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

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

• 0:00
  Welcome to episode number one hundred and twenty five of the Death of Journalism podcast.
• 0:04
  My name is John Zigler. On today's show, I have my first
• 0:08
  and maybe my last official call of the twenty twenty four presidential general election.
• 0:14
  Trump is suddenly sounding almost reasonable on his vice presidential pig Football continues to tell
• 0:20
  us where it is headed, and we begin our final scheduled edition of Ask
• 0:26
  John Anything. I'm known as the Dutch Digital marketing Man. I'm a digital
• 0:31
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• 0:36
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• 0:42
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• 0:51
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• 0:58
  dot com. If you want to grow your business, Peter can help.
• 1:00
  That's the Dutch Digital Marketingman dot com. And hey, thanks for sponsoring the
• 1:07
  show. I want to begin this episode of the podcast by addressing a special
• 1:11
  announcement that you hopefully got in your feed if you're a subscriber to this podcast,
• 1:18
  a couple of days ago, our executive producer, Mike Agavino sent out
• 1:22
  about a three minute special announcement to everyone who is subscribed on various platforms to
• 1:30
  the Death of Journalism podcast, and he even alluded in that special announcement that
• 1:37
  I would be surprised by the announcement itself, and I was because I had
• 1:42
  no idea he was about to do this, and I think he was a
• 1:47
  little concerned that I might be pissed off, one because he didn't tell me
• 1:49
  he was doing it, and two because of the nature of the content,
• 1:53
  although you know, most of the content was very much appreciated and very compliment
• 2:00
  and all well and good, and I understood the intent, but the basis
• 2:05
  of the special announcement was that Mike, essentially going around my back, was
• 2:09
  trying to throw a Hail Mary pass to try to save this podcast. And
• 2:15
  if you're a regular listener, you know that I've been targeting February fifteenth as
• 2:20
  the release date of our last episode of the podcast. And this has not
• 2:24
  been some sort of a game or a gimmick or something that I'm doing with
• 2:30
  some larger plan I've explained very very clearly that there are many, many reasons
• 2:36
  why I think it's best that I leave the podcast and essentially drop out a
• 2:42
  public life on February fifteenth, and that I had always left open the possibility
• 2:47
  that there would be a black Swan event that might prevent that, whether it
• 2:52
  would be in the public domain or within my private life or my public life,
• 2:59
  and I've even alluded to the fact that it's in theory. I've been
• 3:02
  told for two years that a black Swan event was about to happen in any
• 3:07
  moment in my career, although I don't believe that that is going to happen.
• 3:12
  In fact, I'm more confident than ever as of this taping that that's
• 3:15
  not going to happen, even though I am continuing to be told on a
• 3:21
  regular basis that it is going to happen imminently, which is mind blowing,
• 3:25
  incredibly frustrating, insain making and all of that, and I address some of
• 3:31
  that in the last episode of the podcast. But basically, Mike was throwing
• 3:37
  this hail Mary pass to see whether or not there were enough listeners who would
• 3:42
  be interested in transitioning this podcast into essentially a subscription only model now without getting
• 3:53
  too deeply into it, because I've talked about this previously. There are a
• 3:55
  lot of reasons why I thought it was best and still think that it makes
• 4:00
  sense to end the podcast around February fifteenth. Then one of them is that,
• 4:06
  due to a lot of reasons, including a complete collapse of the advertising
• 4:11
  market for certain types of podcasts, there's no way to make this profitable.
• 4:17
  And Mike has been losing money on this and putting a lot of time and
• 4:20
  effort into it, and so you know, now that we're a year and
• 4:24
  a half into this, that's a large part of why I thought, Okay,
• 4:30
  I can't keep doing this. I can't keep doing this to Mike.
• 4:32
  I'm making very very little money, not enough money to make it worth my
• 4:35
  time and effort and aggravation. And so therefore, you know, if only
• 4:42
  from a simply economic standpoint, it makes sense to just drop this and say
• 4:46
  thanks everybody, appreciated, and try to move on with your life whatever that
• 4:50
  may entail. Well. In the process of Mike putting out this Hail Mary
• 4:56
  to see how many people might be interested in participating in shifting this podcast to
• 5:02
  subscription, my first reaction was Okay, this is humorous. You know,
• 5:08
  Michael c that I was right about this all along, because we had talked
• 5:13
  about this many months ago, and I thought we had put the issue to
• 5:15
  bed that a subscription model one is against everything I believe it, and two
• 5:21
  I don't think would work based upon the nature of our audience. And so
• 5:27
  I really wasn't that agitated about it because I was pretty certain that Mike would
• 5:32
  be able to see that this isn't going to work, and then, you
• 5:36
  know, we'd just be able to go along with the plan as it has
• 5:40
  been to end the podcast somewhere around February fifteenth. And then Mike and I
• 5:46
  spoke yesterday pretty extensively, and he indicated that, you know, he was
• 5:51
  pleasantly surprised by the reaction that he got from the special announcement. I didn't
• 5:57
  even actually tweet it out myself. A couple people mentioned it on Twitter,
• 6:00
  and I think I retweeted one or two of them, but I didn't want
• 6:03
  to make a big deal about it. But I also didn't want to,
• 6:06
  you know, I didn't want to kill Mike's hail Mary. I wanted to
• 6:11
  let it, you know, die organically, so that I wouldn't get any
• 6:15
  blame for the death of his idea, which again well intentioned, appreciated,
• 6:20
  but I just don't think makes total sense. And so in the course of
• 6:27
  this conversation, Mike was very much along the lines of, hey, look,
• 6:31
  we barely even tried to drum up people who might be interested in going
• 6:38
  to the subscription model. I think we can get it to the point where
• 6:42
  we have enough people to make this work. And I'm like, oh God,
• 6:47
  So my first reaction to this, Okay, so I'm basically not to
• 6:51
  this was Mike's intent, but basically I'm feeling like I'm being set up.
• 6:56
  I feel like this happens a lot in my family life with my daughters and
• 7:00
  my wife, where I'm being set up to take the blame because now where
• 7:06
  I was getting somewhat comfortable with the idea, wasn't liking it, wasn't looking
• 7:11
  forward to it, because I don't know what the hell I'm going to do
• 7:13
  with my life after this is over with. But I was becoming comfortable with
• 7:17
  the idea. I had made the right decision at the right time to stop
• 7:21
  doing this, and now all of a sudden, if I stick by that
• 7:25
  decision, I'm the bad guy because I am essentially declining a lifeline to keep
• 7:32
  the thing going, and that was agitating me. But I also, out
• 7:39
  of respect for Mike and respect for the audience and for the people that seem
• 7:43
  to like this podcast, I felt like I was obligated to at least consider
• 7:48
  this is a possibility, even though, as I've said many times, I
• 7:53
  hate the subscription model, and if we did it this way, I would
• 7:58
  feel like the biggest hypocrite in the history of the world. I mean,
• 8:01
  I thought I was a hypocrite on Santa Claus and how I've dealt with my
• 8:05
  daughters on that issue, considering what I used to believe about it when I
• 8:07
  was single and never thought I would be married with kids. But this would
• 8:13
  dwarf even that as far as hypocrisy is concerned. Although I do think it
• 8:18
  is theoretically possible to create a subscription model that alleviates some, not all,
• 8:26
  some of those particular problems, and I absolutely would never do this if I
• 8:31
  thought the people that were participating were getting a raw deal or getting screwed over.
• 8:37
  I made that very very clear to Mike, and so basically here's where
• 8:41
  we are on this. I have made Mike no promises after barely sleeping on
• 8:48
  it, because I probably woke up at four o'clock in the morning and ever
• 8:50
  I got back to bed, partially because I've been ruminating about this and other
• 8:56
  matters. I have made Mike the promise to consider it and to give you
• 9:01
  the audience. I guess you'd call it one last chance to let him know
• 9:07
  whether or not this is something you would be interested in. In my mind,
• 9:11
  this would be more of a yearly model than a monthly model, but
• 9:16
  it wouldn't be all that expensive at all. It would be very much in
• 9:18
  line with other similar podcasts or platforms or media outlets or content providers, what
• 9:28
  have you. And if you are interested in this, and I'm not even
• 9:33
  urging you to do it, it's totally up to you. I'm giving you
• 9:35
  the option, and I'm letting Mike be able to play this out to its
• 9:41
  ultimate end. If you are somebody who is interested in doing this, Mike
• 9:46
  set up an email address for you to contact him and let him know that
• 9:52
  you would be seriously interested in participating in a subscription model after February fifteen.
• 10:00
  That email address is a got DOJ. I have no idea other than the
• 10:05
  DJ is obviously death of journalism. I don't know what the a god is.
• 10:09
  I didn't even ask him, but a got a got DJ, So
• 10:16
  a go ot dj, a got DJ at gmail dot com. That's a
• 10:22
  got DJ at gmail dot com, and send an email to Mike Ecavino if
• 10:30
  you want my misery to continue for maybe another year, which is really I
• 10:35
  think the only way I would consider doing this is if somehow we had enough
• 10:39
  people who were interested in doing this for a year commitment that would get us
• 10:45
  into the next presidential administration, and you know, I revisit it at that
• 10:50
  point and see where we are. I'm again not making any promises at all.
• 10:54
  I'm still trying to figure this all out and process all of this,
• 11:00
  but I'm had of obligation to and loyalty to both Mike and to the audience.
• 11:05
  I want to give everybody their opportunity to have their voice heard and see
• 11:09
  whether or not this is possible. And based upon the initial reaction to Mike's
• 11:13
  special announcement, it seems like we are pretty close when it comes to the
• 11:20
  numbers that would be needed. I wouldn't be doing this if the initial reaction
• 11:24
  was such that it was very obvious that we could never get to where we
• 11:28
  would need to get to. So that's up to you. If you want
• 11:31
  to do it, fine, if you don't, I totally get it.
• 11:35
  And once again, I do appreciate the sentiment of Mike's special announcement, even
• 11:41
  though, if at least in the short run, it cost me a lot
• 11:45
  of aggravation, more so than I even realized that it would when I first
• 11:50
  heard it. Because if you haven't heard it yet, you know it's very
• 11:52
  nice, it's very complimentary and very much appreciated. But like everything in life,
• 12:00
  multiple aspects to it, and it's very much a double edged sword as
• 12:03
  of right now. So that's the situation. I'll keep you updated. I
• 12:07
  can assure you of one thing. I am one hundred percent committed to doing
• 12:13
  this episode and three more episodes of this podcast. That's for one hundred percent
• 12:20
  certainty, and I will certainly consider any reasonable thoughts that Mike has about trying
• 12:26
  to continue this. Interestingly, one of the major components of this, which
• 12:33
  I forgot the man reference, is that Mike suddenly made it clear he doesn't
• 12:35
  care about the fact that he's losing money and that he's putting a lot of
• 12:39
  time and effort into this. In fact, under this new model, he'd
• 12:43
  be losing even more money and probably spending even more time on this, And
• 12:46
  I'm like, how does that make any sense? But that's Mike's decision.
• 12:50
  He's an adult, and this was new information to me, and so I
• 12:54
  must consider that new information because that was an important part of this whole equation
• 13:00
  and was I didn't want to put Mike out, especially what he had done
• 13:03
  in funding with the benefit of Hindsight Podcast, which you know, was an
• 13:07
  enormous endeavor and would never have happened without his support, and for that,
• 13:11
  I'm very appreciative and loyal to him on that front. So you know,
• 13:18
  that's new information, and I'm always open minded and if I get new information,
• 13:22
  I'm always willing to change my mind. I'm not there yet. That's
• 13:26
  pretty much up to you, and if you'd like to make that happen,
• 13:30
  feel free to email Mike at a got doj at gmail dot com. All
• 13:33
  right, enough of that stuff, Let's get to some of the other things
• 13:37
  I want to talk about, including a quick revisiting of our last episode,
• 13:41
  because I've made a couple of pretty hilarious predictions that turned out to be frighteningly
• 13:48
  prescient. The first one I want to reference was that I did something I
• 13:54
  don't think I've ever done on the in the history of the podcast before in
• 13:58
  episode four, and that is I preemptively decided to say that an announcement that
• 14:05
  another commentator was going to make was completely full of crap, and without getting
• 14:11
  into all the details. If you're interested, check out episode one twenty four.
• 14:15
  I'm referencing James o'keeth, who became famous via Project Veritas. He was,
• 14:22
  you know, someone who learned under the wing of my former friend,
• 14:26
  now the deceased late great Andrew Breitbart. And so I've been following James o'keeith
• 14:33
  for a very very long time. He's extremely well known within the right wing
• 14:37
  as a provocateur and investigator, someone who is very very good at self promotion.
• 14:43
  He's a bit of a drama queen. Well, long story short.
• 14:46
  Last week, he preemptively previewed a news quote unquote drop, an investigation drop
• 14:56
  by claiming that he was scared for his life and that people who knew about
• 15:00
  the content of this release were scared for his life. And he went into
• 15:03
  this entire diatribe on Twitter about how you know he's lived a good life and
• 15:09
  if this is the end, it's okay. And I mocked him and I
• 15:13
  said, this is a clear sign that what he has is but gus that
• 15:18
  this is going to be a nothing burger, because this is the way someone
• 15:22
  like James o'ke promotes something that doesn't quite meet the level of what would normally
• 15:31
  be a news breaking release of an investigation. If you have that, you
• 15:35
  don't need to claim you're about to be killed. But in the right wing,
• 15:39
  you know, that kind of conspiracy mongering is good business. People buy
• 15:43
  into it. They lap it up because that's the worldview they now have in
• 15:48
  the far right wing in the Trump world. And I told you in the
• 15:52
  last episode this was going to be nothing. And I have to say the
• 15:56
  only thing I was wrong about was that I gave it any question ability at
• 16:00
  all. This was even worse than I possibly imagine. Basically, this was
• 16:04
  another situation. It's remarkable how many of these investigations Keith o'keeith does relate to
• 16:11
  somebody thinking they're on a date, usually a gay man thinking he's on a
• 16:15
  date, where you know they're trying to impress the date, and they overplay
• 16:22
  their importance, they overplay their level of knowledge, They give their date what
• 16:26
  they think they want. As far as salacious details, this was a minor.
• 16:32
  Biden administration officials say what we already know, which is that there's concern
• 16:37
  about Biden's health, there's concern about Kamala Harris his viability to take over for
• 16:42
  him, and that somehow this was remotely newsworthy. Was just flat out ridiculous
• 16:48
  and hilarious, and an indication that James o'keeith is mostly not totally because occasionally
• 16:56
  does come up with some good stuff, but generally a self promoting fraud,
• 17:00
  which is emblematic of the entire right wing grift industrial complex, which is what
• 17:07
  the right wing media has become in the era of Trump. So I completely
• 17:11
  nailed it on James o'keeith, also, rather bizarrely, because I've never done
• 17:17
  this before either. I was talking about the PGA tour and the way they
• 17:22
  have completely dismantled the traditional Pebble Beach pro am and how I hated the new
• 17:27
  format and then it was killing all the charm and tradition of the old Pebble
• 17:32
  Beach pro am. But they were claiming that this is going to be a
• 17:33
  great thing because there's a lot more money in the purse, and it's a
• 17:37
  smaller field, and it's an elevated signature event where only the top golfers are
• 17:42
  allowed to play, and the amateurs are limited only the first two days,
• 17:45
  and there's hardly any celebrities, and it's going to be much better in the
• 17:49
  PGA Tour's mind. In other words, it's going to be antiseptic, and
• 17:52
  it's not going to have anything memorable or interesting or unique about it. And
• 17:59
  I went into a diatribe about how this increase in purse doesn't do anything for
• 18:03
  me. In fact, it diminishes the significance of the tournament because everybody's so
• 18:08
  damn rich. They have nothing really to play for. They have no real
• 18:11
  skin in the game. Their life doesn't change either way if they win or
• 18:15
  lose. It might matter a little bit, but not really to most of
• 18:18
  those guys. The Cinderella stories have been completely eliminated because you only have the
• 18:25
  guys who are already exempt for all the majors, the top eighty in the
• 18:29
  world in this particular case, so they have no real fear of the status
• 18:33
  of their career, and I made an offhand prediction looking at the forecast,
• 18:40
  and this was tape Wednesday, before the tournament that began on Thursday. I
• 18:45
  said, I don't even think they're going to be able to play the whole
• 18:47
  tournament because I'm looking at the weather forecast and I think they're going to probably
• 18:51
  wimp out and not play the whole seventy two holes. That's almost exactly what
• 18:56
  I said, and sure enough, that's exactly what happened. This thing was
• 19:00
  a complete disaster. It was as boring as I anticipated. All the charms
• 19:07
  sucked out of it, all the traditions sucked out of it. The weather
• 19:11
  did not weather cooperated for three days, but then Sunday was a complete washout,
• 19:17
  which I understood. I had no problem with not playing on Sunday because
• 19:19
  I'm definitely somebody who's in the camp of, you know, you play unless
• 19:23
  it's absolutely impossible to play, whether it's a football game or golf or whatever.
• 19:29
  I mean, I have extremely especially in this wissified era, I have
• 19:33
  an extremely high threshold for canceling anything. I hate cancelation Nation from pro sports
• 19:40
  down to my kids' events. To me, it's one of the most under
• 19:47
  reported and underrated corrosive, cancerous elements of our society, where we now cancel
• 19:55
  everything at the drop of a hat. But even I acknowledge they could not
• 19:59
  have played on Sunday because the wind was just too great. There was too
• 20:03
  much danger, too many things flying around. It just would have been impossible,
• 20:08
  and in all seriousness, it would have been too dangerous because of this
• 20:12
  weather that we've been getting that's been getting so much news coverage here in both
• 20:17
  northern and in southern California. However, when they canceled the event Sunday night,
• 20:25
  I was somewhat conflicted because I'm like, oh, wow, boy,
• 20:27
  I look like a genius, because I predicted that this was exactly what would
• 20:33
  happen, and I thought it was the wrong decision because Monday did not look
• 20:38
  that bad. And as it turns out now, taping on Monday morning,
• 20:44
  I don't think it would have been difficult at all for them to play eighteen
• 20:48
  holes on Monday. I mean, would there have been challenges. Of course,
• 20:51
  there would have been challenges. The idea that somehow, by the way,
• 20:55
  that well, if there's challenges, we can't do it anymore is just
• 20:57
  so pathetic when you consider the history of this country and all the challenges that
• 21:02
  people have overcome, but we can't overcome any challenges now. And the pg
• 21:07
  Tour in their announcement saying that they were canceling the final round and making this
• 21:11
  signature event a fifty four whole tournament where it got finished and nobody even knew
• 21:17
  that that was going to be the end of the whole thing. They used
• 21:19
  the language of out of an abundance of caution and concern for the safety of
• 21:27
  those involved. Oh my god, I mean, right out of the COVID
• 21:32
  playbook, Right out of the COVID playbook. An abundance of caution and a
• 21:37
  concern for safety for a golf tournament where it's fricking pebble beach weather, it's
• 21:45
  part of the deal. There's hardly any wind as of this taping, and
• 21:49
  the forecast is like forty percent chance of showers for the rest of the day.
• 21:53
  Again, would it have been difficult to get the course ready. I'm
• 21:57
  sure it would have. But here's the real remarkable part of this. This
• 22:02
  would not have been that unusual or that ridiculous under the old format. In
• 22:08
  other words, this was a regular PGA Tour event, and occasionally regular PGA
• 22:15
  Tour events get cut back to fifty four holes because the tour plays every week
• 22:19
  and you got to give time for players to get to the next stop.
• 22:25
  So Monday is really the latest you can go again. I don't understand why
• 22:29
  they couldn't have waited until Monday morning at least to make the call. That's
• 22:33
  another part of cancelation Nation I hate is when people call things too early.
• 22:37
  We are living in the instant information age, text messaging, what have you.
• 22:45
  It literally takes five minutes for people to be less than that to be
• 22:51
  informed of what's going on. You can wait till the next morning and go,
• 22:56
  you know what, guys, we tried our best. We just couldn't
• 23:00
  do it. But no one does that anymore for reasons I don't understand.
• 23:03
  But okay, under the old format of a regular PGA Tour event, the
• 23:10
  traditional Pebble Beach pro am, I wouldn't be that outraged about a fifty four
• 23:15
  whole event because it's just a regular PGA Tour event. It happens from time
• 23:18
  to time. It's, you know, just bad luck with the weather.
• 23:22
  We move on to the next stop. Fifty four holes is you know,
• 23:25
  I guess enough to call it an event. But this was touted as a
• 23:30
  signature event, which means elevated money, elevated world ranking points. Of course,
• 23:37
  you know, the tour is being mocked rightfully because one of their big
• 23:41
  gripes about live golf is that they only play fifty four holes and that's why
• 23:45
  they are not eligible for world ranking points. Well, they just took the
• 23:49
  PGA Tour, you know, really without much of an effort, just decided
• 23:53
  to curtail one of their signature events with big money and big points, back
• 24:00
  to fifty four hauls. I mean, to hold the hypocrisy, batman,
• 24:03
  and so that to me put this in a completely different category. You told
• 24:08
  us this was more important. You killed the entire essence of the event to
• 24:14
  make it a signature, elevated tournament, and then you treated it like it
• 24:19
  was nothing. You canceled for no reason on a Sunday night. The next
• 24:26
  event is in Arizona. I mean, it's pretty far away from Pebble Beach,
• 24:30
  but you know all these guys got private jets. Now, it doesn't
• 24:33
  you know, they can play on Monday, leave Monday night and get to
• 24:37
  Arizona and Tuesday morning. I mean It's just unbelievable to me that the tour
• 24:41
  was willing to do this, especially given the fact that live golf is breathing
• 24:45
  down their necks. And they had their first event with no problems because they
• 24:48
  were in good weather in Mexico, and you know, they had a lot
• 24:52
  of buzz surrounding that particular tournament. But then there's another element of this that
• 24:57
  I just want to mention briefly in and move on, and that is that
• 25:02
  the PGA Tour is now fully embraced gambling, fully embraced it. I mean,
• 25:07
  all sports now have embraced gambling because they need another revenue stream, and
• 25:12
  golf, which I think has always been a terrible idea because, unlike other
• 25:18
  sports, the crowd can influence what happens in the tournament pretty easily. You
• 25:26
  scream in a guy's backswing, or you know, if you're in the crowd
• 25:29
  and you know the ball comes into the gallery, you can kick the ball
• 25:33
  in another direction or not stop it, or stop it. I mean,
• 25:37
  there's all sorts of things that could happen where a gambler who's on site could
• 25:42
  actually have an impact on what's happening. So it's a very dangerous situation.
• 25:48
  But for the purposes of this, when you embrace gambling, like the PGA
• 25:53
  Tour has, the threshold for not playing a full event has got to be
• 26:00
  increased. In fact, there's apparently a controversy going on because when the third
• 26:07
  round ended, there were some betters who realized that there was a potential loophole
• 26:12
  here. And I don't fully understand it all, but they bet a pretty
• 26:17
  small amount of money on who the top ten finishers were going to be,
• 26:21
  and they basically bet that they weren't going to be able to play the tournament
• 26:23
  on Sunday, and that they would cancel it, and that the current top
• 26:27
  ten would be the final top ten, and that apparently like one hundred dollars
• 26:32
  might be worth a million dollar bet. So there's all sorts of things that
• 26:37
  are related to this. The biggest issue is cancelation nation and the fact that
• 26:44
  we are just a nation of fricking whussies now, just a complete nation of
• 26:48
  woosies. And I got to tell you, for the first time in my
• 26:51
  life, I'm actually kind of rooting against the PGA Tour. I was part
• 26:55
  of me is like, you know, what they're getting what they deserve,
• 26:57
  fuck them. Fuck them. I mean they're destroying the game. They did
• 27:03
  a lousy job of fighting off live. Rory McElroy has completely caved, waved
• 27:07
  a white flag. You know what, what's gonna happen is gonna happen.
• 27:11
  It's gonna suck hard, but I'm done rooting for these people. They get
• 27:15
  what they deserve, and the disaster at Pebble Beach is everything that the PGA
• 27:19
  Tour deserves. Now, there was one other semi prediction. I wouldn't call
• 27:25
  this a prediction because I was theorizing about the political polling in the presidential race
• 27:33
  in a way that clearly was not warranted. If you listen to episode number
• 27:37
  one twenty four, I started, I said, I'm a couple of poles
• 27:42
  away from picking up on a troubling trend if you're rooting for Donald Trump,
• 27:48
  and that is that Joe Biden's approval ratings seem to be recovering pretty dramatically among
• 27:55
  independent voters. There were two poles specifically that indicated that, And normally I
• 28:00
  wouldn't put any real credibility into it, because you know, it's just two
• 28:06
  poles. But I thought the timing, the timing of this was important that
• 28:11
  what we were going to see in the polling you may recall. You may
• 28:15
  recall that similarly, I felt like the polling immediately after DeSantis officially got into
• 28:22
  the race was extraordinarily telling, and that when there was no real bump,
• 28:27
  and in fact, in some polls there was an anti bump from that disastrous
• 28:33
  announcement for president on Twitter by the Santas campaign, I knew DeSantis's goose was
• 28:38
  cooked. That is a critical time period for polling, because then the race
• 28:45
  is real, it's no longer theoretical, and people's responses inherently pick up more
• 28:52
  credibility. Well, we're in a very similar situation right now where for the
• 28:57
  first time, and I've been telling you for months, it was gonna be
• 29:00
  Biden versus Trump and then whoever gets on the ballot as a third party candidate.
• 29:06
  But for the first time now it's really pretty much set in stone.
• 29:11
  A lot of people still are not accepting this, especially on the Trump on
• 29:15
  the Trump side, on the Biden side, a lot of Trump fans still
• 29:17
  think it's not gonna be Joe Biden. Trump got asked about that, We're
• 29:21
  gonna play a clip from him on Fox News Channel in a moment regarding his
• 29:26
  answer on that subject. But by and large, we now know it's gonna
• 29:32
  be Trump and Biden. Is the two major candidates, barring somebody dying,
• 29:37
  which given their ages and health, it's there's certainly possible, but certainly also
• 29:41
  not anything close to likely. So psychologically, I think we now have a
• 29:48
  situation where the polling takes on a bit more merit, where we know it's
• 29:52
  gonna be Trump and Biden. There are no other real, legitimate alternatives in
• 29:59
  the real world, and so in the last episode I said, look out,
• 30:04
  we might be seeing something where now that it's clear that it's going to
• 30:08
  be Biden, and if you're a Democrat or a Liberal, you know,
• 30:12
  pining for Gavin Newsom or some magical other candidate is no longer really an option.
• 30:18
  So it's Biden or Trump. That if we saw an increase in Biden's
• 30:23
  approval ratings, especially among independent voters, that would be the death now for
• 30:29
  Trump, and that we were starting to see, I think, I tweeted
• 30:33
  this, We're starting to see the possibility that whether by design, and I'm
• 30:37
  not a conspiracy person at all, because I don't think this was by design,
• 30:41
  but it could have been subconsciously, by design, by design, or
• 30:44
  by accident. We were close to seeing a situation that would be a bait
• 30:48
  and switch that while it was theoretical Trump was beating Biden in general election polls,
• 30:56
  but as soon as Trump wins the nomination and it's for real, all
• 31:00
  of a sudden, we see a couple point flip and oops, Sorry,
• 31:04
  all those people that decided to galvanize around Trump because they thought he was going
• 31:08
  to be Biden, Yeah, that data is no longer relevant. I thought
• 31:14
  that was possible. That's not happening. That's not happening right now. And
• 31:21
  again, we are at a critical moment in this whole situation. And you
• 31:26
  might be saying, but John, we're still nine months away from voting,
• 31:32
  folks. We have to accept the extremely truly unique aspect of this campaign.
• 31:41
  We have never had a former president running against a current president. We've never
• 31:48
  had a situation that was a rematch quite like this. There was a rematch
• 31:52
  in the nineteen fifties, but you know that basically those two elections with Eisenhower
• 31:59
  went almost exactly the same way, and they weren't even close. But we
• 32:02
  also are living, obviously in a much more modern time, and we have
• 32:07
  a couple other things at work here. We have a much more divided nation.
• 32:13
  We have far fewer independent voters, we have far more people that are
• 32:17
  extreme partisans, we have an extreme partisan media. It doesn't look to me
• 32:22
  like we're going to have debates. In fact, I think the chances of
• 32:27
  there being debates is almost zero at this point, unless Biden feels so desperate
• 32:32
  that he has to debate Trump. I think there was a tell on that
• 32:37
  when Biden announced that he's not or his people announced that he's not going to
• 32:42
  do a super Bowl interview for CBS this weekend. That's extraordinary. I mean,
• 32:46
  talk about evidence that we have become a totally broken and partisan nature.
• 32:52
  It wasn't that nation. It wasn't that long ago. It really wasn't.
• 32:57
  It wasn't that long ago when Barack obob President Barack Obama did a Super Bowl
• 33:02
  interview with Bill O'Reilly when the game was on Fox. Something like that could
• 33:08
  never happen today. Joe Biden isn't going to even do an interview with CBS,
• 33:14
  it's not even Fox for whatever reason, whether he's afraid of looking bad
• 33:20
  or getting a negative question or whatever. It is. It's the freaking super
• 33:23
  Bowl. This became a tradition for about a decade and now that's gone because
• 33:30
  Biden is afraid of even CBS, and the idea that somehow Biden would ever
• 33:36
  do an interview with Sean Hannity even for the Super Bowl is preposterous, which
• 33:40
  shows you just how much things have changed, mostly for the negative, in
• 33:45
  this country over a fairly short period of time. But the fact that Biden
• 33:49
  isn't going to do is CBS super Bowl interview tells me there's no chance he's
• 33:53
  doing debates. And so that gets me back to the importance of this polling.
• 33:58
  In this current era where they're not gonna have debates, we are heavily
• 34:01
  divided. These are two extremely well known candidates, people who have paid any
• 34:08
  attention at all to the news over the last ten fifteen years. More more
• 34:14
  than that when it comes to really both of them, but politically, certainly
• 34:16
  with Biden, know everything they need to know about Biden and Trump. So
• 34:22
  we're dealing with, in some ways a highly quote unquote educated public when it
• 34:30
  comes to this choice. So there's not gonna be a lot of change,
• 34:35
  There's not gonna be barring there's only a couple things that can happen. I
• 34:37
  realize these are big barring the Trump conviction on a felony account, which would
• 34:44
  absolutely change everything. That's the big elephant in the corner of the room here.
• 34:50
  I personally don't think that's gonna happen, but it could, and that
• 34:52
  would absolutely change things. But barring that, or barring major health issues for
• 34:59
  either of these two guys, we are in a situation right now where this
• 35:02
  polling matters, and we have evidence that the idea that I was positing that
• 35:12
  this all might have been a bait and switch and that Trump is now dead
• 35:14
  in the water, really doesn't have a lot behind it. There's one pole
• 35:19
  from Quinnipiac, which I used to work for a million years ago as a
• 35:22
  polling analyst. I don't think anyone's still there that I briefly worked for,
• 35:27
  but I have some respect for that institute, and you know, they are
• 35:30
  liberal, very much liberal, but I do think they try to do good
• 35:35
  work there. They had a poll with Biden winning by six That is the
• 35:38
  only major poll out of the last twelve national polls where Biden is clearly beating
• 35:46
  Trump. He's basically tied in two others, and Trump is winning all of
• 35:52
  the rest of them. But the poll that really was most traumatic it was
• 35:57
  an NBC pole, an NBC p poll came out over the weekend. That
• 36:04
  really kills any idea that, now that we know it's going to be Trump
• 36:08
  versus Biden, that Biden is suddenly making headway or that Trump is in big
• 36:15
  trouble, because they have Trump beating Biden forty seven forty two nationwide. That's
• 36:22
  a five point edge, that is outside the margin of error. That has
• 36:28
  Biden at a lowly forty two percent. That's Trump at a high enough number
• 36:32
  where he could win the election. You can win the election even without major
• 36:37
  third party influence at forty seven percent, if you're Donald Trump, you can
• 36:42
  win the electoral college that way. Okay, This is an increase pretty significantly
• 36:46
  in Trump's direction from July of last year. NBC polled Trump versus Biden.
• 36:53
  In July of twenty twenty three, they had Biden up by four. Now
• 36:59
  they have Trump up by five. This is the biggest lead NBC has ever
• 37:06
  had in sixteen polls of a have done for Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
• 37:13
  It's that is significant, again, especially given the context of the timing here,
• 37:19
  and they have Biden's approval rating at just thirty seven percent thirty seven percent.
• 37:28
  Donald Trump's approval rating at this time going into a reelection of twenty twenty
• 37:34
  was forty six percent, and he lost fairly significantly. Now, of course,
• 37:39
  obviously the COVID pandemic played a huge role in that. That's part of
• 37:44
  what makes it difficult to one hundred percent connect or compare twenty twenty to twenty
• 37:51
  twenty four. So you know that's an obvious caveat, But it wasn't.
• 37:55
  Just in this NBC poll that shows Trump now eating Biden fairly significantly, the
• 38:02
  enthusiasm and the discomfort numbers were really striking. This is interesting on so many
• 38:10
  different levels. They asked registered voters whether or not they are enthusiastic about Trump
• 38:19
  or Biden. Now, this is not surprising given the fact that he has
• 38:22
  a cult. Trump has a higher percentage of voters who are enthusiastic about him,
• 38:29
  but less than he did in twenty twenty. So you know, if
• 38:32
  you're looking for red flags about the Trump campaign, this would be about the
• 38:37
  only one I see in the NBC poll, because in January twenty twenty,
• 38:43
  before COVID, there were thirty two percent of voters who were enthusiastic about Trump.
• 38:47
  Now only twenty percent of voters are enthusiastic about Trump four years later.
• 38:53
  But Biden Biden in January twenty twenty, Remember he was not the Democratic nominee
• 39:00
  yet this is important. His Democratic candidacy was almost dead in the water in
• 39:07
  January of twenty twenty. Right, it was only when he got the endorsement
• 39:13
  from James Clyburn in South Carolina that all of a sudden everything turned around and
• 39:17
  he was suddenly the Democratic nominee. That was after January of twenty twenty.
• 39:22
  But in January of twenty twenty, he had fourteen percent of voters that were
• 39:28
  enthusiastic about him. Now as President of the United States, President of the
• 39:35
  United States running for reelection, clearly against a guy who at least fifty percent
• 39:42
  of the country hates in Donald Trump, only ten percent of voters are enthusiastic
• 39:50
  about Joe Biden ten percent. So even though Trump's enthusiasm level has dipped twelve
• 40:00
  point, it's still twice of what Joe Biden, as the incumbent president,
• 40:05
  has, But that might not even be as significant as the next data point
• 40:09
  I'm going to give you. So they asked the question, which I think
• 40:13
  is a great question, given the nature of this race, what percentage or
• 40:16
  they determined, what percentage of voters are very uncomfortable about a particular candidate?
• 40:24
  Very uncomfortable? This is pretty much how many people really really don't want to
• 40:32
  vote for you. They're only going to vote for you under the most perilous
• 40:37
  of circumstances. And Donald Trump, this is amazing. Donald Trump in January
• 40:44
  of twenty twenty, in this NBC poll was at forty nine percent, which
• 40:47
  I always say in about half the country hates his guts. Forty nine percent
• 40:52
  very uncomfortable about him. This is before COVID, before January sixth. Okay,
• 41:00
  so so in the time period of the last four years, you know,
• 41:04
  we've got this massive pandemic that Trump gets blamed for on both sides,
• 41:09
  and January sixth, which the media won't shut up about. So he was
• 41:14
  at forty nine percent. Then today that numbers forty seven percent are very uncomfortable
• 41:21
  about him. That is remarkable that Trump's very uncomfortable number has gone down.
• 41:28
  Now it's only two points, and that's within the margin of error. But
• 41:30
  basically worst case, if you're rooting for Trump, it's unchanged. Biden's number
• 41:38
  from January twenty twenty to January twenty twenty four has increased fourteen points to forty
• 41:45
  nine percent, more than Trump's number, So by two percentage points. There
• 41:54
  are more people in this NBC poll who are very uncomfortable about Joe Biden than
• 42:00
  they are about Donald Trump than are about Donald Trump. Forty nine forty seven
• 42:07
  again one poll nine months out, and you know there could be a bad
• 42:14
  sample. I mean, Biden's approval ratings awfully low at thirty seven percent,
• 42:17
  but I think the comparisons here are what are really interesting, and it all
• 42:23
  almost all of it goes in the favor of Trump, and it's against Biden.
• 42:30
  Now, why is this Occam's razor. It's because of Biden's age.
• 42:35
  It's because Trump hasn't been president for three years and so therefore people have forgotten
• 42:42
  a lot about that stuff. The economy for a lot of people is a
• 42:45
  lot worse, the immigration situation is completely out of control. All that matters,
• 42:51
  But it's really about Biden's age, and that's the source of the very
• 42:57
  uncomfortable number. When it comes to Joe Biden. So does this mean Trump's
• 43:04
  gonna win the election? No, I am edging towards it now being a
• 43:09
  fifty to fifty shot because I've been in the category of it being less than
• 43:14
  a fifty percent shot for Trump to win that I thought the weather was going
• 43:19
  to be so much in Biden's favor and the hope we talked about the Taylor
• 43:22
  Swift effect and whether or not that may influence things. The reason why this
• 43:27
  is significant, by the way, you know, since I've always talked about
• 43:30
  Taylor Swift, and I do so very seriously. But I'd also don't exaggerate
• 43:36
  the potential Taylor Swift impact. She if she does what is expected, she
• 43:42
  will have an impact on the turnout of young especially single women. That's a
• 43:49
  factor in a very close election. She does not have the power to influence
• 43:55
  an election where Donald Trump is winning by five points. She doesn't. Now,
• 44:01
  again, this poll may be exaggerating Trump's national you know, popularity or
• 44:08
  Biden's unpopularity. I'd like to see some more data now that we know for
• 44:14
  sure it's going to beat Trump versus Biden. I'm sure there's going to be
• 44:16
  still volatility in the polls. I understand all that. That's all understood,
• 44:22
  but we're starting to see evidence that Trump may get out of the range of
• 44:29
  a Taylor Swift field goal, if you want to put it into into football
• 44:32
  terms. And if that happens, then you know Biden's the one who's dead
• 44:39
  in the water because if his age and seeming dementia has had this much of
• 44:47
  an impact on voters and he goes underground and he dodges the debates. See,
• 44:52
  when you dodge the debates as a loser or someone who is perceived as
• 44:59
  at least not winning, that's totally different, especially when you're eighty one years
• 45:04
  old. Then if you're Donald Trump and you're the alpha male and you dodge
• 45:08
  the debates simply because you're you're bigger and better and you don't need to bother
• 45:13
  with the with the JV team, those are two totally different things in perception.
• 45:19
  Now I think they're the same thing in reality. I think Trump was
• 45:22
  dodging desandis because he was afraid, And I think Biden will dodge a debate
• 45:27
  because he's afraid of looking like he has dementia. But it will be perceived
• 45:34
  very differently by a small but an influential group of voters. If Biden is
• 45:39
  not seen as the leader, if he's winning by five points or whatever and
• 45:45
  expected to win, then him taking a stand that he's not going to give
• 45:51
  a platform to, you know, a nut job like Donald Trump might actually
• 45:57
  work. That's sustainable, But it's not sustainable if you're perceived as losing and
• 46:02
  you're weak and you're hiding and your campaign is underground. So that's another reason
• 46:07
  why the polling right now really matters. It's going to determine whether or not
• 46:14
  Biden can get away with dodging those debates which he apps ups. Clear Again,
• 46:21
  the CBS Super Bowl dodge makes it obvious as hell they are not going
• 46:27
  to want to do the debates, and how that dodging gets perceived will be
• 46:32
  determined largely by the polling, just as we just saw in the opposite direction
• 46:37
  in the Republican primary process, where Trump dodged just as I said he would
• 46:43
  dodged those debates. Now, as far as as far as calling something in
• 46:50
  this election, I have two other points, at least directly about polling and
• 46:54
  what's going on in this general election race. I said at the top of
• 46:59
  the show that I have my first official call of the twenty twenty four general
• 47:05
  election. And I was serious about that. I never make promises I can't
• 47:07
  keep. I believe, and let me just make the normal caveat. There's
• 47:14
  two caveats here at all times. One no true black swan event, you
• 47:20
  know, massive terrorist attack or you know nine to eleven being the ultimate black
• 47:24
  swan. Right, So if we discount black swan events and Trump being convicted
• 47:31
  of a famiony between now and the election, right, so we take those
• 47:35
  two things off the table, those are the caveats. I am now ready
• 47:38
  and willing and able to call the first key race of the twenty twenty four
• 47:45
  general election. Donald Trump, barring black swan or conviction, will win the
• 47:52
  state of Georgia. You heard it here first. I'm sure people think I'm
• 47:58
  crazy for doing this right now. And I'm not doing this just because we're
• 48:01
  planning on ending the podcast in a week and a half. I'm doing this
• 48:06
  because I truly believe it. I believe that Trump has won Georgia. He
• 48:10
  has won the last seven or eight polls in Georgia by significant margins. But
• 48:16
  most importantly, this Fanny Willis story which the media is doing their best to
• 48:22
  try to downplay I think is devastating to the the Biden campaign in Georgia.
• 48:29
  Fanny Willis is the local DA who indicted Trump on charges related to January sixth
• 48:37
  and the so called you know, attempt to steal the election whatever. It's
• 48:44
  basically a copycat in some ways of the federal case regarding the election of twenty
• 48:51
  twenty. But what has happened over the last couple of weeks is that we
• 48:54
  now know and Fanny Willis has just been forced to admit that the special prosecutor
• 49:00
  that she hired is a guy with whom she's having or had had a romantic
• 49:05
  affair. And we don't know for sure what you know, real world impact
• 49:12
  that's going to have on the state of that case, which doesn't have a
• 49:15
  trial date at this point, but for all intents and purposes, it has
• 49:21
  destroyed the credibility of the case, which was already on weak ground to begin
• 49:25
  with, especially when you consider this is the case that had that nutjob female
• 49:30
  grand jury four person who stupidly did an MSNBC interview where she was all excited
• 49:37
  about putting Donald Trump under oath. And so when you combine, you know
• 49:43
  the nature of the allegations, the Fannie Willis scandal, the grand Jury four
• 49:50
  person and the fact that Georgia is still outside of Atlanta, is a pretty
• 49:54
  solidly red state. Plus the fact and I'm a big believer in this theory
• 50:00
  of voting, which I've never heard a lot of people articulate. So maybe
• 50:06
  just my theory, but when you look at what independent voters have had to
• 50:10
  do in Georgia since twenty twenty, they've had to vote not just twice for
• 50:17
  US Senate in the general election, but then they had two runoff elections in
• 50:22
  early twenty twenty one, and then they had another Senate election in twenty twenty
• 50:27
  two, which had another runoff election that's the one where herschel Walker lost.
• 50:30
  So there have been six, effectively six US Senate elections in Georgia in just
• 50:38
  the last three years, basically where the Democrat barely won each and every time.
• 50:49
  I'm telling you there's going to be some fatigue among independent voters voting Democratic,
• 50:55
  especially when they're not seeing any good results from that, and especially when
• 51:00
  they're not really liberal in their mindset. These are people who are probably middle
• 51:06
  of the road. They don't like Trump, and you know, I think
• 51:09
  that had a big influence over what they did in those Senate elections. So
• 51:14
  those people are going to get tired of voting Democrat in a state like Georgia.
• 51:20
  And so when you consider the fact that Trump is winning poll after poll
• 51:24
  in Georgia, the fact that it is by all accounts still largely a red
• 51:30
  ish state, and all the other factors that I just stated, barring red
• 51:37
  you know, some sort of black swan. I almost said red swan.
• 51:42
  No, we're not talking about red wave here. Black swans and red waves
• 51:45
  barring black swan or conviction in another case, I think Trump has now won
• 51:52
  Georgia. Now, that doesn't mean he's going to win the election. When
• 51:53
  I tweeted this, a lot of people misinterpreted it somehow a sign that I
• 51:59
  was saying that down Trump was going to win the election. No, I've
• 52:02
  been very clear that there are only six states that matter in this general election
• 52:07
  Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Trump needs
• 52:13
  to win at least three of those six. If he wins four of those
• 52:17
  six, he's in he can't lose the election three. It depends on which
• 52:22
  three he wins. So in my opinion, he is just one. Barring
• 52:28
  black Swan events, He's going to win Georgia, so that leaves five.
• 52:34
  So we're now down to five, five effective real swing states, and if
• 52:38
  he wins three of those five, he's the next president. I'm still very
• 52:45
  skeptical that that will happen. It is Is it possible? Yes? If
• 52:49
  the election were today, would it happen? Boy? It would be really
• 52:52
  close. It would be really really close. It probably would gun to my
• 52:59
  head. If I had the election right now, I think Trump would probably
• 53:01
  win. It would be incredibly close, very controversial, very divisive, But
• 53:08
  I do think I would you rather be in Trump's camp than in Biden's camp
• 53:14
  right now. And as I've already stated, I am more and more open
• 53:17
  to the idea that Trump could actually win this thing. Not nearly sold.
• 53:22
  I'm pretty much now at fifty to fifty about what's going to happen in November,
• 53:27
  but I am confident that Trump will win Georgia. Now. Part of
• 53:31
  why I keep mentioning black Swan and the conviction issue is that there was another
• 53:37
  poll that came out that is really really remarkable. I mean, this is
• 53:43
  maybe the most incredible poll of the year so far. And I could probably
• 53:49
  spend an hour talking about this. I'm not going to. I'm just going
• 53:52
  to give you the basics of it. But there was a major poll that
• 53:57
  asked the question. And I love doing this. I've done this my self
• 54:00
  on multiple occasions. I've commissioned three major polls in my own career, all
• 54:06
  of which made, you know, pretty significant news to varying degrees. And
• 54:10
  what I like to do is to test knowledge or perceived knowledge, not opinion.
• 54:19
  I think you can tell, oftentimes way more about what people think they
• 54:24
  know than what their opinion is. And that's what this poll did. They
• 54:30
  asked the question, they said, to your knowledge, has Donald Trump dot
• 54:37
  dot dot? And then they provided like six or seven different situations to your
• 54:44
  knowledge is this true about Donald Trump? And they asked about several of the
• 54:51
  legitimate court cases against him, including EG and Carol, including the economic fraud
• 54:58
  case which is still to be the determined any day now in New York,
• 55:01
  regarding Trump's real estate empire and his proelection for overstating the value of properties in
• 55:08
  order to get better terms on loans. And then they also asked about the
• 55:13
  four indictments that he faces. So there were six legitimate issues about which they
• 55:22
  asked for the respondent's knowledge, and then they put in two fake ones.
• 55:29
  Now, it was interesting. The fake ones dealt with the idea that that
• 55:34
  Trump had been charged with regard to violating the Emolument's clause of the Constitution,
• 55:42
  which he has not been, although I actually think it should be if nothing
• 55:46
  else, given his relationship with Saudi Arabia, and you know, he's not
• 55:52
  the president right now, but he's clearly taking money directly from the Saudi government
• 55:54
  when it comes to renting his golf courses out for live golf. You know,
• 56:00
  if he was still president, that would be a clear violation of the
• 56:04
  emoluments clause. I think there's evidence that he has violated the Emolument's clause,
• 56:08
  but he's never been charged in any way regarding that. And they also asked,
• 56:15
  I think, just to make it very clear that you determine how many
• 56:17
  people had no idea what was going on, they asked whether or not he
• 56:22
  had been charged with facilitating drug drug trafficking operations, So a completely totally fake
• 56:30
  question. Well, guess what. Here's the reason why I found this to
• 56:34
  be incredibly fascinating and significant Republican voters, over half of them had no idea,
• 56:45
  no knowledge, because that's the question, to your knowledge, has Donald
• 56:50
  Trump blank blank blank been found liable for sexually assaulting, in defaming eg and
• 56:55
  Carroll blah blah blah. You know, the same questions regarding all those other
• 57:00
  issues, and on every single one, about half, sometimes a little bit
• 57:07
  less, sometimes a little bit more Republicans had no idea that the case was
• 57:15
  going on, none, zero, which is mind blowing on so many levels.
• 57:23
  By the way, one of the things I thought about was this really
• 57:25
  substantiates my theory that the Trump people understood that most Republicans did not know Ron
• 57:32
  De Santis's real record on COVID, and that's why they could lie their asses
• 57:37
  off about it and get away with it, especially with the right wing media
• 57:40
  carrying their water on this. I mean, I was confident of that before
• 57:45
  this poll. Now I'm positive the vast majority Republicans did not even know Ronda
• 57:50
  Sandis's true COVID record, and the Sandus people didn't fully understand that. Well,
• 57:54
  we got about half Republican voters having no idea about any of these situations,
• 58:02
  not disagreeing with them, not saying they're illegitimate, not having knowledge of
• 58:08
  them, not having knowledge of them. And by the way, just for
• 58:14
  the record, this isn't just a knock on Republicans being ignorant on those two
• 58:17
  questions that were fake. Regarding the emoluments clause, get this, Democratic voters,
• 58:24
  forty three percent of Democratic voters claimed to have knowledge that Trump had been
• 58:31
  charged with violating the emoluments clause, which of course has not happened. So
• 58:37
  forty three percent of Democratic voters have created a fairy tale. And when it
• 58:43
  came to drug trafficking, even that which is a ludicrous thing, right,
• 58:46
  I mean, if you're thinking that Donald Trump has been charged with facilitating drug
• 58:52
  trafficking, then you're really out to lunch. Well, seventy percent of Democratic
• 58:58
  voters believe that that's true. Interestingly, six percent of Republican voters said that
• 59:02
  they had knowledge that Donald Trump had been charged with facilitating drug trafficking. Now,
• 59:08
  this poll did not get nearly as much attention as it deserves, but
• 59:13
  that is really quite something, and I think it goes to show that if
• 59:17
  Trump is convicted in any of these cases, it really is the end.
• 59:23
  There's no possibility for him to survive. That. I mean, I realize
• 59:28
  people have said that in time and time again, but the polling just makes
• 59:32
  it exceedingly clear that, you know, among independent voters and Republican voters who
• 59:37
  have no knowledge that this is even going on, that that is going to
• 59:42
  be a major turnoff, turnoff. Now would it be a massive blowout,
• 59:45
  I think that's still open for interpretation. I'm not saying it would be,
• 59:50
  but for actually winning the election, that would end it. And I think
• 59:52
  this poll pretty much shows that. It also shows just how unbelievably ignorant the
• 59:59
  American people really are, which is quite shocking and depressing. But you know,
• 1:00:04
  it's not something that's all that surprising if you've been paying any attention.
• 1:00:08
  So, all right, a couple of other things that I want to quickly
• 1:00:13
  mention with regard to the presidential race. Nicky Haley went on Saturday Night Live
• 1:00:19
  Live. I mean, she was literally on the show in studio, and
• 1:00:22
  I don't even understand what she was doing here. She was taking part in
• 1:00:25
  a skit that tried to attack Trump. They had a Trump impersonator. It
• 1:00:30
  wasn't particularly funny, it didn't really make Trump look that bad. It ended
• 1:00:36
  with Haley herself essentially being mocked over her infamous answer regarding the causes or the
• 1:00:44
  root cause of the Civil War. It wasn't like she was making fun of
• 1:00:46
  herself. She allowed herself to be mocked by the show itself, and then
• 1:00:51
  she opened the show. I did not understand how she thought this was going
• 1:00:55
  to be helpful. And to me, this was a sign of two things.
• 1:01:00
  Number One, as I've said previously, she ain't gonna be the vice
• 1:01:02
  presidential nominee, even though she should be. If Trump really wants to win,
• 1:01:07
  that ain't gonna happen, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective.
• 1:01:13
  And also, I don't even think that she is trying to win anymore.
• 1:01:19
  I mean, this felt like, hey, my campaign is over, but
• 1:01:22
  I have a chance to go on Saturday Night Live. That'll be cool and
• 1:01:25
  fun. I mean, as we'll take advantage of this, because you know,
• 1:01:30
  these opportunities are gonna dry up real fast. I mean, that's just
• 1:01:34
  I'm trying to figure out what her motivations were. That's about the only thing
• 1:01:37
  I could figure could possibly be because this is not going to help her at
• 1:01:42
  all in a Republican primary that's essentially already over it's gonna end up eighty twenty
• 1:01:46
  in most states, Like I told you, if she stays in it might
• 1:01:51
  be slightly better than that in her home state of South Carolina, but not
• 1:01:53
  that much better than that, maybe seventy thirty or sixty five thirty five absolute
• 1:01:59
  best case scenario for her in South Carolina, her home state. So there's
• 1:02:04
  there's zero chance that she even makes this into a race. The only other
• 1:02:08
  theoretical strategy here is that she is legitimately in the I'm just here in case
• 1:02:15
  Trump dies scenario. That's really what her strategy is, which you know,
• 1:02:21
  I mean, there's what one percent chance of that half a percent chance of
• 1:02:24
  that. I mean I have been someone who doesn't believe that that's likely because
• 1:02:30
  people when they look at the periodic tables on when people die and what the
• 1:02:34
  chances are people dying in certain ages, they're not taking into account that Trump
• 1:02:38
  has secret Service protection and theoretically really good healthcare, and you know, someone
• 1:02:45
  has a defibrillator around with them all at all times, and I mean,
• 1:02:49
  so the things that would He's not going to die in a car crash because
• 1:02:52
  so he's got a driver, and you know, he's got private plane.
• 1:02:57
  I mean, so all the things that he oretically could cause somebody at seventy
• 1:03:02
  seven to suddenly die and he doesn't have any known illnesses, are not really
• 1:03:07
  there. So I think that it's very very low, less than one percent
• 1:03:10
  chance of that. But you know, as the old movie line from Jim
• 1:03:15
  Carrey, so you're saying there's a chance, so you know, less than
• 1:03:20
  one percent. If that were to happen, I guess she would be there
• 1:03:23
  in a pretty good spot since she would still be in the race. Of
• 1:03:27
  course, all hell would break loose at that point and all bets would be
• 1:03:30
  off. But I do not understand what Nikki Hilly was thinking about doing.
• 1:03:35
  But I'm pretty much resigned to the idea that she's not going to be the
• 1:03:38
  vice presidential nominee. And Donald Trump gave his frankly most coached and detailed statement
• 1:03:46
  yet on who will be his vice presidential nominee in an interview with Maria Bartaroma
• 1:03:52
  on Fox News Business Channel. I have to say Trump actually sounded pretty reasonable.
• 1:04:00
  This was pretty logical and sensible and almost human from Donald Trump. And
• 1:04:06
  he addresses a couple of things here that are important. One the topic in
• 1:04:12
  general, the vice presidential nomination. Two, he names two people that he
• 1:04:16
  is considering or at least would theoretically consider, and Tim Scott, the Black
• 1:04:23
  Senator from South Carolina, and Christy Nome, the governor of South Dakota.
• 1:04:27
  And then he also addresses the issue of whether not RFK Junior could possibly be
• 1:04:33
  his vice presidential nominee, which has been rumored in a way that I don't
• 1:04:38
  think is helpful to the Trump campaign at all, and he tries to shoot
• 1:04:42
  down those rumors. But here's what that soundedllite when Maria Barbaroma interviewed Donald Trump
• 1:04:47
  on the issue of his vice presidential nominee. This President, when will you
• 1:04:51
  announce who your VP is? Not for a while? I mean, we
• 1:04:55
  have so many great people in the Republican Party, but not for a while?
• 1:04:58
  What criteria are you using to identify who your running meat is? Always
• 1:05:01
  it's got to be one thing. It's got to be who would be a
• 1:05:03
  good president? I mean you always have to think that, because you know,
• 1:05:05
  in case of emergency, things happened, right, no matter who you
• 1:05:09
  are, things happen. It's got to be number one, who is your
• 1:05:12
  running mate? Well, I have a lot of good people. We have
• 1:05:14
  a lot of really good people, so you haven't decided who it is.
• 1:05:16
  I have a lot of good ideas, but I haven't, and there's no
• 1:05:19
  reason too. I speak to everybody, I speak to everybody, you know.
• 1:05:26
  I called Tim Scott this so because a lot of people like Tim Scott.
• 1:05:29
  I called him and I said, you are a much better candidate that
• 1:05:31
  for me than you are for yourself. When I watched Tim, he was
• 1:05:35
  fine, he was good, but he was very low key, et cetera,
• 1:05:38
  et cetera. I watched him in the last week defending me and sticking
• 1:05:41
  up for me and fighting for me. I said, man, I said,
• 1:05:45
  you're a much better person for me than you are for yourself, because
• 1:05:48
  for himself he was low key. For me, he's been he's been a
• 1:05:53
  real tiger. He's been incredible, and others have too. So maybe it's
• 1:05:59
  Tim Scott. What could be? It could be a lot of people,
• 1:06:01
  But it was interesting. I was watching Tim. I've been watching, you
• 1:06:03
  know, for a while. I watched him campaign as a candidate, but
• 1:06:09
  I watched him over the last two weeks. As you know, he endorsed
• 1:06:12
  me, fully endorsed me, gave me a beautiful endorsement, and he has
• 1:06:15
  been really strong in terms of that. No, but that has nothing to
• 1:06:18
  do I don't want anyone buddy to take even any inference. But it's incredible.
• 1:06:23
  Christinoman has been incredible fighting for me. She said I'd never run against
• 1:06:28
  him because I can't beat him. That was a very nice thing to say.
• 1:06:30
  It's arding that your team reached out to RFK Junior. He's a false
• 1:06:34
  story. You never reached out to her. I liked him a lot.
• 1:06:38
  Nope, never never happened. Oh is it fair to believe that now?
• 1:06:42
  Obviously the person that he talked most about in that clip was Tim Scott,
• 1:06:46
  and I think Scott makes some sense as Trump's VP. Obviously, the fact
• 1:06:54
  that he's black theoretically brings something to the table, since Trump is seemingly made
• 1:06:59
  in Kingsroads with black voters who are going to be key in places like Georgia.
• 1:07:04
  I mean, having a black running mate from South Carolina is going to
• 1:07:09
  help you in Georgia, although as I said, I don't know that that's
• 1:07:11
  where Trump really needs the help. Pennsylvania and Michigan obviously are the most obvious
• 1:07:16
  examples of where theoretically that might help on the Margins. And he's also somebody
• 1:07:23
  who is not a threat to Trump. That's important to Trump. He's not
• 1:07:28
  really a threat to take over MAGA inc. He's a US Senator, So
• 1:07:31
  I mean that's rational for him to be talking about Tim Scott. Christy nom
• 1:07:36
  Look. I liked her during COVID, although she gets a little too much
• 1:07:41
  credit because it was her legislature that basically told her yet, no, we're
• 1:07:45
  not doing any of this madness, and she essentially was forced to go along
• 1:07:49
  with that. But she did go along with it, and she talks a
• 1:07:53
  good game. She's also seemingly allegedly having an affair or had an affair with
• 1:07:59
  Corey Lewski as a married woman, and Cory Lewandowski was one of Trump's original
• 1:08:04
  campaign managers from twenty sixteen. You would think that would be an eliminating factor,
• 1:08:10
  but we're living in such a bizarre world. Maybe it's not as far
• 1:08:14
  as RFK Junior. I think the Trump campaigns has fallen into a bit of
• 1:08:19
  a trap here, and I have to say again once again proving I do
• 1:08:23
  not have Trump derangement syndrome. I actually think that if there's a party lying
• 1:08:30
  in this contest between whether or not the Trump campaign reached out to RFK Junior.
• 1:08:34
  I think the more likely party to be lying as RK Junior, because
• 1:08:40
  when I look at RFK Junior's responses here, he's very vague about who reached
• 1:08:46
  out to him allegedly. And you know, almost anybody could be under the
• 1:08:51
  definition of the Trump team or the Trump campaign reaching out to you. It
• 1:08:58
  may not have been authorized, they may not have talked specifically about the vice
• 1:09:00
  presidential nomination. There's all sorts of possibilities here where RFK Juniors incentivized to make
• 1:09:11
  his candidacy seem bigger than it is and go along with this median narrative that,
• 1:09:16
  yeah, the Trump campaign has reached out to me and let them carry
• 1:09:20
  his water on the idea that he could be their VP, but he's just
• 1:09:24
  not interested in it. Trump is denying that, and I would like to
• 1:09:30
  believe that that never happened. Trump is now condemning RFK Junior. I think
• 1:09:34
  in more dramatic terms, because I think somebody on the Trump team sees what
• 1:09:39
  I see, which is this is very dangerous. If you are seen as
• 1:09:45
  aligning yourself at all with RFK Junior, you are giving an excuse for people
• 1:09:51
  who might like you but have concerns about you, especially over COVID, to
• 1:09:58
  go ahead and vote for RFK and not you. So that is very dangerous
• 1:10:03
  if you're the Trump campaign, especially you know, there are a lot of
• 1:10:06
  the sandest people, much to my chagrin, who are flirting with voting for
• 1:10:12
  RFK Junior over the COVID issue. And frankly, RMK Junior was not nearly
• 1:10:16
  as good on COVID as it's being portrayed. He tweeted in March to twenty
• 1:10:20
  twenty that lockdowns were working and he thought they might be a good idea.
• 1:10:25
  I'm paraphrasing for the climate issue. So he seems to be in favor of
• 1:10:29
  climate lockdowns. He had no problem with the initial lockdowns. Yeah, he's
• 1:10:33
  a very anti vaccine and now is talking a pretty good game on COVID tyranny.
• 1:10:39
  But the guy is nuts on so many issues. He's a complete socialist.
• 1:10:44
  He's an environmental whack job. He's a longtime heroin addict. His first
• 1:10:48
  wife killed herself. If his name wasn't Kennedy, no one would even consider
• 1:10:56
  him as a legitimate candidate. He can barely speak literally, so I don't
• 1:11:02
  get it. I really, I don't get it at any level. I'm
• 1:11:05
  in the camp with somebody who's looking for a third party candidate just to cast
• 1:11:10
  a ballot for if he's the libertarian candidate, and as a conservative libertarian,
• 1:11:15
  I have actually voted for the libertarian candidate in each of the last two presidential
• 1:11:18
  elections because I could not vote for Trump, but I could not vote for
• 1:11:21
  a Democrat. I don't know who the hell I'll vote for. I'll probably
• 1:11:25
  leave it blank because I can't vote for Robert Kennedy Junior, at least not
• 1:11:30
  under the current circumstances. And so this flirtation with Robert Kennedy Junior is completely
• 1:11:36
  nonsensical to me, and I think dangerous for the Trump campaign. Now,
• 1:11:41
  one other clip from this Trump and Bartaroma interview. This is the issue of
• 1:11:46
  whether or not Biden is going to be the candidate, and it's becoming clear
• 1:11:50
  that he is, and I think Trump even understands that it's going to be
• 1:11:56
  Joe Biden. But the issue of Gavin Newso, my lead favorite public figure,
• 1:12:01
  came up, and for the first time, I mean, it's unbelievable
• 1:12:04
  that Trump is suddenly sounding sensible on multiple issues. He must clearly he took
• 1:12:10
  his medication before this. This interview with the Maria Barnaroma, Trump rips newsome
• 1:12:16
  more dramatically than I have ever heard him do so ever, And I'm not
• 1:12:21
  one hundred percent sure why now, But here's what that whole thing sounded like.
• 1:12:27
  Now you've said you don't even think that's who you're going to face off
• 1:12:29
  in November. I don't. Personally, I don't think. So with all
• 1:12:31
  of that, I'm saying, I don't, I don't know. I mean,
• 1:12:34
  I really don't know. Wasral cost How are you going to do against
• 1:12:39
  I'll tell you what, because he's he's so much better. He wants to
• 1:12:45
  say how wonderful. It's doing horribly. His state is doing horribly. You
• 1:12:50
  look at the homeless problem, you look at the people that are leaving.
• 1:12:55
  You have companies that are leaving. They're all leaving for other locations. I
• 1:12:58
  think Gavin's easy because California is a disaster. He has been a horrible governor.
• 1:13:03
  Now, to be clear, I am not suddenly turning into a Trump
• 1:13:06
  supporter, although it might be sounding like that during parts of this episode of
• 1:13:11
  the podcast. But you know, obviously I love that Trump is now finally
• 1:13:15
  belatedly now that the primary election is essentially over ripping into Gavin Newsom. I've
• 1:13:23
  always been fascinated by that relationship because obviously Newsom's ex wife is Donald Trump's favorite
• 1:13:29
  sons current fiance, and that clearly creates an interesting conflict. But Trump is
• 1:13:36
  right about Newsom there, and I'm glad he's finally saying it. But the
• 1:13:42
  important part of this is Biden, again, barring a catastrophic health issue,
• 1:13:46
  which is certainly more than in the realm of possibility, is going to be
• 1:13:50
  the Democratic nominee. He just blew the doors off of the Although it was
• 1:13:54
  very very low turnout of the South Carolina primary over the weekend that Democrats sort
• 1:14:00
  kind of had it was a half hearted deal, but you know, there
• 1:14:01
  was no legitimate opposition. Biden got well over ninety percent of the vote,
• 1:14:06
  and so you know, that's a done deal. There's there's no legitimate opposition.
• 1:14:11
  RFK Junior got scared and ran away and is now claiming he'll run as
• 1:14:15
  an independent, but he has to get on the ballot, which is a
• 1:14:17
  lot easier said than done. But as far as Newsom is concerned, there's
• 1:14:23
  another story involving Newsom that I just want to get on the record, And
• 1:14:28
  this gets a little complex, so I'm going to try to simplify it as
• 1:14:30
  much as possible. So a few days ago, Newsom was doing a zoom
• 1:14:35
  call with a bunch of other liberals. I don't even know what the reason
• 1:14:40
  for the zoom call was. It surprised me that the governor of California would
• 1:14:44
  get on a zoom call with like seven or eight other people, but for
• 1:14:47
  whatever reason, he did, and it appeared as if before the call officially
• 1:14:51
  started, so it's possible that maybe Newsom didn't even think this was going to
• 1:14:57
  be for public consumption. I'm not sure. But Newsom started talking about something
• 1:15:03
  that supposedly happened when he went to a Target store and he was checking out
• 1:15:10
  and apparently someone just decided to run off with merchandise and not pay for it.
• 1:15:15
  And hilariously, Newsome super liberal socialist democrat, former mayor of San Francisco,
• 1:15:23
  where this kind of thing happens all the time. Now, people just
• 1:15:25
  run out with merchandise and you're not even allowed to say anything to them.
• 1:15:30
  Newsom was outraged by this, and he got into a bit of an argument
• 1:15:34
  with the cashier, and the cashier tried to blame the governor, and this
• 1:15:41
  is in Newsom's tell telling of the story. And then suddenly realized that she
• 1:15:45
  was talking to the governor and then that supposedly caused a whole big hubbub at
• 1:15:51
  the Target store. And the story has been accepted as true, and I
• 1:15:59
  think it's been up it is true because the essence of the story seems to
• 1:16:03
  make Newsome look bad. I guess if you're a conservative, it kind of
• 1:16:10
  makes him look like a hypocrite, right, because here he is outraged over
• 1:16:15
  what liberal policies have allowed to happen in retail stores. And so conservatives have
• 1:16:21
  generally just accepted that this happened, because why would Newsom make up a story
• 1:16:26
  that makes him look bad? But I want you to listen to the story
• 1:16:30
  and perhaps with a more skeptical ear, because to me, this is one
• 1:16:34
  of those stories that ought to have a lot of corroboration and currently has none.
• 1:16:40
  And here's what it sounded like when Newsom told it on that Zoom call
• 1:16:44
  check it out. The woman says, Oh, he's just walking out.
• 1:16:45
  He wuldn't pay for that. I said, why are you stopping him.
• 1:16:48
  She goes, oh, the governor swear to got true story. My mom's
• 1:16:53
  great. The governor lowered the thresholp. There's no there's no accountability. I
• 1:16:58
  said, it's just not true. And she got I said, we have
• 1:17:01
  the tenth toughest nine hudred and fifty dollars the ten tuppests in America. She
• 1:17:04
  didn't even know what I was talking about. By the way, it's the
• 1:17:06
  tenth toughest in America. To look it up. No one gives a damn
• 1:17:09
  ut right. And I said, it's just not true. There's still stop.
• 1:17:13
  They said, well, we don't stop from because of the government.
• 1:17:15
  And then she goes she looks at me twice and then she freaks out.
• 1:17:19
  She calls everyone over, wants to take photos. I'm like, no,
• 1:17:23
  I'm not taking a photo. We're having a conversation. Where's your manager?
• 1:17:27
  How are you blaming the governor? And it was, you know, three
• 1:17:29
  hundred and eighty dollars later, and I was like, why am I spending
• 1:17:31
  three hundred and eighty dollars? Everyone can walk the hell right out now.
• 1:17:35
  I want to make something clear. I don't know what happened when Gavin Newsom
• 1:17:41
  allegedly went alone into a Target store and had this conversation with a cashier.
• 1:17:47
  Is that possible? Yeah, I guess that's possible. But let's talk about
• 1:17:53
  some of the things that don't make a lot of sense here. First of
• 1:17:56
  all, you got Gavin Newsom alone in a Target. Okay, that that
• 1:18:01
  seems like a stretch. Governor of the most popular estate in the country and
• 1:18:08
  a guy who is super rich and I'm very much an elitist. He's alone
• 1:18:15
  in a Target that's number one. Number two. The cashier has no idea,
• 1:18:21
  at least at first, that she's talking to Gavin Newsom, who's a
• 1:18:25
  pretty distinctive looking guy. He's tall, good looking. You know that everyone
• 1:18:30
  talks about the hair. I don't know. He doesn't say he was wearing
• 1:18:33
  a baseball cap, but it's hard not to recognize Galvin Newsom. But I
• 1:18:39
  get that some people don't follow politics at all. Maybe this person had no
• 1:18:43
  idea. But see, even that gets contradicted because eventually she figures it out.
• 1:18:48
  So she the cashier, has some idea who Gavin Newsom is. So
• 1:18:54
  how does that work? You You suddenly realize you're talking to Gavin Newsom,
• 1:18:59
  that doesn't seem to make sense to me. And then Newsom talks about,
• 1:19:02
  well, she got all the other people at the target excited because the governor
• 1:19:08
  was there at the cashier and he said, I'm not gonna take a picture.
• 1:19:13
  Okay, fine, I get that, but that doesn't stop people from
• 1:19:17
  taking pictures. That the people can take pictures, especially a public figure,
• 1:19:23
  whether they want to be have their picture taken or not. So where are
• 1:19:30
  the pictures? And now that this story has made news? And see,
• 1:19:32
  this is why I think it's possibly a lie, because it seems to me
• 1:19:39
  like Newsom didn't realize he was being recorded and therefore didn't think about the fact
• 1:19:45
  that this could make news. And if it makes news, in theory,
• 1:19:49
  somebody from that target is gonna hear about this. Right, this is gonna
• 1:19:56
  be huge news at the target. This is the biggest thing that's ever happen.
• 1:20:00
  But at that target, especially now that Newsom's talked about it publicly and
• 1:20:03
  it's made news, and yet nobody at that target has a social media account
• 1:20:08
  to say, wait a minute, that either didn't happen that way, or
• 1:20:12
  it happened this way, or you know, it didn't happen at all.
• 1:20:15
  Round I guess you couldn't say it didn't happen at all, because you wouldn't
• 1:20:18
  know. But it's consistent with the fact that we haven't heard anything for anybody
• 1:20:24
  at a Target, because there's obviously lots and lots of targets. He doesn't
• 1:20:28
  say which target this was, he doesn't say exactly when this happened, and
• 1:20:32
  the fact that we've had no as of this taping, to my knowledge,
• 1:20:36
  any corroboration at all of this story inherently makes me go, wait a minute,
• 1:20:44
  did this really happen? And again I get why conservatives are willing to
• 1:20:50
  jump in immediately and say, well, boy, look at what Gavin Newsom
• 1:20:55
  said happened to him at a Target store, because it does seem to fit
• 1:21:00
  more of a conservative narrative than a liberal one. But just because Newsom's being
• 1:21:05
  an idiot doesn't mean he's telling the truth. He could have had some convoluted
• 1:21:13
  reason for making the story up. Again, I'm not saying it's made up.
• 1:21:16
  I'm saying there's something that isn't right here. This doesn't all add up.
• 1:21:23
  And when things don't add up, I get very very nervous and very
• 1:21:27
  skeptical, especially when the subject is Gavin Newsom. So I'm not sold that
• 1:21:31
  that actually happened. I would love to hear more corroboration. My guess is,
• 1:21:38
  if it did happen, we would be hearing a at least slightly different
• 1:21:43
  version of what occurred from the people at Target. But I did want to
• 1:21:46
  at least put that on the record because I'm now fascinated by how it is
• 1:21:51
  that Gavin Newsom could alone go into a Target get into a pretty serious policy
• 1:21:58
  discussion with a cashier. The cashier then creates an awful lot of hubbub and
• 1:22:03
  there's no record of this, no verification, no corroboration, no date,
• 1:22:10
  no place, no time, no nothing. That seems very difficult for me
• 1:22:15
  to believe. All right, So enough about politics, although everything has a
• 1:22:18
  political angle, including a couple of football stories that I want to talk about
• 1:22:24
  before I get to the beginning of our last episode of as Jarre on Anything.
• 1:22:30
  The Super Bowl, obviously, is this week. As part of the
• 1:22:32
  Super Bowl proceedings, the commissioner of the National Football League, Roger Goodell,
• 1:22:36
  traditionally does a press conference. It's usually on I believe Wednesdays, maybe Wednesday
• 1:22:43
  or Thursdays, and it's kind of like the state of the league, and
• 1:22:45
  there is a huge turnout among reporters because obviously, you know, that's the
• 1:22:51
  mecca for all sports reporters to be at the Super Bowl. They're all in
• 1:22:56
  one place, and this is generally a massive conference, and occasionally there's some
• 1:23:01
  actual news being made, and occasionally there's a decent question being asked of Goodell,
• 1:23:06
  who generally does not do interviews. So this is pretty much, you
• 1:23:12
  know, the only chance the reporters get on a year, to your basis
• 1:23:15
  to kind of nail Goodell down on a number of important issues facing the league.
• 1:23:21
  Well, it was announced a few days ago that this year that press
• 1:23:27
  conference one is going to be held on a Monday, which is important because
• 1:23:31
  if you're from a minor or not major sports outlet, there's very little chance
• 1:23:39
  that you're in Las Vegas on Monday, because that's very expensive to be there
• 1:23:43
  for the whole week. So inherently, by holding it at the beginning of
• 1:23:47
  the week, you're eliminating a lot of people who could come to the press
• 1:23:51
  conference. But also I found it interesting that the press conference was by invite
• 1:24:00
  only. Now I don't know how restrictive that is, but I found this
• 1:24:03
  to be symbolically significant because one it shows that the league is really turning into
• 1:24:13
  the Pollop Bureau that you know, they don't have to answer any questions.
• 1:24:17
  They're in charge of everything. The press is just doing their bidding. The
• 1:24:21
  press is their pr arm. I've referenced before where I'm convinced that television commentators
• 1:24:29
  were told at least indirectly to knock it off this year when it came to
• 1:24:33
  negatively commenting on soft penalties, specifically roughing the passer and that kind of stuff.
• 1:24:40
  And so now the league is saying very clearly, we are in charge.
• 1:24:45
  You are here to please us. We can determine whether or not you're
• 1:24:50
  even allowed to come, forget about asking a question, you're even allowed to
• 1:24:55
  come to the press conference. And to me, this is a clear,
• 1:25:00
  clear sign that sports journalism football journalism is totally dead, and the league knows
• 1:25:08
  this. The league knows they have all the leverage it used to be in
• 1:25:13
  the glory days of a Howard Cosell, right where you couldn't shut Howard Cosell
• 1:25:17
  up for better or for worse. Nobody was going to tell him what to
• 1:25:21
  say, and people loved and hated that well Cosell himself predicted that it would
• 1:25:27
  not be possible for someone like him to exist in the modern media after he
• 1:25:32
  was gone. And boy was depression, because now all you have is sycophants.
• 1:25:38
  All you have is guys who want to hold onto their cushy gigs,
• 1:25:42
  and they're not going to do anything to cross the league in any significant way,
• 1:25:45
  not just the commentators, but even the so called journalists. And I'm
• 1:25:49
  going to make another prediction. I make a lot of predictions about what's going
• 1:25:51
  to happen in the next five, ten, fifteen years. I believe that
• 1:25:56
  in sports in general, but specifically the National Football League, because they have
• 1:26:00
  so much power, and they will probably be the first to do this.
• 1:26:02
  I think they're going to do away with press conferences for all intents and purposes.
• 1:26:06
  In their totality they may have it might be kind of like the kickoff
• 1:26:12
  has become. It's basically just you know, tradition, pro forma. You
• 1:26:19
  know, it's not even a real play, So they have it just so
• 1:26:24
  they don't claim that they've eliminated the kickoff. But you know, so there
• 1:26:29
  might be a perfunctory semblance of a press conference, but for all intents and
• 1:26:32
  purposes, press conferences are going to go away. And I've been actually waiting
• 1:26:36
  for this for a while because the media has no leverage in this relationship anymore,
• 1:26:44
  especially in the social media age. Teams can simply put out video from
• 1:26:48
  their coach or their players on their own social media accounts and say, you
• 1:26:53
  know what, media pick it up off of that, and they don't have
• 1:26:57
  to face any theoretically difficult questions. The NFL has its own network, for
• 1:27:01
  God's sake, The NFL network ESPN is effectively the NFL network because they're deeply,
• 1:27:08
  deeply embedded with the NFL as business partners. Same thing with the ESPN
• 1:27:13
  and college football. I mean, so you know, the conflict of interests
• 1:27:15
  are all over the place. So I am convinced that we're going to see
• 1:27:20
  the end for all intentsive purposes of press conferences in general. And I thought
• 1:27:27
  that this new situation regarding the Super Bowl press conference and Roger Goodell was emblematic
• 1:27:33
  and symbolic of that and also an indication of the slippery slope. We are
• 1:27:38
  down a slippery slope here when it comes to the death of journalism that cannot
• 1:27:42
  be reversed because nobody in the sports media has the balls or the leverage.
• 1:27:49
  You got to have both. You got to have balls and leverage. And
• 1:27:53
  because they don't have any job security, and because they know they all just
• 1:27:56
  care about holding onto their cushy gigs and getting invited to the Super Bowl,
• 1:28:00
  being able to get passes to the Super Bowl, being invited to the commissioner's
• 1:28:04
  press conference. That appearance of access is way more important than actually asking a
• 1:28:11
  legitimate question. And this allows the league to get away with whatever they want
• 1:28:15
  to get away with, including what they've been doing with the Pro Bowl.
• 1:28:18
  Now, I am alone on an island on this issue, as I am
• 1:28:24
  often, but for years I have been screaming about the Pro Bowl, not
• 1:28:28
  because I care that much about the Pro Bowl. Pro Bowl used to be
• 1:28:31
  a legitimate football game that used to be played the week after the Super Bowl.
• 1:28:35
  Then they moved it to the week before the super Bowl, and then
• 1:28:39
  they just decided to screw it. We can't figure out a way to make
• 1:28:41
  this work with the modern player being so spoiled. We're just going to turn
• 1:28:45
  it into flag football. And for years I have been screaming, folks two
• 1:28:50
  things. This is the ultimate proof that socialism doesn't work, and two,
• 1:28:56
  this is where the league is heading towards some semblance of flag football. So
• 1:29:02
  that's the significance to me. I don't care that much about the Pro Bowl.
• 1:29:08
  I mean, as a kid, you know, it used to be
• 1:29:09
  nice to have cuttle time after the Super Bowl was over to see one last
• 1:29:13
  football game the next week in Hawaii, and for a while it was actually
• 1:29:15
  a legitimate football game. But that's long in the past. Now the players
• 1:29:19
  are making too much money, they're too spoiled, they're too soft. The
• 1:29:24
  pride doesn't matter, and so there's no way to sustain that. So this
• 1:29:29
  past weekend, for the second straight year, the Pro Bowl turned into like
• 1:29:33
  a combination field day and a flag football game. And I will acknowledge that
• 1:29:42
  they've done a pretty good job of trying to make it entertaining. And you
• 1:29:46
  know, they got a big crowd in Orlando, seeming almost sold out crowd
• 1:29:51
  for whatever you want to call these Pro Bowl games. Of course, they
• 1:29:55
  use the Manning brothers as cover for what's happening here. I mean Eli and
• 1:30:00
  Peyton Manning, especially Peyton. Peyton's now doing bud Light commercials. I mean
• 1:30:04
  Peyton Manning is now basically being used as cover for any entity that's trying to
• 1:30:11
  get away with something underhanded because he's, you know, with regard to the
• 1:30:15
  to the straight white Southern male, if Peyton Manning signs off on it,
• 1:30:21
  well it must be okay. And that's why Peyton Manning is getting paid a
• 1:30:25
  lot of bucks to do a lot of things that he shouldn't be doing,
• 1:30:29
  especially considering the fact that in his Hall of Fame speech he gave this amazing
• 1:30:34
  address about saving football as it is, and I thought Peyton Manning was going
• 1:30:40
  to be at the forefront of salvaging what was happening to football, and now
• 1:30:43
  here he is, whether winningly or unwittingly, he's participating in the end of
• 1:30:48
  football as we know it because he's helping give cover to and helping to make
• 1:30:55
  these Pro Bowl games a success. And I'm sure, I am passive that
• 1:31:00
  everybody involved in the in the NFL is thrilled with what they have done with
• 1:31:04
  the Pro Bowl. I mean, this past weekend, the players seemed like
• 1:31:08
  they were having a lot of fun. It was a faux competition, but
• 1:31:13
  there was at least somewhat of a competition, but it was based in flag
• 1:31:17
  football, which is now going to be an Olympic sport. It's a sport
• 1:31:20
  that the NFL is embracing in many, many ways. And I believe this
• 1:31:25
  is all part of the desensitization and the legitimization of the fan, the legitimization
• 1:31:31
  of flag football, to desensitize the fan towards the idea that this is unfathomable.
• 1:31:38
  And I see this in so many walks of life. I think so
• 1:31:41
  much about America is vulnerable because too many people think it's just not possible that
• 1:31:46
  this is going to go away, or this is going to be destroyed.
• 1:31:49
  That's not true. I mean, COVID should have been a massive wake up
• 1:31:54
  call for everybody when it came to this kind of stuff. Everything's on the
• 1:31:59
  table, everything is vulnerable. If you don't see that, then I can't
• 1:32:03
  help you. So this isn't happening by accidents, not happening. It's a
• 1:32:09
  conspiracy. And I don't think they have a date set on when they're ending
• 1:32:13
  tackle football as we know it. It's going to be slowly, but surely,
• 1:32:17
  bit by bit, piece by piece, slippery slope at desensitization and then
• 1:32:24
  eventually and there was kind of a I don't know if you call it a
• 1:32:29
  Eureka moment or an oh shit moment. As I was watching some of the
• 1:32:34
  Pro Bowl games and the flag football because I wanted to get a sense of
• 1:32:38
  just how bad this was. You know, the players were having such a
• 1:32:42
  good time, or at least pretending they were having such a good time.
• 1:32:45
  I mean, it almost seemed like they were being paid under the table for
• 1:32:49
  every time that they laughed or cheered or whatever. Somebody gave him a good
• 1:32:54
  talk about putting on a good show as far as how much fun they were
• 1:32:57
  having. But something to me as I was watching this, guess what when
• 1:33:03
  you play flag football. This sounds so simple, but it's you know,
• 1:33:08
  something I never really thought about before. When you play flag football, you
• 1:33:12
  get really good looks at the player's faces. One of the things, one
• 1:33:19
  of the major things that keeps a football player from being as big as celebrity
• 1:33:26
  as players from other sports is the helmet. It's pretty ch It's why quarterbacks
• 1:33:33
  are generally the only, you know, real huge crossover celebrities. It takes
• 1:33:41
  a lot for a football player to reach that level of celebrity because their face
• 1:33:45
  is covered. I mean, Jason Kelsey is probably the only Lineman. That
• 1:33:49
  does because he's Travis Kelcey's brother is dating Taylor Swift, that he's got a
• 1:33:54
  distinctive beard. I mean, other than that, you could never recognize any
• 1:33:58
  of these guys when they were out and about. And it occurred to me
• 1:34:02
  that, you know, eventually these players are going to figure out that it's
• 1:34:06
  good for them personally, both in their personal lives as well as from an
• 1:34:12
  economic standpoint, to get rid of the fucking helmets. Why do we need
• 1:34:17
  to do this, Why do we need to risk further injury? You know,
• 1:34:21
  people seem to like this. I mean, I mean, I could
• 1:34:25
  be overstating this, but I really think there's something to this that the player
• 1:34:30
  resistance to when they eventually go to some form of flag and once the institutional
• 1:34:38
  memory of what real football was is lost in the next ten to fifteen years,
• 1:34:43
  as the old school guys all retire or going to other things, I
• 1:34:47
  think there's going to be very little resistance among players, very little resistance.
• 1:34:53
  This is actually going to be good for them. Now, it still has
• 1:34:56
  to be done delicately, and Peyton Manning's going to have to help with Tom
• 1:35:00
  Brady. Tom Brady may be the last guy standing, ironically enough, since
• 1:35:03
  he benefited from the woosification of football more than anybody else. But he doesn't
• 1:35:08
  seem like he needs the money or cares that much, and he's been willing
• 1:35:14
  to be outspoken. Who knows once he joins Fox that may all change.
• 1:35:17
  But the Pro Bowl games, to me, was a clear indication, a
• 1:35:23
  clear indication of where this is all going. And it was not the only
• 1:35:27
  all star game this weekend that gave me this sensation. I don't want to
• 1:35:32
  go too deeply into it, but because you know, it's really not that
• 1:35:36
  great a story. But here locally in Ventura County, where I live,
• 1:35:42
  just north of Los Angeles County, you know, high school football is a
• 1:35:45
  big deal. Some major high school football programs here and every year for the
• 1:35:54
  last fifty years, except for COVID, which I think played a role in
• 1:35:57
  what I'm about to tell you one of the many, many, many,
• 1:36:00
  many, many many situations where COVID had devastating, unintended consequences, and maybe
• 1:36:05
  they were actually intended. But there has been for the last fifty years an
• 1:36:11
  all star high school football game in Ventura County, and this past weekend there
• 1:36:16
  was a before the game, there was a local newspaper article about how this
• 1:36:20
  might be the last all star high school football game, and partially out of
• 1:36:27
  wanting to support the cause, partially out of curiosity, I decided to buy
• 1:36:31
  a ticket and go to the game by myself because I wanted to see.
• 1:36:34
  Okay, you know, what is the status of a high school all star
• 1:36:40
  football game? Now? To be clear, this is a situation where these
• 1:36:45
  players had something to play for. You know, they're the best players on
• 1:36:49
  their local high school teams, and so they're good players to begin with,
• 1:36:55
  and they all want to play in college. So they're either still hoping to
• 1:36:59
  get offers from a college or they know this is the last time they will
• 1:37:04
  ever suit up to play a tackle football game in their lives. Those are
• 1:37:11
  two very strong motivations. So I was curious as to, all right,
• 1:37:16
  how what's the crowd going to be like? Because in the movies, right,
• 1:37:19
  you know that you put the article in the newspaper and the whole town
• 1:37:23
  shows up to support the game, and they find a new sponsor and they
• 1:37:26
  continue the fifty year tradition. Well, nothing like that's going to happen here,
• 1:37:29
  because that's not the real world anymore, especially not here. In southern
• 1:37:32
  California, where very few people care about anything. So I go to the
• 1:37:35
  game, and that the stadium. I've seen it packed for a high school
• 1:37:40
  playoff game with the local high school, so it probably holds maybe three thousand
• 1:37:45
  people, depending on how you define that, maybe thirty five hundred. And
• 1:37:50
  there were maybe five or six hundred people that showed up for the game.
• 1:37:56
  I remember there's about seventy five players on the two teams, and so you
• 1:38:00
  got friends and family, and you're close to that number already, So you
• 1:38:04
  know, the turnout was underwhelming. But most importantly, the game was underwhelming
• 1:38:09
  as well. Pretty good skill, but no intensity. Pillsbury dough Boy Soft.
• 1:38:18
  You know, they don't even have kickoffs, which I guess is normal
• 1:38:21
  for an All Star game, but there was almost no tackling. The team
• 1:38:27
  scored on almost every possession the you know, the one time a team didn't
• 1:38:31
  score, they got stopped on a third and long and there was a bogus
• 1:38:35
  pass uh uh, not past interference but roughing the passer call, which I
• 1:38:41
  didn't think was even close to roughing the passer. And they had a replay
• 1:38:44
  board at the stadium. They didn't show the replay of that. For some
• 1:38:46
  odd reason, I wasn't. I didn't think that was really coincidental because I
• 1:38:50
  thought the call was probably bys. But the bottom line takeaway was we're doomed.
• 1:38:56
  We're doomed when it comes to football. Here. We have the best
• 1:38:59
  hype school players in a legitimate area of top notch high school football playing and
• 1:39:05
  what could be the last All Star game, playing for potential college offers,
• 1:39:12
  playing for pride, you know, because they're playing against a lot of their
• 1:39:15
  rival schools, playing for the last time that they're ever going to put on
• 1:39:18
  a uniform. And it was largely not totally, but it was largely just
• 1:39:24
  crap, and it was sad. I didn't. I only stayed until halftime,
• 1:39:29
  and I just came away more convinced than ever that, you know,
• 1:39:32
  I always use California as the example of, you know, what's happening.
• 1:39:39
  What's happening here is going to happen elsewhere. It just happens here sooner and
• 1:39:43
  faster, and the essence of the game itself is in big, big trouble,
• 1:39:48
  especially when the NFL is flirting with flag football and you know, allowing
• 1:39:54
  the game to become as wissified as they have now when it comes to the
• 1:39:58
  college game, There's something else I want to mention that's happening that most of
• 1:40:01
  the sports media is completely ignoring, and that is we are seeing college coaches
• 1:40:08
  leaving in remarkable fashion. It's now way beyond just coincidence. We've got Nick
• 1:40:15
  Saban, legend at Alabama leaving at the top of his game, Jim Harball
• 1:40:19
  leaving Michigan after wing a national championship. We've got the head coach at Boston
• 1:40:25
  College, which is a legitimate program. I mean, Doug Flutie hasn't been
• 1:40:29
  around for a very long time, but I mean they play in the ACC,
• 1:40:31
  they're Power five team, they're head coach just left to take an assistance
• 1:40:36
  job at Green Bay. Rather live in Green Bay, make probably less money
• 1:40:41
  and not be a head coach than have to deal with what's going on with
• 1:40:45
  college football. Ni Allenston transfers radical realignment, the whole bit. There are
• 1:40:49
  rumors that UCLA's coach Chip Kelly is going to bail to be an assistant in
• 1:40:55
  the National Football League. There are other assistants in college that are leaving for
• 1:40:59
  lower levels in the NFL. I mean, it is astonishing. What is
• 1:41:03
  happening, and it is no longer possible to claim that this is all just
• 1:41:06
  a coincidence and that you can't put these data points together. This is clearly
• 1:41:13
  a sign that coaches have had it. And it's one of the many,
• 1:41:17
  many, many unintended consequences that liberals never mostly liberals and some dupe conservatives never
• 1:41:26
  fully considered when I was screaming bloody murder about what you were going to do
• 1:41:30
  to the college game. If you brought in nil and you've allowed instant transfers
• 1:41:35
  at the same time, and you completely destroyed all the traditions, and you
• 1:41:39
  allowed the players to have all the power. The players have all all the
• 1:41:44
  power. Now. I've said numerous times I have no idea how you can
• 1:41:46
  possibly coach in this day and age. And it's clearly reality because you're seeing
• 1:41:53
  decisions being made by college football coaches that make no sense whatsoever. You're probably
• 1:41:59
  going to see it lily on the basketball level as well. You've seen a
• 1:42:01
  couple of high profile retirements Mike Krzyzewski and Roy Williams that didn't have to retire,
• 1:42:08
  but they did, probably just in time before the sport went completely to
• 1:42:12
  crap. You know, let me make another analogy here, because a lot
• 1:42:15
  of times these unintended consequences take a long time to occur, and so therefore
• 1:42:20
  liberals can pretend that it wasn't because of what they did. But I believe
• 1:42:26
  we're seeing a very similar thing happen in college football and coaches to what is
• 1:42:30
  happening with regard to Obamacare and doctors. Obamacare completely radically altered the incentive structure
• 1:42:40
  of our healthcare system, and we are seeing lots and lots. I don't
• 1:42:45
  have data, but antecdotally, it's very clear that lots and lots of doctors,
• 1:42:49
  especially in southern California, are retiring early or even leaving the profession because
• 1:42:56
  or not getting into the profession because the incentive structures are all off. That
• 1:43:02
  liberals don't understand that you need a huge incentive, a huge incentive to go
• 1:43:10
  through what it takes to become a doctor, especially a good one. And
• 1:43:15
  when you destroy that incentive structure, guess what's gonna happen. People aren't gonna
• 1:43:21
  do it, and oftentimes that means good people are not gonna do it,
• 1:43:27
  So your supply is gonna shrink. The number of good doctors you have is
• 1:43:31
  gonna shrink. Obviously, supply and demand being what it is that you're gonna
• 1:43:36
  have put patience in a bind. And it's only gonna get worse because as
• 1:43:42
  time goes on, being a doctor, I mean, which used to be
• 1:43:45
  the be all end off, probably the most prestigious profession you could possibly be
• 1:43:50
  in no longer is. Eventually it's all gonna crumble. But it takes time
• 1:43:58
  because people make these decis decisions not necessarily instantly. They decide, Okay,
• 1:44:02
  I'll retire early, or you know, I'll decide to do stuff. I'll
• 1:44:08
  give it a try and see what happens, and then if it doesn't work,
• 1:44:11
  maybe I'll figure out something else to do. These things take time,
• 1:44:15
  but it's clearly happening. It's clearly happening in the healthcare, it's clearly happening
• 1:44:18
  in college sports. And of course liberals will take no accountability for any of
• 1:44:24
  this. A couple other quick things before we get to ask John anything,
• 1:44:29
  and we're only gonna have a time for a few questions in this episode for
• 1:44:31
  ask John anything. As I've gone a little bit longer than I anticipated,
• 1:44:34
  But this past Sunday were the Grammy Awards. Now I'm not huge in the
• 1:44:41
  music, and I watched the Grammy Awards mainly because my eleven year old daughter
• 1:44:45
  Grace is suddenly as Swifty. She's big into Taylor Swift, and the big
• 1:44:50
  story at the Grammy Awards was gonna be whether not Taylor Swift would become the
• 1:44:56
  first person to ever win four Album of the Year award, which she did.
• 1:45:01
  You know, thank God, something good finally happened for Taylor Swift,
• 1:45:05
  so she made history winning her fourth Album of the Year award. Miley Cyrus
• 1:45:12
  interestingly won two Grammys, and I find it fascinating and very telling that one
• 1:45:18
  the Grammys were completely totally dominated by women, which I have no problem with.
• 1:45:24
  I've always preferred a female singer from a number of different perspectives than most
• 1:45:30
  male singers. But to my recollection, you know, there's never been a
• 1:45:33
  situation where women so completely dominated an awards event of any kind like they did
• 1:45:42
  the Grammys. It's also interesting that Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift, two white
• 1:45:46
  women of almost the identical age. We're both at one point country singers in
• 1:45:53
  Nashville, Tennessee, and now the entire pop music industry is reliant basically on
• 1:46:00
  both of them. I mean, Taylor Swift is head and shoulders above everybody
• 1:46:04
  from an economic standpoint, then you have Miley Cyrus, and then below that
• 1:46:10
  is everybody else. But you know, so I don't know what percentage there
• 1:46:13
  is of it, but a huge percentage of the poppy economy right now is
• 1:46:18
  based in Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus, two people who began their careers doing
• 1:46:24
  country in Nashville and now they're huge pop stars. And the only real big
• 1:46:29
  difference between the two of them is, you know, Miley has tattoos and
• 1:46:32
  doesn't wear underwear, and Taylor Swift doesn't have tattoos and seemingly does wear.
• 1:46:38
  By the way, I'm not making it up, but that's what Miley said
• 1:46:41
  during her acceptance speech of her second Grammy last night. So the fact that
• 1:46:45
  this was female dominated I thought was interesting. I thought the Taylor Swift Miley
• 1:46:49
  Cyrus circumstances are also worthy of note. But then there's the issue of how
• 1:46:57
  unbelievably rare white males were in this entire three hour and forty minute ceremony.
• 1:47:04
  So you've got three hours and forty minutes. It went overtime a little bit,
• 1:47:09
  so I guess it was scheduled for three and a half hours. Three
• 1:47:11
  and a half hours. Now. I actually liked this ceremony, especially at
• 1:47:15
  the beginning. I thought the production values are really good, it was inoffensive,
• 1:47:18
  it was mostly non political, at least at the start. But then
• 1:47:23
  as things went on, I'm like, oh my god, is there anybody
• 1:47:28
  in music today that's a white male? Anybody? Now? I don't care
• 1:47:31
  whether not white males win Grammys or get you know, get to be the
• 1:47:36
  host, or get to give awards. It doesn't matter, except we're now
• 1:47:41
  being told that we live in a world where, you know, equity is
• 1:47:44
  everything, and that things need to be fair and equity of outcome is something
• 1:47:47
  that if it doesn't work out for your group, you are obligated to make
• 1:47:53
  us think about this. So I'm looking around about the three hour mark and
• 1:47:57
  I'm like, wait a minute, are there any white males in this at
• 1:48:00
  all? We got Ed Sheeron, who's just sitting in the crowd being referenced
• 1:48:04
  to a couple of times. Never you know, got didn't get an award,
• 1:48:09
  didn't get asked to introduce an award, nothing, So Ed Sheeran's in
• 1:48:13
  the crowd. So that's about as close as a white male got. Then
• 1:48:16
  you have Luke Combs who got to perform, but essentially his performance was effectively
• 1:48:25
  an apology for having taken a song from a black woman, Tracy Chapman,
• 1:48:30
  and made it into a success. And so he was doing a duet with
• 1:48:33
  Tracy Chapman, which I understand, people like, I got it, no
• 1:48:36
  problem, it's a nice moment, you know, the old version of the
• 1:48:41
  song, the new version of the song. But let's be clear, part
• 1:48:44
  of this was effectively a white guy having to apologize for using the song of
• 1:48:48
  a black female and being successful with it, so that one white guy had
• 1:48:55
  to share the stage in the microphone with a black female because of the politics.
• 1:49:00
  At one point, you had Bono from You two introducing an award from
• 1:49:04
  Las Vegas. He wasn't even in the in the arena in Los Angeles.
• 1:49:09
  Part of it seemed to be taped. I couldn't even understand what was happening
• 1:49:13
  there. But okay, so they allowed Bono to be part of the ceremony.
• 1:49:16
  And by the way, you know, at that point, you still
• 1:49:19
  haven't had any live performances or anybody who was won an award or anybody who
• 1:49:25
  was introduced an award who's a white male, at least not on their own
• 1:49:30
  until you get to the very end, very end of the broadcast, when
• 1:49:34
  seventy four year old Billy Joel, of whom I'm a big fan, I
• 1:49:39
  mean, basically, growing up in the Philadelphia area in my era, it
• 1:49:42
  was almost the law that he had to be a Billy Joel fan. It
• 1:49:45
  was my first concert I ever went to the Old Spectrum in Philadelphia was a
• 1:49:49
  Billy Joel concert. And so I'm a big Billy Joel fan. But the
• 1:49:54
  idea that seventy four year old Billy Joel is the only American born white male
• 1:50:00
  who was given the stage to himself at any point in the three and a
• 1:50:04
  half hour ceremony I fought was pretty significant to point out. When I did
• 1:50:11
  this on Twitter, people got very upset. I'm like, well, white
• 1:50:14
  males make up one third of the US population. There were probably close to
• 1:50:19
  one hundred people who you know, got the mic to themselves. And if
• 1:50:24
  you're being generous, you know Luke Comb's bono and Billy Joel were it for
• 1:50:30
  white males in this entire ceremony, which I mean, can you imagine if
• 1:50:35
  that happened to any other major ethnic group, that even if they didn't encompass
• 1:50:41
  one third of the population, that would be impossible to even conceive of.
• 1:50:45
  By the way, it should be pointed out that during the ceremony, a
• 1:50:47
  guy the name of Killer Mike, who I never heard of before, who
• 1:50:50
  won three Rap Grammys, was arrested for having as allegedly assaulted someone outside of
• 1:50:59
  the era before the ceremony in Los Angeles began, and so that's getting a
• 1:51:04
  lot of news coverage. Of course, his name is Killer Mike. I
• 1:51:08
  don't know what you expected that. He's a rap artist, so it's kind
• 1:51:12
  of on brand. So anyway, that's my takeaway from the Grammy situation.
• 1:51:18
  And then on a much more somber note, I want to at least mention
• 1:51:21
  the death of Carl Weathers. Speaking of entertainment, Carl Weathers, who if
• 1:51:27
  you don't know, passed away over the weekend, and he was an iconic
• 1:51:32
  figure in many different entertainment avenues, but specifically he played Apollo Creed in the
• 1:51:39
  Rocky movies. I have to say a couple of things. One, there's
• 1:51:44
  never been an athlete turned actor who was a better actor than Carl Weathers.
• 1:51:51
  He was a football player for the then Oakland Raiders, and then you know,
• 1:51:57
  became famous with the depiction of Apollo Creed in the Rocky movies. But
• 1:52:01
  there has also never been better or more critical casting in the history, at
• 1:52:09
  least the modern history of movies in my opinion, than Carl Weathers as Apollo
• 1:52:14
  Creed. I mean, Sylvester Stallone got incredibly lucky to have Carl Weathers play
• 1:52:20
  Apollo Creed. If Carl Weathers does not play Apollo Creed, I don't think
• 1:52:26
  Rocky is even thought of today. If they've picked somebody else who's nowhere near
• 1:52:32
  as good as Carl Weathers. We don't know who Sylvester Stallone is. There's
• 1:52:39
  no series of Rocky movies. It's not a huge part of American culture.
• 1:52:44
  And Sylvester Sloan seems to understand this in the statement that he released after Carl
• 1:52:48
  weather suddenly died in his sleep when he was very active. I mean,
• 1:52:53
  this is not a situation where even though he was in his seventies, he
• 1:52:56
  was still very very active. In fact, the day before he died in
• 1:52:59
  his sleep, was interacting with fans on Twitter, and he was still working
• 1:53:02
  and very effectively. So, but what he did with Apollo Creed was really
• 1:53:08
  fantastic. There is no Rocky without Apollo Creed. I mean that's the case
• 1:53:15
  with most villains. I mean you could say that with Star Wars, there's
• 1:53:17
  no Luke Skywalker without Darth Vader. But I'm telling you there's never been more
• 1:53:25
  truth to that when it comes to a casting situation than Carl Weathers and Apollo
• 1:53:30
  Creed. But he goes way beyond just Apollo Creed. In my family,
• 1:53:35
  he will, at least with my daughters, he will always be known as
• 1:53:39
  Combat Carl. Now I'm sure very few people know what I'm talking about,
• 1:53:44
  but the Toy Story series for Disney, they do these shorts and which they
• 1:53:50
  play around the holidays. You know, they have got one for Halloween,
• 1:53:54
  They've got one for Christmas. And there's a character in there called Combat Carl,
• 1:53:59
  played by Carl Weathers, and he voices this toy who's basically a black
• 1:54:05
  gi Joe for all intensive purposes. And the reason why this is significant to
• 1:54:11
  my daughters is in one of these Toy Story shorts, Combat Carl is talking
• 1:54:15
  to Jesse, the cowgirl from Toy Story and trying to urge her to not
• 1:54:21
  give up in a particular dire situation, and he tells her Jesse never gives
• 1:54:28
  up. Jesse finds a way. And I have used that mantra I don't
• 1:54:33
  know dozens of times with my daughters, so much so that occasionally Diana will
• 1:54:39
  voluntarily I think, probably because she knows it makes me happy when she does
• 1:54:43
  it. But if she's trying to do something and she can't do it right
• 1:54:45
  away, she will say to me, Jesse never gives up. Jesse finds
• 1:54:50
  a way. And so that's how we will always remember Carl Weathers in the
• 1:54:57
  Ziggler House as combat Carl Jesse never gives up. Jesse finds a way.
• 1:55:02
  Of course, that's the upside of being somebody like Carl Weathers. You never
• 1:55:06
  really die, I mean, rest in peace. But he'll be remembered forever
• 1:55:13
  because of Apollo, Creed and all the other characters that he played. But
• 1:55:16
  he'll be missed because he was absolutely awesome Carl Weathers. And now I want
• 1:55:21
  to start answering questions that I promised I would answer for ask John anything.
• 1:55:28
  This is part of my plan to end the podcast with our last episode posting
• 1:55:32
  on February fifteenth, which, as I said at the beginning of this episode,
• 1:55:38
  may now be in somewhat of a flux. And I've already stated that
• 1:55:43
  I knew it was going to take at least two episodes for me to answer
• 1:55:45
  all these legitimate questions that I got from you regarding ask John anything. I'm
• 1:55:51
  going to answer a few of them in this episode, and then the rest
• 1:55:55
  I will try to get to in the episode number one hundred and twenty six
• 1:55:59
  of the po podcast. If you are interested in participating in this, this
• 1:56:02
  is really your last chance. If you email me at john Z j ohn
• 1:56:09
  Z john Z at mediait word Media, and I t E dot Com,
• 1:56:15
  I will answer any legitimate questions you have in our next episode of the podcast,
• 1:56:20
  but you've got to email me immediately because I tape on Wednesday morning.
• 1:56:26
  There are a few questions I will admit I'm not gonna answer because they are
• 1:56:30
  not well intentioned and they're not necessarily good questions. I get a few hate
• 1:56:35
  questions every time I do this, and I've just decided, you know what,
• 1:56:40
  I'm not gonna even bother because you know, these are people with ulterior
• 1:56:44
  motives and they don't deserve to have their questions answered, but by and large
• 1:56:48
  the questions are good and well intentioned. So I'm gonna answer a few of
• 1:56:53
  them in this episode and then more of them in the next episode of the
• 1:56:57
  podcast. The first question I'm gonna use comes from someone who's asking a question
• 1:57:01
  that a lot of people have, so I'm just going to try to deal
• 1:57:04
  with it right off the front. And this is from Ray. Ray asks
• 1:57:10
  John, before you go out of public life. I thought you mentioned we
• 1:57:13
  would get to hear more details regarding the major job that you were about to
• 1:57:16
  get this past fall or winter. We heard a little bit, but I
• 1:57:20
  thought you were going to reveal all. Thanks very sad to see you lead
• 1:57:25
  public life. I look forward to waking up every Tuesday and Thursday to hear
• 1:57:29
  you best regards. Ray, Well, Ray, thank you for your sentiment.
• 1:57:32
  And I'm sure I did. I think what I promised. Not sure
• 1:57:36
  about this, but I think what I promised was when I can tell all,
• 1:57:42
  I would be glad to tell all because this story of this job that
• 1:57:45
  I've been essentially promised slash offered for almost two years now, actually in some
• 1:57:53
  ways more than two years now, is just an absolutely mind blowing story.
• 1:57:59
  I mean, and with a lot of very very memorable, incredible stories,
• 1:58:03
  many of which I've told here on the podcast, and I would be thrilled
• 1:58:09
  to be able to in my last episode tell you what has happened. I
• 1:58:13
  don't even know that I could possibly fit it in one episode. I mean,
• 1:58:16
  if I ever told the full story, it would take hours to do
• 1:58:21
  justice to it, because it's that absolutely crazy, bizarre world gonzo and mind
• 1:58:30
  blowing and mind numbing and insane making. And I'm frankly, I got to
• 1:58:34
  say, I am extremely proud to this moment of how I have been able
• 1:58:41
  to somehow handle and endure this situation without seemingly losing my sanity. Now my
• 1:58:46
  wife may question that assertion at least in part, and understandably so, but
• 1:58:50
  by and large, I've been able to maintain my sanity when I honestly do
• 1:58:56
  not think that anybody else in my position, dealing with it what I've dealt
• 1:59:01
  with on this front for the last two years, would have been able to
• 1:59:03
  do so. I really don't. In fact, if you had told me
• 1:59:08
  that I would be able to do so at the beginning of this, I
• 1:59:10
  would have said, no chance, no chance. And I hate that I'm
• 1:59:14
  having to be cryptic about it, but I have to be because even though
• 1:59:18
  I don't believe it and I have no real hardcore reason to believe it,
• 1:59:24
  I'm still being told by somebody I have reason to trust that this is going
• 1:59:30
  to happen. You know, God, I wish I could tell you the
• 1:59:34
  story, and God, I wish I could get some closure on it.
• 1:59:38
  But I don't think either of those two things are going to be able to
• 1:59:41
  happen, at least not on the timeline of what we currently have on this
• 1:59:45
  podcast. So if we stop the podcast as is currently planned, you know,
• 1:59:50
  barring a quote unquote black swan event, I don't think I'm going to
• 1:59:55
  be able to do that I have put out there, and I think this
• 1:59:59
  is re that if I ever do get closure on that situation, and if
• 2:00:02
  I ever do find out what really did happen, and I'm I'm ever free
• 2:00:09
  to talk about it because one of the things that has happened, I've signed
• 2:00:12
  an NDA, a nondisclosure agreement, which I don't even know one hundred percent
• 2:00:16
  what what merit or value or credibility that has I don't know. I don't
• 2:00:21
  honestly don't know, but being safe instead of sorry, at least morally,
• 2:00:25
  I'm still under an obligation to keep this quiet. You know, if in
• 2:00:30
  fact, I ever get to that point, maybe I do one last episode
• 2:00:34
  and we just release it and say here's here's what happened. Uh. You
• 2:00:39
  know, and this is part of why I'm out of public life. I
• 2:00:42
  don't know what's going to happen, but unfortunately I can't talk about this as
• 2:00:45
  much as I would like to. So I apologize for that. But I
• 2:00:49
  know a lot of people have questions about that, and that absolutely is playing
• 2:00:55
  a role, not predominant, not primary, but it's playing. It's part
• 2:01:00
  of a larger, complex equation for why my plan is to end the podcast
• 2:01:05
  and leave public life, barring again some sort of black Swan event. Next
• 2:01:11
  question, This is from Paul in Arkansas Zig. I'm curious if you've been
• 2:01:15
  following the Michael Man mark Stein defamation case. I thought you'd have an interesting
• 2:01:20
  take. I'm sure you know. Man is probably the biggest culprit in legitimizing
• 2:01:26
  climate change hysteria with his dubious and unduly influential hockey stick. Graf Stein,
• 2:01:32
  who is a gifted commentator and speaker, has been fabulous at criticizing Man for
• 2:01:38
  many years, hence the defamation case. One of Stein's arguments, however,
• 2:01:44
  has been to compare Penn State's protection of Man, especially post climate Gate,
• 2:01:49
  because Man, I guess worked for Penn State to their cover up quote unquote
• 2:01:55
  of the Sandusky scandal. I'm definitely pulling for Stein to prevail, as I
• 2:02:00
  believe Man to be thoroughly reprehensible, but it might reassert the claims against Sandowsky
• 2:02:08
  that you have fought so hard to correct. What is Zigg's take, I'll
• 2:02:13
  miss your your will dogged pursuit of the BS clogging the arteries of journalism.
• 2:02:19
  Best of luck with unplugging from the machine. All right, Well, thanks
• 2:02:24
  Paul. Yeah, I am very much aware of this case, and obviously
• 2:02:30
  both from the standpoint of climate change as well as free speech. I'm on
• 2:02:35
  Mark Stein's side, and I think that Stein is a very smart guy.
• 2:02:41
  But Stein has been totally bamboozled into believing that somehow. First of all,
• 2:02:47
  I'm not even sure how this would be relevant, but I guess he's trying
• 2:02:49
  to score points by tying Man to Penn State and Penn State's cover up of
• 2:02:55
  Sandowsky and somehow that's the same thing as the cover up of climate game.
• 2:03:00
  I mean, none of that makes any sense at any level, even if
• 2:03:03
  the Sandusky thing was true. But the Sandusky thing is not true. And
• 2:03:09
  I truly believe that Stein is a smart enough guy that if he was open
• 2:03:13
  minded and I had fifteen minutes with him, I could probably convince them otherwise.
• 2:03:16
  Unfortunately, I have no connection to Stein, and he's very deeply invested
• 2:03:21
  now in this whole narrative that he's created that somehow Penn State is just the
• 2:03:27
  cover up of anything and everything, and that therefore, you know, somehow
• 2:03:32
  his side should prevail in this case. I actually have a bigger problem.
• 2:03:38
  I mean, Stein is somebody who I'm sure is just dealing from ignorance,
• 2:03:42
  that's my guess and self interest. But I have a bigger problem with with
• 2:03:45
  two Irish documentary filmmakers or podcasters who are doing a podcast on this defamation trial.
• 2:03:57
  And these are two people that I I know pretty well. These are
• 2:04:01
  people who used to be very close to Andrew Breitbart. And Andrew used to
• 2:04:06
  host events for both of us because we were I guess in some ways we
• 2:04:12
  were competitors because I was after I got out of talk radio, I went
• 2:04:15
  into the documentary films, and so, you know, back in like two
• 2:04:20
  thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, twenty ten, there weren't that
• 2:04:24
  many conservative documentary filmmakers around of any note, and I was one of them.
• 2:04:30
  And this Irish couple and in flem Is their names, they were one
• 2:04:35
  of them, and you know, I got to know them pretty decently,
• 2:04:40
  and I did not like them, and I did not trust them. And
• 2:04:43
  it wasn't just a rivalry thing, although I think they thought this was a
• 2:04:48
  rivalry, and I think they even went out of their way to kind of
• 2:04:51
  sabotage me at times. I could be paranoia, but in retrospect, I
• 2:04:56
  think that's probably true. I didn't look at it that way because they were
• 2:05:00
  doing things differently than me, and I didn't really care. But you know,
• 2:05:04
  they we were both very close to Andrew breitbarton I think Breitbart, you
• 2:05:09
  know, was definitely one of those people that had concerns about whether or not
• 2:05:14
  I might usurp him during that era as a white male conservative commentator out of
• 2:05:18
  Los Angeles who specializes in anti media content and who's a lot better on television
• 2:05:24
  than he was, and so I think, you know, Breitbart and maybe
• 2:05:28
  Ann and Flem started to look at me as competition or somebody to be,
• 2:05:34
  you know, be careful about, or to keep under control whatever. I
• 2:05:39
  don't know, but here's the important part of the story. So I don't
• 2:05:42
  like them, I don't trust them, and I believe they have even done
• 2:05:46
  some content fairly recently that questions a case of sexual abuse. I'm almost positive
• 2:05:55
  that they did do that. And when I found out about that, almost
• 2:06:00
  just to test the waters, and maybe even I don't even know if they
• 2:06:02
  still remembered me all these years later. I reached out to Ann and said,
• 2:06:10
  hey, look, I see that you're doing this work on this potentially
• 2:06:14
  bogus sex abuse case. Have you ever looked into Sandusky? And I got
• 2:06:18
  some sort of tepid, vague response, and I said, look, I'm
• 2:06:24
  gonna be happy to educate you about what really happened there. And of course
• 2:06:27
  I knew it wasn't gonna go anywhere. It was mostly a test. And
• 2:06:30
  that was before I even knew that they were deeply involved in this whole Penn
• 2:06:34
  State man versus Stein defamation trial. And I knew then there was no chance
• 2:06:43
  that they were ever going to do even hear me out on Sandusky because they're
• 2:06:46
  on Stein's side and they're deeply, deeply invested in this anti Penn State narrative
• 2:06:53
  as well. So bottom line is I hope Stein wins, but he's totally
• 2:06:58
  wrong about Sandusk. I wish I could get fifteen minutes with him and Annon
• 2:07:02
  Flammer totally fraud total frauds who are not to be trusted at all. They
• 2:07:06
  are ultimate grifters, and so keep that in mind with regard to any content
• 2:07:13
  that you might come across of theirs. Next question, I am a Penn
• 2:07:17
  State alumni and am forever in your debt for the investigative journalism on the Jerry
• 2:07:23
  Sandusky case. However, I'm going to miss your podcast when you retire in
• 2:07:29
  a couple of weeks. With the recent news that Tiger Woods and Nike are
• 2:07:33
  parting ways, I have a hypothetical golf question for you. I remember back
• 2:07:39
  in the nineteen nineties when Nike signed Tiger away from the quote unquote best of
• 2:07:45
  breed manufacturers of clubs and balls, and some of the grumbling along the lines
• 2:07:50
  of quote, Imagine how many more wins Tiger would have had if you had
• 2:07:55
  used better equipment, and I'm curious for your take on it. Kind regards
• 2:08:00
  cards, Chris in Cincinnati, Ohio. All right, now, when you
• 2:08:03
  talk about Tiger, this is a topic that I could talk a very long
• 2:08:09
  time about, but I'll try to cut this down as short as possible and
• 2:08:13
  make it as interesting and relevant to the general audience, you know, with
• 2:08:18
  regard to Tiger and Nike, which his relationship with Nike just ended and he's
• 2:08:24
  apparently going in a completely new direction. I actually have someone of it's,
• 2:08:28
  you know, six degrees of John Sickler. I have some connection to this.
• 2:08:33
  If you go back to Tiger Woods as a teenager, you will see
• 2:08:39
  that he's almost always wearing shirts that have the brand name La Mode on them,
• 2:08:46
  and Mode I don't even think exists today. But the Mode was owned
• 2:08:52
  by a guy with whom I was very close at one point, a guy
• 2:08:56
  by the name of Eddie Kahn, who I met through Congressman John Yarmouth because
• 2:09:01
  they both were in Louisville. They were close friends at one time, and
• 2:09:05
  Eddie Cohn moved here to Los Angeles, and Eddie con and his son e
• 2:09:09
  J and I have played a lot of golf together in fact, we played
• 2:09:11
  golf the day before my wedding. They hastially hosted golf on my my bachelor
• 2:09:16
  party, if you want to call it that, at Brentwood Country Club in
• 2:09:20
  Los Angeles, and his son EJ is a great player, and Eddie was
• 2:09:24
  a good player at one point. Well, well, you know, the
• 2:09:26
  great trivia question about Lamode is Lamode at one point had both Tiger Woods and
• 2:09:33
  Phil Mickelson wearing their shirts their attire, and as Eddie used to say,
• 2:09:39
  I was only one hundred million dollars short in my offer to both of them
• 2:09:43
  to you know, have them under contract. So so I have an interest
• 2:09:48
  in this topic from that perspective and the fact that you know, Nike eventually
• 2:09:54
  took Tiger away from Lamo. By the way, you know, Eddie will
• 2:09:58
  tell you that ty Viger's amateur championships should be under at least some legal cloud
• 2:10:03
  because he was getting a lot of subsidies that were not legal at that time.
• 2:10:09
  But oh, I don't think any'll ever tell that story. But I've
• 2:10:13
  always that definitely clouded my perception of what happened with Tiger as a very very
• 2:10:18
  well known amateur all the way back to basically being thirteen fourteen years old.
• 2:10:24
  So this idea by the way that Tiger Woods was being treated shabbily in an
• 2:10:30
  a erasist fashion, not being allowed at the clubhouses in Los Angeles as a
• 2:10:35
  young man, It's just so ridiculous and preposterous. I mean, he literally
• 2:10:37
  had, even at that age, you know, the guy who owned lambe
• 2:10:41
  giving him and his dad free attire and paying for them to go to amateur
• 2:10:46
  tournaments against the rules. But okay, anyway, so to this issue of
• 2:10:50
  Nike, I actually have a different take on this. I have never believed
• 2:10:56
  that Tiger was held back because he I had to go with Nike and Nike
• 2:11:01
  wasn't really well versed in golf equipment at that time. Is it possible that
• 2:11:07
  for a short period of time it took Nike to catch up to be at
• 2:11:11
  the level that a Tiger Woods would require when it comes to equipment. Maybe,
• 2:11:18
  But to me, the untold story of Tiger Woods and equipment goes in
• 2:11:22
  the opposite direction, and it goes to the use of his golf ball.
• 2:11:26
  Now, look, I'm as big a Tiger Woods fan as there is,
• 2:11:30
  but when you look at what happened in the year two thousand, two thousand
• 2:11:35
  is the greatest year in the history of modern golf by far. I mean,
• 2:11:39
  Tiger wins the US Open by fifteen shots, and he wins, you
• 2:11:43
  know, three of the four majors, two of them by total blowouts.
• 2:11:48
  He wins every other tournament. I mean, nobody will ever do what Tiger
• 2:11:52
  Woods did in the year two thousand. Well, in the year two thousand,
• 2:11:56
  for most of the year, Tiger was using a completely different golf ball
• 2:12:00
  then almost the entire rest of the field. It was a little bit like
• 2:12:05
  back to the future, where you had Tiger Woods, the first top notch,
• 2:12:11
  incredibly finely tuned athlete, playing against the guy a bunch of guys never
• 2:12:16
  even went to the weight room, playing with a golf ball that was essentially
• 2:12:20
  from the future. And that's not why he won the US Open by fifteen
• 2:12:24
  shots. I mean, he was by far the best player at that time.
• 2:12:28
  But I'm telling you, it wasn't too long before everybody immediately started to
• 2:12:33
  go to the same golf ball that Tiger Woods was using. And while Tiger
• 2:12:39
  was still the best, the margins started to decrease pretty significantly and very quickly.
• 2:12:46
  Was that all because of the golf ball. No, there's all sorts
• 2:12:48
  of things going on. Tiger's changing his swing all the time, getting injured
• 2:12:52
  all the time. But I'm telling you, if anything, from a technological
• 2:12:58
  standpoint, when it came to Tiger's best season, he actually had a technological
• 2:13:03
  advantage and it was in the nature of his golf ball. All right,
• 2:13:09
  Brandon, Brandon wants to ask what was your experience like working for Mediaite as
• 2:13:16
  a columnist. They seem to be pretty liberal and you're obviously conservative, so
• 2:13:20
  I imagine your experience there was interesting. Best wishes to you in your future.
• 2:13:26
  I will miss your podcast so much. Well, thanks so much,
• 2:13:28
  Brandon or Brandon appreciate it. Look, I was a columnist at Mediaite for
• 2:13:35
  several years. I had done some work for them way way back, and
• 2:13:41
  this is an outlet. It's owned by Dan Abrams, who hosts a nightly
• 2:13:46
  show on News Nation Television, on which I appear about every other week or
• 2:13:50
  so. Although I haven't been on there recently. I've only been on once
• 2:13:52
  or twice so far this year, but as far as I know, I
• 2:13:56
  still get texts from their producers from time to time asking me about potential topics.
• 2:14:01
  So I'm still on their list. I think it just a matter of
• 2:14:03
  whatever subjects they tend to latch onto at any particular time. But anyway,
• 2:14:07
  Dan Abrams, who is ABC's legal correspondent and does a bunch of other things,
• 2:14:15
  he founded Media a long time ago, and I occasionally did some work
• 2:14:18
  for them after the two thousand and eight election regarding my movie Media Malepractice.
• 2:14:22
  And then when Trump became clearly the front runner for the Republican nomination at twenty
• 2:14:30
  sixteen, I wrote some things for them, at least one piece in particular,
• 2:14:35
  where I predicted that Trump was going to be the nominee that went super
• 2:14:41
  viral and it was way ahead of the curve. And at that point,
• 2:14:45
  I guess they asked me to come on as a full time columnist sometime in
• 2:14:48
  there, and I was full time for several years, and then California came
• 2:14:54
  up with this crazy liberal wackadoodle rule about how many articles. This is true,
• 2:15:01
  there was actually a law that prevented me from writing a certain number of
• 2:15:05
  articles and not becoming a full time employee with health care benefits and all that.
• 2:15:11
  So essentially mediite, and I didn't blame them for this. Could not
• 2:15:16
  allow me to write more than a certain number of times of year. So
• 2:15:18
  effectively I went from a full time columnist to a part time columnist, which
• 2:15:24
  I didn't really mind because it's draining, especially when you're writing about Trump every
• 2:15:28
  other article. And it's also difficult, as Brandon implies there, it's very
• 2:15:37
  difficult being a conservative, almost like the token conservative. And I knew exactly
• 2:15:43
  what my role was. I was the principal conservative who was against Donald Trump
• 2:15:48
  but was fair to Donald Trump. That was my role at Mediite. I
• 2:15:52
  understood that, and you know, I was more willing to fill that role.
• 2:15:56
  And there weren't that many people that could even theoretically fill that role,
• 2:16:00
  even back in twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen. There's almost nobody that can fill
• 2:16:03
  that role today because of all the different ways that supposed conservatives have sold out
• 2:16:09
  in order to maintain their anti Trump street cred in the media and basically become
• 2:16:15
  a minstrel show for liberals in the media, and so you know that's always
• 2:16:20
  going to be difficult. Now. Dan is very very fair, he's very
• 2:16:24
  very smart, and he's not a liberal, and I wouldn't call him a
• 2:16:28
  conservative either. I mean, he literally is very very moderate, very open
• 2:16:33
  minded, and so generally, and I didn't do this very often, but
• 2:16:39
  generally, if I had a major dispute and I had to go to Dan
• 2:16:43
  to you know, mitigate it or negotiate it, or to mediate it.
• 2:16:48
  Mediate mediate it is probably the right word considering it's Mediaite. But if I
• 2:16:52
  went to Dan to mediate any particular dispute in my recollection, he almost always
• 2:16:58
  sided with me. Now that's partially because I wouldn't go to him unless I
• 2:17:03
  knew I was right, but that was always very positive. I felt very
• 2:17:07
  good about that. But my editor did change while I was there, from
• 2:17:13
  a guy who was really rather conservative. In fact, I didn't even realize
• 2:17:18
  until after he left how conservative he really was, because he did a pretty
• 2:17:22
  good job of maintaining neutrality and being rather moderate because that's what the brand of
• 2:17:28
  the site was, Mediaite. But then he got replaced by a full blown
• 2:17:35
  liberal and that was a challenge and probably the reason why I ended up leaving
• 2:17:41
  Mediaite. I mean, it really came down to being aggravated and frustrated by
• 2:17:48
  constant nitpicking, specifically when it came to COVID, and specifically when it came
• 2:17:56
  to masks and vaccine mandates. That was the bottom line for me. That
• 2:18:01
  was the straw that broke the camel's back where I was not allowed. And
• 2:18:07
  this would have been, you know, in the early days of the vaccines,
• 2:18:11
  and you know, the liberals still loved the vaccines and still bought into
• 2:18:16
  this idea that the vaccines were magic. And I was catching on very quickly
• 2:18:22
  after initially believing that the vaccines were going to be awesome, that the data
• 2:18:26
  was reversing and that we were being lied to about the vaccines stopping transmission,
• 2:18:31
  and the vaccines don't stop transmission. There is no philosophical basis for a mandate.
• 2:18:39
  That's just basic logic. You can't there's no basis for a mandate of
• 2:18:43
  a vaccine that doesn't stop transmission because you're not impacting anybody else, because the
• 2:18:50
  vaccine doesn't stop you from giving the virus to anybody else. And I think
• 2:18:56
  I was way ahead of the curve, at least in liberal circles. Liberals
• 2:19:00
  were so invested in the vaccines that they simply would not allow me to write
• 2:19:05
  about this, and I had to go to the matt just to write against
• 2:19:11
  mask mandates, which they eventually know they did let me do. To their
• 2:19:15
  credit, they'd let me do with all sorts of caveats and restrictions, but
• 2:19:20
  okay, at least they let me do it. They would not let me
• 2:19:22
  do it when it came to vaccine mandates, and I just decided, you
• 2:19:28
  know what, I'm out, and so I stopped writing for them, and
• 2:19:37
  frankly I did so. There was no blow up. It just just kind
• 2:19:41
  of stopped, weirdly enough, and iron honestly thought that that would end the
• 2:19:48
  relationship for all intensive purposes professionally with Dan, But I don't know. A
• 2:19:54
  year or so later he started asking me on his television show. And I
• 2:19:58
  don't know this, I've never spoken to him about it, but I think
• 2:20:03
  at least part of why that happened is because Dan, who was a very
• 2:20:07
  smart, very open minded guy, realized that I was essentially right, that
• 2:20:13
  I had taken a stand, and that, as it turned out, when
• 2:20:18
  all the facts were in, when all the dust settled, ZIG was right.
• 2:20:22
  Now again, that was never admitted to, never spoken about, but
• 2:20:26
  I'm just putting the pieces together. There was no reason for him to suddenly
• 2:20:31
  start asking me on his television show other than I'm a good television guest,
• 2:20:35
  which Dan knew. But you know, there's plenty of other people you can
• 2:20:37
  get for any of these particular topics that I'm asked to discuss. So that's
• 2:20:43
  my theory on it. So I like Mediaite. I think it's important that
• 2:20:46
  Mediaite exist. I think they do a great job in a lot of ways.
• 2:20:50
  Are they perfect, No, nobody's perfect in the news media, but
• 2:20:54
  I do think that, you know, when it comes to being a media
• 2:20:58
  watchdog and being fair and being substantive, there's nobody better in that space than
• 2:21:07
  Mediaite. And you know, I would have probably kept writing for them if
• 2:21:11
  I had felt as if I had more freedom. I mean, it was
• 2:21:16
  the lack of journalistic freedom or you know, the freedom of commentary and freedom
• 2:21:20
  of speech. It's not really freedom of speech because you know, I don't
• 2:21:26
  have a constitutional right to write a column on their website about anything I want.
• 2:21:31
  But I do think they went too far when it came to issues related
• 2:21:37
  to COVID in cracking down on the conservative viewpoint. And the main reason was
• 2:21:43
  was because their primary editor is very liberal and so it's not that complicated.
• 2:21:48
  So that's what happened with Mediaite. I have nothing bad to say about the
• 2:21:54
  organization as a whole or there or there in you know what they endeavor to
• 2:22:00
  do. I think it's great. I think Dan is really great. I
• 2:22:03
  mean, I think Dan is incredibly unique in this business. Again, no
• 2:22:07
  one's perfect, but you know, when you talk about a mainstream news media
• 2:22:13
  personality, nobody is more fair, nobody is more educated, nobody is more
• 2:22:18
  objective than Dan Abrams. And you know, I've had, like every other
• 2:22:24
  boss, I've had some battles with Dan, but I think we've always respected
• 2:22:28
  each other. And I wish there were more dan Abrams. There are more
• 2:22:33
  people like Dan Abrams running the media business. We probably wouldn't even need the
• 2:22:37
  death of journalists and podcasts because it wouldn't be so broken. And so that's
• 2:22:43
  a very long answer to the question about media. That'll do it for this
• 2:22:46
  episode of the podcast. I still have a lot more questions to get to,
• 2:22:50
  but we do have episode number one hundred and twenty six later on in
• 2:22:54
  this week. That'll drop as always on Thursday morning. So I promised to
• 2:22:56
  answer more of your question. Then, if you want to participate, this
• 2:23:01
  is your last chance, your last chance, you know, this is it
• 2:23:07
  if you want to participate and ask John anything, give me an email,
• 2:23:11
  send me an email at John Z John z at mediite dot com. That's
• 2:23:16
  media it e dot com. See I still have the email address from from
• 2:23:22
  mediaite, so I think that's pretty telling and I will be happy to consider
• 2:23:26
  your question for the next episode of the podcast. And if you would like
• 2:23:31
  to well, this is the last time I'll do this as well. If
• 2:23:33
  you would like to pledge your support for sending this podcast into a subscription model,
• 2:23:41
  you can email Mike Agavino, our executive producer. His email address is
• 2:23:46
  a got dj A g O t DJ A got dj at gmail dot com.
• 2:23:56
  No pressure whatsoever. I'm not even sure what I'm rooting for. We're
• 2:24:00
  here, but I'm just giving you the opportunity to let Mike know you would
• 2:24:03
  like to try to keep this podcast going under a subscription model. That'll do
• 2:24:07
  it for episode number one hundred and twenty five. Until next time. Thanks
• 2:24:11
  so much for listening. My name is John Zigler.