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Episode One Hundred Sixty One: Drunk On The Blood Of Liberty · The Death Of Journalism

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Welcome to episode number one hundred and sixty one of the Death of Journalism podcast.
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My name is John Zigler. I'm your host. In today's show,
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President Biden's declining mental acuity is back in the news. Doctor Fauci finally gets
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publicly exposed and excoriated in congressional testimony, the Caitlin Clark Angel Reese controversy explodes,
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and some thoughts on the eightieth anniversary of the D Day Invasion. We
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begin this episode of the podcast with the post conviction for Donald Trump polling still
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trickling in. I'm a bit underwhelmed and disappointed by the number and quality of
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polls that have come out so far since the conviction. However, I do
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think we have enough data to start to make some analysis and maybe even some
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conclusions about the impact, at least in the short run of Donald Trump being
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convicted of thirty four felon accounts. And it looks like exactly what I told
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you was going to be, which is basically nothing, and that in itself
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is absolutely astonishing. And again, it's a little too early to be coming
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to conclusions, and we don't have any really good state by state polling post
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conviction as of yet, and it's understandable because it's still been a very short
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period of time since the conviction. But I'm sure that there are all sorts
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of polling outlets that are in the field who are desperate to find out what
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impact, if any, the convictions have had. And the data so far
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indicates, just as I suggested that it would, that it's a wash that
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maybe, just maybe Biden has picked up a point or two nationally, which
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is irrelevant since this is going to be an election that is determined by six
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or seven states. It looks like six states at this point because there's numerous
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polls in North Carolina, even post conviction polls in North Carolina, that have
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shown once again, as I've told you for quite a long time, Trump
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is not losing North Carolina, and if he loses North Carolina, there's no
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election to be won anyway if you're on the Trump team, So you know,
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it's irrelevant essentially, and it does not look at this point at this
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point as if North Carolina is even going to be all that close, even
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based on post conviction polling data, and so I am still going to be
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waiting and looking for really good hard state by state polling post conviction, but
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based upon what we've currently seen. If you're looking for some sort of impact
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in the polling from the convictions, you got to use a microscope. It's
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it's maybe there there's a pointer or two that seems to be shifting towards Biden,
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but that's well within the margin of error. That could just be noise,
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that could be coincidence. Who the hell knows what that is now.
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I have said that I don't believe that there's going to be a lot of
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short term impact act of this conviction in the pulling. There could still be
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a drip drip, drip erosion impact in the longer run, or who knows,
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maybe there won't be may maybe he could actually work in the other direction.
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I did not buy this pro Trump narrative that, oh my gosh,
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all of a sudden, massive amounts of people who were Trump's skeptical or not
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going to vote or not going to vote for Trump, We're going to be
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so enraged that they would suddenly be Trump supporters, especially for instance, in
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the black community. I mean, there could be some anecdotal evidence of that,
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but I don't think that it was such a major factor. You're going
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to see it in the immediate data, and that has been the case.
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But I've also thought that we're not going to see a lot of loss of
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Trump's support, mainly because the alternative is Joe Biden. And I think that
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the biggest takeaway from all this is how astonishing it is, how mind blowing
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it is that you can have a situation that would have been a seven point
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zero earthquake in any other presidential election prior to Donald Trump entering the political arena,
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and it would have absolutely ended a presidential election if there had been a
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conviction on thirty four felonies, even if no one really thought that the allegations
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were very serious, or that there was no real victim in the crime,
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and that the jury was incredibly biased and the we're all sorts of d process
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problems. It's just absolutely amazing and a remarkable testament to how bitterly and deeply
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divided we are as a country that you could have this happen and a week
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later it's as if nothing happened. I've talked a lot on this podcast about
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how it's almost impossible in this day and age for an event to really matter,
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to make a huge impact for all sorts of reasons. Fragmentation of media
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and the political divide, and our desensitization, and the fact we don't trust
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the media anymore. All of these are real and legitimate reasons. But I
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do think it's worthy of taking a moment and just kind of contemplating Holy crap.
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I mean, forget about what you think of the verdict. That you
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could convict somebody on thirty four polony charges and it appears, underline, appears
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as of this moment, that it has no real impact on people's opinions about
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whether or not that person should be the next president of the United States.
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In a weird I'm conflicted about this because I'm obviously very conflicted about Trump.
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I don't like Trump personally, I've never voted for him. I have huge
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problems with what is second term might look like. But I also despise Biden.
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I hate the trial, I hate the verdict. I mean, there's
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so many elements of this that are very, very frustrating, and so part
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of me is thinking, Okay, does this mean that the American public has
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seen through the conviction, at least those that aren't Biden supporters. I'm sure
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that you know Biden supporters were already going to vote for Biden. They're more
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deeply invested in voting for Biden now because they don't want to vote for a
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convicted felon. But it's not changing anyone's minds or anyone's votes. Similarly,
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if you're already in the Trump camp, you're not leaving because of this.
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This has just angered you further and motivated you even more to vote for Donald
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Trump because you think that he is a martyr, a victim, and they're
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out to get him because he's a danger to the status quo, which you
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hate. And so these are all part of the reasons why I thought the
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most likely scenario here was that there would be a political wash, that there
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would be no real impact again at least in the short run, when it
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came to Trump's convictions, and it appears as of right now that that could
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change. You get two polls that all of a sudden, you know,
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once the dust settles, go in one direction to the other. I'm willing
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to change my mind on this, but based upon the data we currently have,
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which is not as strong as I would have hoped or expected. But
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I'm basing this on public data as well as things that Steve Cortes, my
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friend and former Trump aid former de Santa se who has been doing independent polling,
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has said about what's going on with his organization post conviction that there's really
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very little if any impact in the polling because of these convictions against Donald Trump,
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and it's really astonishing and I think worthy of at least a little bit
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of contemplation. I mean, the media has completely moved on. I mean
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this week there's more discussion of Caitlin Clark and Angel Rees, the fact that
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a convicted Fallon might be the next president of the United States, even in
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the mainstream liberal news media, and part of that moving on where you know,
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I've been right about the polling so far, I had been totally wrong
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about what I thought was going to happen with the jurors. I predicted rather
8:22
emphatically that we would see in at least one interview with a Trump juror that
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was going to be used by the right as aha, this person's a left
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wing whack job who was a political activist in that jury room. Well,
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we've not seen an interview with any of the jurors, and as far as
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I can tell, normally, if these things are going to happen. You
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hear murmurs of them as of this taping. There is no sign that one
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even one of the twelve jurors is imminently doing a media interview, which I
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don't even have an explanation for that in this day and age. I find
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that almost as mind in fact more mind blowing to the fact that Trump being
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convicted of thirty four felaty counts is not impacting the polling. I mean,
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they've got to be bombarded. I mean, this is a tremendous opportunity for
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any of these jurors to become famous for fifteen minutes, which is very difficult
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for most people to resist in this day and age, and to have twelve
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people resisted is amazing. Now. Is it possible that the twelve of them
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all made a deal that they would either not talk or they would talk together,
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and that that's taking longer to organize. Yeah, that's all possible.
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So I'm not declaring a defeat yet on my prediction. It's just that it
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certainly has not come true yet, and it doesn't have any signs that it's
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coming true. But I guess I'm just more flummoxed by the entire idea that
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we could be a week out from this and we're just all moving on now.
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Obviously, it's going to come back when Trump is sentenced in July,
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just before for the Republican Convention. So obviously this is a story that's nowhere
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near over with. But as of right now, it really is amazing how
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short our attention spans are and how quickly everybody, including the media, is
10:16
moving on. Now. The right wing media wants to move on to a
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completely different trial, which is the Hunter Biden trial, which I'm not going
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to talk much at all about because I don't find it to be of interest.
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I've been very consistent when it comes to Hunter Biden. Yeah, I
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mean, are there legitimate issues regarding Hunter Biden and the way that the media
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handled his laptop in twenty twenty apps of Frickin' looty. That was absolute media
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malpractice, And if it had been in reverse, if that had been Donald
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Trump's son, we would not have seen any of the ways that the media
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systematically censored that story. One hundred percent. I agree with that in totality.
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However, for me to get worked up about Hunter Biden, I have
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to have some evidence that there is proof of Joe Biden either I mean,
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done something wrong or being compromised in his job. And while there's been a
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lot of smoke in this area, I have yet to see any fire,
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and a lot of the smoke has turned out to be utter bullshit, especially
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when it comes to the whole bribery situation and scandal. And I am one
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of the very very few conservative commentators that has never jumped on the whole bribery
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narrative when it comes to Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and their business dealings.
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However, there's one aspect to the Hunter Biden trial that I do find to
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be of interest, and that is that Joe Biden is basically engaging in jury
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tampering by publicly commenting on his son's trial and declaring that he has done nothing
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wrong. And while the evidence is remarkably strong in the case, it seems
12:00
as if the defense is going for jury nullification, which would be rather ironic
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and telling, giving what just happened in the Trump case, which I believe
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is the opposite of jury nullification. I believe that the jury just acted in
12:13
their own self interest. They may have thought that they were doing the right
12:16
thing, because the judge and the prosecutors told them that they were, but
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they all very much clearly wanted to convict Donald Trump for their own personal political
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purposes. And what the Hunter Biden defense seems to be doing is going for
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the opposite. You know, let Hunter Biden go because you'll like President Biden,
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or because you're liberal, or because the President says that he hasn't done
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anything wrong, or you don't want to make the President feel bad about his
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son getting convicted. And so that I think is relevant. I think that
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Joe Biden has acted inappropriately when it comes to this, and there's a narrative
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out there that the left is trying to spin that somehow this shows the the
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Department of Justice is objective because they're pursuing charges against the president's son. But
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that's not the way this went down, and they tried very desperately to get
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rid of this. And if it hadn't been for a jud blowing up a
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sweetheart plea bargain deal, there wouldn't be this trial. So again, I'm
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paying attention slightly to the Hunter Biden situation, but I'm not nearly as obsessed
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about it as many other right wing commentators are. However, I'm much more
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interested in the story involving Joe Biden's declining mental acuity, because obviously this is
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a massive issue regardles at least should be a massive issue, regardless of your
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political persuasion, because if you have a president who is not mentally capable of
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doing the job, that's a huge problem. And the Wall Street Journal is
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out with what is being called a bombshell report involving what people are observing about
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President Biden behind closed door. Now, there are several aspects of this story
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that I find to be interesting. I'm actually scheduled to do a News Nation
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television appearance tonight with Dan Abrams, which, if it happens, and I
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think that it will, will have occurred before this podcast is actually out,
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So I'll tell you about whatever happens there in the next episode of the podcast.
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But the first part of this I find to be kind of amusing is
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the idea that we need people to tell us what's happening behind closed doors,
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as if we don't have a mountain of evidence in the public sphere via video
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of Joe Biden clearly not being at the top of his game mentally. I
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mean, one of the things that Biden I think actually benefits from in this
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arena is that there are hundreds of examples of where he clearly is out of
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it, and therefore it's difficult, if not impossible, to just pick one.
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I was actually thinking about this in preparation for that News Nation television appearance,
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and I thought it would be kind of silly for me to pick any
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one example, because it's not an issue where it's aha, here's the smoking
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gun moment. There are so many of them that it kind of forms a
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tapestry of what appears to be the early on sets of dementia. One that
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comes to mind is, I mean, just recently, he claimed very publicly
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that he was the vice president of the United States during COVID, which is
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just insane. And that's something that was not only very important, but happened
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only a couple of years ago, and he thought he was vice president and
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that he helped fix the problem. But I mean, this happens on almost
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a daily basis. So the entire premise of the Wall Street Journal article,
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which is behind closed doors people are very concerned about whether or not Biden is
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losing it mentally, is frankly almost hilarious. But let me tell you what.
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The Wall Street Journal reported. This is through the New York Post,
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which is owned by the same company, News Corp. The New York Post
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headline about the Wall Street Journal story was Biden eighty one showing signs of the
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cline as polls and aids detail use of cheat sheets, closing eyes for extended
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periods of time. Quote not the same person. President Biden's cognitive decline has
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become obvious and concerning the several high ranking congressional lawmakers, according to a bombshell
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new report, which describes how the eighty one year old commander in chief increasingly
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relies on cheat sheets in meetings and at times has closed his eyes for so
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long that people wondered if he had drifted off. Some of the more than
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forty five Republican and Democratic lawmakers and staffers interviewed by The Wall Street Journal,
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I'd like to know numbers on that, but there apparently aren't any, also
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described a president who spoke so softly during meetings that participants struggled to understand him.
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Others noted that Biden's demeanor and grasp of policy details varied by the day,
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and he frequently relied on notes and deferred to aids during conferences. Quote,
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you couldn't be there and not feel uncomfortable, one person who met with
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the President during critical negotiations over congressional funding for Ukraine AID in January told The
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Wall Street Journal. A senior GOPA told The New York Post that the alarming
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allegations in the report are why the Justice Department has refused to release tapes of
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Biden's interview with former Special Counsel Robert Hurr in the classified documents investigation. Now,
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that last point there, to me, is very critical, because you
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don't get to claim that a story like this is not on firm footing,
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or shouldn't be run, or might not be accurate, when your Department of
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Justice is going to unprecedented lens to prevent the public from being fully exposed to
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an interview with the president that we paid for. We paid for that interview
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with the special counsel, and we can't hear it. We can't. We
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have no idea for sure just how bad it was, which is if so
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facto, in my opinion, evidence that it must be really, really bad,
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because if it wasn't, it would be publicly exposed instead they're trying desperately
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to protect the president by keeping that out of the public sphere, and so
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that to me opens the not just the door, opens the floodgates for all
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sorts of legitimate speculation about Joe Biden's state of mental acuity or lack thereof.
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But to me, we're still missing the big picture in all this. My
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opinion on Joe Biden's mental acuity is a bit nuanced. I don't think he's
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as bad as a lot of conservatives try to claim, or that even Trump
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himself says. On a regular basis. I think that when it really matters,
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situations like the State of the Union address, which we've talked about numerous
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times before, where Biden can still get it together, that he's not completely
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off the reservation. And I've seen this in my own life with highly successful
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men in their eighties. I've seen exactly the same kind of signs that Joe
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Biden is showing, you know, on the big holidays, on Christmas,
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Birthdays, anniversaries, graduations. Generally, they can get it together, and
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I think Biden is in that category. So when it really matters, he's
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there. Mostly the problem is that the presidency is a twenty four seven three
20:21
sixty five job, and not everything that matters is predictable, and so they're
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gonna be times when he's got to be there. Especially the most important times
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are not predictable because that's when some sort of crisis or emergency happens. And
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so is he going to be there when it matters most? Is he going
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to be able to get it together? So that's my general view of Joe
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Biden's mental acuity. I think he is declining. I think that he's not
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there all the time, but when he really needs to be, he generally
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is. But here's my biggest point, and I hope to make this on
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News Nation tonight. It's just astonishing to me. This kind of reminds me
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of the way the media was pretending that the Trump trial jury didn't have this
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perverse incentive to convict him to try to influence a presidential election. Whether that
21:17
was real or imagined or in their mindset doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether
21:21
not the conviction actually impacted it. It's what was in their head and what
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their motivation was, the perception of the situation of the time in which they
21:30
decided to convict him. Well, in my mind, it's somewhat similar that
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we're just pretending. I hate when the media pretends, we're just pretending that
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he's not applying for a four year extension for this job and that he won't
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be eighty five years old while still being president of the United States. First
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of all, nobody should be president of the United States at eighty five or
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regardless of how strong they are physically and mentally. But here's the kicker,
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when you're eighty one and showing clear signs of decline. And by the way,
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you know, one of the things that the Democrats have done this is
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really hilarious. Joe Scarborough, former Republican congressman who's now a liberal sellout for
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many, many years, on MSNBC, he tweeted about the Wall Street Journal
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article and tried to claim, well, this is hypocrisy in the part of
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some Republicans, because it wasn't that long ago that Republicans like Kevin McCarthy were
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saying that Joe Biden is absolutely with it. Well, Hello, things change
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with regard to people when they are in their eighties, and sometimes they happen
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rather rapidly. There was one Democratic analyst or activist that actually responded to the
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Wall Street Journal article by posting an article that's three years old, which has
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comments from Republicans saying that Joe Biden is with it three years old, and
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the pretending that it was a contemporarius contemporaneous article. These things happen quickly,
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and they happen very quickly once someone is in their eighties. I've seen it
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myself. I'm sure you've seen it in your own life. There's nothing magical
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about being president of the United States. If anything, it works in reverse
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because of the enormous pressure of the job. No job ages you more and
23:32
more quickly than the presidency. And so the fact that it is obvious that
23:38
there's decline in ay one should make any rational person think, my god,
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what's it going to be like at eighty five if he gets re hired for
23:48
the job, it's going to be beyond absurd and incredibly dangerous. And I
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have theorized and I continue to believe that it's never going to get to that
24:00
point because there's no chance that Joe Biden serves out a second full term.
24:08
None. I mean I shouldn't say none. I mean we're living in a
24:12
crazy world. But there it's it would shock me if Joe Biden was able
24:18
to serve out a full second term, because not just because of the physical
24:25
and capability of doing that from a mental standpoint, if he goes on the
24:30
on his current decline, if he keeps going in this direction, it ain't
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gonna stop. I mean, come on, does has anyone ever seen it
24:37
stop? Once you start the downhill slide it and he won. It doesn't
24:41
get better at eighty five. We all know this. This is as obvious
24:47
as it gets. But it's not just that that makes me convinced he won't
24:51
serve out a second full term. It's because the Democratic Party would have a
24:56
massive, massive self interest in Joe Biden resigning from office after the midterm election
25:03
of twenty twenty at twenty six, not in just one twenty eight, twenty
25:07
twenty six, the midterm election, and then in January twenty twenty seven resigning
25:11
from office, and that would be a pinball machine of benefits for the Democratic
25:18
Party. They get rid of Joe Biden, they get rid of a president
25:21
that by that point would be even less qualified mentally to hold the position,
25:26
and then they get to have the first female president, Kamala Harris. They
25:30
get to completely change her image and her narrative because now she's an incumbent president
25:38
who can run for two more terms. Constitutionally, this cannot be emphasized enough.
25:45
I understand that conservatives do not fear Kamala Harris at all, for understandable
25:52
reasons, because she's just so annoying and so dumb. But I am not
25:56
in that category. I fear her much more than he Joe Biden, and
26:00
I fear her because once she's an historic incumbent, all of a sudden things
26:07
change, and if you know things are going decently well in the country,
26:11
I have no idea that'll be happening in twenty twenty seven, twenty twenty eight,
26:15
I doubted, but it could be if we're doing well economically. Having
26:18
nothing to do with democratic policies, I think that there is a very good
26:22
chance that she wins in twenty twenty eight, especially since Republicans will not have
26:27
under this scenario a viable candidate, because what's it going to be Donald Trump
26:33
for a fourth time, Because under this scenario, Trump will have lost in
26:38
twenty twenty four, and unless Trump dies, no one else could be the
26:44
Republican nominee. So as I think about the paths forward, this mental acuity
26:51
issue has a lot to do with what's going to happen in twenty twenty eight,
26:56
Because if Kamala Harris is an incumbent president again to a Republican party that's
27:00
in disarray thanks to Donald Trump, then I think she's got a hell of
27:06
a chance of winning, especially as historic first female president. And so if
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I had to encapsulate this in a short sentence or two, to me,
27:15
this issue is not about what's happening in twenty twenty four. Think about twenty
27:22
twenty seven. In twenty twenty eight, when you've got a president who's already
27:26
eighty one years old and in clear mental decline. And so to me,
27:33
you know that that is a huge issue. And if I'm on the Trump
27:38
campaign, which obviously I'm not, I am absolutely focusing on having people think
27:47
about twenty twenty seven and twenty twenty eight. It's not about today. It's
27:52
about three or four years from now, And I would be using the DOJ
27:59
keeping that classified documents investigation with a special counsel interview under wraps at every possible
28:07
moment, and one hundred percent at the debate on CNN. If I'm Trump,
28:14
I am hammering this. Why won't you let the public be fully exposed
28:21
to the interview with you that we paid for? To me, that has
28:26
got to influence people. I mean, why won't that? Why is that
28:30
interview not made public? So think about this in four years time, and
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why are you hiding that interview that actually allowed the special counsel to determine that
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you you basically were so out of it you couldn't be convicted by a jury
28:51
because no one could be sure of what your mindset was because your memory is
28:55
that bad. So I mean that, to me, is an incredibly important
29:00
issue and one that should resonate with at least some swing voters. Thanks for
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