Latest / The Death Of Journalism / Episode One Hundred Three: So You're Saying There's A Chance

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Episode One Hundred Three: So You're Saying There's A Chance · The Death Of Journalism

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Welcome to episode number one hundred and three of the Death of Journalism podcasts.
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My name is John Zigler. I'm your host. On today's show, we
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review the latest GOP presidential debate and this week's election results. I'll tell you
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why the death of basketball legend Bobby Knight matters, and I play golf with
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Gavin Newsom's only brother in law. As you might expect, hilarity ensued.
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I'm known as the Dutch Digital marketing Man. I'm a digital advertising SEO and
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email marketing specialist that also happens to be a big fan of John Zigler and
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the Death of Journalist. Do you need help reaching your target audience? Let
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me help you develop the riot messaging and confated message and the best channels for
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your business. Please visit my website, the Dutchdigitalmarketingman dot com and let me
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help you tell your story. The website is the Dutchdigital Marketingman dot com.
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If you want to grow your business, Peter can help. That's the Dutch
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Digital Marketingman dot com. And hey, thanks for sponsoring the show. Due
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to a golf tournament that I played in this week, our scheduling for releasing
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this podcast has been different this week. We're releasing episode number one hundred and
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three a little bit later than we normally do, but there were some benefits
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to that because it allowed me to watch the presidential debate last night, as
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I taped this on Thursday morning. So in just a moment, we'll get
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to that. But the golf tournament itself had some interesting moments, including,
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as I've already alluded to, the pairing with me in a practice around with
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Gavin Newsom's brother in law. So you'll definitely want to hear that story towards
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the end of this podcast. But we will begin with the GOP debate,
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and I have to say that my projection for this third GOP debate was a
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bit off. I have become rather despondent and resigned when it came to this
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entire process in general and specifically the debates. I mean, what's the point
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of having a non Trump debate? Just as I've predicted many many times,
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Donald Trump would not participate in any of these debates because the right wing media
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is not holding his feet to the fire in any way, shape or form,
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because they don't want to piss off the Trump cult. So Trump gets
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away with dodging these debates because he has such a big lead in the polls,
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the very same polls that when they don't say things he likes, he
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doesn't believe them. I mean, the whole thing is just absolutely insane.
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But I thought that the third version of this debate would be at least as
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bad as the previous two, which were just awful. And I thought that
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mainly because NBC was hosting the debate. They did have you Hewett there as
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a token conservative. He was barely even part of the debate as one of
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the moderators, and his questions were just, in my opinion, awful and
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boring, which is just a really bad combination. But he was there just
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as a token conservative, and I figured that this thing was just going to
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be a disaster in a different way than the Fox News debates, which I
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thought were absolutely terrible in every way, shape or form. This one was
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not as bad as I expected. Now. It almost got off the rails
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from the very very beginning, and it was because of the fact that it
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was being hosted by a liberal media outlet. But Fei Obama Swami in his
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first response, went directly after the moderators tried in vain to ask them a
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question about the Trump Russia collusion hoax, and of course that didn't work,
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but he knew that wasn't going to work. What he was trying to do
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was just ingratiate himself towards the Trump fans who might be watching. That's always
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been his goal. He's effectively a Trump surrogate, and I don't know what
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his long term goal is, but he's certainly there to pick up the Trump
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cult if something happens to Trump. And I actually like some of what he
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said. I know he's a complete fraud, which is why I refer to
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him as Fake Obama Swami. And I have to say that about the only
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good thing that has happened so far in the Republican nominating process is that there
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is evidence that the Republican base kind of gets it, at least the vast
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majority of the base gets it about the fake Obama Swamy. His support has
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dwindled now. That may be because his support is so aligned with Trump.
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That is, Trump has strengthened, it's just come out of the Fake Obama
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Swamy's support. That's quite possible, but it's very obvious that the predictions that
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some had made that Obama Swami might even end up being the second place contender.
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Here are just flat out off and wrong. And I don't know how
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long he's going to stay in because you know, he's very media friendly.
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He doesn't he has his own money, although I don't know how much he
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really has, but you know, it doesn't take a lot of money for
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him to stay in, especially in a social media world where he can post
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on social media and appear on right wing media outlets like having him on,
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especially since he's seen as pro Trump. So I don't think he's going to
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get out, but he's clearly not going to be a major major factor in
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the Republican nominating process. But at that moment, I thought, oh my
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gosh, is this going to be just a complete crap show where everyone is
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now going to go after NBC and the moderators because they're an easy target and
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obviously Republicans understandably and with great justification, hate the news media. That did
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not happen. I mean it looked it was really on the edge for a
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while. I mean, Lester Holt was trying to control the crowd, didn't
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want any responses, which I always think is so stupid. I mean,
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you either allow it or you're going to really have to crack down on crowd
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responses. And this one was in Miami, Florida, so you're obviously going
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to have a more pro DeSantis crowd, especially without Trump there. And so,
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you know, I thought Lester Holt was on the verge of losing control
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and the fake went after them, and then it kind of settled down,
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and you know, there was some fireworks between the fake and Nikki Haley,
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which of course the media loves and NBC obsessed over in their post debate coverage.
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That was their headline out of this was the confrontation between the fake Obama
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Swami and Nikki Haley over TikTok. And what was really odd about that was
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that TikTok seemed to be one of the major sponsors of the debate. Almost
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every commercial wasn't TikTok commercial, and yet almost everybody on that stage was in
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favor of banning TikTok in some way, shape or form, and Vivek Obamaswamy
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went after Nicki Haley is allegedly a hypocrite on the issue because her daughter,
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who's an adult, was on TikTok and it's somehow that was Nicky Haley's responsibility
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or that that in some way discredits her position on banning TikTok, And they
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went after each other pretty good. In fact, Nicki Haley ended up calling
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the fake Obama swamy scum, which was definitely the most unusual and Trumpian moment
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of the debate. But I don't think Viveig really did himself any favors in
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that regard. Veveke did all something else that I thought was really emblematic of
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this entire charade, that is, these debates without Donald Trump, and frankly,
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the entire nominating process as a whole, where Donald Trump is dominating,
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and that is that the fake Obama Swamy was bemoaning the fact that Republicans have
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done so poorly in every election basically since twenty sixteen, I mean off your
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elections, including this year and midterm elections. And who does he blame.
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He isn't blame Donald Trump, not even close. Donald Trump, of course,
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is the brand of the Republican Party. Eve instead decides to attack the
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chair of the RNC, Ronal McDaniel, who is there because of Donald Trump
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and who has frankly, very little power. In my opinion, but she
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gets to be the scapegoat because no one wants to blame Donald Trump, So
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you can blame anybody else but the guy who's actually in charge. The entire
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GOP brand has been taken over by Donald Trump, and so therefore it is
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imperative that he received at least some accountability and blame for when the Republican Party
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does poorly. But unfortunately, and this is going to be a key problem
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going forward, and a lot of this rests on the right wing media being
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afraid to tell the truth. The reality is the majority of the Republican base
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is not see it that way. They do not equate, They do not
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see a causation between Donald Trump and all these losses in twenty eighteen and twenty
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twenty, twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three. They
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don't see it. And all they remember is the great victory of twenty sixteen.
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And so you know, we're as Republicans as people who are terrified of
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what Democrats are going to do this country are already doing to this country.
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We're saddled with this idea that somehow twenty sixteen can be recreated. And now
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there's polling, which you're going to get to. That is furthering this narrative
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that somehow all these other elections didn't happen. Somehow twenty twenty didn't really happen.
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I guess it was stolen, and so somehow Donald Trump is going to
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come back and repeat twenty sixteen, eight years later, and everything else that's
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happened has just been completely forgotten. So that I thought was pretty interesting and
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frankly hilarious, but also indicative of just how broken the process is. Where
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I ve fake Obama Swami is not blaming Donald Trump for why we've had all
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these losses if you're on the Republican side. As far as the rest of
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the debate is concerned, I thought, as usual, Ronda Santis did a
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very solid job and may have been his best performance. His first answer was
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really, really good, and it was about Donald Trump. That was really
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the only time Trump was a major topic of the debate, which I always
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think is ridiculous. I mean, at least you're acknowledging the elephant that's not
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in the room in Donald Trump. But the reality is the only thing that
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matters is Donald Trump at this point, and I refer to this debate as
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the just in case Donald Trump dies debate, and that's basically where we are
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currently. This debate doesn't mean anything unless you consider it potentially a vice presidential
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sweepstakes. But I don't think Rhonda Santis would be in any way, shape
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or form, either in tension or interested in being the vice presidential nominee,
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So that really only includes a couple of people on the stage. I do
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think the fundamental difference in this debate was that there were only five candidates up
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on the dais, which makes a huge difference. I mean, the fewer
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number of people you have, the better of debate you can have, the
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more substantive debate you can have. That's obvious. It's always been common sense,
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and we saw it in action in that third GOP debate, and Desandas
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did very well. The post debate coverage seemed to indicate that, you know,
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I hate these focus because there's nothing dumber than post debate focus groups on
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television, Because as soon as people are on television, they're going to say
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and think things that they wouldn't ordinarily think. They're going to act in ways
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they wouldn't ornimarily act. They're going to watch the debate in the way that
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they wouldn't normally watch it. It's not indicative of anything at all in the
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real world. But television for some reason loves this because they got to do
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something in the in the post game show of these debates. And frankly,
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I thought the NBC post game well, look, I mean I didn't even
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I honestly did not know any of the people who were hosting or moderating.
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I knew a couple of the commentators, but it's this was the d team
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for NBC that did the post debate coverage of this event, and and it
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really looked very, frankly minor league. I was really stunned that this was,
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you know, NBC, and I realized the big three networks are nowhere
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near what they used to be. But from just a pure production standpoint and
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a quality of programming perspective, I thought it was very, very weak.
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But I thought Rhonda Sanders did very well. I also thought he did very
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very well in that post debate interview. I mean, he had me almost
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convinced that here I am somebody who's been desponded and resigned about this campaign for
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a very long time, and I've officially called the race barring death or imprisonment
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for Donald Trump or I'm very very pessimistic, very eorish, even though I'm
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still a Rhonda Santis supporter, and Rhonda Santis had me almost convinced that he's
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got a real good chance to win Iowa. And there's been a lot of
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news in Iowa this past week. Obviously, the governor of Iowa, Kim
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Reynolds, has endorsed Ronda Santis and did so wholeheartedly. Now as far as
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that endorsement is concerned, because I've a lot of people ask me about it,
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does this change the game? And look, I am someone who strongly
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believes that a lot of even so called experts have been very slow to understand
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how dramatically our politics has changed. I think that one of my strengths is
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that I see change pretty quickly, and I see where things are going.
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And even though I'm a traditionalist, I can see where traditions are being broken
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and norms are being broken, and how all the rules are being altered.
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And I don't believe that endorsements make a damn bit of difference. During our
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one hundredth episode where we did ask John anything, I got asked about what
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endorsement would help Rond de Santis, and I did a seemingly pretty humorous bit
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about what would happen if Jesus Christ returned to Earth and endorsed Rond de Santis,
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which you can check out in that episode of the podcast. And even
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that probably wouldn't work. So I don't think that Kim Reynolds changes the game.
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However, I will say that given the nature of the Iowa caucuses,
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it's definitely the most influential endorsement that could possibly happen in Iowa, not just
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because she's the governor, but because of the nature of the caucuses. And
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it's clear this was not just a passive endorsement. This was a full throated
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one hundred percent endorsement. I'm on Desanti's team, which is quite quite courageous
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for Reynolds to do given the state of the current polling. But also,
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it's a caucus, not a primary, and that means that organization really really
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matters. That's something that doesn't really change very much in this new post Trump
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era. So organization matters, and when you're the governor of the state and
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you have you know, email lists and voting lists and all sorts you know,
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you have connections to the local people who are organizing this that actually can
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matter a lot. And you know, the De Santas campaign has been banking
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on its ground game there I think far too much of since the beginning of
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this campaign. But there's no question that given the DeSantis organization and the Reynolds
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organization, that that makes the Desanda's team in Iowa very formidable. Now does
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that mean that Desantas is going to win Iowa? I still am very dubious
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about that. I guess said De Santa's kind of had me convinced he's got
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a shot. I want to make something clear about my prediction because I think
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it's quite possible that there could be a misunderstanding here and I may be responsible
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for that misunderstanding. When I have called the race for Trump barring death or
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imprisonment, that doesn't mean I think it's going to be one hundred percent of
16:19
blowout. It could be a blowout. I mean we're in the blowout territory
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right now with regard to the current polling results. But I have I still
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to this day, think it's possible Desanders can make a hell of a run
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in Iowa and may do much better than the polling indicates, and can he
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win. Look, I think it's theoretically possible. He could pull. Everything
16:45
could break one hundred percent his direction. You know, Scott could drop out,
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and I mean, Hanley's not going to drop out, and Bamba Swami's
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not going to drop out. Christy doesn't really matter in Iowa. But as
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Desand has said, and you know, Trump, considering his name recognition and
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the fact that he's a former president, barely getting over forty percent in most
17:07
Iowa polls is really a damning indictment of his candidacy there. He should be
17:11
at a much much higher clip than that. The problem is, how does
17:15
DeSantis get over forty percent? And that's going to be difficult to see given
17:19
the current polling. But I want to make it clear. I think it's
17:23
possible. It is in the realm of possibility that DeSantis, if everything goes
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his way, actually either wins Iowa or it's a shockingly close result. That
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is still very much in the realm of possibility. The problem is that doesn't
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get it done. That's the big problem, and that's something that I've had
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a very difficult time explaining to my fellow Dessanta's supporters, I mean Ted Cruz
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among others, many others. One Iowa fairly handily, and it didn't do
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him any good against Trump and two twenty sixteen the winner of Iowa. All
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that really does is that that gets you into the ball game. And the
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problem is after that, you can't duplicate Iowa. You don't have a governor
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Reynolds, although you actually do have a governor in New Hampshire that is very
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very pro DeSantis, but it's it's not the same situation. It's a primary,
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it's not a caucus. He's a rather liberal Republican. I don't know
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that he's gonna have the same sway with actual voters there. The polling there
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is much worse. Christy has a lot more traction in New Hampshire. I
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think Haley has a lot more attraction and will continue to have more traction in
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New Hampshire. So you're going to run right into a buzzsaw in New Hampshire.
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You don't have the time to do the door to door handshake campaign that
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you're counting on in Iowa. So Iowa, even if it goes perfectly,
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is really going to be a flash in the pan. It's going to get
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a race as soon as New Hampshire comes around, and then you're going to
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Nevada and South Carolina. And I don't know what Tim Scott's gonna do,
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but Nicki Haley ain't gonna go anywhere at this point. So there's no possible
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way that with Nicky Haley, former governor South Carolina, and Donald Trump in
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the race in South Carolina, that the Sandus is gonna win that because whatever
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momentum he got out of Iowa, it'll help a little bit, but it's
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not going to carry the day. And so that I just want to make
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that clear. I am not someone who has given up completely on this becoming
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a race. I do think it's possible that Iowa still comes through at least
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to some extent, but I just don't see the path going all the way
19:45
to the finish line again barring Trump's death or physical imprisonment. And part of
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you know why I feel this way was once again validated in Tuesday's election.
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Off your election, because stop me if you've heard this before, Republicans underperformed.
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And it's very very very clear why Republicans underperformed. There's two basic reasons.
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I'm sure, there's more than that, but the two most obvious are
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the issues of Trump and abortion, not necessarily in that order, depending on
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what the race is, what the situation is, but those are the two
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albatrosses hanging around the necks of Republicans. It is very, very obvious that
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the country perceives the Republican stance on abortion is out of step with what they
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want. Now the great frustration, and I don't know if you're call it
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an irony, but in the media is a huge part of this problem.
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I actually believe that the average American or the median Americans view of what should
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be the law on abortion is much close to the mainstream Republican party view then
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it is the Democratic party view. But the media has done a horrendous job
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on purpose of educating people as to what's actually happening. They did a horrendous
21:14
job with regard to the Supreme Court decision that ended Roe v. Wade.
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I guarantee you the vast majority of people, especially young people, think that
21:23
the Supreme Court banned abortion somehow, which is not even close to what happened.
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The reality is, they simply decided that there is no fundamental right to
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abortion. In the Constitution, which there is not, and then left it
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up to the states. And then you have these states now putting out these
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referendums and constitutional amendments. And what happened in Ohio is really extraordinary. Ohio
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passed by a very large margin of this past Tuesday a constitutional amendment that is
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in my view, far to the left depending on how you interpret it,
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far to the left of clearly what the average Ohioan would be in favor of.
22:07
But people are now just have this knee jerk reaction that we've got to
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do something to fix what the Supreme Court did, even in Ohio, which
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is now essentially a rather red state. And so if you can't win this
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battle in Ohio, it's a big, big, big problem nationwide. And
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there's you know, the same basic thing happened in Virginia where Governor Youngkin,
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you know, who was a superstar a year ago, two years ago.
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Now all of a sudden, the bloom is off that rose and Republicans underperformed
22:42
in Virginia. It's very clear Virginia is not going to go back into the
22:48
column of a swing state. It was a flash in the pan, a
22:51
fluke that Young Cain won, it seems like and and so you know,
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Virginia is gone as a presidential state. I mean, I think people need
23:00
to understand that, you know, when you have and the reason why it's
23:04
very very simple. When you have all these federal workers in northern Virginia,
23:11
they're always going to vote for the Democrat for president. Now, they might
23:15
not vote for the Democrat on a state level because they don't work for the
23:18
state. They work for the federal government, but it's very very clear from
23:22
the results in Virginia, and they're always the last to come in Northern Virginia,
23:26
you know, might as well be downtown Atlanta or any other big city
23:33
when it comes to landslides for Democrats. And so that was a disappointment for
23:41
Republicans. The Kentucky situation was very, very frustrating. I'll get to that
23:47
in the moment. I do want to at least mention. I think one
23:49
of the proofs that this really is about Trump and abortion is that there were
23:55
some small pockets in strange areas were republic Plicans actually did very very well and
24:02
much better than expected. But those were in local elections, like in northern
24:07
New Jersey Essex County, for instance, a friend of mine from high school
24:11
I've mentioned on the podcast previously, Dave Petrucco, was involved in these races
24:15
on the township level, where there's no abortion issue, there's no Trump issue.
24:19
It's just about common sense and getting back to sanity and fighting crime.
24:26
And there were Republicans who won in races that they've never won for decades.
24:30
And these were races again, no abortion, no Trump, it's just about
24:37
restoring sanity. And that's in northern New Jersey, you know, very democratic
24:42
stronghold. So, you know, I think that is about as good an
24:47
example as I can come up with as proof that this isn't an issue where
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Republicans cannot win, you know, because the country has gone so far to
24:57
the left all over the place. It's a branding problem, and the branding
25:03
problem is mostly in Trump and in the issue of abortion. Now, let
25:10
me go back to Kentucky for a second. This was rather depressing. I
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you know, many years ago I lived in Louisville for a couple of years
25:17
as a talk show host and a radio and TV talk show host in Louisville,
25:21
Kentucky. I still have affinity for the state, and I was this
25:26
is kind of weird for me personally, because when COVID first hit, you
25:30
know, I wanted out of California bad because I knew it was going to
25:34
be awful, and I because I knew what Gavin Newsom was all about,
25:38
and this was going to be years. This is going to take years to
25:41
get through this. I knew this immediately. And so my wife, who's
25:45
a native Californian and it still has her parents and family members here. She's
25:51
never gonna move, but even she was starting to at least consider other places.
25:55
And we were immediately looking at Florida, and I even thought about Kentuck
25:57
going back to Kentucky just to get the hell out of California. And then
26:03
I realized, oh my god, Governor Bashir is almost as bad as Gavin
26:07
Newsom. He's like a mini Gavin newsomber How the hell is he getting away
26:10
with this? And he was among the worst. I mean, it was
26:14
absolutely astonishing to me what he was able to get away with is a mini
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Gavin Newsom in freaking Kentucky, which is a red state. Almost everybody in
26:25
the state outside the city the cities of Lexington and Louisville, are Republicans.
26:30
The Republicans control the House and Senate on the legislative side, and here you
26:37
got this Democrat Bashir, who, by the way, it should be pointed
26:41
out, is the son of a former governor, so the basher name still
26:45
means something in Kentucky. He's a straight white male who looks like a Republican,
26:49
so that helps him, I think, quite a bit. And so
26:53
you know, he's not exactly a it perceived as a far left, woke
26:59
Democrat, but he was awful on COVID, and I was very curious to
27:04
see whether or not this might be the first time then a Democratic governor would
27:10
be held accountable for what happened with COVID. And there was some polling very
27:14
late, very late, that the Republican candidate, Cameron, comes to be
27:18
African American, which may or may not have played a role in this,
27:22
but that indicating that Cameron actually had a shot. Now I never believed he
27:26
was going to win, but I tweeted, this is going to be very
27:27
close. It turned out not to be that close. It was a five
27:33
point race that Bashir won by that margin, and I thought, I'm wow,
27:37
Okay, so you know, here we now are three and a half
27:42
years out of COVID, and not one pro lockdown COVID governor has suffered any
27:52
major consequences at all, and in fact, they've essentially all been rewarded and
27:57
it hasn't even been that close. Weirdly, I would argue that it was
28:03
Gavin Newsom's election result that was the least impressive, not because he only you
28:11
know, he won by nineteen points, but he won by nineteen points against
28:17
the complete nobody with no money, who no one had ever heard of before,
28:22
in the most liberal state of the entire country. And here he is
28:26
an incumbent with tons of money, and you know, Newsom won by a
28:30
smaller margin than Rond de Sanders did in Florida. That to me was,
28:34
you know, somewhat of a moral victory against Newsom. But Basher wins,
28:41
and this now off essentially is the final nail in the coffin of any accountability
28:48
when it comes to what happened with COVID, And it's also an indication of
28:52
the political viability of the issue, which goes back to why Ron de Santis
28:56
is very very unlikely to be the Republican nominee and would have a very difficult
29:03
time winning the presidency because the abortion issue would be a major detriment to Ronda
29:10
Santis. He signed a six week abortion band and now that's in Florida,
29:15
but that would be very, very destructive nationwide. Perception is reality. It
29:21
doesn't matter if he says he wouldn't be in favor of a federal law regarding
29:26
abortion, and that would be that would be an albatross around his neck.
29:32
And it's clear that the COVID issue, what he's most well known for,
29:36
does not play for whatever reason, nationwide. And so you know, I
29:41
can't see him winning the Republican nomination, and I frankly don't think he would
29:45
have the best chance of beating Joe Biden, and the polling seemingly indicates that.
29:51
Now. I'll have some thoughts on that in just a moment, but
29:55
this was a very depressing result in Kentucky because I just I cannot believe that
30:00
the country I thought I lived in would go through COVID, even in an
30:06
atmosphere where we're starting to see some media recriminations that I've discussed in previous episodes
30:11
of the podcast, where the narrative is changing that even in Kentucky, we
30:17
don't have enough people to say, you know what, you screwed up,
30:21
and you ruin my kid's life, and you ruin my business, and you
30:25
put us through hell for nothing, and I'm sorry, you're gone. That
30:30
didn't happen, and it didn't even happen in Kentucky. And that is very
30:37
ominous because when there's no accountability, people get away with it. Guess what's
30:41
gonna happen the next time they have the opportunity to do the same thing,
30:45
They're gonna do it. They're gonna do it. Because nobody got punished,
30:51
and many people actually got rewarded for what they did, and Donald Trump obviously
30:57
is in this category. You could act. She argued that the only person
31:02
in a major position that lost because of what happened during COVID was Donald Trump.
31:08
And you know, I have been all over Donald Trump about his reaction
31:12
to COVID and how he crapped the bed and how he essentially abdicated his presidency
31:18
to doctor Fauci and did everything wrong. And his statements during this campaign about
31:25
what happened with COVID are all over the map. And you may recall that
31:29
right after Desandas announced, I thought Trump gave the Desandas campaign Manna from Heaven
31:37
by saying that New York and Andrew Cuomo's response to COVID was better than Florida
31:44
and Ron de de Santis. I mean, I thought, my gosh,
31:48
you couldn't ask for anything better. That the Desantas campaign should have gone all
31:52
guns of blazing on that, because it was Trump that stepped in it and
31:56
handed them this gift, and that the Santa's campaign did not really do that.
32:02
And now we have Trump, and this is just from a few days
32:06
ago. This is Trump in Florida and an event where he actually decided to
32:13
show up, and he's talking about the COVID response, and of course he's
32:16
saying he didn't get enough credit for what he did on COVID. And then
32:20
he starts praising Republican governors, all of them, by the way, have
32:25
endorsed him. So he only names the Republican governors who endorsed him. That
32:30
means they're the good guys. And he puts forward this narrative that Republican governors
32:37
were great and all the Democratic governors were terrible, just pretending that he never
32:42
made the statement about Cuomo being better than Florida, and of course never mentioning
32:47
Ron DeSantis's name, for which he actually gets chided by the crowd. Even
32:53
he, I think, realized what was happening, and he still went ahead
32:59
and did not mention Dessanders's name. But here's what that sounded like. I
33:02
thought it was very, very telling. We had a lot of amazing successes.
33:07
We did a great job in COVID. We never got the credit for
33:10
the job we did. We let Republican governors keep their estates open, many
33:15
of them did. Henry McMaster, South Carolina did a great job. South
33:22
Dakota did a great job. Tennessee did a great job. A lot of
33:27
them they kept them open. No, I will say this, every Republican
33:42
governor did much better than the best Democrat governor. It's true what they did,
33:50
because some of them kept them open. Some of them, some of
33:52
them was not too many, frankly, but some opened up pretty quickly.
33:57
But the Democrats kept him closed like it seemed like forever in all instances,
34:01
and they really did a terrible job. Crooked Joe puts China first. Russia
34:07
right there is, in my opinion, a pretty good encapsulation of how broken
34:14
this entire narrative is. How broken the system is, how broken the process
34:19
for the Republican nomination is, and why it is the Trump is going to
34:22
win because I mean, right there is a statement of massive contradiction. He's
34:29
he is, he is one hundred percent contradicting himself when it came to what
34:35
he said about Cuomo in New York. He's purposely and selfishly leaving out the
34:39
guy who was the real hero of the situation, Ron de Santas in Florida.
34:44
He's even got the crowd calling him out on it. And this has
34:47
not been a major story in the right wing news media because it's it's one
34:54
hundred percent about not pissing off the Trump cult. The Trump cult means that
35:01
the mainstream right wing media will always be cowed. They will never pursue this,
35:07
and they will never educate their audience as to what's really going on.
35:12
So it is only online among non Trump fans where this gets passed around and
35:17
can you believe what Trump said here? And of course that doesn't have any
35:22
impact because those people weren't voting for Trump to begin with. But right there,
35:27
I thought that tells you an awful lot about who Donald Trump is and
35:30
what really happened with the entire COVID issue. Now as far as Trump is
35:36
concerned and the polling with regard to the general election, there's been a ton
35:42
of media coverage in the last week or so about a New York Times poll
35:45
that indicates that Donald Trump is not just beating Joe Biden. He's beating him
35:52
in the key swing states, the states that will actually determine the winner of
35:55
the electoral College, and he's beating him by a decently significant margin. And
36:01
this has sent all sorts of people into a tizzy. Barack Obama campaign manager
36:07
David Axelrod has kind of echoed his fellow CNN commentator Van Jones is thinking on
36:14
this, saying, hey, gee, you know, maybe maybe Uncle Joe
36:17
should take a pass on this, Maybe he should step out, step aside,
36:22
let somebody else go with this, because there's some real serious concern about
36:27
whether or not Joe Biden is going to be able to beat Donald Trump.
36:30
And of course they view Donald Trump as this grave threat to the country into
36:35
democracy. And I have been interested in, but dubious of all these polls
36:42
showing Donald Trump beating Joe Biden. It's interesting to me that they almost always
36:49
come from the most liberal outlets. I mean the Harvard poll and the New
36:52
York Times poll and Morning Consult. I mean, so, how is this
36:58
happening? And I'm not a conspiracy person. I don't necessarily believe that pollsters,
37:02
who are often not directly associated with their media outlets for whom they work,
37:08
that pollsters are purposely inflating Trump's numbers so that he'll be the nominee and
37:15
then you know, Joe Biden can more easily defeat him, especially if he
37:19
gets convicted of a felony. That might be the actual effect. But I
37:23
don't know that that's really what's happening. It's not a conspiracy. I also
37:29
don't think that these results are based in reality, because we are going to
37:35
have at least one or two trials between now and next November. And you
37:42
know, I think it's possible that Trump gets away with, you know,
37:46
an hung jury because of enough Trump fans get on the on the jury that
37:52
they're not going to vote to convict him. I don't think he's going to
37:54
be completely cleared, vindicated, or or even acquitted of anything, because you're
38:00
also going to have Trump haters on any jury, especially in Washington, d
38:05
C. So it's not going to be a good year for Trump, and
38:10
you're gonna have all sorts of other things. I've mentioned the Taylor Swift the
38:14
fact, I mean that's already starting to make news. I've already been i
38:16
think vindicated on that theory that I have that she's gonna absolutely if Trump is
38:22
the nominee, make sure that women who are in that younger age bracket,
38:27
who normally don't vote in high numbers, make sure that they actually do vote,
38:30
and they're not going to be voting for Donald Trump because they're swifties and
38:35
they do whatever the heck. Taylor Swift says. My own daughter, we
38:39
put out a video on Twitter last night shocked me by saying that her view
38:44
of Donald Trump has changed. She'd kind of been on the Donald Trump Bandwacken
38:49
for a while because she doesn't like Joe Biden. My eleven year old Grace,
38:52
who's in fifth grade, she volunteered that it was because of Taylor Swift
38:57
that she no longer likes Donald Trump. And this is my daughter, for
39:00
goodness sake, so there's definitely something to that. But I just think that
39:06
a year from now, especially given the legal situations and the all hands on
39:12
deck that would occur, and the voter turnout driver that Trump is that the
39:17
reality would be much different a year from now than what is currently being seen
39:23
in the polling. That being said, there is no question that Joe Biden
39:28
is unbelievably weak, unbelievably weak, and Democrats should be very, very frightened
39:37
about his candidacy because it's not going to get much better for him. He's
39:42
physically not going to get any better. The economy may or may not get
39:45
worse between now and then, the Wars situation is probably not going to get
39:51
better between now and then, might get much worse. And so the Biden
39:55
numbers aren't going to improve very much at all either. They're actually hoping for
40:00
and banking on Donald Trump being the nominee to drive their own turnout because there's
40:07
not a lot of enthusiasm for a second Biden term. Now. Part of
40:13
the polling that I find the most interesting is that yes, and this goes
40:16
to how weak Biden is, is that yes, Trump beats Biden, but
40:22
you know who else beats Biden in the exact same poll, Well, Ron
40:27
de Sandis beats him about pretty much the same margins as Trump. Maybe a
40:34
little bit less than a couple of states. It's weird to me how there
40:37
is some disparity in some of these key states between how Trump does and how
40:43
DeSantis would do against Biden. But the person who really beats Joe Biden right
40:49
now is Nicky Haley, and it is not even close. Now, I
40:54
realize that part of this is that Nicky Haley is not nearly as well known.
40:59
She's not in the target of the media. I mean, DeSantis has
41:01
been obviously very much attacked ever since COVID, and Trump has been attacked for
41:08
basically well ever since he got elected in twenty sixteen by the mainstream news media.
41:14
So it's not a totally fair comparison. But this really does show how
41:19
unbelievably weak but Joe Biden is. Let me throw some numbers at you.
41:23
Here's the same poll that got so much coverage, and this did not get
41:28
a lot of coverage. This is Haley versus Biden in Wisconsin, very key
41:35
state. Haley beats Biden by fourteen. In Pennsylvania, Hally beats Biden by
41:40
ten. In Michigan, Haley beats Biden by ten. In Arizona, Hally
41:46
beats Biden by nine In Nevada, Haley beats Biden by nine. I mean,
41:52
I mean, that's unbelievable. And I don't know if Haley doesn't have
41:57
the money to do it. But how in the world you know the Haley
42:00
campaign isn't shouting this from the mountaintops in every media outlet they possibly can,
42:06
I don't know. Again, I don't consider those numbers to be all that
42:12
significant because Haley hasn't been the focus of a lot of attention, and she's
42:16
not that well known, and all that people know is that she's an attractive
42:21
woman who was governor of South Carolina and she was the UN ambassador. I
42:25
mean, that's the most that they know. They also perceive, and I
42:29
think this is part of why this is happening. They perceive her as a
42:32
woman who is at least somewhat moderate on the abortion issue. And I thought,
42:38
frankly, and I'm not a big Hanley fan, but I thought her
42:42
answer on abortion and last night's debate was really pretty good. I'm personally pro
42:47
life, but we need to make it clear to the American people that this
42:51
is not a federal issue. We don't have the votes, we don't have
42:53
the inclination to make this a federal law. We need to respect the way
42:58
that women view this issue, and her entire philosophy seems to be to defuse
43:05
the abortion issue. And as a woman, I think she has a heck
43:08
of a lot more street cred to do that than clearly Donald Trump, who,
43:13
even though he's backing away from abortion bands, it was his Supreme Court
43:17
justices that got rid of Roe v. Wade. And of course you got
43:21
Rhanda Sanders, who signed a six week abortion law in Florida. So Haley
43:28
is in much better, a much better position on that key issue, especially
43:32
as a woman, than either Trump or De Santis would be. And again
43:37
I'm not in favor of Nikki Haley as the nominee unless your only goal is
43:43
to beat Joe Biden. And I have to tell you, folks, if
43:46
your goal is to beat Joe Biden, understanding that the numbers I just gave
43:52
you would not hold up a year from now after she was actually the nominee.
43:58
But if your only goal is to beat Joe Biden, if that was
44:01
all that mattered, and beat them with somebody who is a Republican in a
44:08
legitimate fashion, then Nicki Haley is the person that would have the best chance
44:13
of doing that. Now she's never gonna get that chance barring you know,
44:17
Trump dying and a bunch of other things happening, because she can't get denomination.
44:22
But she's gonna have enough support to stick in at least through South Carolina
44:27
if she wants to, and she's going to be a major major problem for
44:30
Rond De Santis, assuming this isn't a complete blowout in Iowa, because obviously
44:36
she's going to take a lot of the non Trump vote. But I just
44:38
want to be on the record there. If you're if the Republican Party was
44:42
serious about winning, which there's not a lot of evidence that they are,
44:46
then Nicki Haley, even as much as I love Rond de Santis, I'm
44:51
sorry, I'm a realist because of the abortion issue and the COVID issue,
44:58
you know, turning out the way that they have. From an elite electoral
45:00
perspective nationwide, if your only goal is to win, Nicky Haley is the
45:06
person. And that doesn't mean one hundred percent she would win, but she
45:09
would have the best chance of winning against not gonna happen because she can't win
45:14
the nomination without Trump dying and a couple other things happening. But you know,
45:20
there used to be a rationality to this Republican nominating process, as you
45:25
know, as late as twenty twelve, there was rationality. I mean,
45:31
people forget that Mitt Romney was not the clear choice in twenty twelve. Right
45:36
off the bat, there was a lot of dalliances with crappy candidates, you
45:42
know, Michelle Bachman and Herman Kine and Newt Gingridge, and people had to
45:47
sip through the muck to realize, Okay, Mitt Romney, is it gives
45:53
us the best chance to knock off Barack Obama. We don't want a second
45:58
Barack Obama term, So let's go with Romney. Now, he lost,
46:02
but that doesn't mean he wasn't the most electable candidate. This is a major
46:07
problem that Republicans, especially Trump' supporters have. They don't understand. They think
46:12
if you lose that that means somehow the establishment screwed up by picking the candidate
46:17
that was supposedly the most electable but really wasn't. No, Romney was the
46:22
most electable. You were just going up against an incumbent president with a massive
46:29
amount of media bias on his side. Who happened to be multi racial and
46:36
energize the Democratic base in an unprecedented fashion. That was a very very difficult
46:42
hill to climb. Romney almost climbed it, but the fact that he failed
46:46
didn't mean he wasn't the most electable. Well, Unfortunately, that failure set
46:54
the scene for twenty sixteen and for Donald Trump to come in because at that
46:59
point, to many in the Republican base no longer trusted the quote unquote establishment
47:05
to tell them who was the most electable. And then that really got obliterated
47:10
when Trump actually won, when even people like myself were totally wrong who thought
47:15
that Trump was not going to beat Hillary in twenty sixteen. So now there
47:20
is zero trust in the electability issue. But if we were still in a
47:23
pre Trump world, we were still in a pre Trump world like twenty twelve,
47:30
Nicky Haley eventually would be seen as the person to go with because she
47:35
would have the best chance of beating Joe Biden. That's not going to happen.
47:39
I'm not even really in favor of it necessarily, but I would be.
47:44
I would be much more in favor of a Nicky Haley nomination with all
47:49
of its problems than I would be with the Donald Trump nomination, because with
47:52
Trump you get all the problems and you may not win. And there's there
47:57
are indications that you know, and this is where perception and reality are so
48:00
different. There's a perception that Trump is doing so amazingly well in these polls.
48:06
Even in that New York Times poll, Haley does much better than Trump
48:09
does against Biden. And there's a Marquette poll in Wisconsin, and let's be
48:15
clear, Wisconsin is a very very clear state. Here's the results of the
48:19
most recent Marquette poll in Wisconsin. Trump trails Biden by two points Desandas leads
48:27
Biden by two points. That's a pretty big difference four points in a state
48:30
that's notoriously close like Wisconsin. Haley leads Biden by nine points. By nine
48:39
points. Again, I realize it's partially because she hasn't been attacked, and
48:45
you know that would change obviously in a general election. But it's because she's
48:50
a woman. It's because of the perception that she creates on the abortion issue.
48:55
And I do think that there is something to be said if you care
49:00
about electability, logan doesn't seem like Republicans care very much about winning, that
49:06
she would be the one to go with if that's your number one priority.
49:09
Now, there's another interesting thing going on with the polling, and that is
49:15
that RFK Junior, especially in that New York Times poll that got so much
49:19
publicity, has been doing much better than most people have expected, much better
49:24
than he has done in previous polling. And this caught the attention of Dan
49:30
Abrams, my former boss at Media eight, where I was a senior columnist
49:35
for several years, who does a TV show nightly on News Nation on which
49:39
I appear about every other week, and his show asked me to come on
49:45
to talk about this polling data that is rather shocking and how the news media
49:51
is basically ignoring RFK Junior, that this is a Trump Biden battle, and
49:57
in most polls they don't even I shouldn't say most, but in a lot
50:00
of polls they don't even ask about RFK Junior. It's Biden versus Trump,
50:06
and they may or may not actually include RFK Junior. Now, there's some
50:09
rationale for that, because you have to get on the ballot, and when
50:14
you're the candidate who's independent and you're not representing a major party, which is
50:19
what's going to happen with RFK Junior. That's not a done deal. That
50:22
is very difficult. Ballot access is very very difficult. So I'm not saying
50:28
he's not going to get on the ballot, but there's at least a fig
50:31
leaf of an excuse for why the media is ignoring in large part RFK Junior
50:37
because he may not actually be on the ballot in these states where he's getting
50:42
a significant amount of support when we're talking into the mid twenties, sometimes even
50:47
close to thirty percent among younger demographics. In this New York Times poll,
50:52
depending on how you define likely voters or registered voters, RFK Junior is actually
50:59
slightly beating Trump and Biden, which I think is mostly an age issue.
51:05
It's also an anti establishment issue, a name recognition issue because of the Kennedy
51:10
name, I guess, although among younger voters you would think that wouldn't have
51:14
as much power. But I went on News Nation earlier this week to do
51:20
an interview with Dan Abrams about the media coverage of RFK Junior and the polling,
51:23
and I just want to play a small clip, partially because it's kind
51:27
of humorous, how I decided to jump out of the box on this particular
51:31
issue. So I thought you would enjoy this at least, I know Dan
51:35
Abrams did. You'll be able to hear him chuckling in the background. But
51:37
here's what happened when Dan Abrams and I discussed the RFK junior polling issue on
51:44
News Nation. Till now, we've mostly talked about his role as a possible
51:47
spoiler, but a stunning new poll shows that he has the potential to be
51:52
much more than that, and if these numbers hold, he actually has a
51:57
chance to win the presidency. Now, remember this New York Times poll right
52:01
had everyone buzzing about Trump leading Biden in five of six key battleground states,
52:08
But it also shows that in those six key battleground states, RFK is very
52:15
much within striking distance of both Trump and Biden in a hypothetical three way matchup.
52:21
The poll is RFKA wopping twenty four percent, well within striking distance of
52:25
both Trump and Biden. Trump currently leads the potential three way race in the
52:30
battlegrounds with thirty five, Biden has thirty three. That's not all. The
52:37
poll finds that among voters under forty five, RFK actually leads both Trump and
52:45
Biden. In those states, he pulls down thirty one percent among voters thirty
52:52
to forty four, just ahead of both Trump and Biden. Each of thirty
52:55
percent fares even better among the youngest voters. Poll shows RFK as thirty four
53:01
percent support with voters in the eighteen to twenty nine category, solidly ahead of
53:07
Biden at thirty and Trump at twenty nine. It comes on the heels of
53:10
a new Quinnipiac poll which shows RFK pulling in twenty two percent nationwide, trailing
53:16
Biden they say, at thirty nine, Trump at thirty six. But the
53:20
reality is he is a serious player in the twenty twenty four race, and
53:25
the partisan media continues to just ignore him. I mean, look at the
53:30
disparity and coverage between the three on major cable news networks over the last month.
53:37
You can see President Biden got more than twenty two thousand combined mentions,
53:44
former President Trump got more than eighteen thousand, and on those same networks,
53:49
RFK Junior got fifty two. Now I'm not saying you should be getting equal
53:53
coverage, of course not. But for every time RFK is mentioned on partisan
53:59
cable news news, Biden and Trump are mentioned roughly four hundred times. Are
54:06
they intentionally ignoring him? Let's ask John Ziegler, conservative commentator and host of
54:10
the Death of Journalism podcast. John, Thanks for coming back, appreciate it.
54:15
Are they doing it on purpose? Well, there's a lot of reasons
54:19
why they're doing the stand. First, let's talk about why it's happening.
54:21
This is a damning indictment of this choice that it seems that we're going to
54:24
have next year between Trump and Biden. This is like going to your doctor
54:30
and your doctor's saying you got two choices, lobotomy or castration, pick one
54:35
most people. Most people are going to decide, do I have another choice?
54:38
What's my third option here? And so RFK Junior is doing very well
54:43
in that third option category. I happen to believe that any nonpartisan celebrity would
54:49
probably do as well as O RFK Junior. At Charles Barkley or at Deanna
54:52
Sanders. I'd love to see those names tried there. But News Nation is
54:57
obviously very much focused on this issue partisanship, and I think that really hits
55:01
at the heart of the RFK issue, and that is that the left wing
55:06
and the right wing media don't know what to do with RFK Junior because of
55:09
the question you started the segment with, who does he help or hurt the
55:14
most? And we don't know that yet. I happen to have believed before
55:19
this New York Times Paul that the better RFK Junior did, the worse it
55:22
was for Biden. But that's not what this Paul shows. In fact,
55:25
it shows the opposite. The better RFK Junior does, the better it is
55:30
actually for Joe Biden. So you're not going to have the left wing media
55:34
or the right wing media take a position on rf K Junior until they know
55:37
whether or not it help their guy. But they're also not even taking it
55:39
serious. I mean there's a new CNN poll out tonight which literally didn't even
55:44
ask about RFK Junior, right, I mean, they're just making it about
55:49
Trump and Biden. And when you look at these numbers again, I'm stunned
55:52
by the numbers two. I'm stunned that among people basically forty five and younger
55:57
in the battleground states, he's winning well. I think the other issue here,
56:02
Dan, is the lack of trust that the establishment currently has, especially
56:07
among younger people. There is so much distrust of the establishment that RFK Junior,
56:14
as the anti establishment guy, seen as an anti VACKX guy, is
56:17
able to appeal to those voters in a very strong way. And by the
56:22
way, not being covered by the media may actually help are a K Junior
56:25
by in certain circles because they don't know that much about him. They just
56:30
know that Kennedy Dame. They don't really that's exactly right. I hope you
56:34
enjoyed that clip as much as Dan Abrams appeared to do so. But I
56:37
do think there's a serious issue here, and in fact, there's several serious
56:43
issues, But one of them is whom does RFK Junior help most? And
56:49
I still don't have a strong answer for that. I honestly thought up until
56:54
that New York Times poll that the better RFK Junior did words, if he's
57:00
getting in the twenties, then that is bad for Joe Biden because now you're
57:06
beyond just his anti vax base, the people who would, you know,
57:10
bizarrely be prone to voting for Trump if there was no RFK Junior. It's
57:15
bizarre because obviously Trump still is someone who praises his own COVID vaccine to an
57:22
absurd degree, So that doesn't make a lot of sense. But you know,
57:25
these are not necessarily totally rational people. But when you're in the twenties,
57:30
now you're getting into people who are liberals, people who have fondness for
57:37
the Kennedy name. Obviously you're talking about people who just don't want Trump or
57:43
Biden because they, as I do, see this as a lobotomy versus castration,
57:47
or some variation of those two things. And so anybody will do.
57:52
And I mend it what I said about Charles Barkley or Dion Sanders. I
57:57
would love to see a polling outlet just throw out there a prominent semi political
58:01
person who's seen as nonpartisan and see how they would do. I think they
58:06
might even do better than RFK Junior. That's how much distaste there is for
58:12
a Trump Biden rematch. So my theory was the better RFK Junior does,
58:19
the worse it is for Biden. But that's not what that New York Times
58:22
poll indicates. That New York Times poll indicates that even though Trump did very
58:29
well against Biden, he actually did not do as well. When you threw
58:34
in RFK Junior, it actually got closer in these key states. And so
58:38
I honestly do not have an answer. The polling data is all over the
58:44
place when it comes to the issue of does RFK JR hurt Biden more or
58:50
hurt Trump more? And until the media figures out which direction that's going to
58:54
go, they're going to be very hesitant to give him any oxygen because no
58:58
one wants to do anything to hurt their own guy, especially when he's not
59:02
yet on the ballot. So that's an issue to keep an eye on.
59:07
I want to turn away from politics for the rest of this episode, at
59:09
least directly from politics for the rest of this episode. There are a few
59:13
things that have happened in the last week that are very much media related and
59:16
worthy of mention. The manifesto of the Nashville shooter. Remember that a couple
59:22
months ago a transgender person shot up a Christian school in Nashville, where I
59:30
used to live for several years in the nineteen nineties, And there was a
59:35
manifesto which strangely was kept under wraps. And of course, you know,
59:39
it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, Okay, wait a minute,
59:44
there's a manifesto. This person is transgendered. Obviously, at least part
59:51
of the motivation for keeping this quiet is that this is not going to be
59:53
good. This is not going to be good for the narrative. And it
59:58
turned out that that's exactly the case, because this person clearly did this out
1:00:02
of white hatred or hatred of white people. They wanted to kill white crackers.
1:00:07
It was obviously obviously they were mentally ill. You have to be mentally
1:00:12
ill to do this to begin with. But they wanted revenge, They wanted
1:00:15
to kill as many people as possible, and it was racially motivated. Now
1:00:21
can you imagine if the opposite was the case, that this was a racial
1:00:27
hate crime against black people or any other minority, the news media would have
1:00:31
obviously embrace this. There would have been pressure by the media to release this
1:00:37
manifesto. There was no pressure, and in fact, there apparently are several
1:00:43
police officers or police personnel in Nashville that had been put on leave because of
1:00:50
the leak of this. It was leaked to a right wing online media outlet,
1:00:54
and apparently they were doing that against orders. Now, I'm sure they
1:01:00
were doing this at least partially out of politics. Otherwise they wouldn't have given
1:01:04
it to a right wing outlet and apparently they're being held accountable for that.
1:01:09
But that would not happen if this was exactly the opposite with regard to the
1:01:15
racial situation. If this was a crime where black people had been murdered,
1:01:21
especially black children in a Christian school, and it was clear from the manifesto
1:01:27
that this was racially motivated against black people, and you know by this person
1:01:32
talking about white privilege, which is obviously a media construct, and so they
1:01:37
were basically brainwashed by the media into believing that white people have this white privilege
1:01:43
and that they need to be killed. If all this had been in the
1:01:46
opposite direction, there would be media pressure to release the manifesto, and there
1:01:52
would be the media rushing to protect those that leaked it to them. There
1:01:57
would be no ramifications for those who leaked it to them. So this is
1:02:01
a classic situation of how media bias really dictates events. We would have seen
1:02:07
this manifesto immediately if it was favorable to the liberal narrative on these situations,
1:02:16
but it was not, and so it's months later and no one cares,
1:02:21
and then the people who leak it or getting in trouble, and then of
1:02:23
course the mainstream news media, they basically ignore this because one, well it's
1:02:29
a right wing outlet, so we can't really trust it, and two it
1:02:31
doesn't fit our agenda. And three it's old news, So let's all just
1:02:36
move along. Let's just all move along, and let's just pretend that this
1:02:39
didn't really have anything to do. These children weren't killed, at least in
1:02:43
part because we created a bullshit narrative about white people having privilege, which may
1:02:49
have provoked this transgender nut job into killing innocent people in a Christian school.
1:02:53
Now, now we're just gonna move along. And that's where media bias actually
1:02:59
has re world meaning. And this issue of hatred and media bias and race
1:03:07
could not have been more clearly illustrated than in a video that went viral on
1:03:13
Twitter several days ago out of Boston. This is from WBZTV in Boston,
1:03:20
where they're doing a very very solemn report about this horrendous incident that had happened
1:03:28
at Bellingham High School in Massachusetts. And now we're going to play about a
1:03:34
minute and thirty seconds of what aired on Boston television about this awful what is
1:03:42
described by a black woman that you'll hear in this clip as a hate crime
1:03:49
where a sign was found at Bellingham High School. Now I want you to
1:03:54
listen carefully as to what the sign said that caused someone to go to the
1:04:00
police and school officials to be you know, send out an email to all
1:04:09
the parents saying, oh my gosh, how concerned we are and have people
1:04:12
thinking of this as a hate crime and having the local television news media be
1:04:16
all over this is a very serious matter. Listen carefully to what the sign
1:04:23
actually said. A racist sign was founder Bellingham High School, and frustrated parents
1:04:29
want to know what's happening inside the school. Wbz's Christina Hager's live in Bellingham
1:04:33
tonight. Christina. The school says hate has no place on its campus.
1:04:40
A Lisa, the superintendent, send out an email this week saying he's deeply
1:04:43
saddened and that the school staff works hard to create an environment where all students
1:04:48
can feel like they belong, but some parents here say more needs to be
1:04:53
done. Stop white hate. Said the sign near the entrance of Bellingham High
1:05:00
School. Police say two residents removed it when they saw it Saturday and brought
1:05:05
it here to the police department, concerned about the tone. I don't know
1:05:10
what led to it. I don't know why they put it up there.
1:05:13
I don't know if it was a parent that's upset because of the way things
1:05:16
are going. Since the spot is removed from the high school building, police
1:05:20
say there are no security cameras where someone had propped the sign up along the
1:05:26
main road. There are hate crimes, right, and they have hate crime
1:05:30
rules in the school to enforce them. It has some parents concerned. Tiara
1:05:34
Bacchus's daughter told her about it after the superintendent sent this email calling it deplorable.
1:05:42
She's like kind of said it like nonchalant, like it's okay, and
1:05:46
we just kind of looked like, how is this okay? And how are
1:05:51
you going to just send out an email and expect everything to be fine,
1:05:56
Like it's heartbreaking. She says it's not the first time her kids have experienced
1:06:01
racial tension at school. These boys had to rope and they kept on saying
1:06:08
the N word, and my daughter she got up and she went to the
1:06:12
guidance counselor. Police say school resource officers never heard about that. The nice
1:06:17
part we have in the SRO is up there is we want the kids to
1:06:20
go to them. They're visible, they're there all the time. And they're
1:06:24
visible. So if they had a concern or I have a concern, by
1:06:28
all means they should go talk to them. And one of those parents tells
1:06:32
us she's so upset she's now considering moving her students to a different school.
1:06:39
Police are telling us there is no danger to students or the general public in
1:06:45
Bellingham. Christina Hager WBZ News, Christina, thank you. Now, all
1:06:48
of that was over a sign that said stop white hate. Stop white hate
1:07:02
being referred to as a hate crime, being sent to the police. Why
1:07:10
does someone go to the police? I love the clip from the police officer
1:07:14
there in the Boston accent, the white male voice, where I don't know
1:07:18
if this is some parent upset about the way things are going. But I
1:07:24
would have loved to have heard a follow up question with that guy, because
1:07:28
it certainly seemed to be clear what his interpretation of the sign was. But
1:07:31
that's somehow a hate crime. Now, of course, there's two ways to
1:07:36
interpret the sign, stop white people hating or stop hating white people. I
1:07:45
tend to interpret it in the latter direction. It seems as if that's the
1:07:50
way that the people in the story interpreted it. It certainly seems to be
1:07:55
the way the police officer interpreted it. In other words, stop hating one
1:08:00
people. And now that is viewed as at the very least politically incorrect,
1:08:06
a potential hate crime, cause for school officials to get all in a tizzy,
1:08:14
and oh, by the way, having black people be upset at the
1:08:16
school officials for not being even more concerned about this. This is the bizarro
1:08:24
world in which we now live, and I think that's partially why this video
1:08:28
went viral. I mean, millions of views on Twitter for this thing.
1:08:32
Stop white hate is now signs of racism and a hate crime, I guess
1:08:40
against black people. That's how insane this is that if you interpret that sign,
1:08:45
it's just a sign. By the way, it's just free speech.
1:08:47
It's just a sign, that's all it is, not even someone speaking,
1:08:51
it's just a sign stop white hate. I thought we were supposed to be
1:08:56
against hate. Now even allowed to say stop hating white people, because that's
1:09:02
apparently now racist. It's a racial hate crime against black people to say,
1:09:06
please stop hating whites. Even in the same news cycle where we're fighting out
1:09:13
that the Nashville murderer was killing people because they were white. If it wasn't
1:09:20
so serious, if it wasn't so sad, if it wasn't so depressing,
1:09:24
it would actually be very much hilarious. And a lot of this deals with
1:09:30
the changing views of free speech, which I have been I think, way
1:09:34
ahead of the curve talking about. I wrote a book in two thousand and
1:09:38
five called The Death of Free Speech where I saw this coming, where it
1:09:42
was obvious that America and the media itself, which you would think has a
1:09:45
self interest in promoting free speech, does not have nearly the value inherent in
1:09:55
free speech that is necessary to keep it alive. There's a reason why the
1:09:58
founder has made it the First Amendment. Now I realize there's a big difference
1:10:01
between free speech and the First Amendment, but as a value system, as
1:10:08
a pure value, it was very clear to me that Americans and the American
1:10:12
establishment were not valuing and defending free speech nearly enough for it to survive.
1:10:18
Because once it's no longer absolute. That's why the First Amendment was as clear
1:10:25
as it was written. Once it's no longer absolute, once you start creating
1:10:30
loopholes, and you know, hate crime. That's why I always hated hate
1:10:34
crime legislation. I saw this as the ultimate loophole around the First Amendment,
1:10:40
because once you get to define what hate is, as I just proved with
1:10:44
that Boston story, it's all over. It's all over, especially when you're
1:10:47
gonna have liberals defining what hate is, because if you can define it as
1:10:51
hate, then it's no longer free speech. And we've already seen this.
1:10:56
It's happening slowly but surely in all different aspect specs of society. And one
1:11:02
of the areas of society where this has been most obvious is among our younger
1:11:06
people. The younger generation has no regard for the First Amendment or free speech
1:11:14
concepts. And once again I have to give credit to Bill maher liberal HBO
1:11:19
host who has been out in front on this, out in front on COVID,
1:11:24
out in front on free speech, and he had a fascinating exchange with
1:11:30
a guy who is known as a scientist, but he's really a fraud.
1:11:33
He's Neil de Grassi Tyson, and he happens to be a black guy and
1:11:39
he's entertaining. But that's why the media loves him. I mean, the
1:11:42
media loves him because he's entertaining, he's black, and he gives them everything
1:11:45
they possibly want. When it comes to a liberal view of science. This
1:11:49
is a guy who believes that the Statue of Liberty will soon be mostly underwater
1:11:55
due to global warming, which is completely and totally bullshit. But he was
1:12:00
on with Bill Maher, not on the HBO show, but I guess on
1:12:02
Bill Maher's auxiliary. I guess you'd call it a video podcast. I'm not
1:12:06
sure, but he does an interview show. And this exchange was really quite
1:12:11
amazing because Bill Maher goes off on the younger generation, the issue of free
1:12:16
speech and attacking guys like Tyson who are afraid to call out their own people
1:12:25
because it's a lot like the right wing media with Trump supporters and the Trump
1:12:29
cult. They don't want to piss them off. Well, nobody who's popular
1:12:31
among young people wants to call out the younger generation for being full of crap
1:12:36
for obvious reasons. It's about popularity and commercialism. And here was Bill Maher
1:12:42
at his absolute best. Ansually, there's a portfolio. Whether it's still work
1:12:45
on a college campus, surely I would hope not. From what may Maybe
1:12:50
some college campuses the ones you read about are fucking insane. Give it up
1:12:55
on an entire generation and living up on any place that doesn't even remotely attempt
1:13:00
to believe in free speech and thinks that anything that they hear that they don't
1:13:06
like, that they don't agree with, is violence. These people are fucking
1:13:10
nuts, and you should be calling them out. Somebody like you who has
1:13:14
standing with kids should be not You're you're doing what you're doing what parents do.
1:13:19
You're taking the path of least resistance and therefore hurting the kids and yourself.
1:13:25
Parents ruin both their lives. They ruin their fucking spoiled kids' lives,
1:13:29
and they ruin their own lives because the kids rule the roost. So that's
1:13:32
what you're doing. On a national level. I'm feeling more alike on the
1:13:35
ports, really feel like you're in the barbershop. I can't believe I've become
1:13:42
such a big Bill Maher fan, because I hated Bill Maher back in the
1:13:45
day, back in like, for instance, two thousand and eight, he
1:13:48
was one of the the worst Sarah Sarah Palin attackers. And he's actually in
1:13:55
my documentary film Medium Malpractice album. I got elected in Palelin was targeted and
1:14:02
now here we are, you know, all these years later, fifteen years
1:14:05
later, and he's a champion for the truth on COVID and the champion for
1:14:11
reality when it comes to free speech issues and the generational divide. So once
1:14:15
again, kudos to Bill Maher and what a bizarro world we now live in.
1:14:20
There's I think a direct line between some of what Bill Maher said there
1:14:28
and my next story, which doesn't seem to have a connection, but I
1:14:31
think actually does. And I'm referring to the death of college basketball coaching legend
1:14:38
Bobby Knight. He died about a week ago, and this was not unexpected.
1:14:43
He was in his eighties. Thankfully, just before COVID hit, I
1:14:46
mean just before COVID hit, he decided to come back to Indiana and you
1:14:56
know where he had won three national championships and have a reunion. Had not
1:15:00
been back to Indiana for many years after he had been fired. It was
1:15:06
in two thousands, so it basically was twenty years he had been gone from
1:15:11
the university. Because he was understandably angry for being fired after having won three
1:15:17
national championships there and being such a legend, and it was a very emotional
1:15:21
scene. He was clearly not one hundred percent with it, but he at
1:15:27
least knew what was going on, and he knew the players that were there
1:15:30
with him to share that moment, and apparently he had very bad Alzheimer's at
1:15:35
the end. And so you know, this was not a surprise that Bobby
1:15:41
Knight passed. But I think his passing is significant in a number of different
1:15:46
ways, partially because of what Bill Maher said there about how the kids are
1:15:54
now running the show. Well, that's what's happened, not just in parenting,
1:15:59
but also in teaching and in coaching. And I've talked a lot.
1:16:05
I did this with Dick Buckets a few weeks ago about how the news media
1:16:11
tends to praise people in death. Matthew Perry, it's kind of the same
1:16:16
way the news media that praises Friends would never allow Friends as a TV show
1:16:23
to happen with six straight white people being the stars. Ever. Again,
1:16:28
the news media that praises Dick Buckus for his brutal tackling makes it impossible for
1:16:33
there to be a Dick Bucket to ever exist in the National Football leagu again,
1:16:38
because they would be deemed to be too dangerous And the rules have now
1:16:42
all changed to make it impossible for that person who exists well, Bobby Knight
1:16:46
was largely praised in death. I was mildly surprised and pleased that he was
1:16:54
so praised in death given the fact that he and the media had a huge
1:17:00
rivalry. I mean, Bobby Knight hated the media more overtly than almost any
1:17:05
other public figure that was as successful as he was that I can possibly think
1:17:11
of. In fact, it was a large part of his literal epithet,
1:17:16
where he you know, almost on his tombstone, where much like Mike Leach.
1:17:24
You may recall that at the end of last year, there was another
1:17:27
coaching legend, Mike Leach, the head football coach at Mississippi State, who
1:17:30
passed away suddenly, and we played a clip on this podcast that was a
1:17:36
very funny and classic Leech clip because he had been asked about what his legacy
1:17:42
would be when he dies, and his response was, well, what do
1:17:45
I care. I'm dead. I'm not going to know what's going on anyway,
1:17:47
which is classic Leach. Well, when Knight died, Bobby Knight died,
1:17:54
there was a clip that was very famous at the time that went viral
1:17:58
online because essentially it was literally Bobby Knight writing for his own tombstone, and
1:18:05
I don't know whether or not Knight anticipated this being the case. It wasn't
1:18:09
social media back when he did this, but he certainly, I'm sure when
1:18:14
he made this statement, we're about to play for you at an Indiana basketball
1:18:18
game, I think he was being honored for some reason, and you know,
1:18:23
so it's his home crowd. He makes a very famous statement, essentially
1:18:28
reciting a poem, which I think tells you everything you need to know about
1:18:31
who Bobby Knight was and how he viewed the news media. And this was
1:18:39
maybe the most famous thing that Bobby Knight ever said. When my time on
1:18:45
Earth is gone and my activities here are past, I want they bury me
1:18:50
upside down and my critics can kiss my ass. So Bobby Knight was really
1:18:59
one of the last of the Mohicans when it came to just not giving a
1:19:02
damn about what people thought of him, especially in the news media. He
1:19:08
famously battled the news media. They hated him, they wanted to get him,
1:19:13
and they eventually did get him. It's not dissimilar, by the way,
1:19:15
to what happened with Joe Paterno at Penn State. The similar figures.
1:19:20
At one point they were each the winningest coaches in college sports, Joe Paterno
1:19:26
in football, Bobby Knight in basketball. They were both conservatives, They both
1:19:30
had a conservative philosophy. The news media hated both of them. With Paterno
1:19:35
was more of a of a jovial thing, but he jabbed with the media
1:19:42
very overtly, and there's no question that played a role once they had the
1:19:45
opportunity to finally get Paterno, which we documented in our podcast with the benefit
1:19:49
of hindsight. It was more overt with Bobby Knight because of language that he
1:19:56
would use, like what you just heard in that clip. He was very
1:20:00
clear about his hatred and distrust of the news media. And Bobby Knight was
1:20:04
not a perfect guy. I mean, he had clearly an anger issues and
1:20:10
you know, and there's no question at all he could never possibly coach today,
1:20:15
which I think is a shame, because I think there is value in
1:20:19
people like Bobby Knight, and the liberal news media and the sports media.
1:20:26
They love these mythical figures, these mythical coaching figures that they have now made
1:20:31
it impossible or almost impossible for there to ever be anyone like that again in
1:20:36
the future. I mean, Bobby Knight couldn't coach high school basketball today.
1:20:41
He couldn't do it. He'd be fired immediately now. Was he perfect?
1:20:46
No? But one of the many things that liberals don't understand is that they're
1:20:54
constantly always letting the perfect get in the way of the good words. If
1:21:00
it can't be perfect, then we don't want it. In order to do
1:21:04
great things, you have to allow for someone, especially someone who's a genius,
1:21:12
in order to make a few mistakes. You can't throw the baby out
1:21:16
with the bathwater. And that's what's happened when it comes to these kind of
1:21:20
mythical coaching figures. And it's not just Bobby Knight and Joe paternal There's many
1:21:26
other coaching figures who are revered to this day who could never exist in twenty
1:21:32
twenty three, largely because of the news media and our changing culture, and
1:21:36
let's face it, on the college level, the changing nature of academia,
1:21:41
because these academics they can't stand when a coach gets to this level. And
1:21:47
the jealousy towards Joe Paterno and the jealousy towards Bobby Knight was extreme. And
1:21:53
I want to adjust Bobby Knight's downfall in Indiana real quick, because it absolutely
1:22:00
was a media issue, an absolute medium outpractice issue. And I saw very
1:22:04
little of this disgust in the aftermath of his death. And I thought a
1:22:10
lot about so why did the media treat his death so nicely? And I
1:22:14
realized, wait a minute, in their minds, especially at ESPN, he's
1:22:19
now one of them because he became bizarrely an ESPN commentator for a few years
1:22:26
after his retirement, So that absolved him largely of the sins that caused his
1:22:32
downfall that the media used to destroy him. So because he became an ESPN
1:22:40
commentator all of a sudden, he's just his past that caused him to get
1:22:45
fired in Indiana was just a minor little asterisk. Well, if Bobby Knight
1:22:51
had been around to commentate on this, I guarantee you he would have told
1:22:55
you the following story because here's what really happened. So so, Bobby Knight
1:23:00
was tough as hell, demanded a lot from his players. His players largely
1:23:04
loved him. But as time goes on and players start to change, and
1:23:10
he started to get some spoiled brats and kids that are not successful. See
1:23:15
that's the problem. You get a kid that can't hack it, they want
1:23:18
an excuse for why they couldn't hack it. And so there was a kid
1:23:23
who came out with a story he was no longer on the team, that
1:23:26
Bobby Knight effectively physically assaulted him at a practice. And the story that came
1:23:31
out was horrendous and clearly fireable. I mean it was a physical assault.
1:23:36
He was choking him, and you know, the kid was very much injured,
1:23:42
and this was outrageous, and you know that was the story that came
1:23:46
out in the news Meetiam. Of course, the news media loved this story
1:23:50
because they want to get it Bobby Knight, because he's no There's all sorts
1:23:56
of reasons why the media had a thing out for Bobby Knight. And he
1:24:00
wasn't quite as successful in the court at this stage. Although Indiana was still
1:24:03
very, very good, they weren't winning national championships like they had been in
1:24:09
the seventies and eighties. And so now it's the year two thousand and this
1:24:13
story breaks, but there's no evidence, there's no evidence for this, and
1:24:18
then all of a sudden, someone finds and leaks a video of the practice
1:24:26
where this allegedly happened. Now, what's fascinating to me about this is in
1:24:31
a world where we have a legitimate news and sports media, that video should
1:24:38
have largely exonerated Bobby Knight because it did not show what the kid claimed.
1:24:45
The kid probably didn't even realize there was video, and it was obvious that
1:24:49
he had exaggerated greatly for political purposes, or for his own purposes, or
1:24:55
maybe just as he had a mis memory of what happened because he was so
1:24:59
trauma ties by being yelled at by Bobby Knight. Whatever it was. He
1:25:02
did not tell the truth and the original media story was false, But that
1:25:09
wasn't the narrative. The narrative was, oh my gosh, there's evidence that
1:25:14
this happened. Well, no, no, no, All that happened was
1:25:16
that Bobby Knight went to push the kid in the neck area, and if
1:25:21
his hand had been down two or three inches, it just would have been
1:25:26
a push in the chest and would have been a nothing burger. Instead,
1:25:31
for like half a second, his hand is on the kid's neck. There's
1:25:35
no choking. It was not good. It was inappropriate even for the time
1:25:41
period. But I mean, this is the kind of stuff that you're gonna
1:25:45
have to put up with if you're gonna have the good parts of a Bobby
1:25:48
Knight. But liberals can't understand this, and so the video comes out and
1:25:55
it creates a huge media firestorm in the opposite direction of what it should have,
1:26:00
and Indiana almost fires Bobby Knight, but they can't one hundred percent fire
1:26:05
because there's gonna be too much outrage. So what they do is the Woosy
1:26:11
Uh Indiana President, who was very prominent guy at the time, he decides
1:26:15
to put Bobby Knight basically on double secret probation and uh and and you know,
1:26:21
no tolerance for any sort of physical interaction with students or players. Well
1:26:29
then you've you've just put you know, Bobby Knight on thin ice. There's
1:26:34
no possible way to corral him. You know, he's a bull in a
1:26:39
china shop. And again he's got to take some responsibility for this, but
1:26:43
there's absolutely no way Bobby Knight is going to be able to to to be
1:26:48
held to that kind of standard. It's just not in his DNA because especially
1:26:53
since he doesn't think he's done anything wrong. Well, then some student who
1:26:57
clearly clearly was setting Bobby Night up went up tonight and started jabbering at him
1:27:04
and provoking him and clearly trying to get a rise out of Night. And
1:27:09
all Night did was while the kid was walking by, he grabbed his wrist
1:27:14
to stop him from walking away because he wanted to talk to him about what
1:27:17
he had said. And the grabbing of the kid's wrist, because the kid
1:27:23
obviously had an agenda, that becomes somehow a physical assault, and that was
1:27:28
a violation of the no tolerance policy. And that's what ended Bobby Knight at
1:27:34
Indiana after three national championships and you know, record number of wins and being
1:27:41
a legendary figure, and it was all because of liberals and the news media
1:27:46
working together to destroy an icon that made them uncomfortable. Was he perfect?
1:27:51
Absolutely not, But no one's perfect. And you know, my wife and
1:27:58
I want to watch a lot of these documentaries. We have this kind of
1:28:00
thing where we say, you want something great done, you need an asshole.
1:28:04
She's a huge fan of Walt Disney. Walt Disney was a bit of
1:28:09
an asshole from time to time, but he got things done. You find
1:28:13
anybody that gets things done, there's going to be at least a little bit
1:28:15
of an asshole in there. And you know, you got to put up
1:28:19
with that otherwise you're not going to get great things. And when you're dealing
1:28:23
with a genius, you know, unfortunately that's just the nature of humanity where
1:28:28
they're not going to be perfect. And we're living in a world now,
1:28:32
we're going to take this out of you know, the realm of sports and
1:28:35
put it into the real world where this is emblematic of everything that's happening when
1:28:41
it comes to interactions between adults and kids, students and teachers, coachers,
1:28:47
coaches and players. The entire dynamic has fundamentally changed. We've gone from Bobby
1:28:55
Knight, who was a godlike figure who people feel but then loved after they
1:29:01
left Indiana. I mean, Indiana players notoriously love Bobby Knight, black and
1:29:06
white. The black players seem to love it more than the white players do
1:29:11
even but I mean I mentioned that because he was actually one point accused by
1:29:15
the liberal media as being somehow racist against his black players, which was just
1:29:18
asinine, but that's the way they view the world. But we've gone from
1:29:24
these godlike figures and godlike figures. You know, absolute power corrupts, I
1:29:30
get that, but godlike figures if they're good people in their essence, they
1:29:36
can also get a lot done because you have the power to do it,
1:29:41
and they can mold lives. And I've seen it firsthand in my coverage of
1:29:45
sports, especially I spent an entire year with a high school football team writing
1:29:49
a book about it in Stubenville, Ohio. They have a godlike coach and
1:29:53
somehow still there, somehow survived a massive, massive, national alleged sex scandal
1:29:59
that was completely blown out of proportion, and they're very, very successful to
1:30:02
this day. It's probably the best thing that happens in the little town of
1:30:05
Steubenville, Ohio. And so I feel very passionately about this because there's a
1:30:10
lot of good that can happen when you have people in these positions with enough
1:30:15
power to influence young lives. Well, we've eliminated that. We've eliminated that
1:30:21
largely because we killed the Bobby Knights of the world and it. You know,
1:30:27
Bobby Knight is a classic example of this, but he's hardly the only
1:30:30
one that was a seminal moment. When you fire Bobby Knight at Indiana,
1:30:33
by the way, you can't fire Joe Paterno at Penn State in three days
1:30:38
if you haven't already fired Bobby Knight because he grabbed the kid's wrist. Those
1:30:44
two things, you know, are very clearly connected, and it's one thing
1:30:49
leads to another. This is a slippery slope. And so you know how
1:30:54
the hell Nick Saban survives at Alabama. I don't know. It's only because
1:30:58
it's Alabama and because he's very, very successful. There's only a couple of
1:31:01
people left in this realm, and once they're gone, there's no duplicating it
1:31:06
again, and something's going to be lost. And it's a shame. And
1:31:11
it's not just in sports, because it's emblematic, and I think it has
1:31:15
an impact on everyday life, especially when it comes to teachers and kids and
1:31:21
parents and their sons and daughters because the balance of power has changed. The
1:31:29
kids are now in charge. The inmates run the asylum. And we see
1:31:32
this all the time now, especially in college sports. Caleb Williams is,
1:31:40
to me a great example of this, the USC quarterback. I've been outspoken
1:31:44
saying I think he's very overrated. Obviously he's a great player, amazing feed.
1:31:48
But I kept telling everybody in my peer group because they asked me about
1:31:53
USC football because I live in Los Angeles area. What do I think of
1:31:57
him? As I watch most of the games. I think he's very over
1:32:00
And it's turned out I was right about this. Even though he won the
1:32:03
Heisman Trophy last year, USC has lost three games. They actually could have
1:32:08
lost four games. They won one in overtime, barely the game I attended
1:32:13
about a month or so ago. And this past week USC lost again,
1:32:17
essentially ending their season, and Caleb Williams did what. Jason Whitlock of The
1:32:24
Blaze, a black commentator who's often very right and often very wrong, He
1:32:28
referred to what Caleb Williams did after the game as the Lambeau weep. At
1:32:36
Lambeau Field in Green Bay, when people scored touchdowns they leap into the stands
1:32:42
and hug the fans behind the end zone. Well, this was the Lambeau
1:32:45
weep because he did what seemed like a similar thing to the Lambeau leap,
1:32:50
only he was crying with his mother. Now that's a little weird, given
1:32:57
that this wasn't a championship game, yes, and is now effectively over,
1:33:01
and it was so public. You know, I don't I don't don't hate
1:33:05
it, I don't love it. I was actually more upset or more concerned
1:33:10
by the way Cale Williams handled his post game press conference where he is standing
1:33:16
off to the side. He's not even sitting down at the podium. He's
1:33:20
leaning into a microphone with terrible body language, and he's keep saying, I
1:33:25
just want to go home and cuddle my dog and watch TV shows. I
1:33:29
mean, how the hell did we get to this point where the Heisman Trophy
1:33:33
winner from last year, projected number one pick in the NFL draft leader of
1:33:40
men, is weeping with his mother after they, you know, lose a
1:33:45
mid season game and saying he wants to go cuddle his dog and watch TV
1:33:50
shows after the game. And this is the guy who is, by all
1:33:56
accounts, the next superstar in the NFL. Now, I don't leave that.
1:34:00
I would stay way far away from Caleb Williams with a number one pick
1:34:04
if I was an NFL team. And there's another aspect to this. It's
1:34:10
not just my god, what a bunch of whoosies we've become, you know,
1:34:14
when even you know football heroes are acting in this way, but the
1:34:18
changing nature of college sports, largely because of the sports media. I got
1:34:23
asked in or asked John anything episode in episode number one hundred about whether Williams
1:34:29
is going to stick around for the end of the season. I said,
1:34:30
there's no way he's going to play in a bowl game. Well, now,
1:34:33
I've seen sports commentators like Rich Eisen and Colin Cowherd who are allegedly traditionalists,
1:34:42
guys that are, you know, on the older end of things.
1:34:44
These aren't even young people, saying that he ought to quit right now,
1:34:47
forget about the rest of the season at USC and just get ready for the
1:34:53
NFL draft. And I'm thinking, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa.
1:34:55
Hold on a second. The whole point, or at least one of
1:34:58
the major points that they sold us when they decided to make college athletics pro
1:35:02
athletics and let the stars get paid with name, image and likeness money nil
1:35:10
money, was that at least this would mean that players would stick around for
1:35:15
the bowl games or for the end of the season because they'd be motivated because
1:35:17
they're getting paid, or they'd stick around for another season and not turned pro.
1:35:21
And now here we have alleged traditionalists in the sports media saying get the
1:35:28
hell out of college and get ready for the for the NFL draft. Well,
1:35:32
that just destroyed the only benefit of NIL money. If ends up,
1:35:38
what's happened or what will happen. I don't know if it will or not,
1:35:41
because I don't know the nature of Williams's NIL contracts, whether he's intentivized
1:35:45
to keep playing at USC or not. Even though they can't make a major
1:35:49
bowl game, they can't make the playoffs, and they can't make the Pac
1:35:53
twelve championship game. But the point of this is this system is all going
1:35:57
to collapse. No, I mean, and now we're not only not criticizing
1:36:01
people like Caleb Williams for this, as Jason Whitlock referred to with the Lambeau
1:36:06
weep and the weird comments about cuddling his dog, but we're enabling it all.
1:36:13
There's no criticism of him widespread in the sports media, and instead it's
1:36:17
still praising him up and down, enabling his behavior. And hey, you
1:36:24
know, you ought to just quit USC and get ready for the NFL Draft.
1:36:28
I just don't get it, and I think it has damning implications for
1:36:32
not just the sport but society in general. And I gotta believe that at
1:36:38
least part of this is because he happens to be black. I'm sorry that
1:36:43
I come to that conclusion, but I can't figure out why he's getting such
1:36:47
kid glove treatment. Frankly, it's it's the soft bigotry of low expectations that
1:36:54
George W. Bush used to talk about, because I honestly don't think that
1:36:58
a white quarterback that failed this badly this year and acted in this fashion would
1:37:03
be treated this way. There would be all sorts of questions about whether or
1:37:08
not they were ready to lead an NFL team, and instead it's exactly the
1:37:12
opposite. But I didn't mean to get on a tangent on Caleb Williams because
1:37:15
actually think I mean, he's obviously physically a very talented guy, and when
1:37:18
the NFL goes to flag football, Caleb Williams will be an All Pro.
1:37:24
But it's not yet flag football. That's the game Caleb Williams plays at USC
1:37:30
because there is no tackling in California for on tens of purposes, at least
1:37:32
at the high school level, and USC and UCLA play a very soft version.
1:37:40
They're way ahead of the game, like it's always happening in California.
1:37:43
You know, the trends are here and the softness of football that's going to
1:37:47
happen in the future. And I've said many times before that NFL football is
1:37:51
going to become at least partially flag football within the next ten years. It's
1:37:55
already happening in California, and whenever USC and real teams, that becomes obvious.
1:38:03
And that's part of why I think Caleb Williams is overrated, at least
1:38:08
for the sport that it is currently designed as flag football. Caleb Williams will
1:38:13
be fantastic, no question about it. All right, So that's enough of
1:38:16
sports. I was sad to see Bobby Knight go, but I was happy
1:38:19
that he got what I considered to be hypocritical coverage from the sports media because
1:38:25
they destroyed him when it mattered, and now here they're revering him, even
1:38:29
though they have made it absolutely impossible impossible for there to ever be a Bobby
1:38:34
Knight in the future. And I can assure you Caleb Williams would not be
1:38:38
acting like Caleb Williams if he had a Bobby Knight figure as a coach.
1:38:43
But the coaches no longer have any power. I have no idea how college
1:38:46
coaches do it in an instant transfer and an nil era. They have no
1:38:51
power. We've gone from Bear Bryant, who could rule with an iron fist,
1:38:58
to now coach basically have no power whatsoever, and the inmates are running
1:39:02
the asylum. I got to tell the story I promoted the beginning of the
1:39:08
episode kind of dealing with sports because it dealt with golf. And the fact
1:39:13
that I missed the first episode of this week of the podcast because I was
1:39:16
playing in the California Senior Amateur Golf Championship. That was a whole nother story.
1:39:21
I had a terrible first day, a fantastic second day, made the
1:39:27
cut on the number the top thirty made the cut. I made a forty
1:39:30
foot putt on the last hull to shoot one under part of the second round
1:39:33
to make the cut, which was actually a major pain in the ass because
1:39:36
I knew I was going to be doing News Nation television that night, and
1:39:42
the golf course is about two hours away from where I live. I had
1:39:45
been staying in a hotel. I drove back home so I didn't have to
1:39:49
stay in a hotel and pay money for that. I wanted to see my
1:39:54
kids. I needed to do the TV appearance, and we have a little
1:39:57
studio set up at my house, so I drive home and then I drive
1:40:02
back at five o'clock in the morning the next day to play the final round.
1:40:08
Another two hour drive and no sleep, and I was completely toasted.
1:40:12
And the back nine and the last day I was just completely awful. So,
1:40:17
even as I referenced with my daughter Grace, sometimes great things turn out
1:40:21
badly and sometimes bad things turn out great. What was a great thing on
1:40:26
Tuesday with me making the cut turned out to be an awful thing on Wednesday.
1:40:31
But there was a silver lining there in that because I made the cut,
1:40:35
we were able to postpone this episode of the podcast until after the GOP
1:40:42
debate, so I got to do commentary on that. So you can decide
1:40:45
for yourself whether or not in the end it was all a good thing or
1:40:49
a bad thing. But the reason I'm telling you all this is that in
1:40:53
the practice round for this tournament, I played with some interesting people, one
1:40:58
of whom with Gavin Newsom's brother in law, a guy I'd never heard of
1:41:03
before, but a guy the name of Jeff Callen. Now, Jeff Callen
1:41:09
is fairly well known as an actor and a film producer director. If you
1:41:16
look up his profile, you'll see he's been in some significant projects. He
1:41:21
is married to Gavin Newsom's only sibling, his sister. Gavin Newsom obviously the
1:41:27
governor of California and the public figure probably I loathe more than any other,
1:41:32
at least one that hasn't been convicted of a major crime. And so I
1:41:39
did not realize who this was when we started playing the practice round, and
1:41:44
it was a few holes in when a buddy of mine with whom I was
1:41:47
playing happened to mention that the guy we were playing with was Gavin Newsom's brother
1:41:53
in law. So now I have a problem, right because obviously I've got
1:42:00
to talk to him about Gavin Newsom, but I also don't want to upset
1:42:05
the other people in the group. However, this is a practice round.
1:42:11
This isn't a competitive round, so the rules are a little bit different.
1:42:15
It's much more casual, and so I could get away in theory with a
1:42:19
lot more in a practice round than I could if I was paired with him,
1:42:24
say in the competitive round. In the competitive round, I probably wouldn't
1:42:28
say anything at all. I might say something after the round, but certainly
1:42:32
not during the competition round. So I very kind of carefully wade into the
1:42:40
issue. I introduced myself, you know. I asked him some questions about
1:42:45
the dynamic of the family, nothing political. I get some rapport going,
1:42:51
and I wait a few more holes. I kind of let it go,
1:42:55
and I think we were about like on the twelfth or thirteenth hall. I
1:42:59
said to myself, Okay, I've got to at least pick this guy's brain
1:43:03
a little bit about who Gavin is, as well as, depending on his
1:43:09
perspective on Gavin, you know, give him at least a little bit of
1:43:13
my view of how evil I think Gavin Newsom really is. But I don't
1:43:17
want to create a scene because it's not the right time or place. But
1:43:23
on the other hand, I know I'm not going to get an opportunity like
1:43:26
this ever again. So what I did was I asked him about the video
1:43:31
that we've discussed on the podcast previously that just happened while Newsom was in China
1:43:36
of him basically barreling over a little Chinese kid while playing basketball. Newsom,
1:43:45
you know, went to go to the hoop with the basketball and a kid
1:43:49
basically tried to defend him and Newsom barreled him over. Now, news him,
1:43:55
to his credit to a decent job of trying to make it seem like
1:43:57
it was the kid's fault and that all was good. But it was an
1:44:00
embarrassing video that went viral online. So I thought that was a harmless way
1:44:05
to kind of get into a conversation with Jeff about his brother in law.
1:44:12
And it obviously was because Jeff had seen the video and his immediate response was,
1:44:17
oh, you know, he was basically criticizing the media for making such
1:44:21
a big deal about it. He made a comment about how he had warned
1:44:27
Gavin Newsom did not play sports and in dress shoes. He blamed it on
1:44:31
the dress shoes that you know, if Newsom hadn't been wearing dress shoes,
1:44:34
he would have been able to navigate the situation better. He then went on
1:44:39
to talk about what an amazing athlete Newsom was, that he was a great
1:44:44
basketball player and a baseball player, and he's one of the best athletes he's
1:44:47
ever seen, which I thought was a little much of a stretch, but
1:44:53
okay, And so I thought, all right, well, clearly he's got
1:44:58
a lot of fondness for Gavin Newsom, and I'm getting a little uncomfortable with
1:45:01
how complimentary he is of Gavin Newssom. So I decided, okay, this
1:45:06
is the moment where I'm gonna at least let him know my view of Gavin
1:45:11
Newsom, and so what I said, and because he also said, you
1:45:15
know, he's just a great guy, you know, And it was very
1:45:17
obvious that he was very close. And I've learned more since that it's clear
1:45:24
that they are aligned, not just politically but also in business interests as well.
1:45:29
But he's very very close to Gavin Newsom and thinks a lot of them,
1:45:31
which is fine. He's he's obviously he's married to Gavin Newsom's sister.
1:45:38
So I say to Jeff, I said, well, I'm sure in your
1:45:42
world he's a great guy, but in my world he's the guy who destroyed
1:45:46
my two daughters' lives for about two years. And he immediately was very apologetic.
1:45:56
He was very nice about it and said, you know, I'm really
1:45:59
sorry that that happened. You know, he wasn't really in any way,
1:46:04
shape or form having Newsom take blame for it just kind of boy, it's
1:46:09
really awful that that happened. I understand, but I wasn't gonna leave it
1:46:14
there. I said, you know, in your world he's a nice guy.
1:46:16
In my world, he's evil. I consider him to be an evil
1:46:24
person. And he was kind of like shocked by that, taking it back,
1:46:30
because I don't think I don't think anybody ever says that to him,
1:46:33
because they all everyone knows he's directly related to Gavin Newsom. And then it's
1:46:39
just not the way people act in polite society, I guess. And I
1:46:44
thought it was a legitimate comment. I wasn't blaming him. That would be
1:46:47
insane to blame his brother in law for Newsom's own actions. But I just
1:46:53
wanted to know that I consider him to be evil and that he had done
1:46:57
great damage to the lives of my chill. And the tension level wasn't that
1:47:02
high yet yet, which is an important word. And so we get in
1:47:09
our we finished the whole we get in our cards, we drive to the
1:47:12
to the next tee, and he decided he wasn't done with the conversation.
1:47:18
And I'm a little hazy on exactly what was said, but basically he says
1:47:24
to me, well, you know, COVID wasn't just tough on kids,
1:47:29
it was tough on our businesses too, and and the impression I got,
1:47:33
and I did a little bit more research afterwards. I think what he was
1:47:36
saying to me was, you know, I got harmed. My business got
1:47:42
harmed by COVID as well, so I was also a victim. That was
1:47:46
my impression that he was basically trying to say that it wasn't just kids who
1:47:51
were victim I are victims of this. I was a victim too. And
1:47:58
I decided, you know what, I can't. I can't. I can't,
1:48:01
I can't do this. So I immediately say to Jeff, well,
1:48:08
COVID was not tough on businesses. Gavin was tough on businesses. Now we're
1:48:18
at about a seven on the tension scale and the other guys in the group
1:48:25
are starting to get really quiet and looking around and and I'm unsure as to
1:48:30
where this is going to go. And Jeff then says, well, I've
1:48:35
studied the the COVID issue very closely and I'll take issue with you on that.
1:48:42
And I said, oh, I'm happy to have that debate, because
1:48:46
if you if you think I'm paraphrasing here, if you think that it was
1:48:51
COVID and not Newsome that shut down businesses, you got you know, you're
1:48:58
you're sadly mistaken. That was we're my but that was that was the essence
1:49:01
of what I said. And at that point we were now at an eight
1:49:05
on the ten scale of tension, and I decided, okay, I'm going
1:49:10
to hold off on this, and we hit our t shots and we move
1:49:15
on, and I decide, okay, I've made my point, but I'm
1:49:20
not gonna I'm not going to push this any further, mostly out of respect
1:49:24
for the other guys in the group, by the way, one of the
1:49:26
other guys in the group having to be the two time defending champion of this
1:49:29
tournament. So you know, these were serious players that I was playing with.
1:49:33
And so we play the next few holes, and I started to think
1:49:36
about what he said about his knowledge of COVID, and you know, implying
1:49:44
basically that he knew more about COVID than I did. That was essentially what
1:49:47
he said to me, not those words, but that's the way that I
1:49:50
took I took it. Of course, he has no idea who I am
1:49:55
or really what I do, and how wrong that statement would be, how
1:49:58
much I've studied the top of COVID. So I decide, all right,
1:50:02
when we finish, you know, because generally you shake hands, you take
1:50:06
you off your hat, you know, good luck and all that. When
1:50:10
we finish, I'm gonna ask him one question and see whether or not he
1:50:14
really does know his stuff on COVID, because to me, the number one
1:50:20
fact that you gotta know if you understand Gavin Newsom's role in what happened with
1:50:26
the COVID lockdown, is that California shut down first, and that when California
1:50:30
shut down, Gavin Newsom wrote a letter to the President United States Donald Trump
1:50:36
and claimed that twenty six point five million Californians We're gonna get COVID in the
1:50:45
next eight weeks. Twenty six point five million in eight weeks. And I
1:50:53
knew immediately that was a bullshit number. I wrote about that the next morning
1:50:56
for Media eight, and I was one hundred percent right on that that was
1:51:00
an absurd projection, insanely off, never had a chance of even being close.
1:51:06
Because if twenty six point five million people were even theoretically going to get
1:51:11
COVID in eight weeks in one state, that would be a legitimate emergency.
1:51:16
That would be batting down the hatches. Do everything you can to possibly you
1:51:20
know, save people's lives. There's nothing else that's more important than this.
1:51:26
There's no other way to go. I would have I would have been supportive
1:51:29
of that, even I would have been supportive of that. You got to
1:51:31
do everything you possibly can to mitigate this. But that was never going to
1:51:35
be the case, never even going to be close. So if you don't
1:51:40
know that, you don't know shit. So when we finished our eighteenth hall,
1:51:45
I went up to Jeff and I said, Jeff, I just got
1:51:47
one question for you. It's not directly about Gavin, but you said you've
1:51:53
studied COVID carefully. Do you know how many people Gavin we're gonna get COVID
1:52:01
in the next eight weeks when he locked down California and effectively locked down the
1:52:06
country. It's a direct question, very simple. I'm not expecting the exact
1:52:14
number of twenty six point five million, But if you know anything about the
1:52:18
COVID issue, you've got to be at least in the ballpark, because that's
1:52:23
the whole ball of wax. That's that's the whole issue. Everything flows from
1:52:27
what happened at that moment. And he looks at me and he goes,
1:52:31
I don't know about fifty thousand, and I'm like, oh my god,
1:52:39
you don't know shit about shit. I didn't say that, and I wasn't
1:52:44
even that surprised, although I even I was a bit shocked that he would
1:52:46
so far off. I mean, this is a guy who's claiming to me
1:52:49
he's really studied the COVID issue and he knows it was COVID and not Gavin
1:52:54
that was the problem in California. And he's off. He's off by over
1:53:00
twenty six million, by twenty six million, He's off. And I did
1:53:09
explain to him, no, Jeff, it was twenty six point five million
1:53:14
in eight weeks when he justified the original lockdown that would continue for basically two
1:53:19
years, this bogus state of emergency. So at that point I knew Jeff
1:53:25
was full of crap and that there was really no need to go any further.
1:53:29
So I just shook his hand and wished him luck in the tournament.
1:53:32
By the way, Jeff did not make the cut, which I was not
1:53:36
displeased with, but I found that to be a very very fascinating story on
1:53:44
a number of levels. My wife, this is never this never happens whenever
1:53:48
I am in these situations, which happened way more often than seems rational.
1:53:55
I mean, it's just odd how in my life these kind of things just
1:53:58
occur, just naturally. I don't really have a strong theory for why that
1:54:02
is. My theory is that it's not some sort of fate or even coincidence.
1:54:09
It's that my intenne are always up, and so I will often see
1:54:14
opportunities, and then once those opportunities come around, I always take advantage of
1:54:19
them because I don't care, I don't have any fear. And then there's
1:54:23
also, you know, I think part of it living in southern California,
1:54:27
where there's a lot of prominent people, and me knowing a lot of prominent
1:54:30
people. So whatever, For whatever reason, these kinds of episodes happen a
1:54:34
lot in my life, and my wife is almost always very very fearful of
1:54:41
how I'm going to act, very fearful. I mean, we'll be out,
1:54:45
and even my eleven year old daughter Grace, who philosophically is very much
1:54:48
aligned with me politically, especially when it comes to COVID, My wife or
1:54:54
Grace will actually now see situations where we're out in public and they'll go,
1:55:00
uh, oh, Dad's gonna confront this person, whether they're prominent or not,
1:55:03
and they will get legitimately nervous. But the only time my eleven year
1:55:08
old daughter, Grace holds my hand now, as an example, is when
1:55:14
she sees a circumstance like this where she's afraid I'm going to do something publicly
1:55:17
to embarrass her, usually with somebody who's masking a child. If Grace sees
1:55:24
us walking along and there is a parent who is not masked and there's a
1:55:30
child who is masked, she immediately grabs my hand, holds it tight,
1:55:33
and says, Dad, please don't do it. That's how nervous she gets,
1:55:38
because she knows I am very likely to unleash on a situation like that,
1:55:44
and so my wife is normally very very concerned and hesitant to endorse any
1:55:53
sort of even mild confrontation on my part. She actually felt like I was
1:55:58
a little easy on Jeff, which I found fascinating and bizarre. But I
1:56:03
mean she felt like, I did you know, she was fine with what
1:56:05
I did. She felt like I probably should have even gone further with Jeff
1:56:11
Callen, Gavin Newsom's brother in law. I felt like I, under the
1:56:15
circumstances, handled exactly right, because no one got offended. Jeff himself didn't
1:56:19
seem to be that offended. The point got across, and for my own
1:56:24
satisfaction, I was able to reveal that Jeff didn't know shit about the COVID
1:56:29
situation or Gavin Newsom's prominence in how it all went down and what a fraud
1:56:34
it was all based on back in March of twenty twenty. So that's my
1:56:41
Gavin Newsom brother in law story. Interestingly, this is somewhat related. We
1:56:46
have a really positive development for the next episode of the podcast, and that
1:56:53
is that one of my major interview targets, Elec Michaelson, the main news
1:57:00
anchor here at the Fox affiliate in Los Angeles, who's clearly very close to
1:57:05
Gavin Newsom, and who recently traveled to China with Gavin Newsom and did an
1:57:11
interview with him there, which we played on this podcast, in which I
1:57:14
criticized Michaelson for how he handled that, and then he and I had a
1:57:18
direct message session on Twitter about that, as we often do. Because I'm
1:57:23
constantly chiding Michaelson for his coverage. I had asked him at that time,
1:57:28
will you come on the podcast? He said, I have to get approval
1:57:30
from my bosses. I told him there's no chance you're going to get approval,
1:57:35
one because of the subject matter, and two because your general manager hates
1:57:41
me from his days in Louisville, Kentucky, where I infamously dated his morning
1:57:45
show host, which is a whole another story for another day. But Michaelson
1:57:51
has just told me that he has gotten approval. He's in. We are
1:57:57
scheduled to tape an interview and that it should be part of our next podcast,
1:58:01
episode, episode number one hundred and four, which will be out next
1:58:05
Tuesday. So, barring some major change, Elec Michaelson will be our guest
1:58:11
in the next episode of the podcast, and I'm sure we'll be talking once
1:58:14
again about someone with somebody who's very close to Gavin Newsom and who's had a
1:58:18
lot of interaction with him, and specifically I want to ask him about his
1:58:23
coverage of Gavin Newsomb through COVID and beyond, especially since Newsom is being thought
1:58:29
of as the guy who might take over for Joe Biden should he withdraw from
1:58:32
the presidential race. One other programming note, which is also a positive,
1:58:38
Gerald Posner, who have mentioned many times in relation to the Kennedy assassination.
1:58:43
Who wrote the preeminent book on the Kennedy assassination called Case Closed, a guy
1:58:47
I've interviewed several times over the decades. I'm a big fan of his,
1:58:51
but he and I disagree about the single bullet theory, especially given recent developments
1:58:57
with the new witness there, Paul Landis, who as a book out that
1:59:03
basically vindicates my theory of the single bullet theory involving the JFK assassination. Gerald
1:59:11
Posner has finally agreed to tape an interview that will probably be part of episode
1:59:15
number one hundred and five, so next week we'll have, if all things
1:59:19
go as expected, Alec Michaelson in episode number one hundred and four and Gerald
1:59:25
Posner in episode number one hundred and five. So a lot to look forward
1:59:29
to when it comes to the Death of Journalism podcasts as we start to wrap
1:59:32
things up and wind down for our scheduled finish of this podcast barring a massive
1:59:38
development at the end of January in twenty twenty four, So that'll do it
1:59:42
for episode number one hundred and three. As is always the case, Thanks
1:59:45
so much for listening. Please remember to subscribe, rate and review, and
1:59:48
share this podcast with others. If you shared on social media, please tag
1:59:53
me and I'll be happy to share it with my followers on Twitter, my
1:59:56
friends on Facebook. Until next time, thanks so much for listening. This
2:00:00
has Been the Death of Journalism podcast episode number one hundred and three. My
2:00:03
name is John Ziggler.