
52:38
in federal unemployment aid during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report released this
52:44
week by the Government Accountability Office, one in every seven dollars. This is
52:51
very similar to the whole concept of well, boy, you know, if
52:55
we'd only known then what we know now, we would have stopped at bullshit.
53:00
Everybody with a triple digit IQ knew that if you incentivize people to stay
53:07
home and you're throwing money everywhere in a panic situation, that guess what,
53:14
there's gonna be fraud. And it's not just the fraud. The fraud should
53:19
be infuriating enough. I mean, these are people who stole unemployment benefits,
53:24
what out of every seven dollars during a national international crisis. But all of
53:32
this facilitated in a huge way the inflation that we are all still enduring to
53:39
today. There's a direct line, and this was maybe one of the most
53:45
egregious elements of the economic reaction to COVID, where we gave people incentives to
53:52
sit home and not work, and we created massive opportunities for frauds. So
53:59
we gave away one hundred and thirty five billion dollars to people who didn't even
54:04
deserve it. Not to mention, we de incentivize people from working, which
54:09
then caused an impossible situation when it came to reopening because nobody could get anyone
54:15
to work, which increased wages, created supply chain problems, all of which
54:22
created enormous inflation. Not to mention, we're printing money, devaluing the dollar,
54:29
and all of this was easily understood. There were people who warned about
54:32
it at the time, but no one cared because, you know what,
54:37
making sure Donald Trump was a one term president was more important. I mean,
54:42
because that's really what it was all about, whether it was conscious or
54:45
subconscious. And I'm obviously somebody who lows Donald Trump, but I'm clearheaded enough
54:50
to see that was what the primary political motivation was, and Trump was too
54:54
stupid to understand it. I think Trump thought he was going to get credit
54:59
because when he sent out those checks, his name was on those checks,
55:05
and he course didn't get any credit for that, or at least very very
55:07
little credit for that. The reality is this was an experiment to destroy our
55:14
entire system, and from a liberal perspective, it worked fantastically, and they
55:19
don't give a shit that one hundred and thirty five billion dollars was wasted on
55:24
fraud. And of course it's not just you know, the fraud issue that's
55:30
in the news. Recently, we've got a story that's being once again downplayed
55:34
in the mainstream news media about the CIA and whether or not they were aware
55:40
that the lab leak theory not only wasn't a conspiracy theory, but it was
55:45
actually true that that's how the coronavirus began headline in the New York Post,
55:51
and Senator Ran Paul from Kentucky, who's been on this issue more so than
55:54
anybody else in the Senate, he promoted this article on Twitter headline, CIA
56:00
tried to pay off analysts to bury findings that COVID lab leak was likely this
56:07
according to a whistleblower. The story reads the Central Intelligence Agency offered to pay
56:14
off analysts in order to bury their findings that COVID nineteen was most likely leaked
56:20
from a lab in Wuhan, China, knew. Whistleblower testimony to Congress alleges
56:25
a senior level CIA officer told House committee leaders that his agency tried to pay
56:31
off six analysts who found that COVID likely originated in a Wuhan lab if they
56:38
changed their position and said the virus jumped from animals to humans. But according
56:45
to a letter sent Tuesday to CIA Director William Burns, now does that prove
56:50
it? No, it does not. However, that's a hell of a
56:52
lead, and it's certainly consistent with a lot of other things that we already
56:58
do know. That point in the director of the lab leak theory, and
57:01
the most important part of the lab leak theory story is how the news media
57:07
originally dealt with that theory. This was a conspiracy, crackpot theory that was
57:15
perpetrated by nut jobs. President Trump himself was mocked for promoting this theory.
57:22
And it turns out that the most likely scenario is that it was true,
57:27
and it's true also to understand the political ramifications of this and how China dealt
57:32
with the whole thing early on. Had we known this, had this been
57:36
accepted from the beginning, I do think it would have changed a lot of
57:40
people's perceptions of what was really going on here. Plus the truth automatter,
57:46
and the truth seems to be we don't know for sure, but seems to
57:51
be that this did. In fact, once again the media blowing it shockingly,
57:55
was a situation where it originated in a lab. Even John Stewart,
58:01
you know, the comedian John Stewart, famously did a hell of a funny
58:06
bit on a late night talk show basically saying, of course it came from
58:09
the Wuhan COVID lab. I mean, that's the most logical Occam's razor scenario
58:17
here. Now, is it possible that there was a relationship between the lab
58:22
and the wet market. I think that makes some sense, But the lab,
58:28
it couldn't have been. It's way too much of a coincidence for it
58:30
not to have originated in the lab. And that there was a cover up,
58:35
and that even the United States government may have participated in the cover up
58:40
of this being the truth of how maybe the most important thing that's happened in
58:45
the modern history of America and the world actually transpired. There's also, by
58:51
the way, doctor Fauci is still warning about misleading mask studies showing that they
58:54
don't work, which is just freaking hilarious to be and so to typical of
59:00
all this insanity, because after all, the only thing Fauci has ever apologized
59:04
for being wrong on was the only thing he was ever right about, which
59:07
was that masks don't work, which is what he said in early March of
59:12
twenty twenty. But then it became political, and he's a politician, even
59:15
though he claims that he is science. Everything's upside down, and it's just
59:20
so typical of this entire fiasco. I have many, many times related the
59:25
situation with regard to COVID to what is in the process of happening with climate
59:30
change, in global warming, and there was a story that I somehow missed
59:36
from about a week or so ago that I wanted to quickly revisit. This
59:39
is from the Telegraph in the United Kingdom. But this goes to the heart
59:45
of something that I have talked about many times, where you know, I'm
59:47
not an expert. I just used my common sense and my own research,
59:51
which of course is very very dangerous accorded to the main street douce media.
59:54
But I have told you many times that maybe the most egregious certity that the
1:00:00
news media jumps on when it comes to this equation involving climate change global warming
1:00:06
is equating wildfires with climate change global warming. And I have said numerous times
1:00:13
this is just not true, and that experts used to push back against this
1:00:17
until I think they basically made a deal with their media partners. Okay,
1:00:21
we'll stop pushing back on this, because we know how much you love those
1:00:24
pictures of wildfires, whatever you do your stories on climate change and global warming,
1:00:29
because frankly, those are the best pictures right fire at night. I
1:00:32
mean, that is scary stuff. Fire obviously is associated with warming and dryness,
1:00:38
so inherently this is great stuff for the news media. So don't take
1:00:44
that away from us by continuing to say, you experts, gee, you
1:00:49
know, actually there's no real connection between wildfires and global warming. Well,
1:00:53
there's some really great evidence that my assessment of what happened here is actually dead
1:00:59
on. In the Telegraph, they reported a week or so ago headline,
1:01:04
climate scientist admits over hyping impact of global warming on wildfires to get published.
1:01:15
Subheadline, doctor Patrick Brown claims research that cuts against the mainstream narrative on climate
1:01:22
change is taboo in certain journals. And in the words what he's saying in
1:01:29
the subheadline, doctor Brown as well, look, you can't go against that
1:01:32
mainstream narrative on climate change because you're going to be labeled as a heretic.
1:01:39
You're going to be outside the pack. You're not gonna get published in certain
1:01:44
journals. And specifically, the article begins, a climate scientist has admitted overhyping
1:01:51
the impact of global warming on wildfires to ensure his work was published in the
1:01:57
prestigious science journal Nature. Bump bump bum. There you go. There.
1:02:04
It couldn't be more clear. It's all about politics, it's all about self
1:02:07
interest, it's not about the truth. And this is inherently a contradiction of
1:02:14
what science is supposed to be about. Scientific method was supposed to be completely
1:02:19
immune from economic and political pressures. And now that's all that happens when it
1:02:25
comes to at least mainstream scientific inquiry, Very much like what happened with COVID
1:02:32
a lot, ironically, a lot like what Gavin Newsom was bemoaning, even
1:02:38
though he's the one that started the partisan nature of the pandemic response. It's
1:02:44
all about politics and self interest and prestige and being part of the club.
1:02:50
It's not about the truth. And in this case, it couldn't be more
1:02:53
clear cut because we have voluminous evidence of years of so called expert it's the
1:03:00
same experts that are, you know, champion global warming and climate change telling
1:03:04
us yeah, now, wildfires really aren't part of that equation. But then
1:03:08
they decided it must be because they, you know, the narrative police said
1:03:14
we like this too much. We can't we can't give up those pictures of
1:03:17
wildfires because they're the best pictures we have when it comes to trying to make
1:03:22
this cause work internationally. And I, you know, my guess is that
1:03:29
one because they didn't want to get kicked out of the club, and too,
1:03:30
because they saw the larger picture here, they took one for the team.
1:03:35
The experts didn't said okay, fine, you go ahead and use your
1:03:38
pictures and video of wildfires and we'll just stay quiet about the whole thing.
1:03:43
And then it becomes you know, once they stop pushing back, then it
1:03:46
becomes part of the religion. And once it's part of the religion, you
1:03:52
get a situation like I just documented, where you got experts who are giving
1:03:58
even prestigious ns like nature what they want. That's the way to get published,
1:04:03
by lying, by facilitating the religion, by trying to justify the religious
1:04:10
beliefs of this climate change cult, this cult of self interest, that's what
1:04:16
it is, which is exactly the opposite of what science was always supposed to
1:04:21
be. I have to at least mention what happened with Aaron Rodgers and the
1:04:27
New York Jets, because I think this is very telling about the nature of
1:04:31
the news media and the sports media and the entertainment media, and in a
1:04:35
way that you probably are not aware of, but no one else will mention
1:04:42
in case you somehow missed it. Aaron Rodgers was the highly hyped quarterback for
1:04:46
the New York Jets, are spending his entire career with the Green Bay Packers,
1:04:51
four time MVP. I mean, there hasn't been this much hype.
1:04:56
Maybe Tom Brady to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but this was by far the
1:05:00
most hype story when it came to the coming NFL football season, and boy,
1:05:08
they didn't implode on Liftoff. Four plays into his first game with the
1:05:13
Jets, he blew out as achilles tenant. He's out for the season.
1:05:16
He might have his career ended by this. You know, physically, he
1:05:21
could try to come back at the age of forty, but it's hard for
1:05:26
me to understand how that would work, because if the Jets have a good
1:05:31
season without him, they're not going to give him the starting job as a
1:05:36
forty year old coming back from a blown achilles And if he's not guaranteed to
1:05:43
be the starter and have his ass kissed, I doubt he's gonna bother to
1:05:45
do this. He's not going to come back to sit on the bench potentially.
1:05:49
And if they have a bad season without him, which I don't think
1:05:54
they will because their defense is so good and the backup is at least decent,
1:05:59
then why would he bother to come back for a really bad team at
1:06:02
forty I guess he could. You know, there wouldn't be much to lose,
1:06:08
but there wouldn't be this feeling of they're just on the verge of winning
1:06:11
a Super Bowl, which was the whole narrative that led him to New York
1:06:15
to begin with. To me, the media element of this is very very
1:06:20
interesting and telling because it tells you a lot about how the news and entertainment
1:06:26
media works in this day and age, and I don't think people understand.
1:06:30
And this is the main reason why I'm going to mention that Aaron Rodgers story.
1:06:34
Because our attention spans are so short, especially when it comes to news,
1:06:40
where you know, a minute and thirty seconds now is a lot of
1:06:44
news time. It is very, very difficult to talk about a subject that
1:06:50
doesn't deal inherently with somebody that people know, or at least the audience isn't
1:06:57
already very familiar with. And that is why we have such a focus on
1:07:02
celebrities. So if you're doing sports news or content and you mentioned Aaron Rodgers,
1:07:11
everybody in your audience already knows who he is, already has almost two
1:07:16
decades of experience with the guy going back to college, that you don't need
1:07:20
to explain anything else. People are inherently interested in him. He's a controversial
1:07:27
character, one because he apparently didn't take the vaccines, but also because he's
1:07:30
outspoken, he's interesting, and you know He's only won one Super Bowl,
1:07:35
should he have won more? There's a lot to talk about there, and
1:07:40
so this was partially why he was such a huge story in the news meeting,
1:07:45
Not to mention, he's going to New York, the number one media
1:07:47
market in the country. So this is manna from heaven for the sports media.
1:07:53
And then all of a sudden, they're manna from heaven got taken away,
1:07:57
and boy did they have a meltdown in the Sports Meeting you I mean,
1:08:00
because this is a major problem for ESPN. I mean, let's be
1:08:04
clear, sports is essentially sports news has essentially become like soap operas. That's
1:08:10
really what it is. That's the formula. I mean, you know,
1:08:13
men would not want to admit this, but effectively, what sports programmers decided
1:08:17
was that we're just going to create real life soap operas, the soap operas
1:08:23
that used to keep the attention of mostly a female audience during the day before
1:08:28
soap operas became you know, the way of Blockbuster video for all intents and
1:08:33
purposes. But that's really what it is. And so when it comes to
1:08:39
sports content, you're really only allowed to talk about certain people. There's only
1:08:43
about ten people maybe that rise to the level maybe even less than that,
1:08:48
now rise to the level of Okay, we don't have to explain who we're
1:08:51
talking about. We have an audience that's inherently interested in this. And one
1:08:58
of the proofs of what I'm saying is immediately, so many sports outlets talked
1:09:03
almost all day about how Tom Brady may come out of retirement to replace Aaron
1:09:09
Rodgers. There is zero chance of a zero. Tom Brady is forty six
1:09:15
years old, he just had a retirement ceremony with the New England Patriots,
1:09:19
the team that he played most of his career four and he's a part owner
1:09:24
of the Las Vegas Raiders. There is no chance he's coming back to play
1:09:29
football at forty six for the New York Jets. If he did, by
1:09:32
the way, he might last about as long as the thirty nine year old
1:09:35
Achilles Heel did for Aaron Rodgers. It's just preposterous. But the reason why
1:09:44
the sports media does this is because Brady is the ultimate He's the Tiger Woods
1:09:50
of the football world. Everybody knows Tom Brady, everyone has a strong opinion
1:09:57
about him. The concept of him coming act is so incredibly enticing it's inherently
1:10:02
ratings friendly, content friendly. And this wasn't just a passing mention. I
1:10:06
mean I watched ESPN's number one show. Unfortunately, for like twenty minutes they
1:10:13
went on on about how Tom Brady. They went into detail about how this
1:10:15
would work if Brady came back to the Jets, and I'm like, this
1:10:18
is just insanity. And by the way, they're liberals on Twitter still claiming
1:10:24
that Colin Kaepernick could come back to be the Jets quarterback, which got there
1:10:30
was one tweet from a from a liberal who tweeted about how Colin Kaepernick should
1:10:35
be the Jets new quarterback that got fourteen million views. Fourteen million views Colin
1:10:43
Kaepernick because on the left, he's the basically the Tom Brady. He's a
1:10:47
massive celebrity and racial hero for this the boondoggle he pulled on all of society
1:10:57
by pretending that he was being persecuted for his racial stance when in fact he
1:11:00
actually sucked. I mean, the guy, you know, he went to
1:11:04
a Super Bowl ten years ago against Baltimore. It was so long ago I
1:11:10
think that the cornerback he played against might have been Johnny Unitas. And people
1:11:14
are still claiming that Colin Kaepernick could come back. No, the only reason
1:11:17
why that gets mentioned is because there's an audience for it. That's all that
1:11:23
matters, is that there's an audience. And here's the problem that sports media
1:11:28
and the NFL media is going to have. Now this is a dirty little
1:11:30
secret here, folks. Part of why they are in mourning the loss of
1:11:34
Aaron Rodgers is one that that ends an incredible era of NFL quarterbacks, by
1:11:42
the way, almost you know, all of them were white superstars, and
1:11:46
white superstars are becoming in greater, smaller and smaller numbers in most sports for
1:11:54
a lot of different reasons. And you know, when you lose Brady and
1:11:58
the Mannings and Drewes and now it looks like you've lost Aaron Rodgers and Philip
1:12:04
Rivers and Ben Roethlisberger, I mean, all of these quarterbacks. And the
1:12:11
NFL is all about quarterbacks now, one because of the way the rules are
1:12:15
and two because that's what people gravitate towards. So the only thing you're really
1:12:17
allowed to talk about are quarterbacks. And the only way you get to the
1:12:21
status of being somebody who is worthy of being discussed at any moment is if
1:12:27
you win a Super Bowl, because that's how you become a celebrity because then
1:12:30
you're seen by one hundred million people winning football's biggest game. Well, guess
1:12:34
what now that Aaron Rodgers is gone, there are effectively only two quarterbacks left
1:12:42
in the NFL who have won Super Bowls two partially because you know, you
1:12:47
lose what you lose eleven super Bowl wins with the retirement of Brady and the
1:12:53
Manning brothers, so that's a lot of Super Bowls that went out the window
1:12:57
in a fairly short period of time. So there are very very few people
1:13:00
now that rise to the level when it comes to sports media of being able
1:13:05
to just stick it in the microwave and press start. This is all you
1:13:10
have to do when you talk about Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady or even Colin
1:13:14
Kaepernick. Now those days are gone, and this is going to create a
1:13:18
major crisis in the sports media. And by the way, it's the same
1:13:23
concept in cable news television. This is largely why Donald Trump gets so much
1:13:29
media coverage because it's you know, just add water and mix, stick in
1:13:35
the microwave and hit start. Everyone has a strong opinion. Everyone knows who
1:13:40
they are. You don't have to introduce anything, you know, it's just
1:13:43
immediate warfare whichever side you're on. And we see it all the time,
1:13:48
and it absolutely influences news coverage in a massive way. It takes too long
1:13:55
to introduce new characters in the soap opera, and so of laziness and time
1:14:00
constraints sports media and news media and entertainment media, they won't do it.
1:14:08
And getting people into that stratosphere being a large enough celebrity that they're worthy of
1:14:13
being talked about it all times is getting increasingly difficult in this very fragmented media
1:14:20
age. And I found that the loss of Aaron Rodgers is very very interesting
1:14:27
because of that, they're starting to run out of characters. And I mentioned
1:14:32
the white thing. I mean, I'm sure I'll get criticized for that,
1:14:38
you know. Look, unfortunately this matters in this day and age. I
1:14:43
mean, people more easily relate to others who have something in common with them.
1:14:48
Most NFL fans are white, and while most NFL players are black,
1:14:56
there are white people who, at least subconsciously, I think, are more
1:15:00
drawn to a sport that has some semblance of white people playing in that sport.
1:15:06
I think the NBA has suffered because that doesn't really exist anymore. My
1:15:12
God, to this day, Larry bird Is is still talked about constantly,
1:15:16
and so for the white fan, it becomes more and more difficult to find
1:15:23
people celebrities that are big enough that they're worthy of being discussed. And the
1:15:29
sport is changing, and all these white quarterbacks are now retired that we're legendary,
1:15:34
and Rogers may be the last of the Mohicans. And this is something
1:15:40
that the sports media will never want to talk about, but it's a reality,
1:15:44
and it tells you an awful lot about the way the news and the
1:15:47
sports media actually works and why it's not about the truth or about journalism.
1:15:54
One last thing before we get up to our interview with jenk Huger, The
1:15:58
Progressive Commentators writ a new book that I really want you to listen to our
1:16:01
discussion because it's really fascinating. I wanted to give a quick update on a
1:16:08
story I talked extensively about in episode number eighty eight, which was regarding the
1:16:13
new witness in the Kennedy assassination. And I don't want to get too bogged
1:16:17
down in all the details. If you're interested, make sure you listen to
1:16:20
episode eighty eight or episode seventy one of the podcasts, which is where I
1:16:26
outlined my very extensive and unique theory about what really happened in the assassination,
1:16:31
which I believe and many other people believe, may have been vindicated by this
1:16:36
new witness, and the new witness basically provides evidence of what I've been saying
1:16:44
for decades, which is that the so called single bullet theory is not true
1:16:47
and that the first shot hit John of Kennedy in the back and fell out.
1:16:53
According to this secret Service agent, it was that bullet was found intact
1:16:58
in the back of the limousine where Kennedy was sitting. And if that's all
1:17:00
true, and I'm not sure that it is, but if it's all true,
1:17:03
then my theory has been completely vindicated. And it's been interesting to watch
1:17:09
the media coverage of this new revelation and specifically how the Daily Mail actually took
1:17:17
a sound bite that I used in episode seventy one. I'm sure this I
1:17:23
had nothing to do with this, but I used a sound bite episode seventy
1:17:27
one making my case that the warrant Commission was wrong, but that Lee Harvey
1:17:31
Oswald acted alone, and that this single bullet did not create all the wounds
1:17:39
between Kennedy and Connolly in the so called magic bullet theory, that wasn't true.
1:17:45
I played a sound bite from a nurse who was there in the emergency
1:17:49
room at Parkland. Now I thought a lot about that clip from the nurse
1:17:55
that we played in episode seventy one, because I wasn't one hundred percent sure
1:18:00
whether it fit with this new revelation by this secret Service agent Paul Landis or
1:18:05
not. At first, I thought, well, boy, maybe she was
1:18:11
just totally wrong, because how do I reconcile what Landis described, what he
1:18:15
did with the bullet, and what she said. And interestingly, the Daily
1:18:19
Mail seems to think that that SoundBite that I played for you basically backs up
1:18:26
Paul Landis's new revelation. Here was the headline of the Daily Mail. JFK
1:18:31
assassination nurse says she saw the pristine bullet. Secret Service agent Paul Landis now
1:18:39
claims he retrieved from the limo and placed on JFK stretcher, up ending the
1:18:45
magic bullet theory. They start by saying the prior eyewitness testimony of a nurse
1:18:51
president in the emergency room after President John F. Kennedy was fatally shot in
1:18:56
nineteen sixty three, seems to corroborate a four Secret Service agents bombshell knew claim.
1:19:02
Now I can see where this article is coming from, and again I
1:19:06
acknowledge I want to believe it. So therefore I have a bias because if
1:19:13
it depends on how you interpret what Landis is claiming what he did with regard
1:19:17
to replacing the bullet on jfk stretcher, I would like to know more about
1:19:21
the exact timing of what Landis is claiming or what his memory says. The
1:19:27
part of the nurses testimony that I find a little bit concerning her name,
1:19:31
by the way, is Phyllis Hall. Phyllis Hall talks about seeing this pristine
1:19:36
bullet next to Kennedy on his stretcher in the emergency room, but that she
1:19:43
never saw that bullet again. And I'm not sure what she means by that,
1:19:47
but obviously the magic bullet became the subject of an awful lot of news
1:19:53
coverage over the years. She gave these interviews multiple interviews back in twenty thirteen
1:19:59
on the fifth ath anniversary of the assassination. It's uncertain It's not said in
1:20:03
his article whether or not she's still alive now that we're nearing the sixtieth anniversary
1:20:10
of the assassination, but I would certainly love to hear what she's saying now
1:20:15
in response to the Landis book, assuming she is still alive and able to
1:20:18
speak. But that part of what she said always bothered me, because what
1:20:23
do you mean you never saw that? Again, the rest of her testimony
1:20:29
fits perfectly with Landis's story and certainly fits with the idea that there was a
1:20:33
Christine bullet that was found on the stretch or near Kennedy's body in the emergency
1:20:41
room. And now Landis has provided an explanation for how that happened, and
1:20:45
so it does potentially fit together. Again. I still have questions, but
1:20:49
I found it interesting that the Daily Mail proactively made the connection between a piece
1:20:57
of evidence that I had used in episode seventy one to show that my theory
1:21:01
regarding the Pristine bullet was in fact correct. There's another interesting tidbit that I
1:21:06
did not know that was brought to my attention by a listener, which happens
1:21:12
a lot. I think this was brought to me by Andy Faber, who
1:21:15
was a big supporter of my work, especially in the Penn State case.
1:21:18
And this is from the Wikipitia page of the so called Pristine Bullet, and
1:21:25
I was unaware, And now I implied this with the interview that we played
1:21:29
in episode seventy one with not the interview with a phone call between Jaeger Hoover,
1:21:33
the legendary head of the FBI, and Lyndon Johnson just days after the
1:21:38
assassination, and that clip, which is extraordinary in so many ways, a
1:21:42
hundred percent backs up my theory of first hit shot hits Kennedy in the back,
1:21:46
second shot hits Connelly, third shot its Kennedy in the head. And
1:21:49
that's it, that they all came from Oswald. It's all fairly easily wrapped
1:21:54
up. And that was absolutely jay Egger Hoover's theory days after the assassination when
1:21:59
he's in to the President United States in a conversation that he had no anticipation
1:22:03
whatever we made public, at least until he was dead, which is exactly
1:22:08
what happened. Well, if you go to the Wikipedia page of the so
1:22:13
called Single Bullet or Pristine Bullet, there's an interesting note under the origins of
1:22:18
the theory they write in Wikipedia. The first preliminary report on the assassination issued
1:22:26
by the FBI on December nine, nineteen sixty three. So we're just a
1:22:30
couple of weeks later, said quote, three shots rang out. Two bullets
1:22:34
struck President Kennedy, and one wounded Governor Connolly, which is exactly what I've
1:22:40
been saying for decades. After the report was written, the FBI received the
1:22:44
official autopsy report, which indicated that the bullet that struck the president in the
1:22:48
back had exited through his throat. The FBI had written their report partly based
1:22:54
on an initial autopsy report written by their agents, which reflected the early person
1:23:00
that that bullet had only penetrated several inches into the President's back and had likely
1:23:06
fallen out. The FBI concluded, therefore, that the governor had been struck
1:23:13
by a separate bullet, Governor Connolly. So what we have here is the
1:23:18
initial conclusion by the FBI was exactly my theory, and something changed. And
1:23:27
I believe basically what happened here is that there was overthinking and there was reverse
1:23:32
engineering, and there was thought to have been a problem with the Zibruder film
1:23:36
not giving Oswald enough time to pull off the shots that caused the reaction of
1:23:43
Kennedy and the shot that caused the reaction to Connolly and basically Arland Spector that
1:23:46
got the lawyer leader. Senator on the Warren Commission came up with a single
1:23:51
bullet theory as a way to make everything work when he thought he had a
1:23:57
problem that he really didn't have. And the reason why and have that problem
1:24:00
was because Kennedy's reaction is delayed. That's the essence of it. Kennedy's reaction
1:24:04
is delayed and misinterpreted because he never comes close to grabbing his throat at all.
1:24:10
He has his elbows out, fists clinched, and never comes close to
1:24:15
his throat. But because that's been misinterpreted, and because he had this throat
1:24:18
wound that was turned into a tracheotomy at Parkland, all this created a false
1:24:25
narrative and it was a red herring that caused people to misinterpret things. And
1:24:29
now this new this new witness may have just allowed all the puzzle pieces to
1:24:34
be put in place. I'm still not one hundred percent convinced. I'm still
1:24:38
trying to get an interview with Gerald Posner. For some reason, He's not
1:24:42
yet responded to me, which I find to be odd. I'm sure he's
1:24:45
very busy. He's the guy who wrote Kate's Clothes, which actually influenced my
1:24:47
opinion about the assassinated shouldn't rather dramatically, and I have a lot of respect
1:24:53
for him. I will continue to effort an interview with Gerald Posner, and
1:24:57
I'm hopeful that that will happen, since he's already a months ago agreed that
1:25:00
we would do one closer to the anniversary of the assassination. But that's that
1:25:05
update. Still not sure what happened. They're still looking for more information,
1:25:11
but still hopeful that I may have been dramatically vindicated at the last moment.
1:25:15
As we're about to honor the sixtieth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. Now,
1:25:20
I want to play for you an interview that I recently did with Jank Huger,
1:25:26
who is most well known for being the host of the Young Turks Show,
1:25:31
which is a very long running and popular progressive internet outlet. Huger and
1:25:40
I have a weird relationship. We agree on almost nothing, although occasionally we
1:25:45
do agree. We also have had many years where we have no contact.
1:25:49
Then it seems like in presidential elections, we get back in touch and do
1:25:55
interviews with each other. He's interviewed me several times, the first time back
1:26:00
in two thousand and nine in reaction to the two thousand and eight election in
1:26:02
my interview with the vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, which made so much news.
1:26:09
But Jake has a new book out called Justice Is Coming, How Progressives
1:26:13
are going to take over the country in America is going to love It,
1:26:16
And about a week or so ago we did an interview. That interview was
1:26:20
embargoed until the book was closer to coming out. They now gave me permission
1:26:25
to release that interview, and I urge you to listen to this because this
1:26:28
is I talked earlier in this podcast about how you know there are very few
1:26:31
situations now where people who strongly disagree ever get together and do interviews because there's
1:26:38
so many other options and people are so afraid of being confronted. Well,
1:26:42
this gets pretty confrontational, although it stays friendly, and I think you're going
1:26:45
to find a lot of this to be both compelling and unique. So here's
1:26:49
that interview. You know him as the longtime host of The Young Turks.
1:26:54
He's also the author of a book Justice Is Coming, How progressives are going
1:26:58
to take over the country in America. Area is going to love it.
1:27:01
Jank Huger, Welcome to the Death of Journalism podcast. Thank you, John.
1:27:06
Great to be here. Now. Before we get into your book,
1:27:10
which I am very eager to do, I think it's important to provide a
1:27:14
little bit of context about our interaction over the years. It's we have I
1:27:17
think maybe the one of the stranger media relationships that at least that I've had.
1:27:24
It seems like every presidential election we kind of get back into contact with
1:27:29
each other. It began way way back in around two thousand and eight,
1:27:33
two thousand and nine with the whole Sarah Palin story, and in the last
1:27:38
election, Psyche, I don't even know if you remember this, I was
1:27:41
trying to convince you, of a Bernie Sanders supporter, that if you want
1:27:45
to beat Donald Trump, that Joe Biden was the safest path to do that.
1:27:50
I'm curious how you evaluate that now in history, that that particular interaction
1:27:57
in the twenty twenty election. Yeah, well, I have mixed feelings about
1:28:00
that. So to get to juxtapose it as to why I have mixed feelings.
1:28:08
I thought in twenty sixteen that Hillary Clinton was a disastrous candidate, and
1:28:14
not just because I didn't agree with her politics and I'm more progressive than she
1:28:17
is, but because I was worried at desk she was gonna lose. And
1:28:20
I was the only person on an ABC This Week panel to pick Trump to
1:28:27
win, and the panel literally laughed out loud at me. Right, And
1:28:32
so Biden is very similar to Hillary Clinton in that he is an establishment candidate.
1:28:40
Yeah, he's different around the edges and apparently just different enough around the
1:28:45
edges. And Trump, of course, was a disaster for four years,
1:28:49
and especially with COVID. In my opinion and in the opinion of the American
1:28:54
people, that Biden barely won. He won by forty three thousand votes in
1:28:59
three swings states, and so the electoral college. Obviously, popular vote is
1:29:02
how we should do it, and he blew out Trump on the popular vote,
1:29:06
but that doesn't matter. The electoral college matters. So the reason I'm
1:29:10
saying I mixed feelings is because he barely won. But I'm a very practical
1:29:15
guy. I'll always take the victory. So if you said to me,
1:29:23
knowing what we know now, you don't know if Bernie's going to beat Trump,
1:29:28
but you do know Biden is. Then I say Trump is such a
1:29:31
monster and such a threat to democracy, that I'll take the assured Biden win.
1:29:39
Okay, but I don't think but I don't accept a premise at all.
1:29:42
That's a hypothetical, the premises that progresses would do worse in general elections,
1:29:46
and I don't think that's anywhere near true. I don't think that's within
1:29:50
planets of true. Interesting, Okay, so you're here. I thought you
1:29:54
were going to acknowledge I was right, and then you kind of took a
1:29:57
turn a turn at the end there. But I give you credit for acknowledging
1:30:02
that that was basically my argument to you. I don't remember this, but
1:30:05
if you're trying to get rid of Trump, the safest path to do this
1:30:10
would be Joe Biden's candidacy, because Bernie Sanders, in my opinion, would
1:30:15
have made himself more of the issue rather than Trump as the issue. You
1:30:20
guys wanted Trump to be the issue. You wanted a referendum on Trump.
1:30:26
And you know I to this day, jenk I have Trump supporters who say
1:30:30
there's no way that Joe Biden got eighty one million votes, and I say
1:30:32
to them, he didn't get eighty one million votes. Eighty one million people
1:30:36
voted against Donald Trump? Right, I mean, it's that affair. I
1:30:41
literally have the same exact tweet I tweeted. I don't know it was before
1:30:46
or after, but I was like, of course, Joe Biden didn't get
1:30:48
eighty one million votes, eighty one million people voted against Trump? Of course.
1:30:54
Of course, of course that's so obvious. And can eighty one million
1:30:57
people be animated enough to vote against Trump? Absolutely, that is a very
1:31:01
believable fact, right, And who's right and who's wrong? Look, no
1:31:05
one in media has ever come back around and said, oh, Jank,
1:31:09
you were right about Hillary Clinton. We were all wrong. We were all
1:31:12
disastrously wrong. We're all morons. We thought this day the American people love
1:31:15
the establishment. It turns out they hate the establishment. Sorry, I've never
1:31:19
heard one person saying, right, so John take the win, right,
1:31:23
Like, yes, I think a progressive would do better. But that's not
1:31:26
the point. The point, as you said, Biden would win, and
1:31:28
he did win. So that's the win. Yeah, Congress, and another
1:31:31
win for you, jenk In my opinion, Bidens as president has been way
1:31:35
more progressive than I ever imagined. Would you agree or disagree with that?
1:31:41
Nope? Yeah, look I hear you on that. He's more progressive than
1:31:45
he has been in his career, and hence why more progressive than you would
1:31:50
have imagined. But we have such low expectations of our politicians and our representatives.
1:31:58
So when, in my opinion, Barack Obama did about five, if
1:32:02
you're being super generous, ten percent of his agenda, Okay, it was
1:32:08
so called agenda, the one that he campaigned on, and Joe Biden did
1:32:11
better. He did fifteen percent, if you're being generous, twenty percent of
1:32:15
his agenda. But Washington has made that seem like he did two hundred percent
1:32:18
of his agenda. So I've got to remind people things like fifteen dollar minum
1:32:24
wage, we're supposed to be the bare minimum, voting rights was supposed to
1:32:27
be the bare minimum. They didn't even get close. The Democrats voted against
1:32:31
a fifteen dollar minimum wage in the Senate. It was just disgusting. They
1:32:35
he said public option, he didn't even introduce it. He didn't even bother
1:32:39
introducing it. Because he's a politician. They all they're all liars. So
1:32:43
am I satisfied with what Joe Biden has done? No, I'm not anywhere
1:32:46
near satisfied with it. No. Well, I'm not surprised to hear that.
1:32:50
But let's get to the book and one of the more interesting elements of
1:32:55
our I guess you call it on air relationship that happens every four years,
1:32:59
is it disagree on virtually everything, yet sometimes we agree on the big picture
1:33:03
of stuff. And I find the title of your book to be fascinating and
1:33:08
very compelling. Again, justice is coming, how progressives are going to take
1:33:13
over the country and America is gonna love it. I'd like to break this
1:33:16
down into two parts, the two rather obvious parts of the subtitle. First,
1:33:23
progressives are going to take over the country. On this element of your
1:33:27
title, I think we can largely agree, but put out your thesis,
1:33:31
your argument that the progressive takeover is in process of happening in America. Yeah.
1:33:39
So, in chapter one, I explain that if you look at the
1:33:43
issues based on policies, like politics in terms of policies, then the country's
1:33:48
two thirds progressive and it's pretty much inarguable. Like I could show you,
1:33:54
not just the polls that I show in chapter one. I'm sure you dozens
1:33:57
of polls that back them up. And so then a lot of the book
1:34:01
explains chapter one, does, chapter two, does, et cetera. Well,
1:34:04
if progressives are two thirds of the country, then why are they in
1:34:08
charge? And it's a fair question. And the number one answer is chapter
1:34:14
five. The matrix that's mainstream media. Mainstream media is this is something that
1:34:18
Trump wasn't exactly wrong about. Their the enemy of the people. And so
1:34:24
I hate saying that because I love the press and I want the press to
1:34:27
do better. I want the press to be super strong and vibrant. I
1:34:30
know, I'm not like the popular snow right that hate say no, no
1:34:32
press, just our propaganda, right, No, I hate that. I
1:34:36
think the problem with the press is that they're not honest, right, So,
1:34:42
so they paint progressives as totally incapable of winning unpopular when it's the exact
1:34:46
opposite. You can't they can't even read a goddamn pole. Like Joe Manchin
1:34:50
is supposed to be moderate. None of his positions are moderate. I don't
1:34:53
know that a single position of his polls above twenty five percent. Okay,
1:34:57
so he's against paid family lead. For example, we're four paid family leave,
1:35:00
paid family leave polls it eighty four percent. It's not complicated. The
1:35:04
progressive position is massively, massively popular, higher wages, hireman and way you
1:35:10
name it, massively popular. Two thirds of the country wanted. So all
1:35:14
we need. The only reason we're being kept down is two things, money
1:35:16
and media. Corporate money swamps politics. All the politicians lie at the feet
1:35:23
of corporate rule, Okay. And then the second reason is corporate media,
1:35:27
both mainstream media and right wing media, etc. So how do we get
1:35:30
past that? We just need one guy, and I tell you the guy
1:35:33
who could have done it if it was not for literally a stroke of bad
1:35:36
luck, Fetterman. Fetterman would have easily, easily easily been president in twenty
1:35:44
twenty eight two. Probably would have been too early, right, because he's
1:35:48
populous, he's progressive, he beat He took a Republican seat after he'd had
1:35:55
a stroke and could barely speak. That's how popular he was, That's how
1:35:59
much he was kicking ass as a populist progressive. But I can't get a
1:36:04
single politician in America to run as a populist progressive when it's a layup it's
1:36:10
a layup. Just the country's waiting waiting for one goddamn guy to run as
1:36:15
a populous progressive, but I can't get anybody in DC to do it.
1:36:18
Well, let me push back on some of that. Obviously, definitions matter
1:36:23
here, and so when you say two thirds of the country is progressive,
1:36:26
you know, I think that depends on your definition. I certainly agree with
1:36:30
you that there are elements of the progressive agenda that are very popular because they
1:36:33
sound great to people who, frankly, in my opinion, don't really understand
1:36:39
the bigger picture. But I'll see to you that you're right about elements of
1:36:45
the progressive agenda. Let me push back on the Fetterman idea. Isn't the
1:36:48
Fetterman win in twenty twenty two much like the Biden win in twenty twenty I
1:36:55
mean, he's running against the terrible opponent at a carpetbagger doctor Trump endorsed in
1:37:02
a state that has now become reliably democratic except for one fluke in twenty sixteen.
1:37:08
On the presidential side, Yes, there was a Republican senator there,
1:37:12
but there was a reason why he was retiring because he was probably not gonna
1:37:15
win anyway, So aren't you overestimating the appeal of Fetterman. I mean that
1:37:21
Fetterman would not have won if he was going up against a halfway decent non
1:37:26
Trump opponent. No, I don't think so. I'll give you one of
1:37:30
those points. Trump backing Oz definitely hurt him in Pennsylvania, like it might
1:37:38
not hurt him in other states, but it hurt him in Pennsylvania. So
1:37:41
that's true. But outside of that note, Oz seemed like a terrible candidate
1:37:45
in hindsight because Fetterman beat him with a two by four. He got painted
1:37:50
as an elitist piece of crab. And who painted him that way? The
1:37:55
populist progressive John Fetterman did. He kept joking about not just the fact that
1:37:59
he he lived in New Jersey, but he kept joking which of his nine
1:38:03
mansions was in New Jersey or how many of his nine mansions were in New
1:38:09
Jersey. He had beat him to a bloody pulp before the stroke. That's
1:38:13
why seemed like a bad candidate in hindsight. But John, you know our
1:38:17
whole lives. Both parties have been running these super rich guys that you know
1:38:23
that the media then immediately loves and they it's a cakewalk like doctor oz In
1:38:30
in another cycle wins that seat easily, like without someone bashing him like Fetterman
1:38:39
did and painting him as an elitist. He wins. He overwhelms the Democrat.
1:38:45
Alright, alright, well I'm not sure I agree because of the nature
1:38:48
of Pennsylvania, which I grew up in. But okay, all except the
1:38:53
premise sev one more, John, You're right that Pennsylvania is not just trending
1:38:57
blue. It largely is blue, right, and so that makes it more
1:39:00
complicated. And I hear you, and we don't have to agree on Fetterman
1:39:03
in particular. And obviously this Fetterman at post stroke is is a different,
1:39:10
you know, person than the Fetterman pre stroke. So it makes a point,
1:39:13
right mood, But well, I'm curious. I'm curious changing you and
1:39:16
I both hate you, and I both hate the media, and I don't
1:39:18
want to get bogged down on Fetterman. But you're you're, in my opinion,
1:39:23
a fair guy. Don't you agree that the media coverage of Fetterman post
1:39:28
stroke was incredibly benign given the health issues that he was having that had he
1:39:35
been I mean, look, what's happening with Mitch McConnell right now. I
1:39:39
mean, don't you agree that there was a pro Fetterman media bias in the
1:39:43
handling of his stroke situation largely? Yes, So they would have been careful
1:39:49
about a health situation of anyone who was with the major parties, Like if
1:39:57
they were an outsider, they were thrown him to the wolves immediately. But
1:40:00
if it's a corporate Republican and corporate Democrat, even though Fetterman wasn't really corporate,
1:40:05
but he was the Democratic Party candidate, they're going to be softer.
1:40:10
And where they softer with the Democratic candidate is supposed to a Republican one probably
1:40:15
yeah, and and but if you do one example, it becomes obvious if
1:40:19
the same thing had happened to Trump, they would not have like Fetterman.
1:40:25
They would have said no, it's over, it's over over over over over
1:40:28
over. They would have screamed a thousand times, ten thousand times, right.
1:40:33
All right, So before we get to the second part of your premise,
1:40:36
I just want to finish off with with you giving us how you see
1:40:41
this is all going to go down. When you say progressives are going to
1:40:44
take over the country, what do you mean by that, tell us what
1:40:47
do you see in the future here. So, we had a progressive era
1:40:54
in this country, and it was our golden era. It's what made America
1:40:58
great. It's kind of what they don't know it. But I think what
1:41:01
republic right wing voters want to go back to, and that was the two
1:41:05
Roosevelt's Teddy Roosevelt FDR, even though they're from different parties, Woodrow Wilson,
1:41:11
et cetera. And they took over the country and they crushed it. And
1:41:15
so they FDR crushes so much it won four terms. They passed some of
1:41:24
the greatest laws we've ever passed, and so and they were so dominant until
1:41:29
corporate rule came by that they had dad taken over the country. And the
1:41:34
writers of the time said, at that point there was not even a conservative,
1:41:40
like legitimate conservative point of view left in the country. Like the progressives
1:41:44
had won so thoroughly. And I think we could do that again. But
1:41:47
these days coortives are a big problem for progressives. That's the old left right
1:41:50
thing, et cetera. But they're not the biggest problem. The biggest problem
1:41:54
is corporate rule. Well, okay, I am again. I think we're
1:41:58
in a definitional issue here because I take it, I take some not umbradged,
1:42:04
but I disagree with your view of history, but also with regard to
1:42:09
how you define these people. I mean, when I look at what used
1:42:13
to be, you know, a Democrat, the traditional Democrat, today they
1:42:17
almost seem in many ways to me to be somewhat conservative. I mean,
1:42:21
you didn't mention Kennedy, but John Kennedy. Now when I look at some
1:42:27
of the things that he didn't say it, I feel like, my gosh,
1:42:29
he might be too liberal to win a Republican you know. I mean,
1:42:32
he he might be, you know, too conservative to win a Democratic
1:42:36
primary in today's day and age, because the definitions have shifted so much towards
1:42:44
progressivism. I mean FDR absolutely was progressive for his time, no question about
1:42:48
that. But in my view, I look at the pendulum theory and I
1:42:53
think, Okay, in the nineteen twenties, we were way too capitalistic,
1:42:57
and that collapsed with the Great Depression, and then when you combine that collapse
1:43:01
with World War Two, FDR had this incredible opportunity to push the pendulum in
1:43:06
the other direction. And for a while that was good because the pendulum was
1:43:10
too far in the capitalistic direction, and now, in my opinion, we're
1:43:15
going way too far in the other direction when it comes to progressivism. So
1:43:18
I mean, I'm just curious, what do you make of that assessment that
1:43:21
I just made. So that's why I wrote chapter two what is a progressive?
1:43:27
Because whenever we get into these conversations, nobody ever defines the term.
1:43:30
And there's two giant different parts of the progressive movement, and people conflate the
1:43:38
two all the time, and it's super understandable because nobody defines it. So
1:43:42
there's economic issues and then there's social issues. So on economic issues, the
1:43:46
countries with us even more than two thirds. Okay, So the country loves
1:43:51
our economic plank, even Republican voters love our economic plank. On social issues,
1:43:58
that's a different ballow act. So, yes, things have gotten what
1:44:02
people would traditionally say is more progressive through time. Yes, the older politicians
1:44:09
seem way more conservative on those social issues. Obviously FDR Intern the Japanese that
1:44:14
is not a progressive position, right right, Yeah, And I mean if
1:44:17
you ever read those politicians on race, it's not anywhere near progressive. Okay,
1:44:27
So it's a different situation and in today's world, by the way,
1:44:30
the country largely agrees with us again on social issues, as long as we
1:44:33
don't overdo it. That's a giant asterisk. Some on the left overdo it
1:44:39
and then they lose the whole country and they drive me right. Okay,
1:44:42
well I want to get to that shortly, but just one last thing on
1:44:45
this, this takeover that you're predicting in your book, Justice is Coming.
1:44:50
Is this going to come through a particular person or candidate or is this just
1:44:55
going to happen naturally because the country wants it? I mean, where what
1:44:59
do you predicting here from a political standpoint? Yeah, so there's two there's
1:45:03
several phenomenon that is going to make it inevitable. But we do need one
1:45:09
body Jesus Christ. So no, right now, it's not Hey, Bernie
1:45:13
or AOC and we're pinning all of our hopes on one person, not at
1:45:16
all, And in fact it's the opposite. We can't find the one person
1:45:20
who will easily win if they just do the thing that is obvious, right,
1:45:26
And so what are the factors then that is leading leading to, in
1:45:30
my opinion, this inevitability. Number One, Younger voters are massively, massively
1:45:33
progressive. Okay, So I talked about that in chapter six as to why
1:45:36
we're gonna win, it's not even close. We're blowing out everyone, like
1:45:41
even Biden versus Sanders, not just twenty sixteen, but in twenty twenty.
1:45:44
Right, So, even as Biden was winning Michigan primary, Bernie was beating
1:45:49
him by forty fifty points among the young. Okay, And now among the
1:45:54
young is no longer twenty five or thirty five. It's under forty five,
1:45:58
and soon it'll be under fifty. And so we're just a tide of history
1:46:00
is one hundred percent in our direction. There on the demographics on age number
1:46:05
two is go, hold on a second, let me let me pause you
1:46:08
there. You don't buy the theory that and I agree with you, is
1:46:12
to where younger voters are. But you don't buy the theory that over time
1:46:15
that shifts because of the real world hitting their experience. Yeah. I explained
1:46:20
that in the book too. They've done meta studies on this, and they've
1:46:25
done fifty years studies on it, and it turns out it's a myth.
1:46:29
They do not get more conservative. What happens is people lock in their political
1:46:32
views between the ages of fourteen and twenty four and largely never change them.
1:46:36
So can you find examples of people changing their opinions? Of course you can.
1:46:41
Right in fact that I changed my opinions. I became more progressive.
1:46:44
I used to be a Republican, right, but I'm not the norm.
1:46:47
The norm is no, you stay exactly where you were at the age of
1:46:50
twenty four. And so it's an amazing fact. In twenty eleven, above
1:46:55
sixty five years old was very Republican voters, but above eighty five years old
1:47:00
was Democratic voters. Strongly democratic. Why because they grow up with FDR and
1:47:05
JFK and LBJ. Okay, So if you grow up in a time where
1:47:11
progressives were ascendant, then you stay at progressive your whole life. Part of
1:47:15
the reason that above sixty five year olds are largely conservative now is because of
1:47:19
Ronald Reagan. Reagan made them conservative and they stayed considered their whole lives.
1:47:25
You're not buying the data that I've seen that that while you're a one hundred
1:47:29
percent right when it comes to young women, that young men, especially white
1:47:33
men, who feel like they're under attack, are not nearly as progressive.
1:47:39
Are you buying that or not. There's nothing to buy. There's just numbers.
1:47:42
Yes, I agree, like I'm not. That's the number one.
1:47:45
Look, I think John, the reason I respect you is because you're a
1:47:47
rare guy in media who understands that numbers are numbers and math is math.
1:47:54
No matter what we think and what we feel, mainstream media hates numbers.
1:48:00
It's a number that they don't like. They bury it and they ignore it.
1:48:02
They say the exact opposite. No, we're losing white young men.
1:48:08
You're right, and we're not losing them by a lot, but we're especially
1:48:13
compared to women not doing nearly as well with them. And that's partly because
1:48:17
of how some on my side have gone too extreme. H And by the
1:48:23
way, you may marryman. I appreciate or enjoy this, but I think
1:48:27
that one of the many reasons why Biden is going to beat Trump is that
1:48:30
if it ever got close, all that has to happen is Taylor Swift to
1:48:34
snap her fingers. And you know, her cult is a thousand percent on
1:48:39
board, and those are all people that might not normally vote, and I
1:48:42
think people are ignoring. I mean, this is the biggest cult in America.
1:48:45
Swifties and and they're they're right in your wheelhouse. I mean, and
1:48:48
these are all these are all women that are going to vote, going to
1:48:51
vote for the Democrat against Trump. But I don't Again, I don't want
1:48:55
to get bogged down because there's so much about your book that I want to
1:48:57
talk about and so kind of dealt with the that you guys are going to
1:49:01
take over the country, which I unfortunately agree with. I think that you
1:49:05
know, no matter how you define it, and we've already stated the definitions
1:49:10
matter, but by some definition you guys are going to take over, I
1:49:15
think you've already taken over in my opinion. You know, I think that
1:49:18
Biden is very progressive, and I think the media has become progressive, and
1:49:23
I think we saw during COVID that there's no punishment for a lot of very,
1:49:29
very, in my view, obscenely progressive ideas. And so the floodgates
1:49:32
are now open. But where I'm going to take issue with you is on
1:49:36
the second part, which is America is gonna love it when this happens.
1:49:41
And I'm really curious, Jenk because I when I look at American society and
1:49:45
I look at where progressivism has already had an influence. And I have a
1:49:50
list in front of me, and I'm not even going to go through it
1:49:53
right now because it'll take two lock. But I have a list of the
1:49:56
areas of American life where I think recivism has already had an impact and it
1:50:01
has been exceedingly negative. I want to know from you, Jank first of
1:50:06
all, before we get to a specific give me your basic argument for how
1:50:11
and why America is going to love this progressive takeover. Yeah, because among
1:50:16
the different things that I explained about what it means to be a progressive is
1:50:20
the expansion of the circle of liberty. Okay, and so that actually sounds
1:50:26
appealing to someone on the right wing. Right, Well, what do we
1:50:30
mean by expanding the circle of liberty? It means not just to our family,
1:50:34
our community, in our church. And I think conservatives are great inside
1:50:39
the wagons. They care a lot about their family and protecting their community,
1:50:43
etc. Right. The problem is the difference between conservatives and progressives, in
1:50:46
my opinion, is the progressives have larger circle of wagons. If we circle
1:50:51
the wagons, our wagons are all the way out there. It include everybody,
1:50:55
every race, every gender, everything you got right, and we want
1:50:59
equality for everyone, and so when but that but we mean it, right,
1:51:04
the progressive movement does. Whether the politicians are a different story. Right,
1:51:09
So what does that mean? That means the average guy. We're going
1:51:13
to take care of them. That's who We're not going to help the elites.
1:51:16
We're going to help the average guy. We're gonna get their wages up,
1:51:19
we're gonna give them healthcare. We're gonna give their kids an opportunity at
1:51:24
a college education so they can compete with the elites. So they have equality
1:51:28
of opportunity, not equality of results. And this is the foundation of America.
1:51:33
That's why they're gonna love it, because we're gonna give them what we
1:51:38
built this country for. Democrat But where does that ever work? Jank?
1:51:42
Where give me an example of where that concept has actually worked to make life
1:51:46
better? Perfect answer here America nineteen thirty eight to nineteen seventy eight. So
1:51:51
like, in terms of the social issues, we weren't anywhere near close enough
1:51:56
at that point, obvious caveat to that. But on economic issues, those
1:52:01
that was a golden forty years where we built the greatest middle class the world
1:52:05
has ever seen. Okay, well, my view of what happened there is
1:52:12
apparently very different than yours. And I want to go back to the pendulum
1:52:15
theory. See, we began the pendulum being almost a purely capitalistic society in
1:52:20
the nineteen twenties, and I'll acknowledge that that ended up imploding right with the
1:52:26
Great Depression. So then FDR basically rebuilt it in a lot of ways that
1:52:30
progressives would say that was awesome, But the engine, the engine still existed,
1:52:38
the engine being the capitalistic nature of America. That now, I think
1:52:45
the pendulum has gone so far that that engine is in danger of being shut
1:52:50
down. And if it don't have the engine, there's nothing to fuel all
1:52:55
this fantasy world that you guys want to live in. You don't see that,
1:52:59
Jank, No, I don't see it at all. So I view
1:53:01
it as a little bit different. So first John, I don't know if
1:53:05
you remember this from our different conversations, but I call myself a capitalist,
1:53:13
and in fact, in the book I explained I'm a democratic capitalist as opposed
1:53:15
to Bernie's democratic socialist. Okay, and so it's very similar. But I
1:53:20
agree with you that capitalism is the engine, okay. So, and that's
1:53:26
you know, on the left these days, they think that that's somehow a
1:53:30
bad thing, or you shouldn't admit that, or that's wrong. It's no.
1:53:32
I don't agree, and I can make a perfectly great case, and
1:53:36
I do in the book for democratic capitalists. But what we live under now,
1:53:41
John, and why that engine is being strangled as we speak, is
1:53:45
we live under corporateism. Corporations have taken over. And it's not that corporatism
1:53:51
is like capitalism on steroids. No, it's the opposite of capitalism. Corporations
1:53:58
immediately want to limit free markets. Once they're on the top, they immediately
1:54:03
go buy government officials to create monopolies, charge whatever they want. And what
1:54:10
that does is it suffocates the market. And that's why we're having troubles with
1:54:14
the engine that you're seeing. But we both live in California, Jink,
1:54:18
and I mean California, I think you'll acknowledge, has made it very,
1:54:23
very difficult to open and run a small business. For instance. We're seeing
1:54:29
what's happened in the cities here in California. I mean, this is as
1:54:31
close as we get to the modern day utopia for progressivism. Where in California,
1:54:38
for instance, can you point to and go, that's what we're going
1:54:42
to do for America, and that's why America is gonna love it. I
1:54:44
mean, because I don't see it. So look, I think California is
1:54:48
a very complicated case because I think you're half right and I think I'm half
1:54:54
right. So what do I mean by that? So? Vin Newsom is
1:55:00
a corporate democrat. He's not a progressive, and so he does things that
1:55:05
are corporatests that drive me crazy, and I can give you examples of it.
1:55:11
And at the same time, he has gone to some of the extremes
1:55:15
on the left that I am unhappy with, and so that has led to
1:55:17
some of the things that you're talking about. So and but one other thing
1:55:24
John and I mentioned this in the book too, which is that California is
1:55:28
the richest state in the country, and like, you know, we painted
1:55:30
as like, oh my god, we got issues with homelessness and crime and
1:55:33
blah blah blah. No, it's still a relative nirvana. It is.
1:55:40
If this is social I don't think it is socialism, but if it's socialism,
1:55:44
then socialism you're doing an ad for socialism. Because California is like a
1:55:47
thousand times richer than Alabama. And Mississippi socialism is working really well. Well
1:55:54
wait, hold on a second, but jank when you when you start,
1:55:58
when you start from a position, and the California was in as the Golden
1:56:01
state where you really are the richest, and frankly, you were very conservative
1:56:06
for a generation. People forget that now. I mean, you know,
1:56:11
California was a Republican, stayed on the presidential level for an extended period of
1:56:15
time and until about two generations ago, about generation and a half ago.
1:56:19
When you start off at a certain level, you know, you'd say one
1:56:24
to one hundred. If you start at ninety nine and you go down to
1:56:27
eighty five or seventy five and Alabama's at forty five, it's still gonna look
1:56:31
great. You're going in the wrong direction. And you know, people are
1:56:35
leaving California. The tax structure is making it so that I think you're gonna
1:56:40
have a really difficult time continuing to fund this fantasy world. And to me,
1:56:45
California is a warning shot to the rest of the country, is to
1:56:49
why we shouldn't be going in this direction. And I'm curious to why you
1:56:53
don't see that. No, I have see it. So I'll get to
1:56:57
the half and in just a second. But I wonder just what you just
1:56:59
said. Look, John, California was more conservative, and our industries were
1:57:02
even more consertive. People forgett that La used to be the oil capital of
1:57:08
the world. It's by the way, if you've never heard that, it
1:57:12
sounds shocking to you, but it's true. We used to produce twenty five
1:57:15
percent of the oil either for the country or for the world, out of
1:57:18
La back in the day. Okay, that's how. And the La Times
1:57:21
was a conservative newspaper not that long ago, unbelievably conservative paper back in the
1:57:27
day. Right, So now, but of course things shifted over time.
1:57:32
Then you had Reagan, and then you went in a more liberal direction.
1:57:35
Right, But since we went in the more liberal and progressive left direction,
1:57:42
what has happened? Hollywood has taken off like a rocket. You can say,
1:57:47
well, maybe they started a little bit earlier, et cetera. Well,
1:57:50
Silicon Valley was definitely in the left wing era, and Silicon Valley has
1:57:55
taken over the whole world. So you can't say the California is not good
1:58:00
for cabitalism and have Silicon Valley the mecca of capitalism in California. And it
1:58:06
blossomed in California when the left wing was in charge. Okay, well,
1:58:14
I would argue that that was a bit of a fluke. I mean,
1:58:16
it's not the California caused Silicon Valley. It just happened to occur there,
1:58:21
maybe because of Stanford or uh you know. And you know, if you
1:58:25
have the if you don't have the invention of the Internet, then then you
1:58:28
don't have Silicon Valley. I mean, so I'm not sure how California gets
1:58:32
credit for that. I would look at it the opposite way. I would
1:58:34
look at it as Silicon Valley being a fluke that has kept California alive and
1:58:41
afloat from an economic standpoint, and uh, you know, and if it
1:58:45
if it implodes, you know, which it could theoretically do, then California
1:58:49
is gonna even in bigger trouble than than they current we currently are. But
1:58:54
but look, Jank, I don't want to get I don't want to get
1:58:56
focused too much in California, though I do think California is an interesting study
1:59:00
here. I want to go to the broader picture of how I see And
1:59:03
look, you're not going to agree with any of this, but here's how
1:59:08
I see how progressivism has impacted a lot of our social institutions. I've already
1:59:14
referenced the big cities seem to be a mess. We've got increasing overt kind
1:59:19
of crime that we've never seen before. I realized the crime statistics don't look
1:59:23
that bad, but the kind of crime we're seeing where people just going into
1:59:27
pharmacies and taking shit not even worrying about it, is happening in progressive,
1:59:31
liberal cities. We've got massive homelessness. We've got police recruitment problems, military
1:59:35
recruitment problems because of the progressivism in both of those institutions. The education system,
1:59:41
especially here in California post COVID, is a complete mess. Race relations
1:59:45
are far worse than they have been before. Gender relations are a catastrophe because
1:59:50
of progressivism. You guys have changed equality into equity, which is to me,
1:59:55
the end of America. You've created enormous distrust in our voting system by
2:00:00
going with this mail in voting, which is just a recipe for disaster.
2:00:04
You've destroyed sports, You've destroyed movies, you've destroyed television. You don't believe
2:00:10
in freedom of speech, you don't believe in freedom of movement or Association during
2:00:14
COVID, you don't believe in freedom of health with vaccine mandates, the life
2:00:18
expectancy is down under progressive health policies. COVID, to me, taught us
2:00:24
what progressivism really is all about, which is authoritarianism. That you guys,
2:00:29
when you get the opportunity, you are going to drive a nail right in
2:00:33
the coffin of what America was we saw during COVID. It to me it
2:00:39
was an experiment, Jake, of what you guys really are all about.
2:00:43
And California was the perfect example of that. When you have no guardrails,
2:00:46
you people have no discipline, will you will pursue your own agenda to the
2:00:54
that taman of everything that America was supposed to be about. I know you
2:00:57
disagree with everything I just said, but I wanted to have give you the
2:01:00
opportunity to respond to that. Yeah, I don't. Actually I only disagree
2:01:03
with half. It started out as half, maybe two thirds by the end.
2:01:09
Actually, everything you said before mail in ballots I largely agreed with.
2:01:14
After mail in ballots, the rest of it you lost me. Okay,
2:01:17
so well, can I make my argument on mail in ballots for a second?
2:01:21
And you know you know very well, Jank, that I believe that
2:01:25
the twenty twenty election was legitimate, that Trump lost. I don't believe in
2:01:29
massive voter fraud. But mail in balloting is why conservatives have been so easily
2:01:35
duped into believing that there's massive fraud, because mail in balloting is a joke.
2:01:43
Do you You do understand Jank, that when ballots are mailed, that
2:01:48
the children and the grand children of elderly people have access to those ballots and
2:01:54
can vote for them, and all they need is a fake signature and there
2:01:59
and this is happening on a consistent and easy basis. Now, whether it's
2:02:03
the determining elections, nobody knows. But what is to stop that from happening?
2:02:08
Jank? First of all, that's voter fraud. You bring an instance,
2:02:12
there's no way to prove, to prosecute them. Okay, we will
2:02:15
not come up, but John, we First of all, there's been tons
2:02:17
of criminal prosecutions for voter fraud. Almost all of it is by Republicans,
2:02:23
and they all say, oh, well, we thought the other show I
2:02:25
was gonna cheat, so I voted for Trump twice. I voted for my
2:02:28
mom when she didn't want me to vote for her. Okay. So now,
2:02:31
and that's usually actually actually at the voting booth. So I understand what
2:02:35
you're saying that, Hey, it's gonna be hard to prove that Susie voted
2:02:39
for a grandma, Right, But if grandma's pissed and wanted to vote for
2:02:44
Trump, which a lot of grandma's do, yeah, turn Susie in.
2:02:46
That's voter fraud. Okay. So John, it's aid balancing act between enfranchising
2:02:56
the most number of people, making sure that everybody can vote, most American
2:02:58
thing in the world, and preventing voter fraud. Now, the reality is
2:03:02
voter fraud is about point two percent of an issue, Okay. Whereas,
2:03:11
for example, if you do photo idea as an example, it disenfranchises twenty
2:03:15
five percent of African Americans in the country because they live in big cities and
2:03:18
don't need cars, they don't have driver's licenses, etc. Or they're poor,
2:03:23
et cetera. Right, So I'm not going to wipe away twenty five
2:03:26
percent of the Black vote because somebody wanted to address a point two percent issue.
2:03:32
That's absurd. It's absurd, and it's cheating, and it's obvious cheating.
2:03:36
It's saying I'm going to get rid of a bunch of Democratic voters.
2:03:40
Hold on, that's insulting the black people, Jan Jang, that's insulting the
2:03:44
blackle fictional issue that is that we know statistically doesn't even barely exist and almost
2:03:50
all of it is done by Republicans. Well, we don't know that,
2:03:54
and because I think it's way more rampant than we would ever possibly know.
2:03:58
But what you just said to me, and I know you don't mean it
2:04:00
this way, but to me, Jank, what you just said is insulting
2:04:03
the black people. It is insulting the black people that somehow they're not able
2:04:08
to vote in the same way that everyone else is. That's that is insulting.
2:04:12
How is that not insulting? No, John, you're missing. So
2:04:15
it's not a matter of insulting or not insulting. Photo ID is usually through
2:04:19
driver's licenses, and they don't have driver's licenses. It's not a it's back.
2:04:25
Twenty five percent of African Americans do not have PHOTOID and it's some of
2:04:30
it because of socioeconomic issues, but largely because of the fact that they are
2:04:34
more concentrated in cities. So it's not an insult can they get a photo
2:04:38
ID date. Yes, but you will you lose a certain percentage of people
2:04:42
as they go through that massive extra step that others don't have to go through.
2:04:45
Yes, I think you're missing my larger point on this voting issue,
2:04:50
because what my concern is. I'm concerned about a little bit of the voter
2:04:55
fraud problem that mailings present, but I'm more concerned about how this is the
2:05:00
the path through which conservatives are Republicans are Trump supporters have come to believe that
2:05:05
the election system is not reliable. You have to see this jank that when
2:05:11
when you gave because you did it during COVID it is jank hole. Hear
2:05:15
me out for a second. Republicans look at this and they go, wait
2:05:18
a minute. We have this COVID pandemic, and now all of a sudden
2:05:24
we change all the rules of voting. This mail in voting seems very sketchy.
2:05:30
All of a sudden, Biden gets eighty one million votes, and this
2:05:32
all seems very political, and to the Trump supporter, it makes it incredibly
2:05:38
easy for Trump to make this bogus argument. If we did not have mail
2:05:42
in voting, Trump would not be able to make this argument. Work jank
2:05:47
you guys. You guys created this. You own your own distrust of the
2:05:51
system. No, uh, let me address this and then let me please
2:05:57
agree with you on the earlier half. Okay, I've been saying the whole
2:06:00
pagan I'm gonna agree with conservatis on a portion of it. But so but
2:06:04
last thing, on this mail in voting, John, I am not gonna
2:06:08
go chase change the system, to chase down kookie conspiracy theories and just to
2:06:15
knock them down. Okay. So we've been doing mail in balloting way before
2:06:20
COVID and Donald Trump sent it a mail in ballot and he bragged about it.
2:06:27
He took a picture of him mailing in his ballot. So every Republican
2:06:31
or Conservative that has heard that the mail in ballots lead to more voter fraud,
2:06:35
it's not true. There's no stats to back that up at all.
2:06:40
And Donald Trump himself mails in his ballot. Okay. So, and by
2:06:44
the way, you know who had a giant lead in mail in ballots until
2:06:46
the idiot Donald Trump ruined it for you guys, Republicans because Republican voters were
2:06:53
older and so they were doing mail in ballots more. But that we're talking
2:06:57
about absent key ballots. Jank absentee ballots are different than what we're doing with
2:07:02
mail in balloting. Look, people have been mailion ballots for a long long
2:07:11
time. There's nothing new in that system. So that is absolutely something new
2:07:15
in that system. You used to request it, and it had far greater
2:07:20
barriers to fraud than just mailing it out universally to everybody. And and look,
2:07:29
again we're going to disagree on how much fraud there may or may not
2:07:31
be. To me, it's just the concept that there could be fraud that
2:07:34
has opened up all these conspiracy theories, which is not good for the system.
2:07:38
It's not good for America. So let's go back to the part of
2:07:41
my dissertation that you agreed with that where progressivism has caused problems that you have
2:07:47
issues with. Go ahead and with that. Yeah, So I'll give you
2:07:49
an example that has led to some of the crime issues that we have.
2:07:54
Sou I was forgetting rid of cash bail, okay, And there's a great
2:07:59
logic to it, which is, well, look, somebody commits the robbery.
2:08:03
Guy regular guy does it for a hundred bucks, and then or Wall
2:08:09
Street guy does it for a hundred million. Bucks, they both get into
2:08:16
the system. The Wall Street guy that's sold so much more gets to walk
2:08:20
out right away because he can pay the bail, and the regular guy can't
2:08:22
pay the bail, so he stays in jail until his trial, and so
2:08:26
that winds up being punishing him for being poor rather than for the crime.
2:08:30
Right, So that there's a lot of logic and taking away cash goo.
2:08:33
The problem it turned out, was that there is a certain percentage of criminals
2:08:37
that are recidivists and habitual criminals, serial offenders, and they commit a giant
2:08:43
percentage of the crime, okay, and generally speaking, since they're a little
2:08:48
bit out of control, they tend to be poor. Okay. So now,
2:08:50
by the way, there's a guy on Wall Street who does that too,
2:08:52
but they get away with it, okay. But on the street level,
2:08:56
you've got these habitual offenders, and once we took away cash bail,
2:09:01
they immediately get right back into the street and they commit another crime, and
2:09:05
another crime and another crime. So I look at that and go, hey,
2:09:07
we had a good intent and we had good logic to back it up.
2:09:11
But as it turns out, because of this glitch in the system,
2:09:16
it didn't work. Exactly as we imagined. Okay, so we need to
2:09:18
bring that one, roll that one back, right. That's when the left
2:09:22
goes, no, we're doctrinarian, where it's you have a preset ideology.
2:09:26
No one's allowed to disagree. No, you're not allowed to roll that back.
2:09:28
You're not allowed to do anything about crime crimes in your imagination. It
2:09:33
is not in your imagination. It's real. It's definitely, definitely, definitely
2:09:37
real. Their numbers have gone up, and they are doing the things that
2:09:41
you're talking about, John, They're going to stores, taking whatever they want,
2:09:45
and when the left denies it, they seem absurd. Right, So
2:09:48
don't deny reality, let's tweak it. What we want is justice. And
2:09:52
on what I'm trying to explain to my own side is justice doesn't mean justice
2:09:56
just for you, it means justice for all. So yeah, maybe the
2:10:03
left is, you know, in favor of minorities, the poor, or
2:10:07
the middle class, et cetera. And they think they're protecting them because some
2:10:11
portion of the habitual offenders are in some of those categories. Right, No,
2:10:18
brother, how about the working class lady who's going to take the bus
2:10:22
or the subway to work and gets assaulted by some thug. Okay, no,
2:10:28
we gotta protect her. We got to get her justice. Okay.
2:10:31
So and homelessness, they raised billions and billions and millions of dollars from us
2:10:37
here in California. You know what, I know, we both live in
2:10:39
California. And did they spend any of it on fixing homelessness? Not that
2:10:43
I can see. And so that's where the corporate goons coming. And that's
2:10:46
not a progressis the crime? Thing? Is fair to say that that was
2:10:50
a progressive overreach in my opinion, and I appreciate you. I appreciate you
2:10:54
saying that, but I want to get to what I think one of the
2:10:56
core philosophical reasons for why this has happened is and it's one of my biggest
2:11:03
problems with what I see as the progressive agenda, and I referenced it in
2:11:05
my list very quickly, and that is this changing of the goal from being
2:11:13
equality to being equity. And your guy, Bernie Sanders was on Bill Maher
2:11:18
a couple of months ago. I don't know if you saw this or not,
2:11:20
but he was asked about this issue of equity and equality, and it
2:11:24
was fascinating because even Bernie Sanders, who seemingly had never thought about it,
2:11:28
was forced to admit to Bill Maher that he's in favor of equality, which
2:11:33
is equality of opportunity and not equity of outcome. Where do you stand on
2:11:37
this equality equity issue? And do you understand why I think this is in
2:11:43
some ways the biggest issue facing America, because if we're all about equity,
2:11:48
now we're not America anymore. Yeah. I am very firmly on the side
2:11:52
of equality, and in fact, I said, one of the pillars of
2:11:56
progressivism that I explaining Chapter Too is equality of opportunity. So yes, I
2:12:05
don't think that the left going towards equity is helpful. In fact, I'm
2:12:09
even against affirmative action. And so you know what radical left's going to do
2:12:15
if somebody is against affirmative action. So good news, John, Apparently I'm
2:12:20
one of you. So they think that we're doing I'm doing a right wing
2:12:26
pivot, a republican pivot. I'm a fascist, et cetera. And I've
2:12:31
been against a firmtive action for the entire twenty one years. We've been doing
2:12:35
the Young Turks, I've had the courage to say it. I've said it
2:12:37
over and over again, not recently. And it's not because affirmative action was
2:12:43
wrong in the first place. When you first instituted it, almost every job
2:12:48
was, especially the desirable jobs, were filled with white people because of the
2:12:52
structure of how things were, and they logically understandably wanted to pass it on
2:12:58
to their kids, right, So the white longshoreman passed the job onto his
2:13:01
kids, and everything stayed wide. And so in order for African Americans to
2:13:05
be able to break into that system, we needed affirmative action in the beginning.
2:13:09
But we cannot have affirmative action forever. And I'll tell you the part
2:13:13
that I hate, John. I'm a minority. I was born Muslim.
2:13:16
I'm atheist now, but I still get called every name of the book,
2:13:22
so you know. And I'm brown skinned, although some'm on the left now
2:13:26
are saying I'm not brown enough. I don't know what that means. I
2:13:31
don't know what I could do about it either, right, So anyways,
2:13:35
but as a minority, I do not want all of my accomplishmentments minimized because
2:13:43
they say, oh, yeah, like you would have gotten in Like I
2:13:46
went to Wharton Business School, I went to Columbia Law School. I never
2:13:48
checked off any of the boxes. I didn't check off. I didn't even
2:13:52
check off other because I didn't want them knowing my race. Okay, I
2:13:56
wanted to earn it because I was not as unprivileged or underprivileged I should say,
2:14:05
black kid coming from the Bronx. I was a Muslim kid that was
2:14:07
middle class, upper middle class in the suburbs of New York, right,
2:14:11
So I didn't check off any of the boxes. I earned it. And
2:14:15
when I went to school, I went to school at those Ivy League schools
2:14:18
with brilliant kids who are black and white and Jewish and Christian and Asian and
2:14:24
everything in between. They were all brilliant. And but the white kids,
2:14:28
Hey, congratulations, Columbia Law School, You're a genius. Black kids,
2:14:31
oh, Columbia Law School, who want to ride You got it right?
2:14:35
I hate it so oh, I hate that too. I cannot stand that
2:14:39
we are now living in a world jang. And now it's gotten to the
2:14:41
point where if I see somebody on TV or you know, in the movies
2:14:46
or in any element of media, I have to I have to at least
2:14:50
think, well, maybe they really didn't earn the job, maybe they'd got
2:14:54
it because of their race, or their gender, or their sexuality, and
2:14:58
I hate it because it minishes real achievement by people who oftentimes deserve a lot
2:15:03
of credit, and it cheats them. It cheats the people that we're supposedly
2:15:07
trying to help, and it doesn't help society. So I'm glad that you
2:15:11
said that, and I really appreciate that. In our in our last few
2:15:15
minutes together, as we talk about your book, Justice Is Coming, how
2:15:18
progressives are going to take over the country and American is gonna love it.
2:15:22
There's two other issues that I want to address, and in my mind,
2:15:24
they're related, and I'm very curious to see where you're going to come down
2:15:28
on this because before COVID and I don't even know if you know this,
2:15:33
but I mean, I've always had a very good relationship with the left.
2:15:37
One of my best friends in the world was the Democratic Chairman of the House
2:15:41
Budget Committee, John Yarmouth in Louisville, Kentucky, who's progressive. We used
2:15:46
to host a TV show together in Louisville, and we've played a ton of
2:15:50
golf together. I've always been able to almost been a bridge to the left
2:15:54
in some ways from the right. But when COVID hit, and I saw
2:16:00
the reaction, especially here in California. My blood ran cold, Jane,
2:16:03
and I saw, oh my god, you know, there are people,
2:16:07
there are elements of this movement that are really deadly serious about ending what I
2:16:13
perceived to be the essence of America. And I became radicalized. Is probably
2:16:18
too strong a word, because I didn't jump on the Trump train, but
2:16:22
I had my eyes opened as to what's really going on here, and it
2:16:26
was way worse than I even ever imagined. I'm sure you're not going to
2:16:31
agree with what I just said, but can you understand where I'm coming from
2:16:35
there? Yes? And no. So first, let me just say I
2:16:41
didn't know you and Johnny Armouth were good friends. He used to come on
2:16:46
Young Turks all the time when we first started to a radio show, and
2:16:50
I always had a soft spot for Johnny Armouth because he is a rare principled
2:16:56
guy and he's, like you said, he's secretly are progressive in Kentucky,
2:17:01
but smart, practical guy. So a ton of respect for him. So
2:17:07
and anyway, so now it all makes sense you and the Armouth Okay,
2:17:13
I understand. Okay, So now in terms of COVID. Look, let
2:17:20
me acknowledge first the things that I would do differently in hindsight, I would
2:17:26
not have closed the schools, And it would have been a big issue because
2:17:31
they are going to go see their parents, their grandparents, The teachers do
2:17:35
get exposed. It's it's not it's not an easy black and white issue.
2:17:39
Okay, but the kids largely not only should have gotten to schools. Not
2:17:45
going to schools did hurt them, okay, but they probably shouldn't have gotten
2:17:48
the vaccine. So the kids are barely affected by COVID, and it is
2:17:56
theoretically possible. I'm not assigned ast, I'm not perfectly sure, but I
2:18:00
now legitimate scientists are saying it's at best fifty fifty on whether the kids should
2:18:05
get the vaccine. They vaccine could do a tiny, tiny amount of harm,
2:18:09
but they're curing something that the kids is not really a problem, right
2:18:13
for COVID. So for the kids, the only issue was spreading it to
2:18:16
the older people. Okay, other than that, they were going to be
2:18:20
fine. So in terms of the other lockdowns and the vaccines, Look,
2:18:28
that's where I disagree with you, George. Look, we've done this a
2:18:31
million times in our history. George Washington made everyone in the army get to
2:18:37
small box vaccine, even though back then it was brutal and actually killed a
2:18:43
third of the army. But if he hadn't done it, they would have
2:18:46
lost two thirds of the army and we would have lost the Revolutionary War.
2:18:50
It was a bold, courageous, incredible decision that saved the country. Okay,
2:18:54
So now, luckily our medicine is infinitely better today, so we're not
2:18:58
in that not the same situation, jank, You come on, you know
2:19:01
that it's not the same, not remotely analogous, but I mean anything,
2:19:03
it is. And so look, we lost a million people in COVID.
2:19:07
Now there's revisionist history like we didn't, but we did. And if we
2:19:11
hadn't done the things that we did, could we have lost two million,
2:19:13
five million? Yeah, we could have. Well let me stop you right
2:19:16
there. Let me stop you right there, because okay, I would like
2:19:20
to hear some evidence for that. Yes, we lost a million people who
2:19:24
died either with or of COVID. I take issue with the definitions there,
2:19:28
but I'm willing to accept the data as basically being real. But there is
2:19:33
no argument that if we had done you know, things less restrictively, then
2:19:39
things would have been worse. You know why, because we have Sweden,
2:19:43
we have Georgia, we have Florida, we have South Dakota. Those four
2:19:50
places prove that what we did saved no lives, none, zero, zip,
2:19:56
zilch, not a How do you deal you're a data guy, how
2:20:01
do you deal with the fact that none of those places I just mentioned are
2:20:05
off the even close to off the charts when it comes to COVID deaths.
2:20:09
So John, after the show off air, we've got to exchange articles and
2:20:13
data about that, because I have literally read the exact opposite that Sweden was
2:20:20
such a disaster that they had to eventually change mid course ago. Sorry are
2:20:26
bad, We're going to lockdowns like the rest of you. Can I address
2:20:30
that? Can I address Sweden? Here's what happened with Sweden. They made
2:20:33
a horrible decision early on, similar to New York with regard to nursing homes.
2:20:37
They had a ton of deaths early. The media was so eager to
2:20:41
destroy them because they were outside of the pack when it came to react,
2:20:46
came to reaction to COVID that they were invested in their failure. When you
2:20:50
look at total total deaths, total deaths, excess death throughout the entire realm
2:20:56
of the pandemic, not just COVID everything. When you compare Sweden to the
2:21:01
rest of Europe, you know which country did the best of any of them,
2:21:03
and it's not close. It was Sweden. Sweden had the fewest excess
2:21:07
deaths of any country in Europe. And to me, it's almost doesn't matter
2:21:11
about the details, Jank. If we were, if we were saving lives,
2:21:16
Sweden, Georgia, Florida, and South Dakota would be off the charts
2:21:22
that we would be. You would be able to go, John, look
2:21:24
at the data. How come? Why don't you? Why do you disagree
2:21:26
with that? It is so, I'll send you the data on Florida and
2:21:30
South Dakota, It's not just Sweden. Okay, you send me the data
2:21:33
back. I'm totally open minded to him, because, look, John,
2:21:37
I share the same concerns as you do about mainstream media, and that's what
2:21:41
has bound us together for a long time. And so and I have a
2:21:45
friend who is an expert on this, and he would get interviewed by the
2:21:50
press and they would selectively quote him in a way that he was like,
2:21:54
wait, they have an agenda, and he finally realized they have an agenda,
2:21:58
et cetera. So I'm open to it. But I have seen the
2:22:01
numbers in Florida and South Dakota and they were disastrous. I was like,
2:22:03
I understand that they were about, well, they're not disastrous, and I'm
2:22:09
done. Okay, they're not disastrous, and I'll send that to you when
2:22:13
we're done. But to me, I view the last subject I want to
2:22:18
deal with you on in our a lot of time as being related to the
2:22:22
COVID response, is what's happening with climate change slash global warming? Because in
2:22:30
my view, the overreach here is clearly political, and it's clearly being motivated
2:22:37
in my view, by people who look at what happened with COVID and see
2:22:41
that we can do the same thing with climate change, only without an end
2:22:46
date. That the problem with COVID was it had an end date because that
2:22:48
we had the data that showed it disappeared. Climate change, you're global warming.
2:22:54
You're always going to be able to find evidence of that if you want
2:22:56
to. Because we have a very diverse and large globe. We're weird.
2:23:00
Things are going to happen at any given moment if you're looking for him.
2:23:03
I view the overreach on global warming, climate change hysteria as being a major
2:23:09
threat to our way of life because I think you guys, when you get
2:23:13
control, you're going to try to control when we travel, what we eat,
2:23:18
how much electricity we're allowed to use. And COVID proved that that's going
2:23:22
to be the agenda. Where am I right or wrong? So first of
2:23:28
all, you're just flat out wrong on the science. It's not even closed.
2:23:33
So so what am I wrong about on the science? Jank? So,
2:23:37
John, send me the data about Florida, Georgia, South Dakota,
2:23:41
et cetera. I'm open to hearing it out. Okay, we're not going
2:23:45
to be able to send me data that proves that ninety nine percent of the
2:23:48
world scientists are wrong that they all made. They were wrong about masks,
2:23:52
Jank. They were wrong about masks, So so why why could they not
2:23:56
be wrong about something that they have an enormous self interest in promoting. The
2:24:01
scientists in India and Brazil and Portugal and Botswana are not all part of some
2:24:07
kookie conspiracy. They read by J Damn readings as the scientists in America Jenk
2:24:13
and Jenks not a conspiracy. Scientists agree. They all agree. Are you
2:24:18
aware that six Are you aware? In all seriousness, it's sixteen hundred and
2:24:22
nine global scientists just signed off on the idea that climate change is not an
2:24:28
emergency. Yea, that sixteen hundred and nine. I'm sure you didn't see
2:24:33
it because it wasn't reported in your media. So it's sixteen hundred and nine
2:24:37
sign off that it is about six billion, sixteen million, sixteen million scientists.
2:24:43
Huh. Okay, okay, so you can sixteen hundred is like a
2:24:46
rounding error for the number of scientists in the world. So, but you
2:24:52
were the one that referenced the numbers mattering. As far as you know,
2:24:54
no one says that this is wrong. People are saying this is wrong.
2:24:58
They're just ignored by the media. Okay. So, John, in terms
2:25:01
of the authoritarian discern that you have, are you kidding? Yes, that's
2:25:09
exactly my concern about the right wing. So what did they do with Trump?
2:25:11
The minute they lost an election, They're like, screw democracy, screw
2:25:15
the US constitution. We're going for authoritarian factist leader Donald Trump. You admit
2:25:18
it. That's exactly what they did, And Trump doesn't want what would you
2:25:22
do? He says, Oh, North Korea is great. I love their
2:25:26
the communist leader and them that Jake China that whenever they walk into a room,
2:25:31
everybody has to stand up an applaud. He loves authoritarianism. I despise
2:25:35
authoritarianism. So if they if the left goes in the direction you're talking about,
2:25:39
where they start to try to control, and I'll tell you one part
2:25:41
I disagree with them on they started to try to control all of our lives,
2:25:45
et cetera, then I'm gonna come to your side. Okay. Then
2:25:48
finally the radical left will be right about the pivot. Okay, but I'm
2:25:50
not gonna let them control our lives. I think the right wing is maniacal
2:25:56
about trying to control our lives. Like Matt wash just yesterday does this idiotic
2:26:00
thing where this woman's like, hey, I'm twenty nine, is single and
2:26:03
I love my life. And he's like, how Dargo, you have to
2:26:05
do my life your life? And I criticize And by the way, I'm
2:26:09
sure you didn't see it, but I criticized Matt Wallace for that tweet.
2:26:11
And so you're against New York banning gas stoves are californiare banning the sale of
2:26:18
gasoline powered cars. I mean, so you're against that? It depends John.
2:26:22
So if you say, first of all, the number one mistake that
2:26:26
the left is the Democrats are making, not the left Democrats, is they're
2:26:31
starting with the average individual when we don't even like, we don't even make
2:26:35
a dent in climate change. You have to start with the corporations. But
2:26:39
the corporations fund their stupid campaigns, both Democrats and Republicans, so they don't
2:26:46
actually address the mountain. Instead, they addressed the Mohill. And when they
2:26:50
address the Mohill, what do they do? They put these rules on us
2:26:52
that drive us crazy, and then they turn people against fighting to get rid
2:26:58
of climate change because they don't want to get rid of their gas stoves or
2:27:01
their light bulbs, etc. Right. So, do I think the Democrats
2:27:05
are handling it wrong? Yes? Do I think they're handling it wrong on
2:27:07
purpose, ironically to help corporations that created the problem in the first place.
2:27:13
Yes. So I'll give you the perfect example, paper straws. Are you
2:27:18
can I curse on the show? Yes? Are you shitting me? Okay,
2:27:22
we're gonna solve climate change through paper straws. Everyone hates paper straws,
2:27:28
and if everyone on the planet use paper straws, we would still have climate
2:27:33
change being a ninety nine point nine problem. They do that so they don't
2:27:37
want to address climate change because if you address climate change, you'd go after
2:27:41
the oil companies and the gas companies, etc. And nobody wants to do
2:27:46
that. The Democrats don't want to do that, so they make us use
2:27:48
goddamn paper straws. Well, very interesting, is always Jane. Last question,
2:27:56
I noticed that you happen to be wearing it. That's a Wyoming cowboy
2:27:58
hat. Is that correct? Okay, so the the first they won their
2:28:05
first game this past week and weekend when we were taping this interview, I
2:28:09
gotta ask you, because I actually blame Gavin Newsome for a lot of us,
2:28:13
what is your view on college sports realignment? Oh? Yeah, no,
2:28:18
I'm not following that. I know, it's surprising. The only thing
2:28:20
I'm following because I'm so busy. I love college football, but I had
2:28:24
to basically drop it so I because I got a family, got the work,
2:28:28
et cetera. But now Deon Sanders is bringing me back into college football.
2:28:33
That well, I'm a Dean Sanders fan. Two. And because I
2:28:37
actually think that Deane is in a way a conservative and he's got conservative principles
2:28:41
in his coaching. By the way, do you agree with that? Yeah,
2:28:43
Like he mentioned God in that great pregame speech that he had before they
2:28:48
won. Look, Mike coach at the high school level, wound up getting
2:28:52
involved in a national controversy because he would had the kids prey. And I
2:28:56
actually fought for him. And even though on an atheist and I was back
2:29:00
then, etc. I was like that, I know I was in the
2:29:03
prayers. They prayed for good health. Who cares right? Right? And
2:29:07
so yeah, there's a lot I agree with you out there. Okay,
2:29:13
Well, let me there's a reason why I asked you about conference realignment that
2:29:16
might not be immediately obvious, and so I want to explain it here in
2:29:20
our last seconds. I believe that the conference realignment, with all these West
2:29:26
Coast teams now being part of the Big Ten and the Atlantic Coast Conference,
2:29:31
has revealed inadvertently that even liberal academia and their liberal media partners don't give a
2:29:39
damn about carbon footprint. The carbon footprint is a sham and a joke.
2:29:45
Because not one of you people has stood up and said, what the hell's
2:29:48
going on here? We're going to increase the carbon footprint of every single college
2:29:52
team, whether it's football, basketball, baseball, or whatever, because the
2:29:56
traveling is going to increase exponentially. It's all going to by planes, and
2:30:01
none of you people said a goddamn thing about it. JENK, Now,
2:30:03
why shouldn't I perceive that as a smoking gun of hypocrisy? So, John,
2:30:09
you have to separate out progressives and progressive ideology from democrats. Democrats are
2:30:16
ninety percent controlled by their campaign contributions, which are almost all corporate. So
2:30:24
those corporate guys, of course they're not They don't actually care. They don't
2:30:28
care. They want to take away your gas stow because it's going to be
2:30:31
a pain in your ass and it's not going to cost them any money from
2:30:33
their donors. Okay, So are they hypocrites about the carbon footprint of the
2:30:39
football teams? Oh? Gours? Why? Because there's money involved, and
2:30:43
as the poet Philosophers said, cash rules everything around me. K you're a
2:30:50
very interesting guy. I really really appreciate you, probably more than you know,
2:30:54
because in this world of insanity we're living in. I do see you
2:30:58
as a voice of reason on the left, and I hope people will check
2:31:01
out your book. Justice is Coming how progressives are going to take over the
2:31:05
country and America, Although not John Ziegler is going to love it. Thanks
2:31:09
so much for your time. As always, Thank you, John and everybody.
2:31:11
You can get it at tyt dot com slash Justice, tyts in the
2:31:16
Young Turks, tyt dot com slash Justice. Thank you, brother, and
2:31:20
I appreciate you just as much. Ben. Thank you for being open minded
2:31:24
and having great conversations for all these years. Keep in judge me too.
2:31:30
Thanks again to JENK Huger for his time. By the way, I'm sure
2:31:33
you're wondering, so Zig did you send Jank the information about the COVID stats
2:31:41
that he requested. I absolutely did. I texted them to him. He
2:31:46
responded that he would take a look at them when he had an opportunity to
2:31:48
do so. And I have not heard anything since. And generally that means
2:31:54
I'm not going to hear anything. You can interpret that whatever way you want.
2:31:58
I mean, he's a busy guy. He's got book coming out,
2:32:01
so maybe he never got a chance to look at it, or maybe he
2:32:03
looked at it and didn't have a good rebuttal, and that's why I never
2:32:07
heard back from him. I'm not sure which it is, but that's the
2:32:11
reality. Those are the facts of what happened there. That'll do it for
2:32:13
this episode of the podcast, episode number eighty nine. As is always the
2:32:18
case, thanks for listening. Please remember to subscribe, rate, and review
2:32:22
this podcast. Please share it publicly. If you do so, please said
2:32:26
on social media. At least please tag me on Twitter or Facebook. I'll
2:32:30
be happy to share your post as well with my followers on those social media
2:32:33
platforms. Until next time, thanks so much for listening to the Death of
2:32:37
Journalism podcast. My name is John Ziegler.