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Episode Ninety Two: I Have Seen Enough · The Death Of Journalism

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Welcome to episode number ninety two of the Death of Journalism podcast. My name
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is John Ziggler. I'm your host on today's show. Dave Portnoy exposes a
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Washington Post reporter in glorious fashion. I have finally seen enough to say that
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Donald Trump is indeed a near locke to be the Republican presidential nominee. Gavin
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Newsom makes more moves towards being the Democrat nominee if Joe Biden steps aside,
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Rupert Murdoch steps down as the head of Fox News and the latest in the
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Dion Sanders saga. I'm known as the Dutch Digital marketing Man. I'm a
0:37
digital advertising SEO and email marketing specialist that also happens to be a big fan
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of John Ziggler and the Death of journalisten. Do you need help preaching your
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target audience? Let me help you develop the right messaging and confaded message and
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the best channels for your business. Please visit my website, the Dutch Digital
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marketing Man dot com and let me help you tell your story. The website
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is the Dutch Digital Marketingman dot com. If you want to grow your business,
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Peter can help. That's the Dutch digital marketingman dot com and hey,
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thanks for sponsoring the show. I believe that the impact of social media on
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our news media has been devastating. It's one of the many elements of the
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perfect storm that has killed what was left of journalism. Thus the name of
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this podcast, the Death of journalism. There's always some elements of good or
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bad in something as large as social media, but when it comes to the
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issue of journalism generally, I believe that social media has had a very negative
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impact. It has changed the incentive structure in all sorts of ways. I
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mean, maybe the most dramatic way that it has done so is that it
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has greatly reduced the amount of time major news media outlets have before they feel
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like they have to jump out there and put something out on a breaking story.
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And this is how false narratives get created, and everything is determined by
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popularity. Truth is no longer the coin of the realm. It's what gets
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retweeted or shared or liked, So popularity becomes the coin of the realm,
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which is exactly the opposite of what journalism is supposed to be about. It's
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not about the truth. There's all sorts of things. I could do multiple
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episodes on the negative impact of social media on journalism in general. However,
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like a lot of things that have a lot of negative impacts, I've referenced
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hurricanes before. Hurricanes are generally horrible, but they also often bring rain to
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places that badly need it, So even a hurricane can sometimes have positive impacts
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towards it. Social media does have some positive impacts when it comes to the
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shoe journalism, and we saw one of those in the last few days.
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Because before social media there never would have been any sort of accountability or transparency
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regarding a situation where the Washington Post clearly tried to do a hit piece on
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the guy who owns and founded Barstool Sports, Dave Portnoy. Now I've spoken
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about Portnoy on this podcast several times before, most recently because he's getting all
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sorts of credit for this amazing business deal boondoggle where he bought back his company
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from a gambling operation for one dollar. Now, I'm still not convinced that
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this was as great a deal as it certainly appears to be, but that's
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another story front of the day. The issue is Dave Portnoy is a major
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figure in the Independent sports media. He's kind of politically I would put him
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in the realm of people like Joe Rogan or maybe even Lay Travis, these
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anti politically correct populists. They're not really conservative. Certainly Portnoy is not a
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conservative, but he's definitely an anti liberal. He's, you know, somewhat
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Trumpian and certainly in his demeanor, that's for sure. And supposedly he's mostly
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a sports guy, but as is the case very often in this day and
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age, you know, what they do at barstool sports is often not that
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much about sports, and what he does is often not that much about sports.
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And one of the things he's really into his pizza. And this past
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weekend he was hosting a I guess you'd call it a pizza festival, and
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he got word that the Washington Post, a reported by the name of Emily
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heel Or Hill, was asking the sponsors of this festival how they failed or
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justified their association with Dave Portnoy, because, in her words, Portnoy is
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someone known for his massagistic and other troubling comments, and you know, the
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painting the picture that Portnoy hates women and implying that he might be a racist
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I guess, and hey, how do you defend your company or your businesses
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participation in this festival? And of course Portnoy got forwarded at least one,
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I'm sure more than one, but at least one email to this effect.
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So what does he do? Well, he decides to call the reporter,
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but he does so while being recorded. He records the call of himself on
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his side, obviously on video, and when the reporter answers the phone,
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he informs her that she's being recorded, which eliminates any potential legal concerns.
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I was kind of surprised that she readily agreed to that, had no issue
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with that, okay, whatever, And he proceeds to confront her about what
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she was doing. And there's two really important elements to this confrontation, which
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went hugely viral over the last several days. The first is that the reporter
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from the Washington Post effectively gets caught in a lie almost immediately because she denies
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ever having said what Portnoy quotes her as saying, although he mispronounces the word
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misogynistic, which which was kind of humorous during this whole thing, but that
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may may or may not have confused her. So maybe technically, she was
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right when she denied having said what Portnoy claimed that she did. But for
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all intensive purposes, she gets caught in a lie and then says, oh,
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yeah, yeah, I did do that one time. Well, this
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just happens to be the one email that he's confronting her about, and so
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they're going back and forth the bad you know, whether or not she has
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a preconceived notion of who he is. When was she going to interview him
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for this article that clearly had all the makings of a hit piece. And
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this is something that the left wing media has now become expert at. They
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understand now that the best way to go after what they think of as right
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wing figures is to go after the sponsors. That's the vulnerability. That's what
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effectively happened with Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson probably would not have been fired,
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in my opinion, at Fox News Channel had his sponsors not been weakened.
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The audience for the show was tremendous, but the sponsorship was not that great
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because he had been so toxified. Everything about him had become so dangerous that
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the major sponsors were unwilling to be associated with the show, which then reduced
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the amount of income he was generating, which then made it more likely for
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Fox News Channel to cut bait. So this is not worth it. I
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don't know whether or not if his sponsors had been more strongly backing the show,
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whether or not that would have been the difference between firing or not,
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but it certainly is possible it weakened Carlson's position. And this has been seen
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in numerous elements of right wing media. The left wing media understands that,
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especially if a business is large enough, they will still care about being made
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to look bad in the Washington Post to the New York Times or the major
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television networks, the legacy networks. That still matters to a lot of businesses,
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especially large businesses. And so this is the new tactic. This is
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the way, this is the way that cuts somebody's balls off. And that's
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what they were trying to do with Dave Portnoy. So first the order gets
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caught effectively in a lie. But then when he confronts her, this call
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was about a little less than twelve minutes long, and I'm going to play
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a short clip a little bit over a minute for you, because to me,
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this was the most remarkable element of this phone call between Portnoy and the
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reporter because the reporter, Acknowledges admits, Now it's important to point out this
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reporter is a food reporter, so she's engaging in a tactic that's really not
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her normal course of operations. It's not a normal m O. I doubt
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she's doing many hit pieces in the food industry, so she's still learning the
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tactic for all intensive purposes. I don't know if she went the full training
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when it came to how to do a hit piece on a so called right
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wing media figure. So she openly admits that the reason why she used that
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language, calling port a misogynist and referencing other problematic things that he's done in
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his career, and why it is that they're going to stand by Portnoy and
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his festival. She admits the reason why she did that was because you have
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to tell these people something negative to make sure you get a reaction. Now,
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that might not sound as bad as what it really is, because,
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as I think you will hear when you listen to the clip, what she's
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really saying is, yeah, we do that to scare the hell out of
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people so that we make sure we get them to respond to us, because
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they see the handwriting on the wall that what we're really doing here is we're
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doing a hit piece on a person that they're associated with, and therefore they're
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gonna get the blowback. They're gonna they're gonna get collateral damage unless they throw
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you under the bus. That's the hope, that's the tactic. And she
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says the quiet part out loud, and even Portnoy is rather stunned by I
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don't know whether he was stunned by the fact that she would admit it,
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or he was so naive that this was the first time you ever even realized
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that this is the way they really do things. But here is that key
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portion of the phone call between Dave Portnoy and the Washington Post reporter. I'm
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more than willing to have an open conversation about anything if the article is not
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written. I'm afraid with what I'm seeing already here. All it does is
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it validates a hit piece I have not written. I have not written a
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story believing have you made your mind up about me? We're in a reporting
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phase, you know, I can't not for me to say. And I'm
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also working with somebody else. But that seems like a pretty straightforward question,
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that have you made your mind up about me? If you can't answer that,
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no, I could say I have not made my mind up about you,
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then why would you include that in the in the email those answers because
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I was hoping for a dialogue with them, you know, and sometimes you
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have to say something like this is like, you know, it's sort of
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a reporting tactic. When you want someone respond, you kind of have to
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indicate that there might be something negative and then you get them to engage.
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That's all I was trying to do. I really wanted them to engage with
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me. That is a sad state of journalism if that's a tactic that you
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have to What I would say is make up something about somebody. There might
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be something, There might be something negative, and so you want to give
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people a chance to respond and have a conversation with you. That's what I
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was trying to do. But at the same time, you're saying you don't
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know that that's actually truth, So you're leading with something that you haven't done
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enough research to know of it's valid. I'm saying there might be a fuller
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picture, and that's what I want to talk to you about and I want
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to set up a time tomorrow morning, maybe like ten Now. When I
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saw that, I was as astonished as everybody else one that she would be
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willing to admit what's really going on here. But I also felt like,
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okay, that deal that they were making, and for the record, Portnoy,
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while hemming and hawing at first, would eventually agree to do an interview
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with the reporter at ten am the next morning. Now, the next morning.
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The timing here is important because the festival was over the weekend and the
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Post was going to do the article on Friday, and so the ten am
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was on the Thursday, which would at least, in theory, give the
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reporter enough time to place Portnoy's quotes and any context he might provide into the
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article that they were going to be doing the next day. Well, when
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I saw the video and saw how viral it had gone, with millions and
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millions of views on both Twitter and on TikTok, and I'm sure other venues
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as well, I said, I not only said to myself, but I
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even predicted on Twitter. I said, this interview is going to happen because
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this reporter is gonna get her socks knocked off by the level of reaction here,
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and as it turned out, I was exactly right. In fact,
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she ended up locking her own Twitter account and protecting them from being able to
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be seen publicly. I don't know if she still has done that enough,
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but she did do that in the aftermath of this going viral, and surprise,
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surprise, the next day, when the ten am interview was supposed to
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happen, they canceled. The Washington Post canceled. They offered, allegedly Portnoy
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to do an interview at five pm on a Thursday for an article coming out
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on Friday morning, which you know, Portnoy was right to say, you
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know, go screw yourself, and they also offered him the opportunity to answer
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questions via email. See. I think what they didn't want was another recorded
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conversation, which Portnoy had already said he was going to do. He was
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going to record. That was one of the conditions of doing an interview.
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He was going to record the conversation, the actual interview, the formal interview
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that was supposedly going to happen at ten am on that Thursday. So Portnoy
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said no, thanks, and never did an interview with the Washington Post.
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So my prediction was one hundred percent correct, as it usually is in these
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situations, that there was not going to be a formal interview between Dave Portnoy
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and the Washington Post because they didn't know what to do. They I'm sure
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they were in a complete tizzy, and you know, they got caught with
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their pants down, and Portnoy was right to go on the offense instead of
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curling up in the fetal position which used to happen. See, this is
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the benefit of social media. Before having social media and Dave Portnoy have millions
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of potential followers on all these different platforms, there wouldn't have been the option
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to do this. You could have recorded it, but then how do you
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get it out? The mainstream news media is still going to be the Kate
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gatekeeper over this, and they're going to be on the side of the Washington
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Post. So instead, Portnoy goes on Fox News Channel and has all these
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social media outlets and it goes viral. And you know, frankly, the
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reach that Portnoy has here is far far greater than that of the Washington Post
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reporter. So I knew there wasn't going to be an interview. I kind
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of thought, although I didn't predict this publicly, I kind of thought the
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Washington Post might not do the article at all. They were in a damned
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if you do, damned if you don't situation. Right. If they don't
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do it, it's conceding that they got defeated by Portnoy. But if they
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do do it, they basically confirm what Portnoy has been saying, that this
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was a hit piece where they don't really care about what he's going to tell
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them. They have their preconceived notion. This was an attempt to try to
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weaken him by going after his sponsors, and you know it failed because none
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of the sponsors threw them under the bus, none of them bailed from the
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festival. And so this was a clear victory, a clear victory for Portnoy
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and a clear defeat for the mainstream legacy news media. And hopefully the end
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result here, hopefully it will at least make other mainstream media outlets think twice
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before they go down this path, because the Washington Post got completely burned here.
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And the what's really most amazing about this is how easy it was for
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Portnoy to sell his version of events to non liberals online. That's how much
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trust the mainstream news media has lost over the last few years. This was
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an incredibly easy sell, and for good reason, because, especially post COVID,
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we now have a certain percentage of the population. I don't know what
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it is, but it's a very very significant portion of the population that does
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not believe anything coming out of mainstream media outlets. Nothing, even when they're
18:18
telling the truth, they don't believe it, and so they are incredibly willing
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to believe that the Washington Post would engage in exactly the type of behavior that
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Portnoy was exposing and was condemning and was telling his audience, Hey, look
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what's really happening here. Now he had the truth on his side in large
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part. Now, you know, was it one hundred percent the truth on
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his part on his side? Probably not, but it's very rarely one hundred
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percent. But it doesn't matter because the average American is not a liberal and
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it or is at least paying attention, has lost so much rust in the
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legacy mainstream news media that selling the other side of this story now is incredibly
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easy. We saw it in the last episode of the podcast. With regard
19:10
to Russell Brand, Russell Brand has already gotten an enormous amount of support from
19:17
right wing media and right wing media consumers, even though he's a left winger,
19:21
in most part largely because of the lack of trust in mainstream media outlets,
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and that a few years ago. You know, certainly during the beginning
19:30
of Me Too, I don't think Russell Brand would have gotten nearly the same
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kind of support as he has gotten from the right wing now. A large
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part of that is because he was a COVID contrarian, and a lot of
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right wingers, including myself, got a new respect for Russell Brand because of
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that. But I also think over the last several years, both in the
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realm of Me Too and then obviously with COVID, there have been so many
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different things, and then if you're a Trump supporter, my god, all
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the things that they believe are not true that the mainstream news media has been
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selling, some of which in fact we're not true, like Russia Game.
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There's all sorts of reasons in the last five or six years for people to
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have lost their trust, and it is now reached critical mass where you know,
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Dave Portnoys really doesn't even have to work to sell his version of events
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here, and so I thought, by and large, this was a fantastic
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development in one of the very few situations where I'm like, thank goodness for
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social media because this would never have happened prior to the current social media environment
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in which we live. So there's ninety eight percent of it is generally bad
20:41
for journalism, but at least this two percent was good. Now. I
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do think that there is a direct connection between, for instance, Dave Portnoy's
20:53
philosophy when it comes to handling the media and Donald Trump's. There's a symbiotic
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relationship. I mean, they are similar characters, and Trump has done a
21:03
lot of the same things, where it's instead of curling into the fetal position,
21:08
it's fighting back, it's being on the offense. It's taking advantage of
21:14
the lack of trust in the mainstream news meeting. Now, I think Trump
21:17
does so for his own personal benefit and oftentimes when it's not the truth.
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But from a philosophical standpoint, very very similar, and I think one helps
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the other. I think that this is the new tactic that Trump has kind
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of paved the way here, and other people have seen than it can be
21:38
very very effective. And so you know, with regard to Donald Trump and
21:44
the twenty twenty four presidential nominating process, I have been I guess you would
21:49
call it threatening for lack of a better word, Not that I matter even
21:55
a little bit, but I've been threatening for the last several months to finally
21:59
call the twenty four Republican nominating race for Donald Trump. And for a lot
22:06
of people, they think that's ridiculous. We're still several months away from any
22:11
votes being cast, and I have tried very, very, very very hard
22:18
to be patient and to say, you know, because of the circumstances here
22:22
being so unique, and the foreign indictments and never having had a former president
22:26
run for a party's nomination in the modern history of the country before, and
22:33
you know, we're living in such strange times that anything can happen. And
22:37
even though I have been right, I believe more so than anybody else when
22:42
it comes to evaluating what was going to happen and why what has happened has
22:47
occurred when it comes to this Republican nominating process, I have still tried to
22:52
fight my own instincts be patient. It's too early. You know, A
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lot can still happen. There's still a path, and you know, frankly,
23:03
the path that I have been holding on to as a Dessandra supporter,
23:08
which I've never felt confident about, but which at least in theory, I
23:11
thought, Okay, you know, maybe this could happen. Is that the
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only good thing this is a little bit like the only good thing about social
23:21
media is the situation involving Dave Portnoy and the Washington Post reporter. The only
23:26
good thing about Donald Trump taking such a massive lead this quote unquote early in
23:33
the process is that it creates a circumstance where if there becomes negative momentum,
23:41
in other words, if Trump starts to lose a forty or forty five point
23:47
lead, and let's say it gets down to thirty or twenty five, that
23:52
this creates a narrative that could be very dangerous to him facing for indictments,
23:59
being the a that he is not being in office, that he could theoretically
24:03
be dead in the water, and then people might start to abandon him because
24:07
if you think about it, right, let's pretend that the current forty five
24:12
point National League, which is essentially what it is, and I don't believe
24:17
all the polls. But it's somewhere in that vicinity. All right, it's
24:21
massive. Let's just say it's forty points. Be as optimistic as possible.
24:25
You could imagine a world right where if it never got to forty, but
24:30
Trump was holding a twenty five point lead heading into the new year and voting
24:37
in Iowa and New Hampshire, that that would be considered to be a very
24:41
very strong lead, especially given the nature of his support, because it's a
24:47
cult and it's not going to go away. So that would be a narrative
24:51
of oh, Trump is dominating. But if the lead was only twenty five
24:56
points after having been forty or forty five, now you have a potentially damaging
25:06
narrative towards Trump because he's shrinking, he's lost momentum, something has happened.
25:12
There's blood in the water, and that narrative could get people to start to
25:18
question whether or not Trump really is inevitable, and in theory they might look
25:23
around and go, well, what's wrong with the santiss I mean, he's
25:26
he's trumpy, he's awesome governor of Florida, he's much younger, you know,
25:33
have you seen his family? He went to Yale and Harvard, he's
25:37
super smart, He's gotten all these things done. We seem to agree with
25:41
him on everything that why don't we just go with that? Since Trump seems
25:45
to be in trouble here and he's facing all these indictments that I thought was
25:52
possible. Was it remotely likely? No, not remotely likely, but it
25:59
was at least possible, possible enough to where I wasn't willing to say,
26:03
Okay, Trump's going to be the nominee if he's alive and out of prison,
26:07
right, I mean, there's always going to be those two caveats.
26:10
I want to make that clear. If Trump Trump always has to be alive,
26:14
and he probably needs to stay out of prison. He might have to
26:18
avoid a felony conviction if it was early enough. But I don't think there's
26:22
very much chance that there would be a felony conviction early enough to where it
26:27
would have a major impact on the Republican primary, which by the way,
26:32
might be by designed by those that are are going after Trump criminally. But
26:37
this was this was the only path I currently saw that Trump leads by so
26:42
much that if it starts to go in the other direction, if people start
26:47
to get second thoughts, they start to get cold feet. Do we really
26:51
want to do this? You know, when it comes to a guy facing
26:56
four indictments that theoretically it could create this reverse momentum. However, I no
27:04
longer believe that this is a viable path. And the reason why I no
27:08
longer believe this is a viable path is because even if it happens, the
27:15
Santis won't be the benefactor. That's really the death now for this, that's
27:22
the final now in the coffin, I have been talking a lot in although
27:29
I've talked a lot less. You may have noticed I've talked a lot less
27:32
about this presidential race recently because I've essentially given up, you know, so
27:37
that's part of why I haven't been talking about it as much. But for
27:41
me, the final now and the coffin is something that I've discussed many times
27:45
in the past, which is the Sandus's first job was to clear the field
27:51
of non Trump candidates. That was going to always be the biggest question,
27:56
are you for Trump or are you not for Trump? And the big question
28:00
was always how many people are in the Trump only category. I've said many
28:07
times, if it's forty percent or more, he can't lose the nomination in
28:10
a multi person field. And as soon as we got a multi person field,
28:15
I became very despondent because I thought that there was a very good chance
28:18
that the Trump number was at least forty percent, that Cult number at forty
28:22
percent of the Republican voting base, and DeSantis, as big as mistake,
28:29
was not clearing that field. He had to be totally and completely dominant over
28:36
the non Trump candidates, so that if anyone jumped off of the Trump bandwagon,
28:44
they had no real viable, logical place to go other than Ron de
28:49
Santis. And for a while, even as the gap between Trump and DeSantis
28:56
was widening, this was still the case. Desantist was still clearly in second
29:02
place. There was a pretty wide gap between him and anyone else. No
29:07
one else was even close to double digits. They were all just basically in
29:11
the pain and the ass category, nipping at his heels. Well, you
29:17
may recall I said that DeSantis should not do that first debate. As soon
29:22
as it became clear that Trump was not going to do that first debate,
29:26
I said DeSantis shouldn't do it either. I understand why he feels forced into
29:30
it, because he's trying to make the argument that everyone should debate, and
29:33
he feels like he'll be a hypocrite if he doesn't do the debate and says
29:37
that Trump should. But he should have made it clear, and I think
29:42
this was viable that hey, look, if Trump's not going to do the
29:47
debate, then this is not a real debate. And the reason why I
29:49
said DeSantis shouldn't do that first debate is that all that was going to happen
29:53
was he was going to diminish himself because Trump's not on the stage, and
29:57
he's going to elevate all the other non Trump candidates, people like the fake
30:03
Obama swammy, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, people like that. They were
30:08
gonna get a lot more attention and traction than they ever would get in any
30:14
other situation. And if the Santists hadn't done the debate, that would have
30:18
been eliminated because the debate literally would have been a joke. I mean,
30:22
you can't do it debate. You just really can't even do it debate without
30:25
Trump. I mean that's a surd to begin with. I don't even know
30:26
how that happened, but this is the strange world we're now living in.
30:30
But you know, Trump didn't do the debate. If the Santists hadn't done
30:33
the debate, none of these other non Trump candidates wouldn't have would have gotten
30:37
any traction at all. And that was my big fear, was that the
30:41
Santist was effectively going to allow these other candidates to even just a little bit
30:48
elevate themselves and weaken the Santis's position as the second place candidate. Well,
30:56
that is exactly what has happened. Now. It hasn't been dramatic. The
31:02
Santis is still technically in second place, but in New Hampshire he's not,
31:08
and nationally he barely is. And the fake Obama Swammy has gained some traction,
31:15
he's gained donors, he's gained a lot more media attention. And Nicki
31:21
Haley has also done similarly. And there's some signs that Fox News Channel,
31:26
for instance, is now hopping on what is I don't even call it a
31:32
bandwagon, but at least giving her oxygen and traction. And in this coming
31:37
debate this week, I think that there's going to be a very good chance
31:41
that Haley and Obama Swammy end up being the stars. They're both pretty darn
31:47
good on the stage, it's very very difficult to attack Haley because obviously she's
31:52
a woman, and she's very polished, and the fake Obama swammy is very
31:56
very good on his feet, and and there's no question that the narrative in
32:02
this coming debate in the Reagan Library here in southern California is going to not
32:07
be about Trump when it should be why is Trump such a coward? He's
32:13
dodging not one, but two debates. Even at the Reagan Library, the
32:16
narrative is going to be can Ron to Santis hold on to second place?
32:21
That's gonna be the narrative. So as bad as things were in the first
32:24
debate where I said to Santis, shouldn't even do it, it may end
32:30
up being worse than the second debate. And I think that the most likely
32:35
scenario out of that second debate coming up later this week is that Hailey and
32:39
Obama swamy are going to further gain traction, which is going to further weaken
32:45
and maybe completely dissipate the Santiss hold on second place. And that hold on
32:52
second place is incredibly important because without it, the only path I see towards
33:00
Trump being defeated is gone. Because even if Trump somehow starts to implode,
33:08
which is probably too strong a word because he can't implode because he has a
33:12
cult, but I'll use that word just for the sake of argument. If
33:15
he starts to implode, that support is going to be fractured. It's gonna
33:22
go in many different places, and it's probably not going to go to the
33:25
Santis because De Santis is the one person that Trump has attacked. So if
33:30
you're somebody that's on team Trump and you decide, you know what, I
33:36
can't do this anymore. This is a bad idea. You're not naturally gonna
33:42
go to the Santist because he's not clearly the most prominent challenger anymore, or
33:47
the challenger that has the best chance to take Trump out. There's now ambiguity
33:52
about that. And we're gonna have these new flavors of the month Nicky Haley
33:57
and Veak Obama swammy, maybe even Tim Scott Mike penns isn't going anywhere.
34:02
But Chris Christy has traction in New Hampshire, which is what I told you
34:07
was going to be a major danger signal to the Santa's campaign. And I
34:12
said before anybody else. I got mocked for this, just like I've been
34:15
mocked for so much that I've been right about in this whole campaign. I
34:17
mean, the Santa supporters hate my guts now because I keep telling the truth,
34:22
and I keep making these predictions that turn out to be not just accurate,
34:25
but even more accurate than I had feared. And one of them was
34:30
get the hell out of New Hampshire, because there's no chance the Santa's wins
34:32
New Hampshire. None. And that has one hundred been vindicated. And there
34:40
are a lot of the Santa supporters who say, but well, John,
34:43
these national polls don't matter, which technically is true, but it's not really
34:46
true because perception creates reality. In these circumstances, it's all about Iowa,
34:52
and De Santis is gonna win Ioways put a ton of money into Iowa,
34:57
and you know there's a lot of evangelicals there. They're gonna award him for
35:00
his abortion stance. They're going to punish Trump for all of his moral failings
35:06
and his shifting position on abortion. And you know, people that I've even
35:12
bought into the idea. Okay, maybe because it's a caucus, it's a
35:15
different type of person that'll show up and the people of Iowa, they seem
35:19
to be good people, and they take this process seriously. I'm willing to
35:23
buy all that. I'm willing to buy all that, except the polls in
35:28
Iowa have gone exactly the same direction as everywhere else, only slightly less catastrophically.
35:37
Right now, in Iowa, Donald Trump leads by thirty five points,
35:43
and yes, the Sanders is in second. But Haley and Obama, Swamy
35:50
and Tim Scott and Mike Pennce, they all have enough support to stay in
35:55
the race. And by the way, that's the other thing about this.
35:58
People are have an annuated view of the circumstances that would cause someone to drop
36:05
out of the presidential race. We are not living in the nineteen eighties or
36:08
nineties anymore, where as soon as you run out of money, you decide
36:14
to drop out. Going back to social media, social media has changed everything.
36:19
If you have a large enough social media following and you know, and
36:22
you're able to get a halfway decent crowd in Iowa because you have enough celebrity,
36:29
there's nothing to stop you from continuing to run. Nothing. You don't
36:35
have to have nearly the kind of resources now to do it. Effectively,
36:38
you need maybe more resources than you've ever needed before, but to be able
36:44
to just do it once you've reached five percent or so, you know,
36:49
if you're just going to do it for your own ego to be a pain
36:52
in the ascid and the race, there's nothing stopping you. So none of
36:54
these people are getting out, at least until after New Hampshire. After New
36:59
Hampshire you'll start to see people officially dropping. But at that point, the
37:04
most likely scenario here by far is that Trump wins both Iowa and New Hampshire.
37:09
I mean, so even Iowa at thirty five points, Trump in well
37:15
above forty percent. I mean, just let's do some basic numbers, right,
37:22
If Trump is at forty percent, which is I think that probably the
37:27
cult number, if that's his bedrock number. Okay, forty percent, and
37:32
let's say the non descantist crew, the Obama Swamys, the Haleys, the
37:38
Scots, the Pence, the Christie's, Okay, they now all have while
37:44
it's very small, they have their own supporters. And the best scenario I
37:51
can come up with there is they have a lock on twenty five percent of
37:55
the vote. So I'm being as optimistic as possible here, as optimistic as
38:00
possible that Trump is can't get above forty percent in a place like Iowa and
38:06
that the other non DeSantis candidates are going to get twenty five percent. Well,
38:09
let's do some basic math. What's forty plus twenty five, that's sixty
38:15
five. What's left over that's thirty five. That's best case scenario. That's
38:22
best case scenario. There's no there's no logic to even what I just told
38:27
you actually happening. But I'm trying to be as optimistic as possible. That's
38:31
Trumps still winning by five points now had if that occurs, the narrative will
38:38
be, Wow, DeSantis is making a run here and he's almost shocked the
38:44
world. And this was a lot closer than the pulse indicated, and as
38:47
Trump losing his stranglehold on the Republican nominating process, Yeah, and that'll be
38:54
fun for about a week and then New Hampson is going to come around where
38:59
Trump is currently leading by forty five points. New Hampshire doesn't give a flying
39:02
fuck what Iowa does. Trump is gonna claim that anything that happens in Iowa
39:07
is illegitimate because it's a caucus and no one believes a caucus and it's not
39:13
as good as a primary state. And you know, some of there was
39:15
probably problems with the voting that we be all sorts of rationalizations as to why
39:21
the close call in Iowa is irrelevant, and then when he wins in New
39:24
Hampshire, it's completely erased. And I can guarant damn te you there is
39:30
no path to the Santis winning New Hampshire. None, zero, not possible.
39:36
This is I told you. That's why I said, get the fuck
39:37
out of New Hampshire before it's too late. Just seed it. This should
39:43
be Iowa South Carolina. And you know, no one listens to me,
39:47
of course, but I'm right. So what's the scenario here? Best case
39:53
scenario, Trump still wins Iowa by a small margin, and then he crushes
40:00
in New Hampshire because none of the non de Santist candidates are going to get
40:06
out because Chris Christie's that's all he cares about is New Hampshire and Haley's doing
40:12
better in New Hampshire. Obama Swamy probably thinks he could do well in New
40:16
Hampshire, and so Trump will win New Hampshire well once he's won Iowa,
40:22
New Hampshire. This thing is over. It's completely over, because now he's
40:29
got all the momentum. He has validated a year's worth of polls showing that
40:34
he's the alpha. And at that point, we got South Carolina around the
40:39
corner. And what's gonna happen there? Well, Nicki Haley, if she's
40:45
smart, is going to get the hell out and she's gonna endorse Donald Trump.
40:50
Former governor of South Carolina. Tim Scott, Senator of South Carolina is
40:53
probably going to do the same thing. They're not gonna endorse de Santis.
40:59
They're gonna endoors Donald Trump because that's what's best for them. And then Trump
41:04
wins South Carolina in a fucking landslide, and at that point the money is
41:10
completely gone. That may be already gone by that point for DeSantis, and
41:16
he's going to have the Florida primary looming. He doesn't want to go into
41:21
Florida and get humiliated in his own state. So there's no scenario Here's there's
41:29
no scenario where Trump is not the nominee. And there's another element of why
41:36
Trump has to be the nominee that I've alluded to previously, but I probably
41:40
underrated, and this is part of this equation that nobody on the DeSantis side
41:45
seems to understand. And it's really kind of simple, and it essentially goes
41:52
to the old you know this, There used to be a cliche back when
41:54
people cared about boxing, right that you can't beat the champ in a decision,
42:00
you have to knock the champ out. Now, there were sometimes when
42:04
that wasn't really the case Leon Spink speat Mohammad Ali, but in general that
42:12
was that was the case that you know, in theory, you had to
42:16
knock out the champ. Well, in this case, Trump is clearly the
42:21
champ. He's clearly the one sitting on the throne, and you have to
42:25
knock him out. You can't beat him in a long slog. You especially
42:32
can't beat him in a long slog because there are some unique circumstances to who
42:38
Donald Trump is. Number one, he doesn't give a flying fuck about the
42:44
party or the country, which is the number one reason why someone might withdraw
42:50
from a race that they theoretically still had a chance to win. Trump's not
42:54
gonna do that, especially facing four indictments where he knows he has to be
42:59
a Bible care to get jury members to stand by him. His literal freedom
43:05
is on the line. So there's zero scenario where Donald Trump decides, you
43:10
know what, Wow, you got me, Wow, I got you know
43:14
what. I had a weak performance in Iowa, and I can't even I
43:20
can't even humor myself by going through this this scenario. There, even if
43:23
he lost Iowa, there would be no scenario where Trump would go, you
43:28
know what, for the betterment of the party in the country, I've had
43:30
my chance. I'm going to step aside. That is not in the realm
43:35
of even remote possibility, especially with the indictments hanging over his head. So
43:43
he had to be knocked out. He even under the best scenario possible,
43:51
even the greatest fantasy I could possibly create, because he has a cult,
43:54
You're not gonna knock him out, especially now, and and he has no
44:01
incentive to withdraw. He will be a Kamakazi pilot. He will he will
44:09
essentially be a terrorist. All he has to do is say, Okay,
44:14
if you don't give me the nomination, I'm gonna tell my people to stay
44:15
home. Well, in any close race, guess what's gonna happen If it
44:21
somehow got to the convention, the delegates are gonna go with Trump because the
44:25
Santist or whoever isn't going to be a terrorist. They're not going to have
44:30
the hold on the population like that. They're not gonna be able to tell
44:35
thirty percent of the Republican base to sit home and have them do it.
44:38
But Trump can do that. It's effectively, you know, his doomsday device.
44:45
And when he has a doomsday device, that means you can't beat him
44:51
in a close race because they'll just initiate the doomsday device. It has to
44:57
be a knockout. Well, the kockout scenario is now gone because Iowa is
45:04
gone, New Hampshire is gone, and because of Haley and Tim Scott,
45:10
South Carolina has gone. Interestingly, Trump's not doing that great in South Carolina.
45:15
I think he's most poles, He's barely over. That's what's so frustrating.
45:20
He's theoretically beat a ball, but yet you can only have one candidate
45:24
going against him, and Haley and Scott aren't going to have an incentive to
45:30
get out until just before their home state so they don't get embarrassed by losing
45:36
or by the way. The other scenario is, let's say Trump is injured
45:40
but still leading. They may stay in South Carolina to make sure to Santa's
45:45
can't beat Trump. That's so effectively they'll be helping Trump. That might be
45:52
a better deal for Trump for them to stay in than for them to get
45:55
out and endorse him. I mean, either one is good for him.
45:59
But none of these scenarios are remotely consistent with Trump not ending up being the
46:05
nominee. It just doesn't exist. And so for me, the final nail
46:09
in the coffin here is the Santist losing his grip on a firm control of
46:16
second place. Now, is it theoretically possible that this debate will re establish
46:22
that? I guess, I mean, I don't know. I could.
46:27
Could Hailey and Obama Swammy both vomit all over themselves? Highly unlikely. And
46:32
as they said, the Santists isn't going to go after either of them because
46:37
he's focusing on Trump and theory. You can't go after Haley because she's a
46:42
woman. Obama Swamy's a snake. Once again, the Santist is going to
46:46
be the target because he's the only one that has anything that the other people
46:51
that on the debate stage, one which is second place and of course,
46:54
I've said this before, because of the legal troubles hanging over Trump's head.
47:00
That's another reason why none of these people are gonna withdraw, because second place
47:04
may actually matter. There. It's theoretically possible that Trump could get convicted and
47:09
sent to prison before the convention, and therefore whoever is in second place,
47:15
may you know, be in a position to pick up all the pieces.
47:20
And there may be De Santa supporters are saying, well, John, what
47:22
about that for DeSantis? And I say, yeah, okay, that seems
47:30
very very very unlikely to me. One, because of the timing of the
47:32
trials, there are there are some horrendous polling for Trump when it comes to
47:38
the general election if he is convicted of a felony I mean horrendous catastrophic numbers
47:45
for Trump if he is convicted of a felony end or is in prison.
47:51
And while this is theoretical, since we've never experienced anything like this before,
47:53
I tend to agree with that polling, but that that polling does not dictate
48:00
what would happen in a Republican primary or at a Republican convention. And I
48:07
just don't think that De Santis would be the compromise guy, because Trump has
48:10
already corroded his image in Maga world. I mean, if under this scenario
48:17
where Trump is forced to give up the nomination because he's been convicted of a
48:22
fallady, I really don't think that they're going to be okay with De Santist
48:27
being the one to be given the baton. It's going to be hot to
48:32
be somebody that Trump will give their blessing to. His blessing is still gonna
48:37
matter, and I don't think that's going to be De Santis. Who it
48:40
would be, I don't know, but it's not going to be De Santists.
48:45
And it's also not a likely scenario because I'm of the belief that these
48:49
trials are going to be delayed more than the media is anticipating, that they're
48:52
going to take longer than the media anticipates. That Trump is unlikely to get
48:58
convicted in many of them. Even if he is, there's going to be
49:00
appeals that he's not going to be a prison cell immediately. Even if convicted,
49:08
These things always take a lot longer than is anticipated, and so I
49:14
just don't see it happening fast enough to where it would dramatically impact the Republican
49:21
primary process. Now, is it possible I'm wrong about that. Yeah,
49:25
I still don't see the scenario where that results in certainly the Santis being the
49:30
nominee. And I'm still not sure how that would stop Trump from being the
49:35
nominee, because that would go against the very essence of the Trump Republican Party
49:39
narrative right now, which is, we must nominate Trump to show these bastards
49:45
that can't get away with this. So if some DC jury convicts Donald Trump
49:52
for trying to fight for the twenty twenty election, which most Republicans are in
49:57
favor of him doing, that's suddenly going to turn Republicans offer from him being
50:00
the nominee. I just don't see that. If anything, it's gonna increase
50:07
the fervor to make sure he is the nominee for the reasons I've already given.
50:13
And so even if everything goes perfectly because of these unique circumstances, I
50:19
just don't see how there's any other logical, remotely plausible scenario where anybody else
50:25
but Donald Trump is the Republican presidential nominee. And it's mostly because the last
50:34
straw being this idea that even if Trump implodes that support is going to go
50:39
in multiple places. It's not just gonna go back to Ron De Santis.
50:45
Some of it hopefully would, And I want to make clear I'm still a
50:51
De Santis supporter. I'm not giving up. I'm just telling you we're not
50:53
gonna win. I'm just telling you what's gonna happen, and my track record
50:59
on this is better than anybody else I'm aware of on the planet. Not
51:02
that that means anyone's going to listen to me. I'm just telling you what
51:05
the situation is and why this is as doomed a quest as could possibly be
51:14
doomed, even more so than I ever anticipated. I've always been a pessimist
51:17
from the beginning of this. As it turns out, i've been too optimistic,
51:22
because this has gone worse faster than even I thought that it would.
51:28
Now there is the one other scenario. I've gone through the scenario of what
51:31
if Trump is convicted of a felony somehow before the delegates are chosen for the
51:38
convention, which, again I don't see how that could work timing wise.
51:42
The other scenario, which no one wants to talk about for obvious reasons,
51:45
is what if Trump dies? Trump dying, as Megan Kelly said way before
51:52
this whole process began, is really the only logical scenario where Trump is not
51:59
the Republican aneyably. Even then, He's probably still get a lot of votes
52:02
at the convention, even if he was dead. And I mean that sincerely,
52:07
as insane as that is, but that's the nature of the Republican Party
52:09
now and how much of a cult leader he is. But what if Trump
52:13
dies? Okay, yeah, obviously if Trump dies, all bets are off,
52:17
and that might be why you stay in the race, right if you're
52:21
Rondi Santis, that's really the only scenario. Then in theory, this could
52:25
all work out for your candidacy, although I have theorized it. You know,
52:30
if you knew Trump wasn't going to die, but you can't know,
52:35
especially at his age, But if you knew Trump wasn't going to die,
52:38
in all seriousness, and I got mocked for saying this on Twitter the other
52:42
day, in all seriousness, my advice to rondas Anders would be, in
52:45
your closing statement of the debate at Reagan Library announced that you're withdrawing from the
52:51
race, that this is a unique circumstance because of the indictments. The party
52:54
has made it clear we're rallying around Donald Trump and this is not the time
53:00
for my candidacy. And I wish everyone the best of luck. I wish
53:05
Trump the best of luck. I'm gonna go back to making Florida the best
53:07
state in the nation, and I'll see you down the road because that I
53:13
really believe that this debate is gonna be the last opportunity where De Santis is
53:20
clearly the alpha among the betas in the race. He'll be at the center
53:23
stage. He's clearly still in second place, though no not buy very much.
53:29
And I don't think there's gonna be another debate. I really don't.
53:34
I don't think there's gonna be another debate after this, when there might be
53:37
fake debates, but you know, this one's gonna be carried by I think
53:40
Fox Business and some other networks. What network is gonna put together a non
53:47
Trump Republican debate, I mean maybe that someone will try to do it for
53:53
prestige, I guess, But the ratings are going to be terrible because we've
53:58
now established Trump doesn't need to do the debates, and as I predicted all
54:00
along, he's not going to do any of these debates. He got away
54:04
with it the first time his poll numbers went up. He's gonna get away
54:07
with it the second time. Nothing's gonna happen to his poll numbers because he
54:10
dodged the second debate. So now we know for sure Trump is never going
54:15
to do another debate unless somehow his numbers implode, which there's no reason for
54:20
them to do so. So if Trump's not going to do the debate,
54:25
and everyone knows this, and everyone knows that, we're all just fighting over
54:30
second place, which is going to be academic other than maybe for Trump's vice
54:34
presidential nomination, which I think right now, logically Nicki Haley probably has the
54:38
best shot of that, if Trump thinks logically, which is a big if,
54:43
But I digress. The point here is what's the incentive structure for any
54:47
media outlet to host another debate. There's no Trump, you say, don't
54:52
have your star. Everyone's way behind him, and the ratings I'm sure for
54:58
the second debate are going to be worst than they were for the first debate,
55:00
maybe by a large margin. So I just I don't think there's a
55:07
very good chance we're gonna have another real quote unquote debate among the non Trump
55:12
candidates. It's possible that that will happen in some form, but in reality,
55:17
this is the last one that's going to be taken seriously. And if
55:21
you were looking for your last point of leverage or strength or relative strength to
55:25
go out on, this is it for DeSantis, because from this point on
55:30
there are no other jumping off points, there are no other situations where he
55:37
is still going to be seen in anything remotely resembling a position of power.
55:43
And once the primary start, this could get really ugly. This could get
55:47
really ugly for desantists. This could be total humiliation. I'm still hopeful that
55:53
that's not where it's going to end up, that maybe there'll be some semblance
55:57
of a comeback. People will come to their senses. The Sandis will be
56:00
a strong second place finisher. But I gotta tell you right now, I
56:05
think it's more likely that when you combine Iowa and New Hampshire that Nicky Haley
56:08
does better than Rohn de Santis. Not by a lot, but that would
56:12
be my current prediction that when you combine Iowa and New Hampshire, Nicky Haley
56:15
will likely do better than Rohn de Santis as insane as that is. Of
56:21
course that you know, depends on how she does in this debate and other
56:23
things, but I think she's going to probably have a little bit of her
56:27
moment. There's no question that the non Trump media, like for instance,
56:31
Fox News Channel, though much of Fox News Channel is very pro Trump,
56:36
and you know, Rupert Murdoch no longer being the head of Fox News Channel
56:40
is going to change that. But you know, the reality here is that
56:45
there's going to be some elements of the media on the right wing that are
56:49
looking for a new prince to save Sleeping Beauty and take on Maleficent. And
56:52
they thought it was gonna be Rohnda Santis. But it looks like Maleficent is
56:57
taking out Prince Prince Philip. I guess is what is name was with two
57:00
young daughters. I have a pretty good knowledge of these these Disney fairy tales.
57:06
But you know, it looks like Malffson is taking out Rond de Santis.
57:10
So maybe we're gonna go with a princess, Princess Haley to try to
57:15
save Sleeping Beauty. Not that she's going to be able to pull it off,
57:17
but there's gonna be there's a market now for someone to replace Ron de
57:22
Santis, because it's clear, you know that it's not getting the job's not
57:27
getting done for whatever reason, whether it's this campaign, whether it's Trump's attacks,
57:32
whether it's just bad timing, bad luck. There's all sorts of different
57:37
explanations and reasons, but the reality is still the same. And by the
57:40
way, as far as Trump dying, I hate to really put the thought
57:45
that everyone's rooting for Trump to be dead, even I'm not in that category,
57:50
but I even think that that chance is grossly overestimated. I mean,
57:54
there are people who online tell me, well, if you look at the
57:58
percentages of people at Trump's age, what's the chances that they live for another
58:01
year? And you know, they'll people tell you that there's at least a
58:06
five percent chance at someone at Trump's age, you know, being a male
58:10
and not being in great shape, that there's that five percent chance he's going
58:14
to die. And my response to that is, Okay, that's for maybe
58:19
a normal person. Trump is a billionaire, although not nearly as much of
58:23
a billionaire as he claims, with Secret Service protection, and I'm quite certain
58:29
they got a defibrillator with them at all times. I mean, if he's
58:32
remotely smart. At his age and his weight, he would have a defibrillator
58:37
with him at all times. And so a heart attack is really the only
58:42
scenario logically where Trump is going to die in the next year. Well,
58:45
Trump could have a heart attack and not die because he would have immediate medical
58:52
attention and as I said, at least in theory, have a defibrillator right
58:57
there, which is highly unusual. I mean, most people with their first
59:00
heart attack, if they had immediate medical attention, would survive it. So
59:05
even if that happens, Trump isn't going to die. It's not going to
59:09
happen. The only chance, the only time he's really vulnerable to death is
59:13
basically the six or seven hours every night when he's sleeping. That's about the
59:16
only time when he might be vulnerable to that. And so the chances of
59:22
Trump dying are much lower than even people realize. Plus, he's clearly,
59:29
you know, in decent health, and he has energy, although not as
59:32
much energy as he used to have. But so that's not a scenario that
59:37
I take very seriously, although we're living in such a very very strange time
59:42
now. Of course, unspoken in all of this is the reality that he
59:45
can't have Trump ever lose momentum if it is perceived, and perception is everything
59:54
here, if it is perceived that he can beat Joe Biden, especially if
1:00:00
it looks like he's the guy who has the best chance to beat Joe Biden,
1:00:07
and the polls up until this past weekend had indicated that this was at
1:00:14
best a toss up situation, And I've never been particularly willing to believe that
1:00:21
Trump would win a toss up, because if Trump is only at forty five
1:00:24
forty six percent against a very weak Joe Biden, the media is gonna pull
1:00:30
Biden over the finish line, and the electoral College may actually be to Biden's
1:00:35
slight advantage, unlike what happened in twenty sixteen when Trump lost the popular vote
1:00:40
and won the electoral College over Hillary Clinton. So I've never been completely convinced
1:00:45
at all that Trump was gonna beat Biden, even as weak as he is.
1:00:50
But there's been no question that Trump has been doing slightly better against Biden
1:00:53
than, for instance, Ron to Sandis, and I think there's very rational
1:00:58
explanations for that that have nothing to do with whether or not the Santists would
1:01:00
be a better candidate against Biden. And by the way, you also have
1:01:05
to think about down ballot. I think there's absolutely no question that the Santis
1:01:08
would be way better down ballot for the Republican Party in twenty twenty four than
1:01:14
Donald Trump. But with regard to Trump winning the nomination, if it's perceived
1:01:19
that he has the best chance of beating Biden, then there's no way that
1:01:24
he can ever implode. You can never even start that negative momentum because electability
1:01:30
is ultimately extremely important in theory. Electability would be Trump's vulnerability because he's facing
1:01:38
four indictments and because if he gets convicted of felony. The polls have indicated
1:01:45
very very clearly that he can't beat Biden, that no one will vote for
1:01:49
him other than hardcore Republicans. But again, perception is reality here, and
1:01:54
there's a new poll out that basically ends the perception game when it to Trump
1:02:00
selectability. ABC Washington Post put out a poll where Trump is somehow beating Joe
1:02:06
Biden in the national popular vote by ten points. Ten points. Now,
1:02:13
I don't believe that even the people who did the poll don't believe that they
1:02:17
have described their own poll as a quote unquote outlier, which I don't think
1:02:23
I can ever remember, I have no recollection of a major polster ever referring
1:02:27
to their own poll as an outlier. But it is an outlier. I
1:02:30
mean, there's no other poll that comes close to that result. But it
1:02:37
doesn't matter because perception is reality, and the people who don't believe in polls,
1:02:42
that even election day polls, Trump cult members and Trump himself are screaming
1:02:47
about this poll from the mountaintops. This is basically gospel that this poll is
1:02:53
true, that there's something going on in the country, and Trump is gonna
1:02:59
somehow sweep to victory in twenty twenty four, and that's basically game set match
1:03:06
for the Republican nominating process. That's part of why I'm so very, very
1:03:08
confident that this is the time to officially make the call that, barring death
1:03:15
or imprisonment before the Republican Convention, neither of which is likely at all,
1:03:20
that Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee. It's just so incredibly
1:03:25
obvious because electabilities is the final nail in the coffin. I mean, if
1:03:30
you can't make the electability argument, you can't beat Trump. There's just no
1:03:35
possible way, especially as unpopular as Biden is now, this poll pinpoints two
1:03:40
things that are fairly rational, people being upset with the economy, and people
1:03:45
being upset with immigration and the flooding of the southern border, the completely out
1:03:51
of control border, which is hurting Biden significantly. And that's an issue obviously,
1:03:57
both the economy and immigration, or issues where the average person can understandably
1:04:01
favored Donald Trump over Joe Biden. That makes some sense logically, So there
1:04:06
is some theoretical basis for how it is that this poll got Trump to lead
1:04:13
by ten points. Again, I don't believe that. I just don't believe
1:04:16
that. But it doesn't matter, because now the perception is there that Trump
1:04:24
can in fact beat Biden and may in fact be the best option to beat
1:04:28
Biden. And that's only going to further his momentum even more dramatically, especially
1:04:34
as he shows how alpha he is by skipping the debates and having no negative
1:04:39
blowback on him whatsoever. And of course Democrats are understandably freaking out about this,
1:04:45
The media is freaking out about this. A recent guest on this podcast,
1:04:48
jenk Huger from The Young Turks, wrote a column in Newsweek pleading for
1:04:54
Joe Biden to bail from the race because he is convinced that Trump will beat
1:04:58
him. And that was even before or this ABC Washington Post pole and Chinking
1:05:02
Hunger Huger was one of those who correctly predicted in twenty sixteen that Trump would
1:05:08
beat Hillary. Now that doesn't mean that Chink is always right. He's been
1:05:11
wrong about a lot of things. But I can at least see the argument.
1:05:15
And again, it doesn't even matter whether or not the argument is correct.
1:05:18
Perception is reality, and the perception has now been created, ironically enough,
1:05:24
and the mix of people don't believe in poles and certainly don't believe liberal
1:05:28
polls like from the ABC Washington Post Polly Group, now all of a sudden
1:05:32
they believe it and it's reality. Perception has become reality, and that's the
1:05:38
death now for anybody, anybody beating Donald Trump in the race of the twenty
1:05:44
twenty four Republican nominating process. There's no question, there's no question that because
1:05:48
of all this, Donald Trump is going to be the nominee again, barring
1:05:53
death or imprisonment by the Convention. So the bottom line of this is I
1:05:59
have seen enough and with great sadness and after an enormous amount of patients and
1:06:06
consideration for trying to hold off as long as I possibly can, barring death
1:06:13
or barring prison, Donald Trump is going to be the twenty twenty four presidential
1:06:17
nominee and that has enormous implications for the country and for all sorts of things,
1:06:25
which we will get into in future episodes of the podcast, but I'll
1:06:29
continue to cover the process. Although programming note, I think so little of
1:06:34
this coming debate. I have travel plan for later this week, and you
1:06:39
know, it would been very difficult for us to do a post debate podcast,
1:06:44
which we did for the first debate, because normally our schedule is to
1:06:46
tape on Wednesday mornings, and this is a Wednesday evening debate. Is like
1:06:50
the last one was. I don't anticipate us doing that for this. I
1:06:54
just don't think it's important enough and my schedule that isn't conducive to it.
1:06:58
So episode ninety three is likely not going to come out till the following week,
1:07:02
So we will probably be skipping a podcast episode. And it's not entirely
1:07:08
because of how I see the race, but it's at least in part because
1:07:12
That's how I see the race. I just don't. I don't see this
1:07:14
as a legitimate race right now. Now. Could a miracle occur, I
1:07:19
guess, But what would that be. He's already been indicted four times,
1:07:25
So what would be the miracle that would suddenly change the race when it comes
1:07:28
to Trump's popularity? I just I don't see it. But if that were
1:07:33
to occur, and no one would be happier to admit I was wrong more
1:07:36
than me, trust me, nobody on the planet would be happier to say
1:07:41
to you, you know what, I blew it, I was wrong.
1:07:45
But unfortunately, I just don't see that happening, and it will impact the
1:07:49
content of this podcast and may even dramatically impact the duration of this podcast because
1:07:56
I just have no interest at all, zero in commenting for a year about
1:08:01
Trump versus Biden. I just have no interest in that at all. Now
1:08:06
there are those including myself, that are starting to think it might not be
1:08:11
Trump versus Biden, but not because of the Trump part of the equation.
1:08:14
I have talked a lot in recent episodes about how concern about Joe Biden on
1:08:18
the Democratic side is increasing and for good reasons, and I've also discussed about
1:08:24
how our governor here in California, Governor Gavin Newsom, or as my daughters
1:08:29
referred to him, Governor Poossom, because of his COVID tyranny, has been
1:08:34
making a lot of moves that are very consistent with the idea that he at
1:08:39
least thinks there's a chance he may be the Democratic presidential nominee. I referenced
1:08:44
his interview with Chuck tona Meet the Press, One that he would even do
1:08:46
that, but two that he would go out of his way to acknowledge very
1:08:51
vaguely COVID mistakes. That to me, I thought was a clear sign to
1:08:57
wait a minute. This is a guy who thinks he might be on the
1:08:59
ballot outside of California in the near future, because there's no pressure on him
1:09:03
to do that here in California, certainly not by the pathetic news media in
1:09:08
California. And so that was the first sign that I said, Okay,
1:09:13
wait a minute. At least Newsom thinks there's a chance he's going to be
1:09:16
the nominee. It'll be clear. He has said he's not running, and
1:09:19
he has talked about how much he supports Joe Biden. But of course he
1:09:23
has to do that because the only scenario where he could be the nominee is
1:09:27
if Biden decides to bow out. Now, I still don't know how Newsom
1:09:31
would beat Harris for the nomination, but it's just very very clear that in
1:09:38
Newsome's egotistical, megalomaniac mine, he is at least keeping that door open.
1:09:44
And he did something else in the last couple of days that is also consistent
1:09:48
with this. He vetoed a very controversial bill that essentially would have required judges
1:09:58
in custody cases to take into consideration if a parent was not affirming their child's
1:10:06
gender choice. Now, you would like to think this is not a scenario
1:10:13
that would occur a lot, but you know, if it became a law,
1:10:16
I can certainly see a scenario where this would be something that would be
1:10:21
created in bitter custody battles where you could certainly imagine a situation where one parent
1:10:29
may put their kid up to this or manipulate their kid in some way that
1:10:34
would facilitate them gaining custody because they knew the other parent was gonna was not
1:10:40
going to a firm a gender transition. And I even tweeted when the bill
1:10:46
got passed. I said, we're gonna find out whether or not knew some
1:10:51
things. He might have a chance to be running for president in twenty twenty
1:10:56
four, because if he's not going to run for president in twenty twenty four,
1:10:59
there's no reason for him not to sign this. He clearly agrees philosophically
1:11:04
with the with the bill, and there would be no blowback in California among
1:11:11
you know, sixty percent of the population. There will be no blowback in
1:11:14
California for the bill, and the bill only if it became law, would
1:11:17
only impact a very small number of people now would impact their lives potentially,
1:11:23
very very dramatically, but it's a very small number of people. So there
1:11:27
really wouldn't have been any price for Newsome to sign the bill into law,
1:11:33
except he didn't. He vetoed it, and I was not the only person
1:11:41
online who was thinking the exact same thing. That will wait a minute,
1:11:45
hold on the only reason why Newsom would veto this, and when he vetoed
1:11:50
it, even he even said that judges should take this into consideration naturally and
1:11:56
they don't need to have a law to tell them to do it, as
1:11:58
if he was somehow against the idea of asserting the legal authority of the state
1:12:03
to force people to do things. I mean, this is a guy who
1:12:09
signed a bill into law forcing doctors or to not give anti establishment information about
1:12:18
COVID that you can lose your doctor's license if you you said something to a
1:12:26
patient that was not approved by the State of California when it came to COVID
1:12:30
reactions, specifically regarding masks and vaccines. In fact, I think there are
1:12:36
there are doctors who are currently being targeted by the State of California for telling
1:12:44
their patients that masks don't work. So this is the same guy who now
1:12:47
suddenly is standing on principles saying I just don't think it's just a good idea
1:12:51
for the state to be telling judges exactly what they have to do, no
1:12:56
matter what that they ought to be able to do this on their own.
1:12:58
Well, that's in contradiction to his medical tyranny law that he signed, you
1:13:04
know, a year or so ago, which, by the way, may
1:13:08
be reversed. That may be in the process of being reversed by the California
1:13:13
legislature, which might be another sign that Newsome is trying to make himself viable
1:13:20
to a presidential election outside of California. Now, does this prove any of
1:13:26
it? No, but these are these are pretty good signs that if Newsom
1:13:30
is willing to veto this and he's willing to acknowledge mistakes on COVID, although
1:13:34
he's still telling News Nation and Chris Cuomo that his response statistically was way better
1:13:41
than Florida's, which is a complete fucking lie. But no one, of
1:13:45
course in the mainstream news media will call him on that because he's he's a
1:13:48
very good talker, and you know, the media is enamored with him and
1:13:53
they have no interest in torpedoing his lies. But I found that Vita to
1:14:00
be very, very interesting from the standpoint of Newsome potentially at least thinking he
1:14:05
has a chance to be the twenty twenty four nominee. There's another thing that
1:14:09
happened. I mean, boy, he's certainly acting like a guy who wants
1:14:13
to make himself viable for president, because he's not only doing interviews with you
1:14:17
know, the Meet the Press and Chris Cuomo and News Nation, but he
1:14:23
also went to the UN to condemn fossil fuels and make it very very clear
1:14:30
that he's the leader of the climate change cult. By the way, you
1:14:36
know, how did he get to New York to speak to the UN.
1:14:40
I wonder, I wonder if he used any fossil fuels to get to New
1:14:44
York from California. Here's the governor of California and going to New York to
1:14:47
speak to the UN about the horror of fossil fuels. And I'm gonna play
1:14:53
a clip from his address. It's scary as hell, but it's just so
1:14:59
absurd. I mean, we're living in such an upside down world where we
1:15:03
have we're condemning fossil fuels, and what Newsome is doing here, I mean,
1:15:11
it's right out of the smoking playbook. They did it with tobacco,
1:15:15
and it's almost word for word what they're doing now with fossil fuels. That
1:15:20
the companies, the fossil fuel companies are are lying to you. They're not
1:15:25
telling you of the dangers. We're all going to look back and just let
1:15:29
you know. They don't. He don't say it's like smoking, but the
1:15:30
implication is as clear as it could possibly be. This is just like smoking,
1:15:36
you know, and for a lot of people that will probably resonate.
1:15:39
Oh yeah, they these tobacco companies lied to us. It's like the fossil
1:15:43
fuel companies are lying to us. Fossil fuels are literally the greatest thing that
1:15:49
have ever happened to humanity. That's how upside down the world we're living in
1:15:56
now our fossil fuels perfect. No, but by the way, neither is
1:15:59
a letricity. The idea that somehow electricity is magic and doesn't create any of
1:16:05
the same problems that these people claim fossil fuels are creating is just ridiculous.
1:16:13
It's a fantasy. It's a fairy tale. And it's one of the reasons
1:16:17
why I don't trust Elon musk as somehow being a right winger with you know,
1:16:24
I mean, he's made his fortune on the whole electric car boom doggle.
1:16:30
Electric cars are no more efficient in this area when you think about the
1:16:34
totality of their existence, maybe way worse than gas powered cars. But so
1:16:42
here we are condemning the very thing that has changed humanity more dramatically than any
1:16:47
other any other entity. And it's natural. By the way. The other
1:16:53
thing about you know, the liberals view of this, then why don't they
1:16:57
love nuclear? They hate nuclear when by all intensive purposes, assuming you avoid
1:17:02
a disaster by far the most efficient form of energy creation that there is.
1:17:08
But no, no, they don't like nuclear either, so we can't have
1:17:12
nuclear. For some reason, they love electricity because I think they think that
1:17:15
you just flip a switch and it's like free and that nothing bad happens to
1:17:19
create it, which is just flat out wrong. But here is Gavin Newsome
1:17:27
spewing a whole bunch of bullshit about fossil fuels at the UN in New York,
1:17:33
where, of course he had to burn a lot of fossil fuels to
1:17:35
get there. And this tells you just how scary it would be if Gavin
1:17:43
Newsom, ever, really was the Democratic nominee going up against a four time
1:17:47
indicted Donald Trump and highly unpopular Donald Trump, where he could actually win and
1:17:53
become President of the United States, a far more energetic, far younger,
1:17:57
and far more dangerous of Joe Biden. Here's Gavin Newsom at the UN.
1:18:02
It's time for us to be a lot more clear. This climate crisis is
1:18:08
a fossil fuel crisis. This climate crisis persists. It's not complicated. It's
1:18:18
not complicated. It's the burning of oil, it's the burning of gas.
1:18:23
It's the burning of coal, and we need to call that out. For
1:18:28
decades and decades, the oil industry has been playing each in every one of
1:18:32
us in this room for fools. They've been buying off politicians. They've been
1:18:38
denying and delaying science and fundamental information that they were privy to that they didn't
1:18:44
share or they manipulated. Their deceit and denial going back decades has created the
1:18:48
conditions that persist here today. And so thank you, Madam under Secretary,
1:18:55
for recognizing California's effort to join the efforts of others to be more clear and
1:19:00
concise in terms of what we're up against and our responsibility to do more and
1:19:06
be more now. If we had even a remotely credible news media, the
1:19:13
response to what Newsom just said there would be as follows, and this would
1:19:17
be throughout every media outlet nationally, especially here in California. The narrative would
1:19:24
be, well, wait a minute, so we have a climate crisis according
1:19:29
to the governor of California, and yet California's vaunted permanent drought, which has
1:19:35
been used many many times as the smoking gun that there really is a climate
1:19:41
crisis, just ended. It's gone. Literally, no one in California.
1:19:48
One hundred percent of the population is now living in a section of California that
1:19:54
has no drought zero a year after basically on hid cent of the population was
1:20:00
living in an area that had at least some drought, most of it very
1:20:03
severe. So where's the crisis. And oh, by the way, twenty
1:20:10
twenty three is now a couple of months away, and here we are,
1:20:14
you know, mid late September. The Santa Anna winds haven't started yet here
1:20:17
in southern California, so you don't know what's going to happen in October.
1:20:21
But there's basically one month left in this give or take in this year,
1:20:28
where they could turn this around. But this year has been the best year
1:20:34
for lack of major wildfires in the modern history of California. And that follows
1:20:42
twenty twenty two, which was, prior to twenty twenty three, the lowest
1:20:45
year for wildfire damage in the modern history of California. And when you combine
1:20:50
twenty twenty two with so far in twenty twenty three, it is by far
1:20:57
the best two year period of time in the modern history of the state when
1:21:02
it comes to wildfire damage. Now, I've told you many times wildfire damage
1:21:08
has nothing to do with climate change global warming. Even the experts, if
1:21:11
you look hard enough, will tell you that, but they just don't want
1:21:14
to tell the media that because the media loves those pictures of fire and it
1:21:17
seems like it should be connected to global warming climate change. But the reality
1:21:23
here is that these are the two things that the left uses, drought and
1:21:28
wildfires. Well, there's no drought in California, and for two years now,
1:21:32
there's been no wildfires, no major wildfires in California, way way way
1:21:38
below what's been the case recently in California and used constantly by the national news
1:21:44
media as proof literally smoking gun, that there is a climate crisis. So
1:21:48
where's the fucking climate crisis? And then then there would be a lot of
1:21:53
focus on, well, how did Gavin Newsome get to New York? Did
1:21:57
he use any fossil fuels to get there? And then my pet peeve there
1:22:01
would be focused on, well, isn't it odd that Governor Newsom, who
1:22:06
has at least some significant troll over California State schools, is allowing UCLA and
1:22:15
cal Berkeley to change their con conference alignment, which is going to dramatically increase
1:22:24
the carbon footprint of every single athlete and fan of every single one of their
1:22:31
sports programs, which the left, even the left wing media in the sports
1:22:39
world, has never even mentioned. And I've referenced this using the smoking gun
1:22:44
metaphor as many times, saying this is the proof, this is the proof
1:22:48
that the whole carbon footprint thing is a farce. It's a fraud, it's
1:22:51
a scam. It's not real, because if it was, Gavin Newsom would
1:22:57
be saying, over my dead body, UCLA and the University of California are
1:23:04
going to start flying to the East Coast for every single sport and vice versa
1:23:10
and having those schools come to California for every single athletic event. I mean,
1:23:15
the carbon footprint thing couldn't be more clear. And so I just gave
1:23:20
you four really solid pieces of evidence and subjects where what Newsom said to the
1:23:30
un should be destroyed, should be destroyed, should discredit him for all time.
1:23:36
Where's the drought, where the wildfires? How'd you get there? And
1:23:40
what about the carbon footprint of your colleges that you just left let go to
1:23:45
other conferences on the East Coast or in the Midwest. And yet none of
1:23:49
that will be part of the media narrative about Gavin Newsom, none of it.
1:23:56
It's incredibly frustrating but volso very telling about the nature of the news media.
1:24:00
And this is pervasive. This climate change cult is pervasive through every element
1:24:05
of the mainstream legacy news media, and even Fox News Channel is a unich
1:24:12
on the issue because Rupert Murdoch has been pro global warming. I don't know
1:24:16
whether that's going to change now that he's not in charge anymore. But let
1:24:20
me give you another example. The Washington Post did a I guess you would
1:24:26
call this a column or an article, and the theme of it was how
1:24:30
the dream of air conditioning turned into the dark future of climate change? How
1:24:38
the dream of air conditioning turned into the dark future of climate change? Was
1:24:44
this written by the science editor of the Washington Post. No, no,
1:24:50
no, no. This was written by an art critic, an art critic
1:24:59
named Philip Kennicott. He wrote, how the dream of air condition turned into
1:25:04
the dark future or climate change. He's an art critic. Now, I
1:25:06
want you to imagine the reason why I'm mocking the art critic thing. The
1:25:12
number one element that you have to prove to the mainstream news media when you
1:25:17
comment on anything is your level of expertise. Now, can you imagine the
1:25:24
level of expertise you could. You could be a Nobel Prize winner in science.
1:25:29
And if you came to the Washington Post and you said you wanted to
1:25:31
say that luck this whole climate change, global warming things as far as let
1:25:36
me tell you why, it wouldn't matter what your credentials were. They would
1:25:43
laugh you out of the ballpark. You would have no chance of making that
1:25:46
happen none, no matter what your credentials are. But it doesn't matter what
1:25:54
your credentials are if you're spewing the line of the cult, if you're within
1:26:00
the guidelines of the religion. So you can be an art critic and you
1:26:04
can write how the dream of air conditioning turned into the dark future climate change.
1:26:09
This is a lot like condemning fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are the greatest
1:26:14
thing that's ever happened to humanity. Air conditioning, I guess you kind of
1:26:18
call that fossil fuels, although that's generally by electricity. It all comes indirectly.
1:26:26
Fossil fuels are at least indirectly involved in all of this. But air
1:26:30
conditioning is right up there among the greatest things that have ever happened to humanity.
1:26:34
And now they're going to claim that air conditioning is what's causing climate change
1:26:40
because there is theoretically a correlation between the time period in which air conditioning became
1:26:48
very, very popular and now we have alleged global warming. Well, correlation
1:26:55
does not mean causation. There's all sorts of other things that correlate to the
1:27:00
last forty five years or so they're being this alleged increase in global temperature.
1:27:05
You know what. One of those other things that correlates is the use of
1:27:10
satellite technology to determine what the global temperature is. We've only been doing that
1:27:15
for forty five years. So wait a minute, you mean to tell me
1:27:17
we dramatically changed, radically, fundamentally changed the way in which we determine global
1:27:26
temperature, and they just so happened to go up during that same time period,
1:27:31
a time period when it was very very politically advantageous to the people doing
1:27:36
the calculations for that temperature to go up. Gee, get out of town.
1:27:43
Wow, I wonder if there's another explanation. I mean, the number
1:27:46
one thing you're supposed to learn in science is that you can't compare apples to
1:27:49
oranges, and so to me. You know, some people make the point
1:27:54
that really we have one hundred twenty years of reliable data to compare, which
1:27:59
is nothing. It's a blink of an eye, and agree with that,
1:28:01
but I actually think it's way worse than that. It's really only forty five
1:28:04
years, forty forty five years where we compute the temperature exactly the same way
1:28:12
as we do today thanks to satellite technology. And then there's another element that's
1:28:17
similar, you know, with regard to air conditioning. I would argue that,
1:28:21
you know what, indirectly, ironically, air conditioning may have led to
1:28:26
the whole concept of global warming climate change. You know why, because air
1:28:30
conditioning allowed people to live in areas of the world that were previously uninhabitable.
1:28:38
They were too hot for us to live in, and so therefore there were
1:28:42
no populations there. And when there's no population there, guess what isn't happening.
1:28:47
People aren't taking the fucking temperature. But now we've got goddamn cities in
1:28:54
places like in Arizona where that we're you know, fifty sixty years ago basically
1:29:00
non existent, or here in southern California. There's all sorts of places that
1:29:03
are legitimate cities now that no one was living in fifty sixty years ago.
1:29:10
Who the fuck was taking the temperature? Now I realize that they say,
1:29:14
oh, no, we've controlled for that. I just don't believe you.
1:29:16
I don't believe you because you have made it obvious what your agenda is.
1:29:20
You have a political agenda, and so therefore I have no trust that you
1:29:26
have properly controlled for that major difference. So now they're even going after air
1:29:32
conditioning. This is what's going to happen, folks. They are going to
1:29:35
use this, I've said many times before, just like COVID, to control
1:29:40
our lives in every possible way, how we heat, how we cool,
1:29:44
what we eat, when we travel, how we travel. This is it.
1:29:48
This is the new frontier. And if Newsome does in fact become the
1:29:53
Democratic nominee, look the fuck out, because he's going to do exactly what
1:29:56
he did to the country on climate change, what he did to California when
1:30:00
it came to COVID. Now, I've mentioned several times that Rupert Murdoch has
1:30:04
stepped down as the head of Fox News and News Corps, which runs a
1:30:10
whole lot of allegedly conservative media. I could talk a lot about this.
1:30:15
I think it's a little bit overrated because his son Lachlin appears to be philosophically
1:30:20
very much in tune with Rupert Murdoch. In fact, he may even be
1:30:24
more Trumpian than Rupert Murdoch. I do find it absolutely astonishing that one of
1:30:30
the most powerful figures in American right wing media in the history of right wing
1:30:35
media, happens to be a guy who's not an American and who believes in
1:30:40
global warming climate change, and really isn't a conservative. I think the legacy
1:30:45
of Fox News Channel under Rupert Murdoch is terrible for the country and for the
1:30:49
conservative movement. I've said many many times when you look at the history of
1:30:56
Fox News Channel, if you look post Fox News Channel and post conservative media,
1:31:00
Republicans do far, far, far worse in national elections, especially for
1:31:05
president, than they did before Fox News Channel and Rush Limbaugh and talk radio
1:31:11
and then what we now have with independent media and podcasting and online endeavors and
1:31:16
all that because because effectively conservatives gave up the mainstream, they gave up the
1:31:23
ability to communicate with independent voters because it was a financially viable model that made
1:31:29
a lot of money, but it didn't help didn't help the country. It
1:31:32
divided the country, and it minimized and fragmented and marginalized conservative thought were non
1:31:42
liberal thought. I mean, when you look hell, I mean, look
1:31:45
at the victories of Nixon and Reagan and Bush Senior before Fox News Channel ever
1:31:53
even existed. Now I realized part of that demographic shifts in the country.
1:31:58
But I have no love for Fox News Channel at all. And you know,
1:32:03
I have a house that was built at least in part in Fox News
1:32:06
Channel's coverage of my two thousand and nine documentary about the two thousand and eight
1:32:12
presidential election media mail practice Obama got elected. I've been blackballed there for many,
1:32:16
many years because I'm not part of the club and because I don't like
1:32:21
Fox News Channel. But I think that the Fox News Channel legacy under Rupert
1:32:28
Murdoch is mixed at best and is actually very very bad for the country,
1:32:33
very very bad for the conservative movement. And that was even before Donald Trump.
1:32:39
And you know, Murdoch has said to hate Trump, but the reality
1:32:42
is his network has facilitated Trump's nomination. In twenty twenty four, and very
1:32:46
likely the re election of Joe Biden. I still believe that Biden will be
1:32:50
the nominee and that he is very likely to beat Trump unless the economy goes
1:32:55
to complete crap between now and then, which it actually could, so I
1:33:00
think a little bit overrated. I'll be curious to see what happens in the
1:33:03
post Rupert Murdoch world, but I don't expect any major changes, at least
1:33:08
not in the short run. Another story I want to talk about is something
1:33:12
I've discussed the last two podcasts, which is this horrific episode that occurred in
1:33:16
Las Vegas where two teenagers driving a stolen car ran over a white former police
1:33:25
chief here in California was just driving his bike one morning in Las Vegas,
1:33:30
mining his own business, and he got run over basically as part of a
1:33:33
game, almost like it was a video game. Was all taped that video
1:33:39
somehow made it online, and it took a month for this story to really
1:33:43
explode. I did an appearance with Dan Abrams on News Nation last week and
1:33:47
then right after that, and I don't think this was because of our appearance,
1:33:50
but it certainly didn't hurt that we shined some light on it. The
1:33:55
story did finally get a lot of attention nationally, especially among the right media,
1:34:00
especially since there was a second arrest in the case. So now both
1:34:03
of these teenagers have been apprehended. Now it appeared as if both of these
1:34:09
kids were black. You know, some of this is obviously a matter of
1:34:15
conjecture or a judgment call. One of the two kids is clearly African American.
1:34:20
The other appears to be Hispanic. Somehow, those on the left tried
1:34:26
to claim, because of the way that the paperwork was done, that one
1:34:31
of them was actually white. There's no chance that one of these two kids
1:34:35
was white. I've never really focused that much on the racial element of this,
1:34:41
other than the fact that if the races were reversed, there's a one
1:34:44
hundred percent, one hundred percent likelihood that the news media would jumped all over
1:34:47
this as a teaching moment, and how races this is the two white kids
1:34:50
knocked over and killed for sport and for fun, this poor black guy riding
1:34:56
a bicycle on the side of the road. None of that happened because this
1:35:00
was clearly, you know, two kids of color who were killing, murdering
1:35:05
an innocent white guy. And that's not a story that the mainstream news media
1:35:10
cares about. I did find it interesting, though, and I'm very concerned
1:35:15
about some comments that one of these two assholes made to police when they were
1:35:20
arrested that has been redacted that I think might shed a lot of light if
1:35:26
we knew what words were actually being used. This is a story from The
1:35:30
Blaze, and I don't know when that the Blaze redacted this or if this
1:35:34
was redacted, but from the original news source that the Blaze was using,
1:35:39
or maybe even by police. I'm not sure, but here's the story.
1:35:43
The teens accused of Fadling mowing down a sixty four year old retired police chief
1:35:46
Andreas Probes with a stolen car back in August, appeared in Las Vegas Justice
1:35:53
Court last Thursday. Jesu's Ayala, eighteen and Jazmire Keys sixteen face a variety
1:36:00
of charges, including murder, and are being tried as adults in the death
1:36:04
penalty state. According to police, Ayala, whose alleged in humanity was caught
1:36:11
on film, appeared wholly unrepentant upon being taken into custody, telling officers you
1:36:21
think this juvenile expletive deleted is gonna do some expletive question mark, I'll be
1:36:30
out in thirty days, I'll bet you now. That was reported by k
1:36:35
l ASTV in Las Vegas. I am against censorship, especially in this kind
1:36:44
of case, because what words were used there could be very very key in
1:36:50
understanding what really happened here. I want to repeat what this asshole said to
1:36:57
the police. You think this juvenile expletive deleted is going to do some expletive
1:37:03
deleted question mark, I'll be out in thirty days, I'll bet you.
1:37:10
Now. This is Allah, who appears to be the Hispanic best I can
1:37:14
tell, and so I don't know what that expletive deleted is. Is he
1:37:19
referring to himself with some sort of racial description that seems possible to me that
1:37:30
would make sense within the context of this. You think this juvenile, whatever
1:37:36
I know, how he described himself, I think would be very very key
1:37:40
here is going to do expletive. I'll be out in thirty days, I'll
1:37:45
bet you. I can't prove it because I don't know what words were used,
1:37:47
but if he is describing himself in racial terms, then that would go
1:37:54
to the idea that these kids thought they were untouchable because of their minority status.
1:37:59
Now I'm going further than the facts allow me here, But that's why
1:38:04
finding out what he said is significant, potentially critical here, and why I'm
1:38:11
very much against the censorship. Back to the story, Allah, whose criminal
1:38:15
record in the juvenile system is substantial. Surprise surprise added quote. It's just
1:38:21
expletive hit and run, slap on the wrist. They didn't even think what
1:38:27
they did was significant. It was going to give them any real jail time.
1:38:31
They killed a poor guy on purpose for sport. Back to the article,
1:38:38
These remarks volunteered before resting officers had even mentioned the hit and run were
1:38:44
reportedly captured on a police body camera. Well, I certainly hope that becomes
1:38:49
public at some point because that could be very key to understanding the real motivations
1:38:56
here and what was really happening in the minds of these assholes. Back to
1:39:00
the Blaze article. After leaving Propes bleeding in their wake, Ayala and Keys
1:39:04
are said to have stolen two additional vehicles, which they then crashed into one
1:39:12
another for kicks, mirroring a shopping plaza, and Propes was apparently not the
1:39:19
duo's only victim. Extra to the footage of props slaying. Police found another
1:39:26
video on Ayala's cell phone of a second bicyclist being struck by a Kia soul
1:39:34
Klas indicated that in the video of the second incident taken by Ayala, a
1:39:40
voice can be heard repeatedly urging the driver to bump him, remferencing a seventy
1:39:45
two year old man widing his bicycle on the far side of the street.
1:39:48
Both suspects roar with laughter as their car's engine can be heard accelerating. Thankfully,
1:39:56
this seventy two year old man somehow survived the attack. I mean,
1:40:00
there are so many elements of this story that are just chilling and really an
1:40:06
indication of just how unbelievably broken our society is in general, but specifically when
1:40:11
it comes to younger people. And I said on Dan Abrahams show, my
1:40:15
gut tells me this is more of a generational thing than a racial issue,
1:40:17
although I'd like to know what the hell it is. Ill told police that
1:40:21
has been deleted because he used an expletive. Maybe that played a role in
1:40:26
this, but something is very, very very broken here, and at least
1:40:31
they've got these assholes, and it looks like there's enough attention to where they're
1:40:35
not going to get away with this, that the authorities there in Las Vegas
1:40:40
are going to have to punish them to the full extent of the law,
1:40:43
which is not nearly enough for what they have done. Now, speaking about
1:40:47
race, which I do a lot from, I think a pretty unique perspective
1:40:51
on this podcast. One of my greatest concerns about the state of and the
1:40:57
future of this country is how liberals have changed the definition of equality, which
1:41:03
is at the heart of who America has been supposed to be, to equity
1:41:11
equity of outcome. Equality has become equity of outcome. And there was a
1:41:17
reason situation at the Law School of cal Berkeley, University of California, Berkeley,
1:41:24
very very liberal school here in California, where a woman by the name
1:41:28
of Heather McDonald, who is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and has written
1:41:32
a book called When Race Trump's Merit, She was speaking to a group of
1:41:39
law students at cal Berkeley and there was a moderator that was very, very
1:41:45
very aggressive against her, and the crowd there was very very much against her
1:41:48
because she clearly is of my mindset that this idea of changing equality to equity
1:41:57
is incredibly dangerous and also very racist towards black people because the essence of the
1:42:01
argument is that black people cannot compete on an even playing field. And it's
1:42:06
always been my theory talked about this previously on the podcast that basically what happened
1:42:13
was that from the nineteen sixties untill about the end of the Obama administration,
1:42:17
most liberals were fairly rational about this. Okay, we're gonna make up for
1:42:23
past wrongs. We're gonna make everybody legally equal, we're gonna put safeguards in
1:42:28
the system. We're gonna have to be at least a little bit patient,
1:42:30
because these things take time, and eventually we're going to get to a situation
1:42:34
where for all intensive purposes we're largely equal. Now, obviously we're never gonna
1:42:40
have one hundred percent equity of outcome because their cultural differences in the races and
1:42:45
that can and there's economic differences, and there's all sorts of reasons why you
1:42:48
might not get perfect equity of outcome. That was basically the understanding until after
1:42:55
the second Obama administration. You know, we have the first presumably black president,
1:43:00
and he's president for eight years, which by the way should blow apart
1:43:04
any idea that we're still a racist country, especially since he really wasn't qualified
1:43:09
for the job when he got it. But we have eight years of Obama
1:43:13
and guess what happens. We still don't have anything close to equity of outcome
1:43:16
in many, many endeavors. And at that point, I think liberals panicked.
1:43:23
Liberals decided to give up the idea that somehow we need to be patient,
1:43:29
and because they had to come up with an explanation for why this is.
1:43:32
And in their minds, liberals minds, there's only two explanations for how
1:43:36
we have not gotten to equity of outcome, and one is unacceptable. The
1:43:43
one that's unacceptable is the idea that these things take time, and that maybe
1:43:46
there are cultural and economic differences that are preventing there to be equity of outcome
1:43:53
in all endeavors. That's not acceptable. You can't accept that, even though
1:43:59
we live in a world where we perfectly accept that there's not equity of outcome,
1:44:03
for instance, in most athletic endeavors, which is ironic given the fact
1:44:10
that a lot of this comes from academia, you know, and most the
1:44:15
football players, and most basketball players and most track athletes happen to be black.
1:44:20
Well, there are all sorts of reasons for that that liberals don't even
1:44:23
want to think about. But there's clearly a lack of equity of outcome when
1:44:27
it comes to many athletic endeavors. Even at these places of very liberal higher
1:44:33
learning, they just ignore that because you know, there's there's there's I guess
1:44:40
there's reasons for that that that aren't racist. Of course, the only other
1:44:44
explanation for their not being equity of outcome, and the only and the one
1:44:47
of course liberals have embraced, is that our system is so racist against black
1:44:54
people that it's preventing equity of outcome, because that's the only way that,
1:45:00
after all these years of alleged legal equality, that people of color or black
1:45:05
people have not achieved equity of outcome in every major human endeavor. Of course,
1:45:11
we're going to forget about athletics and other endeavors entertainment, where where black
1:45:15
people have representation that is far far greater than the percentage of population would suggest
1:45:23
if you believe in the concept of equity of outcome. So liberals can't accept
1:45:30
this idea that there are explanations that are not based in racism for why we
1:45:34
have not yet achieved full equity of outcome. And Heather McDonald, I thought,
1:45:40
did an amazing job of making this argument in front of cal Berkeley Law
1:45:44
students. And I want to play two clips. The first clip is where
1:45:46
McDonald gets attacked is essentially a racist for her views, and her counter attack,
1:45:55
I think is really tremendous and articulates this incredible important issue in a very
1:46:01
very compelling fashion. And then it sets up a second clip. So here's
1:46:04
the first confrontation, I guess between Heather McDonald and a very biased moderator at
1:46:12
cal Berkeley Law School. I just want to tell you right now that your
1:46:15
book is racist. Your arguments are racist. They are based in eugenics.
1:46:19
They are based on the ideas that black people and brown people can never compete
1:46:24
with white and Asian counterparts. We face enormous discrimination, enormous racism every single
1:46:30
day on this campus. My question to you is this, why shouldn't we
1:46:33
take any of this seriously when it seems that nothing else that you want to
1:46:36
do is just pedal racist drivel. Well, if I believe that blacks can
1:46:40
never compete, I would say, yo, we've got a lower standards because
1:46:44
that's the only hope for getting diverse institutions. In fact, I believe that
1:46:48
if we held single standards and had high expectations, that blacks would compete in
1:46:55
a regime of ubiquitous racial preferences right now. But you can admit black students
1:47:00
with standard deviation below as at grades into college. The gap does not close
1:47:06
by the end of college, and you can continue that with law schools or
1:47:11
medical schools. The gap still does not close. That does not mean that
1:47:15
it cannot close, but it has to start earlier. Let me just give
1:47:18
you the data that explains why you can have diversity or you can have meritocracy.
1:47:25
You can't have both. Sixty six percent of black twelfth graders do not
1:47:29
possess partial mastery of basic math skills defined as doing arithmetic or being able to
1:47:33
read a graph. The number who are advanced in twelfth grade math is too
1:47:39
small to show up statistically on a national sample. That is the reality.
1:47:43
That is why we do not have racially proportionate institutions. As far as your
1:47:48
claim that you experience every day racism and discrimination on that campus, I would
1:47:55
like exact examples and please name some names about the fessors, because I can
1:48:00
tell you that Berkeley fought like hell to contain its racial preference. So having
1:48:08
disagreement as racism, it's racist to disagree with your point of view. Well,
1:48:13
that is a very all encompassing definition of racism. Show me the facts.
1:48:18
Show me the facts that this is a racist institution. The fact of
1:48:23
the matter is is that this institution is so desperate to get its number of
1:48:30
blacks up that it has desperate admissions standards, and it said, if you
1:48:36
force us, we do not want to have a single standard of admission because
1:48:43
that will lower the number of black students on campus. That to me,
1:48:46
is not a definition of a white supremacist institution. I don't know how to
1:48:50
square that circle. How is it that institutions that are fighting tooth and nail
1:48:57
to hold on to racial preferences, including in faculty hiring and promotion, because
1:49:03
they so want to up their number of underrepresent minorities. How is it that
1:49:09
those same institutions are discriminating and a racist It doesn't make sense unless we have
1:49:15
a little game here and we define racism to say blacks are inherently incapable of
1:49:21
meeting standards and that's how they're racist. That's a discussion I'm willing to have,
1:49:27
not that the chancellor and provost and your faculty at Berkeley, which I
1:49:34
am going to make an assumption here, these are the most liberal human beings
1:49:41
in human history. These odd people who run I owe of their students to
1:49:46
succeed. They are not discriminating against you on the basis of your race or
1:49:54
your sex. They want all of their students to succeed, and they particularly
1:49:58
want the underrepresented minorities to succeed. Now, I thought that was beautiful by
1:50:04
Heather McDonald, but it's the second clip that might even be more impactful because
1:50:11
one of the most frustrating elements of this entire issue of quality versus equity is
1:50:16
that not only do we, in my opinion, do we live in a
1:50:21
world, especially in liberal academia, where black people have an enormous advantage because
1:50:29
of the color of their skin. And I realized that here in California,
1:50:32
legally you're not allowed to do affirmative action, for instance, and emissions.
1:50:36
But I don't believe that that's the reality. I believe there are all sorts
1:50:41
of ways to get around that, and at very liberal institutions, I think
1:50:45
they do everything they possibly can to get around that. And so, not
1:50:50
only do we live in this world where, especially in liberal institutions, black
1:50:56
people have an advantage because they are black, but we also live in a
1:51:00
world where if you even say that, you are literally laughed at, you
1:51:05
are mocked, you are booed, you are considered to be delusional. And
1:51:13
why isn't that Well because the media has never ever allowed the idea that black
1:51:20
people might be advantaged by being black to be given any credibility whatsoever. And
1:51:27
so if you are a black person, for instance, it Law School of
1:51:30
cal Berkeley, and you think that you didn't get advantage from a firmament of
1:51:34
action because it's technically illegal in the state of California, you think the concept
1:51:42
that you have somehow been given quote unquote black privilege is totally absurd. And
1:51:48
that really goes to where the media has so much power, because there's no
1:51:53
question that in certain endeavors, especially in liberal academia, people of color might
1:52:00
parties, black people have enormous advantages. And everybody knows this. Everybody with
1:52:06
any objectivity and any experience in the endeavor knows that this is the truth.
1:52:12
So listen to what happens when Heather McDonald tries to make this argument of quote
1:52:16
unquote black privilege and the response that she gets from people who are presumably law
1:52:23
students at the University of California, Berkeley. I think that you really avoid
1:52:28
the question of who decides what merit is institutions that are predominantly white, that
1:52:31
have historically been predominantly white and male. Are we sure that those are colorblind?
1:52:38
And to sit there and say, well, racism is dead, we
1:52:42
have a bad pass, but it's okay now. It seems a little reductive
1:52:45
of the real, deep seated issues. I think that's a valid perspective.
1:52:49
It is hard to believe that we could have switched to that degree from white
1:52:55
privilege to what I would call today black privilege, and you guys are going
1:52:58
to go nuts at that turn. I send it out there with a knowledge
1:53:02
that I would say I thought that that reaction was incredibly telling because these people
1:53:13
who are reacting to her, these law students, smart people, obviously,
1:53:17
very very smart people, regardless of the color of their skin, and I
1:53:21
don't know what, I don't even know whether or not any of them are
1:53:25
are actually black. My guests is the most of the more white. That's
1:53:28
what's really interesting about this that it's white liberals who are probably the ones that
1:53:32
are most outraged by the idea that there could be such a thing as black
1:53:36
privilege, even among liberal academia and so and it's white liberals who are really
1:53:45
the biggest problem here. They're in my opinion, often the biggest racists.
1:53:48
And I think that's part of McDonald's point here, and that might be why
1:53:51
the crowd there was so incredibly outraged by hearing this. But even the idea
1:53:58
that somehow black people might be advantaged is to be mocked and scorned and booed
1:54:04
and laughed at, even though it's obviously the truth. But it's a truth
1:54:10
the media has systematically ignored, and so therefore it can't get any traction.
1:54:15
And I thought that those two clips, they are really really illustrated in the
1:54:20
real world, this incredibly important issue of how equality has been transformed into equity,
1:54:28
and that it is incredibly dangerous concept, incredibly dangerous concept for what America
1:54:34
has always been, as always supposed to be, and what we should be
1:54:41
in the future, but which I don't think we are going to be in
1:54:43
the future, because once we shift permanently and fully from equality of opportunity to
1:54:47
equity of outcome, we're done. It's over. It is completely over.
1:54:51
We are not America anymore, and we are dangerously close to that happening in
1:54:58
a very systematic way. And ironically, we're still talking about white privilege and
1:55:02
institutional racism in America. It's exactly in most cases, not all, but
1:55:08
in most cases it's exactly the opposite. Now, speaking of race, I
1:55:13
want to talk a little bit more about Dion Sanders, And if you've listened
1:55:16
to any of the last few episodes of the podcast, you know that I'm
1:55:18
a big fan of Coach Prime, the head football coach at the University of
1:55:24
Colorado, which has been the only thing the sports media has been talking about
1:55:29
through the beginning of college football season even pro football season. I mean,
1:55:31
Coach Prime has dominated the sports media like almost nobody I have seen for this
1:55:39
period of time when he's a coach of a team that you know has no
1:55:44
chance of winning a national championship, especially now that they have finally lost their
1:55:47
first game. They got smacked by Oregon, just as I told you that
1:55:50
they would. It was forty two to six and it wasn't even that close.
1:55:55
So Colorado's Cinderella story is over. They've turned into a pumpkin. I
1:56:01
think in all likelihood they are going to be very, very lucky to finish
1:56:04
six and six, which would be a great achievement considering they only won one
1:56:09
game last year and Dean Sanders got rid of almost the entire squad. But
1:56:14
even if they go six and six, I mean, it's an incredible disappointment
1:56:17
considering the ridiculous expectations that were created after they started three and zero and the
1:56:23
media went absolutely bananas. I'll actually be surprised if they go six and six.
1:56:27
I hope they do, and I'm sure that some minor bowl is really
1:56:30
hoping for them to go six and six because they'll be Bowl eligible, and
1:56:33
then that minor bowl will be by far the biggest non playoff game that occurs
1:56:39
in the bowl system that's completely and totally broken and college slash minor league football
1:56:44
as it's now been transformed to. But so I'm not optimistic about what's going
1:56:48
to happen with Colorado the rest of the way. I am still a big
1:56:50
fan of coach Prime. I thought he actually handled the loss really well.
1:56:55
I thought he handed it like a man and he was humble. Maybe he
1:56:59
should have been a more humble before that. And I have not been one
1:57:03
hundred percent on board with everything that's gone on with this media sensation, this
1:57:10
absolute explosion of coverage and all of the almost World Wrestling Federation type reactions from
1:57:18
Coach Prime and his team have said, I thought it was too much.
1:57:23
They had to rein it back in a little bit. They might have jumped
1:57:25
the shark. But one of many things I like about Coach Prime is that
1:57:29
I think that philosophically, in his bones, he has what I would call
1:57:33
conservative values, which is kind of amazing giving what he represented it as a
1:57:39
player would have been the exact opposite of that. But he is matured and
1:57:43
he to me, his magic is that he is a black superstar who is
1:57:49
clearly quote unquote authentically black, whatever the hell that means. But he is
1:57:55
clearly someone who's persona and celebrity connects is an an enormous percentage of the black
1:58:02
population, especially young black people. He's hip, he's cool, he's clearly
1:58:08
not selling out who he is, and yet he still appeals to white people.
1:58:15
That's the magic. The magic of prime time Sanders coach Prime Dion Sanders
1:58:20
is that more than any other black celebrity of his kind, I think he
1:58:26
has been able to bridge this gap that seems to be unbridgeable at times between
1:58:31
holding on to his authenticity as a black person quote unquote and still not only
1:58:39
not offending but actually appealing to a lot of white people like myself. And
1:58:45
part of why he's appealing to white people is because he does not play the
1:58:48
black card whenever it suits him, and he goes out of his way,
1:58:54
I think to bring white people into what he's doing. I've I've watched this
1:59:00
phenomenon very very carefully of how he's handling this, and I think he has
1:59:05
been outstanding in this area of bridging the racial gap. And then there's the
1:59:11
issue of his philosophy, which I've said many many times before. It's hilarious
1:59:15
that a very liberal campus like University of Colorado Boulder has essentially embraced as their
1:59:20
identity a guy who, when you look beyond the surface of this guy who
1:59:27
is clearly authentically black, is actually darn conservative, especially considering the standards of
1:59:34
twenty twenty three and how unbelievably woke most of academia is. And I was
1:59:41
really interested when CNN because everybody, every media outlet is trying to come up
1:59:45
with a Dion Sanders angle, because I mean, he's ratings gold right now,
1:59:49
and so that's the way the media works. Oh my god, we
1:59:51
got to we hit a gold mine here, and everyone's got to mind the
1:59:55
gold and so there's nothing left. We're gonna overdo it as much as we
1:59:58
possibly can, because this is the way we work. In twenty twenty three,
2:00:01
so CNN had a columnist by the name of John Blake who wrote a
2:00:05
column about Dion Sanders and the race issue headline Dion Sanders quote unquote audacious blackness
2:00:15
makes him the hero African Americans want right now. And I was really conflicted
2:00:20
about this article because I think there's a point to it. It talks about
2:00:26
how, you know, Deon Sanders is a good dad, lee seeming lem
2:00:30
though he's been divorced twice, and that he doesn't go into his conservative principles.
2:00:35
This certainly doesn't say that, but that this is a unique persona that's
2:00:42
being portrayed by someone who has, in their view, audacious blackness. And
2:00:46
then it's a good example for the black community. That part I can agree
2:00:50
with. And I think this is if this is true, I think this
2:00:54
is fantastic. If if Deon Sanders is the model, especially for young black
2:00:59
people, that's fantastic. I will take that in a heartbeat. I would
2:01:05
put Dean Sanders right now. I can't even think of anybody that I would
2:01:09
put above him when I would say that this is a celebrity that black people
2:01:14
should try to emulate, or model or have as their mentor. I'll take
2:01:17
Dean Sanders. He's imperfect, but I would take Tan Sanders in that realm.
2:01:25
But the part about this article that bothered me was that it completely omitted
2:01:29
what I think is the most important part of this is that it's not just
2:01:33
about black people. It's about bridging the gap. That's the part that is
2:01:39
real magic. That's the part that really matters, that could really do a
2:01:44
lot of positive which is the idea that you can appeal to black people and
2:01:49
to young black people and not give up your authentic blackness or your audacious blackness,
2:01:57
whatever the hell that means. I mean, the implication here is that
2:02:00
every other black coach, whether it's in the NFL or in college slash minor
2:02:04
league football, as I'll now refer to it in perpetuity because that's what it
2:02:09
is, is somehow automatically an Uncle Tom Than in order to be a black
2:02:13
coach, that you have to give up your authentic or audacious blackness. Otherwise,
2:02:17
the white establishment, even in liberal academia, when it comes to college
2:02:21
minor league football, somehow won't accept you if you're an audacious black man.
2:02:26
But the University of Colorado did so because it fits their self interest, because
2:02:30
their team suck so much and they needed to create a firestorm and have a
2:02:33
big celebrity, and so they were willing to put up with Deon Sanders quote
2:02:39
unquote audacious blackness. Okay, whatever I mean. The reality here is that
2:02:45
this is not just black or just white. The key to his success right
2:02:49
now, I think, not just on the field, but much more so
2:02:55
from a public persona standpoint, is that he's bridging that gap that he's appealing
2:03:00
to both. And part of why he's appealing to both is the part that
2:03:03
the liberal media just either is incapable of seeing or doesn't want to see,
2:03:08
and that is that his principles are very much in keeping, as he says,
2:03:14
old school old school personal responsibility, tough love. He even makes his
2:03:19
players dress nice, which you can't even get John Feederman to do in the
2:03:24
floor of the US Senate anymore. John Fetterman could not play for Deon Sanders
2:03:29
based upon the dress code. But this is this is who Deon Sanders is,
2:03:32
and now he can get away with it because he's incredibly popular, very
2:03:36
powerful. He can do anything he once, even after losing to the University
2:03:40
of Oregon, And I think it's still great. And while this loss is
2:03:45
gonna definitely change the narrative and we're gonna see a lot less publicity surrounding Deon
2:03:49
Sanders, especially as the losses mount up. They're probably gonna lose to USC
2:03:54
this coming weekend. While that will be, you know, a dousing of
2:03:59
the flame to a certain degree, I think it's actually good for the longer
2:04:02
term of the story because expectations are everything in life. And I said this
2:04:06
previously. What they did in the first three weeks created expectations that cannot possibly
2:04:13
be met by a first years a first year coach with all brand new players,
2:04:17
and they lost their star player for at least a couple of weeks,
2:04:20
Travis Hunter, by the way Travis Hunter was live streaming playing video games while
2:04:28
his team was losing. That I didn't like. That was a red flag
2:04:31
to me, and I would be very curious to know how Deon Sanders handled
2:04:35
that. I would like to believe that Dion would tell him knock that off,
2:04:41
because that was not sending the right message at all. But okay,
2:04:45
anyway, the point here is that I am hopeful that this is all going
2:04:49
to work out better now that the expectations have been doused, and that if
2:04:54
Deon is in this for the long run, that he can still do a
2:04:57
lot of good. And a lot of this is political, whether or not
2:05:00
the liberal media wants to accept it or not. And they're still not getting
2:05:03
it. They're still not understanding the real source of the magic. The last
2:05:09
thing I want to talk about is a story that I doesn't want to go
2:05:13
away, partially because it's a great story and partially because I clearly have a
2:05:16
deep connection to it. And that is the latest new witness when it comes
2:05:21
to the JFK assassination. Now, I wasn't going to talk about this because
2:05:26
I thought we were out of new information, but then I was sent an
2:05:30
article that I had somehow missed in Vanity Fair. Our producer Mike Agavino sent
2:05:35
this to me just before we went to tape this episode of the podcast,
2:05:42
which now has me feeling much better about Paul Landis. If you haven't been
2:05:46
with us the last couple episodes, I was very excited about the Paul Landis
2:05:49
revelation in this new book because it really fit one hundred percent with my theory
2:05:55
of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Because he found the so called
2:05:59
magic bullet in the back seat of the limousine, which means the single bullet
2:06:02
theory is dead and matches my theory one hundred percent, which is that the
2:06:06
first shot hit Kennedy in the back fell out. I didn't realize it may
2:06:11
have fallen out in the limousine. I thought it fell out at Parkland Hospital.
2:06:14
That the second shot hits Connelly, does all the damage to him,
2:06:15
the third shot Kennedy in the head. They're all fired from Oswald. It's
2:06:19
actually pretty simple, and that essentially what happened was the Warrant Commission screwed it
2:06:24
up because Arnoland Spector overthought it. Thought he was the smartest man in the
2:06:27
room. Needed to make sure that Oswald was seen as the lone gunman and
2:06:30
was confused by the Zubruder film and didn't think he had enough time for the
2:06:35
scenario that I just outlined to actually occur. But I believe that there is
2:06:39
plenty of time because I believe Kennedy's reaction of the first shot is delayed,
2:06:44
and that what we're seeing is a neuromuscular, an involuntary neuromuscular reaction that happened
2:06:49
a second or a second half and a half after Kennedy was actually hit with
2:06:54
that first shot. So Land is his story. Now, sixty years after
2:06:59
the assassination, he found the so called magic bullet. I'm still confused as
2:07:02
to how it would have gotten out of Kennedy's tucked shirt, But in the
2:07:06
last episode I did talk about a listener who said, well, John,
2:07:10
what if they lifted him from his armpits, they pulled the shirt up out
2:07:13
of his belt and the bullet fell out that way. I thought, Okay,
2:07:15
that's that's possible. But I had always thought it made more sense for
2:07:18
the bullet to come out of Parkland, where his shirt and his jacket are
2:07:23
off and they're doing CPR, and they literally pumped the bullet out of his
2:07:26
back and that somehow it had gotten mixed up, and that I've always that
2:07:30
the crux of my theory, the core of my theory has always been this
2:07:33
idea that the magic bullet was found on John Connolly Stretcher at Parkland hours after
2:07:41
the events actually transpired, you know, after the chaos had ended, was
2:07:45
incredibly weak to me. I mean, who the hell was identifying which stretcher
2:07:48
was which, and in all that kind of chaos. I always felt like
2:07:53
it would be very, very easy for there to be a mix up.
2:07:57
Well, there's this Vanity Fair article by the Game by a guy by the
2:08:01
name of James Robin Knelt Roban Knelt, I think that's how you say it.
2:08:07
Robin Ault and James Robinelt spent quite a bit of time with Paul Landis.
2:08:13
That's what's really amazing about this Vanity Fair article where it wasn't just a
2:08:18
quick interview. I mean, he really spent enough time with Landis to be
2:08:22
able to determine in his view Landis's credibility, and he basically gave it the
2:08:28
thumbs up and saying that he believes Landis to be credible as a person and
2:08:35
that he understands his story and that he has provided corroborating evidence that even I
2:08:43
was not fully aware of. Now, I was aware of this controversy involving
2:08:48
which stretcher the so called magic bullet was found on, but even I did
2:08:52
not know the full details of this until this Vanity Fair article came out.
2:08:58
And this is really quite extraordinary. And if you remember, go back to
2:09:01
If you haven't yet, go back to episode seventy one of this podcast where
2:09:05
I talk extensively about my entire theory. I go through this for two hours
2:09:09
plus and one of the things I talk about is the evidence that the magic
2:09:15
bullet was found on Connolly Stretcher, which is everything here. I mean,
2:09:18
if it wasn't found on Connolly Stretcher, then my theory is basically proven,
2:09:24
because that's the whole essence of the single bullet or magic bullet theory, is
2:09:28
that that bullet was found associated with Connolly Stretcher. Therefore it must have fallen
2:09:31
out of Connolly's body. And I've always felt that the evidence of that was
2:09:35
incredibly suspect. Well, the Warrant commissioned final report acknowledges that they're not sure
2:09:43
that that bullet was found on Connolly's stretcher. However, they claimed to be
2:09:48
certain that it was not Kennedy's stretcher, and so therefore they decided, if
2:09:52
it can't be kennedy stretcher, then you know, obviously by process of elimination,
2:09:58
it must be Conne And that always felt very weak to me, especially
2:10:03
given what had to be a very very chaotic situation, and the chain of
2:10:07
evidence was very very poor. A maintenance worker finding this bullet on a stretcher
2:10:13
a couple of hours later. So I was already very suspicious about this based
2:10:18
upon what's in the Warrant Commission report. But this article in Vanity Fair provides
2:10:22
information that I was unaware of. And let me read to you from the
2:10:26
Vanity Fair article. The evidence from nineteen sixty three makes it fully plausible that
2:10:31
the stretcher on which the bullet was found could have been President Kennedy's. How
2:10:37
So, a Parkland Memorial Hospital engineer, Daryl Tomlinson was asked on November twenty,
2:10:43
second before the president's remains had been taken from the hospital, travel back
2:10:48
north to set the controls of the elevator in the emergency area. The one
2:10:52
that had taken the wounded Governor Connolly up to the second floor for surgery.
2:10:56
So that the elevator would only be operable annually. The security team had determined
2:11:01
that only people with official clearance would be allowed access. Tomlinson was instructed to
2:11:07
control who got on the elevator and where they would go. When he pushed
2:11:13
the button to open the elevator, he later recalled there was a stretcher in
2:11:18
the elevator one of the Warrant Commission presumed was Governor Connolly. Stretcher returned from
2:11:24
the surgery floor. Tomlinson testified that the stretcher had some sheets on it and
2:11:30
a white covering on the pad, but no bullet. He moved the stretcher
2:11:35
out of the elevator and placed it against a wall. Again, that's supposed
2:11:41
to be Connolly stretcher with no bullet on it. Back to the article in
2:11:43
Vanity Fair. However, Tomlinson testified that there was another stretcher already in the
2:11:50
hall, which had been placed in front of a men's restroom in the corner.
2:11:56
That stretcher had bloody sheets and some used medical paraphernilia on it. Tomlinson
2:12:05
said that sometime later an intern or doctor in order to use the bathroom,
2:12:11
pushed the stretcher out of the way, but failed to return it to its
2:12:16
spot against the wall. After leaving, Tomlinson roughly pushed it back against the
2:12:22
wall, and when he did so, he claimed a bullet rolled out from
2:12:28
under the mat. This was clearly not Connolly's stretcher. Arlen Specter, Now,
2:12:39
if you listened to episode seventy one, you know, I believe that
2:12:41
Arlen Specter is is the person to blame here. Arlen Specter is someone who
2:12:48
was not that smart, but he thought he was the smartest guy in every
2:12:50
room he ever walked in. He was a senator from Pennsylvania. He voted
2:12:56
not proven in Bill Clinton's impeachment trial based on sky law, which isn't even
2:13:01
a thing obviously in America. It was the difference between there being a majority
2:13:05
of votes to convict Bill Clinton in that impeachment trial and they're not being a
2:13:09
majority of votes. I mean, Specter was, in my view, a
2:13:11
very very overrated guy, and my view of him and his role in all
2:13:16
this has always been he concocted. He reverse engineered a scenario to solve a
2:13:22
problem that he thought he had that he really didn't, And so I have
2:13:26
pinpointed for years that Specter is the problem here. Well, here is more
2:13:31
evidence that I nailed this one. Marlan Specter, who traveled to Dallas to
2:13:35
take Tomlinson's deposition in March of nineteen sixty four because he was the lawyer working
2:13:41
for the Warren Commission, was thunderstruck when Tomlinson relayed this scenario. To judge
2:13:48
from a transcript of that conversation, Specter spent much of the remainder of his
2:13:52
time with Tomlinson essentially trying to talk him out of his recollection, caused to
2:14:00
distress Tomlinson to say he just was not sure about his memory. But the
2:14:05
Q and A itself clearly suggests that Tomlinson, unprompted and unbadgered, had a
2:14:11
cogent recollection that a bullet wherever else it ultimately ended up, had come from
2:14:18
the stretcher that had already been left in the hall in front of the men's
2:14:22
room, meaning Kennedy stretcher. In its final report, the Warrant Commission mentioned
2:14:28
nothing about this detail from Tomlinson's account. Instead, the panel largely dismissed Tomlinson's
2:14:35
testimony writting that even though he was quote not certain whether the bullet came from
2:14:39
the Connolly stretcher or the adjacent one unquote, the commission quote has concluded that
2:14:45
the bullet came from the Governor's stretcher unquote. Okay, so what's really happening
2:14:52
here? This is a thousand percent consistent with my theory that I outlined in
2:14:56
detail in episode seventy one of the podcast, and that is this that Arland
2:15:03
Spector had thought he had figured out a way to get around this problem in
2:15:07
the Zubruder film, that there wasn't enough time between the first shot and the
2:15:13
second shot for Kennedy and Connolly to be hit with separate bullets, and he
2:15:18
needed that to happen because otherwise it opens up a Pandora's box related the conspiracy
2:15:24
and more than one gunman, and they needed Oswald to be the lone gunman
2:15:30
mainly because they believed Oswald to be the lone gunman. I believe Oswald to
2:15:33
be the lone gunman, but because of the Brewer film doesn't have audio,
2:15:39
I think they got fooled. I think Spector got fooled into believing there wasn't
2:15:46
enough time between Kennedy's first reaction and Connolly's first reaction. And what has always
2:15:52
bothered me most about this theory is, wait a minute. Even those that
2:15:56
believe in the so called magic bullet a single bullet theory acknowledge that there is
2:16:01
a space of time between Kennedy's first reaction where he is elbows jet out and
2:16:09
his fist clinch and he does not touch his throat as is perceived. There's
2:16:13
a space of time between that reaction starting and Connolly's reaction starting. Now,
2:16:18
I will acknowledge that there's not enough time between those two reactions for there to
2:16:24
be two separate shots. But what's the alternative explanation? It's not on It's
2:16:31
not my burden to prove this. If we're going to accept the lone gunman
2:16:35
theory, it's the burden on the single bullet theory people to explain, well,
2:16:39
why is there any gap at all? Because if the single bullet theory
2:16:45
is true, there should be no gap between the reaction of Kennedy and the
2:16:48
reaction of Connolly. Maybe a slight gap, but a bullet is going to
2:16:52
hit them simultaneously. Under this theory of the single bullet, the magic bullet
2:16:58
so you have acknowledge that there is a space of time between those two reactions.
2:17:03
It's not long enough. It's not two and a half seconds or thereabouts,
2:17:05
which you would have to be to give Oswald enough time to fire two
2:17:09
separate shots. But there's something. It's about a second. You can't just
2:17:16
have the bullet suspend in air for a second, not to mention to all
2:17:20
sorts of other machinations, and then come out pristine. No, what I
2:17:24
think happened here is that Kennedy's first reaction is delayed by a second or a
2:17:28
second a half because of an involuntary neuromuscular reaction. That's the only way this
2:17:31
makes sense, and it's because he effectively gets hit in the back with a
2:17:35
dart, not a bullet. There was an under charge or a misfire,
2:17:39
and that first shot, it hits him in the back, only goes in
2:17:43
there an inch or two and then falls out at some point. Now I'm
2:17:46
stunned that it would fall out in the limousine for reasons that I've already given,
2:17:48
and I'm still concerned about that. But this Tomlinson story involving Specter basically
2:17:54
destroys the entire essence of the idea that this bullet was eventually found on Connolly
2:18:00
stretcher. It ends it and therefore, logically, the only way to make
2:18:05
all these pieces work is my theory. It's the only way. Otherwise you're
2:18:09
going to have a massive conspiracy with multiple gunmen for which there's no evidence even
2:18:15
sixty years later, and there's you know, there's all sorts of problems that
2:18:20
this has created for their theory, like where that, when the hell and
2:18:22
where the hell was the first shot miss? Which is what you need.
2:18:26
You need a first shot miss if you're the Warrant commission. Well, there's,
2:18:28
as I've said many times, there's no evidence or logic of that,
2:18:31
and it goes against all the testimony of all the Secret Service agents and the
2:18:35
Connolly's who are in the limousine, not to mention basic logic of Okay,
2:18:39
well, where did that bullet go? If it hit the sidewalk, people
2:18:45
would have seen that of it it treat people would have seen that, There
2:18:46
would have been evidence of that. The only evidence there is is a guy
2:18:50
got a cut in his face way far away, not even in the line
2:18:52
of fire, after seeing the most catastrophic thing you've ever seen his life,
2:18:56
James Teague. So to me, I am now feeling much better about the
2:19:03
Paul Landis story. And it's largely because of corroboration by this reporter, this
2:19:11
columnist for Vanity Fair that isn't just talking in very general terms about Paul Landis.
2:19:16
This is a guy he has spent a lot of time with, he's
2:19:18
vouching for and say, you know, and he clearly understands the nature of
2:19:24
the story and all the implications of what happens if Landis is telling the truth.
2:19:30
So I know I've wavered back and forth, and this mainly because I'm
2:19:33
always much more skeptical of any evidence that supports what I want to believe,
2:19:39
because I have a bias, and I understand the power of bias, and
2:19:43
so I hold anything that supports my theory under to a much higher standard or
2:19:46
burden to proof. But I think we're getting there. I mean, I
2:19:50
would like to see more from Paul Landis. I'd like to do my interview
2:19:54
with Gerald Posner, the author of the Bookcase Clothes, who was not buying
2:19:58
Landis's story, and I'm disappointed about that at this point, but I want
2:20:01
to get to the bottom of this but at this point, gun to my
2:20:05
head, I think I'm right. I think Lands is right. It's an
2:20:07
incredibly crazy story. There's all sorts of weird coincidences, but it's the only
2:20:11
way to make all the puzzle pieces fit together. And here we are now
2:20:16
in the verge of the sixtieth anniversary, and I think we're very close to
2:20:18
finally doing that. And you know, the fact that it validates my theory
2:20:24
that I've been mocked for for several decades certainly doesn't hurt make me feel better
2:20:28
if that's in fact what the truth is. I still want to find out
2:20:31
what the truth is, but at this point, gun to my head,
2:20:33
I think Paul Lands is probably telling the truth. All right, now,
2:20:37
I'll do it for this episode of the podcast. Again, a programming note,
2:20:41
even though there is a Republican presidential debate without Trump this week, it
2:20:46
does not appear. You never know. If there's an emergency, I'll figure
2:20:48
out when to make it happen. But because of travel considerations, I'm traveling
2:20:54
to the East Coast this week for basically a high school reunion school basketball coach.
2:21:01
I'm fifty six years old. My high school basketball coach is retiring.
2:21:07
Now after all these years and winning more games and I think anyone else in
2:21:09
the history of the state of Pennsylvania. So we're having an event for him.
2:21:13
So I don't think that episode ninety three is going to be out later
2:21:16
this week. It'll be out at the beginning of the following week unless something
2:21:20
really dramatic happens, So keep that in mind and plan accordingly. But as
2:21:24
always, thanks so much for listening. Please make sure to remember to subscribe,
2:21:28
rate, and review this podcast, share it with others, share it
2:21:31
publicly on social media. If you do so, tag me and I'll be
2:21:35
happy to share it with my followers on Twitter and Facebook. Until next time,
2:21:39
This is episode number ninety two of the Death of Journalism podcast, and
2:21:43
my name is John Ziegler.