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Episode Eighty Five: COVID Fairytales · The Death Of Journalism

• 0:00
  Welcome to episode number eighty five of the Death of Journalism podcast. My name
• 0:04
  is John Ziggler. I'm your host on today's show. Donald Trump says he
• 0:08
  thinks the COVID response was great. Amazing video emerges from vivek Obama Swamy,
• 0:15
  which further justifies my nickname for him, and a great interview with never Trump
• 0:19
  conservative columnist and author Matt Lewis. I'm known as the Dutch Digital marketing Man.
• 0:26
  I'm a digital advertising SEO and email marketing specialist that also happens to be
• 0:31
  a big fan of John Ziggler and the Death of journalisten. Do you need
• 0:35
  help preaching your talk at the audience? Let me help you develop the right
• 0:39
  messaging and confaded message and the best channels for your business. Please visit my
• 0:44
  website, the Dutch Digital marketing Man dot com and let me help you tell
• 0:49
  your story. The website is the Dutch Digital marketing Man dot com. If
• 0:55
  you want to grow your business, Peter can help. That's the Dutch Digital
• 0:59
  marketing Man dot com. And hey, thanks for sponsoring the show. We
• 1:03
  begin episode eighty five the Death the Journalism Podcast with a check in on the
• 1:07
  GOP presidential race and I have become known as a Desanders supporter who is rather
• 1:15
  contrarian and pessimistic about the chances of Rhonda Santa Is actually becoming the nominee.
• 1:22
  For many months now, I have been telling you, trying to sound the
• 1:25
  alarm bells that everything was working in Donald Trump's favor, and at each stage
• 1:32
  I was told by fellow Desandas supporters to be patient. I was told in
• 1:38
  the early spring that I was overreacting that Desanders isn't even in the race.
• 1:42
  Yet once that happens, everything's going to change for the better. I said,
• 1:47
  that's ridiculous, there's no evidence to support that. And then when the
• 1:52
  announcement finally did come and it was a disaster, and I called it a
• 1:56
  disaster, I was told, no, that doesn't really make much difference.
• 1:59
  Besides, this doesn't really begin until the debates start. And at that stage
• 2:04
  I said, well, I hate to break it to you, but there
• 2:07
  isn't gonna be any real debates because Donald Trump isn't going to debate. And
• 2:10
  I was told I was wrong about that, and it I was overreacting,
• 2:15
  And of course it turned out that Donald Trump did, in fact, just
• 2:19
  as I said, dodge the first debate. But I was told at that
• 2:23
  time, don't worry. There's going to be a backlash to Donald Trump not
• 2:28
  being in the debates. He'll be seen as a coward. Santists will dominate
• 2:31
  the debate with all these lesser candidates. This will be good for him,
• 2:36
  and eventually this is all going to turn around. And I said, that's
• 2:38
  delusional, because the circumstances of a non Trump debate, we're going to be
• 2:44
  very very much in favor of Donald Trump. Well, it has turned out
• 2:49
  that once again I was correct about this, although weirdly and frustratingly, and
• 2:54
  I think tellingly, me being right about every single stage of this, in
• 3:01
  my estimation, has actually turned people off to what I'm saying, which I
• 3:07
  think tells you an awful lot about why journalism is dead number one, and
• 3:13
  why our entire media industrial complex is fundamentally broken. Because you would think being
• 3:19
  right would give you credibility and people would want to hear somebody who has a
• 3:23
  good truck record on this. But that's not the world we live in.
• 3:25
  We live in a world where people would be rather be told a lie or
• 3:30
  something that was incorrect that made them feel good, rather than a truth.
• 3:36
  Or a correct assessment of things that made people feel bad. That's the way
• 3:42
  this is. This is essentially therapy now and when the relationship between a host
• 3:49
  or a news outlet and their customers, not even their consumers, now their
• 3:53
  customers has so fundamentally changed. And this is why I constantly say the truth
• 3:59
  is no longer or the coin of the realm. That's not what it is.
• 4:02
  Oftentimes an inconvenient truth or an uncomfortable truth. It's very very bad for
• 4:09
  business. A well crafted lie, sometimes not even that well crafted, is
• 4:14
  actually very good for business. And this is why things are fundamentally broken,
• 4:18
  and we have seen it time and time again, at least in my personal
• 4:23
  experience with regard to this presidential race on the Republican side. Now, I
• 4:28
  acknowledge that it's a bit early to be making final conclusions about the very,
• 4:33
  very hectic last week that included the first debate without Trump and a Trump interview
• 4:41
  or whatever you want to call it with Tucker Carlston, and of course the
• 4:44
  arrest in Georgia and the mug shot heard around the world. It's going to
• 4:47
  take time for all of that, for the dust to settle, for the
• 4:51
  data to finally come in for there going to be enough credible polls where we
• 4:56
  can really get a sense for absolute certainty what if anything the last week or
• 5:01
  so has done to the race. But I don't think it's too early to
• 5:05
  determine that there has been and will be no debate dodging backlash for Donald Trump.
• 5:14
  That's not going to happen. We have enough information. There are several
• 5:16
  polls out post debate, even really post debate, but not fully getting the
• 5:25
  entire impact of the mug shot heard around the world, which by all accounts
• 5:29
  in Republican circles is going to help Trump even further. So, if anything,
• 5:34
  the logic would dictate that what we have so far isn't fully encapsulating yet
• 5:41
  another Trump bump from the last week or so. But there is absolutely positively
• 5:46
  no evidence whatsoever. And even I thought there might be a shred. I
• 5:51
  thought there might be a couple of points here and there where people go,
• 5:57
  wait a minute, what's going on here? Why is Trump not doing the
• 6:00
  debates? This doesn't seem, you know, consistent with who I thought he
• 6:03
  was, and that's wrong, and he's afraid blah blah blah. No,
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  there's been zero evidence of that whatsoever. If there ever was going to be
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  anything close to that reaction, the mug shot absolutely obliterated it. As of
• 6:16
  right now, the lead nationally for Trump is a solid forty points. There
• 6:23
  has been no gain by de santist if at best, maybe the bleeding has
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  stopped for DeSantis, but Ramaswamy or now on this show known as Obama swammy,
• 6:34
  but fake Obama swammy seemingly has made a little bit of headway. Nikki
• 6:40
  Haley seemingly has made a little bit of headway. There's been no movement on
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  Christy or Pence that might show them that they need to get out. So
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  none of this is remotely good if you're in my camp, which is Donald
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  Trump cannot be the Republican presidential nominee in twenty twenty for a variety of reasons.
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  But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. Let's just take what
• 7:05
  we know pretty much for certain now, which is that there is no dodging
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  the debate backlash for Trump, no price to pay for that. So what
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  are the implications of that? Well, I think, frankly there are huge
• 7:20
  potential implications going forward in the history of our presidential elections that indicate we may
• 7:28
  never have real debates ever again, including in the general election. But I
• 7:31
  don't want to get too far ahead of myself again. Let's just go to
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  the second debate, which is scheduled for late September here in southern California,
• 7:40
  the Reagan Library near where I live. And I don't think there's any chance
• 7:45
  that Donald Trump is going to do that debate. I didn't think there was
• 7:46
  even before what happened here. But the only way there was going to be
• 7:50
  a shot that Trump was forced to do that debate was that dodging the first
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  debate impacted his poll numbers. I mean, the great one, the many
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  great ironies of this entirely insane situation is that a man it doesn't believe in
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  polls, famously doesn't believe in poles, even election day polls, has been
• 8:07
  making polling the entire centerpiece of his campaign. His campaign basically is about bragging
• 8:15
  about poles and bragging about getting indicted and lying about ron to sanctimonious. That's
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  literally the entire Donald Trump campaign, and it's working better than I'm sure even
• 8:26
  Donald Trump thought that it would. So why in the world would Donald Trump
• 8:31
  ever do a second debate, there'd be no reason to without some sort of
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  cataclysmic event between now and then, which I can't even conceive of, because
• 8:41
  he's already been indicted four times and it's only seemingly helped him. So he's
• 8:46
  not going to do the second debate. Well, what is that going to
• 8:48
  mean? Well, the second debate, now that we hasn't changed the first
• 8:54
  debate didn't change the race at all, in fact, only helped Trump seemingly
• 9:00
  in many ways, including by helping the Santas's opponents to maybe make some headway
• 9:07
  on him and make his grip on second place more vulnerable than it even was.
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  That was always my great fear about a trumpless debate and how it was
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  going to play into Trump's hands and make the Santas's challenge very, very difficult.
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  But why would anybody watch the second debate, assuming that there even is
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  what I think there will be one because it's the Reagan Library and it's already
• 9:30
  been announced, and I think it's supposed to be on Fox Business as opposed
• 9:35
  to Fox News Channel. But but the reality is that they're going to have
• 9:39
  that debate, Trump's not going to be there, and nobody's gonna watch.
• 9:43
  There was a supplot prisingly high viewership without Trump, about twelve almost thirteen million,
• 9:50
  although Trump's lying about it and saying it was eleven. But by all
• 9:52
  accounts of almost thirteen million people watch that first debate, which is a big
• 9:58
  number, especially out your star. But now that people know what they're going
• 10:03
  to see and they know that it's not going to really impact anything, I
• 10:07
  think that number is going to go down significantly, which means anything that happens
• 10:11
  there has far less chance of impacting anything. I mean, the first debate
• 10:18
  didn't impact anything in a major way, is certainly not in a positive way.
• 10:22
  If you're an anti Trump are like me, why would a second debate,
• 10:26
  also without Trump, with an even smaller audience and smaller media hype,
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  do any different? And so you're going to get the safe you know,
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  it's a definition of insanity. Keep doing the same thing looking for a different
• 10:41
  result. How is the second debate going to change anything? When the first
• 10:45
  debate didn't change anything? And in my opinion, if that's the way this
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  goes down, that's probably going to be the end of the debates. Why
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  is anybody I think there's a very good chance that that's the last debate,
• 10:58
  because if Trump continues his lead, he'll continue to say no, thank you,
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  He'll have no incentive to change his mind. The viewership won't be high
• 11:09
  enough for media outlet to go ahead and do this. Now, it's possible
• 11:13
  that out of ego will prestige, some other outlet might do it, but
• 11:18
  CNN or MSNBC, I don't even know that Republican candidates would agree to do
• 11:24
  it. Trump certainly wouldn't do it, So I don't know who where the
• 11:28
  incentive structure is that all this would result and yet another debate. So I
• 11:33
  think that there's a real good chance, not one hundred percent binding stretch imagination,
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  but a chance that the next debate is the last debate, maybe of
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  the entire presidential cycle. And that's not healthy for democracy in any way,
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  shape or form. It's pathetic, it's sad, it's hilarious because it's very
• 11:54
  much against the self interest of the news media. They don't seem to understand
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  or care about the stakes here and what they're losing because these these debate events
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  or manner from heaven for them. They loved these things in every possible way.
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  So I just don't see currently I mean, obviously things can change,
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  and Trump, you know, is somebody that is prone to changing his mind,
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  and there's a lot going on with him, so it's possible that the
• 12:22
  circumstances could change. But right now I see a path that's pretty darn and
• 12:26
  clear where there's one more debate everyone realizes, Okay, this is a waste
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  of time, and then it never happens again, which of course would essentially
• 12:35
  lock in the race for Donald Trump, because the debates are one of the
• 12:39
  few situations where you could, underlying could have a game changing situation, and
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  by and large now the only thing these debates do is provide an opportunity for
• 12:50
  someone to screw up. That's really what I mean. It's very, very
• 12:54
  difficult to make headway by being great unless you have an amazing exchange where you
• 13:01
  crush somebody and have a memorable funny line something like that. It's far more
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  likely that someone like Rick Perry in twenty twelve or Marker Rubio in twenty sixteen
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  is going to have an implosion moment and it'll harm them. You can still
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  harm yourself very very quickly, but actually trying to make progress in these debates
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  is I think, very very difficult, especially when you have someone like Randa
• 13:26
  Santis, who for whom the standards are so incredibly high and so incredibly unfair
• 13:31
  in comparison to what the standards are for Donald Trump. So I just don't
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  see them as an opportunity for anything really positive to happen. And I suggested
• 13:43
  before the first debate that the Santis people should think about not doing the first
• 13:48
  debate. And it's not hindsight because I was saying this beforehand, but I
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  really think that that was a mistake for them to do the debate. It
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  was an impossible situation. Now they're locked in because they're locked into the everyone
• 14:01
  should debate all the time narrative. So it's not like they can drop out
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  of the second debate and say, well, no, this is between me
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  and Trump. By the way, it's between me and Trump narrative. If
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  you're de santist is starting to fade away because you know, Obama, Swamy
• 14:20
  and Haley are starting to become pretty close in third and fourth place. So
• 14:24
  it's no longer clear cut that Ronda Santis is the second guy. It still
• 14:28
  is clear, but it's not dominant like it used to be. And now
• 14:33
  Trump is even starting to promote that narrative that it's no longer him against the
• 14:39
  Santists, it's Trump against the world, and Trump is is kicking the world's
• 14:43
  ass. But now basically the de Santists team is locked in to doing whatever
• 14:48
  debates there are. I don't see how that dynamic changes to where it's helpful
• 14:54
  to him, and you know, it just doesn't. I don't know what
• 14:58
  the scenario is. Every anything significantly changes. I just I'd love for someone
• 15:03
  to tell me. I don't see it. I really do not see what
• 15:07
  the path is, especially now that there's been no debate dodging backlash for Donald
• 15:15
  Trump, and I'm pretty confident that there's not gonna be one given the data
• 15:20
  that we currently have now. Of course, the big unknown here in a
• 15:24
  lot of ways, the fact that this is such a big unknown stopped me.
• 15:30
  If you've heard this before, plays into Donald Trump's hands. What should
• 15:33
  hurt him actually helps him because there's so much uncertainty given his legal situation that
• 15:41
  one, it gives an incentive for people to stay in the race. If
• 15:46
  he didn't have such incredible legal problems, someone like a Nicky Haley or Mike
• 15:52
  Pennce or Tim Scott would get out of the race because they have no real
• 15:56
  purpose because there's no current for them to win. Now Obama Swami's in there
• 16:03
  to help Trump, and Chris Christie, I think is there for his own
• 16:06
  ego. He says it's to take out Trump. That's not really what it
• 16:10
  is. I think it's to get a new media contract when this is all
• 16:14
  over with, plus his ego which is as almost as big as waistline.
• 16:18
  But the reality is that because Trump is seen as so unpredictable and has so
• 16:26
  many things going on with him, it further increases the incentive to stay in
• 16:30
  the race and decreases whatever incentive there is to get the hell out. And
• 16:37
  there's been a major update when it comes to what appears to be going on
• 16:42
  with the four indictments against him, where we have our first what seemingly is
• 16:48
  a solid trial date for the DC federal January sixth trial, which is now
• 16:56
  set for March. In fact, it's set for the day before Super Tuesday.
• 17:00
  Of course, Trump fans but went absolutely bananas about this, and Trump
• 17:06
  himself went bananas about this one because it's sooner than what they had requested as
• 17:11
  far as a trial date and two, because somehow this is inherent election interference
• 17:17
  because it starts the day before Super Tuesday. Well, to be clear first
• 17:21
  of all, saying that the trial is going to start on that day at
• 17:26
  best, assuming that there are no further delays, which they're easily could be.
• 17:30
  Trials get delayed all the time. Although by all accounts this trial date
• 17:36
  is firm and is very likely to be the start of the trial, nothing's
• 17:41
  actually going to happen on that day. I mean, I don't maybe Trump
• 17:45
  will be in court, but the reality is that's, you know, got
• 17:49
  jury selection which is going to take for fricking ever in this particular case,
• 17:53
  and all sorts of pre trial motions, and the Trump team is going to
• 17:59
  do everything they possibly can to delay things. Plus there's not going to be
• 18:02
  cameras in the courtroom because it's a federal case. I mean, so there's
• 18:07
  all sorts of things that are going to happen. I mean, it's not
• 18:11
  like the day before Super Tuesday, all of a sudden America is going to
• 18:15
  be tuned in to the trial testimony for the GOP front runner. That's not
• 18:22
  going to happen. Now, I've asked the question, what date would be
• 18:26
  amenable, amenable for Trump people. I mean, what date wouldn't be quote
• 18:33
  unquote election interference that would occur between now and say twenty twenty five, And
• 18:37
  of course there isn't a good date. Now, I did get a decent
• 18:41
  response, which I think has some credibility, And the credible response to that
• 18:45
  question is, well, this is something that should have happened in twenty twenty
• 18:48
  two, and I agree with that. I think that's the strongest argument that
• 18:55
  there is to use a Trump term hanky panky going on with regard to how
• 19:00
  these cases are being adjudicated, because this is a situation where it's not like
• 19:07
  we know very much more than we did during twenty twenty two. I mean,
• 19:11
  this is this is a crime that allegedly occurred at the very beginning of
• 19:15
  two thousand and twenty one. So you know, logically, you could have
• 19:21
  easily brought these charges regarding January sixth, sometime in twenty twenty two, which
• 19:29
  is when they would have had the least amount of negative impact on the Republican
• 19:33
  race for the presidential nomination. Now, of course there would have been people
• 19:38
  who would have said, well, you're you're interfering in the mid term election.
• 19:41
  I get that, but you know, this would have been less obvious
• 19:47
  and less dramatic had there been a trial in twenty twenty two, and at
• 19:52
  that point, you know, Republican voters would at least know what the hell
• 19:56
  they're getting themselves into, because presum the trial would be over by now,
• 20:02
  and Trump would decide whether or not he was going to run or not run,
• 20:04
  and voters would be able to determine whether or not he should be the
• 20:07
  nominee. So I think that's a strong argument, but that's we're beyond that
• 20:12
  now. And any date, any date that was chosen, is going to
• 20:17
  be inherently political, because this is an inherently political process, which is part
• 20:19
  of the problem and getting a jury in this case, as I've already stated
• 20:23
  many times, it's going to be impossible a fair jury. It's going to
• 20:26
  be absolutely impossible. However, you know, there are those who have said
• 20:32
  that the jury poll in Washington, DC is going to be dead set against
• 20:37
  Donald Trump for obvious reasons. DC is a very Democrat and very African American
• 20:42
  community, so you expect that there's going to be an awful lot of Democrats,
• 20:48
  Liberals, and black people in that jury poll. Which is not going
• 20:51
  to be good for Donald Trump, and that offends me in my sense of
• 20:53
  fairness. I don't think that that's a fair situation. I will say that
• 21:00
  we talked in an episode eighty four about this potential phenomenon that black people,
• 21:04
  at least some black people may gravitate towards Trump because they feel as if he's
• 21:08
  being persecuted and treated unfairly by the legal system. I think that could theoretically
• 21:15
  help Trump in the jury pool, because you only need one person maybe two,
• 21:22
  to hold hands together and say this is not right, this is not
• 21:25
  fair. And you can certainly potentially see that happening. But it's more it's
• 21:30
  more unlikely in a place like Washington, DC than it would be like,
• 21:33
  for instance, in South Florida where the classified documents cases going on. So
• 21:40
  you know, to me, all these trials are going to be all about
• 21:42
  jury selection. That's the only thing that's going to matter as far as the
• 21:48
  outcome, because Trump is so obviously a very very divisive personality and the facts
• 21:53
  and the evidence in the law are not really gonna matter. But we do
• 22:00
  now have a trial date set in what is a situation that could could very
• 22:06
  possibly result in a conviction sometime next year. How long that's going to take
• 22:14
  is anybody's guess. In my opinion, based upon where we're currently heading with
• 22:18
  this, by the time this trial begins, this nominating process is going to
• 22:23
  be essentially over. I mean, what is the scenario if Trump wins Iowa
• 22:30
  and New Hampshire, which then means he wins Nevada, and then when he
• 22:33
  wins South Carolina, how do you stop that freight train? There's there's no
• 22:37
  way, I mean, even if everybody drops out, there's all The polling
• 22:42
  now shows that head to head, the disparity between Trump and DeSantis is almost
• 22:49
  the same as it is in a multi person race, So he won't be
• 22:56
  a convicted felon by this point, republic booking voters are still going to be
• 23:00
  under the delusion that this isn't going to hurt him in the general election.
• 23:03
  In fact, there's a new poll out indicating that the perceived electability of Donald
• 23:08
  Trump has actually increased since his fourth indictment and arrest. Increased fairly significantly.
• 23:18
  In that I think it's over sixty percent of Republican voters believe that Donald Trump
• 23:22
  has the best chance to beat Joe Biden. So how is that freight train
• 23:27
  gonna stop its supposedly with regard to the reality of the debates, I've already
• 23:32
  articulated, I just I do not see how that happens. And so,
• 23:37
  you know, and this is gonna make me sound like I'm in the election
• 23:41
  interference camp with regard to the timing of this thing. Frankly, you know,
• 23:45
  this timing couldn't be worse. If you're a voter like me, who
• 23:52
  one of your greatest fears is Trump gets the nomination and then gets convicted and
• 23:57
  he's a convicted felon heading into the general elections. That's one of the more
• 24:03
  nightmarish scenarios, and the timing of this certainly makes that possible. Now,
• 24:10
  I still gotta believe. I mean, you know, there's a lot of
• 24:11
  comparisons and I make them all the time between this situation and the OJ Simpson
• 24:17
  case, because you're gonna have a potential jury nullification circumstance because of the nature
• 24:22
  of the defendant. But I mean that case, it wasn't that complicated,
• 24:26
  took like nine months. This is a federal case, you know, involving
• 24:32
  very complicated issues, and so to me, if it starts in March.
• 24:37
  It could easily go through the election, and of course that's what Trump is
• 24:42
  gonna want, so he's going to be incentivized. He wants this to be
• 24:45
  delayed for a number of reasons. One, every day that it it's delayed
• 24:48
  is a day that he can't be sent to prison, and two is another
• 24:53
  day where he could get elected president, in which case this thing is null
• 24:56
  and void because he'll effectively pardon himself. So I'm still not convinced that we're
• 25:03
  ever going to get a conviction, at least not before the election of Donald
• 25:07
  Trump. But a lot of people are very upset about the timing of this.
• 25:11
  But Trump people have basically made a profession out of becoming victims and you
• 25:17
  know everything there, you know, and this is one of the more confusing
• 25:19
  parts of why they love Donald Trump. Donald Trump is now a victim of
• 25:22
  everything. His entire first term was a martyrdom and victim hood. And you
• 25:30
  know, these are things that used to be verboden in the conservative movement and
• 25:36
  Republican circles, and now they get embraced. And yet there's no thought that
• 25:40
  we'll wait a minute, if he was a victim and a martyr the first
• 25:42
  time around. How's it going to be any better when he's eight years older,
• 25:48
  can only serve one term, and as all other other elements set against
• 25:52
  him, including four indictments. No one wants to answer that question because you
• 25:56
  can't. Doesn't make any goddamn sense. Now, with regard to the fake
• 26:03
  Obama swammy, I do want to mention and play a clip that's really extraordinary
• 26:08
  and has gotten a lot of play online. I don't know how much play
• 26:12
  this has gotten in the actual mainstream news media. It probably hasn't gotten very
• 26:19
  much at all. I haven't seen it get any because there's a lot of
• 26:22
  other stuff going on, and it's a clip that and I'm not sure that
• 26:26
  the mainstream news media knows how to interpret because, as I have strongly implied,
• 26:32
  not just by the name that I use for va Obama swammy, I
• 26:37
  believe that that he is a fraud. I believe that he doesn't have any
• 26:41
  true belief systems, that he is essentially selling a persona with a blank slate
• 26:49
  to Republican voters for whatever incentive or agenda he has. I'm not sure what
• 26:56
  it is. It's clearly though, tied to Donald Trump and as I have
• 27:00
  predicted from the very beginning, Obama Swammy is a problem for DeSantis. He
• 27:06
  is a Trump surrogate, and he is a phony and a fraud. But
• 27:11
  even I was a bit stunned, you know. I started calling him Obama
• 27:15
  Swammy a couple of weeks ago, and in the first debate he quotes Barack
• 27:18
  Obama's two thousand and four Democratic Convention speech, which was kind of amazing.
• 27:23
  Well, that's the Obama Swamy part of the name. As far as the
• 27:27
  fake part of the name, there has emerged a clip from a two thousand
• 27:33
  and four episode of Hardball with Chris Matthews on I don't know if it was
• 27:38
  on MSNBC or CNBC at the time. It shows used to be on one
• 27:41
  of those two networks and switched a couple of times, I believe, but
• 27:45
  on the NBC family of networks, hard Ball with Chris Matthews and Al Sharpton
• 27:51
  is doing a town hall because Al Sharpton was one of the candidates, and
• 27:56
  they get a question from a young Indian guy who at the time was nineteen
• 28:02
  years old, so he's in college, and it turns out that the questioner
• 28:07
  is you guessed it The fake Obama Swamy, and he's asking Al Sharpton the
• 28:15
  question one he's at least pretending to be someone interested in potentially voting for Al
• 28:22
  Sharpton for president, but that he's clearly there as a Democrat. He references
• 28:30
  the campaign of John Kerry and John Edwards and basically ironically asks, why should
• 28:37
  we vote for you, Al Sharpton when you have the least amount of political
• 28:41
  experience, which is exactly the situation Obama Swamy is currently in in the twenty
• 28:47
  twenty four presidential election. Twenty years later, and here's what that clip sounded
• 28:53
  like. Questionnaire Good Reverend Shopton. Hello, I'm Vivekan. I want to
• 28:57
  ask you a last week on the show, we had Senator Kerry, and
• 29:00
  this week and and the week before we had Senator Edwards. And my question
• 29:04
  for you is, of all the Democratic candidates out there, why should I
• 29:08
  vote for the one with the least political experience? Well, you should because
• 29:12
  I have the most political experience. Now, for some people, at least
• 29:18
  online, that was an eye opening moment, like, oh my god,
• 29:22
  I mean I realize he's he's a kid in college at this time, but
• 29:26
  this is obviously a guy who's a Democrat, a liberal, he's considering voting
• 29:32
  for Al Sharpton. Yes, it's twenty years later or thereabouts, but I'm
• 29:37
  sorry. You know, at that age of nineteen, I get because I
• 29:42
  experienced the same thing in my own life. When you're a kid, you
• 29:45
  know the old saying, if you're not a liberal, you have no heart.
• 29:48
  If when you get older, if you're not a conservative, you have
• 29:51
  no brain. You know, I went through the transition at about ten or
• 29:56
  eleven years old. I remember when I was nine years old in nineteen seventy
• 30:03
  six, for some reason, I liked Jerry Brown running against Jimmy Carter for
• 30:10
  the Democratic nomination, and you know, I don't even know why I did,
• 30:15
  but for some reason I liked him. I also like Bill Bradley,
• 30:18
  who was a New York Knicks basketball player who was very liberal, turned out
• 30:22
  to be the Democratic Senator from New Jersey. I think his first election was
• 30:26
  nineteen seventy eight, So it was right after that when Ronald Reagan became,
• 30:33
  you know, at the forefront. And Reagan had lost the nineteen seventy six
• 30:37
  nomination, and I remember my mother crying at the convention. At Reagan's convention
• 30:41
  speech, because she was such a huge Reagan fan. So by the time
• 30:45
  nineteen seventy nine comes around, when I'm twelve years old, I'm full on
• 30:51
  the Republican conservative bandwagon and a huge Reagan fan. By time nineteen eighty occurs
• 30:59
  and he wins the presidential election against Jimmy Carter, and since then, I've
• 31:03
  been a conservative slash libertarian and very very much anti liberal. So my transformation
• 31:10
  occurred when I was twelve. Now, you can say what you want about
• 31:12
  the fake Obama Swammy. He's a very smart guy. I mean, I'm
• 31:18
  beginning to think he might even be a genius, a fraudulent genius, but
• 31:22
  he's extremely intelligent. And so the idea that somehow his transition, his transformation
• 31:32
  politically happened that late in life and that dramatically, I'm sorry, I'm not
• 31:37
  buying. I mean, it wasn't that long ago, and he wasn't that
• 31:42
  young. So this clip is a problem to me. Now. Obviously,
• 31:48
  given the fact that I referred to him as vivek Obama Swammy, I'm very
• 31:51
  prone to believing anything negative about for fake Obama Swammy. But I do think
• 31:56
  that clip is significant, and I do think it's an impact on Obama Swami's
• 32:02
  campaign. Weirdly, at the same time that this clip came out, and
• 32:07
  I'm sure it wasn't a coincidence. I'm sure someone went back and you know,
• 32:12
  they probably heard a rumor that the fake had been a questioner on Hardball.
• 32:16
  Who knows how this I don't. I don't know the story of how
• 32:20
  this came to public consumption. But at the same time, another photo and
• 32:28
  I haven't seen the actual clip, but I assume exists since we have a
• 32:30
  photo. But there's a photo at the same type of events. It's a
• 32:35
  hard Ball with Chris Matthews town hall where one of the questioners is Pete Buddha
• 32:40
  Judge, who ran for president on the Democratic side in twenty twenty and as
• 32:45
  our current Transportation secretary. And of course this is just incredibly weird. I
• 32:51
  don't think it was the same event because I looked at the crowd behind the
• 32:57
  questioner and it was clear that the questionnaire was standing in exactly the same place,
• 33:00
  at least appeared to be, and yet the crowds behind them were totally
• 33:06
  different. So my sense I could be wrong about this, but based upon
• 33:09
  what I've seen of the photographic evidence, It seems to me as if these
• 33:13
  were two different events. That would have been really very strange if both Obamaswami
• 33:17
  and Buddha Chuch had been questioners at the same televised presidential town hall in two
• 33:23
  thousand and four. But I don't think that's the case. It's just one
• 33:28
  of those weird quirks, And who knows what the hell that means, other
• 33:32
  than that we're living in a simulation. Now back to Trump for a second.
• 33:38
  Trump did an interview yesterday as of this taping with Glenn Beck. Now,
• 33:45
  Glenn Beck is a very very interesting character to me. This interview was
• 33:50
  rather surreal to me because I've gotten to know Glenn Beck pretty darn well.
• 33:54
  I've had a very strange roller coaster relationship with Glenn Beck many years ago.
• 34:00
  Before I ever knew him, I thought the guy was an actor and a
• 34:05
  fraud because he was so good. He was such a good performer. I
• 34:07
  thought, there's no way that can be authentic. Having done it myself at
• 34:13
  a pretty high level, I felt like I understood that there's just no way
• 34:16
  that this can be real. And he would do things like the way he
• 34:21
  would look away from the camera, and there's seemed to be some things he
• 34:27
  was doing for a dramatic effect, and I just, you know, I
• 34:30
  liked some of what he was saying, but I just never trusted him.
• 34:32
  And my radio co host at the time, woman by the name of Leah
• 34:37
  Brandon, was a huge Glenn Beck fan, and she kept saying, John,
• 34:39
  you're wrong about Glenn, You're wrong about Glenn. I was like,
• 34:43
  okay, whatever. Well, during the twenty sixteen election, Glenn really impressed
• 34:49
  me because he was the leading conservative voice who was very anti Trump. And
• 34:54
  it was during that time period where he and I got to know each other
• 35:00
  pretty well, both on and off the air, and we were commiserating with
• 35:02
  each other on and off the air, and we did several interviews with each
• 35:06
  other, and I was very impressed that he was the last of the Mohicans
• 35:12
  when it came to the major conservative commentators in twenty sixteen who remained anti Donald
• 35:17
  Trump and vehemently so. I mean, I remember he even had me on
• 35:22
  just before the twenty sixteen election to make my case that in swing states that
• 35:30
  Republicans either shouldn't vote for Trump or maybe even should consider voting for Hillary,
• 35:35
  because I thought that the goal here was a Hillary presidency. I'm not a
• 35:39
  fan of Hillary at all, but that I thought that the least bad scenario
• 35:44
  was a Hillary presidency with a Republican Congress, and I still do this day
• 35:47
  believe that that would have been a far better scenario for the country and for
• 35:52
  the conservative movement for a whole myriad of reasons. And after the election,
• 35:59
  beck Can continued largely with his anti Trump stance, and I remember I went
• 36:04
  down to Dallas to do a whole day's worth of interviews with The Blaze related
• 36:08
  to the Penn State Joe Paterno Jerryson Dusky case. It was amazing that they
• 36:14
  did this for me, but I think they were looking for any content that
• 36:16
  wasn't Trump related at the time. And at the end of that day,
• 36:21
  I did a TV interview on The Blaze with Glenn beck one on one.
• 36:28
  I think it was like an hour long and something. It was at least
• 36:30
  a half hour. I think it felt like it was an hour. I
• 36:32
  think the only place that still exists is on my DVR on my television because
• 36:37
  it's not online anywhere that I can find. And it was an extraordinary interview
• 36:40
  because the two of us basically commiserating about the post Trump state of the conservative
• 36:46
  movement, and at times it was very depressing, but it was both of
• 36:52
  us really opened up, and it was kind of extraordinary. It was also
• 36:54
  interesting because they try to have a studio audience there, and the Blaze had
• 37:00
  been so obliterated by their anti Trump stance and Trump's victory in twenty sixteen that
• 37:06
  they could barely even get any semblance of a studio audience. I mean,
• 37:09
  it was sad, and it was very obvious what was happening, and it
• 37:15
  was just an ominous feeling throughout the Blaze. And so when Beck started the
• 37:21
  transition back towards the Trump camp not long after that, I gave Glenn a
• 37:28
  bit of a pass on that because I saw firsthand wanted it done to him
• 37:31
  personally, psychologically, financially, as well as the pressure it put on the
• 37:37
  company at the time he owned, which is not the case anymore, but
• 37:42
  that he had a lot of people relying on him for their jobs, and
• 37:45
  so I understood the pressure, the unique pressure he was under, and I
• 37:51
  also understood the economic realities of being anti Trump as a conservative commentator makes it
• 37:59
  impossible. I had been doing a weekend National radio show before the twenty sixteen
• 38:05
  election, and we dropped it like three weeks after the election was over because
• 38:09
  we knew there was no chance of this being successful going forward. Well,
• 38:15
  Beck didn't have that option because he had a lot of people working for him
• 38:17
  and this, you know, this was his empire that he had created.
• 38:21
  At one point, he was a huge, huge figure covered Time magazine,
• 38:25
  and so he had lost a lot in a lot of ways. And so
• 38:30
  I had empathy for and sympathy with his situation. And when he started the
• 38:36
  transition, I didn't like it at all towards Trumps transition, but I understood
• 38:40
  it. But boy was he sensitive about it. I mean, he was
• 38:45
  so sensitive about it. I'll never forget this. He got pissed at me
• 38:49
  an email one time, and I couldn't even understand what he was talking about,
• 38:53
  And before long I was able to figure out that he had been told
• 39:00
  by I guess a producer who's I don't know if this was part of their
• 39:02
  job to search social media for these kinds of things. But I had liked
• 39:08
  a tweet someone sent to me that was negative towards Glenn for what appeared to
• 39:15
  be the beginning of a transition in favor of Donald Trump. I didn't retweet
• 39:20
  it, I didn't quote tweet it. I simply liked it. And I
• 39:23
  like it literally have liked, I'm sure hundreds of thousands of not more than
• 39:30
  that tweets in the in the decade or so that I have been on Twitter
• 39:35
  now known as X because to me, it's almost like a courtesy. I
• 39:38
  like your tweet if you respond to something I said, unless it's insane,
• 39:44
  and even then sometimes I'll like it with and make it clear that I'm not
• 39:47
  in agreement with it. But liking a tweet to me means literally nothing.
• 39:53
  And this was this was the cause of a significant riff between me and Glenn
• 39:59
  back the fact that I I liked, not retweeted, not commented on,
• 40:05
  liked a tweet criticizing him for his apparent transition towards being a Trump supporter.
• 40:10
  Again, now we were able to rectify this to his co host actually helped
• 40:15
  rectify this rift, and I went on the show again several other times,
• 40:21
  but I haven't been on very recently. In fact, the last time I
• 40:23
  was on was about the Paul Pelosi situation, on which I was one hundred
• 40:28
  percent right. I mean I went on the day after the Paul Pelosi attack
• 40:30
  occurred, and I told Glenn, this is not a conspiracy theory. He's
• 40:35
  not gay. You know, my father has known Paul Pelosi since they triple
• 40:39
  dated together with Nancy and at Georgetown. He has a very good friend who
• 40:44
  knows Paul Pelosi even better than he does. There's there's no way that this
• 40:46
  has anything to do with Paul Pelosi being gay. And I was one hundred
• 40:51
  percent right about this, and I thought Glenn understood this, and then seemingly
• 40:57
  Glenn kind of shifted back towards the eracy theory because I guess he realized that
• 41:01
  how popular that conspiracy theory was. And I don't think it's a coincidence that
• 41:06
  I haven't been on since, especially since Glenn has made it more and more
• 41:12
  clear that he is one hundred percent on the Trump train because he's learned his
• 41:15
  lesson. I mean, he's really, you know, making it very clear
• 41:21
  he's on the Trump train. And to me, this is a far greater
• 41:25
  sin than what happened with the transition, because we now know, we now
• 41:31
  know what Trump's all about. The circumstances of a twenty twenty four Trump presidency
• 41:37
  are far, far, far more ominous than they were in twenty sixteen for
• 41:43
  so many different reasons. No one's going to work for him. He's only
• 41:45
  got one term. His campaign is about I am your retribution. I mean,
• 41:52
  he's gonna lose just as certainly as he was gonna maybe more so than
• 41:55
  he was gonna lose in twenty sixteen. And he pulled off the miracle.
• 41:59
  So I have no sympathy now. I mean, I get it that he
• 42:01
  got the Blaze back on its feet, but now Glenn doesn't want to go
• 42:07
  back to what happened previously. And I get that from a from a career
• 42:10
  standpoint, having gone through a lot of royal coaster rides myself, But I
• 42:15
  just don't have the same level of sympathy or empathy with what Glenn Beck is
• 42:20
  doing. And I think now it's it's far more overt. It's something it's
• 42:24
  frankly nefarious in some ways. Uh you know, it's it's it's very duplicitous
• 42:30
  because Glenn knows. But Glenn also knows on which side the bread is buttered.
• 42:37
  And we saw that again where he did this interview with Donald Trump.
• 42:40
  Again very surreal for this the same guy that had twenty seventeen I was doing
• 42:45
  this TV interview with commiserating over the post state, post Trump state of the
• 42:52
  Republican Party in the country, and this was while he was President of the
• 42:55
  United States. Well, Glenn has convinced himself, I think, get least
• 43:00
  in part, that this is really all about this nebulous deep state, that
• 43:04
  the deep state is controlling everything and what the hell that I still don't know
• 43:07
  what the hell the deep state is, but Glenn's entire theory, which I
• 43:12
  find fascinating and contradictory. The day before he did his interview with Donald Trump,
• 43:16
  he expressed that his belief is that the deep state is so powerful and
• 43:22
  so dead sent against Donald Trump that they're going to do this to get Trump
• 43:25
  nominated and make sure he loses the general election. Now forget about the fact
• 43:30
  that I don't believe that there's this all knowing, all powerful deep state.
• 43:35
  If you believe that, then why not just abandoned Donald Trump as a presidential
• 43:40
  candidate. Glenn Beck is kind of the personification of this very very odd phenomenon
• 43:47
  and mind blowing phenomenon that somehow you can't believe two separate things. You can't
• 43:53
  believe that this is a raw deal llegally and not be in favor of Trump's
• 43:58
  nomination. You could support him in his legal case and not believe he ought
• 44:02
  to be the Republican presidential nominee, especially when you believe that that will facilitate
• 44:07
  the reelection of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. I do not get this,
• 44:13
  And if I ever interviewed Glenn again, which I'm sure I won't for a
• 44:15
  number of reasons, that would be at the top of my list of questions
• 44:20
  because that makes no damn sense. But none of this makes any damn sense.
• 44:25
  I mean, we're in the process of making the dumbest decision in the
• 44:29
  history of presidential decisions, at least in my lifetime, and Glenn Beck is
• 44:34
  a part of that. So he does this softball interview with Donald Trump.
• 44:37
  It's very clear, as I've said previously, that Beck is aligning himself with
• 44:42
  Tucker Carlson, because Tucker Carlson is a free agent and very very popular,
• 44:46
  and they've done events together and interviews together, and now obviously Tucker is the
• 44:51
  MVP of the Trump campaign, and I'm sure that's at least partially why Trump
• 44:54
  is willing to go on the show of a guy who was one of his
• 44:58
  harshest and most prominent critics during his first presidential campaign, Glenn Beck, and
• 45:05
  I do think it's important to point out that, you know, when you
• 45:07
  look at the four biggest former Fox News Channel stars, and I would say
• 45:14
  that they're Bill O'Reilly, Megan Kelly, Glenn Beck, and Tucker Carlson.
• 45:19
  I mean, there must be something very powerful and psychological and addictive about being
• 45:24
  that level of celebrity, having that kind of power, making that kind of
• 45:28
  money, having that kind of prominence when you are the star at Fox News
• 45:34
  Channel, and then you lose it under varying circumstances, all four have left
• 45:40
  Fox News Channel. Beck hit basically the Nator after Trump's selection, Megan Kelly
• 45:46
  got fired by NBC and The Today Show. Tucker Carlson got fired over the
• 45:52
  dominion voting systems lawsuit revelations. Bill O'Reilly had sexual harrassment allegations against him.
• 45:59
  But all for those people, not coincidentally, are on the Trump train in
• 46:04
  a very significant way, varying degrees of significance, but very clearly they're on
• 46:09
  the Trump train. I don't think that's a coincidence, because they're all hanging
• 46:14
  on to what they know is what the audience wants. They don't want to
• 46:19
  be irrelevant, and the easiest path to irrelevance is to not be on the
• 46:22
  Trump train once it leaves the station, and it's clearly left the station,
• 46:29
  and all four of them are on the train safely at least for their career
• 46:35
  purposes, not for the country or for the conservative movement of the Republican Party,
• 46:39
  but for themselves personally, their careers. And so Trump does this interview
• 46:46
  with back, which was just pathetic in so many ways. This softball interview
• 46:52
  was. It wasn't quite as softball as Tucker Carlson's interview, but it was.
• 46:54
  It was enough of a softball to where nothing really nificant happened except for
• 47:01
  the fact that Trump starts bragging about the COVID response and this is this is
• 47:09
  not new, but to me, it was just so symbolic of how screwed
• 47:15
  up this entire situation is. And you know, Beck knows that the COVID
• 47:20
  response was terrible. He's done interviews with Ronda Sanders where he's talked about how
• 47:23
  the COVID response was terrible. Somehow Trump doesn't get any direct blame for that,
• 47:30
  but without any blowback, Trump goes on Glenn Beck and starts bragging about
• 47:35
  how amazingly great the COVID response was and even brags about ventilators, ventilators.
• 47:43
  He's bragging about ventilators in twenty late twenty twenty three, and here's Donald Trump
• 47:49
  on Glenn Beck's radio show. This country was coming together, then we got
• 47:52
  hit with COVID. We did a great job with COVID. Has never been
• 47:57
  acknowledged, but it will be in history. We did a great job with
• 48:00
  the ventilators and all the things we did because nobody knew what it was,
• 48:04
  nobody had any clue as to what it was, and we did a great
• 48:07
  job. I mean, when you put that clip in the context of a
• 48:10
  guy who complimented Andrew Cuomo while criticizing Ron de de Santis's reaction to COVID,
• 48:17
  and it has made it clear he's buddy buddy with Gavin Newsom, who led
• 48:23
  the entire insanity when it came to COVID lockdowns. I mean, that should
• 48:29
  be disqualifying for the Republican presidential candidate, and instead it won't make any news
• 48:35
  in the right wing media, and it will impact absolutely zero votes. Now
• 48:38
  that the Santas team did try to make a little bit of hay app about
• 48:43
  it, but you know, I think it's too late to make this the
• 48:45
  centerpiece of their campaign, which it should have been from the beginning from a
• 48:51
  substantive standpoint. I mean, I've said many times why the response from Trump
• 48:55
  was not great at all. It was absolutely horrible. In the number one
• 49:00
  and most obvious example is giving doctor Fauci a platform and a forum where essentially
• 49:07
  Trump abdicated his presidency by making Fauci into a massive celebrity, thus giving him
• 49:13
  incredible power that was real world power as opposed to executive power in an unprecedented
• 49:19
  situation. But the idea that Trump is so out of touch, so clueless
• 49:23
  that he's bragging about ventilators is astonishing even to me, because ventilators did nothing.
• 49:31
  That ventilators are like hand washing. I mean, that was the obsession
• 49:37
  of the Spring of twenty twenty. We need ventilators and everyone needs to wash
• 49:42
  their hands. Well, they never talk about handwashing very much anymore because they
• 49:45
  realized that it was bullshit and ventilators. All ventilators did was keep people alive.
• 49:52
  A little bit longer under herrendous circumstances before they died. I have never
• 49:59
  seen anything indicates that ventilators ended up being the difference between life and real life
• 50:05
  and death when it came to COVID, especially during the Trump presidency. So
• 50:09
  he's just delusional on this, and he's delusional about saving millions of lives with
• 50:15
  the vaccine and the travel ban and all that, and nobody, not Glenn
• 50:21
  Beck, nobody else close to him will correct him on this. And it's
• 50:24
  infuriating, not just because it's wrong, but because what will happen if he
• 50:30
  is elected or what will even be the message when he's the nominee, Because
• 50:35
  we are very very close to solidifying in history. And it's funny because Trump
• 50:38
  references how history will view his response in that clip. We're very close to
• 50:44
  history deciding that basically, we responded properly to COVID, and we just got
• 50:50
  unlucky because I guess we're so obese and old as a nation, and for
• 50:54
  some reason, we had the you know, the most deaths. By Trump's
• 50:58
  count, we had the most deaths in the world by far. That's not
• 51:01
  actually true from a percentage standpoint, although we did very poorly in comparison to
• 51:06
  a lot of other nations, including Sweden, which if you look at the
• 51:09
  excess deaths of Sweden, they did better than any other European country, and
• 51:15
  they also had the least amount of restrictions and lockdowns. But of course the
• 51:20
  media is completely invested in the idea that we didn't really screw up during COLVID.
• 51:25
  In fact, you know, if anything, Trump was bad because he
• 51:28
  was too much on the side of freedom. They really hate the Santis as
• 51:34
  They even let Trump lie about the santiss record because they seemingly love that.
• 51:38
  I mean, even though I'm sure they're confused about the idea that somehow they're
• 51:44
  on the same side as Trump. On the COVID reaction, the La Times
• 51:50
  had a headline from a columnist Michael Hiltzig, who's extremely liberal, very dumb
• 51:55
  and wrong all the time. But just to show you how much they still
• 52:00
  hate the Santis because of his response to COVID, his column had the headline
• 52:06
  COVID lockdowns saved millions of lives. So of course RHNDA Santis is mad about
• 52:12
  them. That's the headline, and it's about the Republican debate, and that's
• 52:16
  in the La Times from the whack job liberal always wrong Michael Hiltzick. The
• 52:22
  idea that COVID lockdowns, as Trump believes and Hiltzick believes, and which is
• 52:27
  liberal orthodoxy and religion at this point, saved millions of lives in America is
• 52:32
  completely preposterous. And again, we know this largely because of Sweden. We
• 52:39
  know this because of Sweden. We know this because of Georgia, We know
• 52:43
  this because of Florida, We know this a little bit because of South Dakota,
• 52:46
  which never locked down. There is absolutely positively zero evidence, data or
• 52:52
  logic to indicate that lockdowns, say Danny lives, but especially not millions of
• 52:58
  lives. It's completely posterous. I mean, if you added millions of deaths
• 53:02
  to our number, which is a little over a million, so millions,
• 53:07
  right, so at least two right. So you're saying, Michael Hiltsake,
• 53:10
  that if we had done nothing, we would have had at least three million
• 53:15
  people die with or of COVID. Where's the data to back that up?
• 53:21
  Why is that not the case in Sweden? Why? Well, how do
• 53:24
  you explain Sweden? And again, how do you explain Georgia opening up before
• 53:29
  anybody else? Or Florida right behind that, or South Dakota never shutting down
• 53:34
  in any way, shape or form. They can't do it. It's a
• 53:36
  fantasy. It's a fairytale. And the irony is it's the same fairytale that
• 53:42
  their arch enemy, Donald Trump is selling to this day, even in the
• 53:46
  so called conservative media, and getting away with it. And it's just unbelievable.
• 53:52
  It's infuriating. And I have said numerous times, and I think I've
• 53:57
  been vindicated on this already, that the COVID response is the foundation for what
• 54:05
  liberals want to do with regard to climate change and global warming. And there
• 54:09
  was a clip that came about at least my attention, and I saw it
• 54:13
  on Fox News Channel in the last couple of days. The clip, I
• 54:16
  don't know when it actually happened. It was not this week. It appears
• 54:22
  to have been a couple of weeks old, but for some reason it's now
• 54:23
  making the rounds, I think because it wasn't from a mainstream media outlet,
• 54:28
  but I think it's basically a video podcast. But this is doctor Fauci.
• 54:32
  You want to talk about vindication for the John Ziegler view of liberals using the
• 54:38
  COVID model on climate change global warming. Here is doctor fricking Fauci. I
• 54:45
  should mention I don't think I've ever talked about this on this podcast, but
• 54:50
  I had to say. I called it on doctor Fauci before anybody else did.
• 54:54
  I could tell the first moment I saw him, I didn't know anything
• 54:58
  about him. I should have, but I did before the COVID thing happened,
• 55:01
  and immediately I thought, oh my god, this guy is a megalomaniac.
• 55:06
  He's an egomaniac. I presumed he was credible at the time and at
• 55:08
  least knew what the hell he was talking about, but the fact that he
• 55:13
  was loving being on camera I knew was horrendous because then he was never gonna
• 55:19
  want this to end, and he was going to be the person that was
• 55:22
  going to determine when it ended, and so he had an inherent conflict of
• 55:25
  interest. He wanted this to go on forever because it was the greatest thing
• 55:29
  that ever happened to him, because like Trump, he's a megalomaniac, egomaniac
• 55:32
  who loves the attention and loves being on TV. And Trump was a fucking
• 55:37
  moron for giving him an unlimited platform in front of every television network in the
• 55:43
  world, with everyone was sitting at home and nothing to do with almost Super
• 55:46
  Bowl like ratings on a daily basis. I mean that I cannot to this
• 55:50
  day believe that Donald Trump was this stupid because that was the biggest mistake he
• 55:54
  made. And so here's doctor Fauci talking about flicking climate change. He has
• 56:00
  no level of expertise on this at all, but because he is science in
• 56:07
  his own words, I guess that means that you know, everything he says
• 56:09
  is inherently credible. But listen to what he used for it to be.
• 56:14
  Just the whole tone of what he's talking about is unbelievably stupid. And he
• 56:19
  actually references the Maui wildfires as a major example of climate change because the democratic
• 56:27
  governor of Hawaii, you know, blame climate change when we have a massive
• 56:31
  amount of evidence that it has nothing to do with climate change. It was
• 56:36
  largely local democratic officials in competence and insanity and how they decided to deal with
• 56:43
  this whole situation that manifest itself in this horrendous wildfire that killed an awful lot
• 56:50
  of people in absolutely horrendous circumstances. But here is doctor Fauci talking about the
• 56:55
  issue of climate change and what it's going to take to fix climate change.
• 57:00
  The climate change countering has to come from an international commitment to decrease the common
• 57:08
  imprint in society so you don't have the kinds of crazy weather that we're having
• 57:15
  in this country. I mean, if you look at it, I mean
• 57:17
  everything from the fire, the tragic fire in Hawaii to Texas which has something
• 57:24
  like seventy five days in a row over ninety five. I mean, it's
• 57:30
  completely really amazing has happened with climate change. Now, to me, the
• 57:35
  biggest the couple issues that are important, but the biggest issue of that clip
• 57:39
  is that Fauci really seems to believe, at least pretends to, that human
• 57:44
  action, just like with COVID, can somehow instantaneously majorly impact the fricking climate
• 57:53
  of the planet Earth. And it's very similar to the absurdity of, for
• 57:59
  instance, somehow us being able to to major impact on how much the virus
• 58:07
  was gonna transmit, you know, and how many people were going to die
• 58:12
  of COVID, that somehow man made restrictions could directly and immediately influence the impact
• 58:21
  of a virus which has never been done before in human history. The entire
• 58:27
  concept of lockdowns was always frowned upon in the scientific community because it was thought
• 58:31
  to create more damage than good and that you really couldn't hide permanently from a
• 58:38
  virus. It was going to get you eventually, and and Fauci believes in
• 58:43
  this. He believes in it. With regard the climate change was it is
• 58:45
  even more ridiculous than with regard to the spread of a virus. And then
• 58:52
  he's totally wrong on Maui, which reminded me of his being totally wrong on
• 58:57
  commodio cordis with regarding of Damar Hamlin, the buff Bill's defensive back who collapsed
• 59:02
  in the field in an NFL game at the very beginning of this year,
• 59:06
  where they now claim it's commodio cortis, which is a blow to the heart,
• 59:09
  which there's no evidence, logic, or any doctor who actually treated Hamlin.
• 59:15
  Saying that publicly in the way that that message eventually came out was completely
• 59:20
  ridiculous and highly suspicious. But immediately Fausci latched onto commodio cortis, something he
• 59:25
  knows nothing about why, because that's what the media wanted. That he was
• 59:31
  giving the media what they wanted. He loves the media attention, he loves
• 59:35
  the media adoration, he loves being loved, and he is a liberal at
• 59:39
  heart. And I'm now questioning whether he's actually also a moron. I really
• 59:45
  do question. Man. He could be evil, and he could be doing
• 59:49
  a fake Obama swamy here, but he could also just be dumb, because
• 59:52
  you'd have to be dumb to really believe what doctor Fauci just said there.
• 59:58
  And this is a guy to this day who is considered to be godlike in
• 1:00:01
  the mainstream news media. And it's also an indication that, as I've told
• 1:00:06
  you, they're going to try to do the exact same thing with climate change
• 1:00:09
  that they did on COVID, and Fauci is saying the quiet part out loud,
• 1:00:15
  and it's not even quiet anymore. It's they're being very, very obvious
• 1:00:21
  about this. And if we don't pay attention to it, it's our own
• 1:00:23
  damn faults. And if we nominate Donald Trump to be the Republican presidential nominee,
• 1:00:29
  we're going to get what we deserve, only probably worse. Now as
• 1:00:32
  we tape this, speaking of quote unquote climate change, there's a major hurricane
• 1:00:37
  hitting Florida, and Georgia. It's either a category three or four, depending
• 1:00:42
  on who you believe, is that it makes landfall. I'm sure that the
• 1:00:46
  media is going to use this to promote their climate change, global warming narrative,
• 1:00:52
  because now they've weaponized normal weather. I mean, there's nothing remotely unusual
• 1:00:55
  about a major hurricane hitting Florida at the end of August. It happens basically
• 1:01:00
  every year. Hopefully this won't create a catastrophic damage, but a category three
• 1:01:07
  or four hurricane is a very significant event. ROHDA Santis appears to be all
• 1:01:10
  over it. But I will also guarantee I'm more positive that they're going to
• 1:01:15
  use this for climate change global warming. But I'm also sure that they're gonna
• 1:01:20
  look for any kind of failure on the part of the Santis to use against
• 1:01:24
  him, and it will be very obvious in comparison to their coverage of the
• 1:01:29
  Malli fires and the Democratic responses, specifically President Joe Biden's response. The hypocrisy
• 1:01:36
  is going to be overt because they've given Biden and Democrats in Hawaii largely a
• 1:01:40
  pass, despite numerous missteps and a ridiculous statement by President Biden that somehow these
• 1:01:46
  fires reminded him of a kitchen fire where he almost lost his vintage Corvette and
• 1:01:52
  that's been lost and most Americans don't even know that that even happened. Wait
• 1:01:57
  till you see what they do with this hurricane. Because one of the things
• 1:02:00
  I have been wrong about. I've been right about a lot, but I've
• 1:02:02
  been wrong about the impact of incumbency on the DeSantis campaign. It is absolutely
• 1:02:08
  an incredibly negative force incumbency for the DeSantis campaign. You know, Trump is
• 1:02:15
  out of power, so he's not responsible for anything. Same with Nikki Haley,
• 1:02:20
  Viveka, Obama Swammy, Chris Christy, Mike Pence, they don't have
• 1:02:22
  real jobs. You would think that Dessanta is now handling a hurricane, no
• 1:02:29
  matter how badly or well it goes, would it worst be no impact because
• 1:02:35
  it would show him in charge and if he did a good job, it
• 1:02:37
  would really help him. But we don't live in that world because kind of
• 1:02:40
  like with the debates, it's almost impossible to get bonus points. The only
• 1:02:45
  thing you can do is lose. So being an incumbent now actually has almost
• 1:02:50
  only negative impacts associated with it. DeSantis has proven that incredibly obviously, because
• 1:02:59
  he had most successful legislative session in Republican governor history, at least in the
• 1:03:05
  modern history of the country. This year, he waited until that was over
• 1:03:08
  to run for president, and it did no good for his campaign. In
• 1:03:13
  fact, it only hurt him because the media was able to take crap out
• 1:03:15
  of context and don't say gay and the Disney thing and the slavery thing,
• 1:03:22
  all this bullshit. Being an incumbent is actually an incredibly negative influence on DeSantis's
• 1:03:30
  campaign. I never thought that would be the case. I thought he would
• 1:03:32
  look strong and powerful and relevant and be the alpha male. But no matter
• 1:03:38
  what happens with regard to this hurricane, the best scenario is much like the
• 1:03:43
  first debate, no harm done. That's the best the Santists can hope for.
• 1:03:46
  So no Sandists, because he's an incumbent governor of a major state,
• 1:03:52
  has nothing but risks and no rewards. It's just it's it's infuriating, but
• 1:03:58
  it's actually kind of funny. But it also is going to send a major
• 1:04:00
  message in future campaigns. I really do think now Florida isn't a unique circumstance
• 1:04:06
  because so much happens in Florida, especially when it comes to weather, but
• 1:04:12
  I do think we're going to see a situation where in the future it's going
• 1:04:15
  to be non incumbents that are going to be running for president unless you're an
• 1:04:18
  actual incumbent president, because it's far easier to do it none of those circumstances,
• 1:04:24
  given the circumstances of our media environment. Speaking of the hurricane, I
• 1:04:28
  do want at least mention that, as I predicted, California's drought is now
• 1:04:32
  officially over eight months. Eight months after one hundred percent of land mass in
• 1:04:39
  California had some level of drought, now ninety seven percent of the mass of
• 1:04:45
  California has zero levels of drought. There's like four or five different levels of
• 1:04:50
  drought, and now ninety seven percent of the land mass of California has zero
• 1:04:57
  drought, which is very, very difficult to get to zero because the standards
• 1:05:00
  of drought are pretty low. I mean, you can have a situation where
• 1:05:05
  you're looking around going everything seems great and still be under the standards set be
• 1:05:11
  technically in a drought. And the only areas of California that are still even
• 1:05:15
  under the most mild levels of drought are basically on the Oregon state line and
• 1:05:20
  the Arizona state line where nobody lives, and it's basically not even California.
• 1:05:26
  So for all intensive purposes, one hundred percent of the California population is now
• 1:05:30
  living in a land mass that has zero level of drought. And I saw
• 1:05:34
  one article in the San Francisco Chronicle acknowledging this miracle and then of course moving
• 1:05:42
  on. But there's been no major mainstream media narrative alteration when it comes to
• 1:05:47
  California, because the drought in California was a constant drumbeat for years. For
• 1:05:54
  years, this was the smoking gun of global warming climate change. Well what
• 1:05:58
  about now there's no drought. Now, how do you explain it now?
• 1:06:02
  Of course, they don't need to explain it because they control the narrative and
• 1:06:06
  this part of the narrative doesn't fit with their agenda, so they're just largely
• 1:06:10
  going to ignore it. One other media note before we get to our interview
• 1:06:15
  with Matt Lewis, CNN has announced that they have a new CEO. His
• 1:06:19
  name is Mark Thompson. He's formerly of The New York Times and before that
• 1:06:24
  he was with the BBC. I am told by people who seem to be
• 1:06:29
  in the know that he is largely a business person, and that his main
• 1:06:34
  objective here is going to be helping CNN from an economic standpoint, that he's
• 1:06:40
  not an ideologue, although you know, when you look at the biography New
• 1:06:45
  York Times in BBC, that certainly would seem to indicate that he's liberal.
• 1:06:49
  But I'm told that this will not have a strong influence on the direction that
• 1:06:55
  CNN is taking. There's been a lot of speculation, and we've done so
• 1:06:59
  on this podcast as well, that CNN is trying to move away from their
• 1:07:04
  liberal history and try to be more centrist. I am still told that that
• 1:07:10
  is what's going to happen, and that there could be some things on the
• 1:07:14
  horizon with regard to that attempt to be much more moderate and in the middle,
• 1:07:18
  But I don't know that for sure. But I did at least want
• 1:07:21
  to mention that Mark Thompson is the new CEO at CNN, because we have
• 1:07:27
  talked a lot about the speculated evolution of CNN trying to get back to real
• 1:07:33
  news, which is how they became famous to begin with, before drifting farther
• 1:07:39
  and farther to the left. And we'll see what happens next, and obviously
• 1:07:43
  we'll cover that on the Death of Journalism podcast. Now, I want to
• 1:07:45
  play for you an interview that I did actually just last night, so it's
• 1:07:49
  very recent interview. In fact, we talk about a couple of things that
• 1:07:53
  I reference in the commentary portion of this episode of the podcast. The interview
• 1:07:59
  is if Matt Lewis, who is a longtime friend of mine, a fellow
• 1:08:02
  never Trump conservative. He's written a book called Filthy Rich Politicians, and I
• 1:08:08
  think you'll enjoy this interview that we tape last night. Joining me now is
• 1:08:13
  Matt Lewis. He is a Daily Beast columnist for quite a long time,
• 1:08:16
  a former CNN contributor, and author of the book Filthy Rich Politicians. Matt
• 1:08:23
  Lewis, Welcome to the Death of Journalism podcast. John Ziggler, Man,
• 1:08:28
  old friend. Good to be with you here. Yeah, I've been against
• 1:08:30
  on your podcast many times, but it made sense for you to come on
• 1:08:33
  and talk about your book and a bunch of other things onto this podcast.
• 1:08:38
  So let's start with the book. And I'm very curious about you know,
• 1:08:44
  when you write a book, you're hoping to catch lightning in a bottle,
• 1:08:46
  especially when you're not a massive celebrity, and you would think that with the
• 1:08:50
  Oliver Anthony thing blowing up, that writing a book called Filthy Rich Politicians would
• 1:08:57
  be good timing. Tell us about the books good timing for you? It
• 1:09:00
  has been good. I'm not a major celebrity. I'm a minor celebrity,
• 1:09:05
  and the book performed about as well as you would think a minor celebrity book
• 1:09:09
  might do. Performed well, and I think it's a great book. It's
• 1:09:13
  about how the rich get elected and the elected get rich, and a lot
• 1:09:17
  of people don't know, but your average member of Congress is something like twelve
• 1:09:20
  times richer than the average American household. That's an interesting trivia thing. But
• 1:09:28
  more concerning is the fact that once people get elected, they tend to get
• 1:09:31
  richer. And there are a lot of reasons for that, including it certainly
• 1:09:34
  appears to be insider trading. So you know, I go after Nancy Pelosi
• 1:09:42
  exposing some of the curious lucky trades that Paul Pelosi has made, as well
• 1:09:46
  as Republicans too. So it's a bipartisan book and it did well, and
• 1:09:53
  I'm very proud of it. But you know, you always hope you're going
• 1:09:57
  to make the best seller list, and that did not happen, John,
• 1:10:00
  but with the Oliver Anthony thing blowing up, which clearly is in the same
• 1:10:04
  exact theme. Has what do you make of that phenomenon and has it related
• 1:10:11
  to the book at all? A lot of people sent me so I think
• 1:10:15
  that Oliver Anthony's uh, you know, hit song Richmond North of Richmond.
• 1:10:20
  It was a few weeks behind my book. I don't know that it gave
• 1:10:24
  me a bump at all. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't. I
• 1:10:27
  don't know. A lot of people sent it my way, but I think
• 1:10:30
  it taps into a similar theme. I think there is a sense that the
• 1:10:34
  game is rigged and that elected officials are using their perch to feather their own
• 1:10:41
  nests. I think he was able to tap into that, probably better than
• 1:10:45
  I was with the book. But that was my sense that that this,
• 1:10:50
  you know, my sense is that what makes a book sell is when it
• 1:10:58
  people have a suspicion that something is happening, and then you can write the
• 1:11:02
  book to confirm it, to document it. And that's what we did.
• 1:11:05
  But I think he wrote the song, and the song actually probably resonated even
• 1:11:11
  more than the book, albeit you know, fairness to me, were we
• 1:11:15
  were ahead of the curve there. Now, when it comes to politicians and
• 1:11:18
  wealth, to me, I think the most I don't know if you agree
• 1:11:23
  with this or not, but the most shocking thing is not what's illegal or
• 1:11:27
  corrupt, it's what's actually legal. And would you agree with that assessment totally?
• 1:11:33
  I call it the banality of corruption, right, And so until twenty
• 1:11:36
  twelve, it wasn't even illegal to engage in insider trading in Congress. Now
• 1:11:43
  that is technically illegal. However, it's almost impossible to prove. But things
• 1:11:48
  like book deals, right, it sounds so innocuous, so an Adne.
• 1:11:54
  But Bernie Sanders became a millionaire because of a book deal. Ron de Santis
• 1:11:59
  became a millionaire because of a book deal. Now if they you know,
• 1:12:02
  they got the book deal because of their they ran for president or they were
• 1:12:06
  going to run for president, that's how they got the book deal. In
• 1:12:10
  other cases, it's political committees like the NURCC that will balk purchase thousands,
• 1:12:17
  tens of thousands of copies of a book that some of that money can be
• 1:12:23
  kind of laundered back into the pockets of the politicians. So book getting a
• 1:12:28
  book deal sounds very tame. And boring, but in fact, a lot
• 1:12:31
  of politicians cash in that way. What about the issue of insider training and
• 1:12:35
  as far as what's illegal and what's skirting the lines of legality? And how
• 1:12:41
  is it that people like Nancy Pelosi just seemingly get incredibly lucky when it comes
• 1:12:45
  to their stock picks. Right, And you know, I'll pick on Nancy
• 1:12:48
  because she's the most prominent example. It is not exclusive to her by any
• 1:12:54
  means, but I'll give you a couple of examples. John, So,
• 1:12:57
  in twenty twenty, her husband Paul exercises stock options for hundreds of thousands of
• 1:13:04
  dollars on Tesla stock. Five weeks later, Joe Biden signs an executive order
• 1:13:12
  mandating that federal, state, and local governments began to transition towards zero emissions
• 1:13:19
  vehicles. So what do you think happen to Tesla stock in those five weeks?
• 1:13:25
  Right? Obviously it went up, but that could be a coincidence.
• 1:13:28
  So the next year, a few months later, but it's technically the next
• 1:13:32
  calendar year, twenty twenty one, Paul Pelosi buys ten million, ten millions
• 1:13:40
  of dollars worth of stock options and Microsoft shares. This time it's just two
• 1:13:45
  weeks later that the US Army announces that Microsoft will be producing these augmented reality
• 1:13:53
  headsets, which could be worth tens of millions of ten no, I'm sorry,
• 1:13:58
  billions of dollars over the next decade. Now, maybe that's a coincidence
• 1:14:02
  too, right, But we're starting to see and this is just like two
• 1:14:05
  examples. The peloss have many, many examples where they've been very lucky and
• 1:14:12
  timely. And I'm not big on stocks myself. I'm not a big investor,
• 1:14:17
  but people who are tell me that this is hard to believe. And
• 1:14:24
  did you find out much of anything about COVID related trades, because obviously this
• 1:14:30
  was a situation where Washington, DC and the people in the know probably had
• 1:14:36
  a bit of a heads up before other people did about the fact that we
• 1:14:41
  were going to basically shut down the entire world in twenty twenty and remake the
• 1:14:46
  economy in a lot of ways for the next couple of years. What did
• 1:14:49
  you find out with regard to COVID and quote unquote insider trading. So one
• 1:14:56
  of the things I learned, John is that I'll give you a sort of
• 1:15:00
  a weird analogy, but steroid use and sports. People think that athletes take
• 1:15:05
  steroids because it makes them bigger and stronger and more muscular, and it does
• 1:15:10
  do that. But the real reason people take steroids is because it helps them
• 1:15:15
  recover quicker from injury and fatigue. That's what stock trade insider trading is like
• 1:15:21
  for members of Congress. Yes, it can help them get richer, but
• 1:15:27
  that's not the reason to do it. The real reason to use insider trading
• 1:15:31
  in Congress is it prevents massive losses. It prevents in times of crisis,
• 1:15:40
  you will not lose your shirt, right, So you know, There've been
• 1:15:45
  many examples of this, and Peter Schweitzer in his he had a great book
• 1:15:47
  about a decade ago that documented the financial upheaval like in two thousand and seven,
• 1:15:55
  two thousand and eight, and how members of Congress were able to dump
• 1:15:59
  stock and Obamacare, same thing times of not a crisis per se, but
• 1:16:04
  rapid change with COVID, the same thing happened, as you may recall.
• 1:16:12
  And I think the most egregious example is a Republican Senator Richard Burr, who
• 1:16:17
  at the time was chair of the Intel Committee, privy to all sorts of
• 1:16:24
  briefings, you know, classified documents, those sorts of things who dumped hundreds
• 1:16:31
  of thousands of dollars of stock and things like Wyndham hotels, you know,
• 1:16:35
  things that might possibly not be handy to have during a global pandemic. He
• 1:16:45
  did this before the average American realized how bad COVID was going to be.
• 1:16:50
  But John, the more interesting thing is he picks up the phone and he
• 1:16:54
  calls his brother in law and within like two minutes of hanging up the phone
• 1:17:00
  and his brother in law calls his broker and dumps his stock. Coincidence.
• 1:17:05
  Now, by the way, nobody got in trouble for this. Nobody went
• 1:17:10
  to jail for this. It seems very suspicious. But how do you prove
• 1:17:15
  that Richard Burr wasn't just a very shrewd investor who was reading accounts from China
• 1:17:23
  or other nations about how bad this was going to be. Well, you
• 1:17:27
  know, you mentioned the two thousand and eight meltdown, and I'll never forget
• 1:17:32
  I was at the Ryder Cup golf tournament in two thousand and eight with my
• 1:17:38
  good friend at the time, who was a congressman, who while we were
• 1:17:43
  getting something to eat in the concession area, he was literally on a conference
• 1:17:47
  call with Nancy Pelosi and the entire Democratic Caucus. And this was before the
• 1:17:55
  complete meltdown, and he looked at me it was almost ash and was like,
• 1:18:01
  this whole thing is going to fall apart. And it never even occurred
• 1:18:06
  to me because I don't want to portray the trust of my friend. Then
• 1:18:11
  you know, call people I know as they get the hell out of the
• 1:18:14
  stock market. But I can't. I could not have possibly been the only
• 1:18:17
  person who was who was in that kind of a situation. So, I
• 1:18:21
  mean, it's a difficult thing to control information, especially in this day and
• 1:18:27
  age. Is it not? No, it totally is. And so one
• 1:18:30
  of the reforms I call for and my book, Filthy Rich Politicians, is
• 1:18:33
  to ban individual trading of stocks for members of Congress. And literally my book
• 1:18:40
  came out July eighteenth. The very next day, Josh Holly and Kristen Jillibrand
• 1:18:45
  announced they would have a bill doing exactly that. And the reason for that
• 1:18:49
  is, John, I think it's unreasonable to ask somebody who knows something not
• 1:18:55
  to use that information. I mean, Martha Stewart went to jail, now
• 1:18:59
  technically went to jail for lying to the FBI, but the underlying crime was
• 1:19:04
  that someone tipped her off and said, hey, look, this stock that
• 1:19:09
  you own is going to go belly up tomorrow. And what would you do
• 1:19:15
  if your life savings was invested, or a good portion of it, and
• 1:19:19
  you found out, oh, by the way, the pharmaceutical company you've invested
• 1:19:23
  in, they've just the FDA has just decided not to award them status or
• 1:19:30
  something like that. Would you hold onto it out of honor or pride?
• 1:19:33
  I think it's human nature to dump that stock, So let's prevent that sort
• 1:19:42
  of temptation by just eliminating it. I tend to agree with it. I
• 1:19:46
  mean, a blind trust seems like a good idea for everybody who is in
• 1:19:50
  a position of power in Washington, DC. Now, obviously the issue of
• 1:19:57
  money and politics has been very much in the new not just because of Oliver
• 1:20:01
  Anthony, but because of all the Hunter Biden's stories. Yes, and I
• 1:20:05
  have said on this podcast, and I've said to you in our personal conversations
• 1:20:10
  that I hate the Hunter Biden's story. Not because I'm against the idea of
• 1:20:15
  accountability or finding out what the hell happened, or you know, a good
• 1:20:19
  Biden scandal. I'm all in favor of that. I just don't trust any
• 1:20:25
  media outlet on the story because there are perverse incentives and the left wing media
• 1:20:30
  and the right wing media to not get that story right. And it's a
• 1:20:33
  very complex story. But it's clear that Hunter Biden was making money off of
• 1:20:40
  the Biden name, and that he probably wasn't the only one. What do
• 1:20:43
  you make as the as the author of this book of the Hunter Biden's story
• 1:20:47
  visit v making money in a corrupt way off of your name and connecting it
• 1:20:53
  to Washington Power. Well, first of all, I agree with you in
• 1:20:56
  terms of the prudence here. I have many times, I think I've written
• 1:21:00
  three or four columns at the Daily Beast saying we should take the Hunter Biden
• 1:21:05
  things seriously. It is clear that he is trading on his name, that
• 1:21:11
  he is cashing in on his father's career. We should not dismiss this.
• 1:21:15
  We should not assume that it's a you know, a conspiracy theory. But
• 1:21:19
  I have also, you know, sort of like the Pioneers take the arrows.
• 1:21:23
  I have not been at the front of this parade because it is fraught
• 1:21:27
  with danger and there are people spreading this information. It's very difficult to know
• 1:21:31
  fact from fiction. And I have to say that original story way back in
• 1:21:36
  what twenty twenty seemed very sketchy, right, you had respected members of the
• 1:21:44
  Intel Committee saying that this was Russian disinformation. I'm talking about the laptop.
• 1:21:48
  You know, Rudy Giuliani had already kind of gone to Ukraine and tried to
• 1:21:51
  dig up there. It seemed very sketchy. So I understand the hesitation of
• 1:21:59
  people to want to talk about it, to want to cover it, And
• 1:22:01
  in my book, Filthy Rich Politicians, I felt like I had to talk
• 1:22:05
  about it. At the same time, I didn't want Donald Trump or Joe
• 1:22:12
  Biden to dominate the book because again, it goes to the banality of corruption.
• 1:22:16
  I mean, I think that your rank and file member of Congress,
• 1:22:19
  you know, who's a millionaire. That's a story that needs to be told.
• 1:22:25
  And there's going to be plenty of books about Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
• 1:22:28
  So I included them. They're probably fifteen percent of the book, but
• 1:22:31
  they do not dominate the book the way that you might assume. But the
• 1:22:35
  bottom line is that it is very clear that Hunter Biden has been trading off
• 1:22:42
  of the name of Joe Biden. Now, we do not yet know if
• 1:22:44
  Joe Biden is the quote unquote big guy, but we do know that it's
• 1:22:49
  not just Hunter Biden. I mean, Biden has two brothers, Frank and
• 1:22:55
  James, who have both also been trading off of their famous, powerful brother,
• 1:23:01
  getting jobs, making money off of, you know, at least the
• 1:23:05
  implication that their brother might help one of their clients at some point. And
• 1:23:11
  this has been going on for decades John to a certain degree in terms of
• 1:23:15
  the family being part of this business. The Atlantic Head an article that noted
• 1:23:21
  that way back in nineteen eighty eight, when Joe Biden ran for president back
• 1:23:27
  in eighty eight, he raised something like eleven million dollars for president, something
• 1:23:32
  like twenty percent of that money went to paying his family. So this is
• 1:23:38
  not a news story. This is part of the I don't want to say
• 1:23:42
  Biden crime family, but the Biden family story certainly Part of the reason,
• 1:23:47
  man, that I really disliked the Hunter Biden story is again I mentioned that
• 1:23:53
  both the right wing media and left wing media have very perverse incentives on it,
• 1:23:57
  but also it's being used by largely Trump fans. And and here Trump
• 1:24:04
  is a guy who's whose own son in law, Jared Kushner, literally took
• 1:24:11
  two billion with a B dollars for his hedge fund, which he doesn't He's
• 1:24:15
  not even a hedge fun guy. He gets two billion dollars from from the
• 1:24:21
  PIF the famous same fund it's funding live golf out of Saudi Arabia. This
• 1:24:27
  is directly from a government that I would prefer to as at least a semi
• 1:24:30
  adversarial foreign power. You have us by the balls when it comes to the
• 1:24:36
  price of gasoline, and we all know about nine to eleven, So I
• 1:24:40
  mean this is this is not a friendly country, even though they pretend to
• 1:24:44
  be at times. Takes two billion dollars for his hedge fund. And then
• 1:24:47
  on top of that, and by the way, I have been negligent in
• 1:24:50
  my own podcast because I'm the only guy in the world. Matt from a
• 1:24:54
  conservative perspective talks about the live golf scandal that's right out there in front of
• 1:24:59
  God and everybody, and nobody talks about it, even the left wing media,
• 1:25:01
  which is which is Donald Trump. Well, no, no, no,
• 1:25:05
  you're missing even the point. Donald Trump, the leading candidate for president
• 1:25:11
  of the United States and the Republican side, has hosted not one, not
• 1:25:15
  two, not three, but four events at his golf courses this year where
• 1:25:20
  he is being paid an undisclosed amount of money by the Saudi Arabian government,
• 1:25:27
  the royal family, the same entity that's paying off his son in law,
• 1:25:31
  and I guarantee you, Matt guarantee that they are paying ridiculously over market price
• 1:25:40
  to rent out those golf courses. So forget about the fact that this is
• 1:25:44
  all part of a kamikaze attack on an American institution and a charity. That's
• 1:25:47
  what the PGA tour is an American so so Live is an attack on an
• 1:25:56
  American institution, that's a charity. Forget about that part right on, got
• 1:26:00
  in front of God and everybody. Donald Trump is taking an undisclosed amount of
• 1:26:03
  money from foreign government and nobody is even mentioning this, and in visive the
• 1:26:10
  two billion dollars that Jared Kushner got for his hedge fund. So is anything
• 1:26:15
  about Jared Kushner in the book or the Trump family absolutely, John, And
• 1:26:20
  what the point I make in the book is that even if you assume all
• 1:26:26
  the allegations about Hunter Biden are true and the Biden family right, so that
• 1:26:30
  the House Republicans are alleging that the Biden family has set up all of these
• 1:26:35
  like shell corporations, and that foreign governments have funneled I don't know, ten
• 1:26:41
  million dollars to the Biden family, which is horrible and a huge scandal and
• 1:26:47
  all that. Even if it's true, it pales in comparison to the Trumps.
• 1:26:53
  I mean, quantitatively and qualitatively what the Trump family. And by the
• 1:26:59
  way, we also make this point, Jared Kushner was in the Trump administration.
• 1:27:04
  Hunter Biden is not in the Biden administration, right, so on so
• 1:27:08
  many levels, as bad as Biden is, Trump is like ten times worse.
• 1:27:15
  Yeah, I think that's probably the core of why I can't stand the
• 1:27:17
  Hunter Biden's story, because inherently there's massive hypocrisy by on the part of those
• 1:27:24
  that are trying to champion in the story. I mean, can you can
• 1:27:27
  you? I mean, holy glass House, Batman, I mean, it's
• 1:27:30
  just ridiculous that the Trump people are the ones, and it's classic you know,
• 1:27:34
  disinformation and reflection and deflection. And it's frustrating because I always want to
• 1:27:44
  get to the truth and I want to figure out what they'll happen. And
• 1:27:45
  I'm sure that there's a scandal there with regard to Hunter Biden. I just
• 1:27:49
  don't know how big it is and what the nature of it is and how
• 1:27:51
  involved Joe Biden is on it. I'm very open to that. I just
• 1:27:56
  would like there to be some actual evidence. Now, with regard to your
• 1:28:00
  book, Filthy Rich Politicians, you and I are very similar in a lot
• 1:28:06
  of ways. We're both at one time never Trump conservatives. I don't even
• 1:28:10
  know if that's still a thing or not. But we also like to talk
• 1:28:15
  about the media. That's the essence of this podcast, the death of journalism.
• 1:28:17
  And so I'm curious about the media reaction to your book. And this
• 1:28:21
  might be a little inside baseball, but here you are, you know,
• 1:28:25
  a former CNN contributor never Trump conservative. You've got this book out which really
• 1:28:30
  allows either or both sides to be attacked depending on what your pre election is.
• 1:28:36
  From your media perspective, how has the media treated you in the book,
• 1:28:42
  and what do you think we can gleam about the nature of the media
• 1:28:45
  from that reality. So, first of all, you're right, I think
• 1:28:50
  this book had an audience on the left, the right, in the center.
• 1:28:55
  So I was on the Young Turks believe it or not, that's a
• 1:29:00
  left outlet. I was on Michael Malice, who's sort of like an a
• 1:29:05
  narco capitalist, his podcast. I was on Will Kin's podcast, who's a
• 1:29:10
  Fox News guy. Of course, I did like Morning Joe's show, Jake
• 1:29:15
  Tapper. I did NPR's Morning Edition. I was on Megan Kelly's show.
• 1:29:20
  So really a diverse audience for this book. I there were a couple places
• 1:29:30
  I wanted to go that I couldn't go that just never they never had me
• 1:29:33
  on. One was Mark Levin's radio show. And the reason for that is
• 1:29:39
  that, for some reason, and I don't know why, but Mark Levin's
• 1:29:44
  radio show apparently sells books, and not everybody sells books. You can do
• 1:29:48
  there are shows that get a lot of views, but for whatever reason,
• 1:29:51
  they don't sell books. I'm told that Mark Levin's radio shows sales books.
• 1:29:56
  I tried hard to get on. You would think he might, he might
• 1:30:00
  enjoy having, like even the Daily Beast Matt Lewis agrees that Nancy Pelosi is
• 1:30:05
  whatever, could not get on there. I assume that it's because I'm a
• 1:30:15
  Trump critic. I assume, I don't know. Never got any feedback There's
• 1:30:20
  a guy named Tim Pool who's sort of a MAGA podcaster, but he lives
• 1:30:28
  I tried to get on his show because he lives near me. I live
• 1:30:31
  in West Virginia. He lives like two miles from me. Apparently could not
• 1:30:35
  get on that despite many overtures and books sent. He and I do not
• 1:30:41
  He and I do not agree, but I thought we could had a good
• 1:30:43
  conversation about money and politics. And then Fox News is the big one,
• 1:30:47
  the big white whale, and I have you know friends and you know colleagues.
• 1:30:55
  I'll say, who were at Fox that I've had a cordial relationship with
• 1:30:59
  And I don't know why exactly. I was never given a reason, but
• 1:31:03
  never got on Fox News. I was on Wilkin's podcast, which was cool.
• 1:31:08
  Never got on the air, And you would think that they might enjoy
• 1:31:12
  having someone who's a mainstream writer who can call out Nanti Pelosi, AOC.
• 1:31:20
  The other observation John and then I'll shut up, is that typically if I
• 1:31:28
  would go on like a right leaning outlet, they would only ask me about
• 1:31:31
  AOC and Pelosi, And if I would go on a left leaning outlet,
• 1:31:35
  I would be talking about Donald Trump and Richard Burr and who you know.
• 1:31:42
  So, even though I was going on a wide variety of diverse viewpoints of
• 1:31:48
  shows, typically they would only try to get me to talk about their adversary.
• 1:31:57
  So take that for what it's worth. Well, do you agree,
• 1:32:00
  man? And just using your own personal example, it's you know, it's
• 1:32:03
  a small example, but I think it's it's interesting about the larger reality of
• 1:32:09
  the way the news media has changed. Do you agree that the news media
• 1:32:14
  ecosystem has become far more tribal in recent years, especially post Trump, and
• 1:32:20
  that now people who at least previously would have considered having on someone it doesn't
• 1:32:28
  totally agree with them on everything that now it's like, up, you're not
• 1:32:32
  on the pro Trump approved list, forget about it. If we're a MAGA
• 1:32:35
  outlet, we can't do somebody who has seen as anti Trump, for instance,
• 1:32:41
  or even on the left. You know, if you're quote unquote seen
• 1:32:45
  as a conservative, it doesn't matter that you work for the Daily Beast or
• 1:32:49
  whatever. Somehow you're on the bad side. Do you agree that what was
• 1:32:55
  always a reality once we started the fragment in the cable news and all these
• 1:33:00
  other outlets now talk radio and everything else, did now exist has now gotten
• 1:33:05
  so much worse, and and really in a situation where everyone is just preaching
• 1:33:13
  to the choir and the choir is not allowed to hear anything that might offend
• 1:33:16
  them in any way, shape or form whatsoever, is that accurate? I
• 1:33:21
  think so, John. I think that if this book could come out twenty
• 1:33:25
  years ago, it would have been a runaway best seller. I'm very proud
• 1:33:29
  of it. I think the content is superb. I'm biased, of course,
• 1:33:32
  the covers awesome. It's filthy, rich politicians. Blurbs were from you
• 1:33:38
  know, all sort of Andy Ferguson, Glenn Greenwald, even at a Tucker
• 1:33:45
  Carlson blurb my former boss from from my last book, We Entrepreneuru. And
• 1:33:53
  again, I think the idea of someone from a mainstream outlet calling out Nancy
• 1:33:59
  Pelosi and AOC and Ilhana mar would have been very welcomed. The Conservatives would
• 1:34:08
  have would have with open arms, invited me on as one of their own
• 1:34:13
  to even you know, even the Daily Beast met lewis that kind of thing.
• 1:34:18
  I think it is very clear now. And by the way, so
• 1:34:23
  as my book was coming out, I'm not going to mention any names,
• 1:34:25
  but there were three or four other books that I kind of had my eye
• 1:34:29
  out that we're about we're going to publish around the same time as mine.
• 1:34:32
  I have to confess I've not read any of them. I was obviously too
• 1:34:35
  busy with my own book. And I'm biased, but I suspect my book
• 1:34:40
  was better than theirs. They all made the best Again, I'm totally biased,
• 1:34:45
  I confessed that, but they all made the best seller list the New
• 1:34:49
  York Times. And I think that if I had become if I had decided
• 1:34:58
  I'm going to be a Republican, a conservative, I will never speak ill
• 1:35:03
  of a Republican. I will not criticize if Donald Trump's are a nominee,
• 1:35:06
  I shall not speak ill of Donald Trump. I shall not think independently.
• 1:35:12
  I'm part of this team. Then I think I would have been easily.
• 1:35:15
  I would have been on Mark Levin, I would have been on Fox News.
• 1:35:17
  Maybe the other problem there, by the way, is that Fox News
• 1:35:23
  owns, you know, they're their parent, corporate parent owns. I think
• 1:35:28
  it's HarperCollins, a competing book publisher, so who knows. But but I
• 1:35:33
  do believe that I would have probably been on the list as well. And
• 1:35:36
  that's fine, like I've had a great career. I'm very happy. I
• 1:35:40
  do not need that to have been successful. But selling books is a big
• 1:35:45
  deal. It's a part of being in the media. And look, I
• 1:35:50
  always tell this story John. My dad was a prison guard for thirty years
• 1:35:55
  in Hagerstown, Maryland, and he said that the first thing you do if
• 1:35:59
  you go to prison, if you join a gang. And the reason you
• 1:36:03
  join a gang is that if you don't join a gang, you will be
• 1:36:09
  shanked in the yard because nobody will have your back. Well, here I
• 1:36:14
  am nobody has my back because I didn't join a gang. Well, nobody's
• 1:36:20
  more gangless than me, Matt. I've even been kicked out of the Desantist
• 1:36:26
  gang because I've had the audacity to tell people that this isn't gonna work,
• 1:36:30
  and people don't like that. So I am I got you beat on that
• 1:36:33
  regard. I am the most gangless person on the planet, for better for
• 1:36:39
  worse. I have to ask you since you mentioned Tucker Carlson, Yes,
• 1:36:44
  and I have talked a lot about Tucker Carlson. You know, I have
• 1:36:47
  never been friends with him, but he and I have texted a lot in
• 1:36:51
  the past. I briefly worked for him a million years ago, and you
• 1:36:57
  know, we all know he loads Trump, just like he said in the
• 1:37:01
  Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit. However, it was very obvious to me in April
• 1:37:08
  of this year that he was, for whatever personal self interest that he thought
• 1:37:12
  there was, he was jumping on the Trump train, and I thought that
• 1:37:16
  that was going to have a major impact, and that I even went on
• 1:37:20
  News Nation and basically predicted just before he got fired that Tucker Carlson was going
• 1:37:26
  to be the MVP of the Trump campaign and that the Trump campaign would be
• 1:37:29
  victorious largely because of Tucker Carlson. And that was even before the firing,
• 1:37:33
  which I think really helped the Trump campaign in a lot of ways that might
• 1:37:38
  not be overtly obvious, but I have even I even with that prediction,
• 1:37:44
  Matt, I have been disappointed and frankly shocked by just how overtly and brazenly
• 1:37:51
  Tucker Carlson has sold out to Donald Trump, the most recent example being this
• 1:37:57
  sham quote unquote interview that he did competing with the first Republican debate. And
• 1:38:02
  I have expressed my outrage and umbrage and disappointment and frankly anger to Tucker personally
• 1:38:11
  because I thought Tucker was better than this, and I was obviously wrong,
• 1:38:15
  and I actually will blame Tucker Carlson, and I already have blamed him personally
• 1:38:18
  and publicly for Donald Trump's nomination and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's reelection. And
• 1:38:26
  now that sounds and he laughs at that because he thinks that he has no
• 1:38:29
  influence over these events, which I think is ridiculous. But what is your
• 1:38:33
  take on what the hell has happened to Tucker Carlson? Well, John,
• 1:38:38
  it's very complicated. I mean, I'm conflicted. I worked for Tucker for
• 1:38:44
  six years, and in those six years, he was a great boss.
• 1:38:49
  He never once lied to me anything he said he always delivered on He was
• 1:38:58
  fun he was funny. He was I mean, he's never been a choir
• 1:39:06
  boy or a boy scout, but he had, you know whatever. A
• 1:39:14
  lot of times you go to work for somebody and they promise you with the
• 1:39:16
  moon and then they don't deliver. He always delivered. And he paid me
• 1:39:23
  for six years to write things that I think he profoundly disagreed with, which
• 1:39:27
  I respect. So I have a lot of personal loyalty to him. I
• 1:39:34
  think he's a great writer. I really have an affinity for him, and
• 1:39:40
  I think he's a very smart guy. But he says things now that drive
• 1:39:45
  me crazy and that I think are harmful for the country and that I profoundly
• 1:39:51
  disagree with. And so I'm in this weird position where I have I basically
• 1:39:59
  say the spiel every time someone asks me about him, that I completely disagree
• 1:40:05
  with him on almost everything he says. I think it's actually hurtful for the
• 1:40:13
  country and very unconservative in a weird sort of way. I mean, ironically,
• 1:40:17
  I guess because he's the hero of the right and I'm not. But
• 1:40:24
  from a personal standpoint, he was great to me and he employed me for
• 1:40:28
  six years, so I and look, I get that. And by the
• 1:40:31
  way, I think, I think you understand I'm coming from a similar place.
• 1:40:34
  You know him a lot better than I do. But I respect the
• 1:40:38
  hell out of his talent, and I never had any personal problems with him.
• 1:40:43
  I think that he is probably, in many ways the greatest quote unquote
• 1:40:46
  conservative commentator of our generation, at least until this year. But it's not
• 1:40:54
  just the pro Trump stuff, which is incredibly damaging given the nature of the
• 1:41:00
  the primary that is allegedly going on right now. But it related to that
• 1:41:03
  is how the hell did he become such a manic conspiracy theorist. And he
• 1:41:11
  laughably claimed in the Trump quote unquote interview of Debate Night on Twitter, that
• 1:41:16
  I'm not a conspiracy person at all, which is completely ridiculous because he's become
• 1:41:23
  the champion of all sorts of insane conspiracy theories. And there he had Trump
• 1:41:29
  trying to convince him that Jeffrey Epstein really did kill himself, and Tucker would
• 1:41:35
  have none of it because he's already determined, without any evidence at all,
• 1:41:40
  without even a suspect, when it should be the easiest crime to solve in
• 1:41:43
  history in a federal prison, that Jeffrey Epstein was actually murdered, and he
• 1:41:47
  just was oblivious to the fact that even Trump that was too far afield for
• 1:41:50
  even Trump. Trump was trying to convince him, No, Tucker, I
• 1:41:56
  really do think he killed himself. So to me, Matt, while his
• 1:42:01
  self interest changes obviously after the firing, this was happening before the firing,
• 1:42:08
  so I can't blame the firing on it. Like a light going on or
• 1:42:13
  off in Tucker's mind, or is he faking this, I think something deeper
• 1:42:18
  has happened to him, I like on a personal level, for him to
• 1:42:24
  suddenly go from being so smart to buying into these very deep conspiracy theories,
• 1:42:31
  these dark conspiracies. JFK was killed by our government, and it's obvious everybody
• 1:42:35
  knows it because one guy who whose name I'm not going to tell you,
• 1:42:40
  told me. So. I mean, that's that's just that's that is insane
• 1:42:44
  stuff. I mean, that is that is the base loves that kind of
• 1:42:47
  crap now, but it's insane. So it's my theory something has happened to
• 1:42:55
  Tucker personally. What do you make of that theory? So let me just
• 1:43:00
  try to unpack it a little bit. I don't know that I have an
• 1:43:05
  answer, but I've got a few data points that that are interesting. So,
• 1:43:11
  first point, Tucker used to go on radio shows and take down conspiracy
• 1:43:19
  theorists. So he would go up against nine to eleven truthers, for example,
• 1:43:25
  using the same exact brain that he has and rhetorical devices and destroy them.
• 1:43:32
  So he was someone who was going up against conspiracy theorists and mocking them,
• 1:43:40
  which I think is interesting. Second, I think Tucker has had a
• 1:43:45
  very resilient career. This is a guy who's been fired by CNN, you
• 1:43:53
  know, after John Stewart basically went on and embarrassed him on Crossfire. He
• 1:44:00
  got fired by MSNBC. Rush Limbaugh used to make fun of him, constantly
• 1:44:05
  calling him Chatterton Osworth or something like that. It was a reference to a
• 1:44:10
  nineteen fifties kind of campy TV character from like Dobie Gillis or something like that.
• 1:44:17
  And now he then he became he was mocked for wearing the bow ties.
• 1:44:23
  You know, he got boot at Cepack and then he went on to
• 1:44:26
  be the hero of the right, like the most popular TV you know,
• 1:44:30
  cable news TV host in America. So I wonder maybe he doesn't want to
• 1:44:36
  lose that after obtaining that. So he's had an incredibly interesting and resilient career.
• 1:44:49
  And of course, you know, like twenty years ago, he was
• 1:44:53
  more of kind of a libertarian. He used to be pro imb He wrote
• 1:44:56
  a very great piece at the Wall Street Journal in favor of immigration. So
• 1:45:02
  I don't know what that leads to, but I think they're interesting, you
• 1:45:06
  know, data points along the way. So you don't really have an opinion
• 1:45:11
  on why that shifted you're just articulating that there has definitely been a major shift
• 1:45:16
  in the way that his thinking works or my opinion doesn't work. I mean,
• 1:45:21
  I could tell you. I could tell you two things. One,
• 1:45:26
  I went to work at The Daily Caller Tucker's outlet in twenty eleven, early
• 1:45:32
  twenty eleven, like January, and he was like a populist, nationalist and
• 1:45:38
  culture conservative back then. So he did not just become maga because of Trump.
• 1:45:46
  He was already hitting in that direction. But he loved to debate,
• 1:45:54
  and he loved interesting people, and he loved diversity. So he would employ
• 1:46:00
  people who disagreed with them, and he would welcome dissent. And I don't
• 1:46:04
  think he's that way anymore, to be honest with you, But but I
• 1:46:08
  admired that. Well, you know, you mentioned the not wanting to give
• 1:46:12
  up the status right of being a star. I think it's interesting and not
• 1:46:17
  coincidental to look at Chucker, Carlson, Glenn Beck, Meghan Kelly, and
• 1:46:24
  Bill O'Reilly. What do all four of them have in common? At one
• 1:46:28
  point, each of them was the star at Fox News Channel At different times
• 1:46:32
  in the history of Fox News Channel, they each of them was the number
• 1:46:36
  one star. They all left under various degrees of bad situations. Right,
• 1:46:45
  all four of them are now completely and totally on the Trump train, even
• 1:46:48
  in twenty twenty four. I don't think that's a coincidence because they know that's
• 1:46:56
  the safest boat to get on. That boat's not sinking when it comes to
• 1:47:01
  a conservative, right wing audience. And my theory on that going, you
• 1:47:05
  know, my secondary theory other than something has happened to Tucker's brain where he's
• 1:47:11
  all of a sudden turned into Alex Jones, which is just beyond bizarre to
• 1:47:15
  me, is that from a self interest standpoint, each of these four understands
• 1:47:20
  where their bread is buttered when it comes to the customer base. What do
• 1:47:25
  you make of that? I mean, that sounds very reasonable to me,
• 1:47:29
  John, I don't know how much being pro Trump helps you, but I
• 1:47:34
  do think being anti Trump sinks you. Yes, And I'm like exhibit A.
• 1:47:41
  I guess of that, right? I mean, you know, I
• 1:47:45
  think that if you want to exist like on YouTube, like if that's your
• 1:47:53
  Twitter or YouTube, if you want to build a fan base independent of like
• 1:47:58
  working for a mainstream the outlet, but you want to have a fan base
• 1:48:00
  like Twitter, followers, YouTube subscribers, likes buzz. You have to pick
• 1:48:09
  a tribe and you have to go all in, and once you do that,
• 1:48:13
  you cannot waiver. You cannot say, well, I disagree. I
• 1:48:15
  think they've gone too far on this one. No, you're all in,
• 1:48:21
  And I think that's the lesson. I think they've they've learned that that it
• 1:48:25
  has to do with technology and algorithms and all of that. What does not
• 1:48:30
  work and this era is nuance. It just doesn't play in this environment.
• 1:48:38
  That's true. Nuance does not work. But I just to finish that previous
• 1:48:41
  point. I think it was obvious, but just to make it clear.
• 1:48:44
  All four of those people I mentioned, it's a drug. Right when you
• 1:48:47
  become that big and that seemingly influential and powerful and rich, you don't want
• 1:48:55
  to lose it. And you know, Glenn and Tucker. That's the other
• 1:48:58
  thing that Tucker has lost it. So he know, he more than anybody
• 1:49:03
  knows what it's like to be on TV and then mess it up or get
• 1:49:12
  fired and sort of lose it. I mean, he never lost it completely.
• 1:49:16
  I would argue that, I would argue that Beck is an even worse
• 1:49:20
  or better depending on your definition example, because you know, Beck held on
• 1:49:26
  to anti Trumperism through the inauguration in twenty sixteen, and I went down to
• 1:49:30
  Dallas. I've talked about this already on the podcast, but I went down
• 1:49:35
  to Dallas for a full day to do interviews with The Blaze on another subject,
• 1:49:40
  and I mean it was it was depressing. I mean it was clear
• 1:49:44
  everyone there knew that it was over for them. And the fact that Glenn
• 1:49:47
  has now somehow gotten back on the train, the Trump train in a way
• 1:49:51
  where now he's interviewing Donald Trump and kissing his ass and the Blaze is back
• 1:49:57
  on its feet. I guess one you have reached that level of high,
• 1:50:01
  gone to the Nator and gotten back up. You don't want anything to do
• 1:50:06
  with with any risk at all going forward to ever be irrelevant again. And
• 1:50:13
  and that's my theory on what's happened with Glenn Beck. And I think you
• 1:50:16
  you're telling a similar story with the guard to Tucker Carlson. Of course,
• 1:50:19
  Bill O'Reilly, you know he would be completely irrelevant if he wasn't on the
• 1:50:24
  Trump train. Now, Meghan Kelly, I think could get away with being
• 1:50:30
  more anti Trump than she is. I'm really baffled by why she's pro as
• 1:50:33
  pro trup. Remember well, and let me say I'm grateful that she had
• 1:50:39
  me on. We had a great conversation about my book, and I'm thankful
• 1:50:43
  that she had me on. No, I'm serious, I'm not just you
• 1:50:45
  know, she'll probably never hear this, but I like I like Meghan Kelly.
• 1:50:48
  It's frustrating that she's she's pro Trump. No, But the point I
• 1:50:53
  was making is, remember, she went to the mainstream media and got canceled
• 1:50:58
  because she had something to do with cultural appropriation or blackface or something at Halloween,
• 1:51:05
  and she said something that was perceived as politically incorrect, and so they
• 1:51:10
  canceled her. And so I think that would have an effective of maybe,
• 1:51:15
  okay, radicalizing a person that's you know what. That's a that's a great
• 1:51:18
  point. I'm I'm gonna stick with that theory because that makes more sense than
• 1:51:21
  anything else I had come up with. Now, now, you and I,
• 1:51:26
  I will truly do believe, share a bit of of a similarity in
• 1:51:31
  that we were pretty much the last of the Mohicans when it came to being
• 1:51:36
  quote unquote anti Trump conservatives, and both you and I, I think at
• 1:51:43
  the same time fingered the aha moment of when we realized, oh my god,
• 1:51:51
  most of us never Trump conservatives are a bunch of frauds other than you
• 1:51:57
  and me. And that was the attack Brett Kavanaugh when you know, out
• 1:52:01
  of nowhere, the Christine Blasi Ford story came up, and you and I
• 1:52:05
  were basically the only never Trump conservatives that said, wait a minute, this
• 1:52:09
  story sounds like bullshit, and this is completely inappropriate, and you know he's
• 1:52:15
  innocent. Here every other supposed never Trump conservative immediately knee jerk defended Christine Blasi
• 1:52:24
  forward attack at Kavanaugh. Not because of the facts, not because of what
• 1:52:29
  was right and wrong, but because that's where they knew their audience wanted them
• 1:52:32
  to go their new audience, which was obviously very liberal, because effectively it
• 1:52:40
  was a minstrel show that these these never Trump can quote unquote conservatives now known
• 1:52:45
  as the Lincoln Project, they were being forced to dance by their liberal audience
• 1:52:49
  to show liberals how smart they are and that these are the good quote unquote
• 1:52:54
  Republicans and conservatives and therefore you must go by their religion and their orthodoxy,
• 1:52:59
  and that required an attack on Brett Kavanaugh. Do you recall that situation the
• 1:53:04
  same way that I do similar I do want to kind of put my cards
• 1:53:11
  on the table here and be honest. As I recall, it's been a
• 1:53:15
  few years, but as I recall, I wasn't sure whether Brett. Initially,
• 1:53:20
  I wasn't sure whether Brett Kavanaugh was in a center guilty. However,
• 1:53:26
  I do think I made the observation that that this was the moment in time
• 1:53:32
  when we would see people reflexively going to their corners, and people who once
• 1:53:40
  upon a time would have cheered on or supported a conservative, you know,
• 1:53:45
  judicial nominee, we're now kind of reflexively saying he was guilty and criticizing him.
• 1:53:53
  And I think the bottom line, John, as you well know,
• 1:53:58
  is you got to have a tribe, and there were so many people who
• 1:54:02
  they couldn't stand to be never Trump and be in the middle and kind of
• 1:54:06
  call them like they saw them. Once they left the Republican Party, they
• 1:54:12
  couldn't remain being pro life, for example, they had to go to the
• 1:54:15
  other side for protection or for tribal identity belonging. They had a craving And
• 1:54:25
  so I don't want to give myself too much credit being brave, but I
• 1:54:30
  do. I do think that I was able to diagnose that pretty well.
• 1:54:35
  Well, I mean, I'm kind of the harder version of you. I
• 1:54:40
  mean, you're you're much softer, so I would water, you would devil
• 1:54:45
  on my shoulder or the angel. I'm not sure. Well, no,
• 1:54:48
  I'm just I know. I mean, you know, when it comes to
• 1:54:51
  the testosterone level, for whatever reason, I'm going to always be out there
• 1:54:58
  a lot more aggressively than Matt Lewis, which, by the way, brings
• 1:55:00
  me to my next question. And I do mean this mostly good naturedly,
• 1:55:05
  but I'm honestly very curious. So given what you and I had experienced as
• 1:55:12
  never Trump conservatives and realizing, you know, the the enticement to sell out
• 1:55:17
  to the left on everything, what the hell happened to Matt Lewis on COVID?
• 1:55:23
  How the hell did you blow it on COVID as badly as you did.
• 1:55:27
  I'm still I'm comfortable with my COVID stats, so my philosophy, Matt.
• 1:55:33
  And by the way, let's this is a dated I mean, I
• 1:55:36
  feel like this is an old, an old story. Now. I feel
• 1:55:41
  like my my take on COVID was that we should be cautious, we don't
• 1:55:47
  you know when this thing first happens. If we're conservatives and we're prudent,
• 1:55:55
  we want to exercise caution. And I'm also an introvert, so like social
• 1:56:01
  distancing, I've been practicing that my whole life. I've been preparing for this,
• 1:56:04
  so I kind of it was. Look, I live in West Virginia.
• 1:56:09
  We've talked about this before, but I think the key difference between us
• 1:56:12
  is I live in West Virginia, and so I can go outside anytime I
• 1:56:17
  want. I was. I literally coached baseball. I coached a little league
• 1:56:21
  baseball team in twenty twenty, in the spring of twenty twenty. So COVID
• 1:56:28
  was not a big deal to me. If I went into a store or
• 1:56:31
  my church, my church stayed open, maybe closed a week or something,
• 1:56:34
  but I would wear a mask. But it wasn't really it didn't interfere with
• 1:56:42
  my life really, whereas I think you, being in LA were subject to
• 1:56:46
  too much more onerous lockdown man dates, and so I think that probably impacted
• 1:56:53
  my take on it. Was the fact that it really was not that big
• 1:56:58
  of a deal to me. I didn't want to get but I didn't want
• 1:57:00
  to kill anybody getting a vaccine to me, is not a problem. I'm
• 1:57:05
  more than happy to do it. I'm probably I'm gonna get the flu vaccine
• 1:57:09
  or the flu shot or whatever next month. And you know, I could
• 1:57:15
  do all sorts of things in West Virginia and if I went in a store,
• 1:57:17
  I put on a mask, So for me, it wasn't a big
• 1:57:19
  deal. So you didn't give a shit about us people in blue states,
• 1:57:23
  that we're having our lives and our children's lives by the insanity. I get
• 1:57:29
  it. Well, I know I do think this. I will say I
• 1:57:31
  do think the school shut downs specifically, we're harmful. And it's possible I
• 1:57:38
  was late to the game, but I know I've written numerous, well more
• 1:57:43
  than one column criticizing the school lockdowns while they were still in effect. And
• 1:57:50
  look, I want to be clear, I don't think you were, by
• 1:57:53
  any stretch of imagination, horrible on COVID in comparison to liberals, but I
• 1:57:59
  expect did more from you, I guess, is what I'm I'm saying.
• 1:58:01
  I am curious, Matt, do you see the COVID response as a one
• 1:58:09
  off where maybe we might have overdone it a little bit? And you know,
• 1:58:14
  liberals overplayed their hand, but it's not indicative of anything larger or do
• 1:58:19
  you see it as I do, which is this is a test run for
• 1:58:24
  the end of America and they realize what they can get away with when it
• 1:58:28
  comes to tyranny and taking away freedoms, and that when it comes to climate
• 1:58:31
  change and global warming, we're already seeing the same playbook being used all over
• 1:58:36
  again. Which of those two camps would you feel more aligned with? I
• 1:58:41
  would say the former. I'm not that alarmed by it. This was a
• 1:58:45
  global yeah. Now, and look, maybe I'll I've changed my mind before.
• 1:58:49
  John, maybe I'll say you were right all along. But you know,
• 1:58:54
  two or three years later, I'm still in the camp that this was
• 1:58:57
  a global pandemic. We did not know what was hitting us at the time.
• 1:59:01
  We were trying to figure it out as we went. It seemed reasonable
• 1:59:05
  to me that we would take precautions to protect the vulnerable among us. I
• 1:59:12
  do not see it as being like and again, this is probably partially the
• 1:59:15
  fact that I live in West Virginia. But it you know, it didn't
• 1:59:19
  seem that bad to me considering the consequences of death. Okay, but what
• 1:59:27
  did we do to save any lives? What what was done that saved What
• 1:59:30
  can you point to you, Matt and tell me, tell me what restriction
• 1:59:34
  that was was mandated by government without any legislative approval. Understand I didn't.
• 1:59:43
  I didn't even support I didn't support mandates to begin with. I mean I
• 1:59:47
  was that's what happened. Yeah, well, but I was never. I
• 1:59:50
  was never for mandates. But with the exception of the military, I think,
• 1:59:55
  if you're in the US military and they tell you to get a shot,
• 1:59:57
  you get a shot. But other than that, I posed mandates.
• 2:00:00
  But I think if a store wants to require masks, you should honor that.
• 2:00:08
  I don't think you should mandate the vaccination, but as a responsible citizen,
• 2:00:12
  I thought it was incumbent upon me and my family to do it.
• 2:00:15
  But mandates, to me are a different question. Well, I'm glad to
• 2:00:19
  hear that. But the real I'm still asking a question, what did we
• 2:00:23
  do, whether it was mandated or not, what happened based on government edict
• 2:00:30
  that actually saved people's lives? Because I have not gotten an answer to that
• 2:00:33
  question in three years. What did we do that saved any lives? I
• 2:00:38
  mean, I don't know about government edict. I do think the government with
• 2:00:41
  Operation Warp Speed, did a great job of producing a vaccine that I'm confident
• 2:00:46
  and save lives. To me, that's the biggest thing. It was always
• 2:00:49
  about getting to the vaccine, and once you got to the vaccine, then
• 2:00:54
  I think opening up quickly was key. And that's where you and I probably
• 2:01:00
  agree. I think Rod de Santis at the time, I was probably critical
• 2:01:02
  of him, thinking he was a little bit ahead of the curve, But
• 2:01:05
  in hindsight, I mean, I think once you had the vaccine, that
• 2:01:10
  was when you open up. But the vaccine was the key to me the
• 2:01:14
  whole time, and what they were selling for the vaccine certainly sounded great,
• 2:01:19
  but it didn't live up to the sales at all. And I would ask
• 2:01:24
  you, Matt, you know, look, I'm I'm somebody who took the
• 2:01:27
  Johnson and Johnson vaccine. I forced my wife to get it, which she
• 2:01:30
  still gives me crap about. But I would I would ask you to revisit
• 2:01:35
  the data on whether or not people were really saved by the vaccine. You
• 2:01:40
  know, one of the worst periods of death we had due to COVID in
• 2:01:45
  this country was in January of twenty twenty two January of twenty twenty two,
• 2:01:49
  well after the vaccine was already in everybody's arm. More people have died of
• 2:01:57
  COVID after the vaccine was available than died before. It clearly does not stop
• 2:02:03
  transmission as they claimed, and and the fact that it was ever mandated is
• 2:02:09
  an abomination and an indication to me that we're not the country that I thought
• 2:02:14
  we were when it comes to free it. When was it mandated? Well
• 2:02:19
  mentioned it was mandated in all sorts of ways by various government entities. I
• 2:02:25
  mean, in order to keep your job. I mean, unless you're not
• 2:02:28
  if you were what I know that Joe Biden tried to mandate it like for
• 2:02:34
  government employees, right, but that was struck down the military man. Also,
• 2:02:39
  I think that there were all sorts. There were all sorts of I
• 2:02:42
  mean, especially here in California, it was effectively impossible to do anything unless
• 2:02:47
  you were vaccinated. That, okay, that's a fair point. I wasn't,
• 2:02:51
  You're right, I was in LA and you couldn't go to a restaurant
• 2:02:55
  without having like a vaccination card or something. Right, That was not insane.
• 2:03:00
  But John, I have to tell you, that was not the experience
• 2:03:02
  of everybody in America. And I understand that where you're coming from California,
• 2:03:08
  La specifically it I'm sure it seemed much more onerous than it did in a
• 2:03:13
  lot of parts of America, Right, But the bigger picture here, and
• 2:03:16
  I look, I'd love to debate with you COVID forever because I was you
• 2:03:20
  really baffled me. I mean, you really baffled me during COVID. I
• 2:03:25
  mean, of all the people that I was looking for for some sanity that
• 2:03:29
  I was disappointed in, you were at the top top of the list.
• 2:03:31
  But you and I normally I agree on a lot of things, so right,
• 2:03:36
  That's why I was so offended. So but and I get the West
• 2:03:42
  Virginia thing has has a lot to do with it. I get all that.
• 2:03:45
  But the bigger issue here is the future. And to me, and
• 2:03:50
  that will end on this, on the politics of this, because you and
• 2:03:54
  I like to talk politics, because this gets us to the Republican race.
• 2:03:58
  To me, the fact that you know, every democratic tyranny in inducing governor
• 2:04:05
  won reelection and you know, while the Santis won by twenty points in Florida,
• 2:04:13
  it looks like he's going to get his ass handed to him in the
• 2:04:15
  Republican presidential nominating process. History is going to especially with the media carrying the
• 2:04:21
  water on this history, I'm very much afraid. And even Trump is now
• 2:04:27
  promoting this notion of history that we basically got it right when it came to
• 2:04:32
  lockdowns and mandates and school closings and sports closings and all that kind of stuff,
• 2:04:36
  which to me is terrifying going forward, and the fact that you don't
• 2:04:43
  see it as terrifying, because I mean, I think I understand the way
• 2:04:46
  the left works. The left has no ability, matt no ability to rein
• 2:04:53
  in their natural instincts. They are feelers, They always always, always overplay
• 2:05:00
  their hand, and because they have gotten no significant, real negative blowback for
• 2:05:06
  what they did on COVID, I think they see the future as any opportunity
• 2:05:13
  we get, whether it's climate change or global warming, whatever, we're going
• 2:05:15
  to do the same thing over again. And the fact that you don't see
• 2:05:19
  that, to me is a bit depressing. But you clearly don't. No,
• 2:05:24
  I mean, I have to be honest with you. I mean,
• 2:05:25
  I think we should always be on guard against authoritarianism and all that. But
• 2:05:30
  to me, we had this global pandemic. I mean, there was a
• 2:05:33
  motive for this. I have to tell I, am it's funny because I'm
• 2:05:39
  reading a book right now called The End of Reality by Jonathan Taplin. The
• 2:05:44
  subtitle is how four billionaires are selling a fantasy future of the metaverse, Mars
• 2:05:48
  and Crypto, and it includes things like, you know, transhumanism. I
• 2:05:56
  am much more worried and paranoid right now about what these you know, utopian
• 2:06:01
  tech billionaires like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk and Mark Andresen and Mark Zuckerberg.
• 2:06:08
  I am way more freaked out by their bizarre plans for us than I am
• 2:06:15
  about COVID. Like, yes, in a hundred years, when there's another
• 2:06:17
  pandemic and they do a lockdown, you know it's not going to be one
• 2:06:21
  hundred years. We're gonna have that conversation because because the definition of pandemic has
• 2:06:26
  just been changed. The definition of pandemic has just been changed. Now we're
• 2:06:30
  I think we're equally paranoid, but about different things. I mean, I'm
• 2:06:33
  telling you, mad, Okay, some of the stuff, No, I
• 2:06:38
  understand where you're coming from. My mouth is what's yeah, what's freaking?
• 2:06:41
  I get it, especially when it comes to artificial intelligence, I totally get
• 2:06:44
  it right. So last thing, the twenty twenty four race, it has
• 2:06:47
  been my opinion from the beginning that Trump was a heavy, heavy favorite and
• 2:06:53
  that everything has gone his way that would be conceivable, and bizarrely, his
• 2:06:57
  campaign has been bolstered by all four of these indictments, and then effectively it's
• 2:07:02
  going to take a miracle for him to not be the nominee, and then
• 2:07:05
  in low likelihood, he will then lose barring a massive recession to Joe Biden
• 2:07:11
  in the general election. Do you agree with that basic assessment. Yes,
• 2:07:16
  okay, there you go. Well, thank you for joining us. No,
• 2:07:20
  it's not just the Just in the past two weeks there have been major
• 2:07:26
  polls that would buttress your contention, John, and you've had You've had this
• 2:07:30
  viewpoint for many months, But just in the past few weeks that the AP
• 2:07:34
  had a poll that demonstrated that fifty three percent of Americans would not consider voting
• 2:07:43
  for Trump in twenty twenty four. They wouldn't even consider it. Then there's
• 2:07:48
  another eleven percent which say they are unlikely to vote for Trump. So the
• 2:07:54
  idea of him winning a general election seems unlikely. Based on that, But
• 2:07:58
  then simultaneously there are other polls. There's an NBC News poll and then there's
• 2:08:03
  like a demoines registered poll that showed things like Trump up by thirty or forty
• 2:08:07
  points. It showed that Trump's supporters trust Donald Trump more than they trust their
• 2:08:16
  own family, more than they trust their own clergy. So my, you
• 2:08:22
  know, my only conclusion, if we are to believe these polls, and
• 2:08:26
  that's a big caveat. I don't always believe the polls, but if we
• 2:08:28
  are to believe them, these are from credible, serious mainstream posters, it
• 2:08:33
  seems that Donald Trump cannot win a general election and he cannot lose a primary.
• 2:08:39
  That's the only conclusion I withdraw. And as someone who has been in
• 2:08:46
  the mainstream, not just the Daily Beast, but as a CNN contributor,
• 2:08:50
  and you know, you've been in the DC orbit for a lot of your
• 2:08:52
  life, what is your assessment of where the mainstream media is on this.
• 2:08:58
  Are they purposely knowingly setting the stage for Trump to win the nomination because they
• 2:09:05
  think he's the weakest general election candidate for Republicans or is this just naturally happening
• 2:09:13
  because they're pursuing their crass self interest when it comes to ratings and content.
• 2:09:18
  Where do you stand on that. I think in twenty sixteen, the Democrats
• 2:09:24
  and the media both elevated Trump and helped him win the nomination. I do
• 2:09:30
  not think the media is doing it this time because of what happened in twenty
• 2:09:35
  sixteen. They learned the lesson that this guy could win with forty six percent
• 2:09:41
  of the vote. He you know, just because he loses the popular vote
• 2:09:46
  does not mean he will not win the presidency. So I do not think
• 2:09:50
  the media is elevating him because they assume he's going to lose. To the
• 2:09:56
  extent that they're elevating him, I think it is because he gets ratings,
• 2:10:00
  he gets clicks. Uh, he is interesting and entertaining. So are we
• 2:10:07
  going to survive all this? Man? Again, I'm very concerned about the
• 2:10:11
  metaverse. I'm very concerned about transhumanism. I'm very concerned about AI. Yeah.
• 2:10:20
  I look, John, I think we have we have to work as
• 2:10:24
  if it all depends on us, pray as if it all depends on God.
• 2:10:28
  We cannot become depressed and obsessed. I think again, do everything you
• 2:10:37
  can as a journalist or an activist or whatever, and then go watch some
• 2:10:43
  football. Man. You gotta you gotta stay saying. I think they've they've
• 2:10:48
  destroyed college football and they've destroyed pro football. There's not there is no football
• 2:10:52
  point anymore. Man. How about how about them? How about them?
• 2:10:56
  How about them Oriels? Though? Man? In the American leagues? That's
• 2:10:58
  what we lit up on baseball. You'm up on baseball a long time ago,
• 2:11:03
  all right. Matt Lewis, Daily Beast columnist and author of the book
• 2:11:07
  Filthy Rich Politicians. Thanks so much for your time. Always great to talk
• 2:11:11
  to you, Matt. John Ziggler, always great talking to you, man.
• 2:11:13
  Thank you for having me. Thanks again to Matt Lewis for his time.
• 2:11:16
  Please check out his book, Filthy Rich Politicians. That'll do it.
• 2:11:20
  For this episode number eighty five of the Death of Journals and Podcast, my
• 2:11:22
  name is John Zigler. Please remember to subscribe, rate, and review this
• 2:11:26
  podcast, share it on social media. If you do, tag me and
• 2:11:30
  I'll share it with my followers on Twitter and Facebook. Until next time,
• 2:11:33
  thanks so much for listening. My name is John Zigler.