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Episode Two Hundred Twenty Eight: Halftime Hijack · The Death Of Journalism

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to episode two hundred and twenty eight of the
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Death of Journalism Podcasts. My name is John Zigler. I'm
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: your host on today's show. The Super Bowl is probably
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: more noteworthy for what happened outside the game than in it.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: CBS finally releases the entire sixty minutes Kamala Harris interview,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump and Elon Musk are all the news media
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: can seemingly talk about, and Trump tees it up with
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Tiger Woods amid rumors the PGA Tour and lib Golf
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: maybe finally making a deal. Obviously, this past Sunday was
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Super Bowl fifty nine, and I had debated as to
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: whether or not to do an extra episode of the podcast.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: I had implied I might, but never promised that I would.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: And the game turned out to be such a blowout,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: and while there are certain elements of it that I
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: still find worthy of comment and I will do so momentarily,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: I didn't think it was worthy of an extra episode,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: So I apologize if you were anticipating that. But as you,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: I'm sure know, the Philadelphia Eagles blew the Kansas City
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Chiefs out in decisive and dominating fashion. This was an
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: outcome that I had predicted, although certainly not the blowout
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: part I had said. I thought the Eagles would win
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: because I thought the Chiefs luck would run out, whether
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: it was the referees or just karma or the fact
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: that they're just not that good. That was my whole
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: narrative about the Chiefs was that they're obviously a very
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: good team, but are they worthy of three straight Super
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Bowl championships? No way, no how. They're in no way,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: shape or form as good or certainly not better than
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: a lot of the teams that have won two Super
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Bowls in a row. And from a historical perspective, I
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: really did not want the Chiefs to become the first
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: three peat winners. And it was very obvious early on
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: in the game that that was not going to happen
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: because the Chiefs were completely dominated and I believe even exposed,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: especially on offense. I mean, Patrick Mahomes looked very human.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Travis Kelcey looked absolutely terrible. In fact, you know, there's
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: been some videos out on TikTok. The sports media will
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: never tell you how bad Travis kelce looked because the
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: whole tailor swift effect and they don't want to get
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: the wrath of the Swifties. But there's been some TikTok
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: videos showing that Travis Kelce really was a mass of
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: liability for the Chiefs, especially in past protection. But the
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Eagles completely dominated. This was in some ways the most
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: dominating first half performance in Super Bowl history, and it
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: wasn't even closed. The final score wasn't quite that bad
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: forty to twenty two, but that was a cosmetic job.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: And so the bottom line here is history was preserved.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: I believe the sport of football was vindicated in that
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: defense won this game. I talk all the time about
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: wissified the league has become, but the referees played a
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: very small role in this game. They essentially let the
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: players play for the most part. There was one call
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: that went against the Eagles early on and had people
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: started to go down that path of the Chiefs narrative
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: where the league somehow is favoring the Chiefs. But I
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: had two views on this. One was that with all
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: of this becoming such a public narrative that subconsciously the
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: referees were going to be very hesitant to appear to
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: be favoring the Chiefs. Plus the whole conspiracy theory, and
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: I do believe it's a conspiracy theory, but I think
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: there's some validity to it given human psychology. I've talked
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: about the subconscious momentum that the whole Chiefs narrative and
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: the Taylor Swift thing creates, and that that may impact
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: the referees, but that all falls apart once the team
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: is in the Super Bowl because there's no next game.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: There's no more incentive really for the NFL to continue
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: you to promote this Chiefs dynasty situation. Now you could
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: argue that somehow a three peat would be good, but
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: I don't think that would have a three peat would
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: have been good for the league at all. So anyway,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: the referees stayed out of it for the most part,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: and the Eagles dominated with defense, and there is no
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: three peat. And while I'm nowhere near the Eagles fan
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: that I was as a kid, where I lived and
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: died with every single game during the seventies and eighties,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: you know, I like this Eagles team. This is probably
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: the best Eagles team of all time. Their second Super
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Bowl championship. They deserved it, the best team won, so
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: from a football fans perspective, this was a good outcome.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: You would have liked to have seen a closer game,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: more dramatic game, but I was happy with this outcome.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: As far as the television audience, it appears by the
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: way that they're doing the numbers currently, which is different
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: than the way they've done the numbers in the past,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: that they're going to be able to claim Fox is
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: that this was the most watched Super Bowl ever as
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: far as the number of people, with an average of
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty seven million viewers. But reading between
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: the lines, that's pretty clear that there weren't really as
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: many people that watched this game as watched last year's game,
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: which had set a record. And from a ratings perspective,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: you know, there's the total audience standpoint, which is the
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: number of people watching at any given time, and then
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: there's the percentage of televisions in America that actually tuned in.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: And from a rating perspective, the game was down slightly
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: from last year and has been down especially during the
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: COVID years. But if you eliminate the two COVID years,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: it's been hovering around forty percent of all televisions, and
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: that's down from the heyday where it was close to
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: fifty in the mid high forties, and it will continue
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: to go down because of the fragmentation of our media
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: and you know, just the nature of our culture. Plus
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: I've never understood how Super Bowl ratings can be accurate
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: when the seemingly the vast majority of people are not
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: watching at their home. There some sort of a gathering
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: in most cases. I don't know what the percentage on
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: that is, but it's certainly significant. But by you know,
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: by and large, this was a well watched game, especially
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: considering the fact that it was a blowout. Fox is
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: gonna claim it was a record audience. I don't really
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: buy that, but certainly very healthy and certainly consistent with
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: last year, which was up because in large part of
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: the whole Taylor Swift effect. So the Taylor Swift effect
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: was still there, at least in some shape or form. Now,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: as far as the football parts of this, I was
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: really happy for Jalen Hurts and his amazing personal story
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: after having been benched in a national championship game at
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Alabama and then transferring to Oklahoma and now he's a
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Super Bowl winning quarterback. You know, that's a great story.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Saquon Barkley seems like a great guy. He wasn't the MVP,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: which is what I was hoping for, since that would
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: give us fifty years of symmetry between him and his
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: fellow penn Stater and buddy, the late great Franco Harris,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: who was MVP of the game fifty years ago for
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: another Pennsylvania NFL team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. But that didn't happen,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: but still great for Saquon Barkley and certainly bad for
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: New York Giants fans, including our executive producer Mike Gavino everywhere,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: because the Giants basically gave Saquon Barkley up. Cooper de
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Jen became a well known star, and the Cooperjajean story
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: is kind of amazing. If you don't know. He's the
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: guy who intercepted Mahomes and returned it for a touchdown
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: to give the Eagles a seventeen nothing lead that pretty
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: much sealed the game, even though it was very early
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: on in the game, but at that point you knew
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: that the Eagles were very much in the driver's seat.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Cooper de Jen is interesting because he is essentially the
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: first white cornerback in the National Football League in a
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: very very long time in fact, the last one and
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: anyone can remember was New York Giant Jason Seahorn, who
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: was also well known for an interception return for a
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: touchdown against ironically up the Eagles in a game I
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: actually attended, which I have to say, for anyone who
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: remembers that play, maybe the most athletic, incredible play I've
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: ever seen in my life, certainly in the sport of football.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: And it came right at me where I was sitting
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: with my then girlfriend's family. They were longtime Giant season
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: ticket holders, and that was amazing. But Jason Seahorn was
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: probably the last white cornerback of the National Football League.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Now there's some argument as to whether or not Cooper
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: dejen really is a cornerback. He played cornerback at Iowa,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: and it's exceedingly exceedingly rare for a white guy to
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: play cornerback. But he certainly is a nickelback. He's a
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: defensive back. He sometimes plays what you could call cornerback.
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  Speaker 1: There's even a viral song about the fact that Cooper
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: to gen is a white cornerback. Yet there was no
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: mention at all, no mention at all on the broadcast
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: of this historical ballment with a white cornerback returning interception
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: for touchdown. Now, of course, we hear all the time
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: about black quarterbacks, even though black quarterbacks are becoming commonplace.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: In fact, I believe black quarterbacks will soon be the
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: majority in the National Football League. We still hear about
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: black quarterbacks, but not a white corner That's way too
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: dangerous because I would need some explainting as to will
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: why is it that there hasn't been a white cornerback
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: in decades? Well, Cooper dejen who seems like a super
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: nice guy and is incredibly athletic, But he's so athletic,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: he was an incredible basketball player in high school. And
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: there's a really hilarious clip that you can probably find
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: if you are interested, of Cooper Dejean doing an interview
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: where he gets asked by a female television host if
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: he played basketball against fellow Iowaha guy Caitlin Clark one
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: on one whether or not he would win. Actually, I
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: think it was a follow up to a statement that
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: he had made to another reporter that he said, yeah,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: I think I would beat Caitlyn Clark, who he's friends with.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: It was no animosity, he just was being honest about it.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: And the female anchor is kind of incredulous, like, really,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: you would beat you would beat Caitlyn Clark. And in
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: the middle of the interview, the start playing Cooper de
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Jean's spectacular highlights from high school where he's a dunking machine,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: and even the female actors like, oh, oh, okay, I
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: see what you're talking about. So anyway, Cooper de Gens
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: seems like a nice guy, honest enough to admit that, yeah,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: I would beat Kitlyn Clark if we played in basketball,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: but there's no animosity there. And he had the moment
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: of a lifetime on his twenty second birthday, so that
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: was all remarkable. Now as far as Patrick Mahomes and
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Travis Kelsey are concerned, I mean, Patrick Mahomes is being
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: anointed the goat, which was ridiculous before the game. Tom
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Brady is the goat until further notice, and that would
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: most be or at least be five years down the road.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: So that's if the Chiefs somehow continued on this dynasty.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: But I think the Chiefs have major problems. I mean,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: I think Mahomes the style of play, he's kind of
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: a you know, I've always kind of associated him with
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Alan Iverson. I used to say that, you know, when
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: I was a radio talk show host, sports talk show
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: host of WIP in Philadelphia during Allen Iverson's heyday, that
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: you know, enjoy it now because once Allen Iverson loses
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: a step, it's over. Because he's so reliant on his
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: quickness and his ability to avoid you know, in that
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: case to the defense in basketball, but when in Mahomes case,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: to avoid defenders, the difference between scrambling and scampering for
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: a first down and getting caught in the backfield for
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: a sack is minuscule, and you lose half a step
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, the equation totally changes. And
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: you know, Mahomes is starting to get to that age
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: where that may happen. And his connection with Travis Kelcey.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: The Chiefs have a massive Travis Kelcey problem, and that
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: problem is that his contract is up and they've got
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: to decide whether or not or actually he's not up,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: but they have an option to get rid of him.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: That would save an enormous amount of money if they
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: were to cut him. But how do you cut Travis Kelcey.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, he's a you know, historical player, He's a
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: huge part of the community. He's obviously Taylor Swift's boyfriend,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: at least as of right now. Who knows after the
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: loss whether or not that's still the case. And that
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: ridiculous seventies porn outfit that he wore going to the
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: game that he got mocked for and then warred again afterwards,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: which was even more bizarre. But Travis kelcey is done.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, he's done as an elite tight end. How
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: much the Travis, the Travis kelce and Taylor Swift relationship
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: has had to do with that, I don't know. I mean,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: but I'm sorry at his age, when and you're hosting
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: game shows and you're doing a podcast, and you're trying
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: to keep the most famous woman in the world happy
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: all during football season, that's got to take a toll,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: and it certainly hasn't helped Travis kelce So I don't
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: know what the Chiefs do with Travis kelce They're seemingly
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: in a no win situation there, and if they get
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: rid of him, you know that's going to cause a
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: massive problem. They don't. I don't see how they get
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: any better next year, and we may be seeing the
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: decline of the Chiefs dynasty, because that really has been
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: the heart of it from an offensive perspective as far
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: as Taylor Swift is concerned. Now we're going to start
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: to get into the stuff that happened off the field
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: with regard to the Super Bowl. It's really astonishing to me.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: I don't know why it is, but it still is
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: how stupid we are as a culture. But the Taylor
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Swift narrative out of this was that she got booed
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: at the game because she was put up on the
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: jumbo tron there at the Superdome and there's video of
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: there being some booze in the crowd there, and this,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: of course went viral because there's an audience. There's a
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: market for a story that says Taylor Swift got booed
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: because we're not used to seeing that, right. You know,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Taylor Swift is adored everywhere she goes, and so here
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: we aren't the nation's biggest event, the Super Bowl, and
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: she gets booed, and so this goes viral. And it's
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: one thing to go viral, but it's another thing for
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: the President of the United States, who was at the game,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump, to post about it on social media and
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: by the way post about her multiple times, but to
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: basically dunk on her for having been booed. Now, there
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: are videos I have seen where Donald Trump got booed
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: by a couple of people, not by a large segment,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: but by a few people, which is natural for someone
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: as controversial as him at the super Bow. That didn't
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: go viral at least not that I saw, certainly not
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: on the right. But the video of Taylor Swift being
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: booed was incredibly benign. Frankly, I was surprised it wasn't
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: more dramatic. Why because she's a very controversial figure who
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: grew up in the Philadelphia area, was an Eagles fan,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: and now she's obviously associated with the Kansas City Chiefs. Well,
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: an enormous number of the people in that stadium are
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Philadelphia Eagle fans who are basically bred to boo. I mean,
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: that's part of the DNA of the Philadelphia sports fan.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: So of course, if you put Taylor Swift up on
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: the jumbo drod, they're gonna be some Eagle fans who
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: either jokingly or half jokingly or maybe even seriously boo
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Taylor Swift because you're booing the idea that she used
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: to be an Eagles fan, and now she's obviously rooting
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: for her boyfriend Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: That's natural big deal. And the booing wasn't even close
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: to being overwhelming. Again, frankly, given Philadelphia's reputation, I expected
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: the booing to be far more dramatic than it was.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: Yet this will become and has become, one of the
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: significant narratives coming out of the biggest cultural event of
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: the year. That's what people will remember. Oh yeah, Taylor
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Swift got booed. It's just so dumb. She didn't really
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: get booed, and there's a very good explanation for the
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: very mild booing that she did get. And for the
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: President the United States to be attacking her for this,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: it's just so pathetic. It's just so ridiculous and so
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: indicative of what a dumb country we have become. Now,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: as far as the broadcast of the game is concerned,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: I have two major problems, maybe three, but through two
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: or three things I want to mention with regard to
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: the Fox broadcast in the NFL's you know, putting on
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: of the Super Bowl and the decisions that the NFL made.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: I went on News Nation actually on what was technically
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: the last Dan Abrams show, although Dan was not hosting,
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: he had said goodbye the night before. By the way,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: as an aside, last Thursday was Dan's last show on
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: News Nation. I had appeared on it at least sixty
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: to seventy times over the last three years, and I
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: was asked to go on Dan's last show the day before,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: and I, you know, it's so funny. When you do
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: these things as often as I do, you get a
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: sixth sense or a fidy sense. And I was like,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: this isn't going to happen. There's there's no way that
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: a y Whenever I get booked the day before, and
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: especially if I really want to do it, there's a
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: very good chance I'm going to get bumped. And that's
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: exactly what I antsicipated happening. I even told my wife
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: this was going to happen, and that's exactly what did happen.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: I mean nothing to do with me, but the bookers
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: had whole to do a show with. I guess what
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: they thought of was Dan's favorite guests. And Dan put
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: the kebash on that because he didn't want everything to
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: get to all Schmalsey and emotional and be about him.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: So he went in a completely different direction, and I
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: was totally fine with that. I was disappointed that that
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: didn't happen. But then on that last Friday, which I
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: guess was the last technical Danny from show before Leland
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Vivert took over. This week, they had me on to
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: talk about Donald Trump attending the Super Bowl and a
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: whole lot of the other super Bowl related media narratives,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: you know, And one of the things I mentioned was
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: the contrast between Trump and Taylor Swift and the fact
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: that it was highly unusual. I joked that it was
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: highly unusual, potentially dangerous to have the two most powerful
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: people in the world at a football game in close proximity,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: because you know, normally you try to keep them two
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: most powerful people in the world up in case something
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: really bad happens. There were some people that have thought
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: I was serious about that, which is really odd. But
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: one of the topics that came up in this News
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Nation appearance was me saying that it's amazing that the
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: National Football League really is still one of the most
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: powerful liberal organizations in America. In fact, you could argue,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: given the state of the Democratic Party that the National
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Football League is the most powerful liberal organization that there is,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: and there is no doubt, at least not in my mind,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: that the National Football League is extremely liberal at its essence,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: in its DNA, not just its politics, not just I'm
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: not suggesting that they're part of a conspiracy to keep
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Republicans from being elected. I'm talking about the philosophy that
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: drives to the bus, if you will. At the National
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Football League is extremely liberal and it's still very woke,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: and we saw that in multiple ways during the Super
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Bowl broadcast. The first thing I want to mention is
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: that not the halftime show. I'll get to that in
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: a second, but the halftime commercial. Basically all halftime was
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: woke them on steroids. But the commercial that the NFL ran.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: They traditionally do an extended commercial at halftime, you know,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: in order to promote whatever their pet cause is. I'm
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: sure this is part of the contract that the network
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: signs when they get the Super Bowl. You give the
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: NFL two minutes during halftime to do basically whatever they
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: want to do, and the NFL decided to promote girls
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: flag football. Now, they have in the past used this
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: time to promote women in football, and you know, I
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: get it. I understand what they're doing. They're looking out
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: for the long term interest of the sport, and I
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: think it's probably a smart move. I mean, we've seen
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: that with the whole Taylor Swift situation. It's a hell
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: of a lot easier, a hell of a lot easier
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: for guys to watch football on Sunday, although it's no
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: longer even just Sunday now it's almost every day of
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: the week. But it's a hell of a lot easier
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: for guys to watch football if the woman in their
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: life at least is approving of it, if not a
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: part of it. And so if you can get women
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: invested in the game, you can get more fans, but
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: you can also get a permission slip for your core
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: male audience a heck of a lot easier. And so
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: I understand from a strategic perspective what the NFL is doing.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: But the actual commercial that they ran was outrageous, absolutely outrageous,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: and is not getting nearly enough discussion. Now it is
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: in some right wing circles, and I get that, but
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: if you missed it, basically, the essence of this commercial
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: was there's a high school where flag the girls flag
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: football has now become a varsity sport because they're trying to.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: That's the campaign here, to get girls flag football to
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: be a varsity sport in fifty different states. It already
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: is here in California to some degree, although I don't
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: know many schools that actually do it, but it is,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: it does exist. And the whole narrative of this commercial
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: is that the boys football team, all made up of
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: white guys, not a black guy to be found on
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: the varsity football team, are a bunch of bullies who
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: are not as good at at least flag football as
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: the girls are. So I mean it literally, literally one
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: of the white male football players gets kicked in the
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: balls or gets hitting the balls, so literally, they're going
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: after masculinity, and I guess toxic masculinity, white male toxic masculinity.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: So they're mocking and demeaning high school male white football
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: players and elevating girls playing flag football. Again, I'm totally
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: fine with promoting girls flag football, although I should mention
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: and I got a lot of messages on Twitter about
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: this because people know my stance on this. This is
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: all certainly very consistent with the National Football League trying
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: to make flag football acceptable to a large audience. To
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: normalize flag football. We've seen that with the Pro Bowl.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: The Pro Bowl is now flag football. We've seen that
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: with what's going to happen at the twenty twenty eight
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Olympics in Los Angeles. Somehow flag football is going to
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: be an Olympic metal sport, which is insane to me,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: completely and totally. Third, it might be entertaining, but it's ridiculous.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: And it certainly consistent with my theory that the National
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Football League, which has approved all of this and promoted
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: all this, is doing everything they possibly can to normalize
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: flag football. Not just because they want kids who normally
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: wouldn't play football to be able to play football, or
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: they want girls to be able to play flag football
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: to get them invested in the sport. That would all
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: be fine, but I do see that there is a
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: more nefarious element of this, which is, at the very least,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: the more you can normalize flag football in the minds
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: of the average football fan, the easier it is to
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: completely cashtraight tackle football and make it more and more woossified,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: as we have seen on a yearly basis, and to
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: effectively whether you ever call it that or not effectively
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: turn tackle football into flag football because you have this
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: existential threat of concussions and other major injuries that the
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: National Football League has decided, Okay, we are going we're
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: not gonna tell anybody we're gonna do this, We're not
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: gonna acknowledge it, we're not going to admit it, but
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: we're going to destroy the essence of our sport in
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: order to try to preserve this economic monster that we've created. So,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: you know, the whole concussion thing started to become a
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: massive issue about ten years ago, and ever since then,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: the National Football League has abandoned tackle football, especially vis
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: a VI the quarterback. And it's my belief that in
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: five to ten years, effectively the quarterback will not be
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: allowed to be touched or tackled. Now, how that's gonna work,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: what it's going to look like, I don't know. I
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: don't know that they're actually going to put a flag
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: on the on the quarterback, but maybe they will. I
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: think it's going to depend on how this whole twenty
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: twenty eight Olympics flag football thing goes. So I am
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: I am skeptical of the entire motive. I don't think
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: it's just about getting girls into the sport. I do
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: think there's another element of it. But the actual commercial
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: that was run should have offended every white male who's
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: ever played high school football in their lives. I mean,
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: and that's literally the core of the core of the
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: core audience of the National Football League, all to elevate
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: girls in a ridiculous fashion. And this is, you know,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: how anti conspiracy I am. And I'm not even really
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: alleging a conspiracy. I'm being extremely cynical about how this
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: whole thing came together. I have no knowledge that what
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: I'm about to say is true, but it certainly did
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: seem odd to me that part of this commercial, a
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: very very small part of this commercial compared to how
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: much publicity and promotion it got before the Super Bowl
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: ad actually ran, was the part that was played by
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Pat McAfee of ESPN as the principle of this school.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: And this got my spidery senses going in a pretty
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: big way because this character, well it was supposed to
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: be funny. Pat McAfee was playing a batbalding principal who
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: was promoting a girls' flag football and this was not
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: really necessary. There wasn't it wasn't really necessary for this
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: to be part of the commercial, so why was it there? Well,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: I have a theory. I have a theory. This is
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: just a theory. It could be totally wrong, but I
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: think that somebody realized that, wait a minute, we're gonna
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: need a little bit more protection on the theme of
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: this commercial. And what better protection do we get than
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: the guy who is the personification of the white male
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: man's man's core football fan than Pat McAfee. I mean,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: that's his whole persona well, on a ESPN this is
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is who he is. He's a football guy,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: he's a white dude, he's a man's man, you know,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: and he's very, very popular on ESPN. And I have
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: two massive problems with this that no one else is
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: going to mention. But how the hell does Pat McAfee
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: possibly ever in the future be an objective commentator on
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: the National Football League when they hired him to be
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: part of a massive premiere time slot right in the
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: middle of the halftime commercial for the Super Bowl. That's
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: a massive conflict of interest. You are now working, if
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: you're Pat McAfee, you are now an employee of the
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: National Football League. Now there's always massive conflicts of interest
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: when it comes to these corporate entities and they're commentators
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: on the National Football League because National Football League is
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: partners with all of them ESPN and obviously NBC and
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: Fox and CBS and other Virtually every major media corporation
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: is a partner with the National Football League. And it's
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: not just a corporate partnership right now. The National Football
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: League holds all the leverage. So when you are engaging
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: in Super Bowl commercials, I don't know if mcmack. I'm
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: sure McAfee was paid something for this, but it doesn't matter.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: That's a huge plum to be part of a Super
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Bowl commercial at halftime and you're working on behalf of
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: the National Football League. How can you possibly be an
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: objective commentator in the future when your main job is
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: to commentate on football, half of which is the National
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Football League and half of which is on college on
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: game day on Saturdays. So from a purely journalism standpoint,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: I realized sports journalism is as dead as anything could
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: possibly be. But that's a massive problem. And I generally
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: like pack McAfee. I don't agree with everything he says,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: but I think he's good. I think he's entertaining. I
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: think he sometimes does provide smart commentary, sometimes not so much.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: But that was a problem for me. But my sense
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: is I would not be surprised at all if he
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: was an add on to that commercial because they needed
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: some sort of protection. They needed some sort of white
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: guy hero to be able to deflect from any criticism
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: they might get because that commercial is it's a direct
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: attack on your core football fan, the white male who
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: played high school football. You're all a bunch of egomaniacs, bullies,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: and you're not as good at flag football as the
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: girls are. That was the essence of that commercial, all
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: in an alleged effort to promote girls flag football, which,
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: as the father of two daughters, either of whom has
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: shown any interest at all, I'm playing flag football. I
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: am in complete favor of that. If that was where
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: it ended, that's great, and there's lots of ways to
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: do that. It didn't happen to me white guys who
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: play high school football in order to do that, but
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: that's what the National Football League decided the do. This
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: is their baby, this is their two minutes during the
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: halftime show, and that to me was very illuminating. That
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: to me was the National Football League showing me what
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: they're really all about, where their values really are, and
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: how they are willing to crap on their core audience
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: at a moment's notice whenever they think it's remotely in
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: their interest. And that's what they did in that commercial,
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: And to me, that has not gotten nearly enough attention,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: And of course it's not gonna get any attention in
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: the corporate sports media because of the conflicts of interest
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: I've already mentioned. Then there's the actual time show, and
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: this did get a lot of conversation, and I think
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: it deserved to get a lot of conversation. Although it
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: is my guess and I don't know what the actual percent,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: but it's definitely over fifty percent. It is my guess
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: that over fifty percent of this audience. And according to
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: the ratings, over one hundred and thirty million people watched
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: the halftime show, although interestingly that was down from what
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: the rating was at the end of the second quarter,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: which is highly unusual for a Super Bowl halftime show.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: But that's, you know, an enormous number of people, and
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: it might be right at or near the largest number
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: of people to ever watch in America one of these
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: halftime shows. Okay, so there's no question that this was
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: a massive deal. But my guess is that over fifty
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: percent of that audience did not have any clue, any
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: clue about what was really going on during that halftime show.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: At best, their perception was, oh, we got a rapper.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: I've never heard of him, but you know, people seem
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: to like it. Oh, look at that Uncle Sam, Samuel L.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: Jackson's playing on Sam. And we got depictions of the
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: American flag. That's cool. And you know, boy, does seem
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: like there's a lot of black people in this. I
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: don't see any white people. But okay, fine, this is
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: New Orleans in a majority black city, depending on how
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: you define New Orleans. And you know, fine, you know,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: not my cup of tea, but okay fine. That was
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: probably the depth of knowledge that the average person watching
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: the super Bowl halftime show actually had. But there was way, way,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: way more going on, and even I was not fully
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: aware of it until I researched it and watched dozens
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: of videos of people commenting on what actually transpired after
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: the super Bowl halftime show. Now, the star of the
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: super Bowl halftime show was a rapper, by the name
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: of Kendrick Lamar. And you know, the first problem here
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: is that the vast majority of this the super Bowl audience,
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: doesn't even know who Kendrick Lamar is, certainly not before
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: the super Bowl. And the choice of Kendrick Lamar, I
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: think is important on a number of levels. The first
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: is what it says about the state of the music
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: industry and also our fragmented society. I talk about this
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: all the time about how there are so many implications
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: of our fragmented culture and our media, and one of
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: them is that it's exceedingly difficult for someone to become
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: very very famous now, very very difficult now in the
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: case of like a Taylor Swift, once you get to that,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: you know, superstar level, everybody knows about you, and it
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: might even be easier to become super duper famous once
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: you get past the point of being famous. But there's
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: it's it's kind of like gravity, right, you know, once
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: you get into the into orbit, like Taylor Swift is,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: there's really no restrictions. But getting into orbit as a
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: superstar now is very very difficult in virtually every endeavor
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: but music especially, and much like the movie industry, the
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: music industry is very, very broken. I mean, let's face it,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: this is a whole nother story for another day, but
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: this is you know, if you listen to the radio,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: you know, most stations, even stations my young daughters listen to,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: they play mostly eighties and nineties music these days, maybe
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: a little bit of seventies, maybe a little bit of
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: early two thousands, and of course whatever's hot today, right,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: But does anybody really believe that twenty thirty forty years
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: so now people are going to be playing music music
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: from the two tens of the twenty twenties, that it's
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: gonna end up having any kind of staying power, any
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: sort of legs. No, because most of it's total crap,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: and because we don't have nearly as many superstars, and
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: when it comes to the super Bowl halftime show, effectively
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: we've run out of the superstars. Most of the superstars
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: and you know that are certainly that are still a
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: viable age have played the super Bowl. Now that you know,
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: the super Bowl halftime show, people need to remember completely
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: changed in nineteen ninety three when Michael Jackson did the
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: super Bowl halftime show at the Rose Bowl, and you know,
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: that changed the world and after that. You know, most
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: of the big names and music did the Super Bowl
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: half time show at some point, but at a certain
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: stage you run out of those people, and now you're
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: in a situation where you know your biggest star in music,
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: Taylor Swift is at the game, but she's way too
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: big to be doing a halftime show. So you can't
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: get the super superstars, the very few super superstars that
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: you have to do it. You know, you literally don't
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: even pay them for this. She doesn't need the publicity.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: It's all risk and no reward for on one like her.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: So you can't get the super superstars, the very few
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: that you have. And there are very few people who
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: are in that next tier that you know, star tier.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: There's lots of stars. Now everyone could be somewhat famous,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: you know, in the social media age, but it's impossible
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: to find somebody at that level that appeals to a
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: broad range of Super Bowl viewers. The super Bowl is
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: our last communal meaning it's not really targeting one particular demographic.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: Everything else in television is about narrow casting. The super
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: Bowl is the last broadcasting event. I mean that literally,
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: I mean that's the last scheduled event where allegedly seemingly
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: the target is everybody, as opposed to a niche for
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: a demographic that you just want. That year's going to
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: focus on that group of people, because you know that's
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: who the our advertisers are going to target, and that's
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: who you think are going to be interested in tuning
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: in to your programming. But the Super Bowl is still
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: large enough to where the goal is to broadcast well
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: for a halftime show, it's basically impossible to find somebody
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: who is at least somewhat well known from a broadcasting
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: perspective to the vast majority of your audience who is
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: still willing to do a Super Bowl halftime show and
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: isn't too old to do a super well time show,
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: because you need someone who's at least somewhat young enough
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: to pull it off because physically it's it's not particularly easy.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: And so the selection of Kendrick Lamar I do think
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: is an indictment of the music industry now because I
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: don't know much about Kenlen Lamar. Most people think he's great,
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: especially Street Fred in the world, and then certainly the
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: African American community is in the stratosphere right now for reasons.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get to in just a second. But
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: you know, the reality is that there aren't many people
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: you could choose from that would have fit the bill
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: for the broadcasting audience of a super Bowl. So they
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: chose Kenrick Lamar. And of course he's black, he's a rapper,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: and this is consistent with the direction that the super
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: Bowl halftime show has gone over the last several years. Now,
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: apparently jay Z is a big part of the decision
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: making here. It's his company, I guess that the NFL
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: contracts with to put these hattime shows on. And so
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: obviously jay Z is black, and that is you know,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: that realm of music is certainly his forte. That's where
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: he's going to, you know, most likely go. I mean,
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: it's just natural. It's human nature has nothing to dow
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: really with race, but has clearly favored black artists over
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: the last several years, and the National Football League has
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: gone along with that. Well, in my perception, there's not
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: been a halftime show that was more obviously and purposely
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: quote unquote black than this one. Literally from the standpoint
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: of who was in the show. I mean, you had
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: an American flag made up of human beings and it
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: appeared as if every single person there was black. There
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: were no white performers. Every performer appeared to be a
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: person of color in some way, shape or form. And
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: of course the music being rap music, that is a
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: type of music associated with black people. And that's all fine,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: I've got no problem with that. But then came the focus,
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: the substance of it and the underlying meanings of all
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: of it. And you had Samuel L. Jackson, a well
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: known actors. Okay, that's certainly an attempt to appeal to
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: a broader audience. He's black, but he's very well known,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: he's a crossover guy, very esteemed actor. But he's playing
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: Uncle Sam. Well, if you watched it from you know,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: basically not paying attention, the whole thing looked very patriotic
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: with Samuel L. Jackson playing Uncle Sam, as I mentioned
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: in the American Flag being all over the place, But
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: if you actually listen carefully to the substance of it,
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: the messaging was extremely anti United States of America, basically
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: portraying the United States of America as an as a
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: fundamentally racist country where white people are dominating black people,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: where white people don't want black people to be their
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: natural selves That was basically the theme of Samuel L.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: Jackson's commentary, and he was basically commenting on, almost doing
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: a play by play for what Kendrick Lamar was doing,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: which was gradually getting up the momentum to offend white people.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: Now those are my words, but that's essentially what the
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: messaging here was that, you know, Uncle sam was commenting
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: on the star of the show, Ken Lick Lamar and
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: his effort to stay within color, within the lines, but
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: then eventually he just couldn't do it anymore, and he
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: lets his real self out and he becomes free from
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: the the white man who's trying to, you know, keep
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: him enslave. Again, those are my words, but that's the
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: essence of what was really going on here. And the
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: unleashing of Ken lick Lamar came when he did this song,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: which is essentially an attempt to portray drape another black
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: artist as a pedophile. Now I can't even believe, you know,
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: I know all that because I've researched it. But the
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: allegation of so called pedophilia against Drake is all based
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: apparently on an alleged I haven't actually seen evidence of
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: the text message, but I'll up. Presume, for the sake
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: of argument, that it exists an alleged text message that
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: Drake may have sent to a fourteen year old actress,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: Well that was inappropriate. Now, if that happened, that's bad, terrible, whatever,
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: But there's no allegation of actual pedophilia. But that's the
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: essence of why Ken Louck Lamark is on Kendrick Lamari
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: is on this this basically this diatribe, this crusade against
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: Drake that's created this massive feud, and certainly in the
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: rap community, in the black community, this was something everyone
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: was highly anticipating. Oh my god, is he really going
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: to go after Drake like he does in his normal song.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: Are they gonna let him say the word pedophile? Is
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: he even gonna do the song at all? And I
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: mean Lamar went out of his way to make it.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: It was teasing about it, and then he eventually effectively
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: did go on the attack against Drake. But it wasn't
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: just that. Serena Williams, the greatest female tennis player of
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: all time who dated Drake many years ago, made a
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: cameo appearance during I don't even know people realized this.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: It didn't get that much publicity, and you really had
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: to be paying attention to even see it, and you
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: certainly had to know a lot of history going on here,
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: which I didn't know at the time to understand the
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: meaning of all of it. But Serena Williams, a former
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: girlfriend of Drake, came on and did a crip walk.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: Now doing a crip walk that's from the crips and
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: the Bloods in Los Angeles. Doing a crip walk to
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: begin with ought to be controversial, but I didn't know
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: this until afterwards and it was posted on social media.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: Serena Williams actually had a stepsister killed by the crips.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: Here she is how bazaars that she's doing the crip
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: walk in a cameo to allow Kendrick Lamar. Kendrick Lamar
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: to continue and escalate his attacks on Drake because she
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: used to date Drake, and this is all happened. They
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: got the Super Bowl halftime show. They talk about narrow casting.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: This is as narrow as it getst not to mention
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: it is it's appealing. I mean, this is a personal feud.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: How the hell did the National Football League allow a
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: personal inappropriate feud to be aired to the largest audience
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: possible in their largest platform that they have, which is
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: the halftime show of the super Bowl. How could this
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: pie possibly have happened? I mean, this is insane. If
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: anything close to this had occurred with white musicians or
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: actors or celebrities, this is all anybody would be talking about.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: The media would be completely obsessed with this. If this
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: was all about some sort of if this is all
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: about Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, it would be totally inappropriate.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: It would be seen as insane. It would be there
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: would be a legal liability. By the way, there's speculation
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: that Drake manned up suing the National Football Leaguehich. Frankly,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't mind seeing even though I wouldn't agree with it,
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: but I would like to see how that would all
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: turn out. And I'd like to see this poll issue
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: get a little a little bit more publicity, because I
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: don't think the even anything we're close to, the average
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: fan watching that super Bowl halftime show had any idea
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: the subtext of what was really occurring and how the
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: super Bowl halftime show had been effectively hijacked. That's what
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: happened here. The super Bowl halftime show was hijacked for personal,
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: political and racial reasons by a fairly small group of people,
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: Jay Z, Hendrick Lamar, Samuel L. Jackson, Serena Williams, and
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: they got away with it. It was very much, at least
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: to me. It reminded me a lot of what transpired
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: during the Olympic opening ceremonies in Paris this past summer,
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: and I talked about this on the podcast, and I
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: talked about this on News Nation on Dan Abrams Show,
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: where my theory on what happened there. You may recall
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: that whole Last Supper controversy where there were a group
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: of transgender performers that all of a sudden in the
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: middle of the Olympic Summer Games opening ceremony very dramatically
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: seemed to depict the sea in the famous painting of
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: the Last Supper, and this created an enormous amount of
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: outrage and controversy. And my theory was that basically, what
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: happens here is in the decision making process, and this
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: is this is my view of a lot of things
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: that happen. I've referenced this many times on the podcast,
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: but I think this is a classic example where in
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: the decision making process whoever is in charge has such
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: a bias, and it's political in nature, you know, whether
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: it's trans or whether or not it's raised issues, it's very,
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: very very touchy issue. It's a third rail. There's nobody
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: in the room who has the wherewithal and or the
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: guts to say, hey, what are we doing? What are
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: we doing? Nobody there, There's nobody in that position that's
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: going to be willing to put up their hand and say, hey, guys,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: are we sure this is a good idea, because then
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: they're going to get destroyed. They're going to be seen,
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: in the case of the Summer Olympics as anti trans
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: or you know, if somebody, let's say the NFL had
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: a liaison to the which they probably do a liaison
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: to the halftime show, just kind of keeping tabs on everything.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: And by the way, you know that liaison in this
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: case would have to be a black person. Otherwise if
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: they were a white person, they really aren't going to
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: raise their hand. But regardless of their race, it's quite
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: possible that they had no clue about what was really
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: transpiring here, or they were willing to go along with
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: it personally for all sorts of possible reasons, and so
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: I would like to believe that, like, for instance, Roger Goodell,
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: who I consider to be a leftist, almost Gavin Newsom
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: like personality, I would like to believe that Roger Goodell
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: did not fully understand what was going to happen during
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: that halftime show and how much it was going to
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: be hijacked, because I think he's smart enough to realize
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: that was a mistake. But there's nobody in the process
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: of the decision making. The decision making process is totally
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: and completely broken, and so that's what causes what occurred
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: during the Summer Olympics opening ceremonies with that whole trans
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: Last Supper controversy, and I think that's what allowed the
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: hijacking of the super Bowl halftime show. And it was
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: a hijacking. And there's no question that the rap audience
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: and the core black audience loved it. They loved it.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: This is huge in black culture, you know, the whole
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: few thing. My god, whenever one of these few things
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: breaks out, black Twitter goes bananas. They love it, and
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: I get it, it's human nature, but it doesn't belong
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: at halftime of the super Bowl to be aired out
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: in front of one hundred and thirty million people, when
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: the vast majority of those one hundred and thirty million
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: people are one completely oblivious and two not being entertained
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: because they don't know who Kendall Lamar is. They don't
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: understand the rap music, they can't even understand the words.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: That was something that a lot of people said, I
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: can't even understand what he's singing or saying, and they're
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: not enjoying it. It's not doing anything for them. But
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: because it's wrapped in the whole issue of race, there's
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: no criticizing it except in the right wing media, which
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: has actually rightly criticized the Super Bowl halftime show. But
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: that's to me how this whole thing transpired. And it
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: was particularly hypocritical because one, the NFL have been getting
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: some credit in right wing circles prior to the game
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: because the word leaked out that they were not going
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: to put the phrase end racism in the end zones anymore,
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: which they had been doing ever since the whole George
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: Floyd fiasco. Well, this was the first Super Bowl since
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: then that end racism was not in the end zone,
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: and a lot of people sarcastically and mockingly and understandably said, WHOA,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: we ended racism. We did it. And some people even
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: tried to claim that Donald Trump was the reason why
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: this was occurring, because he obviously ended racism in the
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: first couple of weeks of his presidency, and also he
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: was attending the game, and maybe the NFL didn't want
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: to offend the President of United States. I doubt I
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: had anytthing to do with it at all. But they
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: eliminated the whole end racism phrasing or messaging in the
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: end zones. Well I don't know why they did that,
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: but it was particularly ironic given the fact that the
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: halftime show was extremely racist in a lot of ways.
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: And speaking of hypocrisy, they got rid of the end racism,
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: but they ran two commercials two commercials during the broadcast
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: that were about anti hate using Snoop dog Who's I
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: mean Snoop Dogg's a whole nother story for another day.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: What a complete fraud and phony he is. Nobody has
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: ever manipulated the white establishment using their blackness better than
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: Snoop dog I almost have admiration for how well he's
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: been able to do that. But Snoop Dogg and Tom
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: Brady did an anti hate ad. I can't stand these
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: anti hate ads, not because I'm a fan of hatred,
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: but because of Okay, how do you define hate? And
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: there's there are certain circumstances, like, for instance, World War Two,
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: where hate is really important and can get a lot
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: of good things done without hatred of the Nazis or
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: the Japanese. After Pearl Harbor, we don't win World War Two,
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: so sometimes hatred can be used in a very very
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: positive dire. But anyway, that's another whole story for another day.
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: As I keep saying, but the important part of this
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: is so the National Football League puts on two anti
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: hate commercials using Snoop Dogg and the guy who is
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: doing the color analysis on the broadcast, Tom Brady. Okay, fine,
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: we're against hatred, yet our halftime show is all about
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: a personal feud where one rapper calls another musical artist Drake,
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: a pedophile and then brings in his ex girlfriend to
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: dunk on him while she does a crip walk. How
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: is that consistent with the whole anti hate message? And oh,
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: by the way, and this didn't get nearly enough attention
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: because even I I thought, there's no way this is
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: actually happening. I thought I misunderstood this because I was
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: at a party. I wasn't paying that close attention, And
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: I thought, am I really seen West using what looks
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: like a haphazardly thrown together phone video of him lying
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: down into a Super Bowl commercial for his website?
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: You see that, Kanye West? Well, that really did happen.
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: And apparently during the Super Bowl, if you went to
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: the website, the only product that was available was a
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: white T shirt with a swastika. How the hell did
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: the NFL g duped into doing this? I mean, the
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: NFL declines all sorts of Super Bowl commercials that have
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: any political tinge to them at all, mostly from a
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: conservative perspective. But somehow Kanye West does allowed to slap
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: together this phone video and it becomes an ad for
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: his website, and he's selling swastika T shirts and I
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: guarantee the vast majority of people don't even know that happened.
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, this was If the corporate sports media wanted
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: to portray this Super Bowl as a complete fiasco and
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: a disaster, they would have more than enough narrative points
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: to do so. More than enough. I've just outlined them
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: all that is a disaster. This is your biggest event
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: of the year. This is the biggest event in American
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: culture on a yearly basis. You could argue the largest
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: number of people watching any television program in American history.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: And all of this just happened under apparently. I don't
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: know whether or not it's the approval of the National
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Football League or whether not the National Football League got duped,
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: or they were just oblivious, or this is really what
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: they wanted, or maybe some combination thereof, but regardless, this
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: could easily be portrayed, rightly, incredibly as a total disaster
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: for the National Football League. But that's not what happened.
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: You know why, because the National Football League controls the
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: news and sports media more completely than the Democratic Party
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: ever dreamed of controlling the mainstream news media. That's a fact,
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: and it's you know, because the Democratic Party, you know,
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: they've obviously lost all their power. The mainstream legacy news
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: media has lost an enormous amount of power, but the
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: National Football League is keeping especially the television business afloat.
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: The Democratic Party is clearly not doing that. So, you know,
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: the philosophical ties between the legacy news media and the
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party are still there, but it's nowhere near as strong,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: nowhere near as strong as what the NFL has going
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: for it, which is they are the reason the television
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: networks are still viable. Without the National Football League, television
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: is basically dead, completely dead, and the television networks know this,
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: and they are all hopelessly conflicted. And so no individual
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: is going to have the guts to take on the
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: National Football League, not even Pat McAfee because he's on
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: the payroll now, and no corporate entity is going to
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: allow any commentator that might want to go ahead and say,
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: you know what, guys, there's another way to look at
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: what happened to the Super Bowl, and this was a
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: disaster for the National Football League. No, that is not
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: going to happen. So everybody knows on which side their
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: bread is buttered. Everybody knows it, and nobody, nobody, especially
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: in the sports media, is going to get out of
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: line because there's too much risk and there's absolutely positively
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: no reward. And that's why none of this that I
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: just talked about is going to be a major media narrative,
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: and to the point that it even gets mentioned. I
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: saw a couple of mainstream news stories about the halftime show,
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: and they sugarcoat and get, you know, pass over the
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: most significant elements of it very very easily, I mean,
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: you know, to them. For instance, I saw a story
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: where the Serena Williams controversy was much more benign that
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: this was just oh, by the way, Serena just happened
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: to be someone who dated Drake a long time ago.
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: Ha ha ha, Isn't that funny? And let's quickly move along.
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: There's no getting into the nitty gritty eye none of
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: it because of the corporate conflicts of interest that I
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: just reference, and they are as deep as I've ever
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: seen them on any subject. The National Football League is
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: that important, that influential. There's that much money at stake,
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: and it's not just money. It is an existential issue.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: It is not an exaggeration to say that without the
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: National Football League, these television networks are ring grave peril
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: and they all know it. So nobody is going to
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: do anything to upset that Apple card and the National
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: Football League can get away with whatever the hell they
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: want to get away with. And power corrupts, and ultimate
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: power corrupts. Ultimately, that's a human reality, and I think
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: we saw it with regard to the National Football League
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: and the Super Bowl, whether it was all by design,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: by accident, or somewhere in the middle, the reality is
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: still the same. Now there's a somewhat shifting gears away
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: from the super Bowl, but to a somewhat similar issue.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: We've got issues of corporate conflicts and Donald Trump being
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: litigious and medium malpractice and the changing nature of the
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: world now that Donald Trump is president, and the use
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: of lawsuits to try to intimidate these news media outlets
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: that have lost all their leverage and have corporate entities
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: that just don't care about journalism anymore and don't care
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: about the offending their journalistic operations because their journalistic operations
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: aren't bringing in money anymore, not nearly the way they
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: used to. And so everything has changed, and Donald Trump
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: has taken advantage of this. We've saw it with regard
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: to the settlement in the ABC George Stepanopolis case where
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: ABC caved in a situation where I don't think they
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: actually committed a defamation against Donald Trump, although there was
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: a case to be made there, but in order to
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: avoid that kind of a situation a long extended lawsuit
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: and a trial, ABC caved and gave Donald Trump's presidential
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: library fifteen million dollars and paid attorney's fees, and Trump
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: absolutely won that situation. Well, there's a similar circumstance going
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: on with CBS, and this deals with a case that
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: I don't think Trump has nearly as strong a case
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: on because it isn't about defamation. It's about election interference,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: whatever the hell that means, where he's suing CBS and
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: sixty minutes because of the editing of an interview involving
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: Kamala Harris during the presidential campaign. This is something we
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: discussed at the time on the podcast, and you know,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: it was very obvious that sixty minutes had done something
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: that was very strange and probably an example of medium malpractice,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: certainly not in keeping with journalistic standards. Basically, what was
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: alleged was that one time CBS put out a question
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: and an answer that sounded one way, and then they
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: put out the same question and there was a different
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: answer by Kamala Harris, and the second version sounded a
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: hell of a lot better than the first version, where
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: the first version was her giving a word solid and
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: direct response to the question by Bill Whittaker of sixty
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: Minutes and then the second one was her being much stronger,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: much more direct, and while the answer still didn't make
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: a lot of sense, it at least sounded strong. It
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: at least wasn't a word salad, and you know, it
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: was at least passable. And so you know, that sparked
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: Trump suing CBS and a whole slew of stories about
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: whether or not you know, there was other examples of
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: malfeasans within that interview. And then of course Trump wins
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: the election and he becomes president, and now his guy
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: is the head of the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: Now this is where to me. Look, no one hates
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: CBS and what they apparently did here more than me.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: But I'm very queasy about the idea of using the
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: FCC as leverage to get journalistic institutions to do your
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: bidding out of fear of their corporate entities losing their licenses.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: And that has been directly threatened by Trump and effectively
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: by the SEC. Well, CBS, in the midst of this
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: threat and in the midst of this lawsuit caved and
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: gave up the transcript and the full unedited interview between
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: Bill Whittaker and Kamala Harris, and if you haven't had
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: a chance to do so, I urge you to take
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: a look at it, because there's no question that Kambala
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: Harris comes off much worse in the full unedited interview
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: than she did in what was portrayed on air with
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: lots of edis. That's not unusual. I mean, can we
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: be real for a second. I guarantee every time Donald
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: Trump tapes the interview with Sean Hannity, only the good stuff,
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: only the stuff that makes Donald Trump look good, gets aired.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: That's just the normal it's done now because it's not
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: about journalism, it's about doing the bidding for your side.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: And you know, let's go. I guarantee Donald Trump has
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: said something stupid, really stupid to Sean Hannity or to
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: someone of that ilk, and they just decide to edit
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: it out because that's the mentality now. I mean that
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: never used to be the mentality, but now that we're
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: living in a world of partisan media where it's not
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: about journalism, it's about giving therapy to your side, telling
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: your side what they want to hear. And so your
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: side wants to hear how great Donald Trump is. You're
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: not going to portray him as anything but great. It's
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: a commercial and CBS at least still tries to claim,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: which maybe in some ways is worse, that they're objective.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: But they're clearly not objective, and that was shown by
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: all the things that they did not air from the
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: Kamala Harris interview. To me, the most interesting part, now,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: this would have gotten into some sort of an ethical
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: question because it was unclear as to whether or not
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: Harris still expected that they were being taped and that
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: this was still part of the interview. But at the
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: end they basically, you know, Harris cops to the fact
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: that in order to pay for what she wants to do,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: we're gonna have to increase taxes. Now, that's an incredibly
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: significant thing in the middle of a presidential campaign, but
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: that never got aired. That never got aired, And to me,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, I feel very confident. I feel very confident
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: that if the interview had been with Donald Trump, and
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: they got Donald Trump on camera saying that in order
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: to pay for what he wants to do, we're gonna
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: have to increase taxes, that would have somehow some way
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: made it out into the public sphere. That would have
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: been known by voters. There's no question in my mind,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: they would have gotten around the ethics question there. But
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: that's not what happened with Kamala Harris because, whether consciously
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: subconsciously somewhere in between, CBS was trying to protect Kamala Harris.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: They were not trying to do his search and destroy
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: mission on her. Now, to be clear, Bill Whittaker asked
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: some good questions. I complimented Bill Whitaker at the time,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: but you know, there's there's asking good questions and then
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: there's other people doing the editing. I don't you know.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: I'm sure at Whittaker had some level of influence, but
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: I don't think he had control over the editing of
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: the interview, and he certainly didn't have control over the
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: different versions that different entities at CBS ended up using,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: whether it was on air or online. And that's really
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: what got CBS in trouble here. The smoking gun of
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: all this was that we have a CBS News entity
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: in one case showing one depiction of a question and
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: an answer, and another CBS entity using a completely different
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: version of the same question with a totally different Kamala
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: Harris answer, and the totally different Kamala Harris answer is
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: a heck of a lot better, or at least lay
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: less bad for her, wasn't a word salad, and depicted
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: her as much stronger on the issue than the first version.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: Just for the record, I'm gonna play a clip here.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: This is what actually happened. The first thing you're gonna
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: hear is Bill Whittaker asking you a question and the
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: actual word salad answer as it happened in real life
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: from Kamala Harris. And then you're gonna hear the same
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: question again, and what a different entity of CBS News
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: used to depict what actually transpired. And you're gonna see
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: that the two Kamala Harris answers are very, very substantively
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: and stylistically different. And so here's what that sounds like,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: to try to give you a sense of what actually happened,
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: and then how CBS, at least one element of CBS
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: News edited it.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 3: But it seems that Prime Minister net and Yah who
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 3: is not listening.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 4: We're not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: the United States to be clear about where we stand
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 4: on the need for this war to end.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: But it seems that Prime Minister net and Yah, who
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: is not listening. The Wall Street Journal said he that
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: your administration has repeatedly been blindsided by net and Yahoo,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: and in fact, he has rebuffed just about all of
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: your administrations and treaties.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 4: Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 4: in a number of movements in that region by Israel
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 4: that we're very much prompted by or a result of
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 4: many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 4: in the region. And we're not going to stop doing that.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 4: We're not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 4: the United States to be clear about where we stand
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 4: on the need for this war to end.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: Now, that's really bad. I mean that is clear cut,
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: literally clear cut evidence of editing an interview to make
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: Kamala Harris look a heck a lot better than she
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: actually did. And that's wrong. Now, But is that illegal?
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: See the problem here is, Okay, how are you defining
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: you know, that being a violation of FCC standards or
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: that being election interference? Because you have to be very
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: very clear about what the rules are, because are you
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: not going to allow any editing at all? You understand, right,
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: for something to have legal bearing, there has to be
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: very very specific rules. Otherwise it's a slippery slope in
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: either one direction or the other. So you're not allow
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: any editing at all. By the way, you know, I
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have any problem, especially in this date age with
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: the Internet and social media what have you. Entire interviews
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: with major figures ought to be made available on a
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: routine basis. That ought to be the normal editorial procedure
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: in this day and age. It's so antiquated to still be.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: I get where on your evening newscast you only have
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: a couple of minutes to devote to it, and you
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: know that is clearly edited, and maybe you should say
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: this is an edited version of the interview, though it's
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: obviously implied and most viewers understand it. But I have
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: no problem at all, especially in a presidential election, with
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: the idea that news outlets ought to put an entire
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: interview online. I mean, this is an issue that I'm
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: very well familiar with. For instance, when I agreed and
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: made the deal with Matt lau or an NBC in
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: the Today Show to do an interview with Dottie Sandusky
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: and myself from Dottie Sandusky's home. One of the most
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: important elements of The deal to me was I'm getting
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: to tape this interview myself and that the whole interview
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: would be put online. That's you know, that was part
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: of the deal which they agreed to, and I did
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: that for very specific reasons. Now they were different, kind
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: of in the opposite direction of the Kamal error situation,
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: because I didn't want there to be something edited out
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: of context, and I wanted to have proof of what
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: was really transpiring. It was basically just to keep NBC
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: honest and you know, and they allowed me to do that.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: And you know, for for most for most part, their
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: editing was honest. And you know, there were problems with
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: the interview, but that had nothing to do with the
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: editing really. So that was I think an important and
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: smart thing for me to do, it for anybody that
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: situation to do, especially when they're on the side of
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: an uh you know, the unpopular side of a controversial
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: issue where the news outlet has an obvious bias against them. Well,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: this is the opposite direction where CBS News has a
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: clear bias in favor of Kamala Harris. And so when
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: you then through a mistake. Basically, I think this was
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: an error by CBS. This was an oversight. This is
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: a situation where I'm sure they wish they hadn't done this,
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: where they put out two different versions of Harris's answer
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: to the same question and people go, aha, what else
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: is going on here? Well, there wasn't that much else
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: going on here. And as far as it being election interference,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: which is the core of Trump's lawsuit against CBS, a
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: lawsuit that rumors have been circulating for a long time,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: that paramount is going to settle, much to the outrage
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: of the CBS news personnel. And I can understand why,
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: because I don't know what good comes of that other
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: than getting rid of a headache with the current president
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: of the United States. Okay, what's what's the violation? Yes,
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: it was an it was it was bad journalism, and
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: yes it eventually got exposed, and that's good now. And
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: in my view, it shouldn't have taken the FCC to
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: intimidate CBS into exposing the journalistic malfeasans because this ought
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: to be standard operating procedure, especially for presidential candidates doing interviews.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: But tell me what the rule is. That's what I'm
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: always concerned about. Tell me what the violation is are
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: you not allowed to edit interviews at all? Because if
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: that's the case, then that's gonna cast a massive problem
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: from a purely from a time perspective, because obviously interviews
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: are way too long to play in their entirety in
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: the midst of, for instance, a normal newscast. It's not realistic.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: So you I need to have some sort of editing.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: So where do you draw that line. There should be
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: a difference between an ethical violation and a legal violation.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: What CBS did was wrong, and hopefully they've paid some
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: sort of a price for it. Now you may say, well, John,
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: the only reason why they paid the price is because
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: Trump sued and the FCC intimidated them. I acknowledge that
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: it's unfortunate that that's the world we're living in. I
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: think that's problematic that it took a lawsuit and FCC
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: intimidation to do this. CBS should have done this on
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: their own. They're wrong. Everybody's wrong, which is so often
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: the case in this situation. Everybody's wrong to a certain
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: degree on this and all of it's very, very troubling
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: from the standpoint of what's left of journalism. And this
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: is a particularly interesting situation for me because I did
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: an entire documentary film about the two thousand and eight
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: presidential election called Medium Malpractice, How Obama Got elected than
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: Palin was Targeted, which featured the only interview that Sarah
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: Palin ever did about the media coverage of the two
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: thousand and eight election, which made enormous amounts of news
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: and put me on every television talk show there was,
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: including The View and The Today Show with Matt lower
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: and virtually every show on Fox News, all because of
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: that Katie Kirk Sarah Palin interview. That was not the
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: whole element of it, but that was a huge part
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: of this whole equation, which Katie Kirk was working for
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: the same CBS at the time. So and here we have,
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: you know, the vice President the United States and Kamala Harris,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: and in Sarah Palin, we had the potential next vice
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: president of the United States, and Katie Kirk is on
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: a search and destroy mission for her. It couldn't be
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: more obvious. And a huge part of my Sarah Palin
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: interview is about how there was some very nefarious editing
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: of that interview, and that's all part of the record. So,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I got the he b gbis
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: and you know PTSD. Thinking back to my entire Sarah
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: Palin experience in light of this CBS sixty minutes controversy
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: involving Harris, where I am positive that if you saw
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: the entire Sarah Palin Katie Kirk interview, that Katie Kirk
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: would end up looking worse and Sarah Palin would end
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: up looking better. Now, with Sarah Palin perfect, No, I've
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: been through that one hundred times. She was put in
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: an impossible situation. No one could have been ready under
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: those circumstances, but she was nothing like what was portrayed
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: in the news media, and she got destroyed by the
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: news media. And if we lived then in the media
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: atmosphere that we live in now, I actually think Sarah
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: Palin would have survived because I think Donald Trump has
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: completely and totally changed the game. Trump has completely changed
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: the game, and we've seen enormous amounts of evidence of
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: that in just the last week. I mean, Sarah Palin
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: was basically living in the dark ages. She was still
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: in the era where Republicans were playing nice. She was
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: in a straight jacket, and you know, in today's day
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: and age, Sarah Palin's response to what was done to
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: her would have been completely different, and I think it
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: might have been very effective.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 4: Now.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: Would it have been effective in two thousand and eight,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but I think she was capable of
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: that kind of counterattack. And in fact, I truly believe
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: that a lot of Trump's philosophy with regard to how
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: he treats the media was influenced by what happened to
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: Sarah Palin. I mean, he and Palin were allies for
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: a while, and then he apparently discarded her because frankly,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: I think she was at one point kind of a
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: threat to him, because she really was in some ways
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: Trump before Trump was. Trump basically took over the persona
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: that Palin created after she had been destroyed by the media,
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: and Trump learned a lot of lessons from that, and
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: now that he's been elected a second time and has
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: no fucks left to give, he is really letting it
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: all out. And there have been several examples of that
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: in just the last few days. So I want to
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: go through them because they don't really have much in
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: common except for they exposed Trump's philosophy and strategy when
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: it comes to dealing with the media. Now, to be clear,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: not too many people can get away with this kind
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: of stuff, but Trump clearly can. And now that he
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: realizes that he can, he is letting it all hang out,
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: and he is on the attack constantly. And you know,
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: his fans love it. Is it presidential? Often?
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 5: Know?
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: Is it humorous? Almost always? Yes? So here are three
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: clips that I want to play that are under this
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: heading of Trump changing the game and now really just
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: constantly just not even giving the media any respect at all,
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: even a modicum of respect. And look, the media deserves
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: a lot of blame for how they're in this position.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: If the media had not blown their relationship of trust
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: with the American people, Trump probably couldn't get away with us,
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: at least not with a large enough number of people
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: to make it be effective for him. But now that
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: the news media has basically clowned itself and lost all
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: credibility and lost all trust, they have no moral standing
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: to back them up. They can't win against a Trump
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: who's constantly on the attack and is very very good
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: at This example occurs during one of Trump's impromptu press conferences.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: And boy, I mean he is incredibly accessible to the
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: press now because he has nothing to fear because he
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: knows they can't lay a glove on him for some
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: of the reasons I just stated, and also because it's
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: just like target practice for him now, and even if
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: he happens to screw up, there's no ramification, no repercussion,
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: no accountability, because the right wing media is not going
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: to hold him accountable when the left wing media has
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: no power anymore. So here is one of those impromptu
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: press conferences that Trump is doing on a routine basis
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: now on Air Force one, and he gets asked a question, which,
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: to be fair, I don't even understand either, from a
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: reporter from the Huffington Post, And instead of addressing the question,
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: Trump just goes off on the Huffington Post and moves on.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: And here's what that sounded like.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 6: President suggested that if there's the three point rules in
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 6: a way that you don't like, they can just ste
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 6: close it by themself.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: You would agree with them.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know even what you talk to him that
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: needed to you?
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 5: Who you with?
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: I'm closer who.
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: I'm no wonder. I thought they I thought they died.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: Are they still around? I haven't read them in years.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: I thought they'd died.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: Well, Now, any other previous president probably wouldn't have gotten
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: away with that because it's very unpresidential. But Trump's fans
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: love it. And you know, Trump has this superpower, this
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: magic power, where he can get away with things that
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: other people can't because he has completely changed the game
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: and he knows that certain media outlets have no power
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: over him at all, and he's very effective at dodging
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: legitimate questions by using the same tactic, though this one
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: didn't directly deal with the media itself. Here he was
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: in the Oval Office being asked a question about the
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is one of the government
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: agencies that Trump and Elon Musk are targeting for extinction,
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: and instead of although he does somewhat directly address the
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: issue of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which I think
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: is a complicated one. I don't know that this is
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: clear cut, because there are some important things that the
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau does. But Trump instead focuses on
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: the invoking of the name Elizabeth Warren, the senator from
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: Massachusetts who famously pretended to be a Native American during
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: parts of her career, and which in whom Trump has
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: famously and hilariously nicknamed Pocahontas. So he latches onto the
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warren part of this and just goes off on
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warren in relations ship to the Consumer Financial Protection
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: Bureau President regarding.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 7: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau of Democrats in seating Elizabeth
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 7: Warren have said that by freezing and it's getting big
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 7: banks and jo corporations at green light.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 6: Pocahontas just the faker.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: You know, that was set up to destroy people. She
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: used that as.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 6: Her little personal agency to go around and destroy people.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: And she's a fake.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 6: Just like she said she was an Indian and she
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 6: wasn't an Indian.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: You have more Indian blood in you than she has.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 6: If she went to college based on the fact that
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 6: she was an Indian, she got jobs based on the
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 6: fact that she was an Indian.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: She's a fake.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 6: That was that was set up to destroy some very
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 6: good people, and it worked.
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: I mean it worked a lot of a lot of
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: great people.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 6: I'll tell you, Before I ever heard the term, people
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 6: would come up to me in the Midwest and areas
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 6: that say, Sarah'm being destroyed by them. They use that
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 6: to destroy people. She's a nasty woman. She's a really
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 6: nasty woman. Despite her phony beer commercial.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: Now, we did the right thing. That was a very
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: important thing to get rid of it. And it was
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: also a waste.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 6: I mean, number one, it was a bad group of
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 6: people running it, but it was also a waste.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: If you looked at when.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 6: She really ran it, Wow, that was a vicious group
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 6: of people.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: They really destroyed a lot of people.
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: Use confirm its your goals to have a totally eliminated agency.
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 6: Yeah, because we're trying to get rid of waste, fraud,
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 6: and abuse.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: You know what, I'll allow it. I'll allow that one
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: when it comes to Elizabeth Warren because I really have
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: disdain for her and what she did, specifically with regard
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: to claiming to be a Native American. What Trump uses
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: the attack on Warren to completely dodge a legitimate question.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: And this is really, I think part of the larger
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: issue when it comes to the story that has dominated
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: the news cycle for at least the last week or so,
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: which is Elon Musk's attempt, through the use of DOGE
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: to the Department of Government Efficiency to try to get
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: rid of waste and corruption and spending that we can
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: we can do without, to try to theoretically reduce the
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: deficit and get government spending finally under control, something that
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: I'm philosophically completely and spiritually totally in favor of. But
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: I do have concerns about the methods that are being used.
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: And there's another example. This is the third clip I
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: want to play from Trump, where the media is clearly,
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: clearly trying to create a wedge between Donald Trump and
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: Elon Musk. This is obviously strategic now it is a
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: legitimate storyline. This is unprecedented in American history where we
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: have this unelected, richest man in the world who is
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: acting and it's not an exaggeration to say as if
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: he's like a de facto co president, and that's never
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: happened before. I mean, Musk has never been elected to anything,
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: He's never even gone through Senate confirmation for anything, and
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: he apparently is being given or is usurping, all sorts
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: of enormous power regarding how the federal government operates. And
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: it is always obvious I have mentioned this many times
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: to many other people have as well that one of
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: the keys to whether or not the Trump presidency is
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: going to be a success is whether or not the
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: Musk Trump relationship or the Trump Musk relationship is able
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: to withstand the attempts by the news media to just
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: Detroit because you've got two guys with massive egos, and
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: you know, there's all sorts of potential pitfalls here. I mean,
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: it's kind of remarkable that the thing has is gone
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: as well as it has so far. I mean, I
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: think so far, what we're seeing is that Trump and
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: Musk fully understand that the media is trying to create
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: a wedge between them. They're aware of it, and they're
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: seemingly dedicated to not letting that happen. And I think
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: they've also been in a foxhole together and that tends
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: to forge a real bond. And so you know, right now,
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: I would say that the Musk Trump relationship is extremely good.
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: But over time, there's a very good chance that that's
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: not going to be the case. And if that does
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: get severed, then I think the Trump presidency is in
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: big trouble. The second term of Donald Trump is in
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: big trouble. And so when Time magazine puts Elon Musk
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: on the cover and puts him behind the desk of
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: the President in the Oval office, that's an obvious and
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: clear shot across the bow at the Trump Musk relationship.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: I mean that is intended. Again, there's some legitimacy to it.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's not a significant and real news
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: story that deserves news analysis. It absolutely does, because, as
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: I said, this is unprecedented and very very significant what's
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: happening here on a number of levels. So it is
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: a story. But there's no question that part of the
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: motivation here, part of why Time magazine is doing this
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: and putting Musk on the cover in such a provocative way,
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: is to get under the skin of Donald Trump one
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: hundred percent. That is part of the agenda here. And
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: so Trump got asked at the White House about this,
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: and Trump did not take the bait, and in fact,
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: he went back to his is now normal modus operandi,
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: which is to attack the media outlet itself and to
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: diminish it to market. And much like the Hulpington Post
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: claim that he wasn't even aware that it was still
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: even in business. And here's what that sounded like.
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 7: If you have a reaction to the new Time magazine
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 7: cover that has Elon Musk sitting behind your resolute desk, muscoga.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: Recommend his Time magazine still in business. I didn't even
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: know that.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: I discuss.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 2: Is doing a great job.
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 6: Uh, he's finding tremendous fraud and corruption and waste. You
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 6: see it with the U. S, A, I. D. But
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 6: you're going to see it even more so with other
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 6: agencies and other parts of government. He's got a staff
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 6: that's fantastic. He's wanted to be to do this for
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 6: a long time. And if everybody else knew it was existent,
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 6: but I think never so much. When you look at usaid,
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 6: that's a uh, that's a fraud.
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: The whole thing is a fraud. Very little, very little
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 2: being put to good use.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: Now, that's an effective way of avoiding the core issue.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: And the core issue is Elon Musk's role in government
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: and Trump's relationship with him, and whether or not that
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: could be jeopardized by the media's clearcut attempt to create
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: division between Trump and Musk, to create jealousies between Trump
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: and Musk, and so far there is no indication that
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: that has been successful. In fact, and I don't know
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: whether or not this was in reaction to the Time
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: magazine cover or whatever. He kind of seems counterintuitive, so
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: I never know for sure what strategy and what's coincidence
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: When it comes to Trump. But Elon Musk and Donald
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: Trump did a remarkable and unprecedented press availability in the
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: Oval office. I mean, there were so many elements of
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: this that were just so weird. Some people might think
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: it was awesome. There were parts of this that were great.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, you had the richest man in the world
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: standing next to the very desk that Time magazine had
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: depicted Musk sitting behind on their cover. Trump was behind
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: that desk. There's a whole room full of media asking
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: questions of both Trump and Musk. For much of the time,
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: Musk has one of his children sitting on his shoulders
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: while he's answering these questions. And much of this has
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: to do with this issue of Doge and the tactics
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: that are being used to try to get rid of
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: what Musk and others perceive as government waste or corruption.
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: And how now it appears as it the left's tactic
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: here to fight back is to go into the courts.
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: Now everything is going into the courts, and most of
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: the court ruling so far are going against Doge and
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: Musk and the Trump administration's attempts here. And before I
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: go further on this, I just want to make it
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: very clear that philosophically, I am totally on board with
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: Elon Musk and his efforts here. This is so typical
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: of my view of Elon Musk. I am constantly conflicted
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: by Elon Musk. There is so much to like there.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, the best version, the best view
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: of Elon Musk is that this is a guy who
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: is this genius who really cares about the future of America.
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: He's willing to put in the line, his money on
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: the line, his reputation on the line, his time on
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: the line. By the way, I have no idea how
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: Elon Musk has as much time to do all the
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: things that he's doing as he does. I mean the
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: amount of times that he or posts on X, not alone,
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: given all the I mean I post on X about
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: the same amount as Elon Musk does, and it takes
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: most of my day. I have no idea how Elon
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: Musk has time to do anything else, because, in theory,
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: in order to do a post, he's got to do
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: some research into what he's posting, whether it's accurate, what
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: he's retweeting, whether or not that's based on anything real.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: By ways, sometimes I think he doesn't do a predicularly
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: good job of that. I think he falls for a
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: lot of false stories, which is one of the reasons
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: why I'm conflicted about Elon Musk. But in theory, he's
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: Manna from heaven. I mean, you know, some sort of
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: superhero iron Man sent here to save the country. But
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: the conflicting part comes in not just that. I think
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: he's too busy and sliced too thin, and things are
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: gonna fall through the cracks, and he's gonna say things
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: that aren't accurate, and he's gonna do things that aren't right,
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: and he's gonna jump on things that then aren't true true,
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: and go down paths that maybe aren't the right way
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: to go. But there's also the larger picture, and that
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: is what kind of a country do we live in?
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: What is our system of government? Which I'm not sure
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: based upon some of Musk's public statements, he fully understands.
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm I'm of the view we are a
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: democratic republic and we are absolutely positively not a monarchy.
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: And Trump and Musk seem to be acting as if
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: this is some sort of a monarchy, some sort of
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: a in their minds, benevolent dictatorship. Now, benevolent dictatorship, when
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: you know the leader is super smart, is by far
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: the most efficient form of government by far. But that's
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: not what we are and there are dangers inherent in that.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: Maybe not under this regime or this administration, but certainly
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: if this is where we now go in the future,
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: there's all sorts of problems that this would cause under
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: the best case scenario, what happens when a democratic administration
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: takes over. Now, there are those who might say, well, okay, John, yep,
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: that's danger, but we have no choice. Our backs are
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: against the wall. We are facing imminent bankruptcy in this country.
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: We are so far gone from what the founding father's
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: ever envisioned that none of that really matters anymore. We're
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: in a fight for our lives. This is a fight
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: for survival. We have the power right now, and Musk
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: happens to be the only guy who has the wherewithal,
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: the ability and the opportunity to do this, and so
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: let him go. And you know what, that is an
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: argument that I can certainly understand. I get it, I
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: get it. It's kind of like the Al Davis old
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: Oakland Raiders just win baby argument. Doesn't matter how you
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: do it. You know, these are desperate times that require
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: desperate measures when you're looking at the long term future
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: of the country, especially from a financial perspective and a
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: debt standpoint. I get all that. So that's why I'm conflicted.
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: I don't think this is easy, but I have grave
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: concerns about how this is all going down, grave concerns.
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: I don't have concerns about what the intent is. I
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: don't think like a lot of liberals do that somehow
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: Musk is trying to take over the world and once
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: your personal data and all that kind of stuff. I
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: think his intentions are one hundred percent good here, or
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: almost one hundred percent good. He's a human being, so
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: probably not one hundred percent good. But by and large,
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: I'm not concerned about his intentions. I'm not even concerned
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: that much about his decision making with regard to what's
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: in the best interest of the country and what's not.
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: I think he's solid there, But the methods are what
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: very much concerned me. And one of the reasons why
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: I was very skeptical that DOJE was gonna have any
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: real impact was that, I guess, naively I thought this
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: was gonna be a situation where we went through the
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: legislative process, but that's clearly never been the intention. It
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: certainly hasn't been the execution. Legislation has nothing to do
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: with this. Congress has nothing to do with this. This
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: is essentially one unelected guy with the president's blessing, going
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: on a search and destroy mission, which again, is probably
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: the only way that it can get done. I acknowledge
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: that because our political system is so totally broken and
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: Republicans in this case have such small majorities in the
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: House and the Senate, and there's just no possible way
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: to get legislation through because inherently, when you cut jobs
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: and you cut spending, you're gonna piss people off. And
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: nobody wants to piss people off in their own district
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: or their own state when they're up for reelection. Nobody's
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: going to do that, which is why spending has exploded
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: over the last several decades. It's inherently going to occur
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: because of our broken political system and the fact that
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: we don't have anybody with courage in Congress, and so
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: this thing got more and more bloated and more and
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: more out of control. And yes, usaid I understand that
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: the Trump bands think, aha, this is the deep state.
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: You know what, Effectively it was a deep state. It
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: wasn't a deep state conspiracy. They're not all on the
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: same you know email or they don't all get the
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: same memo. They're all not organized to try to get Trump.
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: But yes, there was one hundred percent a deep state
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: where a ridiculous amount of money was being used to
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: promote liberal agenda items not in the United States, one
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: hundred percent. And should that be gotten rid of. Absolutely
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: it ought to be gotten rid of in the right
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: way ideally, But I'm all in favor of getting rid
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: of that. By the way, the low hanging fruit here,
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: and there's so much low hanging fruit when it comes
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: to federal government waste and corruption and what have you.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: But once you get past that, it's gonna be much
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: more difficult because you're eventually going to hit bone. So,
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: you know, the low hanging fruit is important, but you're
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: not talking about real money in the overall scheme of
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: the massive monster that is the federal government in our
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: incredible debt and deficit. By simply going after the low
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: hanging fruit, that's not going to happen. But back through
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: the process part of this. Ideally this would be done
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: through Congress. They obviously understood they couldn't do that. So
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: now they're going basically like, this is a mafia operation.
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: I use that metaphor a lot. Trump likes to think
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: of himself as a mafia boss. Well, in the mafia,
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: your power is based upon is the person in charge
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: gonna listen to you or not? Is the person with
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: the keys to the building gonna do what you tell
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: them to do or not. I mean, that's literally what
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: we've gotten to already. The person with the keys to
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: the building, are they on your side or on somebody
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: else's side? And that, to me is a very scary proposition.
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: That is not the way the US government should be running.
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: We are a nation of laws, not men. Men can
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: change their allegiances on a dime. But right now it
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: appears as if Musk and Trump are counting on the
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: fact that they can get into a situation where eventually
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: the person with the metaphorical keys and sometimes the literal
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: keys are willing to listen to them and give them
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: access to the information that they need the building whatever,
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: keep keep other people out of the building, Like the
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: Department of education, that kind of stuff. And I understand
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: why Trump fans love this, I mean the dunking on
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: liberals and pissing them off and and you know, making
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: them cry I and crushing the deep state. I get it,
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: totally get it. But there are legitimate concerns here as
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: far as procedure and principle and what kind of a
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: country we are. That being said, I fully get why
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: Musk realizes that this is imperative and there's no other effective,
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: efficient way of doing this. And you know the other
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: part of Musk, Trump and Musk I mix up in
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: my head already. Well, the other part of Musk that
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: I have to at least mention is that I'm not
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: sure does himself. I know why his fans love this,
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure he does himself. And he real favors
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: when he goes out of his way to make a
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: mockery of the whole situation, which is something that he
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: did earlier this week where he changed his Twitter handle
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: to some version of the name Harry Balls. He changed
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: his Twitter handle to Harry Balls. I'm not sure why
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: he did that, but hilariously, CNN and Dana Bash actually
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: reported that Elon Musk the co president in their minds,
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: has changed his Twitter ex handle to Harry Balls, and
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: Dana Bash actually says the name Harry Balls. Now. I
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: would like to believe, and I'm pretty sure this is true,
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: the Dana Bash didn't do this being fooled that you
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: didn't have any idea what the name Harry Balls was
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: really supposed to me. I don't think that she or
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: CNN are that dumb. I mean, we've had situations like that.
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: Kind of stuff has happened in the past in other
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: news stories, but I don't think this is one of
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: those situations. But for whatever reason, CNN decided that this
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: was a good idea to actually use the name Harry
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: Balls on CNN. And here's what it sounded like when
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: Dana Bash reported it on CNN.
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 8: Now, the Disruptor in Chief, Elon Musk, who apparently has
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 8: adopted the alias at least he changed his social media
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 8: handle to Harry Balls, tweeted this morning democracy in America
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 8: is being destroyed by judicial coup. An activist judge is
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 8: not a real judge.
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: Now, I will fully acknowledge that that's hilarious and must
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: use this as an excuse to change his name back
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: to Elon Musk because he tweeted out the video of
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: Dana Bash doing that, and he said in the description,
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: I made them say my name. And of course millions
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: and millions of people viewed this, and you know, applauded
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: Musk and it's hilarious. And he pulled this, I guess
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: a prank on CNN where they were forced to use
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: the name Harry Balls. But to what end? I mean,
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: it's it's funny. I've got I think, a pretty good
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: sense of humor. I admire that in somebody. But what
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: effect did that have? What positive effect did that have?
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: Especially when your credibility, your personal credibility, is at the
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: heart of whether or not this effort is going to
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: be successful or not. And what you say has to
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: have credibility, it has to be truthful. And a lot
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: of things that Elon Musk says publicly, especially on his
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: Twitter or x feed, are not one hundred percent truthful.
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: This is part of what concerns me about his time management.
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: He can't possibly have the time to do the due
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: diligence and the vetting necessary to be able to determine
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: what some anonymous Twitter account has decided was an example
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: of wasteful or corrupt spending by the federal government, and
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: then he retweets it or repost it and says, oh,
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: this is outrageous, and you know, tens of millions of
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: people get exposed to that and then not have it
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: be true. And we've already seen a couple of examples
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: of that. Musk was asked about one of them at
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: that remarkable Oval Office prest conference where literally Musk has
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: one of his kids on his shoulders and Trump is
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: sitting behind the desk just a couple of feet away
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: from him. And this was a very legitim a question
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: that it was asked about this report that somehow we
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: had spend fifty million dollars on condoms for Hamas and
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: that turned out not to be true. And I have
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: to say, must candles this question very very well. A
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: lot of people on the left used it as aha,
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: he's acknowledging that he's not always going to tell the truth,
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: because at one point he says, here, there's going to
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: be things I say that aren't true, which is problematic
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: I will fully acknowledge, but he at least says, and
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: when that happens, we'll correct it, which you so by
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: and large. I like this answer, but I think it
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: also exposes the problem here, especially when Elon Musk is
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: only apparently one man. I'm convinced there might be more
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: than one Elon Musk based upon all the things that
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: he has going on at one time. But he's only
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: one man. This is not where his expertise. Expertise lies,
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: and I frankly don't think he's that great at being
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: able to determine what's true and what's not. I consider
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: that to be in my wheelhouse. Now. I'm not perfect
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: at it, but I think I'm better than just about
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: anybody else, almost to a fault, because I am constantly
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: having to respond to people asking me you usually, you know,
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: via emails or direct messages, Hey, Zig is this story true?
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: And then I have to go and spend a ridiculous
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: amount of time simply to respond to a message from
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: somebody I don't even know. I get it, you know,
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: in a weird way. It's a compliment, but it's a
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: pain in the ass. I'm very good at that. Now.
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: There are a ton of things I'm terrible at that
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: Elon Musk is great at. But Elon Musk is not
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: great at determining whether a story is true or not.
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: He has jumped on many bullshit stories. He has a
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: clear conspiratorial strain in his DNA and his thinking, which
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: is very you know, trump like, but is also very
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: troubling and gets him into a lot of prices. So anyway,
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: here is that statement. In response to the question about
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: this story involving condoms for hermas.
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 9: Must you said on x that an example of the
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 9: fruit that you have cited was fifty million dollars of
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 9: condoms was sent to Gaza. But after the fact check
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 9: this apparently Gaza in Mozambique and the program was to
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 9: protect them against HIV. So can you correct these statements?
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 9: It wasn't sent to Hamas. Actually it was sent to Musambique,
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 9: which makes sense why condoms was sent there. And how
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 9: can we make sure that all the statements that you
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 9: said were correct so we can trust what you're saying.
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 5: Well, first of all, some of the things that I
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 5: say will be incorrect and should be corrected. So nobody's
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 5: going to pad one thousands, I mean any you know,
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 5: we will make mistakes, but will act quickly to correct
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 5: any mistakes. So you know, if the I'm not sure
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 5: we should be sending fifty million dollars with the condoms anywhere. Frank,
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 5: I'm not sure that's something Americans would be really excited about.
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: Again, that answer, right, there is really a rarshack test
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: for how you view Elon Musk. The left saw it
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: as Aha, he doesn't know what he's doing, he's telling untruth.
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: The right looked at it and said, now, this is
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: a guy who is totally sincere. He's being transparent, he's
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: trying to get it right, and he's willing to acknowledge
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: when he's wrong. By the way, I will give mus
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: credit for this. Donald Trump never would have given that answer.
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump never would have had the humility the humility
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: to give that kind of an answer. I'm very curious
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: as to what Trump thought of Musk's answer there. There
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: was no discernible reaction from Trump when Musk said what
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: he did, But by and large I thought that was
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: a good answer. But it still exposes the overall problem.
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: And it has been extremely frustrat over the last couple
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: of weeks to be able to try to discern what
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: is true and what is not when it comes to
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: these allegations of wasteful and corrupt spending by the federal government.
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: And some of this has absolutely been true. A lot
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: of it is very fishy. To me, None of us
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: has been that surprising. I mean, when you have this
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: much money being spent by, you know, people who are
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: bureaucrats and lifelong liberal government employees, and you've just come
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: out of a liberal administration, of course you're going to
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: have a lot of crazy, absurd spending. By the way,
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: I do think it should be pointed out that I
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: have never heard and I don't even know, you know,
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: to what extent this is true or not, But I'm
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: just throwing this out there is Hey, why is it
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: we haven't seen any right wing stories about how much
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: of this spending was happening during the first Trump administration.
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: Why has that not been a narrative at all? Because
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: I guarantee you that a huge portion of the spending
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: that is being targeted right now was still going on,
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: especially under USAID in the Trump administration the first time.
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: Of course, Trump's fans will say, oh, well, he was
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 1: new to the game then, and you know he was naive,
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: and you know that he didn't understand about the deep state. Okay, whatever,
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: I mean to me, that's an important point here is
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: this didn't suddenly happen in the last four years with
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 1: Biden in office. This happened as well during the first
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: Trump administration. And there's also another element of hypocrisy here,
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: which is over his lifetime, Donald Trump as well as
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: Elon Musk, have both benefited directly or indirectly from government
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: subsidies that there's one hundred percent factual one hundred percent
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: Must probably more so than Trump, and so there's a
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: lot of hypocrisy going on here for the spending from
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: the first Trump administration and then the personal history of
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: both Trump and Must benefiting from government subsidies. Not all
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: government subsidies are bad. A lot of them are. A
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: lot of them are mostly bad. And that's the biggest
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: problem is the one that's the ones that are mostly bad,
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: mostly wasteful, maybe even corrupt. But it's almost impossible to
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: only get rid of the bad part. It's really in
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: a situation where you've got to get rid of the
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: baby with the bathwater, so to speak. And this becomes
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: much much more difficult in reality than it is in theory,
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: which is part of why Congress is useful, useless, useless,
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: not useful useless in these situations and why we have
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: gotten such a ridiculously bloated federal government and all this
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: insane amount of spending. This was not always the way
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 1: it was, but it literally is like this monster that
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: once it gets out of control, you cannot curtail it.
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: And Musk is trying in one last desperate attempt to,
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: if not kill the monster, at least get it under
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: control because it before it devours all of us. And
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: I again flaud and support that effort, I have concerns
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: about the way it's being done and whether or not
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: it's ever actually going to be effective. Let me give
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: you one kind of real world example. I don't know
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: if this is a good example or not about the
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: problem when it comes to trying to get rid of
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: of wasteful spending. So, and I'm just mentioning this because
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: this is real world and it just happened to happen
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: with us recently in our family. So we have the
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: worst television setup that I can possibly imagine, for complicated reasons,
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: but we still are on cable, even though we have
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: streaming as well. But we have cable and streaming, and
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: so outside of our streaming, we have this frontier communications
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: cable which is literally the worst company I have ever
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: dealt with in my entire life. And I'm not exaggerating.
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: I hate Frontier Communications with a white hot passion. I mean,
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: dealing with them is impossible. They are completely incompetent. The
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: cable sucks, most of the channels are unreliable. We are
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: paying a ridiculous amount of money, over three hundred dollars
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: a month for cable. Part of why we keepe it
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 1: is because on our DVR is basically half my television career,
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: all sorts of old television appearances that there's no way
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: to access them anywhere else. That's not the whole reason,
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: but that's part of it, and so that's part of
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: why I don't want to get rid of it. But
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: you know, they are just a terrible company. By the way,
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: my wife found it, fantastic loophole, which is so tellic
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: about the society in which we live. The biggest problem
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: with dealing with Frontier is with customer service, you can't
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: get a real human being. It's impossible to get a
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: real human being. And if you navigate the system long
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: enough and are patient enough, you might get somebody from
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: a foreign country to talk to you and they have
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: no clue what they're doing, except my wife decided to
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: just call the customer service number for disabled people. They
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: have a special number for disabled people, and it works
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: like a charm. Immediately you get an American person who
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: speaks English and seemingly knows what they're doing. Amazing, amazing,
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: and they're not even allowed to ask you you know
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 1: what your disability is? You know what. I have no
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: problem with my wife doing that at all, because this
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: company is just horrific in every possible way. Anyway, the
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: reason why I'm telling this story is that when my
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: wife got on the phone using the disabled hotline, we
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: went through, or she went through the options for trying
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: to reduce our monthly cost, and the easiest way to
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: do this was to get rid of the HBO package
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: and we would save I don't know, I think it's
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: like seventy or eighty bucks a month if we got
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: rid of that package. And we rarely watch HBO because
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: especially now that curb your enthusiasm is over with, so Max,
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 1: I guess it's what it's called now, no longer HBO,
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: but still it's kind of like Twitter and next. I'll
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: always think of it as as HBO. So you know,
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: my wife gets rid of the HBO package and she's
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: very proud of herself that she saved seventy eighty bucks
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: a month, which is fantastic, Right, This is I think
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: the analogy here to Elon musk Is is pretty obvious
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: and appropriate. But here's the problem. Eventually there's going to
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: be something we want to watch on HBO and we're
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: not going to have HBO anymore. Now. We could then
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: spend more money on the streaming the max streaming service,
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: but then we've cut into our savings. And so the
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: point of this is that something can be wasteful for
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: the vast majority of situations, but there's still something of
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: value there that you're going to lose, and there will
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: be some negative ramification for that decision eventually. I mean,
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: there's all sorts of examples with regard to USAID. For instance,
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: apparently farmers are going to lose a lot of their
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: subsidies because of the proposed cutbacks or elimination of USAID,
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: and you know that's going to be a problem for people.
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 1: And as far as the subsidies involving media outlets, I
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: referenced from the last episode of the podcast, that. I
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: was skeptical of the story that was brewing as I
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: was taping that Politico, the liberal news outlet out of Washington,
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: d C. Had been given eight million dollars by US. Aid, well,
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: that's not really true. I mean, that's a story that
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: got a lot of publicity. It didn't feel right to me,
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: and it turns out it's not one hundred percent accurate.
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: What happened was that those that money was for subscriptions,
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: and it wasn't for subscriptions in the most part, for
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: actual Politico's news content. It was for this thing called
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: political pro Now, I will fully acknowledge it sounds scammy
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 1: one hundred percent, but it does appear as if government
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: employees were getting a service from Politico that the government
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: was paying for. It wasn't like, hey, here's eight million dollars,
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: go do with it what you want. There's there's a
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: service that is being provided that government employees were using.
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: Now you can argue, is that are not a good idea?
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: Was it too much money? Sure? But first of all,
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: eight million dollars it's not even a drop in the
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: bucket when it comes to the federal government spending. But
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 1: the point of this is that's a story that created
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: a lot of outrage that isn't exactly the way it
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: was portrayed, certainly not in the right wing media. But
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: this is why all of this is so frustrating, so confusing,
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 1: so exhausting, because it's very easy to put a headline
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: out there that, you know, the federal government paid political
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: eight million dollars, no matter, no wonder, their coverage of
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: Trump was so shitty, and their coverage of Biden was
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: so so soft. Well, okay, fine. By the way, were
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: they being paid during Trump's administration? My guess is they
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: probably were. Did that impact their coverage then, no sign
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 1: of it. So I just wish people would be consistent.
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: But more important than that, in the bigger picture of
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: all this, I do think that there's big problems with
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: how this is all going down and whether or not
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: it's going to be effective. And of course the media
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: is fighting against this tooth and nail. They've got the
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: constitutional crisis narrative already written and there's some semblance of
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 1: substance behind that. Now, of course, they've already used the
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: constitutional crisis narrative in the first term with Trump and
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: it turned out to be bullshit. So no one's buying
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: constitutional crisis, but there are legitimate constitutional issues at play here,
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: and there's also truthfulness concerns. I mean, there was a
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: this morning. There's a video going viral. I'm not going
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: to play it because it's too long and the payoffice
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 1: as great as it sounds, but Chris Sonuno, the former
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: anti Trump governor of New Hampshire, was on CNN and
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: was making, you know, the argument that you know, this
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: is all fantastic, while the CNN panel was saying, well,
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: a lot of what Musk is saying is not true,
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: and Snuna was fighting back against that, and of course
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: we don't evenly find out what's true and what's not.
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: But in the end, Anderson Cooper so said to Chris Snuno,
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 1: don't be a dick, live on the air. So within
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 1: twenty four hours you have CNN conferencing Elon Musk's Twitter
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: handle as Harry Balls, and then Anderson Cooper saying to
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: Chris Sonuno, don't be a dick. This is the new CNN, folks,
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 1: Harry Balls and don't be a dick. Oh wow. And
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: all this, of course is very much consistent with the
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 1: narrative on the right, especially among Trump fans of the
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 1: legacy news media has completely imploded, and there's a lot
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: of truth to it. They're having a meltdown because it's
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: not gonna work, at least not in the short run.
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: But you know what will work in the long run
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 1: is when things get cut and then there are repercussions
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: when there's something on HBO you want to watch and
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 1: it's not there. There's gonna be repercussions for this because
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 1: it's not as simple. It's not as cut and dry,
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: it's not as black and white as Trump fans are
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: trying to pretend. And it's also not gonna be as easy,
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: especially with all these court battles that at least right now,
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: the Trump administration seems to be losing. So there's a
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 1: massive difference between, especially when it comes to Donald Trump.
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: Trump's talk and Trump's ability to actually make things happen.
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: A lot of this is just for show right now.
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 1: A lot of this there's no real proof that any
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: of this has actually been cut and there's real savings.
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's some evidence, but there's not enough evidence
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: I don't think to be able to come to any
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: real conclusions about this. And you know, Trump seems to
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: live in the world where if he says it and
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: he believes it's happened, then that's what happened. I've mentioned
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 1: this in Relationship, So the wildfire relief situation involving California,
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: where my concern is that Trump is, you know, thinking that, well,
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: I went to California and I dictated what my wishes were,
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 1: and I'm a king, and so those witshes will be
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: carried out and over the long haul. I don't see
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 1: that that's the most likely scenario. And I want to
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 1: play a clip now from Governor Newsom here in California
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 1: or Governor poussam Is my children have referred to him
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: ever since the COVID panic, which has me very concerned
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: about the difference between what Trump is talking about in
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: theory and what's actually going to happen in practice. I
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 1: have used an analogy which I think is really pretty
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 1: good and bizarrely this I tell the story. You may
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: recall I use the analogy of democrats when it comes
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: to the wildfire recovery and rebuilding process as like Doctor
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: Strangelove played by Peter Sellers in the classic movie which
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 1: is Doctor Strangelove, which is in my view, one of
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 1: the best movies ever made, certainly one of the best
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: black and white movies ever made. And in the movie,
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 1: Doctor Strange love Pape played by Peter Sellers, is battling
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 1: his internal demons, his internal Nazism. He's trying to hide
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: it because that's who he really is. He's really a Nazi,
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 1: and that manifests itself in him trying to give the
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: Hitler salute and trying to prevent himself from giving the
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 1: Hitler high Hitler salute. And the analogy I made was
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: that that's like democrats trying to fight their internal environmental
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 1: wackoism when it comes to the rebuilding of Los Angeles.
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 1: They know that that's not the right message. They cannot
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 1: become who they really are, not Nazis in this case,
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: but environmental whack jobs when it comes to all the
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 1: restrictions on rebuilding. That's who they really are. But they've
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 1: been hiding it, and they've been saying a lot of
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: the good, good things, like you know, we're gonna streamline
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: the permit process and get rid of the red tape
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 1: and basically turn into Republicans overnight. My question always says, well,
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 1: why aren't you doing that all the time. If you're
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 1: acknowledging that that's bad policy, why is it just now
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: when the politics have changed and the stakes have gotten
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 1: much much higher and the world is watching at least
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 1: for now. Why are you all of a sudden changing
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: your philosophy. Aren't you acknowledging that normally you're wrong? But
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: there's still that internal environmental wackoism that is trying to
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: come out, like it did with Doctor Strangelove. Now, the
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: side story here is when I did that analogy on
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: this podcast, I had the strangest thing occur on my
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 1: TikTok feed the next day. And keep in mind, you know,
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: I have my phone next to me as I tape
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 1: this podcast. The very next day, maybe even later that day.
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 1: After I did that analogy on the podcast, up pops
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 1: on my TikTok feed an old video of Peter Seller's
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 1: talking about how he came up with that concept in
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 1: the movie Doctor Strangelove, almost exactly what I was talking about.
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: And this has happened on numerous occasions, and it has
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: me kind of freaked out about what's really going on
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 1: with TikTok and how much they are able to access
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 1: our information. I have thought long and hard about how
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 1: that could have happened. It is possible that maybe TikTok
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 1: is also charting my Twitter searches or my Twitter feed,
• 2:07:36
  Speaker 1: because that is theoretically an explanation for this, and that
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 1: it might explain some other things that have happened in
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 1: this round. But that was kind of freaky to me
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 1: and not related to this issue at all. But the
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: analogy is still apt when it comes to what's really
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 1: going to happen here in California. And for the first
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: time I know, I've been actually, for me bizarrely optimistic
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: when it comes to the California rebuild because I think
• 2:08:01
  Speaker 1: that there's some unique political incentives here that have created
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 1: a good incentive structure. For instance, not just the politics
• 2:08:12
  Speaker 1: of it, with Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles,
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: being forced to run for reelection next year, and with
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 1: her previous opponent, Rick Caruso clearly willing and able to
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 1: run against her, so that's an important political incentive to
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 1: get things done. But there's also obviously Newsome wanting to
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: run for president in twenty twenty eight and the Olympics
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 1: coming to Los Angeles in twenty twenty eight, So I
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: thought those types of things, plus the fact that Democrats
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 1: were talking a good game would give this a chance
• 2:08:40
  Speaker 1: to exceed low expectations for the rebuild. But then Gavin
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: Newsom went on CNN I believe, and made this statement
• 2:08:51
  Speaker 1: about how it is that Los Angeles should rebuild and
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 1: how we need to keep the climate and science in
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 1: mind when it comes to the way we rebuild. And
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 1: here's what that sounded like.
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 7: You previously mentioned the timeline for rebuilding would be six
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 7: to nine months. Is that going to happen? And should
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 7: people rebuild in some parts of California? Given how high the.
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 10: Fire risk, you can't rebuild the same. So we have
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 10: to rebuild with science. We have to build with climate
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 10: reality in mind. We have to look at infrastructure or redundancy, systems, ingress,
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 10: egress as it relates to emergency management and planning materials.
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 10: All of that has been reviewed and reconsidered and with
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 10: the latest iterations in terms of understanding and technology. And
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 10: I say technology in the context of how again we
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 10: build the infrastructure to keep it safe, to address undergrounding
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 10: of lines, how we address the larger issues of redundancy
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 10: in terms of systems. But more important than anything else
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 10: is the need to get the debris removed, thirty days
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 10: to do the hazardous waste. We want to get six
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 10: to nine months the rest of the debris that concurrently
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 10: people are getting permits. So this is all happening rolling together,
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 10: and we want to see construction very shortly and in
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 10: the next few years. We want to see hundreds thousands
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 10: of homes rebuilt.
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 1: When I saw that, I was like rut row, because
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: those are code words. Those are code words for the
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: environmental Wacoism is returning. That's newsome as Doctor Strangelove, unable
• 2:10:29
  Speaker 1: to restrain the Nazi salute because that's their religion. And
• 2:10:33
  Speaker 1: once that Pandora's box is open, I mean it's been
• 2:10:36
  Speaker 1: opened in this state for a very very long time.
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: It appeared as if it was being at least temporarily
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 1: closed when it comes to recovery from the wildfires. But
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 1: now that it's been reopened, once you go down that path,
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 1: once that Pandora's box is open, there is no going back.
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 1: Because once you give the bureaucrats, and they're all liberal
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 1: environmental nutshot the power and the authority to say what's
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 1: acceptable for rebuilding and what's not, you're done. You're dead
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 1: in the water. It's impossible to move forward because those
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 1: people are never satisfied. The only way you were going
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 1: to get this done is if you were radical about it.
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 1: It's a little bit like Elon Musk and Doge. You know,
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 1: you have to be all in on this because once
• 2:11:29
  Speaker 1: you give an inch, they're going to take a mile.
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 1: And that to me was Gavin Newsom making it clear
• 2:11:36
  Speaker 1: he's going to give more than an inch, and he's
• 2:11:38
  Speaker 1: going to use this. You know. They will so badly
• 2:11:41
  Speaker 1: want to blame these wildfires on climate change or global warming.
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 1: That hasn't really worked, so they're going to try to
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 1: invoke their climate change global warming religion when it comes
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 1: to the rebuild. And my optimism about how long this
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 1: is all going to take has been greatly diminished by
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 1: what just transpired there with the Governor Newsom's statement. But
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 1: I'm not giving up total hope yet. One of the
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 1: ways that I am able, I think, or at least
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 1: the way I'm using to discern how the rebuilding process
• 2:12:16
  Speaker 1: is going is by the statements of Rick Caruso. I
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 1: trust Rick Caruso. He's not perfect, but he's rational. He
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 1: seems like a sincere guy. He's like a mini Elon Musk,
• 2:12:28
  Speaker 1: a rich dude, seemingly just trying to save Los Angeles,
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 1: and he seems extremely agitated by what he is seeing
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 1: with regard to the early processes of the rebuild. And
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 1: so if he's agitated, my optimism has been greatly diminished.
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 1: But we'll see what ends up happening there. Thanks for
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 1: listening to today's free drop of the abbreviated show. If
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 1: you're interested in listening to the entire show, you must
• 2:12:52
  Speaker 1: become a patron. Please go to Patreon. That's pat r
• 2:12:58
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• 2:13:04
  Speaker 1: of Journalism with John Ziggler. My name is j H
• 2:13:08
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• 2:13:13
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• 2:13:18
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• 2:13:21
  Speaker 1: can subscribe.