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Episode Two Hundred Forty Three: The Check Engine Light · The Death Of Journalism

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to episode two and forty three of the Death
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: of Journalism podcasts.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: My name is John Zigler. I'm your host in today's show.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: The media claims Trump dramatically ambushed the President of South
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Africa at the White House, but no one seems to
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: be really buying it. Sixty minutes, host Scott Pelly has
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: a fit about Trump while giving a college commencement address.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: It seems time to declare DOGE.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: A total failure.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: AI has already made stunning and scary strides, and it
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: now seems clear that the morons running college football must
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: really hate college football. I hope you had a good
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Memorial Date weekend. Some people think of it as the
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: start of pool and Beach season. Based upon my experience
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: this past weekend at the pool and the beach here
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: in California, we should be thinking about it as a
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: stark annual reminder of America's catastrophic obesity epidemic.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: But I digress.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: I want to begin substantively on this episode of the
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: podcast with something that happened.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: It seems like quite a while.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Ago now, but it's still worth starting the podcast with.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: It was the extraordinary event that occurred at the White
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: House about a week ago, almost exactly as we do
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: this taping, because it happened just after the taping of
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: episode two hundred and forty two of the Death of
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Journalists and podcast. And what I'm referring to is something
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: rather extraordinary that happened at the White House when the
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: President of South Africa visited, and Trump confronted the President
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: of South Africa with evidence of what he referred to
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: as a white genocide there, specifically white farmers being murdered
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: because of their race, having their land taken away, and
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: that things in South Africa are basically extremely chaotic and
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: dangerous for certain white people. And this turned into an
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: absolute frenzy. The media went absolutely bananas, because, after all,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: this is a narrative that they can't possibly even remotely
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: contemplate because it goes against everything they believe in. Anything
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: that deals with race is automatically kryptonite for the mainstream
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: news media, and they have bought in a long time
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: ago that the end of apart tid in South Africa
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: and the complete radical change in the government there was
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: one of the greatest things that's ever been accomplished, So
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: they have no interest in anything having to do with
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: this kind of a reverse racism narrative, and with regard
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: to in the bigger picture Trump, this episode, to me
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: really kind of reminded me that having Trump as president
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: is a lot like having a teenage daughter. Now, technically
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: I don't have a teenage daughter yet. My daughter Grace
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: turns thirteen this Sunday, but she's been acting like a
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: teenage daughter for quite a while, so I feel like
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: I have some understanding of this. And the reason I'm
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: making this analogy is, you know, when you have a
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: teenage daughter, it's a roller coaster ride.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: It's drama all the time. There are lots of ups
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: and downs.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: It's never predictable, and most of the time it's awful,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: but occasionally something magical might happen and it's pretty awesome. Rarely,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure it's worth the roller coaster to ride.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure the rare ups are worth the downs
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: we'll see. But occasionally something really good will happen, and
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: when it does, it's euphoric. And I would put what
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: happened with Trump and the South African president in that category.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: It wasn't perfect, but it was really pretty cool. I mean,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: there's no question that Trump.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Especially with his base.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: His Audidians won the day with a grand slam home run. Now,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: of course, with Trump, much like a teenage daughter, there's
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: never going to be anything that's perfect, and he probably
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: overstated his case.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: And I'm sure you've seen the video of where.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: He basically said, Okay, you're going to deny this, mister president,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: so I'm going to prove to you what's.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Really happening there.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: And a lot of the video evidence that he produced
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: was a little bit misleading. Wasn't really from people in
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: the South African government. Some of those that were cited
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: are actually in opposition to the current president of South Africa.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: The use of the word genocide is probably an exaggeration.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: So whenever you have Trump involved, you're never going to
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: get all the details right. He's not a detailed guy.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: He's obviously very much prone to exaggeration. But the essence,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: the essence of the message was, hey, President of South
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: abst Africa, you've got major problems going on here. This
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: is outrageous what you're allowing to have happened. And it
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: seems to be based in racism. And obviously the president
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: of South Africa is black. South Africa with a history
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: obviously of Apartheide. The news media has triumphed the end
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: of apartheid endlessly. They made Nelson Mandela into a hero,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: which you know, there's a very strong argument that he
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: was not. Most people don't realize Nelson Mandela was on
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: the American terrorist.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Watch list until two thousand and eight.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: So there's been an entire mythology that has been built
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: up around a part the end of Apartheide and Nelson Mandela.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: And so I was mostly cheering what Trump was doing here.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: I think in intention and in impact, this was a
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: positive thing.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: Now what the ultimate result of this is, I'm not sure.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: There were some pretty amazing and I think rather hilariou
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: moments where he brought in golfers Retief Goosen and Ernie Els,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: both from South Africa, who happened to be in Washington,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: d C. Because the Senior PHA Golf Championship was being
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: played just outside of DC in Bethesda, Maryland at Congressional
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Country Club.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: I thought, actually, Retief Goosen and Ernie.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Els did a pretty darn good job given the difficult
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: circumstances they.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: Were put in. This is the day before the tournament.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: By the way, Retief Goosen ended up almost winning the thing,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: which I thought was kind of amazing when you're preparing
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: for the tournament the day before by going to the
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: White House and speaking on what had to be international television,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: essentially testifying rather controversially on behalf of the United States
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: against your homeland.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: But that's just, you know, that's the way Trump does thing.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Trump loves golf, he loves celebrity, and I gave credit
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: to Goosen and El's for being willing to take part
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: in all of this situation. And as far as South
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: Africa is concerned, I have to acknowledge that I have
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: a bit of a bias. I guess you would call
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: it a bias here. Both of my in laws have
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: strong ties to South Africa. They met in South Africa,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: my mother in law grew up in South Africa, and
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: so they have obviously a lot of knowledge of the
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: situation there. They still have friends and relatives there, and
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: I can assure you that they one thousand percent agreed
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: with the essence of the Trump event and his confrontation
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: and confronting of the South African president.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: That's part of.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Why I feel comfortable siding with Trump on this, even
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: if some of the details were not accurate, but of course,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: from immediate perspective, it was very predictable how the news
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: media was going to react. They went crazy, and the
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: word that they most often used, overwhelmingly so was ambush.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: They claimed that the Trump allegations were unfounded, maybe even untrue,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: but the word that they really loved was ambush, as
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: if somehow that discredits the reality of the situation, because
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: the South African president was surprised that he was being
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: confronted about this, and you know, look, I'm sure he
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: was surprised, but this was not an ambush, and ambush
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: would be if they were having a private meeting. And
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, Trump invited in the world's
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: media and you know, started the projector and said, mister President,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: please respond to this and contradiction to your claims that
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: this isn't really happening in your country. That would be
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: an ambush.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: But that's not really what happened here at all.
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  Speaker 1: The South African president knew he was in the White House,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: he knew he was in front of all the media.
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  Speaker 1: He made a claim that Trump understandably believed not to
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: be true, and Trump proved it and to me, the
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: word ambush being used constantly was really a sthentification that
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: what Trump was saying was generally mostly, if not totally true,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: and that was really their last bashing in the defense
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: or attack.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: In this case, it was an ambush an ambush.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, twelve different mainstream legacy media outlets that I
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: saw use the word ambush in their article about this
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: event that occurred at the White House, and it wasn't
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: just the print or the internet media. The broadcast media
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: seemed to get the exact same memo. Now, to be clear,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: you know, I am an ardent anti conspiracy person. I
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: don't believe that there is a memo that goes out.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of people believe that there is,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: because how else could every single outlet end up using
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: the word ambush. But I just think it's very similar
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: people acting very similarly in a situation where there's a
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: lot of group think, and then once one person uses it,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: everybody else starts to copycat, especially in a situation like
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: this where they're so terrified of the issue. I mean,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: race scares the living crap out of the news media,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: and they fall in line every single time. It's their kryptonite.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: It really is. When race is involved, the liberal news
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: media has no chance. They are always always going to
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: go with the most liberal of narratives, and no one's
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: going to get outside of the herd because they're going
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: to be terrified of being run over. And sometimes that
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: produces rather hilarious results. And that's what happened here, as
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: proven by this compilation in which went viral on X
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  Speaker 1: of legacy liberal media outlets constantly using this is real,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: this is not AI constantly using the word ambush to
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: describe what occurred when President Trump confronted the President of
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: South Africa. Part of the dramatic scene in the Oval
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Office today, the tense confrontation President Trump ambushing the President
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  Speaker 1: of South Africa.
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: Next another Oval Office meltdown, President Trump ambushing the President
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: of South Africa.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: President Trump is being accused of conducting something of a
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  Speaker 1: diplomatic ambush of South Africa's president in the Oval Office.
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  Speaker 4: To be with you, I'm Katie to President Trump, orchestrated
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: another Oval office ambush today is.
• 11:23
  Speaker 5: Today Donald Trump meeting with the President of South Africa
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  Speaker 5: and attempting to ambush and humiliate that leader.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: To Zelenski Territory, where essentially he was a bit ambushed
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: inside the Oval Office.
• 11:36
  Speaker 6: Felt like an ambush in there, kind of like the
• 11:39
  Speaker 6: President's Lensky meeting in the Oval Office.
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  Speaker 7: This was an ambush.
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: It was orchestrated.
• 11:44
  Speaker 6: Little Roma Posta brought his best diplomatic self to this meeting,
• 11:48
  Speaker 6: but nothing could have prepared him for this multimedia ambush.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: What started as to some degree in ambush. Well, Katie,
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: I mean it wasn't ambushed.
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: Ambush's ambushed, ambush and ambushed, ambushing.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: USh an ambushed inside the Oval offit.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's really remarkable, and I do believe that
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: it is mostly, if not entirely, evidence of the dramatic
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: group thing that dominates to this day legacy news media coverage,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: especially when the topic is race. Now, I do, because
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: I'm always about the truth, I do want to acknowledge
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: that I'm not sure that it was proper for Trump
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: to use the word genocide. But it was also rather
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: interesting to see how the legacy news media, the left
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: wing media, tried to debunk the claim of genocide. And
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: maybe the best or worst, deputing on your perspective, example
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: of this came from PBS News, and of course PBS
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: is in the process of having their funding cut by
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: President Trump, So they have an inherent conflict of interest here.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: But this was These are two different tweets within a
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: really rather short period of time on the day in
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: which this event at the White House occurred. So here's
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: what PBS News tweeted out. This is the first tweet
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: President Trump. Donald Trump confronted South African president, accusing him
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: of not protecting white farmers from violence while playing misleading
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: videos that back up controversial and unfounded claims of white
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: genocide in the country. After a reporter asked Trump what
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: it would take for him to be convinced that there
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: is no white genocide in South Africa, the president, the
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: South African president said it would take Trump quote listening
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: to the voices of South Africans and reiterated that the
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: claim isn't true. He said white members of his administration
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: would not have accompanied him to the White House on
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: Wednesday if there were genocide. Now I'm not sure that's
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: really true, because obviously it's their job, and you know,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: clearly they haven't been killed. But the most important part
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: of this is that PBS News then later on the
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: same day, put out this tweet, white farmers have been
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: murdered in South Africa, but those murders account for less
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: than one percent of more than twenty seven thousand annual
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: murders nationwide. So you know, it's just it's less than
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: one percent, so therefore we can't call it a genocide.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: It's perfectly fine, less than one percent of totally it
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: is a people being killed apparently because of their race.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Experts said, deaths do not amount to genocide, the experts say,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: And President Trump misleads about land confiscation, even though there
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: were other media outlets that were saying, this is totally
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: untrue what Trump is saying about land confiscation. But then
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: they were forced, when confronted, to acknowledge that it is
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: now the law in South Africa, where it is legal,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: perfectly legal under certain circumstances, to take away people's lack.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: So again, Trump is not great on the details. He's
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: very much prone to exaggeration. But by and large, I
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: think he did the right thing here. I think that
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: the message was clear, the point was made. The media
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: went bananas. Nobody is buying the media counter narrative anymore.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Maybe at a certain point ten years ago, maybe even
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: five years ago, six years ago before COVID. More people
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: may have bought the media's view of this, but I
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: don't think they do so anymore, especially when it comes
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: to the issue of race, because I think the average
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: person now understands what I've said a couple times already,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: which is that this is a real, legitimate vulnerability. When
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: it comes to the mainstream news media, any issue involving race,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: real or imagined, they are not to be trusted. They
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: have been wrong constantly, and they are continuing to be
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: wrong on a consistent and continual basis. And part of
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: its stupidity, but a lot of it is fear. Fear
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: that is the easiest way to get canceled, lose your job,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: whatever it is in the mainstream news media.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Is if you find.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Yourself outside the herd on an issue related to race,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: it is far far safer from a personal and career perspective,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: to just go along with whatever the prevailing narrative is
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: if the topic relates to race.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter if it's not true.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if it's actually the antithesis of being true.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: Because you will never get fired for that.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: You will never ever ever get fired in the liberal
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: mainstream news media for promoting a false liberal narrative about race.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: We saw it once again this past week with the
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: fifth anniversary of the death of George Floyd. The left
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: wing media still cannot comprehend even much like South Africa.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: It's remarkably similar, much Mike, like the narrative surrounding apartheid
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: in Nelson Mandela and the history of South Africa. The
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: mainstream news media still cannot even comprehend the concept that
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: maybe George Floyd wasn't murdered by that police officer in Minnesota,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Maybe there were other circumstances that caused his death.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: Maybe all of that really was a moral panic.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: And then in the middle of COVID and the middle
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: of riots and not having all the information, maybe we
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: rushed to the wrong judgment. You're not even allowed to
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: remotely discuss that in liberal media circles, while in right
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: wing circles an entirely different narrative has basically now been accepted,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: which is that this wasn't murder at all.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: And that the whole thing was hatchet job.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: And so it's really remarkable what happens when the topic
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: is race. You know, the left wing media is going
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: to be wrong almost every single time, and they've proven
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: it again with their dramatic overreaction to what occurred at
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: the White House where President Trump I think, by and
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: large correctly and effectively confronted the president of South Africa
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: on what is happening in his country. Now, I want
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: to move on to a couple other things involving Donald Trump.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: He has declared full scale war on Harvard in numerous ways,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: and this is an extremely complex issue. It is a
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: little bit like the NPR PBS situation, although I think
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: there are some differences, which is why my view of
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: this is slightly different, different and more nuanced than my
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: view the NPR PBS thing. In a weird way, Trump
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: is acting towards Harvard in the way that I wish
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: he would act when it comes to NPR and PBS.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: My entire argument with regard to federal funding of public
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: broadcasting is that Trump has an opportunity to alter their
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: bad behavior through.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Incentives and disincentives.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Which is the way I wish he would go about
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: doing it, rather than just cutting off funding in totality,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: really leaving public broadcasting to be even more liberal than
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: they currently are and less substantive because they won't have
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: quite the same funding. It's a little weird to me
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: that he seems to be using that philosophy when it
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: comes to Harvard, where he is threatening to take away
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: all sorts of funding and grants because he doesn't.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Like their behavior. By the way, I agree with.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Him on a lot of it, especially with regard to
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: the use of dei, which seems to be in violation
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: of both Supreme Court rulings and laws. So I'm all
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: in favor of that. I mean, if you're not obeying
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: the law, then there ought to be consequences for that,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: and you lose your privilege of massive amounts of federal funding.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: I'm totally understanding of that. Now, this issue of whether
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: or not foreign or international students will be allowed into
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: the country to go to Harvard, which was very temporarily
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: stopped by Christy Noms, I have a problem with legally.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: And when I heard about nomes edict, I immediately thought, Okay,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: this can't pass muster legally, And there was a judge
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: that immediately blocked the attempt to prevent Harvard from being
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: able to essentially admit international students, and so I don't
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: know where that's going to end up. It seems like
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: almost everything that the Trump administration does, it's remotely controversial,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: ends up in court, and it seems like most of
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: the time they're losing, at least in the lower courts.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: That one sounds like it may end up going to
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, and we'll see what transpires.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: I will have to say that one of the.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Things I thought about, which is just hilarious, and I'm
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: almost rooting for this, regardless of the legality or illegality
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: of the effort.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: To barrow international students from going to Harvard.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: But can you imagine if that actually did stick and
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Harvard had to go to their waiting list to be
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: able to fill up their classes, right, you would have
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: this incredibly bizarre situation where lots of students at Harvard,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: almost all of whom are very.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: Liberal and woke, would have to be.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Thanking Donald Trump's administration for getting them their spot at Harvard.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Now we're not there yet, but that was a scenario
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: that did use me quite a bit. And so, look,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: I understand why Trump is doing this. I think philosophically
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: there's some rationale to it. I'm a little uncomfortable with
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: what seemed to be the targeting of one institution. I
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: have no love for Harvard. I have a weird Harvard
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: story which isn't directly related to any of this, but
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: it's a good story. So all Telloson's we're discussing Harvard,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: to me, the best story that I know of, certainly
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: that I'm directly related to, with how unbelievably fast things
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: changed when it came to gender and academia and how
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: much progress we made as a society and a country
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: in a remarkably short period of time. Deals with what
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: happened with regard to college on my father's side of
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: my family. So my grandfather on my father's side was
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: a German rocket scientist. I've referenced him several times afore.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: He's famous in rocket science circles for his work on
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: solar panels in our first satellite program.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: And you could very easily argue that he was a sexist. Now, obviously, he.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Was a product of his time growing up in Germany,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: and you know, I'm not defending that, I'm just explaining
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: why he was a sexist.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: He was such a sexist that.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: He had three children, two daughters and one son. My
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: father and the first child was a daughter, and by
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: my father's account, she was the smartest of the three,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: but my grandfather forbid her from going to college because
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: she was a woman, a girl, and that college was
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: not for women or girls. This would have been in
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: the late nineteen fifties, and so she did not and
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: she understandably was I don't know bitter is the right word,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: but understandably she was very upset that that ended up.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: Being the case.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: My father ends up going to Georgetown, and the older child,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: the daughter, she never went to college as a young person.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: And so in that one generation, this is to me remarkable,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: In that one generation, my grandfather went from forbidding his
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: daughters from going to college.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: At all to just before he died.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Having not one but two granddaughters in the same class
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: at Harvard Business School, not undergrad business school. Now that's
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: cultural change right there. That is unbelievably rapid cultural change
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: in one generation to have one of my sisters and
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: one of my cousins both women, in the same class
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: at Harvard Business School.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: And but I know a lot of people that have.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Actually, weirdly, I know more people have gone to Harvard
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Business School than Harvard undergrad. But Harvard, you know, has
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: a lot of good attributes, not nearly as many as
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: it used to, and there are benefits to Harvard being
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: in the United States and being seen internationally as allegedly
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: this great institution of higher learning.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: However, so you know.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: That's a little bit like the PBS NPR analogy I made,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: because I do think that there's a public interest to
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: having public broadcasting, especially on the local level, that is
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: somewhat substantive, and that's therefore, in theory, there's a reason
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: to have public funding involved. And I've already said I
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: think that this should be a carot and a stick
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: situation that Trump should be using rather than cutting off funding.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: And so it seems like Trump's going much more with
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: the carrot and stick. I don't know how this one's
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: going to end up. You know, is fighting back with
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: everything they have. One of the problems I have with
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Harvard and other institutions like them is that they have
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: effectively become massive hedge funds that just happen to hold classes.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: And that's not an exaggeration, and this thing has gotten
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: completely out of control. They have a fifty two billion
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: dollar endowment, and that's a little bit deceiving that number,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: but it's still massive, and and you know there's not
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: they don't even really need to hold classes anymore.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: It's a hedge fund, And so.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: I generally support in theory what Trump is trying to
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: do there. I'm a little bit skeptical of how it's
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: going to turn out in practice. But I'm also not
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: certain that Trump's gonna win at all, because I think
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: that legally Harvard is going to have a pretty good case,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: especially when it comes to the admission of international students.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: But you know, it's not just Harvard that Trump is
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: at war at. I mean Trump is at war with
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: all sorts of different media outlets. I've already mentioned MPR, PBS,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: you got that settlement from ABC, you got a settlement
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: from Meta, and he's in the process of potentially getting
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: a settlement from CBS, which is causing all sorts of
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: consternation in the media world, especially at sixty minutes. Before
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: we get to that, though, I want to mention another
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: thing that happened just after the confrontation with the South
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: African president at the White House. Trump went after NBC
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: and specifically reporter Peter Alexander, who I don't think is
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: that bad a reporter, especially now by NBC standards.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: For asking him a question about the Katar.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Jet that he accepted as a gift, the four hundred
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: million dollar jet that's going to apparently replace Air Force One,
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: at least temporarily. Trump is claiming that this is a
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: gift to the United States, it would be silly for
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: us not to take it. I've previously explained why. I
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: don't think that his analysis of this is accurate, and
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: I do think that there are troubling aspects of this.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: I think there's a conflict of interest. I'm not convinced
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: he's not gonna end up using the plane himself actories
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: out of the of the presidency. But I'm more concerned
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: with the quid pro quo element of it. There's all
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: sorts of parts of this equation that I don't like.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: He's also pretending as if there's no costs for the
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: United States involved in making this jet into effectively part
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: of Air Force One. He just pretends that doesn't exist.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: But here's the part that I find to be most important.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: This is a clip of Trump not just condemning Peter
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Alexander for asking the question at the White House event
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: with the South African president, but then going way, way,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: way over the line and threatening NBC as a corporation, which,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: when you're the president of the United States, should be
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: completely off limits because obviously his guy runs the FCC.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: The FCC regulates NBC and all of their local stations
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: and their licenses and everything else. And to do this
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: in the way that Trump did it to me was
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: not just inappropriate.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: It was an indication that Trump.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Knows he's wrong about the Katar jets situation. That's why
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: he's lashing out in such an immature fashion. But this
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: clip did not get nearly enough attention because it got overwhelmed,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: understandably by all the focus on the actual confrontation with
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: the South African president. But in normal times, if a
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: democratic president had done this to a conservative media outlet,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: this is all the right wing media would be talking about.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: But this was absolutely absurd and outrageous what Trump did here,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: and what I thought was a very telling reaction to
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: a legitimate question.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: The Pentagon announcement would be accepting jets.
• 30:06
  Speaker 8: What are you talking about?
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: What you know you to get out of here? What
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: does this have to do with the guitar jet?
• 30:16
  Speaker 8: They're giving the United States Air Force a jet okay,
• 30:19
  Speaker 8: and it's a great thing. We're talking about a lot
• 30:22
  Speaker 8: of other things. It's NBC trying to get off the
• 30:24
  Speaker 8: subject of what you just saw. You are a real
• 30:27
  Speaker 8: you know, you're a terrible reporter. Number one, you don't
• 30:30
  Speaker 8: have what it takes to be a reporter. You're not
• 30:32
  Speaker 8: smart enough. But for you to go into a subject
• 30:35
  Speaker 8: about a jet that was given to the United States
• 30:38
  Speaker 8: Air Force, which is a very nice thing. They also
• 30:40
  Speaker 8: gave five point one trillion dollars worth of investment in
• 30:45
  Speaker 8: addition to the jet.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: Go back.
• 30:48
  Speaker 8: You're to go back to your studio at NBC because
• 30:51
  Speaker 8: Brian Roberts and the people that run that place, they
• 30:54
  Speaker 8: are to be investigated. They are so terrible the way
• 30:57
  Speaker 8: you run that debt work, and you're disgrace. No more
• 31:01
  Speaker 8: questions from you. Go ahead, talk about that. His name
• 31:08
  Speaker 8: is Peter something. He's a terrible report.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: Quiet, let's go now again.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: I say this constantly, but I don't think that Trump
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: fans understand this, and I don't think Trump understands it.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: There is a massive difference between Trump attacking a media
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: outlet and saying they ought to be investigated when he's
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: a candidate and not in office, and when he's president
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: of the United States. I don't think Trump understands that.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Maybe he doesn't care, but there is a huge, huge,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: I mean exponential difference. I mean maybe if it's possibly
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: to be greater than exponential, it's night and day. When
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: you're a candidate and you're not in charge of the FCC.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: That's a completely different set of circumstances than what exists today.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: And it's totally wrong. Based upon a question, a legitimate question.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: That's being asked by a.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Reporter, you think NBC should be investigated now, of course,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: you know, is that.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: Really going to happen? Probably not.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: You know, people around Trump say that if he says
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: something once, they just discarded. If he says it twice,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: then they actually have to try to pretend to take
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: it seriously.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: I don't know whether not Trump.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: Said this again in private, or if he does say
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: it again in public, whether or not the head of
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: the SEC is all of a sudden going to have
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: to put together some sort of bullshit investigation of NBC.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: But Trump knows.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: See, this is where Trump is not a complete idiot.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Trump knows what the vulnerabilities of the media are. And
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: one of the vulnerabilities. Maybe almost as strong as the
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: issue of race is the issue of governmental regulation and
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: the losing of licenses.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: And anything in that realm. And Trump has been.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: Extremely effective, i think, in a rather corrupt fashion, of
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: using the threat of federal power to coerce ABC into
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: a massive settlement when I don't think they had any
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: reason to do so. Same thing with metathough I think
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: the case against Meta was probably stronger than the case
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: against ABC. And you know, we'll see what ends up
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: happening with NPR and PBS. And right now, the big
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: issue is whether that CBS is going to do the
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: same thing that ABC did. And Trump knows that if
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: you send a shockwave just doesn't even have to be real.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: But if you know Brian robertson Comcast Universal and the
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: owners at NBC, the guys that run NBC are even
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: remotely convinced that Trump might be serious, that is going
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: to cut the knees off of NBC reporters. Okay, Trump
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: has already seen this at CBS. I'm gonna get to
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: it in a second, because they haven't haven't even actually
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: settled with CBS in that lawsuit yet, and CBS is
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: caving all over the place they've gotten rid of or forced.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's hard to know what was forced what
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: was voluntary. But the bottom line is the head of
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: sixty Minutes and this head of CBS News are both
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: out of their jobs in just the last few weeks,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: while this negotiation involving the CBS settlement with Trump is ongoing.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: So Trump sees that this tactic is working, one from
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: a monetary perspective, and two because the media outlets, the
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: ownership the corporate executives, the suits don't give us shit
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: about journalism. They just don't want the federal government causing
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: a big problem for their bottom line. And there's no
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: bigger problem than somehow your license is get threatened or
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: you get you know, some sort of government intervention and
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: massive regulation. So even if it's total bullshit, it's probably
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: gonna be effective.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: I doubt that Peter Alexander got a note. I could
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: be wrong. I hope I'm wrong.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: In the old days, I would be wrong, But I
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: doubt that Brian Roberts sent Peter Alexander an email saying, hey, buddy,
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: don't worry about a great.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: Job, keep it going. I doubt that happened.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: M It's much more likely that Peter Alexander, now you know,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: has his balls shrunken, either by people around him, higher
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: ups or even by his own self. Censorship is it's
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: a chilling effect because he sees the handwrinning on the wall.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: Alexander does and other reporters.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: So if the president is threatening your boss, guess what
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: you're going to be less likely to do? Ask a
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: question that you know Trump isn't gonna like. Trump understands this,
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: and Trump, I'm sure his fans love this, but this
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: is not the way a functioning democratic republic is supposed
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: to work, even close and I guarante MTU if a
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: democratic president ever did it, the right wing media rightfully
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: would be going bananas over this. The implication of this
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: is profound, and it's also incredibly contradictory and hypocritical because
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: who has been Trump's favorite mainstream media reporter person he's
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: given massive access to in multiple interviews to since taking office.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: The second time Kristen Welker host to meet the press
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: on what network? NBC? So I don't even understand.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: So Trump is trying to ban NBC from asking him
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: legitimate questions at a press event at the White House
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: and yet he's constantly going on Meet the Press.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: Which is on NBC. I don't even get it. I
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: don't understand it.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: However, I do feel confident that Trump partially lashing out
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: because he knows the question is legitimate, and partially proactively
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: and strategically putting pressure on NBC reporters to back the
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: fuck off because he knows exactly how the corporate suits
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: are going to react, because all the group corporate suits
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: are caving to him. I've already gone through the list,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: and that gets me to what's going on with CBS.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: So just to review, we talked about this previously. The
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: head of sixty minutes, the producer there resigned.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: I said at the time this.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Was a mistake if the producer of sixty minutes ought
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: that their resignation was going to turn the tide, and
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: that the executives at Paramount who are negotiating this settlement
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: with Trump or something going to go, oh my god,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: we're losing sixty minutes. We've got to stand up for
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: journalism that was hilariously naive, adorable, but hilariously naive.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: We don't live in that world anymore.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: And it's clear to me more now than ever, especially
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: from a clip that I'm about to play for you
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: from the host of sixty Minutes, Scott Pelley, that the
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: people involved in this situation in sixty Minutes really don't
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: get how little leverage they have. They really don't understand it.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: And it appears as if the head of CBS News
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: was either forced out or it was you know, I
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: don't know if it was voluntary, but they're gone. Okay,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: So in a few short weeks you have the producer
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: sixty Minutes and the head of CBS News gone. All
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: during this period, we're in a very high profile way Paramount,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: which is being sold, which is why they're incredibly vulnerable
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: to federal regulation because it has to be approved by
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: the federal government the merger of the acquisition, and so
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: therefore Trump has a lot of leverage, and Trump wants
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: to use the leverage for himself, and so he's trying
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: to milk Paramount out of a large, multimillion dollar settlement.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: Over the whole sixty Minutes Kamala Harris interview situation, which
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: while I thought was very poor journalism and should.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: Have been criticized, and they should have.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: Been more transparent about and they should have lost credibility
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: over was not illegal, and it's not even close to
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: a situation that should be adjudicated in courts, especially by
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: a sitting US president, But it has been remarkably effective because,
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: and this is maybe from a journalistic standpoint, this is
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: the core issue. The people that run the corporations that
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: own the alleged journalistic outlets don't give a flying fuck
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: about journalism. They actually think journalism is.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: A pain in the ass.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: Now, it's expensive, it's not making nearly as much money
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: as it used to, and it's causing problems for them
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: from a regulatory perspective. So if they could have their
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: way at this point, they would probably want to be
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: done with their news organizations. And Scott Pelly, former anchor
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: on the CBS Evening News, I guess I refer to
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: him as the host of sixty minutes, which I think
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: is probably an accurate description. He clearly doesn't get it,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: and he is crying into the wilderness, and he went
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: viral because of a commencement address he gave at Wake
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: Forest over the Memorial Day weekend.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: And I'm a little bit conflicted about.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: This because substantively, there's a lot of truth in what
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: Scott Pelly said here. However, as I continually say whenever
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: this topic comes up, I'm sorry, Scott. You should have
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: been concerned about preserving your credibility for this situation a
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: long time ago, but you squandered it, You pissed it
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: all away, and so now nobody who's not a liberal
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: gives a fuck that you are screaming and yelling that
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: we are in a very dangerous situation with regard to
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: free speech and journalism. And I actually think that part
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: of who Pelly was attacking. I think this was a
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: dual attack. I think it was not just Trump. I mean,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: it was perceived as being almost entirely Trump, but I
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: think he was also going very subtly after his own
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: corporate overlords for caving into Trump, which is obviously part
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: and parcel of this whole situation. If Trump wasn't putting
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: the pressure on paramount, then this wouldn't be happening at CBS.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: But here was Scott Pelly making an argument that, you
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: know what, ten twenty, certainly thirty years ago, would have
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: very much resonated with a wide swath of the public,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: because at that point CBS in sixty minutes hadn't yet
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: lost all of their credibility when it comes to their
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: journalistic integrity and aren't seen as nothing more than left
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: wing media hacks who are attacking Trump regardless of what
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: the truth is. Now, see, I think there's probably some
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: truth in it. In fact, I know there's some truth
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: in this. I have actually a couple of different analogies
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: that I'd like to use here to describe what Pelly
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: is doing, but I first want to play the clip
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: so that you understand the context of my analysis. So
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: here was Scott Pelly, former CBS news anchor and the
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: host of sixty Minutes, giving the commencement address at Wake
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: Forest and articulating what he sees is the dire set
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: of circumstances surrounding free speech and journalism.
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: But in this moment, this moment, this morning, our sacred
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: rule of law is under attack. Journalism is underattack, universities
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: are under attack, freedom of speech is underattack, and insidious fear.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: Is reaching.
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: Through our schools, our businesses, our homes, and into our
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: private thoughts, the fear to speak.
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: In America.
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: Power can rewrite history with grotesque, false narratives. They can
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: make criminals heroes and heroes criminals power can change the
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: definition of the words we use to describe reality. Diversity
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: is now described as illegal, Equity is to be shunned.
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: Inclusion is a dirty word. This is an old playbook,
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: my friends. There's nothing new in this.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: I understood when I saw that that immediately the right
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: wing social media influences we're going to dunk all over
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Scott Pelly. And there's good reason for that, by the way,
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: there's good reason from a hypocrisy perspective, because.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: It wasn't that long ago.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: It was only a couple of months ago that sixty
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: Minutes did a story about free.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: Speech tyranny in Germany.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: Where they were completely on board, completely on board with
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: total ridiculousness and totalitarianism when it came to absurd and
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: very scary crackdowns on free speech. It was almost a parody,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: and so they didn't even provide the other side of
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: that particular story. So for sixty Minutes to have any
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: credibility on this, then you can't be doing stories like
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: they did with regard to the crackdown on free speech
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: in Germany. And they've been silent on the crackdown on
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: free speech in other places like Great Britain, and so
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: I'm with those who say, wait a minute, you don't
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: have the credibility not just from a political perspective, but
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: from the hypocrisy standpoint, the consistency standpoint, to be able
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: to make this argument. But I'm always looking at these
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: things as fairly as I can. I tend to have
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: a little bit more of a nuanced view of this.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: My main takeaway from what Pelly was saying is that,
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: you know what, there's some truth there. There's some really
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: important truths there. But here's where we are on this.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: This is a lot like this is the weird Ziggler analogy.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: This is a lot like the check engine light on one
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: of these you know, new cars where the computer runs everything.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: And I don't know about your situation, but I know
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: in both of the cars that we own, it's never
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: reliable because you know, you never know what's real and
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: what's not. Is this check engine light going on because
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: of some sort of malfunction? Is the car wrong? Is
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: the computer wrong? Do I really have to deal with this?
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: And over time I can. By the way, I get
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: the same thing with my key battery being low. It's
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: been telling me my key battery is low for like
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: two years. So why do I take it seriously?
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: Do I have to? Is this for real or is
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: it not?
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: But you eventually get desensitized to these kind of warnings,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: And so the analogy here is that, Okay, you've been
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: telling me this, You've been warning me about Trump for
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: all this time. You know, at a certain point, I'm desensitizing.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: You no longer have any credibility, and I don't take
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: it fully seriously. But to complete this analogy, there's a
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: part of me at least that thinks, you know what,
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: there might be truth here.
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: I at least don't have to keep listening.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: I don't think accept it as true, but I need
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: to at least keep listening because at some point this
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: warning might actually be real. And what frustrates me about
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: the Pelly comment is the warning may very well be real.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: He's just a really bad spokesperson for it. Partially because
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: of his coverage of Trump, partially because of the loss
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: of credibility by CBS in sixty minutes, not just on
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: Trump but on other matters that I've already referenced, but
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: also because of the self interest that's involved here. I mean,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: you know, it's the boy who cried Wolfe syndrome. It's
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: now obvious that Pelly and others like him have no
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: credibility at all.
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: Now to me, I still listen to them. They have
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: a smidge of credibility.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: I just don't accept what they tell me at face
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: value as being true anymore. You know, maybe thirty years
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: ago I probably would have, but no longer. And you
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: know that is a double edged sword. There's some positive
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: to that, but there's also negative because this is a
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: legitimate warning that he's trying to be giving, trying to give,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: but nobody outside of the far left is paying any
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: attention because they have squandered their credibility. I've talked before
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: using another metaphor analogy about the fire hose. You know,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: they used up all the water in their fire hose
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: in a partisan direction, and now they got no water
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: left when they really need it to put out this
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: fire of real significant problems that Donald Trump is causing
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: in this particular case to the institution of journalism and
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: the entire concept of free speech. In fact, not only
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: is the water supply and their hose gone, I would
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: argue that it's been replaced with gasoline, because the more
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: they go after Trump, the more it seems to help him.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: We saw that in the twenty twenty four presidential election.
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: There's one more analogy I would like to use here.
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: To me, Pelly is a little bit not in totality,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: but a little bit like an abuser who has lost control.
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: Let's use a male female relationship here.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: He's like a guy who used to control a woman
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: in a relationship. He was abusive in that relationship, and
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: now all of a sudden, she's really moved on and
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: he no longer controls her. And it's freaking him out
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: because at one point he was in complete control and
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: now he has no control. And the analogy there is
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: with regard to credibility and influence and control over the narrative,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: it's got to be quite frustrating.
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: And I still think shocking.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: I really believe that part of what motivated Pelly's wait
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: far as commencement address was shock. I could be wrong
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: about this, but I think it was shock because when
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: I hear his voice, it sounds like a guy who
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: is stunned that things like the producer at sixty minutes
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: resigning and the head of CBS News losing her job
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: not having any impact. We've lost our power, We have
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: no real influence anymore. And these are things that not
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: that long ago in their lives would have been unthinkable.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: It would have been a massive deal for that to
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: occur in a short period of time, especially with the
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: President of the United States effectively facilitating this massive shakeup
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: at CBS News because of threats of regulation licenses and
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: not approving of a sale of paramount that would have
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: been unthinkable. But because the public doesn't have any trust you,
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: any trust in you anymore, and because corporate executives don't
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: give a flying fuck about journalism, they have no power,
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: They have no real audience anymore in comparison to what
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: they used to have. They have no influence because they
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: have no credibility, and they have no backup because their
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: corporate executives look at them as a pain in the
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: goddamn ass. And eventually this is going to go away.
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: Eventually we're not going to have evening newscasts anymore, We're
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: not going to have major network news operations.
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: In my opinion, how long it's going to take for
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: that to occur, I don't know.
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: But it could not be more clear that Trump is
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: destroying now.
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: I get that a lot of his fans are thrilled
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: with this.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's a positive development at all, because
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: what's going to be left in its wake is complete
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: and total chaos and nothing but partisan clickbait disguised as news.
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: You need to have some semblance of credible journalism for
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: this society to function in anything close, even remotely close
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: to a reasonable fashion, and we're very close. Actually, I'm
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: one of those very rare critics of the liberal mainstream
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: news media that has always been promoting reform, reform and accountability,
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: not destruction.
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: We are very close to destruction.
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: And I know that Trump will feel quite good about
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: it when it happens, and it'll be vindicated and his
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: fans will cheer, but I don't think the country is
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: going to be.
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: Better for it.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: And this Pelly statement at wake Forest, I think is
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: a really great or bad, depending on your perspective example
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: of that, because I think what Pelly said substantively was
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: important and significant and had some truth to it, but
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: I also realized that it was going to have absolutely
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: no impact whatsoever. And maybe the most interesting element of it,
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: most telling element of it, was what motivated it to
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: begin with. I think a large part of that is.
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: This is the shock. This is a guy who is shocked.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: Over his personal and his team's loss of power and influence.
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: And they are desperate, and they're crying out into the
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: wilderness and no one's listening because they squandered their credibility
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: a lite long, long time ago. I want to move
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: now to the passing of the so called Big Beautiful Bill.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: Other people are referring to it as the Big Budget Buster.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: It barely passed the House of Representatives late last week.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: It really only passed because Democrats lost the vote because
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: one of their older members passed away. Otherwise they would
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: the Republicans would not have had the votes to pass
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: the so called Big Beautiful Bill.
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: I was against this idea. I was in the Thomas
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: Massey camp. But it was obvious that.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: Trump wanted this past and that's why it finally did,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: barely by the skin of its teeth. It now goes
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: to the Senate, where it has an uncertain future. But
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: to me, the most significant part of the passing of
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: the so called Big Beautiful Bill was that this is
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: really the end. Maybe not the funeral, but effectively, this
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: is the end of the entire effort by Elon Musk
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: and doge the Department of Government Efficiency to dramatically cut
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: government spending.
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: This is the end.
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: Now, I think I've been ahead of the curve on
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: this entire topic. I mean, I told you almost immediately,
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: and I think the moment for me that I realized, Okay,
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: this isn't going to work. First of all, I realized
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: that the odds of it working were very low to
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: begin with. This really is a Luke Skywalker going to
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: the death Star situation.
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: You get one shot at this.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: You got you know, Trump with one turn to serve,
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: and you've got Musk with all the money in the world,
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: and he's willing to do this, and you've got a
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: Republican House and a Republican Senate and this is the
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: one shot. Well, it appears as if Elon Musk didn't
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: really even get his shot off, and the death Star
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: is not going to be blown up. And I knew
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: that that was where we were headed when that whole
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: kerfuffle over the email to federal workers happened, where you know,
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: tell us what you did over the last week. I
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: guess that was what the email said to all federal workers.
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: And when, first of all, that email didn't go off
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: functionally in a proper way. But more importantly, it had
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: the balls cut off of it. When all of almost
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: all of the major heads of these departments were saying,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: just ignore the email, something that Trump had to at
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: least approve of and certainly didn't disapprove of it. I
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: knew then that the DOGE wasn't going to work, because
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: no one's going to take DOGE seriously if you know,
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: something like that happens, and they cut the balls off
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: of it. And that was just the beginning of the problems.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: There were many, many problems with DOGE. I think Elon
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: Musk was very well intentioned, and I admire him risking
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: an enormous amount of personal capital and his reputation, maybe
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: even his physical safety for this effort. And it actually
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: angers me, and I know it angers a lot of
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: even Trump supporters online, although they're not connecting any of
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: this to Trump himself. That so far none of these
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: DOGE cuts, which really aren't that great to begin with,
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: have been codified in the law.
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: While it's a.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: Separate issue technically, certainly philosophically, the passive passage of this
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: massive monstrosity, the big beautiful bill that does nothing at
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: all to curltail spending and by all accounts, will further
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: explode the deficit in years to come. Goes directly against
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: the goals of Elon Musk and Doge. And so to me,
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: it's over. The dream is over. And there are massive
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: implications to this. I mean, we won't see them in
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: the short run. And this is always why we were
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: so screwed on this, because no one ever wants to
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: enforce or cause short term pain because there's another election
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: to worry about, so we always kick the can down
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: the road, making the problem worse into the future. Well,
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: eventually that bill is going to come due in a big,
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: big way, and Elon Musk understands this, and maybe Ron
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: DeSantis understands this, but not too many other people in power,
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: certainly not Donald Trump seems to understand or care about this.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: I've got clips from both Elon Musk and Ron de
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: Santis about this situation.
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: And here is Elon Musk doing an.
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: Interview with CBS this morning where he doesn't use dramatic language,
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: but it's clear, especially when you combine this with something
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: I briefly discussed in the last episode of the podcast,
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: which was that Musk gave another interview to CNBC where
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: he said he was not going to spend nearly as
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: much money in the future on political spending as he
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: did certainly in the twenty twenty four campaign.
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: To me, I interpreted that as.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: Elon Musk has become very disillusioned with the political process
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: and maybe even with Trump in particular. Now he doesn't
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: reference Trump here at all, which is probably a smart
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: move politically, but he expresses disappointment with the.
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: Big Beautiful Bill and even mocks the name Big Beautiful Bill.
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: And here's what that sounded like on CBS, So you.
• 59:39
  Speaker 7: Know, I was like, we're disappointed to see the massive
• 59:43
  Speaker 7: spending bill, frankly, which increases the budgeteps if not doesn't
• 59:47
  Speaker 7: decrease it, and that reminds the work that THEDOC team
• 59:50
  Speaker 7: is doing.
• 59:51
  Speaker 5: I actually thought that when this Big Beautiful Bill came along.
• 59:53
  Speaker 5: I mean, like everything he's done on Doge gets wiped
• 59:57
  Speaker 5: out in.
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: The first year.
• 59:59
  Speaker 7: I think can be can be big, or it can
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 7: be beautiful, but I don't know if it could be
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 7: bug My post opinion.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: That to me is Elon Musk almost conceding defeat.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: Now he's still talking game.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: On Doge, still doing interviews on Fox News Channel. I
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: don't think he's ever going to admit full defeat, at
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: least not yet, but certainly by the measure of what
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: the original goals were here, or what the original standards
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: were for success. This has been a disaster, and I
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: don't think it's Elon Musk's fault. I think it's mostly
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's fault, because it was Donald Trump who pushed
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: through the big beautiful bill without Trump that never has
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: any chance of passing.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: But Trump has.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: Made it clear he doesn't really give a fuck about
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: cutting spending or reducing the dead or the deficit.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: He might talk a good game.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: About that, but in reality, he's never gonna do that
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: because in three and a half years he's gonna be
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: gone and he doesn't care. So why take the political
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: pain that it would require to actually massively cut government
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: spending in the short run. I often use probably my
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: favorite movie line. I reference movie lines a lot, but
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: I probably reference this one more than any other from
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: the movie Rocky One, and it was Apollo Creed's trainer
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: who told Apollo Creed in the corner, he doesn't think
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: this is a damn show. He thinks this is a
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: damn fight. I love that line because to me, I
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: have experienced it in my own life so many times
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: where Oh, I didn't realize you just thought this was
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: a show.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: I thought this was a fight.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: I'm much more of a fight guy than a show guy.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: Elon Musk is clearly a fight guy. Elon Musk, to
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: use the Rocky metaphor, he thought he was in this
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: for a fight. Trump thought this was a show. And
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: I gotta believe that.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: Musk is rather disillusioned by that.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: This is a guy realizing that he didn't have any cavalry,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: that Trump didn't really have his back, that Trump played.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: Him for all intents and purposes.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: And that he risked an awful lot, lost an awful
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: lot of his net worth.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: Who knows if we'll get it back. Maybe he will,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: maybe he won't.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: But he sacrificed a lot for this effort. And as
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: proven by the lobbying efforts with regard to the Big
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: Beautiful Bill, Trump did.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: Not have his back.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, as it's turned out, Elon Musk, if he
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: really had the goal of reducing the debt, and I
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: haven't run the numbers on this, but if he had
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: just taken all the money he spent on the twenty
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: twenty four Who knows whether not that would have made
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: the difference between Trump losing or not.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: But he had taken all that money and not engaged in.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: This effort which has reduced the price of the stock
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: of Tesla and cost him money in all sorts of
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: other ways.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: So, in other words, if he never.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: Did anything overtly political to reduce his own net worth
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: and his reputation, and he had just written a check
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: to the federal government for a couple of one hundred billion dollars,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: which he could have theoretically done and by the way,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: the math may have made work out pretty darn well. Again,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: I haven't done it, but this is not an insane theory.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: If he had just stayed out of the fray and
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: written a check for whatever it is, he could have
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: saved the federal government a heck of a lot more
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: money than the Doge effort is going to.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: So this ended up being about.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: The most inefficient way of trying to reduce the debt
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: is humanly possible, and it has failed. And you know,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: Musk was rather benign in his language there, because he
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: doesn't want to offend Trump. Ron de Santis, Governor Florida,
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: the guy who should have been the twenty twenty four
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: Republican presidential nominee, and we will rue that day that
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: he wasn't, I believe, for the rest of the history
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: of the country, depending on how this all works out.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: But Ron de Santis, to his credit, used a little
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: bit stronger language. Of course, he's not going to attack Trump.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: He can't do that because that's toxic. It's a lot
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: easier to go out to Republicans in Congress for being
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: weak and cowardly. But Ronde Santis was echoing this exact
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: same situation, this exact same perspective that Doge has essentially
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: been hung out to dry because of political cowardice.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: And here's Ronde Santis on that topic.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 6: Brillion dollar deficit is a tax on you. It works
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 6: its way through the economy. There's no free lunch, and
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 6: that's what ends up happening. And it's a little frustrating.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 6: Elon Musk went into this doze effort. He was getting lampooned.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 6: I mean like they're firebombing his Tesla dealerships, media smearing
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 6: him relentlessly.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: His business has.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 6: Suffered all this stuff because he basically said, look, we
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 6: can't keep doing this, and we need to moderate and
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 6: reduce the amount of money that the federal government is spending.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 6: And yet we have a Republican Congress and to this day,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 6: we're in the end of May, past Memorial Day, and
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 6: not one cent in Doge cuts have been implemented by
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 6: the Congress. That's one of the reasons why we need
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 6: a balanced budget amendment to the US Constitution. It's another
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 6: reason why we need term limits for members of Congress.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 6: But I think what you've seen with how and I
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 6: kind of said this early on that Doge and Elon
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 6: were on a collision course with the swamp, and the
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 6: question is what would happen. And I don't think there's
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 6: any question that Doge fought the swamp, and so far
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 6: the swamp has won, and that's just unfortunate. But I
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 6: don't think you can look at this any other way.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 6: So this is hardwired into how the people in Washington
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 6: are borrowing and spending your money. But it has huge
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 6: implications for the viability of our economy, our country and
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 6: everything going forward. And you know, don't tell me it
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 6: can't be done when I became governor. So if you
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 6: look at Florida's been a state for one hundred and
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 6: eighty years. If you look at all the debt that's
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 6: been accumulated over our entire history of statehood, just since
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 6: I've been governor, we've paid off forty one percent of it,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 6: and we're doing more every day. So that's not adding
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 6: to debt, that's reducing debt. We have the lowest per
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 6: capita debt of any state in the country. And if
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 6: you looked at what your share as a Florida resident
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 6: is for our outstanding state debt, it's about four hundred
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 6: dollars a person. What is your outstanding share for the
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 6: US federal debt It's like one hundred and five thousand
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 6: dollars a person, and escalating ours is declining.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: You also look at Florida.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 6: We have the lowest number of state employees per capita,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 6: don't have a big bureaucracy. We are also the second
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 6: lowest in terms of spending per capita of any of
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 6: all the fifty state I.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: Agreed completely with rohnd de Santis there.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: I wish we lived in a world where he could
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: connect the dots to Trump.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: Politically, that's not viable. But this is all about Trump.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: Yes, Republicans in Congress are a bunch of everybody knows this.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: But if Trump was the one who was really both
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: publicly and privately championing this entire concept of debt reduction
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: and the reduction in spending, this bill would never have passed,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: and that we would be a lot further along in
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: the effort to try to codify the so called Doge
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: cuts in spending. So I can't believe we live in
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: this world, but we clearly do where it's perfectly fine
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: to criticize the Republican Party and Republicans in Congress, but
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: never really criticized Trump when the Republics in Congress are
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: simply taking their cues and their.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: Orders from who Donald Trump. This is not difficult, but.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: This is the crazy world we're now unfortunately living in.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: And I think the biggest bottom line of this is
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: this was the last shot, folks. Now, I was always
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: skeptical that we've already passed the point of no return.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: I already used the Luke Skywalker death star metaphor, but
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: that's really where we are here.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: This was the last shot we are going to go,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: for lack of a better term, bankrupt.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: I just don't know when, and I just don't know
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: to what degree that is going to catastrophically impact our
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: way of life. I wish I knew, I really wish
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: I knew, But I am positive that we are headed
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: not just in that direction, we are headed to that outcome.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: And there are a million points along this path where
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: we could have gone in a different direction. This might
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: have been the last chance we had to reverse it,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: at least a little bit because of the unique circumstances
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: surrounding Elon Musk, and we blew it, and we blew
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: it almost entirely because Donald Trump really wasn't into the fight.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: He thought it was just a show.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: Now, one other issue related directly to Donald Trump is
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: what's going on with regard to Russia and Ukraine. In fact,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: I would suggest that so far in Trump two point zero,
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: the two things that I'm probably most disappointed by, although
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: there are many different issues that could compete to be
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: on this list, but certainly two of the top five
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: or ten have been the failure of DOGE and the
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: failure to put an end to the war between Russia
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: and Ukraine, which Trump, to be clear, promised he would
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: be able to easily do on day one of his presidency. Well,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: we're now at the end of May and we are
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: nowhere near that happening. There have been times in which
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: it looked like we might be close, where Trump has
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: almost declared victory, but then once again, surprise, surprise to
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: no one who is actually paying attention or understands Vladimir Putin.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: Putin has once again reversed himself and is attacked in
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: Kiev again. And this really pissed off Donald Trump. This
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: seems to be a legitimately upset Donald Trump. I don't
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: think he was completely acting here. I don't think this
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: was totally a show, which is actually rather troubling because
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: the statement that Trump made in castigating Putin for his
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: latest aggression against Ukraine, even while there's been negotiations for
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: a ceasefire, were really remarkably catastrophically naive. I mean, this guy,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: what Trump is saying here, what you're about to hear,
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: is to be one hundred percent believed.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: Trump is an.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: Incredibly naive person with regard to Vladimir Putin, and he's
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: effectively admitting, whether he realizes it or not, that Putin
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: played him, just as many people like myself have been
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: warning about for a very long time that Trump thinks
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: that because someone is nice to him or says nice
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: things to him, or gives him.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: Gifts, that therefore they're a good person.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: That's the way Trump sees the world, when in reality,
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: Putin understands Trump maybe better than Trump understands Trump, and
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: Putin understands exactly how to play him, and I think.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: The results are pretty obvious at this point.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: But here is Donald Trump on a tarback taking questions
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: from a reporter.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: Where he goes off.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: On Vladimir Putin and essentially acknowledges that he doesn't understand Putin,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: pretends that somehow Putin has changed, and effectively admits that
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: Putin played him.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 4: I'm not happy with what Putin's doing. He's killing a
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 4: lot of people, and I don't know what the hell
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 4: happened to Putin. I've known him a long time, always
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 4: gotten along with him, but he's sending rockets into cities
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 4: and killing people, and I don't like it at all.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: I honestly, we don't know how you can interpret what
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: Trump said there in a way that's positive towards Trump's
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: ability to deal with Putin in general, or to interpret
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: Putin correctly in any way, shape or form. I mean,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: that's embarrassing. The idea that somehow Putin has changed is
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: absolutely ludicrous. Everybody knew that this was always who Putin was,
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: and I have constantly said that the entire strategy of
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: this negotiation between Russia and Ukraine made no sense to me,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: because remember it was Trump who took away all of
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: Zelensky's bargaining power with that fiasco of a White House
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: event that his fans loved. He exposed to the world
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: literally that Zelensky has no cards, that Ukraine has no
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: cards in dealing with Russia. That to me was a
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: mass of rudimentary, rookie mistake, and he did it for
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: his own ego. Okay, fine, that's out there. But once
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: you've established that, I think Trump did something almost as dumb,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: where he negotiated first with Ukraine about what they would
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: accept as a cease fire and then went to Russia.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: You can't do that from a purely leverage perspective. You
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: have made it very clear to.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: The world that Russia has the cards and the leverage.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: Therefore you must go to Russia first, and then if
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: you think the deal is acceptable, you've got to then
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: convince the person or the entity with no leverage, no cards,
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: Ukraine and Zelensky to accept what Russia wants. That's the
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: real world. But Trump did it in the opposite way.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: And now here we are, we're nowhere near the end.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: Of this war. There.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: You know, we've got threats on both sides. Trump is
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: putting out posts threatening Putin. Putin supporters are threatening Trump.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: People are talking about world War three, which I don't
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: think is going to happen, but certainly stranger things have occurred.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: And this is a disaster right now. This is a
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: complete disaster. And you know, it's a very complex situation.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: I never thought that Trump was really going to solve
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: it on day one. He shouldn't have promised that. But
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: Trump needs a sake, take some responsibility for where things
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: are and for at best, his catistrophically bad analysis of
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: who Vladimir Putin really is. I want to move on
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: now to speaking of World War three. I am now
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: becoming convinced that from a societal perspective, we're going to
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: have a little bit of something that is almost as
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: significant as World War Three when it comes to artificial intelligence.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: I haven't talked that much about artificial intelligence. Certainly not
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: in the last few months, or maybe even last year
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: or so. You know, when artificial intelligence became a big thing,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: I chimed in on it, and I was concerned like
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: anybody else, But there was part of me that thought,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: you know what, maybe this is going to be one
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: of those things that never materializes to be as dangerous
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: as feared. I mean, I totally get why people like
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: Elon Musk are sounding the alarm that artificial intelligence is very,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: very dangerous, but I hadn't really seen anything yet that
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: made me go, holy shit.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: We are totally fucked.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: In fact, I even made an incorrect prediction in the
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty four presidential election where I had said on
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: this podcast that I thought it was almost a certainty,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: a sure deal, a done deal, that there would be
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: some sort of major controversy where either Biden or Trump back.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: When they were the candidates, I think is when I
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: said this.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: But you know, obviously the same thing would have held
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: true with Harris or Trump when she became the Democratic candidate.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: I was very confident that we would see a massive
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: controversy where artificial intelligence would be used to create probably
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: an audio clip, because that's easier an audio clip of
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: one of the major presidential candidates saying something completely outrageous,
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: and I even theorized that it would be an attack
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: on their own political base, and that it would be
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: very difficult to tell whether or not it would be real,
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: and that this would go viral before we were able
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: to prove that it wasn't real. That did not really happen,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: so thankfully I was incorrect about that. However, I am
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: more convinced than I have ever been that eventually that
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: kind of thing is going to be standard operating procedure.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: And partially what has changed my mind or further heightened
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: my sense of doom about this, and it made me
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: reconsider my somewhat optimistic view that maybe this wasn't going
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: to materialize and be as bad as everyone forecast, was
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: the release of Google's VEEO three.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: Or VO three I guess they're calling it now.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: If you have not yet checked out VO three, I
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: urge you to do so, because it is remarkable. It
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: is insane. In my view, it is incredibly dangerous, and
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: basically what they did was that they released some videos
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: that were created using nothing but artificial intelligence that for
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: the first time at least in my experience, it was
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: almost impossible to tell the difference between what was artificial
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: intelligence and what was real life human beings.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: Now, the release actually had some humor related to it.
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: It even seemed to me to be a little bit
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: of a warning about what it actually was, which I.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: Thought was potentially some good news.
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: But this is very, very scary stuff, and to me
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: it really kind of was almost like cold water in
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: the face, like, holy shit, this is no longer theoretical.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: This is already you know, we're only like what eighteen
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: months into this issue as a serious thing. We're already
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: at the point where even someone as discerning and cynical
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: and experienced as myself cannot really tell for sure the
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: difference between something that is real and something that is
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: fake created by artificial intelligence. Now, I do think there
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: is some hope in that people I think seem to
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: get the dangers inherent in this situation.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: Like, for instance, I brought this up in the car,
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: On the way to the pool or to the beach
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: of her Memorial Day weekend with my wife and my
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: two daughters and my eight year old second greater Diana,
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: who has a really strong head on her shoulders and
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: is very, very cynical and has a really good way
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: of getting to.
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: The bottom line on everything.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: She just blurted out, we can't even tell what's real
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: and what's not anymore. And I said, Diana, you have
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: nailed it. That is that's the most important issue. And
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: we were already dealing with this. I deal with this
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: on a weekly basis on this podcast, and frankly, you know,
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: that's essentially what I do.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: That's what I do.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: You know, most of my time I spent on social media,
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: and that's what I do during vast portions of this podcast.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: I try to determine.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: To the best of my ability, which I think is
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: pretty strong in comparison to most people's. I try to
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: determine what is real and what isn't, what's fake news
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: and what's real news. And we were already in a crisis,
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: thanks largely to Donald Trump and his battle with the
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: so called.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: Fake news media.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: We were already in a crisis before artificial intelligence when
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: it came to determining what's real and what's fake. But
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: now that artificial intelligence has already gotten to the point
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: where it is almost impossible to tell for sure what's
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: real and what isn't now this crisis has had gasoline
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: poured all over it, and there are all sorts of
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: ramifications for this. I mean, there's obviously the entertainment world
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: is the first place where people are freaking out because
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: I don't know how the movie industry survives when you
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: can create a movie that looks just like a high
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: budget film for you know, a few thousand dollars in
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: a world where movies are already struggling to make money.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: Although a couple of movies has past weekend did very,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: very well at the box office, I still think people
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: want to go to the theater if they have a
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: reason to go to the theater. But there's no question
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: that the business model for movie and television production has
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: almost completely collapsed. This is going to cause a further
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: problem the arts. Similarly, I don't know how in the world,
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: you know, art of any kind can exist in a
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: world where AI can do it instantaneously and maybe even
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: better than a human can.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: By the way, I think one of.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: The weirder implications of all this is I think that
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: celebrities are somehow going to benefit even more than they
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: currently do.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: I've talked in the.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: Past about how Hollywood has this massive problem with not
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: producing new stars. Well, now with AI, you're not gonna
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: have to produce new stars.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: If you're big enough celebrity.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: With the use of artificial intelligence, especially when it comes
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: to your voice, you can live forever. So why do
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: you need to create a new Brad Pitt or a
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: Tom Cruise or George Clooney or whoever Leonardo DiCaprio when
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: AI can just make them their image and likeness can
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: do whatever you want forever and ever. It doesn't matter
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: how old they are, if they even die. So I think,
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: you know, as a sideline, I think that's gonna be
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: one of the most interesting and bizarre impacts of AI.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: If I'm a big time celebrity, this may be the
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: greatest thing that's ever happened, because I'm gonna live forever.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: But I think the much more profound implications of what
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: happened to the human element of creating entertainment or art.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: And I do think that politically there are massive implications
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: when it comes to being able to discern what is
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: real and what is not. And in academia, I think
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: there are massive implications. I mean, there's already huge problems
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: with chat GTP and creating fake essays and how to.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: Deal with that.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: But even bigger than that, to me, in an AI world,
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: I don't even know why in the world we're.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 2: Even teaching kids. Some of the things that we're teaching
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: them they're completely useless, Like, for instance.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: I mean math, other than basic math, what do you
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: need math for anymore? When we all carry with us
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: a calculator at all times, Well, we also now all
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: carry with.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: Us you know, Google and.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: Groc and and you know all sorts of now AI mechanisms.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: Well we can have any question we want answered, maybe
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: not one hundred percent accurately and without bias, but to
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: a large degree answered. You know, there's autocorrect on your spelling,
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: Thank goodness for my daughter who, because of her dyslexia,
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: has horrendous spelling. But I'm not even sure it's good
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: enough to qualify for autocorrect. But I mean, the point is,
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: the technology has really eliminated the need for the vast
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: majority of what we teach kids, which to me is
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: a great opportunity to teach kids things that actually matter
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: in real life, and maybe more about history and humanity
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: and our system of government and that kind of stuff
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: that's to me where the focus ought to be, because
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: that's the stuff you know. Also, by the way, learning
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: how to think that really ought to be the true
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: focus of academia, instead of reading, writing, and arithmetic, which
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: are now almost antiquated because of the world in which
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: we now live. If you have a decent cell phone
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: on you, you don't need any of that shit and
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: you just need to learn how to use it on
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: your phone.
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: So, I mean, the ramifications of.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: All this are profound, and even I'm just touching the
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: very service. This is the very tip of the iceberg.
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: In my opinion, we need warning labels on this. This
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: ought to be like cigarettes. And I'm being very serious
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: about this. I think regardless of where it is, whether
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: it's on social media, on television, in a movie, there
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: needs to be some labeling of something if it is AI,
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: if it is artificial intelligence, and there needs to be
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: some stigma attached to that. There needs to be a
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: line in the sand right now where we realize, okay,
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: you do understand that we're going to replace humanity here, folks,
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: and that there needs to be very strict guidelines and
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: transparency when it comes to artificial intelligence and how it's
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: going to be used, and that the implications of this
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: are dramatic and unpredictable. This is going to go in
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: places that we could never possibly imagine, and it's going
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: to impact all sorts of areas of life. If we
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: don't act now, it might already be too late to
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: put some level of restriction on it. And I'm a libertarian.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: I'm all for free speech. So that's where you know.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: To me, I'm a big believer in labeling and stigmatizing
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: something that's bad.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 2: You know, the first AI movie.
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: That comes out, for instance, needs to bomb at the
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: box office, and it needs to bomb hard.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: That's the only path here.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: And with regard to the implications of all this, I
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: want to play a clip from Vice President Jade Vance,
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: who I consider to be a very very smart guy,
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: and this answer was about AI in general, or I
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: think it was maybe more about social media, but he
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: references AI in it. He starts talking at first about
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: how our society has changed dramatically when it comes to
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: the dating and the mating process, and how social media
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: has greatly stunted that situation, which I could not agree
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: with more In all seriousness, I am completely flummoxed as
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: to how anyone ever gets married and has kids in
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: this younger generation because we have taken the mating process.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: You know, it's been exaggerating in the last five years
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: or so with dating apps, maybe more than maybe ten
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: years with dating apps. But when you consider what has
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: happened in my lifetime, lifetime of most people who would
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: be listening to this podcast, we have done so many
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: things to stunt and destroy the traditional mating process that
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: it's remarkable to me that anybody still gets married and
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: has kids.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 2: It's almost a frickin miracle.
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: And at the heart of this, and this is where
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: the social media comes in, is that we now have
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: a generation of people who are in potentially the mating
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: pool that have completely and totally unrealistic expectations for what
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: is possible. And social media has really facilitated that in
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: a very very dramatic way. I mean, for instance, taking
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: this out of the theoretical into the practical. Because of
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: dating apps, guys who are less than five are less
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: than five feet tall. Guys are less than five feet
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: tall probably have a big problem regardless of social media,
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: but guys that are less than six feet tall have
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: basically no chance, no chance on the dating apps, none
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: And you essentially have a situation where the top two
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: percent or thereabouts of so called high value men have
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: their pick of the litter and the rest of the
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: men have no options at all. And you've got the
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: top maybe twenty percent of women from a physical looks perspective,
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: they're dating all of the same guys in the two percent,
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: and the other seventy or eighty percent are completely out
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: of luck, partially because their expectations are completely out of control,
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: largely thanks to social media. I mean, this is just
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: a horrendous situation that has massive implications for our society,
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: something Elon Musk has talked about where we're not reproducing
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: in nearly large enough numbers, and JD. Vance addressed that
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: as well as some of the national security concerns involving AI,
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: and so I felt like what he said was really
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: important and really intelligent. So I wanted to figure out
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: a way to get it into the podcast, and so
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: that's the best I could do. But here is Vice
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: President Jdvans on this topic in general.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 5: You know, if you look at basic dating behavior among
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 5: young people, and I think a lot of this is
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 5: that the dating apps are probably more destructive.
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: Than we fully appreciate.
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 5: I think part of it is technology is just, for
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 5: some reason made it harder for young men and young
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 5: women to sort of communicate with each other in the
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 5: same way our young men and women just aren't dating.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 5: And if they're not dating and they're not getting married,
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 5: they're not starting families. There's a level of isolation I
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 5: think mediated through technology. That technology can kind of, you know,
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 5: be a bit of a save. It can be a
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 5: bit of a band aid, maybe make you feel less lonely,
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 5: even when you are lonely. But this is where I
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 5: think AI could be profoundly dark and negative. I don't
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 5: think it'll mean three million truck drivers are out of
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 5: the job. I certainly hope it doesn't mean that. But
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 5: what I do really worry is doesn't mean that there
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 5: are millions of American teenagers who are talking to chatbots
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 5: who don't have their best interests at heart, or even
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 5: if they do, other best interest start they start to
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 5: develop a relationship, they start to expect that a chat
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 5: bot that's trying to sort of give you a dopamine rush,
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 5: you know, that that that compared to a chat bot
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 5: a normal human interaction is not going to be as
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 5: satisfying because human beings have wants and needs, right, And
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 5: I think that's one of the of course, like the
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 5: great things about marriage in particular, is you have this
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 5: other person and you just have to kind of figure
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 5: it out together.
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 5: But if the other person is a chatbot who's just
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 5: trying to hook you to spend as much time on it,
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 5: that's the sort of stuff that I really worry about
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 5: with AI. And then and then there's also a whole
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 5: host of defense and technology applications. I mean, we could
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 5: wake up very soon in a world where there is
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 5: no cybersecurity, where the idea of your bank account being
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 5: safe and secure is just a relic of the past,
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 5: where you know, there's there's weird shit happening in space
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 5: mediated through AI that makes our communications infrastructure either actively
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 5: hostile or at least largely Yeah, obviously.
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: This is a topic that is not going away, and
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: one that we will talk about again in the future.
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: On the death of journalism.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: Podcasts, but I had not discussed in quite a while,
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: and I was so taken aback by the debut of
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: Google's VO three that I wanted to reference it in
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: this episode and that's why I did it here, but
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: I will absolutely do so again as events warrant in
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: the future.
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 2: I want to move now to the.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: World of sports, where as usual, there's a lot going on,
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: and once again in the WNBA, we have some news
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: to report.
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 2: This is going to shock.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: You, and I need you to you to hold on
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: to something here and make sure you're sitting down because
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: I don't want aything bad to happen to you when
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: you hear this news if you haven't already, But the
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: WNBA did an investigation into the alleged racially charged jeering
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: of Angel Reese in the first game of the WNBA
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: season where her team got crushed by Caitlin Clark and
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: the Indiana Fever. And get this, this is mind blowing.
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: They determine that there was no actual violation by any
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: of the fans at the Indiana Fever game. I know
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: that is stunning. I know that it's shocking. You know
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: it's weird that I predicted that that's exactly what would happen.
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: But here we are, shockingly, after all that media coverage,
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: after all that controversy, after reporters doing a press conference
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: with Angel Reese where they just accepted that this very vague,
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: nonsensical allegation of racism among Indiana Fever fans was real, because,
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: after all, as I said in the earlier portions of
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: this episode of the podcast, race is like kryptonite, especially
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: for the sports media. I mean, this sounds crazy, but
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: the legacy of Al Campanas and Jimmy the two very
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: famous people who got their lives destroyed because they got
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: canceled over comments that were deemed to be racist, it
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: really impacts the sports media to this day. And they
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: just went right along with this because that draw. You know,
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: Indiana's a white state, and Caitlin Clark is white and
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: her fans are mostly white, so therefore they must be racist,
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: and therefore no one would make up an allegation that
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: was fake regarding racism. That would never happen, even though
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: it happens constantly. We've seen it happen on almost a
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: monthly basis over the last several years. It's just that
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: the news media ignores it whenever it gets proven to
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: have been some sort of a hoax or at least
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: a false allegation or a false report or misunderstanding, like
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: the whole bubble Wallace news situation in NASCAR several years ago,
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: but the news media went right along with it. But
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: shockingly the truth was nothing actually transpired.
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: Nothing.
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: So this was exactly just as I said, like the
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: entire BYU Duke women's volleyball controversy that we began the
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: death of journalism talking about two hundred and forty two
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: episodes ago. That was our first episode. We devoted largely
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: to that entire controversy and how I turned out the
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: end of being exactly right that that was fake, that
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: did not happen, and it was obvious that that did
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: not happen, made no sense for it to have occurred,
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: and it made no sense here. I mean, the similarities
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: were remarkable in the two situations, and yet the story
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: of the investigation finding no evidence that this actually occurred
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: will not make nearly the same mark in the sports
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: media as the initial nonsensical allegation. We see this constantly,
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, even the Justi Smollette situation. He basically paid
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: no penalty and is still claiming to this day, even
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: as he settles with the City of Chicago, that somehow
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: the city of Chicago was out to get him, I mean,
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: and that was as clear as could possibly be, and
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: there was no accountability for any of the news media
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: that believed Jessie Smollett's always absurd story. And this continues
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: to happen. The debunking never gets nearly the attention as
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: the initial allegation. And this is particularly the case in
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: the sports media, which is even worse than the news
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: media when it comes to race and issues of liberalism.
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: So there was no racist crowd reaction to Angel Rees.
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: Anyone with a brain always knew that was the case,
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: except for those people in the sports media who clearly
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: have no brain, or at the very least they put
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: that brain aside whenever race is at issue because they
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: don't want to lose their cushy gigs. Now, speaking of
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: Kitlyn Clark, there was another episode involving potentially real racism
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: and Caitlin Clark that the news media completely ignored because
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: a little bit like what happened, you know, for a
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: much much lower level than what is transpiring with regard
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: to South Africa. Whenever there's so called reverse racism potential
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: racism by a black person against the white person, the
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: news media and the sports media especially have to put
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: their hands over their eyes and their ears, and they
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: hear no evil, they see no evil, and they move on.
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: There was an allegation, and I'm always very hesitant when
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: it comes to lip reading, because I don't think lip
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: reading is a particularly exact science. But there was an
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: episode involving Britney Griner, who's probably the second most controversial
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: WNBA player behind Angel Reese.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 2: Britney Griner, of.
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: Course, was the player that got arrested in Russia. We traded,
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: you know, one of the worst trades in history. We
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: traded this horrendous character for her release, and now she's
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: back in the WNBA, and she was caught on the
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: sideline seemingly potentially making a racist reference to Caitlin Clark
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: or maybe to one of the referees. And because of
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: that ambiguity, I don't want to, you know, make too
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: big of a point about it.
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 2: Here's what I find to be significant.
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: Even though in some right wing social media circles people
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: have tried to make an issue of what Britney Grinder
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: appeared to say on the sidelines, there was no investigation
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: of that, and there was certainly no left wing media
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: coverage of this.
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 2: ESPN did nothing on what.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: Britney Grinder may or may not have said about Caitlyn Clark,
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: even though obviously it would have been in great ratings fodder.
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: They're not going to touch it because it doesn't fit
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: their overall narrative when it comes to race. But why
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: was there no investigation, Well, there was no investigation partially
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: because Caitlyn.
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: Clark's not going to make an issue out of it.
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: Angel Reece was thrilled for.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: The media to make an issue out of something that
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: didn't happen, and she put some gasoline on that fire
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: by things that she said and even a post that
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: she made on social media that some people interpreted as
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: being racist itself. She embraced the whole idea that she
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: was a racial victim. That's one of the greatest things
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: that can ever happen, especially to a black female celebrity
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: who's not very good at basketball. So Caitlyn Clark, who
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: is obviously terrified of this issue, absurdly apologized for her
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: white privilege last year and has done nothing to defend
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: her fan base against unfounded allegations of racis. I mean,
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: it's amazing to be that Caitlin Clark gets no accountability
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: whatsoever for not standing up for her own fan base none.
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: And look, I get she's trying to protect herself and
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: her image and her her marketing viability, and she also
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: doesn't want to be attacked by other people in the WNBA.
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: And she's already been physically roughed up on a regular basis.
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: She's actually out now with an injury for a couple
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: of weeks, and we'll see what it ends up happening
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: to the WNBA ratings without her where. You know, there's
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: one study that indicated last year she was responsible for
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: over twenty six percent of all the revenue of the
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: entire WNBA, which is unbelievable, especially to consider that she
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: didn't even get put on the Olympic basketball team last year,
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: which is just insane. But I do think that Caitlyn
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: Clark should be stepping up here, especially once her fan
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: base was exonerated. And yet her silence is deafening and
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: it's very frustrating, and it's to me, it's ruined a
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: lot of what was an awesome, you know, development to
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: have someone like Kitlyn Clark become a superstar.
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 2: I really like Caitlyn.
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: Clark, I want to like her, but the whole white
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: privileged thing and not standing up for your own fan
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: base and throwing them under the bus and allowing them
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: to be attacked unfairly has really turned me off towards
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: Caitlyn Clark. But she still obviously is great, and she's
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: incredibly popular, and you know, I don't I don't think
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: that any of this is going to dramatically impact her popularity,
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: although to me it should. We lived in a rational
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: world because she has some responsibility here. The culprits are
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: mostly the sports media and then Angel Reeves and maybe
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: Britney Griner, but Caitlyn Clark deserves some responsibility for this
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: as well, and she's not taking any and that's disappointing.
• 1:42:59
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