Latest / The Death Of Journalism / Episode One Hundred Twenty Four: Black Swan Hunting

Transcript

Episode One Hundred Twenty Four: Black Swan Hunting · The Death Of Journalism

• 0:00
  Welcome to episode number one hundred and twenty four of the Death of Journalism podcast.
• 0:05
  My name is John Zigler. I'm your host on today's show. There
• 0:08
  are some remarkable and very telling reactions to the absurd Donald Trump defamation judgment.
• 0:15
  The Trump cult is stupidly losing it over Taylor Swift and the Super Bowl,
• 0:21
  and there are some developments in the never ending PGA Tour Live golf saga.
• 0:27
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• 0:37
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• 1:07
  I want to begin this episode of the podcast with some important housekeeping notes.
• 1:14
  If you've been counting down to the plan end to this podcast and my plan
• 1:22
  to basically leave public life. We have four more episodes scheduled as of this
• 1:29
  taping right now, which means that our last episode would be the second one
• 1:36
  after the Super Bowl. It would drop on February fifteenth. So we have
• 1:41
  this episode plan and then four more after that. And as part of that
• 1:47
  plan, I would like to do one last edition of Ask John Anything,
• 1:53
  which has played an important role in my career over the years. Sometimes it
• 2:00
  actually got me fired once in Louisville, Kentucky, but it's also been a
• 2:04
  fun segment that I've done for a long long time in different variations of talk
• 2:09
  shows and podcasts and what have you. And since this is likely the last
• 2:15
  go around, I want to do it one last time. We've done this
• 2:17
  twice before on the Death of Journalism podcast and it's gone well. So I
• 2:23
  want to give you the opportunity, seemingly one last opportunity to ask me virtually
• 2:28
  any question you want, as long as it's reasonable and I find it at
• 2:31
  all interesting. I will share that on the podcast and promise a straightforward Nobs
• 2:38
  answer. Now, if you want to participate and ask John Anything, it's
• 2:43
  pretty easy to do. The simplest way would be to just email me your
• 2:47
  question. You can email me at john Z that's John Z, john Z
• 2:55
  at Mediaite the word media, and then dot com john z at mediait dot
• 3:05
  com. That's the most straightforward way to ask a question for Ask John Anything.
• 3:10
  You can also respond to a post that I will make on both Twitter
• 3:15
  and Facebook inviting questions for ask John Anything. And if you're already a follower
• 3:21
  of me on Twitter or on Facebook, you can direct message me and you
• 3:27
  can get your question across that way. All this becomes a little bit more
• 3:30
  arduous and complicated from my end in gathering the questions, but I try to
• 3:36
  be as accommodating as possible and generally people have good questions. So if you
• 3:43
  have a question, this is pretty much last call, and we will hopefully
• 3:47
  be doing this at least in part in the next two episodes of the podcast,
• 3:53
  episodes number one hundred and twenty five and number one hundred and twenty six.
• 3:55
  We'll do the news of the day to start off each of those episodes,
• 4:00
  and then probably the second half of each will be Ask John Anything.
• 4:04
  So, like I said, email me, direct message me, or respond
• 4:09
  to the posts that I will make on both Twitter and Facebook inviting people to
• 4:14
  participate in Ask John Anything Now. I have talked in the past about the
• 4:21
  fast possibility that there could be some sort of a black Swan event that might
• 4:28
  change the plan to both end the podcast as well as me leaving public life
• 4:33
  in the middle of February. Black Swan, for those that don't know,
• 4:38
  is a term that's been used for something that comes completely out of the blue.
• 4:42
  It's very dramatic, no one could foresee it, and it basically changes
• 4:46
  the world, kind of like a nine to eleven type event. And I've
• 4:49
  even theorized about potential black Swan events, most of them having to do with
• 4:56
  Donald Trump somehow leaving the stage, either miraculously not winning the Republican nomination for
• 5:01
  president, or him passing away or becoming debilitated or what have you. And
• 5:08
  you know, that's never been a likely scenario. I knew he wasn't going
• 5:11
  to lose the nomination, which is partially why I picked the date. The
• 5:15
  date of February fifteenth was was pretty strategically chosen because I figured, Okay,
• 5:21
  at that point, Trump will for sure have the nomination in hand, and
• 5:27
  the general election will be set, and you know, that'll be after the
• 5:30
  super Bowl, which I anticipated was going to be a big deal because I
• 5:33
  thought the whole Kansas City Chief Taylor Swift thing was going to happen, which
• 5:38
  in fact it has. We'll talk more about that later in this episode,
• 5:42
  because there's some interesting things going on on that front politically. But so I
• 5:46
  picked February fifteenth with a lot of thought involved, and none of those public
• 5:54
  black swan events have come close to happening. There's no sign that they would,
• 5:58
  although of course that's what a black swan is. It's generally not anticipated.
• 6:03
  However, there has been one element of this equation and one of the
• 6:09
  many reasons why I'm planning on ending the podcast and leaving public life. I
• 6:15
  mean, there's a lot of reasons. This is a complex equation. I've
• 6:18
  talked about this previously, but one I don't want to overemphasize it. But
• 6:24
  one of those reasons is this incredibly insane situation that I have been dealing with
• 6:33
  behind the scenes for two full years now, and for over the last year
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  plus about thirteen months I've been dealing with on almost a daily basis, and
• 6:47
  I've referenced this very vaguely before. I'm going to be more vague this time.
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  But it dealt with the situation that I had been told was happening,
• 6:57
  that was going to result in a dramatic change in my career situation, and
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  most intriguingly, was at least in theory, going to give me an opportunity
• 7:08
  to potentially do some real good not just in my career, but also in
• 7:15
  theory, in the news media and maybe even for the country. And this
• 7:19
  whole situation has been beyond bizarre, and everyone I have told about it I've
• 7:28
  only told a few people very close to me about it, agrees that it
• 7:31
  is off the charts. It's off the rails, it's a movie waiting to
• 7:38
  be made, and it has been incredibly draining on me physically, mentally,
• 7:46
  emotionally. It has taken an enormous toll on my marriage. In fact,
• 7:53
  I would say that one of the reasons why it is my plan to stop
• 7:58
  the podcast and leave public life is that I don't think that my current situation
• 8:05
  is sustainable given all the stress that I have been under, all the frustration
• 8:09
  that this causes, and I'm trying to relieve pressure in any way I possibly
• 8:15
  can, and this seems to be the only avenue that I can do that
• 8:20
  in, and I'm not because I don't get paid a lot of money to
• 8:24
  do this, and because our executive producer, Mike got Gavino, is losing
• 8:26
  money doing this, and there doesn't seem to be any path for there to
• 8:33
  be a fundamental change in where this podcast can go commercially. I mean,
• 8:39
  from a content standpoint, I think this podcast has been fantastic, if I
• 8:43
  don't say so myself. But from a commercial standpoint, you know, there
• 8:48
  are many struggles involved in this, and there's no real path to commercial success
• 8:54
  based upon where things currently are, and so all of those things have combined
• 9:01
  to make me think, okay, I need to end this, especially with
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  where we're heading in twenty twenty four, with this Trump Biden rematch and all
• 9:09
  of Trump's legal problems and everywhere in every way that the country is heading,
• 9:15
  and me banging my head against the wall. But this situation involving effectively the
• 9:20
  promise of a world changing job that has never come to fruition and about which
• 9:31
  I have had grave doubts for a long time. In fact, you know,
• 9:35
  when I announced a few months ago that I was planning on ending the
• 9:39
  podcast and leaving public life. It really came about in large part, not
• 9:43
  in totality, but in large part because I had come to the conclusion that,
• 9:48
  for whatever reason, this situation that I've been dealing with for two years
• 9:54
  was never going to actually happen. It wasn't gonna happen. I wasn't sure.
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  In fact, all I really wanted was closure. That's all I've really
• 10:07
  wanted on this whole situation for a long time, because it's been very clear
• 10:13
  to me that none of this makes any sense. I mean, no scenario
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  and what I've been dealing with, and I hate to be vague about it,
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  and I apologize, but I have no choice. But you know,
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  I'm someone who tries to figure everything out. I pride myself and being able
• 10:28
  to figure out circumstances that you know, very few people even try to do
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  so and aren't able to do so, like I did with the Penn State
• 10:37
  Joe Paternal Jerry Sandusky case. I mean, this is you know, I
• 10:39
  think I did the same thing with the jfk assassination. I've done the same
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  thing with other stories. This is this is who I am. It's in
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  my DNA and I've been dealing with this almost every day for two years,
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  and I honestly don't understand what's happened, what may have happened, what didn't
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  happen, And to this day, to be clear, I'm still being told
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  essentially the same story that this is going to happen and could come to fruition
• 11:09
  at any moment, and I have no logical, evidence based reason to believe
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  that I continue to go along with it, and basically have created two different
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  tracks in my mind. There's the track of, Okay, this isn't going
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  to happen. I need to change my life in a way where I can
• 11:30
  theoretically survive in the short run all these different pressures, while also somehow still
• 11:37
  being able to maintain the minute possibility that this is all going to happen exactly
• 11:45
  as I'm being told. The best analogy that I can come up with,
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  and I think it's really good. Although I don't want to overstate the significance
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  of the situation, although I have to say the significance of the situation could
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  not be more stark in career terms. I mean, we're basically talking about
• 12:03
  the most dramatic all or nothing situation that I could possibly even conceive of.
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  It's either world changing or you know, never, you're never gonna hear from
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  me again, and there's really nothing in between there, But it still doesn't
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  one hundred percent equate with this analogy. And the analogy is a lost or
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  kidnapped child that has been gone long enough to where you presume that the child
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  is dead, and you're told by somebody that you trust that no, I
• 12:39
  can get the child back, and here's how I'm gonna do it. And
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  you know, that's like every parent's worst possible nightmare, right because you have
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  to do everything you possibly can to keep any semblance of hope alive. If
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  you're being told even a story that doesn't make a lot of sense, you
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  hold on to any semblance of hope in that situation, and you you don't
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  do anything to potentially disrupt it. And that's kind of it's not more than
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  more than kind of, it's basically what psychologically, at least, I've been
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  dealing with for like I said, two years, and especially the last thirteen
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  months. And you know, gunn to my head, I don't think I'm
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  getting the child back, but I'm still being told that I am. And
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  that's in some ways that's the worst scenario for me, because there's no closure
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  there. My wife is convinced I'm never going to get closure on this,
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  and she's, you know, she's definitely in the camp that there's something that
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  doesn't make sense here. And other people, like I said, have been
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  in have had similar roller coaster views of this whole situation. And I mean,
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  I don't even have a scenario that I can confidence say is what I
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  think is actually happening. I've come up with dozens to try to make sense
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  of this circumstance, and every time I do so, something either happens or
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  doesn't happen that makes me think, Okay, well that doesn't make any sense
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  anymore. And and so you know, I obviously I would love for this
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  thing to miraculously happen, especially at the last moment, and change everything.
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  Again, I don't anticipate that happening. Psychologically, I'm preparing for that not
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  to be the case, even though I'm being told still, you know,
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  as of this week, that that will be the case, and it's been
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  you know, Psychologically, I'm amazed that I've been able to get through this
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  at least to this point, and still be functional and still have this podcast
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  be you know, as cogent as it apparently has been, and and and
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  and as good as it has been in determining what reality is, I mean,
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  because that's really the essence of what I do. I determine or project
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  what reality is. I make sense of what sometimes seems nonsensical. So for
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  me to not be able to do that in this private situation that has such
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  an impact on me, my family, and you know, maybe even things
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  much more important than that, is incredibly frustrating. And and so now I'm
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  trying to gird myself for Okay, as we end the podcast, and I,
• 15:39
  you know, decide that I'm just gonna leave public life, not tweet
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  or do interviews or anything like that anymore, just try to go away and
• 15:48
  and try to reduce the pain as much as possible. That would be easier
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  if I had some semblance of closure on this other situation. And I'm somehow
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  having to do that with my wife's counsel ringing in my ears that I'm not
• 16:07
  going to get closure, and I have acknowledged that that was likely going to
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  be the case for a long time, But you're still holding out some hope
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  you know, you know, you want to know, okay, what happened
• 16:19
  to the kid? You know, what happened to this situation where you told
• 16:23
  me that you were going to get my child back, and you know,
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  there were all sorts of incredibly detailed promises that were made and just for whatever
• 16:37
  reason, have not yet happened and may never happen. So I realize,
• 16:41
  and I hate that that is incredibly cryptic. I would like nothing better than
• 16:48
  to be able to tell this whole crazy story. I don't think that's going
• 16:53
  to be able to happen, you know, by the end of the podcast.
• 16:56
  I haven't spoken to our executive from my gay Gavino about this yet,
• 17:00
  but maybe we can, you know, potentially do one last episode sometime down
• 17:06
  the road. If I ever figure out what the heck actually did happen here,
• 17:11
  Who knows, but you know, I just want at least one provide
• 17:17
  some more context for why the plan is to end the podcast to what I've
• 17:22
  been going through, because it absolutely hasn't had a massive impact on me personally,
• 17:30
  and I'm sure indirectly on the content of this podcast and certainly on on
• 17:36
  the plan to end the podcast. And also, you know, I wanted
• 17:41
  to give some semblance of transparency, although I'm not able to provide very much
• 17:48
  on you know, the possibility. You know, I don't want to create
• 17:51
  a Brett Farm situation here where all of a sudden I go, yeah,
• 17:56
  what, you know, I was just kidding about that. I'm not going
• 17:59
  away and here's the new deal. I mean, that would actually be a
• 18:03
  great thing, I guess at this point to happen, but I don't want
• 18:06
  to create a circumstance where there is at least the semblance of the possibility of
• 18:11
  a black swan, especially when it's coming so close to the end date for
• 18:17
  the podcast. So I said a lot there, but I'm not sure I
• 18:19
  really provided much information except I guess I'm asking for your understanding and for you
• 18:27
  to stay tuned. And I'm not sure one hundred percent where this is all
• 18:33
  headed. But I'm planning both, you know, psychologically, and it's from
• 18:40
  a logistical standpoint to end the podcast with the last episode dropping on February fifteenth,
• 18:47
  and at that point it would be my great desire and plan to just
• 18:49
  drop out a public life. There is, however, still hanging over my
• 18:55
  head the possibility that that may not be the case. But it's not because
• 19:00
  of this being some sort of bizarre grand plan to get attention or to breathe
• 19:07
  life into the podcast by getting people to think that we're ending it. That's
• 19:11
  not what's happening. It couldn't be further from the truth. But that's the
• 19:15
  current situation. There Now one other housekeeping note I have mentioned, and did
• 19:22
  so in the last episode of the podcast, that it had been my plan
• 19:26
  before I end the podcast to tell the full story of my absolutely amazing defamation
• 19:33
  trial from when I was a radio talk show host in Louisville, Kentucky.
• 19:38
  This happened about twenty years ago. And other than the situation I'm currently enduring
• 19:45
  that I can't tell you about, my defamation trial story is probably my most
• 19:52
  remarkable tale of my life. And there's a lot of competition there, because
• 19:56
  I've had some pretty amazing stories in my life in my career, but I
• 20:00
  would say in its totality, that's probably number one, at least of those
• 20:07
  that I can talk about publicly. And I'm I said in the last episode
• 20:12
  of the podcast, I thought, Okay, you know, we now have
• 20:15
  Donald Trump's defamation case. This is the perfect opportunity and situation for me to
• 20:22
  tell the full length version of this story. And I referenced in the last
• 20:26
  episode that there's basically three different versions of the story. I think, I
• 20:30
  said three minute version, thirty minute version, and three hour version, and
• 20:34
  the three hour version ought to be a movie. And I sincerely mean that,
• 20:38
  I mean regardless of me, you know, I think that what happened
• 20:44
  in this situation would be a hell of a movie, especially you know,
• 20:48
  it will never be because you need a famous person involved, and I'm not
• 20:52
  a famous person, especially in this day and age. But from a movie
• 20:56
  perspective, it's got everything you could possibly And in the last episode, I
• 21:02
  told you what I described as the three minute version. It was probably closer
• 21:06
  to the five minute version of this story. And I said that in the
• 21:10
  next episode I might do the medium version of the story. And I was
• 21:17
  alerted to the fact that I've already done this about six or so years ago,
• 21:25
  in late twenty seventeen, just over six years ago. There is a
• 21:30
  Twitter follower mine named Mary who had basically said to me last night, Hey,
• 21:36
  Zig, you've already told the medium version of this story, and you
• 21:41
  did so in a podcast that you used to do under the title of free
• 21:48
  speech Broadcasting. I guess this was still in the aftermath of the old John
• 21:52
  and Leah radio show, which we disbanded for a number of reasons after Trump
• 22:00
  won the presidency in twenty sixteen, and so I continued to post as a
• 22:04
  podcast. I guess I called it the John Zigler Show or the World according
• 22:11
  to Zig. I guess that's probably what it was called, World according to
• 22:14
  Zig And I was not even aware that those episodes were still readily available on
• 22:21
  iTunes, but apparently they are, because Mary sent that to me via Twitter
• 22:27
  and I posted it. And what I did was I listened to it,
• 22:33
  and I was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe. I knew
• 22:37
  I had talked about the Louisville defamation trial, but I absolutely did not remember
• 22:45
  that I had basically done, almost verbatim, the same version of the story
• 22:51
  that I had planned on doing for Death of Journalism. And this was a
• 22:56
  bit disturbing from the standpoint of am I really getting this old and I'm now
• 23:00
  forgetting that I had done this Again, I remembered that I had talked about
• 23:04
  it, I didn't think I had done it as extensively as I had for
• 23:11
  World, according to Zig but I absolutely did because when I listened to it
• 23:17
  last night with you know, I'd say about ninety five percent of it was
• 23:22
  exactly what I planned on doing in this podcast. So there's no real need
• 23:27
  to create a record because the record already exists and it's easily and readily available.
• 23:33
  So if you're interested in that, check out on iTunes again, it's
• 23:41
  under Free Speech Broadcasting World according to Zig or John and Leah Show. It's
• 23:45
  from December tenth of twenty seventeen. And what I'll do is that I will
• 23:52
  post a direct link to that episode in the thread where I post this episode
• 23:57
  on both Twitter and Facebook. So if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook,
• 24:02
  you'll easily be able to find this episode that I did back in late
• 24:07
  twenty seventeen where I pretty much give the radio extended radio podcast version of my
• 24:15
  Louisville defamation lawsuit story where against all odds, I won. Unlike Donald Trump,
• 24:23
  I won the case against me for defamation, and that was because I
• 24:29
  did nothing remotely illegal. What I said was true, it was complimentary.
• 24:33
  It became a media firestorm. The judge disregarded all the law, all logic,
• 24:40
  and somehow against what our jury consultants were claiming was going to happen.
• 24:45
  They said we were going to lose. We ended up winning anyway, And
• 24:47
  I'm convinced that at the exact same circumstances occurred today, we would lose because
• 24:52
  the world has changed, the media has changed, jurors have changed, our
• 24:57
  value in free speed of free speed, each has definitely changed. And so
• 25:03
  I think it's particularly interesting in light of what's happened with Donald Trump, and
• 25:07
  I urge you to take a listen to that, because again, it's a
• 25:10
  great story, and I think it does tell you a lot about our legal
• 25:15
  system, our media, free speech, and how I knew twenty years ago
• 25:19
  that this was all hanging by a thread and that today it would turn out
• 25:26
  very differently. And I think that's part of what happened with Trump in his
• 25:30
  case with the allegation of defamation against E. G. And Carroll, And
• 25:37
  obviously, you know, that's the whole reason why I even wanted to bring
• 25:41
  up my defamation trial because of the context that provided to Trump's situation. And
• 25:48
  I talked a lot in the last episode about why I thought that the judgment
• 25:52
  against Trump was completely farcical, a total joke one hundred percent wrong, and
• 26:00
  most conservative commentators, almost every conservative commentator has agreed with me. I think
• 26:07
  I may have a little bit more credibility here because of the fact one I
• 26:10
  hate Trump and two because I've gone through a very similar situation myself. But
• 26:15
  I'm also a big believer. I've said this many times before that you often
• 26:21
  really find out about the truth of a situation after it is supposedly over.
• 26:30
  And what I mean by that is, you know, after somebody gets fired,
• 26:34
  after a divorce, after the verdict in a criminal trial or a civil
• 26:41
  trial, after an election, that's when the truth seems to pour out.
• 26:49
  And boy did that happen in space. Regarding the accuser of Donald Trump,
• 26:56
  e g And Carroll, and I have been very clear that I do not
• 27:02
  find this person, Egene Carol to be credible. I don't find her to
• 27:07
  be credible one because her story does not stand up. There's no year for
• 27:11
  it. It appears to be a duplicate story of a TV episode of Law
• 27:18
  and Order. She has corroborating witnesses, but of what she said to them.
• 27:26
  But okay, why don't we know what year this happened? And she's
• 27:30
  highly political very liberal, very anti Trump. She's made allegations I didn't mention
• 27:37
  this in the last episode. She's made allegations of a similar nature against numerous
• 27:44
  men, some of whom were high profile. I believe at least six other
• 27:48
  men other than Trump. She's made statements about sex on social media and in
• 27:53
  an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN that are frankly just off the rail bizarre,
• 28:00
  especially for an alleged abuse victim. She referenced rape being sexy to Anderson
• 28:07
  Cooper made him so uncomfortable he made he went almost immediately to a commercial.
• 28:12
  And so I don't believe her story is credible. I don't find her to
• 28:17
  be credible. Trump absolutely screwed up in the deposition in a colossal way,
• 28:22
  which I said at the time was probably why he lost the initial jury verdict,
• 28:30
  because he misidentified her in a photograph and said that she Egene Carroll's not
• 28:36
  his type. And then he's never met her, and here's a picture of
• 28:40
  them meeting and she's beaming almost right in his face, and she identifies her
• 28:45
  as his second wife, Marla Maples, even though his first wife was in
• 28:48
  the photograph with him. I mean, just a colossal screw up by Trump.
• 28:56
  I don't think that the nature of his celebrity is being given nearly enough
• 29:00
  credit by the media or by that jury, because this is a guy who
• 29:06
  met thousands of people every day in the nineteen nineties or whenever this was.
• 29:11
  This might have been an early earlier than that when the photograph was taken,
• 29:15
  but during this time period, he's a massive celebrity. Everyone meeting him,
• 29:19
  it's a very memorable moment for them, but it's not for him, especially
• 29:23
  if he doesn't think that you're important enough to remember. And so the idea
• 29:27
  that he didn't remember meeting her is irrelevant. And you know, therefore the
• 29:33
  picture the only frankly, the most relevant part of the picture to me until
• 29:37
  Trump screwed up the deposition is that she, Egene Carroll, is clearly beaming.
• 29:44
  I mean, she's thrilled to meet Donald Trump. Now this is apparently
• 29:48
  before the alleged assault. But the reality is Trump screwed up that deposition.
• 29:55
  But there's no real evidence of an actual sexual assault, and a civil trial
• 30:02
  verdict, as they said in the last episode, which is only a preponderance
• 30:04
  of the evidence without a unanimous jury verdict is in no way, shape or
• 30:10
  form, especially for a divisive defendant like Donald Trump. Is not an indication
• 30:15
  that the jury has proven or that it has been proven that Donald Trump sexually
• 30:22
  assaulted Eging Carroll and without the sexual assault. And I may not have emphasized
• 30:27
  this quite enough in the last episode. If there's no sexual assault, if
• 30:33
  that didn't happen, there can't be defamation because because it's perfectly fine and more
• 30:40
  than appropriate for Trump to call Eging Carroll a liar if there was no sexual
• 30:47
  assault. Now I don't know whether or not they ever had a sexual encounter.
• 30:49
  I think there's all sorts of different possibilities here, including the idea that
• 30:53
  Trump was so used to doing this in his world and thought it was consensual
• 30:57
  that he didn't even remember it. Who the hell knows. But the idea
• 31:02
  that this was somehow defamation because a presidential candidate is defending himself against what he
• 31:07
  believes to be a false allegation of sex abuse is completely ridiculous and a grave
• 31:14
  threat to the First Amendment. Well back to eg and Carroll and finding out
• 31:18
  the real truth after something is over, and it's not. To people who
• 31:25
  followed this, it is not a surprise that she is a bit of a
• 31:29
  loon, and that might be putting it mildly, that she may have a
• 31:32
  screw loose, but boy did she reveal herself in every possible way in an
• 31:38
  interview that she did with not one but two lawyers. So right off the
• 31:45
  bat, By the way, it's important to point out in this clip I'm
• 31:48
  about to play, which you may already be familiar with because it's gone viral
• 31:51
  on the right because it's on MSNBC and Rachel Maddow's show, Rachel Maddow,
• 31:56
  who's extremely liberal, exceedingly anti che Trump. Her entire career now is based
• 32:01
  upon being anti Trump. She happens to be a lesbian. And and so
• 32:07
  when you have not one but two lawyers sitting next to you, that is
• 32:13
  a short tell tell sign. The lawyers do not trust what you are going
• 32:19
  to say. They do not think that you are trustworthy. They are terrified.
• 32:25
  I mean two lawyers. There's no need for two lawyers to be on
• 32:30
  the set with Egene Carroll. There's really not even need for one, although
• 32:35
  I guess you know there would be questions about the legalities of the situation that
• 32:39
  she wouldn't be qualified to answer. But she had a lawyer on her left
• 32:45
  and a lawyer on her right, and Rachel Maddow this is so telling.
• 32:49
  I mean, I'm not sure that you could create a situation that, in
• 32:54
  an incredibly short period of time, less than a minute, exposed how lacking
• 33:00
  incredibility the entire case against Donald Trump was in every possible way. Then what
• 33:07
  I'm about to play for you, because here Rachel Maddow is trying clearly to
• 33:17
  protect eg and Carol from allegations that she's profiting from this story to the tune
• 33:25
  of eighty three point three million dollars. Who knows how much she'll of that
• 33:30
  she'll actually ever get, but that's the total judgment that she is owed by
• 33:36
  Donald Trump, and Madow is essentially tossing her a softball. The softball is
• 33:44
  tell us what you're gonna do for women and women's rights and women equality and
• 33:51
  supporting women with all this money you're gonna get. In other words, hey,
• 33:57
  eging Carroll, can can we pretend and that this was all about the
• 34:00
  truth and a principle and that you're gonna use this money for good instead of
• 34:07
  profiting from it? Because there might be some people out there that might think
• 34:12
  that you were motivated. She doesn't say this, but I mean, this
• 34:14
  is the implication. There might be some people out there that think you might
• 34:17
  have been motivated to either make up or exaggerate a story simply for financial gain.
• 34:25
  So let's put that to bed and let me toss you a massive beach
• 34:31
  ball softball in order to do that. And Egen Carol could not possibly have
• 34:39
  screwed this up if she had tried more dramatically. This is unbelievable. This
• 34:47
  is unbelievable. I don't even really want to set it up too much because
• 34:52
  if you haven't heard it, it'll spoil it. But basically, she becomes
• 34:58
  the worst nightmare, the worst nightmare for Matdow and her lawyers, to the
• 35:04
  extent that one of the lawyers meekly and pathetically tries to claim that Ejen Carol
• 35:10
  is joking when she responds to Madow's seemingly innocent querry about what she's gonna do
• 35:19
  for women with a tirade about how she's gonna buy Rachel Maddow a penthouse and
• 35:28
  they're all going to go shopping together and joyously spend Donald Trump's money. And
• 35:34
  here's what that sounded like. On MSNBC not long after the jury verdict had
• 35:40
  come in. You've talked about using some of Trump's money that you're about to
• 35:45
  get to help shore up women's rights. Do you know what that might be,
• 35:51
  what that might look like? Yes, tell me I had such such
• 35:57
  great ideas for all the good I'm going to do with this money. First
• 36:00
  thing, Rachel, you and I go shopping to get completely new wardrobes,
• 36:07
  new shoes, motorcycle for crawling, new fishing rod for Robbie. Rachel,
• 36:12
  what do you want? Penhouse? Rachel, Penhouse? And France? You
• 36:17
  want France? You want to go fishing in France? No, all right,
• 36:22
  that's a joke. Although if me fishing in France could do something for
• 36:30
  women's rights, I would take the hints, you know, I would obviously
• 36:34
  take one for the team. All right, Let me let me be as
• 36:38
  if, as if you need persuasion in that regard. Let me let me
• 36:42
  finish with a final question. I mean, there were almost no words really
• 36:46
  to describe how unbelievable that is. And if we had a news media in
• 36:52
  this country, a mainstream news media in this country that was remotely fair,
• 36:57
  every single American would see that. And by the way every media member who
• 37:04
  has vouched for Egene Carroll would be forced to defend that, to at least
• 37:09
  respond to that, to be held accountable for that. This is the person
• 37:14
  that they have held up as a heroin and you know, the truth teller,
• 37:20
  the person who's getting justice against Donald Trump. And after the verdict it
• 37:27
  all comes out, the quiet part gets said out loud. One, this
• 37:31
  person is nuts. Two, she's clearly overjoyed by all of this having happened.
• 37:39
  The idea that there is any damage to her reputation or damage to her
• 37:45
  life, which is a key component, a hugely important element of the whole
• 37:52
  defamation claim and the basis of the eighty three point three million dollars just got
• 37:58
  proven to be bull crap. There's no damage here. She's being treated like
• 38:02
  a hero by MSNBC, every television non Fox News network once or on,
• 38:08
  so there's no damage to her reputation. In fact, her reputation in left
• 38:14
  wing circles is exponentially greater than it ever was before this. Her financial situation
• 38:20
  is exponentially greater than it ever was before this. She clearly has no fear
• 38:24
  of sparking death threats, which was part of her team's argument in favor of
• 38:30
  a massive judgment because Trump fans are so pissed that her life is at risk.
• 38:37
  Now, really, if you're really that concerned about getting death threats,
• 38:40
  you're gonna go on MSNBC and brag about how you're gonna buy Rachel Maddow a
• 38:47
  penthouse with Donald Trump's money. You don't think that's gonna enrage some people?
• 38:53
  Mean it enraged me, And I can't stand Donald Trump's unbelievable. I'm almost
• 39:02
  I mean, at every level, at every level, this clip destroys her
• 39:08
  entire narrative. She doesn't sound like a sex abuse victim. She's thrilled to
• 39:14
  be there. There's no damage to her reputation, there's no damage to her
• 39:17
  life, and the motivation of money could not be more clear cut. And
• 39:28
  you know this rarely happens where we see an interview like this, especially with
• 39:32
  somebody who's a bit of a nut job, on live national television after they
• 39:37
  have just gotten a massive judgment, massive eighty three point three million dollars,
• 39:44
  a massive judgment in a civil trial. I am convinced that if every single
• 39:51
  one of the thirty six men that got paid well over one hundred million dollars
• 39:57
  in the Penn State Joe Paterno Jerry Sandusky case. Had been interviewed immediately after
• 40:01
  getting the money, we would have seen incredibly similar reactions, remark, only
• 40:08
  they would have been talking about buying sports cars and beach houses, and they
• 40:14
  would have been just as thrilled as Eging Carroll, which further makes me question,
• 40:20
  not just question, but I'm basically convinced Eging Carroll is not telling the
• 40:23
  truth here. Is it possible they had some sort of encounter. Yeah,
• 40:28
  I guess that's possible. But I am very comfortable saying Eging Carroll was not
• 40:32
  the victim of sex abuse by Donald Trump. Do I know that with one
• 40:37
  hundred percent certitude? No, because nobody possibly could. But the idea that
• 40:42
  this somehow met the threshold even in a civil case with only a preponderance of
• 40:47
  the evidence needed to convince a non unanimous jury is just insane. And that's
• 40:54
  just on the abuse part. The defamation part is even more absurd and ridiculous
• 41:01
  because of the definition of defamation among public figures in a country that allegedly still
• 41:07
  has the First Amendment and free speech rights, we don't. We don't and
• 41:13
  I realize most people don't want to, at least not Trump fans don't want
• 41:17
  to defend Donald Trump. I think my record is pretty damn clear. I
• 41:21
  don't care you know who I defend. I'm about defending what's right, what's
• 41:24
  wrong, what's best for the country, and you know, and what makes
• 41:29
  the most sense based upon the system as it's supposed to work. And this
• 41:34
  has created some very dangerous precedents, not just in the realm of free speech,
• 41:38
  by the way, but also the whole idea that it's perfectly fine and
• 41:44
  even wonderful to steal other people's property under government sanction simply because you don't like
• 41:52
  them, or because they're so unpopular with that jury pool that you're able and
• 41:57
  with the media that you're able to get away with it. I think subconsciously
• 42:01
  that has a major impact. I mean, we kind of I don't want
• 42:06
  to get sidetracked here, but you know, we've seen this in pro sports
• 42:09
  now where a pro sports owner, like what happened with the LA Clippers and
• 42:15
  the Cincinnati Reds and some others where an owner Washington Redskins, the owner becomes
• 42:22
  so unpopular that they effectively have their property taken away from them. Now in
• 42:28
  those cases they got reimbursed, But it's the basic same concept that I think,
• 42:34
  in a weird way, all of our property rights are being subconsciously eroded
• 42:39
  by this kind of garbage. But that's just a side note to the larger
• 42:44
  issue here regarding Donald Trump, the impact on the presidential campaign, and the
• 42:49
  precedents that it may set with regard to free speech throughout society. I mean,
• 42:55
  a presidential candidate eighty three point three million dollars for defamation in a situation
• 43:02
  where there's no evidence or even a logical story, remotely credible story that they
• 43:08
  might have abused this woman in a year that's unknown, over almost thirty years
• 43:14
  ago. Eighty three point three million dollars, and the media largely cheers,
• 43:20
  and the vast majority of the public doesn't even know the basics of the case
• 43:23
  and won't even see this crazy clip that I just played for you because they
• 43:30
  don't. They don't want you to know the real egen Carol. It's very
• 43:34
  uncomfortable for the media, and Rachel Maddow in that clip was clearly uncomfortable.
• 43:38
  If you, if you get a chance watch the video, you could probably
• 43:42
  tell from the audio that she was very uncomfortable, but the video makes it
• 43:45
  even more clear how much she real even she realizes, oh crap, this
• 43:51
  is really gonna look bad. At least that was my interpretation of what happened
• 43:54
  there. And then there's the reaction to this verdict by Nicki Haley, which
• 44:02
  I am completely baffled by. You. I have never thought that Nicky Haley
• 44:07
  was particularly smart. I don't think she's dumb, and I don't love her.
• 44:13
  I don't hate her. I think she's a PC Republican. I have
• 44:15
  said numerous times and quite emphatically, that I think if Donald Trump wants to
• 44:21
  win the general election, he should choose Nicky Haley as his vice presidential nominee.
• 44:25
  But I don't think that's going to happen, and I think the chances
• 44:29
  of that happening were further diminished with regard to Haley's reaction to this civil verdict
• 44:37
  against Donald Trump. She basically said that she believes the jury, and she
• 44:43
  went on Fox News Channel after having said she believes the jury on I think
• 44:47
  it was faced the nation over the weekend. She then went on Fox News
• 44:52
  Channel and kind of faced the music from Fox Channel anchors because you know this
• 44:58
  is a situation where the majority of Fox News channel viewers are not going to
• 45:02
  agree with her in essentially supporting the jury verdict against Donald Trump, and she
• 45:09
  reiterated this very strange naive might even been a contrived idea that somehow jurys never
• 45:21
  get it wrong, that somehow, inherently a jury verdict I get a jury
• 45:25
  verdict should be respected, although I don't think a civil trial jury in New
• 45:31
  York, when the defendant is Donald frickin' Trump, is inherently deserving of respect
• 45:37
  at all, because of the fact you only need a preponderance of the evidence,
• 45:42
  it doesn't need to be a unanimous verdict, and because of the political
• 45:46
  nature of the case in which she acknowledges and the clip I'm about to play
• 45:52
  for you, so I don't even understand does she not unders does she not
• 45:55
  understand the difference between a criminal case and a civil case. The criminal case,
• 46:01
  I think that there's at least some logic to the idea of you must
• 46:07
  respect the jury's decision, although I still think, especially given the political nature
• 46:13
  and the toxic nature of Donald Trump, you ought to then go, Okay,
• 46:16
  well, what was the evidence, what was the nature of the evidence
• 46:20
  against him. I mean, we do have the O. J. Simpson
• 46:22
  case. Does Nicki Haley think that OJ Simpson is innocent? I would have
• 46:25
  loved for that to be the follow up, and that was a criminal trial.
• 46:30
  I mean, what about the civil case regarding OJ Simpson? I mean,
• 46:34
  and I always use OJ mainly because it's a case that people of a
• 46:37
  certain age are intimately familiar with and it's so dramatic. But so here's Nicky
• 46:44
  Haley going on Fox News Channel making what I think is one a statement that's
• 46:51
  not based in reality, but also I don't even understand what the political motivation
• 46:57
  or the strategic gameplay is regarding her making this stance on this incredibly dubious civil
• 47:06
  trial verdict against Donald Trump. And here's what that sounded like, Governor,
• 47:09
  on the subject of your opponent. We should point out, just four weeks
• 47:12
  now until that all important South Carolina primary, you're taking some new fire from
• 47:16
  Donald Trump's campaign and supporters for what you said about the E. G.
• 47:21
  And Carrol case on Meet the Press yesterday. Of course, the president was
• 47:23
  found liable in that case. A jurry awarded her eighty three point three million
• 47:29
  dollars. Here's what you said when you were asked about it. I absolutely
• 47:32
  trust the jury, and I think that they made their decision based on the
• 47:36
  evidence. So The New York Times wrote an article around that and which had
• 47:40
  said, in part quote, four weeks before what could be the decisive Republican
• 47:44
  primary in South Carolina, Miss Haley is trying to navigate an extremely narrow and
• 47:49
  treacherous path, finding a way to diminish mister Trump's hold on her party's electric
• 47:52
  without decisively turning conservative voters against her the way they had destroyed other Trump critics.
• 48:00
  How do you navigate that path? Gonment? It cracks me up that
• 48:02
  people trying to overanalyze. I just tell the truth as I see it.
• 48:07
  I think there have been politics played with prosecutors that have brought on some of
• 48:12
  these cases. I think there's been politics played even with the judges. But
• 48:15
  I do think American juries still get it right. They listen to the evidence,
• 48:20
  They make the decision based on the evidence, and I do still trust
• 48:23
  any American that sits on a jury. I trust that they're making the right
• 48:27
  decision. I just don't get it. I do not understand what she's trying
• 48:31
  to accomplish there. She gains nothing from that, and she further alienates the
• 48:39
  vast majority of the Republican Party. I haven't seen any pulling data on this
• 48:45
  yet, but I mean, if I'm as vehemently in Trump's corner on this
• 48:51
  verdict as I have, not that I'm a representative focus group for the Republican
• 48:57
  Party in general, unfortunately, But if I'm feeling this way and people that
• 49:01
  I know are feeling similarly, I gotta believe that at least ninety percent of
• 49:09
  Republican base voters are mostly of not totally on Trump's side here, and so
• 49:16
  I don't know who she's appealing to. She already has the never Trump anti
• 49:22
  Trump vote, which I have said consistently is unfortunately twenty percent of the Republican
• 49:28
  Party. And guess what in all of the post New Hampshire polls that have
• 49:32
  been done nationally, guess how it breaks down, Folks, is going to
• 49:36
  shock you. Stop me if you've heard this before, but it's basically eighty
• 49:40
  twenty. Just as I told you, I said, this is all going
• 49:44
  to break down forty forty twenty, forty Trump cult members, forty Trump like
• 49:50
  members, twenty never Trump, anti Trump Republicans. And so if you have
• 49:55
  a Trump Haley head to head matchup nationally. It might differ state to state,
• 50:01
  but nationally it's going to be eighty twenty and that's essentially what all the
• 50:06
  polls are showing. It might end up being seventy thirty or sixty eight to
• 50:12
  thirty two, something like that in South Carolina, which is Nicky Haley's home
• 50:16
  state, in the next major primary, which isn't for several weeks. But
• 50:21
  there's no chance Haley's going to win. And I don't see her stance on
• 50:24
  this helping her at all. I mean, so to me, if you're
• 50:29
  going to be wrong, at least do something that is strategically beneficial for your
• 50:32
  presidential campaign. And not only is it not beneficial for your presidential campaign,
• 50:38
  I think it probably ends any realistic hope with Trump. You never know for
• 50:43
  sure, but in a logical world, it ends any realistic hope that Nicki
• 50:46
  Haley is going to be the vice presidential nominee. Trump's not going to put
• 50:52
  on the ticket. Somebody who has, even from just an ego standpoint,
• 50:58
  somebody who has backed the jury verdict that he I'm sure abhors to an epic
• 51:06
  proportion that accuses him of sexual assault and defamation to the tune of eighty three
• 51:12
  point three million dollars. I just I cannot see, even in this bizarre
• 51:15
  world in which we live, a situation where that happens and that has consequences,
• 51:22
  even if you're a Trump fan, I think that has consequences because I
• 51:25
  don't see the person that could be the vice presidential nominee that brings as much
• 51:32
  to the table with as little risk as Nikki Haley would. I mean,
• 51:37
  Haley is qualified for the job, vetted for the job, been you an
• 51:42
  ambassador, been a governor. It clearly appeals to suburban white women that are
• 51:47
  a key voting demographic. Did very well with independent and Democratic voters in New
• 51:53
  Hampshire, you know, compliments Trump demographically and nearly every way. Even Steve
• 52:00
  Cortes acknowledged that in our interview a couple episodes ago. And so she's the
• 52:07
  best option if your goal is to win, and Trump has said we lose
• 52:10
  the country if he doesn't win, So you would think he's going to do
• 52:14
  everything he possibly can to win, right, well, except, you know,
• 52:17
  do something that bruises his ego by having Nikki Haley be the vice presidential
• 52:22
  nominee. So I had always thought at the beginning of this process that Haley
• 52:28
  was gunning for the vice presidential position. That made the most sense. If
• 52:34
  that really is her goal, she's not gone about it the right way,
• 52:38
  because I don't think there's much chance of any of that happening now. Who
• 52:44
  it's going to be, I don't know, but none of the names that
• 52:45
  have come up so far in any way, shape or form, moved the
• 52:50
  needle when it comes to helping Donald Trump actually beat Joe Biden. And there's
• 52:57
  some interesting things going on with regard to the polling between Trump and Biden.
• 53:00
  And you might be thinking, zig, do we really need to be thinking
• 53:04
  about polling. We just got through essentially the Republican primary process. By the
• 53:08
  way, the polls ended up being pretty darn good in both Iowa and in
• 53:14
  New Hampshire. But you know, here we are a good eight nine months
• 53:19
  away before people start voting in the general election. I actually think this is
• 53:23
  a very critical period of time regarding the polling in the general election. And
• 53:30
  let me tell you why. Number One, I think that once people now
• 53:36
  know for sure or seemingly for sure, that it's going to be Trump versus
• 53:40
  Biden, their opinions about who they prefer, Trump versus Biden are more valid
• 53:50
  than they were just a few weeks ago. I do think there's something to
• 53:53
  be said between theoretical situations and the reality of a situation. It's not dramatic,
• 54:05
  it's subtle, and it may only impact a small number of voters.
• 54:08
  But I think in theory, if you ask, you know, if you're
• 54:13
  a polster, and you ask potential voters, Okay, who do you like
• 54:16
  Trump versus Biden, and they're still in their head the idea that it might
• 54:21
  not really be Trump versus Biden, I think that impacts the results a little
• 54:27
  bit. But now it's pretty much for real it's Trump versus Biden, and
• 54:34
  I think that that has the potential to cause the results of these polls to
• 54:39
  shift a bit. And I think we started to see and we're seeing we're
• 54:45
  kind of seeing two different things now in the polling, and it's probably too
• 54:50
  soon to come to any conclusions, especially since what I'm seeing are two seemingly
• 54:57
  very different things, And so I'm going to need some more time, and
• 55:00
  unfortunately we may not have enough time with regard to the duration of the podcast
• 55:05
  before I get enough data to make a really definitive analysis of this situation.
• 55:10
  But I'm seeing two seemingly different things happening right now in the polling data.
• 55:16
  In this period of time, since Trump won Iowa and was clearly going to
• 55:22
  be the nominee, and now that the primaries have started and there's no sign
• 55:25
  that Biden's dropping out and no one's running against him, people are now finally
• 55:30
  accepting what I've been telling you for many months was always going to be the
• 55:34
  case that it's going to be Trump versus Biden. And the first thing I'm
• 55:38
  seeing is that there are two polls, at least two where all of a
• 55:44
  sudden, Biden's approval rating is improving rather dramatically. Now, approval rating polls
• 55:53
  tend to be rather sporadic, and like, for instance, you know Ras
• 55:58
  Mussin Reports, which is tradition been a very pro Trump outlet, they're always
• 56:04
  all over the map when it comes to Biden's approval rating, and sometimes they
• 56:07
  actually have Biden's approval rating the best of any of the other polls, which
• 56:12
  is strange. But I'm not referring to Ras Muscin here. There were two
• 56:16
  poles out, especially among independent voters, where within just the last couple of
• 56:22
  months, Trump's not Trump. Biden's approval has dramatically, I'm talking about it,
• 56:29
  like fifteen eighteen points among independent voters increased. His approval has increased fifteen
• 56:35
  to eighteen points among independent voters in just the last couple of months, and
• 56:40
  just after now it's been clear that it's going to be Trump versus Biden.
• 56:45
  Now is that statistical noise? Is that a fluke? Is that a bad
• 56:51
  sample? Could it be? I mean, there's some reasons that it could
• 56:55
  have happened. For instance, you know, in January, people are getting
• 56:59
  their financial statements for what happened in twenty twenty three and specifically the last quarter
• 57:04
  of twenty twenty three. And I'm telling you there's going to be a lot
• 57:07
  of people pretty happy if they have money in the stock market, because the
• 57:10
  stock market has been gangbusters over the last several months, and you know,
• 57:16
  is now at an all time high, and it looks like the economy,
• 57:20
  at least on some levels, maybe not at the lower levels, but at
• 57:22
  the higher levels, is certainly sustaining itself, isn't headed for recession. So
• 57:29
  there's at least some logic to a certain percentage of the population. It only
• 57:32
  takes a few percentage points for people to start changing their perceptions about things.
• 57:37
  And then the reality hits that, oh, it's going to be Trump,
• 57:42
  and you start to be reminded, like with things like the Egen Carrol defamation
• 57:46
  result in all these other legal situations, you start to remember all the negative
• 57:52
  things about a Trump candidacy or presidency, and maybe if you're in the end
• 58:00
  decided group or the independent group, you go, you know what, I'm
• 58:02
  gonna bite the bullet. I'm gonna just put up with this old man for
• 58:06
  another term and see what happens, because the alternative is just too dangerous.
• 58:10
  I don't have an answer. I'm just telling you there's the beginnings of if
• 58:16
  you're in the Trump campaign, a very troubling development, which is, if
• 58:22
  I see another one or two polls that are consistent with this idea that for
• 58:28
  some reason Biden's horrendous approval ratings are starting to recover. Whether it's who knows
• 58:36
  why, but it could be because of this whole idea that we're now certain
• 58:39
  it's going to be Trump versus Biden. And maybe there were some independent,
• 58:44
  liberal leaning folks who had hopes that it wouldn't be Biden, and now they're
• 58:47
  stuck with him, so they feel like, Okay, I got to be
• 58:51
  on team Biden because the alternative is now for sure Trump. All these things
• 58:54
  are possible. Again, we don't have enough data to make any definitive conclusions,
• 59:00
  but we're a couple of poles away from this being a real thing,
• 59:05
  and you know, in the next couple of weeks I'm certainly going to keep
• 59:07
  an eye on that now. Conversely, conversely, there's a new poll out
• 59:12
  by Bloomberg and Morning Consult that just shocked the hell out of me because it
• 59:19
  goes in the exact opposite direction of the theory that I just put out there
• 59:24
  that something is happening where people are kind of rallying around Biden. Now,
• 59:30
  I want to be clear, Biden's approval riddings still suck by any historical margin,
• 59:35
  but they were no chance for re election range until the last week or
• 59:42
  so with these two polls that I reference. But this Bloomberg Morning Console poll,
• 59:49
  they did a swing state pole. Now it's important to point out they
• 59:52
  did this right after the Iowa CAUCUSUS and this was a huge sample, one
• 1:00:00
  of the largest samples I've ever seen well over four thousand registered voters, which
• 1:00:06
  I don't like registered voters polling because to me, likely voters is far more
• 1:00:12
  valuable. But it's easier to do registered voters and because you don't have to
• 1:00:17
  determine how likely it is somebody is to vote. But among this this massive
• 1:00:22
  pool of registered voters in the seven swing states, and they're including North Carolina,
• 1:00:30
  which I don't really think is necessarily a swing state. I mean,
• 1:00:31
  to me, if Trump is battling in North Carolina, he's going to lose,
• 1:00:37
  So it's almost irrelevant what's happening in North Carolina. To me, the
• 1:00:40
  swing states are really Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, and
• 1:00:45
  Pennsylvania. Those are the states that are really going to determine things well.
• 1:00:50
  In all seven of those states. According to this Bloomberg pole just out as
• 1:00:54
  of this taping, Trump is winning, and he's winning by more more than
• 1:01:00
  a couple of points. I think the smallest margin is Nevada, and he's
• 1:01:04
  ahead by three points, and I think he's uphead by ten in North Carolina.
• 1:01:09
  But that is that is stunning to me. I mean, that would
• 1:01:14
  be stunning even if I had not picked up that something was happening regarding Biden's
• 1:01:19
  approval ratings recovering from their horrific standing. But the only caveat to that is
• 1:01:25
  that this poll is a little bit old, and it took a while with
• 1:01:30
  all those those voters, I guess, all those registered voters, to compile
• 1:01:35
  the data, make all the phone calls took there's a week long polling inscursion,
• 1:01:40
  and then to release the results. But it is possible that that is
• 1:01:46
  an old result in this you know, ever changing world that we're living in.
• 1:01:51
  But it's certainly worthy of mention because if it's even close to true,
• 1:01:55
  Well, now Trump has a shot, I mean, because those are the
• 1:02:00
  states are going to matter. The national polling number doesn't really matter, you
• 1:02:05
  know, it doesn't matter, which Trump proved that in twenty sixteen, where
• 1:02:08
  you can lose the popular vote by a significant margin and still win the electoral
• 1:02:14
  college. And if he wins, he has to win at least three of
• 1:02:19
  those six states that I mentioned, depending on which three he wins, he
• 1:02:22
  would win. If he wins four of those six again, he's currently winning
• 1:02:27
  all of them, according to Bloomberg Morning Consoled, then he wins the presidency
• 1:02:31
  there's no if ands or butts about that. Do I believe that that's what's
• 1:02:35
  going to happen. I don't, because I think there's going to be all
• 1:02:38
  sorts of things. They're going to happen. They are going to be negative
• 1:02:43
  towards Donald Trump and positive generally towards Joe Biden barring a massive physical failing on
• 1:02:51
  Biden's part, which is certainly more than in the realm of not just possibility,
• 1:02:55
  but maybe even likelihood based upon what we've seen recently over the last year
• 1:03:00
  or so from Joe Biden, especially given his mental health. But I think
• 1:03:05
  there's all sorts of things that are much more likely to help Biden and hurt
• 1:03:08
  Trump. And that's just assuming no felony criminal conviction on Trump's part in the
• 1:03:15
  nine months or so between now and actual voting beginning. And one of those
• 1:03:22
  is, you know, Trump's vice presidential nominee, If it's not going to
• 1:03:25
  be Nicky Haley, I do not have any confidence at all that we're not
• 1:03:30
  going to see a situation where his VP nominee hurts him pretty dramatically, at
• 1:03:36
  least among swing independent voters. Because the names that I'm seeing, I don't
• 1:03:42
  see how they're gonna help NICKI Haley I think would help. I don't see
• 1:03:45
  any other possibility where any of the names being floated help at all, and
• 1:03:52
  some like Ben Carson, seventy two year old gaff machine, I think would
• 1:03:58
  hurt rather dramatically. Now, in that light, I did find it interesting
• 1:04:01
  that there was a story out of Pennsylvania very near my old hometown. I
• 1:04:08
  grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Washington crossing Pennsylvania where Washington crossed the
• 1:04:13
  Delaware famously to beat the Hessians on Christmas morning, and right near where I
• 1:04:18
  grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania's a place called Levittown, and Levittown was
• 1:04:26
  the location of a very strange situation that occurred over the last couple of days.
• 1:04:31
  This is a headline on the Fox affiliate out of Philadelphia, Philadelphia area.
• 1:04:36
  Man actually from Levittown arrested after allegedly beheading his father, whom he said
• 1:04:45
  was a federal employee who was quote burning in hell and called for revolution against
• 1:04:55
  the Biden regime. Now, it's hard to interpret exactly what's going on there
• 1:05:02
  other than there's a behetting and calling for revolution against the Biden regime and who
• 1:05:08
  said what where? But my first thought was maybe Trump has found as vice
• 1:05:13
  presidential nominee. I mean, Pennsylvania is a swing state, and you know,
• 1:05:17
  this guy's seemingly willing to go to the mat when it comes to fighting
• 1:05:23
  against the Biden regime. I don't know, but I found that to be
• 1:05:29
  I'm trying to be funny here, but that's the kind of person I think
• 1:05:31
  we're gonna end up with when it comes to Trump's VP nominee. It's not
• 1:05:36
  gonna be someone who is sensible and helpful with regard to independent voters. And
• 1:05:43
  I don't know who it's going to be, but it's I don't think the
• 1:05:45
  options are particularly good as far as by the way, beheading. There's another
• 1:05:50
  beheading story that I've got to mention because this deals with one of my pet
• 1:05:56
  peas, which is the whole issue of hate crimes, and they were going
• 1:06:00
  to destroy free speech. I have long, long been someone who believed that
• 1:06:06
  so called hate crime legislation was the loophole through which free speech would end,
• 1:06:13
  and I think I've been vindicated in that. And there aren't too many stories
• 1:06:16
  that are stranger than this one because it involves sort of a beheading. This
• 1:06:23
  story from The Blaze Christian Navy veteran charged with hate crime for beheading demon statue
• 1:06:31
  at Iowa Capital. Now, to be fair, this Blaze story, conservative
• 1:06:36
  media outlet, is a bit biased in the way that they're telling the story,
• 1:06:40
  but I'll allow it in this particular situation. They write, hundreds of
• 1:06:45
  statues of historical and religious significance have been toppled throughout the United States in recent
• 1:06:50
  years. Rather than stop the oconoclasts, responsible government officials have in many cases
• 1:06:59
  rewarded them, at least when they were not themselves directly responsible. However,
• 1:07:04
  it became clear this week that the powers that be still hold some things sacred
• 1:07:11
  abortion clinics and Satanic idols. Within hours of a federal court finding six more
• 1:07:19
  pro life activists guilty of peacefully demonstrating inside an infamous late term abortion clinic,
• 1:07:27
  Christian Navy veteran Michael Cassidy was charged with a hate crime this week for toppling
• 1:07:33
  a satanic statue last year at the Iowa Capitol. The Polk County Attorney's office
• 1:07:43
  indicated the Cassidy's admission did he quote destroyed the property because of the victim's religion.
• 1:07:50
  Remember, the victim is a statue. The victim's religion prompted the decision
• 1:07:56
  to increase Cassidy's previous mistemey intercharge to a Class D felony. Now, look,
• 1:08:04
  I think what Cassidy did was stupid, and you know it should the
• 1:08:11
  thing have been there, probably not, you know, but it's it's still
• 1:08:15
  vandalism, and there ought to be some ramifications for that. But the idea
• 1:08:21
  that it's a hate crime because you were motivated to decapitate a statue because of
• 1:08:31
  the quote unquote religion of the statue it being Satanic, is bizarre world And
• 1:08:39
  the fact that this is happening in Iowa is really strange, very disturbing,
• 1:08:45
  and quite depressing for a lot of different reasons. But you know, it's
• 1:08:48
  not the kind of thing you would expect to happen in a place like Iowa.
• 1:08:53
  But this is speech. Again, this person was clearly making a I
• 1:09:00
  guess you would call it a political point that's in the realm of speech.
• 1:09:06
  Should they be punished for the property destruction, absolutely, but not for the
• 1:09:14
  speech element of this. And I would, like you know, I would
• 1:09:16
  have this would have been one of those cases that five ten years ago,
• 1:09:19
  I said, well, Okay, this is crazy. There's no way this
• 1:09:23
  is going to stand. Even if somehow he gets convicted of this, he's
• 1:09:27
  gonna win on appeal. Eventually the court's going to throw this out. I
• 1:09:30
  no longer have that kind of confidence because our entire society is no longer valuing
• 1:09:36
  free speech as it should or as it used to. And I think that
• 1:09:41
  the whole Trump defamation case kind of shows that that even the media, the
• 1:09:45
  media which has a self interest in protecting free speech, doesn't seem to give
• 1:09:50
  a crap and doesn't seem to understand the significance of these situations. And so
• 1:09:57
  I just wanted to mention that circumstance because want to fit with the other beheading
• 1:10:01
  story, but also because I just think hate crime legislation is incredibly dangerous,
• 1:10:08
  and this is a really important example of that. I talk a lot on
• 1:10:13
  this podcast about what a bizarre cast of characters and frauds and weirdos now dominate
• 1:10:23
  the right wing media. I know most of these people. They're mostly grifters.
• 1:10:28
  They don't give a damn about the cause. It's all a business.
• 1:10:30
  A lot of them pretend to be about the cause. In fact, the
• 1:10:33
  people that pretend most to be about the cause and wear that on their sleeve
• 1:10:38
  most dramatically tend to be the biggest frauds. And I want to at least
• 1:10:44
  mention what's going on currently with James o'keeth now. James o'keeth is an interesting
• 1:10:49
  figure. He became most well known for his investigative reports when working for Project
• 1:10:55
  Veritas, and then he and Project Veritas had a big falling out and he
• 1:11:00
  left Project Veritas or was fired from there or whatever. I have no idea,
• 1:11:04
  you know what, what actually occurred, but he's no longer with Project
• 1:11:08
  Veritas. And James o'keeith, you know, for decades now has done a
• 1:11:13
  lot of interesting things, and he used to be very close with an old
• 1:11:17
  friend of mine, Andrew Breitbart. Andrew Breitbart was basically his mentor, and
• 1:11:23
  he's famous for doing things that make huge splashes on the Internet or on social
• 1:11:30
  media, are extremely popular among the right wing base and are generally dealing with
• 1:11:36
  subjects that are important and where he has a point. But generally, almost
• 1:11:45
  every single time o'keeith puts out a new video or a new investigation, the
• 1:11:50
  reality of it never fits the flash of it. He's very he's a very
• 1:11:57
  good promoter, and he's very good, you know, at making things seem
• 1:12:03
  way more important and dramatic than they actually are. And so there'll be this
• 1:12:10
  flash in the pan and everyone will get all agitated because they'll take something out
• 1:12:13
  of context and pretend that it's something that it's really not. And then when
• 1:12:17
  you get down into the details, you go, Okay, that really wasn't
• 1:12:21
  as big a deal as he pretended it was. But by then he doesn't
• 1:12:25
  care because he's gotten all sorts of traffic, all sorts of media attention,
• 1:12:29
  all sorts of donations to his organization, and it's a win. And very
• 1:12:33
  rarely, there's been a couple of rare exceptions to this, but very rarely
• 1:12:39
  does anything positive end up happening, except you know, riling up the base
• 1:12:43
  and creating more anger and division and confusion. Well, as of this taping,
• 1:12:48
  o'keith is hyping a new drop of an investigation of some sort. I
• 1:12:55
  have no idea what the nature of it is, but I wanted to mention
• 1:12:59
  it one because because you know, it's possible that this may make some news
• 1:13:02
  in the right wing media over the next few days. He's scheduling this for
• 1:13:08
  the afternoon of this particular taping of the podcast. But he's hyping it in
• 1:13:14
  a way is really quite something even for him. I mean, he is
• 1:13:18
  a drama queen on steroids. And to be clear, he is literally an
• 1:13:26
  actor. He likes to take part in musicals. I mean, that's really
• 1:13:31
  what he is at heart. He's an actor, and I'm always very suspicious
• 1:13:36
  of people who are actors, especially when this becomes performance art. Well,
• 1:13:44
  I've always said about O'Keefe that you can pretty much tell how is his investigative
• 1:13:49
  drops are going to go based upon how he's hyping them. Because if you
• 1:13:55
  have something, and I think he learned this from Andrew Breitbart, but if
• 1:13:58
  you have something, because I remember having conversations with the bright part about this
• 1:14:01
  very subject, if you have something really really good, there's no need to
• 1:14:09
  really hype it. You don't need to do that. I mean, you
• 1:14:13
  just drop it. And if it's really really good, people are gonna lap
• 1:14:17
  it up, they're gonna share it, the media will pay attention, and
• 1:14:21
  there's so there's no need for pregame hype. And you know, but a
• 1:14:28
  day before the release, actually a couple of days before the release, o'keeith
• 1:14:31
  started to hype this new investigation again, the subject of which I have no
• 1:14:36
  clue, but he did so in a way that I thought was worthy of
• 1:14:41
  mention because it's it's frankly hilarious and I think also telling. But this was
• 1:14:45
  the tweet where o'keeith actually announced. This is the first part of the very
• 1:14:50
  very long tweet where o'keeith announced that there's gonna be a new investigation of the
• 1:14:58
  bad guys, and this one is so important that my life might be on
• 1:15:02
  the line. And this is what he wrote. This is actually true.
• 1:15:08
  I'm not exaggerating. This is word for word, But James O'Keefe, one
• 1:15:12
  of the most influential right wing media figures, a guy with over two point
• 1:15:16
  two million Twitter followers, and a person that Fox News Channel follows very very
• 1:15:21
  closely and gives lots of oxygen to. This is what he wrote, hyping
• 1:15:27
  whatever this new investigation is. People familiar with the story coming out tomorrow keep
• 1:15:34
  texting me asking me about fear. I've taken the time to write a careful
• 1:15:44
  response. Now I'm presuming that what comes next is what he wrote to these
• 1:15:49
  people who were texting him about this story he has coming out now. The
• 1:15:55
  first thing I'll say here before I get to what he wrote, I assume
• 1:16:00
  to these people texting him is if this is really so top secret, then
• 1:16:04
  why are there so many people who know about this story coming out in enough
• 1:16:10
  detail where they're texting him about his physical safety. I'm immediately very suspicious of
• 1:16:18
  that. Maybe one person, maybe you know, a really good friend to
• 1:16:23
  confid on, But he says people, as in, multiple people who are
• 1:16:29
  familiar with this top secret thing I'm doing are texting me asking about fear.
• 1:16:33
  All right, fine, I'm suspicious, but whatever. He then writes at
• 1:16:39
  thirty nine, I've lived a good life. Whether it's complete or not is
• 1:16:45
  not up to me. What happens next. I don't know if there's more
• 1:16:53
  to come here, so be it. I've learned the pursuit of truth requires
• 1:16:59
  extreme risk, operating without a safety net. I've experienced so much, lived
• 1:17:06
  ten lives compressed into a fraction of one. That's all a man can hope
• 1:17:14
  for. Meteoric highs, extreme lows, and near death experiences, jail and
• 1:17:23
  jury trials, travels to every state dozens of times, adventures, travails,
• 1:17:29
  failures, betrayals, and loves lost and gained, repeated valleys, moving and
• 1:17:36
  climbing mountains, enduring multiple rebirths and renewals, and this goes on and on
• 1:17:45
  and on, and then in the follow up to that tweet, he posts
• 1:17:50
  a link to where you can donate to his costs. So he's basically saying,
• 1:17:58
  this investigation is so important, so dangerous, I think I'm gonna die.
• 1:18:03
  But if I'm gonna die, it's okay because it's all been worth it.
• 1:18:09
  I mean, this is absurd. I don't know what James o'keith is
• 1:18:15
  is gonna be releasing, but the fact that he's hyping it with I might
• 1:18:19
  die because of it tells me there's something wrong with the actual content of the
• 1:18:26
  investigation. That it's either not gonna be as portrayed or that it needs a
• 1:18:30
  lot of hype to be able to be perceived in the way that he wants
• 1:18:34
  it to be perceived. Because again, if it was that big of a
• 1:18:39
  deal, there's no need to do this, and there's certainly no need to
• 1:18:43
  claim that you might get killed. Well, if you were so dangerous that,
• 1:18:47
  why haven't you been killed already? I mean, this is the kind
• 1:18:53
  of whack a doodle stuff that now dominates the right wing media's. It is
• 1:19:00
  hilarious on one end, and I think it's telling, but it also is
• 1:19:04
  really an example of the type of people who are running the show and how
• 1:19:11
  it is that we get Donald Trump as the presidential nominee on the Republican side
• 1:19:15
  for a third straight time. The last episode of our podcast was entitled garbage
• 1:19:21
  in, Garbage Out. Well, that's the entire essence of the right wing
• 1:19:27
  now. It's all garbage in, garbage out. Everybody believes in all these
• 1:19:30
  crazy conspiracy theories. And the response to o'keeths tweet, as far as I
• 1:19:36
  can tell, was overwhelmingly positive. Oh my god, this must be huge.
• 1:19:41
  Oh please be safe, praying for you, James o'keeth. They're just
• 1:19:45
  being played. He's playing them, and so they will interpret whatever the hell
• 1:19:53
  he's releasing through the prism of o'keith thinks he might get killed over this the
• 1:19:58
  situation, although he never actually specifically says that, that's the obvious and clear
• 1:20:02
  implication, and the right wing base will lap that up because that's now their
• 1:20:09
  worldview. The worldview is dominated by conspiracy theories, and when you have that
• 1:20:15
  worldview, dominated by conspiracy theories. That's the prism through which you see everything,
• 1:20:20
  including the race for the Republican nomination, and that's how you end up
• 1:20:25
  with Donald Trump dominating and winning that nomination really without even breaking a sweat.
• 1:20:30
  Now, there's been a lot of other evidence that the right wing is full
• 1:20:35
  of nut jobs, and specifically when it comes to the reaction to what's happening
• 1:20:41
  with Taylor Swift, the Kansas City Chiefs, and the upcoming super Bowl.
• 1:20:45
  Now, I've been very outspoken about Taylor Swift in a lot of different ways.
• 1:20:48
  I think I was way ahead of the curve when I said many months
• 1:20:51
  ago, to the shock of a lot of listeners of this podcast, the
• 1:20:56
  Taylor Swift was going to become a major issue in a Trump Biden presidential matchup,
• 1:21:01
  and that it was not going to be a positive for Donald Trump,
• 1:21:05
  that it may in fact end up saving the election for Joe Biden. And
• 1:21:10
  I've gone through many times as to why I believe that. I think my
• 1:21:14
  view is a little bit different than some others, and maybe even what is
• 1:21:17
  being perceived. I actually think that she doesn't even need to make a full
• 1:21:21
  endorsement, She just needs to increase the turnout among her core bas fan,
• 1:21:28
  which is young women who generally don't vote in high numbers, and if all
• 1:21:31
  of a sudden they do, they're generally going to vote for Biden and against
• 1:21:36
  Trump, if only because of the abortion issue and because of all the negative
• 1:21:40
  media attention that Trump gets, and because she does not like Donald Trump.
• 1:21:45
  She's made that clear in the past. Although no one wants to mention this,
• 1:21:49
  but Donald Trump actually appeared in a Tailor Swift video many years ago,
• 1:21:54
  back when she was still a country singer. She did a video with Shania
• 1:21:59
  Twain and there were many celebrity cameos in that video, and one of them
• 1:22:04
  was by Donald Trump, which is kind of amazing. But Okay, obviously
• 1:22:11
  things change, and Taylor Swift has changed. She's no longer country. She's
• 1:22:15
  pop and she's way, way, way bigger than she was then, and
• 1:22:20
  she's big enough to where I believe her cult could influence this presidential election.
• 1:22:26
  Well, now, all of a sudden, the right wing has really latched
• 1:22:30
  onto this issue in a way that is wack adoodle and counter productive and wrong.
• 1:22:38
  And let me just give you a couple quick examples. We've got the
• 1:22:42
  fake Obama Swami going on Twitter and essentially implying that the Super Bowl is fixed.
• 1:22:49
  As crazy as this is, the Super Bowl is fixed, that the
• 1:22:53
  Chiefs are going to win to help set up a Taylor Swift presidential endorsement against
• 1:23:00
  Donald Trump. That's essentially what the fake Obama Swamy said, and he has
• 1:23:06
  rightfully been roundly criticized for this. Jason Whitlock of The Blaze, black conservative
• 1:23:13
  commentator who the thing is most interesting about Jason Whitlock is I can't remember anybody
• 1:23:18
  who when he is right, he is more right, and when he is
• 1:23:24
  wrong, he is more wrong than Jason Whitlock. I mean, there's almost
• 1:23:28
  no in between. If he was a baseball player, every at bat would
• 1:23:31
  either be a home run or a strikeout. There is nothing in between when
• 1:23:35
  it comes to Jason Whitlock. But he absolutely nailed it when it came to
• 1:23:41
  the issue of the fake Obama Swamy, claiming that Taylor Swift is being set
• 1:23:47
  up by the National Football like they're gonna have their entire season, their biggest
• 1:23:51
  event, the biggest cultural event of the year by far, this Super Bowl,
• 1:23:56
  with all the billions of dollars being bet on, it is going to
• 1:24:00
  be fixed. Also, the NFL can use her to help defeat Donald Trump.
• 1:24:06
  I mean, it's so insane as to not even be worthy of mentioned.
• 1:24:11
  And this is somebody who was a major presidential candidate and is still being
• 1:24:15
  allegedly considered, although I don't think he's gonna get the job as Donald Trump's
• 1:24:20
  vice presidential nominee. It's unbelievable. This is how broken the right wing is
• 1:24:29
  that this is a presidential candidate, still a VP candidate, theorizing about this.
• 1:24:35
  And then we have the right wing media and Jesse Waters on Fox News
• 1:24:41
  Channel, who's a moron. I mean, he might be dumber than Sean
• 1:24:43
  Hannity, It's tough to tell. But Jesse Waters goes on in the aftermath
• 1:24:49
  of the Chiefs making the Super Bowl and does an interview with a guy under
• 1:24:56
  the claim that Taylor's swift is a Pentagon asset intended effectively to take out Donald
• 1:25:06
  Trump. Now, this got a lot of negative attention, even by a
• 1:25:11
  lot of conservatives, you know, people saying, you know, we don't
• 1:25:15
  deserve to win, meaning conservatives, this is insane. But to my very
• 1:25:20
  strong recollection, this is not the first time Jesse Waters has done this.
• 1:25:25
  He did this previously and it didn't get much attention. I'm not sure why
• 1:25:30
  it hit a nerve this time. Maybe it's because the Chiefs making the Super
• 1:25:33
  Bowl and because of Vivak's comments, and Rolling Stone had a clickbait story about
• 1:25:41
  Trump the Trump camp targeting Taylor Swift. It seemed like total bullshit coming from
• 1:25:46
  Rolling Stone, like Rolling Stone's gonna have a really good source within the Trump
• 1:25:50
  camp about their secret plan to take on Taylor Swift and that Trump's pissed at
• 1:25:56
  Taylor Swift because he thinks he's more popular than she is. Just sounded like
• 1:26:00
  classic bullcrap clickbait to me. But for whatever reason, people suddenly understood that
• 1:26:06
  Jesse Waters has been on this kick. By the way, I looked into
• 1:26:10
  this whole Taylor Swift as a Pentagon asset thing, and there's like the tiniest
• 1:26:16
  little grain of sand on which this is based. Her name got used in
• 1:26:24
  somebody's testimony, and it seemed like it was an aside comment. It was
• 1:26:30
  not in any way, shape or form an indication She's being used as a
• 1:26:34
  Pentagon asset to take out Donald Trump. But this is the crazy world of
• 1:26:40
  the right wing media. Now, this is prime time on Fox News Channel,
• 1:26:45
  Jesse Waters is telling the audience that Taylor Swift may be a Pentagon asset,
• 1:26:50
  and Theveke Obama Swami, major presidential caredidate who might be Trump's VP,
• 1:26:56
  is telling people that the Super Bowl may be fixed in order to set up
• 1:27:02
  Taylor Swift, taking out Donald Trump and Sean Hannity. By the way,
• 1:27:06
  Sean Hannity is like the voice of reason among these nut jobs, but he
• 1:27:12
  also is on this tirade against Taylor Swift, and all of this is not
• 1:27:18
  just crazy, it's strategically stupid. I am somebody who thinks conservatives, especially
• 1:27:27
  now, especially now, conservatives should be embracing the entire Taylor Swift situation,
• 1:27:35
  but from all sorts of different angles the Taylor Swift Travis Kelsey relationship. Look,
• 1:27:43
  I get why football fans can hardcore football fans are annoyed by this,
• 1:27:49
  threatened by this. She herself has made a rather snide comment about Chad's brads
• 1:27:57
  and dads and being annoyed at her, which I thought was sounded kind of
• 1:28:01
  racist to me. You know, you know, go screw off white men
• 1:28:05
  who are annoyed at me being on the TV screen when you were ever watching
• 1:28:11
  the Kansas City Chiefs. But frankly, I actually think Travis Kelcey and Tallis
• 1:28:15
  Swift have handled this situation about as well as they could have. I mean,
• 1:28:21
  I really came to that conclusion after the AFC Championship game, because before
• 1:28:28
  I did this last episode of the podcast, episode one twenty three, I
• 1:28:32
  did not get a chance to really do a deep dive into all of these
• 1:28:36
  videos after the game, and my god, there are hundreds of TikTok accounts
• 1:28:42
  that went into extraordinary analysis of what happened after the game between Travis and Taylor
• 1:28:50
  and Travis's brother and Tony Romo and Andy Reid. And I gotta tell you,
• 1:28:59
  as somebody who was believe that this relationship was real from the beginning,
• 1:29:02
  I mean I was open to the idea that it might be exaggerated for pr
• 1:29:06
  purposes, but very early on I told you this relationship is real. Now,
• 1:29:13
  if you watched anything that happened after that game and you don't understand that
• 1:29:17
  relationship is real and at least right now, at its essence, very good,
• 1:29:24
  then I can't help you because you don't have a clue about the nature
• 1:29:28
  of reality or humanity. These two people are in love clearly, and so
• 1:29:34
  from a personal standpoint, good for them. And I got to tell you,
• 1:29:40
  when I looked at those videos after the AFC Championship game, I became
• 1:29:45
  so incredibly impressed with both of them when you consider the level of chaos,
• 1:29:50
  the level of scrutiny, the level of emotion that was going on after winning
• 1:29:57
  that game, where Travis not only gets to the super Bowl, but he
• 1:30:00
  was the reason why the Chiefs won. That game might have been the best
• 1:30:02
  game he's ever played in his entire career. And he's going back to the
• 1:30:06
  Super Bowl and he's dating the most famous woman in the world. And she
• 1:30:11
  comes on the field and by the way, she doesn't give a rats ass
• 1:30:15
  that her hair doesn't look great, and she pauses to let him hug his
• 1:30:20
  mom, and she backs away when he goes to have a moment with his
• 1:30:26
  brother Jason, who plays for the Eagles, but was there in Chief's garb.
• 1:30:31
  And I mean that was as real as could possibly be talking about brotherly
• 1:30:34
  love. And I mean I didn't pick up any sense at all that Taylor
• 1:30:40
  was a prima donna. She seemed to know her place, he seemed to
• 1:30:45
  understand his place. And her her place in his moment. I mean to
• 1:30:50
  me, considering all the scrutiny, all the cameras, all the microphones,
• 1:30:58
  all the attention, all the pressure involved in that situations, as simple as
• 1:31:02
  it all sounds, that could have gone south or haywire incredibly easily, incredibly
• 1:31:11
  easily. That was one of those moments where you know, kind of like
• 1:31:15
  EJ and Carroll after the verdict, does that whack a doodle interview with Rachel
• 1:31:20
  Maddow that we played earlier in this in this podcast, that's when you find
• 1:31:25
  out what's really going on, who these people really are. To me,
• 1:31:29
  that was a very transparent moment that if there were cracks in the foundation,
• 1:31:34
  they would have become abundantly clear under those circumstances, and instead, I didn't
• 1:31:42
  see anything that was even a red flag. I mean to me, if
• 1:31:46
  I'm if I'm friends with Travis, I'm like, nail this down, buddy,
• 1:31:49
  get married, because this is the real deal. Now. Who knows
• 1:31:54
  whether that'll ever work out, but I mean, you can't ask for anything
• 1:31:58
  more than this situation. And as conservatives, especially given the crisis that especially
• 1:32:05
  younger people are currently undergoing with regard to gender and male female relationships and everything
• 1:32:15
  that we thought we believed in suddenly being tossed up in the air and nothing
• 1:32:18
  makes any sense anymore. This is as good as it gets. This is
• 1:32:24
  normalcy. This is the classic, you know, head cheerleader and the prom
• 1:32:29
  king getting together or the football star getting together. Not just a football star,
• 1:32:33
  by the way, but a big burly tight end, not a pansy
• 1:32:38
  quarterback like they always get the girls. If we as conservatives really believe in
• 1:32:43
  the things that we claim we should be champion this relationship between Taylor Swift and
• 1:32:48
  Travis Kelcey. I mean, this is this is a situation where you've got
• 1:32:53
  a big burly guy who you know is acting like a real gentleman with the
• 1:32:59
  most famous woman in the world. You know, it's a classic head cheerleader
• 1:33:02
  in football star situation we've been you know, masculinity is under attack in every
• 1:33:10
  possible way. But he's he's obviously an extremely masculine guy who's treating her properly.
• 1:33:16
  And this relationship seems to be going so well. I mean, with
• 1:33:20
  all the confusion that's happening regarding gender and male female relationships, conservatives should be
• 1:33:28
  thrilled that this is happening. And by the way, there's another aspect to
• 1:33:32
  this whole situation. It's not just something that, Wow, we can really
• 1:33:35
  feel good about these two people fighting each other and seemingly being in love in
• 1:33:40
  a way that's normal in a world that's no longer normal. But there's another
• 1:33:45
  aspect to this that conservatives are completely missing, and that is that for a
• 1:33:48
  lot of dads, and going back to the whole Trump Biden thing, a
• 1:33:53
  lot of voters who theoretically would be in Trump's camp, not that this is
• 1:33:58
  going to necessarily impact their votes, but a lot of dads are enjoying the
• 1:34:01
  hell out of the fact that their young daughters are suddenly into football. I
• 1:34:05
  don't know how many are in that category. Online you see a lot of
• 1:34:11
  this on TikTok, a lot of you see a lot of this. I've
• 1:34:13
  experienced this to a minor degree in my own life. I've referenced my daughter,
• 1:34:18
  Grace, who's a swiftie, you know, is a lot more forgiving
• 1:34:21
  of me watching Kansas City Chiefs games and boys. She pumped up for the
• 1:34:26
  Super Bowl, like I'm sure a lot of girls are. But that's something
• 1:34:29
  that you know, Grace would not have cared about prior to the whole Taylor
• 1:34:32
  Swift situation. So well, I think it's dangerous for football to be so
• 1:34:39
  invested in the Taylor Swift situation. Football has absolutely benefited dramatically, at least
• 1:34:45
  from an audience standpoint, because of this. And I had to say,
• 1:34:50
  you know, I'm as big a media critic as there is. Obviously,
• 1:34:53
  this is the death of journalism podcasts. You know, CBS only showed Taylor
• 1:34:59
  Swift in suite during that AFC Championship game, which got record ratings, by
• 1:35:02
  the way, not to anybody surprised, you know, twelve to seventeen percent
• 1:35:08
  higher than last year's AFC Championship game, depending on how you do the numbers,
• 1:35:13
  probably the most watched AFC Championship game in history, even though it had
• 1:35:16
  an earlier time slot of the two games. So there's no question that this
• 1:35:21
  translated into eyeballs in the AFC Championship game. But CBS only showed Taylor Swift
• 1:35:29
  for twenty five seconds by at least one account during the game, and I
• 1:35:34
  frankly thought that they were completely appropriate. I mean, if you do it
• 1:35:40
  in measured terms, you know, only when something really legitimately big happens,
• 1:35:45
  and Taylor was seen a lot because Travis had a huge game. I mean,
• 1:35:49
  they could have gone to her actually more than they did. She's the
• 1:35:53
  most famous woman in the world, and a huge part of your audience is
• 1:35:56
  there largely because of her being part of the narrative. That should not be
• 1:36:01
  a problem to show her on occasion, and especially after the game, when
• 1:36:08
  you know this, this love affair has gotten so much attention, and here
• 1:36:12
  they are so clearly, legitimately sincerely in a romantic situation that we've never seen
• 1:36:19
  before. I'm sorry, people are going to be interested in that. There's
• 1:36:24
  nothing wrong with showing that, and so I frankly think that CBS handled it
• 1:36:29
  pretty darn well. They got rewarded with these record ratings. And conservatives are
• 1:36:34
  completely blowing it on this all out of this instinctive desire to defend Donald Trump.
• 1:36:43
  I mean, she hasn't even said anything yet directly about this election.
• 1:36:46
  Now, clearly she hates Trump, and clearly if she makes any sort of
• 1:36:49
  endorsement, it's going to be anti Trump. Everyone knows that. To me,
• 1:36:55
  strategically, politically, the way they ought to be handling this is okay.
• 1:37:00
  We understand that Taylor is not a fan of Donald Trump. We even
• 1:37:02
  think that she's probably going to try to influence the election. We hope people
• 1:37:06
  don't make decisions based upon that, but boy, it sure seems awesome that
• 1:37:11
  she and Travis Kelce have found love and we wish them all the best.
• 1:37:15
  And isn't it awesome that, you know, dads and daughters are being able
• 1:37:19
  to bond over NFL football games. That's the proper response to this politically,
• 1:37:25
  also happens to be the proper response from a rationality standpoint, because that's reality,
• 1:37:30
  that's what's actually happening. But the right wing is so broken, so
• 1:37:34
  stupid and such dominated by a bunch of nutjobs and kooks like viveag Obama Swami,
• 1:37:44
  who I called from the very moment he entered the fray here and where
• 1:37:47
  he got Jesse Waters primetime on Fox News Channel, that we end up looking
• 1:37:53
  like complete morons. Conservatives look like idiots, they look like their anti woman
• 1:38:00
  and and you know, Taylor Swift, we could we could have a whole
• 1:38:03
  lot worse when it comes to who is the most influential entertainer to young women.
• 1:38:12
  I'm not saying she's anything close to perfect. I don't. I don't
• 1:38:15
  particularly like her. Her music is inoffensive. It's on the radio literally every
• 1:38:18
  fourth song. I mean, my daughters and I actually track this when we're
• 1:38:24
  in the car. It's literally almost every fourth song. Now, it was
• 1:38:27
  a Taylor Swift song. But you know, when you go back to the
• 1:38:30
  to the eighties and Madonna, Madonna was everything in the eighties. I gotta
• 1:38:35
  tell you, I think Madonna probably had more of a negative influence on young
• 1:38:40
  girls than Taylor Swift does. So we could do a hell of a lot
• 1:38:44
  worse as conservatives than Taylor Swift, especially considering the fact that she is promoting
• 1:38:51
  what you know, a lot of liberals considered to be toxic masculinity in a
• 1:38:56
  in a big, strong, bearded tight end as her romantic be all end
• 1:39:02
  all in Travis Kelce, I'm sorry, this is not a bad thing.
• 1:39:10
  There could be a hell of a lot worse than this, and there's a
• 1:39:13
  lot of positive elements to it, and conservatives are blowing it for not understanding
• 1:39:17
  this. And look, I was out in front saying this is going to
• 1:39:21
  be a political issue. I also said it was going to be a conflict
• 1:39:26
  of interest issue for the National Football League when it comes to the Chiefs because
• 1:39:30
  they have such a huge incentive for the Chiefs to get to the Super Bowl.
• 1:39:34
  I don't think that influenced the AFC Championship game. I think Lamar Jackson
• 1:39:39
  being overrated probably had more to do with that and the Ravens kind of choking.
• 1:39:44
  I don't think it was the officiating. But also, by the way,
• 1:39:48
  this shows that Vivague really doesn't understand what the hell is talking about.
• 1:39:51
  Not just now, he's just not wrong, but he's just not very smart
• 1:39:56
  in this area at least, and I consider him to be a pretty sharp
• 1:39:59
  guy, very good talk. But it doesn't matter now whether the Chiefs win
• 1:40:03
  as long as it's not a blowout, which there's no chance it's gonna be
• 1:40:08
  a blowout because both these teams are good. In fact, the only chance
• 1:40:10
  there is for a blowout would be if the Chiefs were to win in a
• 1:40:14
  blowout because you got a young, inexperienced quarterback in brock Perty he could throw
• 1:40:17
  a couple of interceptions or something and then it's off to the races. But
• 1:40:20
  the Chiefs aren't getting blown out. But the NFL doesn't care now who wins
• 1:40:27
  that game. They're gonna get the eyeballs. It's gonna be the most watched,
• 1:40:31
  depending on how you define these things sporting event. Maybe in American history,
• 1:40:38
  the NFL has already won. They don't give a crap. Whether or
• 1:40:41
  not the Chiefs win or not has nothing to do with it, and it
• 1:40:45
  would have zero real influence over what role Taylor Swift may play in the presidential
• 1:40:53
  election. So I realized, as is often the case, my view of
• 1:40:56
  the Tailor Swift situation is nuanced. Life is off nuanced. But I'm quite
• 1:41:00
  certain that conservatives or the right wing, or the Republican Party or the quote
• 1:41:05
  unquote right wing media, whatever you want to call it, are blowing it
• 1:41:11
  rather significantly. And if you're interested, read Jason Whitlock's column on The Blaze
• 1:41:16
  for his take on this, because I think he was dead right. This
• 1:41:20
  was a home run, not a strikeout when it came to his role in
• 1:41:25
  analyzing what's going on here. One last sports related story. I got to
• 1:41:30
  talk about what's going on in golf. You probably are aware. I'm a
• 1:41:34
  tournament golfer, play a lot of senior amateur events. I once, many
• 1:41:40
  many years ago, briefly worked for the PGA Tour. Was fired by the
• 1:41:43
  PGA Tour Productions team for another story for another day. I did nothing wrong.
• 1:41:48
  Actually was quite proud of why I got fired in that situation. But
• 1:41:53
  I knew on day one it was never gonna work because my philosophy of my
• 1:41:57
  principles were completely at odds with the PGA Tour, which was basically a propaganda
• 1:42:02
  unit PG Tour Productions for the tour itself. But I have no real ill
• 1:42:08
  will towards the PGA Tour. But I've talked a lot about this ongoing battle
• 1:42:14
  that the tour is in with so called Live Golf, which is funded by
• 1:42:17
  the Saudi royal family and which has basically used Donald Trump golf courses in a
• 1:42:23
  way that I find to be highly suspicious and a very underrated political issue,
• 1:42:28
  because I think it's a way for them to pay Donald Trump under the table
• 1:42:31
  a lot of money, and money that he may be in great need of
• 1:42:34
  cash wise, given his financial situation right now. But that's not what I
• 1:42:40
  want to focus on today. There is news breaking this morning that there's been
• 1:42:44
  a major development in the entire PGA Tour Live Tour saga, and it feels
• 1:42:53
  to me that this is a really basically a much ado about not very much
• 1:43:00
  from the standpoint of how golf is going to change from a structural standpoint,
• 1:43:04
  because right now all that has happened is the PGA Tours announced that they have
• 1:43:09
  a private equity firm that's going to be dumping a boatload of money into the
• 1:43:14
  PGA Tour, that they're no longer essentially going to be a charity. I've
• 1:43:17
  talked a lot about how really the PGA Tour blew it when it came to
• 1:43:23
  the pr and the marketing of their battle with Live instead of going on and
• 1:43:28
  on about nine to eleven families. Not that nine eleven families don't matter,
• 1:43:31
  but I just think it's an old story, and our own government doesn't blame
• 1:43:34
  Saudi Arabia for the nine to eleven attacks, even though the majority of the
• 1:43:40
  hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. I just didn't think it was going to be
• 1:43:42
  effective politically. To me, the argument I would have made is this is
• 1:43:45
  an attack on an American charity, and look at all the things that we
• 1:43:49
  do throughout the country and our tour spots for charities. They didn't go that
• 1:43:58
  route. I don't know why, but essentially they're abandoning. It seems like
• 1:44:02
  the whole charity thing now they're a commercial corporate endeavor. PG Tour enterprises with
• 1:44:10
  this influx of cash from this private equity firm. There's still no word on
• 1:44:16
  how PIFF, the Public Investment Fund from Saudi Arabia is going to directly be
• 1:44:21
  involved in this. In fact, it seems to me, you know,
• 1:44:26
  the details get boring and confusing. Here's why I'm sensing, based upon an
• 1:44:32
  initial analysis of this, it feels like this is the PGA Tour essentially doing
• 1:44:39
  to Live what Live did to the PGA Tour when they signed John Rahm.
• 1:44:44
  So you know, there was this deal back in June of last year,
• 1:44:47
  a deal to make a deal. Some people called it a merger. I
• 1:44:51
  was tentatively optimistic at the time that the PG Tour may have won this battle.
• 1:44:57
  Then as detail started to lead and developments continue to happen, I changed
• 1:45:02
  my mind. I said, this is not going to work out. There's
• 1:45:05
  no way to make a deal that's going to be amenable to both sides.
• 1:45:11
  It's going to be good for golf. So I became very very pessimistic about
• 1:45:15
  this, and my final the final nail in the coffin for me was when
• 1:45:19
  Live bought John Rahm at the end of last year. John ram the Master's
• 1:45:26
  Champion, one of the top golfers in the world, a Spaniard, and
• 1:45:30
  you know they bought him for a ridiculous amount of money, somewhere in the
• 1:45:33
  neighborhood of five hundred million dollars. Well, they probably underpay for him from
• 1:45:38
  a political standpoint, They way, way, way, purposely overpaid for him
• 1:45:43
  when it comes to his monetary value. But what he did was effectively show
• 1:45:49
  the PGA Tour that whatever negotiations were going on at that time are not going
• 1:45:55
  to cut it. You aren't getting it. So we're going to go take
• 1:45:59
  one of your best players and show you that we still have all the ammunition
• 1:46:02
  in the world, all the money in the world, and the willingness and
• 1:46:05
  the ability to take your best players unless you do a deal that is in
• 1:46:12
  our best interest. That's how I interpreted it, and one of the major
• 1:46:16
  implications of that was that it effectively broke Rory McElroy. Rory McElroy good buddies
• 1:46:23
  with John Rohm Ryder Cup teammates on the European team. Rory had been hugely
• 1:46:28
  anti Live hugely pro PGA Tour, and Rory got broken by this immediately.
• 1:46:34
  He waged the white flag, caved in. He's still making statements even as
• 1:46:39
  of this week, that are completely insane, given his past comments on Live
• 1:46:45
  Now saying that Live players ought to be able to come back on the PGA
• 1:46:47
  Tour with no punishment at all, I mean, which would have been unfathomable
• 1:46:54
  six months ago. I mean, this is flipping as hard as you can
• 1:46:57
  possibly flip. I mean, this is like Ted CRU's sucking up to Donald
• 1:47:01
  Trump after what happened in twenty sixteen. This is like Matt Sandusky for those
• 1:47:05
  of you are fans of with the Benefit of Hindsight podcast, this is like
• 1:47:09
  Matt Sandusky going from his stepfather, Jerry's biggest supporter to claiming to be a
• 1:47:15
  sex abuse victim and taking money from Penn State. I mean, I had
• 1:47:19
  huge respect for how Rory McElroy was handling this situation, and now that is
• 1:47:25
  gone. I cannot believe that Rory McElroy has caved to this degree. And
• 1:47:30
  it's mainly because I think he sees the handwriting on the wall that the PGA
• 1:47:34
  Tour is essentially lost. Now what happened as of this taping today. Is
• 1:47:40
  that kind of like what lived with John Ruhm. It seems to me like
• 1:47:44
  the PGA Tour is saying to Live, Okay, if you want us to
• 1:47:48
  do a deal only on your terms, we're not willing to do that.
• 1:47:51
  And here's proof that we can survive without you. And the proof of that
• 1:47:57
  is we've got all this new money that's coming in. We're gonna make our
• 1:48:01
  players equity partners in this new PGA Tour enterprises, and so essentially the players
• 1:48:10
  are going to make a bigger boatload of money than they already have, and
• 1:48:15
  presumably that will make sure that the players that are currently on the PGA Tour
• 1:48:20
  will stay on the PGA Tour and that there will be at least some slowing,
• 1:48:27
  if not stopping, of the hemorrhaging of players defecting over to Live Golf.
• 1:48:31
  But what about a merger between Live and the PGA Tour. I gotta
• 1:48:36
  tell you, it seems to me, you know, from three thousand miles
• 1:48:42
  away, not having any inside knowledge at all, just using common sense,
• 1:48:45
  it seems to me like we're in a stalemate now, and this is really
• 1:48:49
  the worst possible scenario for golf, because you're going to have some of the
• 1:48:54
  best players in the world on live playing in their ridiculous format that no one
• 1:48:58
  gives a crap about. And then you're gonna have a very diluted PGA Tour,
• 1:49:03
  which is actually the worst of all scenarios. You're gonna have less star
• 1:49:08
  player star power on the PGA Tour, but more money. Now, I
• 1:49:13
  don't understand financially how this is gonna possibly work out. I just don't see
• 1:49:17
  how the value of what the PGA Tour is offering, for instance, from
• 1:49:23
  a ratings standpoint on television, and what they offer when it comes to the
• 1:49:27
  experience of going to an event. I really don't see how this is gonna
• 1:49:30
  warrant these billions of dollars being injected into the sport. I just don't get
• 1:49:36
  it. It's not my area of expertise. I don't see where the end
• 1:49:42
  return on investment is. I just don't. But from a golf perspective,
• 1:49:46
  this to me is the worst of all worlds. You have total division except
• 1:49:50
  for the four major championships. It's only gonna be four times a year where
• 1:49:55
  the top golfers are all gonna get together in an event. That actually matters.
• 1:49:59
  That's what it looks like. And by the way, you know,
• 1:50:01
  this gets a little bit too deep into golf, but that was always the
• 1:50:04
  part of this equation that bothered me the most to someone who was rooting for
• 1:50:10
  the PGA Tour, because the PGA Tour is aligned with those four major championships,
• 1:50:15
  you know, the Masters, the US Open, the PGA and the
• 1:50:18
  British Open, but they don't own or run any of those four major championships.
• 1:50:26
  So there's an alliance, but there's no ownership. And my greatest fear
• 1:50:31
  was the only way the PGA Tour could withstand this kamikaze attack is if the
• 1:50:36
  four major championships one hundred percent went to the mat to save the PGA Tour.
• 1:50:45
  But what was gonna happen eventually, And I don't know if this did
• 1:50:47
  or not, it may have will make me never know the four majors were
• 1:50:53
  suddenly gonna realize eventually, holy shit, this divide between the PGA Tour and
• 1:51:00
  Live is actually great for us because now we were already way bigger than all
• 1:51:08
  the other golf tournaments in the world, but now there's only going to be
• 1:51:11
  four times a year where there's legitimate golf tournaments with the best players in the
• 1:51:15
  world. So now all the majors have this perverse self interest to actually be
• 1:51:21
  thrilled or at least be accepting of this bifurcated world where you have half the
• 1:51:29
  players on live and half the players on the PGA Tour that are of great
• 1:51:33
  note. And so that to me was a moment when I realized, wait
• 1:51:39
  a minute, the PGA Tour has really no leverage here. They can't win
• 1:51:42
  the arms race when it comes to money against the Saudis, and the major
• 1:51:46
  championships are actually incentivized for the PGA Tour to not win this thing. They're
• 1:51:53
  going to be just fine and probably in a better position with this new non
• 1:51:59
  merged situation. And so the PGA Tour it looks like it's going to have
• 1:52:04
  less star plot power but more money, which actually makes the product, in
• 1:52:09
  my opinion, way worse because the one thing that the media never mentions of
• 1:52:15
  many when it comes to this particular subject is golf more than any other sport,
• 1:52:23
  more than any other sport by far, the money is inherently corrupting to
• 1:52:30
  the game itself. Yes, it's corrupting when NFL football players or NBA basketball
• 1:52:35
  players are making ridiculous amounts of money, but there's still a team and there's
• 1:52:42
  still a desire to win a championship. Is it as great or as strong
• 1:52:47
  as it used to be? No, but it still exists. I mean
• 1:52:50
  we saw, you know, Travis Kelcey couldn't have been more pumped in the
• 1:52:55
  locker room after the AFC Championship game. He doesn't care about the money,
• 1:52:58
  and he's dating the you know, the most powerful and richest woman in the
• 1:53:02
  world pretty much and maybe marrying her soon, so he's not worried about the
• 1:53:06
  money. He wants to go win another Super Bowl, So that still matters
• 1:53:12
  because you're part of a team. But when you're an individual, the money
• 1:53:18
  means everything because no matter what happens in these golf tournaments, now it's not
• 1:53:25
  gonna matter to these guys' lives. The whole point is when I watch any
• 1:53:30
  sporting event, the ultimate result is I want to see somebody's life change or
• 1:53:34
  maybe potentially change, or have to deal with the fact that their life could
• 1:53:39
  change, either positively or negatively. That's human drama that requires pressure, and
• 1:53:45
  in golf that used to be the essence of what made it interesting, entertaining,
• 1:53:50
  compelling human drama. Is my life gonna change? Well, now there's
• 1:53:57
  not gonna be any life changing situations. And the sport itself was already diminishing
• 1:54:03
  this fear factor because technology has basically taken fear totally out of the game,
• 1:54:10
  especially when it comes to the driver, which went from the hardest club to
• 1:54:14
  hit to the easiest club to hit, and the golf ball not spinning it
• 1:54:17
  nearly as much. I mean, there's almost no fear at the highest level
• 1:54:20
  of the game anymore. Well, there's no fear on the course, and
• 1:54:25
  there's no fear cerebrally or off the course anymore. Because if you get on
• 1:54:30
  the PGA Tour and you're especially one of the top one hundred guys, you're
• 1:54:33
  already set for life. It doesn't matter at all whether you win a tournament.
• 1:54:40
  That's the whole problem with live. These guys have already paid hundreds of
• 1:54:44
  millions of hours. What do they care whether they're stupid team that no one
• 1:54:47
  can remember their names for wins on a particular week. They don't care.
• 1:54:53
  It doesn't matter to them. They're already set for life, and so if
• 1:54:59
  they win, great, don't who cares. They're going to go back to
• 1:55:01
  their mansions and their hot wives and their beautiful kids back in the day,
• 1:55:06
  back in the day when golf, in my opinion, was at its best.
• 1:55:11
  Even Jack Nicholas, you know, before he really got famous and the
• 1:55:15
  money started to get really good, was driving his family from tournament to tournament,
• 1:55:21
  and if he missed the cut, it actually impacted his life. Even
• 1:55:26
  Jack Nicholas, at the time the best golfer in the history of the minor
• 1:55:30
  history of the game. Well, you know, in my opinion, basically
• 1:55:34
  all this comes down to golf fans being forced to pay for enjoying twenty years
• 1:55:41
  of Tiger Woods or whatever, in fifteen years, whatever you want to say.
• 1:55:45
  His peak was Tiger Woods changed everything, and it was a hugely positive
• 1:55:48
  influence in my life. I got in a lot of enjoyment out of it.
• 1:55:54
  In some of the greatest sports watching moments of my life were Tiger Woods.
• 1:56:00
  I'm not sure I would have gotten through difficult periods of my life without
• 1:56:02
  having Tiger Woods look forward to. That's how big of an impact he was
• 1:56:06
  in mostly a positive direction in my life and the lives of millions of other
• 1:56:11
  big golf fans, Well, now we're paying for it. Now we're going
• 1:56:15
  to pay for it the rest of our lives. Because Tiger completely changed the
• 1:56:18
  economics of the game. He changed the nature of the athletes getting into the
• 1:56:25
  game. There's all sorts of parody now because there's five hundred great athletes across
• 1:56:30
  the world that are playing golf. Why because of Tiger Woods. There's never
• 1:56:33
  going to be another Tiger Woods, because you can't possibly given the technology of
• 1:56:38
  the game, and given the number of great athletes playing the game, and
• 1:56:42
  the fact that you now hit your peak at the age of twenty five or
• 1:56:45
  maybe even younger than I said that a few episodes of the podcast to Go
• 1:56:49
  and Lo and behold, there was a twenty year old amateur that just won
• 1:56:55
  a PGA Tour event and then turned pro almost immediately after doing that. Because
• 1:57:00
  it's a much younger man's game now, largely because of technology, and so
• 1:57:04
  all these things that to me made golf compelling watching are gone. I find
• 1:57:11
  it boring. I find the PGA Tour now to be largely irrelevant because it's
• 1:57:15
  not filled with all the best players in the world except when the major championships
• 1:57:21
  happened. And now their answer to this, and I understand it from an
• 1:57:27
  economic survival standpoint. We need more money to keep our stars from leaving.
• 1:57:32
  But the more money is going to make the product less compelling. I'll give
• 1:57:38
  you a great example. This weekend is the Pebble Beach Pro Am. This
• 1:57:42
  is an iconic event on the PGA Tour held at Pebble Beach. Used to
• 1:57:46
  be known as the Bing Crosby. Used to be dominated by celebrities. Back
• 1:57:51
  in the day. They used to have really big celebrities play with the pros
• 1:57:57
  for you know, they would play either for three or four days if they
• 1:57:59
  made to cut at Pebble Beach and surrounding golf courses. This is, you
• 1:58:03
  know, something that people have I don't know, forty five years and older.
• 1:58:08
  It's been a huge part of their golf fan experience, maybe even younger
• 1:58:13
  than that. Well, this week they're completely changing the tournament and we're told
• 1:58:19
  it's for the better. Why because well, we've added a ton of money
• 1:58:23
  to the purse, so we've reduced the field by half, We've gotten rid
• 1:58:28
  of all the celebrity amateurs. We're gonna have a bunch of NFL quarterbacks playing,
• 1:58:32
  so it'll be eight athletes, most of which are NFL quarterbacks, and
• 1:58:35
  then seventy two rich guys that are pay seventy thousand dollars for the right to
• 1:58:41
  play two rounds with a pro and the pro am portion of this was only
• 1:58:46
  is only gonna be the first two rounds. But we're gonna be told this
• 1:58:49
  is so much better than what we we fell in love with with the pebble
• 1:58:55
  Beach pro am. There's way no Bill Murray, nothing like that. But
• 1:58:59
  it's gonna be so much Why Well because we've got a better field. Why
• 1:59:02
  because we've added a bunch of money. Well my response is, well,
• 1:59:05
  but it's gonna suck. There's not gonna be anything unique or interesting or memorable
• 1:59:12
  about it. So a bunch of multi, multi multi millionaires are gonna be
• 1:59:16
  playing for money that's not gonna impact their life at all. Also, that
• 1:59:19
  you can claim you had a greater field than you had previously, well this
• 1:59:24
  is what you have to do now that you've lost so many players to live.
• 1:59:27
  You used to be able to have a great field just by accident,
• 1:59:30
  but now you lost fifteen of your your most noteworthy players to live or thereabouts,
• 1:59:35
  So now you have to bribe your best players to play in certain so
• 1:59:40
  called signature events or elevated events. I'm like, well, it sucks,
• 1:59:45
  but they'll say, but no, this is this is a signature event,
• 1:59:48
  but it sucks. No, but it's a signature event. I don't care
• 1:59:51
  what you call it. It sucks. And by the way, this weekend,
• 1:59:57
  the forecast indicates to me they're not even gonna be able to the tournament
• 2:00:00
  because they're gonna get bombarded with rain and cold and all sorts of things and
• 2:00:04
  they become such whoosies. They used to play through those types of conditions at
• 2:00:09
  Pebble Beach, but they probably won't anymore. So there's a good chance the
• 2:00:12
  tournament doesn't even get completed as scheduled. These guys paying seventy thousand dollars for
• 2:00:15
  two rounds are gonna get completely hosed. So I'll be curious. I'm not
• 2:00:19
  even sure what I'm rooting for when it comes to that, I may be
• 2:00:23
  rooting for the tournament to get rained out. This is a tournament I used
• 2:00:25
  to look forward to every single year. But the biggest part of this is
• 2:00:29
  the biggest lesson, is that money destroys everything. Money really is the root
• 2:00:33
  of all evil and money is destroying golf before our eyes. I don't think
• 2:00:39
  we're going to see an actual merger between the PGA Tour and Live anytime soon,
• 2:00:45
  although Rory McElroy has certainly opened the door and destroyed whatever leverage the PGA
• 2:00:49
  Tour may have had when it came to negotiating such a merger going forward.
• 2:00:56
  So that's based upon what we currently know my analysis of that situation. As
• 2:01:00
  I said at the beginning of this episode of the podcast, our next episode
• 2:01:03
  will have at least some of the time allotted devoted to Ask John Anything.
• 2:01:10
  So please consider sending me a question anything that's legitimate or interesting or compelling.
• 2:01:15
  I'll be happy to answer it. Just do so by emailing me at John
• 2:01:19
  Z at mediait dot com. That's John z at mediaite dot com. Or
• 2:01:25
  send me a message on Twitter or Facebook, or respond to either of the
• 2:01:30
  Twitter or Facebook posts that I make regarding inviting people to ask questions for Ask
• 2:01:35
  John Anything. Until then, thanks so much for listening. My name is
• 2:01:39
  John Ziggler. This is the Death of Journalism podcast.