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Episode Eighty Six: Weaponized Weather · The Death Of Journalism

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Welcome the episode number eighty six of the Death of Journalism podcast. My name
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is John Ziggler. I'm your host on today's show. The weather continues to
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be used as a political weapon. Trump is now suddenly condemning the United States
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reaction to COVID. ESPN is dying, but not before taking college football with
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it, and something nice finally happened within the Penn State Joe Paterno Jerry Sandusky
0:26
fiasco. I'm known as the Dutch Digital marketing Man. I'm a digital advertising
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the Dutch Digital marketing Man dot com. If you want to grow your business,
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Peter can help. That's the Dutch Digital Marketingman dot com. And hey,
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thanks for sponsoring the show. In the last episode of the podcast,
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I made a prediction that with the hurricane barreling down on Florida, that we
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were about to see a massive contrast between the way the news media would handle
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Ron de santis is handling of that situation in comparison to the softball treatment they
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have given President Biden when it came, as well as the local Democratic response
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to the Maui wildfire tragedy. And that prediction has largely been not born out
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to be true. I was mostly wrong about that, however, not totally
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wrong, and there were some interesting developments on this front and ways that I
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did not anticipate. First of all, it appears it's always interesting to me
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how fast the news media feels like they need to jump on a narrative.
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I mean, people forget that in two thousand and six, it took several
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days before Katrina became a massive catastrophe in New Orleans. In fact, there
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were initial reports the next day that while it was terrible, it wasn't as
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bad as expected, and this ended up leading George W. Bush, President
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Bush at the time, into saying those famous or infamous words, heck of
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a job, brownie to the guy who was leading FEMA at the time,
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and that led into a political disaster well Weirdly, it was only like a
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day or two after the storm hit Florida that much of the right wing media
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was already declaring that ron de Santa was a victor in this. Ben Shapiro,
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Guy Benson on Fox News Channel, even Piers Morgan, who now somehow
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has considered right wing media, which is very strange to me in so many
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different ways. But all of them and others were complimenting Rohn de Sant on
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how he handled the Florida hurricane, and by and large, the news media
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in the mainstream, the laft wing media was not attacking the actual response or
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preparedness for the hurricane by Governor De Santis in Florida. In fact, I
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was even asked on News Nation, on which I appear about every other week,
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usually on Dan Abram's show. This was on Dan's show, but he
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was on vacation, so there was a fill in host, and I was
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asked whether or not this was going to help De Santis in the Republican primary
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process, to which I basically scoffed, and I said, well, look,
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in a rational pre Trump twenty fifteen world, this might have helped because
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it would remind people that DeSantis is competent, and that DeSantis delivers and DeSantis
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knows what he's doing, and that these things used to actually matter, but
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in a Republican primary they don't because Republican primary voters want entertainment, they want
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retro You shouldn't. They want to slam dunk liberals. It's not about actually
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being competent. I also made a somewhat facetious although I think based in reality,
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an analogy that incumbency. I've mentioned this before both on News Nation on
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this podcast. Incumbency is now, at least in the Santis's case, basically
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a negative where only things can go wrong. You don't get credit for anything
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that goes right. You only get blamed for things that might go wrong,
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even if you have nothing to do with them, and anything that you do
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do that could be considered right is going to be mischaracterized by the media and
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turned into somehow being a negative. I've equated it kind of like being a
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dad or a husband, which I'm both a husband and a father of two
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young girls. I know that if anything happens on my watch right, if
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I'm in charge, or basically, in some ways, not not in real
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life, but in theory, the husband and the dad is in charge of
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the household. Anything that goes wrong is inherently, at least somewhat my fault.
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So if under my watch I get through a potential crisis and nothing bad
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happens, the only benefit I received from that is I don't get in trouble
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for that day. Maybe the next morning. That's it. There's no actual
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reward, and of course, if anything does go wrong, you're going to
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get blamed, whether you deserve that blame or not. So it's basically all
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risk and no reward. And that's the situation that Santis was in with regarding
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the hurricane hitting Florida. It's all risk and basically no reward. So if
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you do everything exactly as you should do, all that's going to happen is
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people will go Okay, great now, nothing went wrong, No big deal.
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It's kind of boring. Actually, it's the strange, upside down world
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we're now living in. And I've now it's probably the thing I've been most
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wrong about when it came to evaluating this Republican primary contest, especially between Trump
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and Dessandis. I really thought that being an incumbent would help de Santist take
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the mantle of being the alpha male. With Trump being unemployed and you know,
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potentially getting indicted and seemingly very powerless and desantist, is having the greatest
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legislative session in the history of Florida, and he's in charge, and he's
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young and virile, and Trump is getting old. I honestly thought that was
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all going to play into a positive narrative for Desanders. But we're now living
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in such a weird world that being an incumbent, I think is more of
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a negative than it is a positive. I mean, look what's happened with
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vivek Obama. Swamy never held elected office in his life, changes his positions
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all over the place, as no record really as white clean. Much of
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what record there was was asking Alice Sharpton and on television at the age of
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nineteen why he should vote for him in the two thousand and four presidential action.
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Now he's mister conservative libertarian, yet he has no responsibilities. He gets
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to create a fantasy world, much like Trump does. I said this on
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News Nation too. Trump gets to create a fantasy world for the way things
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would be if he was in power, with no accountability, no responsibility for
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anything that might go wrong. So both Trump and Obama Swamy benefit from not
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only not being in power, but you know, between them they have a
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total of four years in elected office. And and and frankly, with Trump,
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Trump gets to blame anything that went wrong on either the deep state end
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or COVID. It's just it's just insane making. But the reality is that
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by all rational accounts, the Santists did what he does back and he had
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Florida prepared for it, and it was not nearly as bad as a hurricane
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could theoretically be. A lot of there was a lot of damage, but
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there was not as much loss of life as is normally seen in a situation
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like this. But that didn't keep the news media from trying to create some
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mischief. They thought they saw an opening with regard to the rivalry or the
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battle between Desantists and President Biden, and that somehow Desantists was stiffing Biden by
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not meeting with him. Adam Kinsinger, who I just you know, it's
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so frustrated him because I used to really like this guy, former Republican congressman
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from Illinois who was an anti Trumper and is now a CNN commentator, And
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you know, he went on a tirade, calling it absolutely outrageous that desantists
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did not meet with Biden during the hurricane visit from the President. Biden himself
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defended the Santis on this and said he had no problem with it whatsoever.
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But this is what happened to all of the never Trumpers, the group of
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which I was a member very early on and suddenly realized, Oh my god,
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these people are not really in this for the truth or for the cause.
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They're in this to keep their careers going and to remain relevant. And
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in order to do that, you have to basically perform an a minstrel show,
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which is to give liberals everything they want. And the idea that you
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could be an anti Trump alleged Republican conservative and torch a Santis over a hurricane
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response to me tells me you're not serious, that you're not credible, that
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you're doing everything you possibly can to help Trump win the nomination, because either
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consciously or subconsciously, you know that's good for you, because that's your brand.
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Your brand is to be anti Trump. And if there's no more Trump,
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there's no more you See, That's never been an issue with me.
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I want Trump be off the stage a long time ago. It had nothing
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to do with brand day because I don't give a crap. I want what's
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best for the country. But these people don't care. And you know,
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so here's a guy who I really liked for quite a while as once again
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fallen prey to this same phenomenon that so many other never Trump conservatives have.
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I mean, there's nothing they like more than to attack the Santists, which
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if they were serious people, if they were credible, it would be exactly
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the opposite, because the Santists offers an opportunity for the Republican Party to straighten
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itself out, to get past Trump, which is what they claim they want.
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But that's not what they really want. They just want to remain relevant.
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They want to keep their cushy gigs. They want to make some money,
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you know, they want to stay on the gravy train. It's grift.
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It's just grift. And this is a great example of that. And
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it's not the only one, but it's to me, it's most aggravating because
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it comes from someone who I used to respects as a public and congressman.
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Now you can tell that the media has moved on from the Hurricane because they're
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attacking the Santis in another way, at least some elements of the news media
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are. There was a neo Nazi march in Florida, which, of course,
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you know, Florida incredibly large, diverse, and often wacky state.
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Anything that happens, there's going to be somehow the Santis's fault, whether it's
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a nut job murdering three black people in Jacksonville or a neo Nazi march,
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which Rolling Stone not exactly a credible news media outlet, but still taken seriously
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by some people, and it's a large outlet. Rolling Stone reported that the
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neo Nazi marchers were quote all the Santis supporters. They were all the Santis
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supporters. Now, I've never understood this entire concept where small groups of nut
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jobs let's pretend this was true, which by the way, it's not.
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I've never understood how small groups of whack jobs, poor training themselves as supporting
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a person somehow reflects negatively on that person. Now I get if it's a
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massive portion of your fan base, I get it. But this was a
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very small group of people, you know, who were just dressed weirdly.
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So that's why the news media and of course, you know, they love
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the whole neo Nazi narrative of making white people look racist in the whole bit.
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But the reality is, I've never understood this entire concept that a candidate
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gets blamed because of what some small number of supporters may or may not believe.
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That's not their responsibility. It's not their job. They can, I
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guess, condemn it, but it's not. It's not their responsibility. It's
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an absurdity to hold a candidate responsible for what every single one of their supporters
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in the country, this larger as largest days Florida is may or may not
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believe. So it's an inherently ridiculous concept. But it's also not true because
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the video of these marchers proved this, and Rolling Stone completely ignored the reality
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that there was video evidence that some of the marches were actually disparaging the Santists,
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saying to fuck the Santists and calling him a joke. So the entire
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narrative was false. And it's just another indication that the Santists is going to
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be held to a completely different standard than anybody else in this entire race,
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especially Donald Trump and especially on the Republican side. Now, you know,
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the fact that they're still going after the Santis is about the only sign that
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he still has a heart peat in this Republican race, even though we're now
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just at the beginning of September. But of course, the other element of
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the entire hurricane storyline is that somehow this is consistent with you guessed it,
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global warming, climate change, and this is this is becoming farcical. It
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was always absurd, but now it's just completely ridiculous. It is it is
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so overtly political. I have never lived for fifty six years followed the weather
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very closely, especially in recent years because this has become such a large issue
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in the news media. And I have never seen, never seen a summer
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now officially coming to closed post Labor Day, although technically not till the later
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portions of September. But I've never seen a summer where the news media has
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been more focused on weaponizing normal weather, on weaponizing storms and heat. I
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mean, it's it's been absolutely insane, and it's overtly political, and there's
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a symbiotic relationship between the Biden administration and the news media on this issue,
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and it would not be more clear. And of course Biden used the hurricane
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and his visit to Florida to further this narrative. Now, this clip I'm
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about to play for you is from President Biden in Florida reacting to the hurricane.
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The first part of this clip that's extraordinary is just how feeble, just
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how feeble President Biden is. And you know, I don't know how this
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is going to sound on the podcast, but he sounds very weak voice.
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He clearly is reading what someone else has written for him. He's not doing
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it in authoritative fashion. But also the substance of what he's saying is absurd.
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He is jumping all over every single one of these false narratives, specifically
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with regard to wildfires, which we know have nothing to do with climate change
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global warming, and specifically when it comes to Maui, we know that this
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disaster had nothing to do with any sort of climate change. It was about
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the electrical system, and the handling of it was exacerbated by what appears to
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be a lot of local incompetence. Not to mention that this is a situation
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where, you know, we see this all over the place, especially here
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in southern California, where people are living in inherently dangerous areas, and when
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the inevitable disaster happens, no one wants to accept the reality that, you
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know what, there's risks in living in exotic places, and when you're stuck
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between an ocean and an overpopulated beach area and a jungle, and you've got
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incompetent local officials and the perfect storm happens where you get a hurricane way offshore,
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where you get the wind but not the moisture, then disaster is going
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to happen eventually. And unfortunately, that's what happened in Maui. Now and
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the news media coverage of Biden's response has been incredibly benign, especially in comparison
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to what they did to George Bush in Katrina. But the idea that they
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have allowed this climate change narrative to fester and for the president to still be
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able to use it now while he's responding to a hurricane in Florida in late
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August, folks, I mean that is about as normal as anything you can
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possibly imagine in the weather system. I mean, every single late August early
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September, there is a hurricane that hits Florida. This was a category three
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hurricane, almost category four. It was a strong one, nothing remotely out
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of an ordinary with regard to its size, its ferocity, or its timing.
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Nothing at all. But now they realize that weaponizing the weather is maybe
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their best path to instilling total control over the economy, over our lives,
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and instilling essentially socialism. They saw what they could do with COVID. Now
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they're realizing that this is the path with regard to climate change, global warming,
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and they're able to get away with it because the media is completely on
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board, and because their base audience is largely young people who are frankly stupid
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to begin with and don't have nearly enough experience within their own lives to be
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able to draw upon to go wait a minute, there's nothing going on here,
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that's all that unusual they I mean, if you've only lived twenty years,
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you only remember ten of those years. You don't have the ability to
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go back and go, well, wait a minute, I remember twenty thirty
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years ago, before this was even an issue, the same stuff was happening.
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So it's not a surprise at all that young people are the ones being
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bamboo led by this. They're also the ones being targeted by this. So
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here is President Biden feebly trying to make the connection between you guessed it a
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hurricane in late August in Florida and the fact that man made climate change is
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an existential threat, the evidence of which we are seeing more and more often.
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According to President Biden, I want to reiterate that appreciation today. I
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also convene my entire cabinet as part of a whole of government response. And
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that response is to increase the number and intensity of the extreme weather events.
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And beware, we're going to be used all the resources available to the government
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to do it. Nobody can deny the impact of climate crisis. Is nobody
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intelligent can deny the impact of a climate crisis anymore. Just look around around
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the nation and the world for that matter. Historic floods, intense droughts,
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extreme heat, deadly wirefires, what wildfires that have caused serious damage like we've
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never seen before. Just since being president in two and a half years,
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I've flown over more land burned to the ground as a consequence of wildfires than
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occupy the state or the entire land of the state of Maryland. From down
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in New Mexico and Alabama all up to Montana and around has been devastating.
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Essentially, what Biden is laying out there is a children's fairy tale. It's
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a fairy tale, every single bit of it. An it is a myth.
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And I don't I don't would love to know if he really even believes
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it. I mean, who knows what he believes at this point, because
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his brain is seemingly turning to mush. But this is all political. It
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has nothing to do with the truth at all. And this idea that somehow
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we can combine all these things together and one short period of time and make
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a determination about what the global climate is doing and whether or not man has
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any impact on it is juvenile. It is juvenile. This used to be
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called weather. Now all of a sudden, if it fits the agenda,
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it's global climate change. And never ever, ever, ever forget that.
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The reason why they changed it from global warming to climate change is because they
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wanted no ability to be held accountable. And that's what climate change branding does,
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because there's always going to be something weird going on in a globe this
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large, even in a country this large. I mean, we have an
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incredibly large country with a very diverse set of weather patterns, very diverse and
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so inherently, at any given time, something bad is going to happen.
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It's inevitable. And they know this, and so now because the media is
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willing to go along with it. In fact, they're often not just enabling
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it, they're promoting it. They can suddenly turn normalcy into catastrophe and make
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it politically advantus, advantageous for themselves. And they're you know, they're I
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don't know how effective it is, you know, I mean, we're seeing
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among younger people this becoming a larger and larger political issue. I mean,
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for the first I don't know decade of this effort, they really weren't making
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that much progress politically. This issue was seen as very low on the depth
22:44
chart of priorities from a political standpoint among the average American. Among younger people
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now, say, under the age of thirty, certainly under the age of
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twenty five, that number is greatly increasing because of all this propaganda and because,
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as as already said, these are the people that are are least well
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equipped to combat the propaganda. Even after COVID, you would think that some
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younger people would go, well, wait a minute, they told us everyone
23:15
was going to die, and I just I had my high school life destroyed
23:19
because of the exact same thinking. Maybe you know, they're not right about
23:23
this either, but I'm not sensing that that there's large numbers of young people
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that have made that connection, largely because the media will never make that connection
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for them, and obviously they're teachers in college are never going to make that
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connection for them, and very few people are willing and able to do that
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on their own. But this is this is so absurd. I mean,
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all of it is. But it's also dangerous because it's gonna change our way
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of life. It's gonna absolutely change our way of life. This is going
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to be the battle of the next decade and beyond, and it's getting it's
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going to get into how we use our energy, whether we're allowed to have
24:06
energy freedom, how we're even a you know, what we're allowed to eat,
24:10
when we're allowed to travel. I mean, this thing is going to
24:14
be a major, major issue unless somehow the Biden Harris administration is stopped at
24:21
one term, and I'm despondent about whether or not there's a good chance of
24:25
doing that. As far as the media itself is concerned. I mentioned you
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know that the media has been carrying water for the Biden administration. On this,
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The New York Times had a headline, falsehoods follow close behind this Summer's
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natural disasters. This was an article about you know, there's a lot of
24:44
people that have been trying to debunk the idea that all these natural disasters we've
24:48
been telling you about are not really related to global warming climate change. And
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of course, the great irony is this article in The New York Times was
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promoted at least on line and I believe in the paper itself with a photograph
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of, believe it or not, the aftermath of the Maui wildfires, ironically
25:08
enough, with electrical wires running right through the charred remains of that section of
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Maui. And that's why these fires apparently happened. And it was liberal democratic
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incompetence for why it was that they created as much damage as they did.
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So, I mean, it's almost hilarious the level of irony and hypocrisy here
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on Twitter. The New York Times described this articles as natural disasters and extreme
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environmental conditions became more commonplace around the world this summer. What's the evidence of
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that? More coverage. There's been more coverage of it because the media sees
25:53
it as a narrative. By the way, Biden referenced in his comments,
25:57
while I've been making more visits the natural disasters than ever before. Why because
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they see it as a narrative working for them. So anything at all that
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happens all of a sudden becomes cause for a visit because they see the political
26:12
advantage in it. That's new, not to mention it's just a normal human
26:19
phenomenon. Then when you're looking for something, you're gonna find it more often.
26:26
So what used to just be considered well, boy, we got tornadoes
26:30
in the late spring in Oklahoma, or hurricanes and August and Florida, or
26:37
wildfires in areas that are dry. I mean, these things used to just
26:44
be normal. Now all of a sudden, it's all part of evidence that
26:48
we're actually right about this one. And those that are trying to tell you
26:52
that we're wrong, they are, you guessed, did conspiracy theorists for these
26:57
people have no clue about how the right views them now. But this is
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just to fully articulate what the New York Times put out on Twitter. As
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natural disasters and extreme environmental conditions became more commonplace around the world, this summer,
27:11
no evidence of that at all. Scientists. Of course, that means
27:15
when we say scientists, that means people we have chosen who are willing to
27:21
bastardize themselves to promote our mutually self interested narrative. Scientists pointed repeatedly to a
27:30
shared driver climate change. Conspiracy theorists pointed to anything. But that's right.
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You're a conspiracy theorist if you point to the fact that in the photo that
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The New York Times chooses to promote this article, there are electrical choires running
27:51
right through the charred remains of Maui, and that, by all indications,
27:56
the fire started because of the electricity not being turned off and the winds causing
28:03
electrical lines to be you know, vulnerable to causing a fire. I mean,
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it's again, this would be hilarious if it wasn't so serious. It's
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just so obvious what's really going on here, especially post COVID. The fact
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that they're getting away with this so soon after COVID is mind blowing, even
28:26
to me, even as pessimistic as I am. It's really hard for being
28:30
to imagine that people are buying this now. On the right, people are
28:34
not buying this and so they have marginalized themselves just to the left, but
28:41
that's a huge portion of the country and they still have influence over those people.
28:45
And of course, at the very same time this whole thing is being
28:48
put out there, this BS narrative is being promoted. You know, we
28:55
have a bunch of other things going on that I'll get to moments, Tilly.
29:00
That should, that should in a rational world, beginning enough coverage to
29:03
where people would go, h I wonder if there's something else going on here,
29:07
But first I do at least one to acknowledge what's going on with the
29:11
Burning Man festival in Nevada, which I'm sure some liberals are going to put
29:18
into this basket of disasters that are related to climate change global warming. This
29:25
was a festival where there were over seventy thousand people in the Vata, basically
29:30
in a desert, and then all of a sudden, they got almost an
29:33
inch of rain. By the way, I keep seeing reports of they got
29:37
almost an inch of rain, which is two or three months of rain that
29:41
this area would expect, and they got it all in one day. Okay,
29:45
yeah, that's technically true. But guess what happens under those circumstances.
29:52
Invariably, the two or three months period of time that you're accounting for this
29:59
much rain being normal will always come in one day. That's how Nevada gets
30:07
rain. God damn it. They don't get light showers at one thirty in
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the morning. They get massive rainstorms occasionally. And those that were preparing and
30:18
promoting this festival even warned about this. They put out survival guide books.
30:26
Because it is not unusual at all this time of year for there to be
30:32
a massive rainstorm creating flooding, which creates a basically a mud pit where the
30:38
parking lot is supposed to be, and the desert turns to mud and no
30:44
one can move, And so there's nothing at all remotely unusual about this.
30:49
The only thing unusual is the stupidity of holding a massive festival in a place
30:56
where if it rains hard, no one can get it out. I mean,
31:00
that's that's where the blame for this lies, METT and carbon emissions creating
31:07
there a more likely scenario of heavy rains in the Vada in August. I
31:11
mean, the insanity of this thing never ever ends. Now, there are
31:18
some humorous and strange elements to this story. Chris Rock, the comedian al
31:23
video of this just this morning, escaped via hitchhiking on the back of an
31:30
open ended pickup truck with a bunch of buddies or I guess many people he
31:36
knew, but fans of his who picked him up to to get him out
31:38
of the burning Man area. You know, conservatives, especially online, are
31:44
mocking liberals for their lack of survival skills. There's another element of this which
31:51
is going to expose the hypocrisy of these people, because almost everybody at this
31:55
festival was a liberal. But they're creating an environmental disaster. People are leaving
32:00
their vehicles stuck in the mud, there's trash everywhere. I mean, you
32:08
know, these are all people who are claiming, I'm sure to be pro
32:13
environment and you know, we've got to change our lives to mitigate climate change
32:19
so that these disasters don't keep happening. Meanwhile, they're gonna leave a ship
32:22
haul in the desert. Over all this whole situation, I mean, the
32:27
bottom line here is this should never have happened. There should never be an
32:30
event like this when you're relying on their not being rained. Yes, nine
32:37
out of ten years or whatever percentage you want to use, you're gonna get
32:40
away with it. But a little bit like Maui, you're playing with fire
32:45
to use a bad metaphor, you're eventually something's gonna go wrong. Eventually,
32:51
it's gonna rain hard at the wrong time, and you're gonna have an absolute
32:55
crap show, almost literally. And that's what's happening with Burning Man. And
33:00
instead of it revealing the stupidity of all this, and yes, the stupidity
33:07
of liberals in a lot of ways, and the hypocrisy of liberals on the
33:09
environmental front, I'm sure there will be people, people who including our president,
33:14
who will use this is further evidence of natural disasters that can According to
33:20
the New York Times, you have to be a conspiracy theorist to not believe
33:24
are due to climate change. Now, I mentioned that there's a few things
33:30
happening that, if the media was remotely fair, would get people to go,
33:34
wait a minute, how does this make any sense? You know,
33:36
we've constantly heard the refrain that ninety seven percent of all experts have already agreed
33:43
that the science has settled that man made climate change global warming is real,
33:47
and so shut the fuck up if you disagree, If you're a contrarian,
33:52
if you're a denier because ninety seven percent of experts could never be wrong.
33:55
Well, I actually strongly disagree with that. I'm always wondering, Okay,
34:00
well what about the other three percent? If it was ninety nine point nine
34:05
percent, I'd go, okay, that's pretty convincing. I mean, I'm
34:09
not going to blindly believe anything anyone says anymore, especially post COVID. But
34:14
ninety nine point nine percent, I'm like, oh, all right, that's
34:16
strong. The three percent bothers me because three percent is around the number of
34:22
experts you would get who would be willing to stand up for what they knew
34:27
to be right, even if it was against their self interest to do so.
34:30
So that ninety seven percent number has never had any positive impact on me
34:36
at all. I mean to me, you know, if you're looking at
34:39
this from just simply the standpoint of I'm gonna go with whatever the experts are
34:45
saying, I would actually be more convinced if it was sixty five or seventy
34:51
percent. If sixty five or seventy percent said that this was real, I'd
34:57
go, Okay, that's a credible number, because you know why, that
35:00
shows me that you can still have a career and disagree. If it's sixty
35:06
five or seventy percent, then you know it's not a cult. There's not
35:12
a self interest, a dramatic self interest to come to the same conclusion that
35:16
everyone else has come to. Otherwise you're gonna get kicked out of the club,
35:21
and no one wants to do that. So I would consider sixty five
35:24
to seventy percent to be a credible number. Ninety nine point nine percent would
35:30
be a very credible number, because then you're just dealing with the one guy
35:34
who wants to be a contrarian and maybe wants to get attention for it.
35:37
But three percent, which has always been the number they use that to me,
35:42
I go, well, wait a minute, I want to find out
35:44
more about that three percent. Well, there's also people who will tell you
35:47
that that three percent number is much larger, and that the reason why it's
35:52
only three percent is because in order to get counted you have to basically agree
35:58
with the conventional wisdom with the pack. So it's it's amazing that it's actually
36:02
three percent, and in the real world it's actually larger than that. Well,
36:06
there's some evidence to support that theory. That came out even though the
36:07
news media systematically ignored it. This is a headline in a conservative outlet.
36:15
More than sixteen hundred scientists Nobel laureates declare quote unquote, climate emergency a myth.
36:27
Now, even if these people are wrong, you would think that that
36:29
would be enough to create a mainstream news media story. I've seen no coverage
36:34
of this development at all in the major media, even to condemn it or
36:38
to mock it. But here's the essence of the story. A coalition of
36:43
sixteen hundred and nine scientists from around the world of signed a declaration stating quote
36:50
there is no climate emergency and that they quote strongly opposed the harmful and unrealistic
36:55
net zero carbon dioxide policy being pushed across the globe. The declaration does not
37:02
deny the harmful effect of greenhouse gases, but instead challenges the hysteria brought about
37:09
by the narrative of imminent doom. The declaration, put together by the Global
37:15
Climate Intelligence Group, was made public this month and urges that quote climate science
37:21
should be less political. Well, climate policies should be more scientific. Wow,
37:29
what a controversial statement that is. That used to be the way science
37:35
was done. It used to be understood that you had to keep politics and
37:38
self interest out of science, and as we saw during COVID, that horses
37:45
long ago left the barn. Now it's all about politics, it's all about
37:49
self interest, and it's not about science, and it's not about the truth.
37:52
And I don't know, I obviously don't know the level of expertise of
37:57
any of these sixteen hundred and nine people. I do not, however,
38:00
know that if these sixteen hundred and nine people had come up with a different
38:04
conclusion, then they would have gotten a hell of a lot of news media
38:07
coverage, a hell of a lot of news media coverage, even on Fox
38:10
News Channel, which is unfortunately very pro climate change, global warming, because
38:15
of Rupert Murdoch. So you know, right there we have evidence of massive
38:22
double standards and hypocrisy and lack of fairness basic fairness when it comes to the
38:27
news media and this issue. And then there's another development that's occurred that I
38:31
still I am amazed that even the right wing media has not picked up on
38:37
this at all. And I've tried my best, but I'm not relevant.
38:43
And you know, no matter how many times I tweet about it, nobody
38:45
significant picks it up. I've not seen anybody, I mean even like a
38:51
bunch of Heiro I could have missed it if he has, or somebody of
38:55
that ILK who was usually smart enough to to focus in on obvious smoking gun
39:05
pieces of evidence that the Left is totally wrong or at least hypocritical about something.
39:10
And for the third time in less than a year, this has happened
39:15
in the area of college sports, specifically college football, though it's going to
39:19
impact way more than just football. For the third time in less than a
39:24
year, elite liberal academic institutions and their liberal media partners have facilitated a massive
39:35
increase in the carbon footprint of their athletic teams and nobody, nobody has objected
39:45
at all. We now have what's left of the pac twelve Conference, teams
39:51
from that conference on the West Coast here in California becoming two of them becoming
39:55
part of the Atlantic Coast Conference. It's as absurd as that is. So
40:01
teams that literally face in some cases, can see the Pacific Ocean are now
40:08
going to be part of the Atlantic, meaning the Atlantic Ocean, the Atlantic
40:13
Coast Conference. I mean that means just the stupidity of this is beyond comprehension
40:21
even by twenty twenty three standards. But the reason why it's relevant to this
40:25
conversation is that what about the carbon footprint? The carbon footprint for not just
40:32
the football teams, but for every single sport, not to mention the number
40:37
of classes that are going to be missed is going to increase dramatically, just
40:42
like it did when USC and UCLA left with California's approval to go to the
40:46
Big Ten. Now, all of a sudden, you're gonna have teams from
40:50
New Jersey and Pennsylvania and Maryland going to California and vice versa. How they're
40:57
gonna get there. They're not gonna go by horseback. They're gonna go by
41:00
airplane, and it's going to increase their carbon footprint dramatically. And this is
41:07
the third time this has happened in less than a year, and nobody has
41:12
said boo about it. And to me, this is the smokingest of smoking
41:16
guns, because there's no way out of this. If the carbon footprint really
41:22
matters, then how the hell does cal Berkeley and Stanford and USC and UCLA
41:31
and all these other very elite liberal schools on the West Coast from the pac
41:38
twelve justify every single one of their sports teams having to travel across the country
41:45
for events that used to be within state, and vice versa and vice versa.
41:52
So it's hypocritical on both the climate change as well as the academics matter
42:00
standpoints. I mean, it's just it's awful. It's just terrible not to
42:04
mention the end of rivalries and traditions. And later on in this podcast,
42:09
I'm going to get into the state of college sports and how ESPN is failing,
42:14
and that's a symbiotic relationship, but I wanted to mention it in the
42:16
realm of climate change, global warming, because there's nothing that proves the absurdity
42:22
of carbon footprint more than how elite academia and their liberal media partners have ignored
42:29
the carbon footprint issue totally completely when it comes to conference realignment. Now,
42:37
with regard to the news media coverage of Joe Biden and specifically Hunter Biden,
42:43
I have said many many times in this podcast, I hate the story,
42:45
not because I haven't any interest in it or I haven't investigated it. It's
42:52
that it's so murky to me, and I don't trust any media outlet on
42:57
it. No one on the left, no one on the rights as the
43:01
proper self interests to come up with the truth of what actually happened. And
43:06
there is a lot of smoke in the Hunter Biden Joe Biden's story, a
43:10
lot of smoke. I mean, there's all sorts of crazy things. There's
43:15
ten percent for the big guy, and there's these all these aliases that Joe
43:20
Biden used in emails to communicate with his son about this that we're now learning
43:24
about. You know, there's allegations about the prosecutor in the Ukraine and whether
43:31
or not that was good or bad for Bizma, and all of the all
43:37
of it, the payoff allegations, the ten million dollars, all of it
43:42
is very strange, very smoky, but still murky in my mind. In
43:47
large part, I still think there's a chance might sound naive to people,
43:52
but there's a chance that for the most part, Hunter Biden was bragging and
43:58
lying about his dad's involvement. I still think that narrative makes some sense and
44:06
can hold water depending on how some of these factual situations turn out. However,
44:12
I want to illustrate and highlight a really stunning and illuminating moment that occurred
44:21
with a Washington Post columnist by the name of Philip Bump, and this really
44:25
exposes how corrupt and incompetent, and lacking in curiosity and frankly lazy the mainstream
44:34
news media has become. Now Philip Bump again in Washington Post columnist, he
44:40
was on a video podcast guy I've never heard of before by the name of
44:45
Noam Dorman or I think that's how you say his name, Noam Dorham,
44:51
and he to the host's credit, Dorman, if that's how you say his
44:59
name. He he asked a very simple question of Philip Bump about how he
45:05
interprets some of the messages that we have found from Hunter Biden, specifically in
45:10
this case, about having to give money to his dad, and Bump's reaction
45:19
is just so incredibly telling because he wants no part of it. It's obvious
45:24
that he doesn't want to think about it, he doesn't want to talk about
45:28
it, and he even ends the interview abruptly claiming that you know, he
45:32
was over the time that he agreed to be interviewed for. But to me,
45:37
this belongs in a museum, because here we got a Washington Post columnist
45:43
who is called on the carpet on the issue of hey, what do you
45:45
think about this? And they could not make it more clear they have no
45:51
interest in thinking about this at all because they know it doesn't fit their self
45:55
interest. What do you take from the text message to his adult or a
46:00
hundred texts I have to get fifty percent of my income to Pop. I
46:04
have no idea what that means. I don't. I have no idea what
46:06
that means. But it's it's it's I know, it's circumstantial evidence, and
46:08
you prefer that what what what couldn't I have no idea? What doesn't it?
46:12
Don't know? Well, I appreciate your has anybody has anybody asked her?
46:15
I don't know. I don't know. Don't you think somebody should ask
46:17
her? Okay, like I'm not. I just said I don't know,
46:21
and I don't know what to make of it, So I have nothing say
46:22
about it. Yeah, but doesn't say yeah. But you say there's no
46:24
evidence evidence, But then there's a text message where he says, I give
46:28
Pop fifty cent of my money. That's that's evidence. Okay, Well what
46:31
okay? Fine, fine, so evidence. I appreciate your having me out.
46:35
It doesn't that's something like that. Who do you think it's been worried?
46:37
I look at that. I'm saying, I am you don't I feel
46:42
you want me to leave? Like just walk out in the middle of this.
46:44
You can that way you can, you can go? Is this a
46:45
standard? Really? This is the way the Washington Post handles people who disagree
46:50
with when I agree to beyond for forty five minutes and then they get on
46:52
for an hour and fifteen. Yeah that after a while, I go.
46:54
Thanks. Now that video has been seemingly viewed millions of times online, and
47:01
rightfully so, because it deserves to be seen by anybody and everybody who cares
47:07
at all about media accountability. Because that really does tell you an awful lot
47:13
about why I don't trust anybody on this story. I mean, come on,
47:17
this is your freaking job to at least be curious, and the you
47:22
know, the reaction was so very very telling. I mean to end the
47:27
interview, and to do so in a way where it makes it very very
47:31
obvious you have no interest. You're not even going to pretend. You know
47:35
how easy it would be to just pretend to be interested in the subject.
47:39
Philip Bump didn't even do that instead, he really did expose the reality of
47:45
this situation is that they're in the tank for Joe Biden, and they're they've
47:50
been in the tank on the Hunter Biden story from the beginning. And you
47:53
know, just to reiterate, this is why I hate the story so much,
47:57
because I can't trust Normally, there is some element of the news media
48:01
that's somewhat trustworthy on even political stories, but in this case, every single
48:07
media outlet has a perverse self interest to not get this story right, and
48:13
so it's a very difficult story to be able to figure out the truth on.
48:16
And then you have this perfect storm of political considerations bastardizing the coverage of
48:23
everybody who is looked into it, and also preventing people on the lap from
48:29
even bothering to look into it. I mean, frankly, it reminded me
48:32
kind of of the vaccine issue. I mean, this was anything adverse to
48:36
the vaccines. This was exactly the left wing media reaction, and they look
48:40
at the Hunter Biden's story exactly the same way. Now, to prove that
48:45
I am an equal opportunity offender on this, I want to mention that a
48:51
friend of mine and a guy who's been on this podcast before, News Max
48:54
anchor Greg Kelly, and I like Greg. I mean, I've spoken to
48:59
Greg a lot off the air. He's been very kind to me at times.
49:04
He seems like a very nice guy, and you know, he's done
49:07
some really good things in his career. He just got a promotion, by
49:12
the way, as far as timeslots at Newsmax. But Greg made some news
49:16
over the last few days because he reported, I guess you would say,
49:22
reported that there's going to be audio evidence regarding the Biden scandals that will come
49:29
out before Halloween that will force Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race.
49:36
I think that's a pretty good synopsis of what Greg is reporting, and
49:40
that he has knowledge of this. Now he didn't say he's actually listened to
49:45
the audio, but he is reporting that he knows that this exists and that
49:52
at best Biden will be forced out of the race and he might even be
49:55
forced to resign the presidency. I have to say that with the caveat that
50:00
I like Greg and I think he's a good guy. I don't think,
50:06
I do not think that this report is credible, and to me, it
50:08
has all the signs of what I call predictive reporting. Now. Predictive reporting
50:15
is when you think something might happen, you want to get ahead of the
50:20
curve on it. And you might even have a grain of a rumor that
50:23
you've heard from somebody that you think theoretically could be credible, and you want
50:30
to get it out there because if it happens, then you look like a
50:31
genius. And if it doesn't happen, well, most people are going to
50:36
forget about it by Halloween, and especially on the right, and especially in
50:39
this day and age, you always have the fallback position of, well,
50:44
you know, deep state got to it, yeah, the day in that
50:47
deep state, I mean, the deep state can be responsible for anything now,
50:52
So no matter what prediction you make, you have an inherent plausible deniability.
50:55
You always have an escape hatch because deep state got to it, or
51:00
the media killed it, or whatever it is. And and so those that
51:02
don't forget about it will will easily forgive you for having been wrong, because
51:08
you weren't ever really wrong. You're never really wrong when you make a prediction
51:12
like this. So while the timing of it was oddly specific, which normally
51:17
I would I would I would attribute some credibility to that. I mean,
51:22
if you're if you're giving a deadline of Halloween, I find that to be
51:25
interesting. I'm gonna stick with my initial impulse that this is not a credible
51:32
report, This is not true, this is not going to happen, and
51:36
that and that this is predictive reporting. Now, you know, there are
51:39
reports of audio tapes which may have been what manifests Greg going in this direction
51:45
to begin with. But we've we've seen with Trump and audio tapes that even
51:51
audio at this day and age can always be spun and and so you know,
51:55
getting you know, look, people looking for an excuse for to get
52:00
out of the race. There's no question about that. There's no question he
52:02
is vulnerable. There is no question that if some legitimate scandal hit Biden in
52:09
the next couple of months, that it could cause him to drop out of
52:15
the race. Again. This is partially what might be motivating what Greg is
52:17
doing here, or facilitating what Greg is doing here, because it does make
52:22
some sense globally. I mean, he is vulnerable. He's obviously weak physically
52:28
and mentally and politically. He's barely beating Donald Trump in general election polls if
52:32
at all, Despite all of Trump's legal problems, and so there are Democrats
52:38
who would love to get rid of Joe Biden. Of course, that would
52:43
give them another headache. What do they do next? Do they go with
52:45
Kamala because she's next in line? She would be obviously historic as a female
52:50
and a female of color, and she's vice president. I mean, obviously,
52:52
if if Biden were ever to resign, they'd have to go with Harris
52:55
because she'd be president if he just withdraws from the reelection race. In theory,
53:01
someone else like Gavin Newsom could step in, but I just think that
53:05
would be very, very difficult in a short time frame. And so anyway,
53:10
I wanted to mention that I don't think that Greg is telling the truth
53:14
here. I don't think he's necessarily lying. He may have convinced himself that
53:17
what he's hearing is true. But that report did get a lot of attention,
53:22
especially on the right, and I wanted to address it. By the
53:24
way, also with regard to the Washington Post, even when they break their
53:30
normal modus operande when it comes to being in the tank for Joe Biden,
53:36
they're still in the tank for Joe Biden. You know, they're fact checker.
53:39
I got the name of Glenn Kessler, who was incredibly busy during the
53:44
Trump administration with his fact checks. I mean, I don't know how many
53:47
fact checks he did, but it was an astronomical number in the Washington Post
53:52
when it came to trying to hold Trump accountable accountable for his lies. He's
53:57
been strangely quiet during the Biden administration, and Biden just keeps telling these massive
54:02
whoppers, especially about his own personal life, where he's just making up stories
54:07
that can't possibly be true. Well, I do at least want to acknowledge
54:10
that The Washington Post and Glenn Kessler did over the weekend put out an article
54:15
analysis Biden loves to retell certain stories. Some aren't credible, which is a
54:23
very very nice way of saying some are flat out lies. They promoted this
54:30
on Twitter. Peter Bakery, a Post reporter, did writing as President Biden
54:35
has continued a tradition. It's a tradition, folks, It's a tradition unlike
54:39
any other. As they say at Augusta National continued a tradition of embellishing his
54:45
personal tales in ways that cannot be verified or are directly refuted by contemporating his
54:52
accounts. This article breaks them down. Boy, that is the nicest way
54:59
possible saying, you know what, our president is a pathological liar when it
55:02
comes to his own personal history, a pathological liar. And these are you
55:07
know, this is a tendency that got Brian Williams fired from the most prestigious
55:13
news anchor job in the world at NBC about a decade ago. A little
55:16
less than a decade ago. I mean, these are things that used to
55:20
matter, because if you're lying about your own personal history, you know what
55:23
else are you're lying about? If you or even worse, if you actually
55:27
believe these stories are true, then you know what else is wrong with you?
55:34
What else are you completely in the in the dark about? So this
55:37
was very, very mild and typical of the way the news media works.
55:43
Even when they acknowledge reality, they have to do so in a way that
55:45
is as beneficial to Biden as possible. I want to move back to Donald
55:52
Trump and to the issue of his ever changing position on our COVID response.
56:00
In the last episode of the podcast, I castigated Trump for going on Glenn
56:07
Beck's show and not just defending his COVID response, but bragging about it,
56:15
saying it was great, even bragging about ventilators, which in twenty twenty three
56:20
is beyond insane. I mean, for Trump to brag about ventilators in twenty
56:27
twenty three when there's no evidence they did anything at all except perhaps, you
56:34
know, elongate a horrendous experience for a few weeks among people who almost all
56:39
ended up dying in twenty twenty is just unfathomable. And for him not to
56:45
get any blowback, even on the right, is incredibly frustrating and insane making.
56:52
And I went in through into that topic on episode eighty five. Well
56:57
then, very strangely, almost immediately after having done the Glenn Back interview,
57:05
Trump put out a statement, first I guess, on truth Social and then
57:10
via the Twitter feeds that are connected to his campaign, he put out a
57:15
video statement where he essentially sounded like Ron de Santis when it came to evaluating
57:22
the COVID response. This was all related to this new push for mask mandates
57:30
and potentially vaccine mandates, with this alleged surge of COVID that we're in,
57:36
which I still don't see in the data at all, not even a little
57:39
bit. But there's been a lot of fear monitoring, especially in the news
57:44
media, and so Trump went from basically being, you know, mister,
57:50
we did a great job with COVID. We never got the credit we deserved
57:52
and history will vindicate my response to COVID to essentially, and I'm sure in
57:59
his own mind and he didn't think of it this way, essentially condemning the
58:02
entire response to COVID and saying we can't do this all over again. And
58:08
here's what that sounded like via trump sellent personal video statement. The left wing
58:14
lunatics are trying very hard to bring back COVID lockdowns and mandates with all of
58:19
their sudden fear mongering about the new variants that are coming. Key whiz,
58:23
you know what else is coming an election? They want to restart the COVID
58:28
hysteria so they can justify more lockdowns, more censorship, more illegal drop boxes,
58:34
more mail in ballots, and trillions of dollars in payoffs to their political
58:37
allies heading into the twenty four elections. Does that sound familiar? These are
58:43
bad people, These are sick people we're dealing with. But to every COVID
58:46
tyrant who wants to take away our freedom, hear these words, we will
58:52
not comply, so don't even think about it. We will not shut down
58:57
our schools. We will not accept you or lockdowns. We will not abide
59:00
by your mask mandates, and we will not tolerate your vaccine mandates. They
59:07
rigged the twenty twenty election, and now they're trying to do the same thing
59:10
all over again by rigging the most important election in the history of our country,
59:15
the twenty twenty four election, even if it means trying to bring back
59:21
COVID. But they will fail because we will not let it happen. When
59:25
I'm back in the White House, I will use every available authority to cut
59:29
federal funding to any school, college, airline, or public transportation system that
59:35
imposes a mask mandate or a vaccine mandate. Thank you very much. Now,
59:39
when I saw that, I was truly stunned. I'm like, this
59:45
guy's a schizophrenic. I mean, pick a lane, dude, and him,
59:50
of all people objecting to many of the things that his administration helped institute
59:58
back in twenty twenty, was hypocrisy on steroids. I even tweeted, only
1:00:05
half jokingly, that this felt an awful lot like O. J. Simpson
1:00:08
declaring that he was going to devote his life to finding out who the real
1:00:13
killers were. You know, Trump saying, oh, we can't do this
1:00:16
again. We cannot comply. You know, We're not gonna We're not gonna
1:00:21
repeat the mistakes that were made previously. When he was the guy who was
1:00:24
in charge, he was the guy who's at the towne. He was the
1:00:28
guy that gave Fauci the platform and the power to do everything that he did.
1:00:32
It's just such an upside down world. And that's the world we live
1:00:36
in now. If there was any solace in this, Twitter actually pegged the
1:00:42
Trump account with not one, but two what are called community notes, basically
1:00:47
correcting the content of what was in Trump's video message, reminding people of what
1:00:54
the Trump administration actually did in twenty twenty. Now. Political, I don't
1:01:00
know what to make of this. I mean, I guess this goes back
1:01:05
if you just use Ockham's razor. This goes back to Trump's basic philosophy when
1:01:10
it comes to dealing with his cult, and that is give them options.
1:01:15
Give the cult options. When you give the cult options, they will pick
1:01:19
whichever one they like the best, and therefore they can they can peg it
1:01:23
to something that Trump has said or done, and that to them is Trump's
1:01:28
position, and that's who Trump is, and that's been very effective for Trump.
1:01:32
So if there's any thinking behind this from a political strategy perspective, that
1:01:38
might be it. Now, there's there's an element to the right wing view
1:01:44
of COVID that I have mentioned before but probably have not done so enough,
1:01:50
which I think is playing a huge role in why De Santis has not been
1:01:53
able to make any progress. In fact, has has gone in the opposite
1:01:58
direction, largely when it comes to the Republican race for the nomination, and
1:02:02
that is there's this very strange phenomenon that even among Republicans, the most anti
1:02:13
COVID response people are also Trump cult members. And I know this from firsthand
1:02:21
experience because when COVID first hit here in southern California, because we were getting
1:02:25
the worst restrictions in the country, there was a movement to put on these
1:02:30
counter protests and I was asked to speak at several of them because I had
1:02:36
done a viral video about my speech to the local board of supervisors here in
1:02:42
our county north of Los Angeles that you know, castigated them for mask Man
1:02:49
dates back in May of twenty twenty that went viral around the world. So
1:02:52
I was asked to speak at these protest rallies. And it was very obvious
1:03:00
from the get go that almost everybody that attended these things were not just Trump
1:03:05
fans, but they were Trump cult members. And these things effectively became Trump
1:03:12
rallies. And so after I guess I went to two or three of them,
1:03:15
I just stopped. And I think that the organizers were probably happy with
1:03:19
me not doing them anymore, because, you know, I would throw in
1:03:23
barbs against Donald Trump. In fact, I think the first one I did,
1:03:28
I even joked, you know, when it came to Trump, I
1:03:30
was promised that there would be balls. Where are the balls? I mean,
1:03:36
that's one of the attributes of Trump that I actually thought was potentially productive.
1:03:40
I was promised that there would be balls. Where are the balls?
1:03:45
And and so that was not a message that the people that these rallies wanted
1:03:50
to hear because because there's it's it's incredibly counterintuitive given Trump's roll in all this,
1:03:58
but that's Trump's bay and weirdly, and I think that Santist people didn't
1:04:04
understand this, and I did not understand this, that blaming Faucci doesn't do
1:04:11
anything for De santist when it comes to picking away Trump's support. In fact,
1:04:17
it actually does the opposite, because we live in opposite world. Blaming
1:04:23
Faucci gives Trump an out in the minds of strong Trump supporters. In the
1:04:30
minds of strong Trump supporters, that means it wasn't Trump's fault. It was
1:04:36
Fauci's fault. Now, to a rational person, they like a De Santis
1:04:42
supporter, goes, well, that doesn't make any sense, because it was
1:04:45
Trump that didn't fire Fauci. He put him on television, he backed him.
1:04:48
Fauci said what a great job Trump was doing and doing everything he told
1:04:51
him to do. He gave him an award on his last day of office,
1:04:56
the whole bit. But to the Trump mind, no, no,
1:05:00
no, this means it wasn't Trump's fault and he's learned the lesson and he's
1:05:03
not going to do it again. Going back to the oj and OUCHI I
1:05:08
remember there are people saying the same thing about, oh, well, you
1:05:11
know, we should let him off because he's never going to do this again.
1:05:14
What I mean people actually thought this, and I guess the Trump mindset,
1:05:19
there's some rationality that well he was, he did such a terrible job
1:05:23
on COVID the first time, that he's learned, because you know, Trump
1:05:26
is nothing but somebody who would learn from his own mistakes and never repeat them.
1:05:30
Right, that somehow he gets the opportunity to do this again, he'll
1:05:34
be better prepared and there won't be a Fauci this time. And that's the
1:05:38
way they're thinking, because they don't want to accept that their hero isn't isn't
1:05:43
who they thought he was, That he's a fraud, a fake, a
1:05:45
phony, a coward who was easily manipulated by Fauci. And when it really
1:05:51
came time to show balls, he came up tiny and DeSantis was the one
1:05:57
who saved the day. But none of those people want are all. Very
1:06:00
few of those people want to accept that reality because it makes them feel badly
1:06:04
about themselves. And that's what this is, unfortunately, really all about.
1:06:09
It's not about policy, it's not about what's best for the country. It's
1:06:13
about how the candidate makes me feel about me. It's pathetic, but that's
1:06:18
where we are, and that's I think the crux of what's going on when
1:06:24
it comes to Trump and the Santis and this issue of the COVID response,
1:06:29
where Trump is all over the map because he gives his cult options. If
1:06:33
you want to believe he's in favor of lockdowns and mask mandates and vaccine mandates,
1:06:39
then fine. If you want to believe he's the champion against them,
1:06:44
here's your evidence for that. And the idea that the guy who was bragged
1:06:46
about Operation Warped Speed with the vaccine is now condemning vaccine mandates because he knows
1:06:54
his bass is against them is frankly hilarious. And a lot of this is
1:06:59
coming up because of the fact that mask mandates, or at least mask usage
1:07:02
is back in the news because many media outlets and some so called experts are
1:07:06
longing for the days of mask mandates. And there was a fascinating thing that
1:07:14
happened on CNN this past weekend. Doctor Fauci went on CNN to be interviewed
1:07:19
by a guy my name of Michael's mcconnish, now six degrees of John Ziegler.
1:07:24
I know Michael mcconnish pretty well. I used to fill in for him
1:07:29
decades ago in his Philadelphia radio show, and we've appeared on television in Philadelphia
1:07:33
several times. We kind of guess had a little bit of a rivalry.
1:07:39
Michael, I think was better than me on the radio back in those days,
1:07:44
but I was better than Michael on television. And I even sensed that
1:07:47
when we were on television together, he was a little bit afraid of me.
1:07:51
And I was very skeptical of Michael, even though I agreed with a
1:07:56
lot of what he said. He's a conservative, he's much soft you're conservative
1:08:00
in both tone and belief than I am. But generally we agree on a
1:08:04
lot of things. But I was skeptical of him because he's, you know,
1:08:09
one of these guys who went bald on purpose, and he used to
1:08:12
wear a fedora when he was in Philadelphia, when he was on television.
1:08:15
You know, it just felt like a showman's type of thing to do.
1:08:18
And I was always very skeptical of that kind of person. But by and
1:08:24
large I had respect for him. And then if you're a fan of the
1:08:28
With the Benefit of Hindsight podcast, and if you really listened to every minute
1:08:31
of that, you know, epic podcast about the Penn Stage, Joe Paternel
1:08:34
Jason Dusky scandal, you may recall that I was critical of Michael smerconish because
1:08:40
I knew he was buddies with a lot of the plaintiffs attorneys, the accusers
1:08:44
attorneys, and it felt to me like he was even doing the bidding for
1:08:47
a lot of those attorneys during the case. And in fact, he had
1:08:51
written an article out of the blue about Mike mcqueerie that in retrospect I truly
1:08:59
believe was planted with misinformation, dramatic misinformation. Now I've not talked about this
1:09:06
publicly, but I guess it was about a year or so ago Michael and
1:09:12
I got back in touch. It was a little bit over a year ago
1:09:15
because I had seen him at the Reagan Library a presentation for a book that
1:09:21
he had written, and long story short, we had some phone conversations.
1:09:25
We talked extensively about the Sandusky case, and I still think he might have
1:09:30
been manipulated in doing what he did, but I don't think it was on
1:09:34
purpose, because he's very open minded, as overminded as I like him to
1:09:39
be, but he's very open minded about the case itself. And I've sent
1:09:42
him a lot of stuff and we've continued communication, and so I've always been
1:09:47
a little conflicted about Michael's mcconnish, and I hope I'm wrong about a lot
1:09:51
of my suspicions about Michael, but I got to give him credit and I
1:09:56
did so via text for what he attempted to do this past weekend CNN where
1:10:00
he confronted doctor Fauci, probably more strongly than anybody in the media at least
1:10:06
that I've seen, has done on the issue of the efficacy of masks.
1:10:13
And this was really rather remarkable, now what Michael did here on CNN,
1:10:19
which is why it's kind of amazing for this to occur on CNN. But
1:10:25
Michael had Fauci on and he referenced the Cochering Review, which was basically a
1:10:31
conglomeration of masks studies which they put together to show that masks do not work,
1:10:39
and even in ninety five, masks do not work when it comes to
1:10:44
stopping the spread or stopping people from getting COVID or as I've already stated,
1:10:47
passing it along. And this I'm gonna play this clip for you here.
1:10:53
This is the primary clip. This is Michael S. Mcconnish on CNN detailing
1:10:59
the New York Times column which happened months ago that we talked about this on
1:11:03
the podcast, this column in The New York Times, which, of course
1:11:09
then The New York Times felt obligated to basically contradict a couple of weeks later
1:11:15
with a BS liberal columnist trying to claim the opposite that, of course masks
1:11:19
do work, and we don't want our customer base to feel badly about having
1:11:23
been duped into wearing masks for a couple of years, because that's what this
1:11:27
is really all about. It's about customer maintenance. But here is Smerconish confronting
1:11:34
I think that's it might be too strong a word, but it's a fair
1:11:36
word, confronting doctor Fauci on the issue of the efficacy of masks in quite
1:11:44
a detailed fashion. And then Fauci's, at least the first portion of his
1:11:48
very lame response, Brett Stevens and The Times talked about Cochrane put that on
1:11:54
the screen. The most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the
1:11:58
efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illness, including COVID nineteen,
1:12:03
was published last month. Its conclusions, said Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist
1:12:09
who is the lead author, were unambiguous. There is just no evidence that
1:12:13
they masks make any difference, he told the journalist Mayen Demasi full stop.
1:12:18
But wait, hold on, what about the N ninety five masks as opposed
1:12:21
to the lower quality surgical or cloth masks. Makes no difference, none of
1:12:26
it, He said, Well, what about the studies that initially persuaded policymakers
1:12:30
to impose masks mandates? They were convinced by non randomized studies, flawed observational
1:12:36
studies. How do we get beyond that finding of that particular review. Yeah,
1:12:43
but there are other studies, Michael, that show at an individual level,
1:12:46
for individual, when you're talking about the effect on the epidemic of the
1:12:51
pandemic as a whole, the data are less strong. Now, this is
1:12:57
one of the many differences between Michael's mcconnish John Ziggler for better or for worse.
1:13:02
I respect what Michael was doing there, and I understand the restrictions,
1:13:08
and he surely felt like he was under doing this in front of Fauci himself
1:13:12
and doing this on CNN, and probably in Michael's mind, took a lot
1:13:15
of bravery to do this. Now, if John Zigler was doing this I
1:13:19
would have been a lot more aggressive with Faucci on this, especially given his
1:13:25
response. So let's take a look at Fauci's basic response was, well,
1:13:29
look, Michael, we have other studies, and yes, from a community
1:13:34
standpoint, mandates didn't do very well. But individually, we have evidence via
1:13:41
these studies that masks do in fact work when it comes to combating COVID.
1:13:47
Now there's two elements of this. One. If that's true, Fauci is
1:13:53
basically acknowledging that mask mandates don't work. I'll get to that momentarily, and
1:13:59
that's the key issue, but I do at least want to address the substantive
1:14:02
part of this idea that individually masks might not work. I mean, sorry,
1:14:08
individually they might work while not working for the community. Well, I
1:14:13
have said continually, and it's you know, it's so obvious, and yet
1:14:16
it never gets stated. When it comes to masks, we don't need no
1:14:21
stinking studies because we have real world evidence, unprecedented real world evidence for over
1:14:34
three years throughout the entire world, in areas that used extremely stringent masks mandates
1:14:45
to areas of the world that didn't have any mask mandate at all. The
1:14:51
reason why normally in science you need a study is because it's not feasible to
1:15:00
have a real world experiment where you have enough data to where it would tell
1:15:06
you what reality is. That's what studies are for. Studies are trying to
1:15:13
create a situation where in a controlled environment, we're going to figure out what
1:15:18
would happen if the whole world went through this without the whole world having to
1:15:24
go through it. But when it came to COVID, we had the unprecedented
1:15:30
situation where simultaneously much of the world was completely masked up, some of it
1:15:36
was not masked up at all, and we had extensive and once again unprecedented
1:15:45
data telling us how many people were getting COVID, how many people were dying
1:15:50
of COVID, and what have you. So there's no need for any studies.
1:15:57
And when a topic is as polite criticized as mask, mandates have been
1:16:01
from the very very beginning, because they were seen by liberals as an anti
1:16:06
Trump virtue signal. That's what masks were, That's how they became popular on
1:16:12
the left. That's why Fauci flipped his opinion on MASK because he saw his
1:16:16
political base was embracing and demanding mask mandates. So on a topic this political
1:16:24
studies are inherently, in this day and age, not credible because they're always
1:16:30
going to come up with the conclusion that they know their audience once and when
1:16:35
it comes to so many of these alleged studies that justify masks are pathetic,
1:16:40
not just in there in the way that the study is performed and that they're
1:16:45
not scientifically credible, but also in the results they get. The best they
1:16:49
can ever come up with is that there's some marginal, on the edge advantage
1:16:56
to wearing a mask, and that's from people who are clearly manipulating the time
1:17:00
periods, so that mask mandates and masks themselves can be somehow justified, and
1:17:05
it's with COVID. It's incredibly easy to do because the cases are always rising
1:17:11
and falling and what is a fairly predictable fashion. So if you spart the
1:17:15
study at a time period where cases are falling, and then you stop it
1:17:20
as soon as they start going up again, guess what's gonna happen. You're
1:17:24
gonna find some statistical evidence that masks might work. But we don't need a
1:17:30
politically biased study. We have the data, and the data could not be
1:17:34
more clear cut. If masks worked, there would be overwhelming Once again,
1:17:41
to use the favored analogy of this podcast, there will be O. J.
1:17:45
Simpson level of evidence that masks worked, and there's zero, none,
1:17:50
zilch, nada in the real world. And Fauci effectively seems to acknowledge that.
1:17:57
But what he doesn't acknowledge and what didn't confront him on is okay,
1:18:02
doctor Fauci, if what you're saying is true. Let's say that there's some
1:18:06
weird magic or phenomenon that somehow, individually masks work. I guess the theory
1:18:13
here would be for people who understand how to use their masks properly, there's
1:18:17
some benefit. But because society is such a bunch of morons and we don't
1:18:21
know how to use mask properly, it doesn't work from a community standpoint,
1:18:26
right, if you've you acknowledge that, which I don't. But if you
1:18:30
acknowledge that, then what's the argument for mask mandates in a free society.
1:18:38
There is no argument for mask mandates in a free society if you've acknowledged that.
1:18:44
There's no positive impact of mask mandates on the community spread for whatever reason,
1:18:50
And Fauci has acknowledged that in this mccanish interview. Now, will that
1:18:57
create any news coverage at all? No, of course, not even on
1:18:59
the people haven't fully picked up on this. To what extent this got media
1:19:03
coverage On the right, it was oh my gosh, Faucci got asked about
1:19:08
this on CNN. Can you believe it? Which I understand that's part of
1:19:12
what makes this newsworthy. It's almost, you know, a man bites dog
1:19:15
type of situation, considering where CNN has been on this and other COVID related
1:19:19
issues for the last three years. But Faucci as usual. You know,
1:19:25
I don't think he's very bright. He's certainly not credible, and ironically,
1:19:30
I mean, I mean, if all the amazingly insane facts from the last
1:19:36
three plus years of COVID, it's hard to beat the fact that the only
1:19:42
subject on which Faucci has admitted he was wrong is the only subject he was
1:19:46
actually correct, and that is at the beginning when he said, masks don't
1:19:54
work, don't bother wearing a mask. I'm paraphrasing, but that's essentially what
1:19:58
he said in early March twenty on sixty minutes. Amazingly, that's still on
1:20:01
YouTube you can find it for yourself. We've played it here on the podcast
1:20:05
previously. I mean, he mocked masks. He mocked masks, and the
1:20:11
only thing he is apologized for was while lying, while lying, claiming that
1:20:16
he came up with that because he didn't want there to be a run on
1:20:19
masks. Bullshit, complete bullshit, And it's the only thing he's apologized for,
1:20:26
and it's the only thing he was one hundred percent right on. And
1:20:29
that to me is just so classic and typical of the upside down world in
1:20:32
which we live, and it really encompasses our COVID response in many many ways.
1:20:40
Now moving on, although Fauci is involved in this next subject, I
1:20:44
want to reference a couple of interviews that my former colleague slash acquaintance, Tucker
1:20:50
Carlson did over the last several days. Of course, he's been, you
1:20:55
know, very much in the news because of his interview with or We Will
1:21:00
an interview is his mutual appearance on Twitter with Donald Trump as counter programming for
1:21:05
the first Republican presidential debate. But then he's also done an interview with Adam
1:21:12
Carolla, a guy who I know a little bit been on his show before.
1:21:15
I like Adam a lot. And he also did an interview with Dave
1:21:18
Portnoy from Barstool, who I've talked about previously. Because he's getting all sorts
1:21:24
of credit for this amazing financial deal that he pulled off to get Barstool back
1:21:30
after having sold off much of it to a casino company. I think that's
1:21:34
been a bit overplayed. And now we hear that Barstool has laid off about
1:21:39
a quarter of its staff. And I'm just to this point now where all
1:21:43
these rich guys, whether it's Tucker Carlson and Dave Portnoy or Clay Travis or
1:21:49
you know, these guys who have made a ton of money and gotten there's
1:21:53
gotten their share of all this, and they claimed to be men of the
1:21:56
people, that they're basically all frauds. I mean, that's that's you know,
1:22:00
that's that's my knee jerk reaction until proven otherwise. And I think there's
1:22:06
more evidence that I'm right about this now. In the Adam Carolla interview,
1:22:12
Tucker condemned Fauci, yet he never asked Trump about Fauci or the COVID response.
1:22:19
I mean, he mocked Fauci, and then he also claimed, and
1:22:24
this is where the point where I'm never sure with Tucker if he if he's
1:22:28
losing his mind, if he's just trying to instigate, what his motivation is.
1:22:34
But he effectively predicted that Trump is going to be assassinated in his interview
1:22:40
with with Adam Caroll. The Corolla did the interview, Tucker was the subject,
1:22:44
and and it was kind of an aside, but it got a lot
1:22:46
of news coverage on the right, you know, and it was all from
1:22:49
the standpoint of home, my god, the deep State, you know,
1:22:53
the next thing they're gonna do is they're gonna kill Trump, which, of
1:22:58
course, I always go back to my premise that once you buy into,
1:23:02
for instance, to kennedy assassination being a CIA plot, which Tucker does with
1:23:08
no evidence, based upon one unnamed source that he for some reason believes and
1:23:13
I've gone to great lens to disprove that entire concept that the CIA killed Kennedy
1:23:18
in nineteen sixty three. But once you believe that, every conspiracy theory actor
1:23:23
that is very easy to buy, and it's very easy to buy that somehow
1:23:27
the deep State is going to take Trump out. Well, okay, if
1:23:30
that was even remotely part of the plan, then why wouldn't they have already
1:23:35
done that. They're just going to use that as the backup plan in case
1:23:40
these indictments don't work. I mean, it's just so silly, and you
1:23:45
know, I do find it kind of interesting. I keep using the OJ
1:23:48
example today for some reason, but I think they're all very relevant. It's
1:23:53
amazing to me when you think about people who have not been assassinated, how
1:23:57
OJ Simpson has never apparently had an attempt may on his life, considering how
1:24:00
divisive he is. And granted he was in jail for a long time,
1:24:04
which probably protected him, but you know, here's a guy who is hated
1:24:09
by an enormous number of people in this country and is very easily accessible,
1:24:13
and yet there's been no attempt on his life. Well, Trump obviously is
1:24:16
much less accessible, has Secret Service protection, and there's apparently never been a
1:24:21
serious attempt on his life, which is I guess good news. It's also
1:24:26
kind of amazing considering how many nut jobs there are in this country that nothing
1:24:30
like this is has seemingly been attempted to this point. Now, why Tucker
1:24:34
is doing this, I don't know. It certainly feeds into his conspiracy theory.
1:24:40
Narrative. It's also kind of like what I said with Greg Kelly,
1:24:43
that this is predictive reportings, because of course, if it doesn't happen,
1:24:46
that's good news, and no one will remember it. If it does happen
1:24:50
somehow, or if there's even an attempt on Trump's life, Tucker will be
1:24:55
hailed as a soothsayer and a truth teller and being prescient, and oh my
1:25:00
god, Tucker warned us about this. It also elevates Trump to this person
1:25:06
that is so dangerous to the establishment that they may now have to assassinate him,
1:25:11
which of course only helps him in a Republican primary. And I've said
1:25:15
many times that Tucker is Trump's MVP. So all of that is just disgusting
1:25:19
and I'm baffled and frustrated and depressed about what has happened to Tucker Carlson.
1:25:27
And then there was the interview that Tucker did with Dave Portnoy, where literally
1:25:31
just after having helped Donald Trump avoid the Republican debate, he told Portnoy that
1:25:40
he wished that Trump had done the debate and that he agrees with Portnoy that
1:25:45
both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are too old to be president, so he
1:25:53
rips fauci. Tucker does in his interview with Adam Carolla never asked Trump about
1:25:59
anything, aren't in the COVID response, and then Tucker says Trump should have
1:26:03
been doing the debate. He never really confronted Trump about that, he asked
1:26:09
him about it, but just basically put it up as a softball and a
1:26:12
silver platter for Trump to knock it out of the park. There was nothing
1:26:15
condemning him for being a coward, for not wanting to face real questioning,
1:26:19
which he didn't get from Tucker Carlson. And then nothing about the age issue.
1:26:25
So Tucker said he one hundred percent agrees with David Portnoy that both Biden
1:26:30
and Trump are too old to be president. Yet Tucker never asked Trump about
1:26:33
any of those things. What a complete and total sellout. It's just sad
1:26:39
what has happened to Tucker Carlson. I would love to understand why. You
1:26:43
know. In our last episode, Matt lewis the author conservative author and nine
1:26:46
had I think a very interesting discussion theorizing about what's really gone going on with
1:26:51
Tucker Carlson, and Matt knows Tucker much more so than I do, and
1:26:57
So if you're interested in trying to figure that out this miss three, go
1:27:00
back and listen to the last hour or so of episode eighty five and the
1:27:03
discussion between me and Matt lewis where we get into what the hell's going on
1:27:10
with Tucker Carlson. There's also been a lot of coverage about what the hell's
1:27:14
going on with Mitch McConnell, the senator from Kentucky Senate minority leader who,
1:27:19
for the second time, and really, I guess about a month or so,
1:27:24
completely froze up at a press conference. I mean totally froze up,
1:27:32
looking lost, looking even older than he is, unable to respond ironically enough
1:27:41
to a question about whether or not he is going to run for re election
1:27:44
in twenty twenty six. And this really understandably set a lot of people off
1:27:50
on the entire age issue when you combine it with Biden, and you combine
1:27:55
it with Diane Feinstein here in California, the senator who really has no idea
1:28:00
what tells going on, and somewhat related to John Fetterman and his stroke issue,
1:28:04
of course, the hypocrisy on the media about how seriously they're taking the
1:28:09
Mitch McConnell freeze in comparison to the way they they protected John Fetterman is really
1:28:15
quite striking. I mean, McConnell obviously has a very important position as the
1:28:19
Senate Minority leader, but you know, this is the end of the world
1:28:25
when Mitch McConnell freezes us up at a press conference. Meanwhile, you know,
1:28:29
Fetterman usually can't put two sentences together, and that's no problem because that's
1:28:34
somehow a medical condition. And this is much more serious because presumably it's it's
1:28:40
old age. Now I don't know what's causing it. McConnell's doctors say that
1:28:46
he's perfectly healthy enough to continue working. You know, the two elements of
1:28:53
this thing that I find most interesting, I mean six degrees of John Ziegler.
1:28:56
I've stated this before. I believe Mitch McConnell had a major your role
1:29:00
in my firing in Louisville, Kentucky, where he's from, when I was
1:29:03
a radio talk show host and a TV host there. I can't prove that,
1:29:08
but I have circumstantial evidence to indicate that he played a significant role in
1:29:13
that. And so I've never been a personal fan of Mitch McConnell. I
1:29:17
was actually pretty tough on him when I was there in Louisville, But I've
1:29:23
also got a lot of respect for him when it came to his strategic ability
1:29:30
to, for instance, get judicial nominees through, specifically when it came to
1:29:33
Brett Kavanaugh and others. I think that he is a very good tactician.
1:29:40
I think that he is has been, at least until recently, a very
1:29:45
very smart guy politically. You know, even you know Congressman John Yarmouth,
1:29:50
formerly a very very good friend of mine from Louisville, Kentucky, who is
1:29:54
the arch enemy of Mitch McConnell, has said that he considered Mitch McConnell to
1:29:59
be one of the smartest people he's ever dealt with in politics, And to
1:30:03
see now him unable to even physically respond to basic questions is quite startling and
1:30:12
sad and troubling. In a rational world, McConnell should probably resign. We
1:30:18
don't live in that world. Diane Einstein should not be in her role as
1:30:25
a California Senator. But you know, we have a situation now where no
1:30:29
one wants to give up power. No one wants to go from being very
1:30:31
powerful to completely irrelevant, especially in old age Plus you have staffers who are
1:30:36
very much invested in their boss keeping the job, because if there's a new
1:30:41
senator, they're out of a job. And in most cases, and then
1:30:45
there's the issue of how this theoretically should be relating to the Republican presidential nominating
1:30:51
process. If we were living in a remotely rational world, this issue of
1:30:57
age, which is clearly at the four run of the average person's thinking,
1:31:01
I mean, and Dave Portnoy articulated this in his interview with Tucker Carlson.
1:31:06
The average person is looking at McConnell and Feinstein and maybe Fetterman and certainly Biden,
1:31:13
and yes, even Trump and going, what the hell is going on
1:31:16
here? Can't we get some people who are younger and more nimble and more
1:31:20
with it than what we have? Is this really the best that we can
1:31:25
come up with? And in that environment, going with Donald Trump, who
1:31:30
if elected, will be in his eighties well before his term is over,
1:31:34
his one term in office is over, seems like political idiocy, political suicide.
1:31:41
Where this is the most basic and obvious and eye level issue that Americans
1:31:48
can understand. Everyone has an experience with age. Everyone understands what's happening to
1:31:55
Joe Biden, it's the number one reason why he's not crushing Trump in these
1:32:00
general election polls. And to contrast Joe Biden as this elderly swamp figure,
1:32:09
we're gonna put up Donald Trump, who's almost as old and almost as swampy,
1:32:13
and maybe more corrupt and indicted four times. That's the contrast you want
1:32:18
for the general election when you have the alternative of a forty four year old
1:32:23
sitting governor with a hot wife and an awesome cadre of kids, young kids,
1:32:30
who I mean, that's that's really that's what you want to do.
1:32:33
You want to go with Trump in this situation instead of the Santis, where
1:32:36
De Santis provides the perfect contrast. Given the mood of the country and everything
1:32:45
that's going on in our politics and the way that the average person is looking
1:32:47
at this, it's just further evidence that this decision is the easiest that has
1:32:53
ever occurred in the history of Republican nominating processes. And it appears for all
1:32:59
the world that by a large margin, Republicans are going to blow this very
1:33:03
easy test. This is basically two plus two equals for and somehow it looks
1:33:08
like Republican voters are going to come up with seven. That's really where we're
1:33:13
at on this. And as far as Trump and the issue of who's going
1:33:16
to be his vice presidential nominee, because I have said this is a question
1:33:20
that should be asked of him continually, because no one is going to work
1:33:24
in his administration should he somehow get elected the second time, and who he
1:33:27
picks as vice president might be the most significant in the history of Republican politics,
1:33:32
even more so than John McCain's, not just because of Trump's age,
1:33:36
but because of what happens next with the Republican Party, because his vice presidential
1:33:42
nominee, even if he loses, will kind of be an heir to the
1:33:45
throne of this cult that Trump has created on the right. Well, Glenn
1:33:51
Beck, who I criticized for doing a very softball interview with the guy he
1:33:57
used to load, at least publicly used to load, and Donald Trump,
1:34:00
in an interview that I discussed in the episode eighty five of the podcast,
1:34:03
he also asked Trump, and I didn't realize this at the time, so
1:34:08
I'm kind of catching up on this. He asked Trump in a way that
1:34:12
I didn't really appreciate because it was I think promoting the fake Obama swammy as
1:34:16
well as of promoting the idea that Trump is inevitable and that Trump is going
1:34:21
to be the nominee, and also just the tone of it. You're going
1:34:24
to hear Back laughing and going along with Trump what Trump says here, But
1:34:29
Back did ask Donald Trump in that interview about the fake Obama swammy, He
1:34:35
didn't refer to him as the fake Obama swammy, and whether or not Trump
1:34:40
would consider him as a vice presidential nominee. And here's what that sounded like.
1:34:45
On Ben Glennbeck's show last week, last question, you said that you
1:34:49
weren't you weren't going, but you would be watching the debate for a vice
1:34:56
president? Have you thought of vice president and Ramaswami? Well, I think
1:35:02
he's great. Look anybody that said I'm the best president in the generation,
1:35:06
I don't know. You'll have to define generation. And he said it a
1:35:12
couple of times, and he said it in a hundred years. So I
1:35:15
have to like a guy like that, you know, I can't get upset
1:35:16
with him. But he's a smart guy. He's a young guy, he's
1:35:21
got a lot of talent. He's a very very very intelligent person. He's
1:35:27
got good energy, and he could be in some form of something. I'll
1:35:30
tell you, I think he'd be very good. I think he's very good.
1:35:32
I think he's really distinguished himself. He's starting to get out there a
1:35:35
little bit. He's a little bit getting a little bit controversial. I can
1:35:39
tell him, be a little bit careful. Here's something you have to hold
1:35:44
in just a little bit, right. He's got a lot of good energy,
1:35:47
I will tell you. And he's he's he's been very nice to me
1:35:51
and and you know most of them have, other than Christy, don't think
1:35:54
it. Christy left with an eight percent approval rating. He was tied up
1:35:58
in Bridgegate the whole It was amazing. How there is Yeah, there's so
1:36:04
much of that that I think is interesting and worth pointing out. Again,
1:36:08
I don't like the way that Glenn handled it for the reasons I've already stated
1:36:13
and you've probably heard for yourself right there. Also this is you know,
1:36:17
evidence one thousand and one that the way that Trump's heart is simply by complimenting
1:36:24
him. That if you compliment Trump, he's not able to criticize you.
1:36:28
Because that's the number one issue in the world, are you pro Trump or
1:36:30
not pro Trump? And if you are pro Trump, are you pro Trump
1:36:33
enough? And you know, the fake Obama Swamy has made it more clear
1:36:39
than anyone else in the race that he is very, very pro Trump,
1:36:42
which I predicted from the beginning. I've referred to him on television multiple times
1:36:46
as a Trump surrogate. I believe I've been greatly vindicated than that, and
1:36:50
now here we have the specter that he could theoretically, and the way I
1:36:55
interpret that is I'm considering him, but you know, he's got along to
1:37:00
go to prove to me that you know he deserves the VP slot, which
1:37:03
basically means, you know, kiss up some more the fake and we'll see
1:37:06
what happens. That's the way I interpreted what Trump said there. I don't
1:37:12
know who Trump's VP nominee is going to be, assuming that we get that
1:37:15
far, but I do think it's going to be an important choice, and
1:37:18
I'm pretty confident that it will be the wrong one. And I think the
1:37:21
fake Obama Swammy would clearly be the wrong one for a number of reasons.
1:37:26
And by the way, he might be a little too smart and a little
1:37:29
too dangerous for Trump to name as his VP. I think that Trump is
1:37:36
unlikely to go for somebody who could theoretically snatch his cult away from him if
1:37:43
given the proper platform, and Obama Swammy might be too dangerous for that particular
1:37:48
job. So if I had a gun to my head, I said,
1:37:50
I don't think for Fake is going to be Trump's VP nominee. I mentioned
1:37:56
at the very beginning of the show, I wanted to talk a little bit
1:37:58
about how ESPN, which I loathe the sports network for so many different reasons,
1:38:04
is dying. And there's been some major developments on that front, really
1:38:09
kind of extraordinary developments over the last week or so. Specifically, Spectrum Cable
1:38:15
has dropped ESPN as well as many Disney channels from their lineup in a dispute
1:38:23
over payment. And this means that ESPN is essentially overnight lost about twenty maybe
1:38:30
twenty five percent, depending on how you do the numbers of their subscribers at
1:38:34
a very critical time period where they've got the beginning of college football, and
1:38:40
they've got the US Open tennis tournament going on, and obviously the NFL starting
1:38:45
coming up this week. I mean, this is a huge time for ESPN
1:38:48
when they're already in financial straits. They've had enormous cutbacks, which we've discussed
1:38:54
on the podcast previously, and you know, they've lost a lot of audience
1:38:59
for a lot of different reasons. I would like to believe at least some
1:39:02
of it is because they are so incredibly politically woke to an absurd and extreme
1:39:08
degree. I've been a critic of ESPN for a long time, largely because
1:39:14
of their horrendous coverage of the Penn State Joe Paterno Jerry Sandusky scandal, which
1:39:18
I spent most of the last eleven or twelve years debunking. And this is
1:39:24
a complicated issue, but trying to narrow this down to the brass tacks.
1:39:28
Basically, what's happened is, as I have stated many times before, the
1:39:32
business model of the news and the sports media is completely broken. And the
1:39:39
business model used to be based in commercials. Well, commercials are no longer
1:39:44
really the same money maker that they used to be because we can avoid commercials
1:39:49
now in so many different ways, because we can channel change, it's on
1:39:54
DVR, we can fast forward through them. There's so many different ways to
1:39:58
avoid commercials, and audiences are so fragmented that commercial time is just not nearly
1:40:03
as valuable in virtually all aspects of media as it used to be, and
1:40:11
a lot of ESPN's business model, and by the way, the entire professional
1:40:15
sports landscape is built upon a false premise of what commercial time was going to
1:40:20
be worth. And now we're in a death spiral where essentially the cable companies
1:40:28
understand that ESPN is gonna go. They basically telegraph this, They're gonna go
1:40:33
to paid streaming services. So instead of getting this for free, you're gonna
1:40:38
have to pay directly ESPN because previously ESPN of the greatest boondoggle in the history
1:40:45
of the world, where non sports fans were paying like ten dollars a month
1:40:50
for ESPN because that was a part of their cable subscription, whether they ever
1:40:56
used or watched ESPN or not. Well, that gravy train is coming to
1:41:00
an end, and the cable companies are realizing, wait a minute, you
1:41:04
know you're going to screw us, so you know, we're not going to
1:41:08
continue on with this with this current deal. And I don't know how this
1:41:12
is gonna shake out. I really don't, because we may be in a
1:41:15
situation where there's it's not possible for there to be a deal that makes sense
1:41:20
for everybody. But I do know that, you know, money is the
1:41:25
root of all evil, and ESPN is the root of all evil when it
1:41:29
comes to sports and specifically college sports. Uh, it's great news to me
1:41:35
that ESPN is dying because I hate ESPN, but they're taking college sports and
1:41:42
specifically college football with them as they are dying. And let's be clear,
1:41:46
television drove everything on this. Television and the roller coaster ride and the broken
1:41:53
business model and the changing media landscape that that ESPN was slow to adapt to
1:42:00
has caused, either directly or indirectly, all of these changes, specifically in
1:42:04
college sports, all of the realignments that are completely insane, and as I've
1:42:10
already mentioned in this podcast, you know, blow up the carbon footprint idea
1:42:16
that exposes it as a complete absurdity and hypocrisy because no one seems to care
1:42:21
that these these athletic teams are going to be traveling across the country in planes
1:42:27
when they never did so previously because it used to be a regional game.
1:42:30
Well, regional games don't do anything for national television. May want national television
1:42:36
matchups, ESPN does, and so ESPN is driving the bus, and of
1:42:42
course they're also reporting on this, which is an inherent conflict of interest.
1:42:46
I mean, you know, going once again, I'm going to set a
1:42:50
record for OJ analogies. But this is also a lot like you know,
1:42:54
OJ reporting on his own murders somehow. I mean, ESPN's killing college football
1:43:00
and an ESPN is reporting on ow ESPN is killing college football. Of course,
1:43:04
they're not doing so in a fair manner at all. In fact,
1:43:08
oftentimes they're doing in a delusional fashion where they're just not even acknowledging that television
1:43:15
has driven so many of these changes. And it's not just by the way
1:43:17
organizationally. It's not just conference realignment. It's even on the field. I
1:43:24
mean, I think the game on the field has completely changed. We've talked
1:43:30
before about the over emphasis on safety, which has changed not just the fact
1:43:35
that the game is way softer than it ever was before, but it is
1:43:40
allowed and basically forced teams to go with running quarterbacks, which you know,
1:43:44
there have always been running quarterbacks in college football, but now almost everybody's a
1:43:49
running quarterback. Because the quarterback is so protected and you can get away with
1:43:54
it. You're not going to get your quarterback injured. Especially in the Pro
1:43:57
ball, you're not gonna get your quarterback nearly injured as you used to.
1:44:00
There could never be a running quarterback in the NFL because you wouldn't survive an
1:44:04
entire season. But now they protect the quarterbacks so much that it's changed the
1:44:10
way the game is played. And we've seen it just this weekend with college
1:44:15
football starting. They've even changed the rules with regard to the way the clock
1:44:18
is managed because of television. And you know, UCLA's coach actually chided a
1:44:26
sideline reporter at a halftime interview saying, I hope you guys sold a lot
1:44:30
more commercials because this game went really fast, So we're getting less play and
1:44:34
more commercials, all because the business model is broken. They've literally changed the
1:44:39
rules of the game about when they stopped the clock. The game itself is
1:44:44
soft and unrecognizable to someone who grew up in the seventies and eighties and nineties
1:44:48
as a huge college football fan like I am, and so basically everything about
1:44:54
it has been destroyed, and it's all a direct line back to television in
1:44:58
general and ESPN and particular, and it's really kind of hard to find things
1:45:03
at least for me to like about college football. And however, there was
1:45:10
an amazing storyline that occurred this first weekend, and that is involving Dion Sanders
1:45:15
in Colorado. Now, you may recall, if you're an avid fan of
1:45:17
this podcast, several months ago, I pointed to Dion Sanders as the new
1:45:23
head coach at Colorado, and I said, keep an eye on this,
1:45:27
because this is interesting because here we have, you know, prime Time,
1:45:30
a guy who, when he played, I thought embodied the worst of everything
1:45:33
there was in professional sports, because it was all about him and his gold
1:45:38
change and his persona of Prime Time and me, me, me, and
1:45:43
not about the team. And now here he is, bizarrely in twenty twenty
1:45:47
three, maybe in some ways being the last bastion of old school you know,
1:45:56
character and principles and the way the game used to be played. And
1:46:01
because he can get away with it, and he can get away with it
1:46:04
one because he's a celebrity too, because he's a black guy, and so
1:46:09
he's allowed to coach in a way that other people are not allowed to coach.
1:46:13
The whole tough love concept, which I'm totally in favor of and which
1:46:16
I think has been lost, especially since the entire dynamic of college sports has
1:46:23
changed, where the coaches have no power, the players have all the power,
1:46:26
especially with nil money and instant transfers. So you know, it used
1:46:30
to be college coaches were gods. Now they have to beg nineteen year olds
1:46:34
not to leave the team if they get their feelings hurt. Well, I
1:46:40
said, look at Dion Sanders, because what's happening is it appears as if,
1:46:44
at least in the spring, it looked like his team was not responding
1:46:47
well to the tough love because they were all leaving in record numbers, almost
1:46:54
to an insane degree. I don't I wasn't even sure Colorado was going to
1:46:58
be able to field a full scholarship roster team when it came to the fall,
1:47:05
and somehow Sanders was able to at least do that. But there was
1:47:08
a lot of skepticism going into his first game against TCU, which got crushed
1:47:13
in the National Championship game last year against Georgia, whether or not Colorado was
1:47:17
going to live up anywhere close to all the hype surrounding Dion Sanders being this
1:47:24
new exciting head coach who's breaking all the normal rules of being a college coach,
1:47:30
and I was skeptical, not as skeptical as a lot of media members
1:47:34
were. I mean, there were people who were saying, Colorado's gonna get
1:47:38
crushed. Colorado sucks, they don't have the players, this whole experiment's going
1:47:43
to be a disaster. I was kind of in the middle. I'm like,
1:47:45
Okay, I'm curious. I'm actually rooting for Dion Sanders. It certainly
1:47:50
seems like a herculean task to put together an entire roster, even in the
1:47:55
transfer nil era, and be able to compete against major hours. But lo
1:48:00
and behold, Colorado not only competed, they beat TCU. It was by
1:48:05
far the biggest sports story of the past weekend. Now, of course the
1:48:09
media is all in on primetime because they realize what an amazingly great story this
1:48:15
is. Because you got somebody who crosses the generational divide. He's a celebrity
1:48:19
among virtually the entire population. He's a black guy again, so this is
1:48:26
new and exciting. You know, not that there's not been black coaches before,
1:48:30
but there's not been a black coach like this before and a major program.
1:48:34
I mean, this, Dion Sanders breaks the mold and he does so
1:48:40
in an entertaining fashion and in a way that I think has potential. Now,
1:48:44
look, it's one game TCO TCU might suck. So it's quite possible
1:48:49
that, you know, five or six weeks from now, the Colorado story
1:48:53
might look very, very different. It's also possible that the world has changed
1:48:59
that in this day and age, you know, with this kind of player,
1:49:02
in this era where you know, celebrity is everything and you've got to
1:49:08
be a players coach and you gotta let the players do what they want.
1:49:11
And you know what, it's going to motivate a player to not just to
1:49:15
come to your school with the play is something that Dean Sanders has that no
1:49:20
other coach is going to be able to match. And getting off to a
1:49:24
good start is key to this whole thing, because you know, it's all
1:49:28
about narrative. If it started off poorly, he would look ridiculous. Eventually,
1:49:32
If it starts off well, you get momentums, people start to believe,
1:49:38
and the media jumps on board. You keep winning. Look out because
1:49:43
if it goes in that direction, Deon's going to change college football forever.
1:49:47
So I mean, this could still go in a number of different directions.
1:49:50
But I find the Deon Sanders story to be very, very interesting, and
1:49:54
it's so typical at this upside down world we're living in, where maybe the
1:49:59
last hope, the last passion for old school principles when it comes to football
1:50:05
and coaching is going to be embodied by Deon Prime Science Sanders. It's just
1:50:11
impossible to have believed this twenty years ago, but this is where we are.
1:50:15
And you know, I'm rooting for Deon. I mean, I don't
1:50:18
agree with everything he says, but you know, from a from a bones
1:50:24
perspective, from a principal perspective, he is actually pretty darn conservative. He
1:50:29
ain't no liberal. I don't care what his opinion on abortion might be or
1:50:33
any other policy matter. When you talk about the way he looks at humanity,
1:50:38
the way he looks at the world, the way he looks at how
1:50:41
to get the best out of people, it is it's got conservative bones.
1:50:45
And I'm very curious to see whether or not he can make that a success,
1:50:49
and I hope that he can. Now. Obviously, when it comes
1:50:54
to college football, I'm always going to be associated with the Penn State,
1:50:58
Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky, JASCO there was a development this past week that
1:51:02
I want to at least mentioned, because there have been so few opportunities for
1:51:06
there to be any semblance of good news in this entire tumultuous period of my
1:51:15
life, probably the worst period of my life career wise, over the last
1:51:17
eleven or twelve years. So it's you know, particularly noteworthy when something nice
1:51:23
or good happens. And so I wanted to talk about that briefly on the
1:51:27
podcast Penn State. You know, they got rid of the Joe Paterno statue
1:51:30
in a panic back in twenty twelve in order to play Kate the NC Double
1:51:35
A, even though Joe Paterno did absolutely nothing wrong, and if you have
1:51:39
any doubts about that, check out our epic podcast with the benefit of hindsight.
1:51:44
Ever since then, there's been an attempt by the pro Paterno people to
1:51:49
do something in lieu of the statue that honors Penn States passed and their legacy,
1:51:58
if you will. And so what they've done next to the football stadium
1:52:01
is they have created the Penn State Legacy Plaza. Now, what this really
1:52:05
is is a kind of ingenious way of generating money because because people will pay
1:52:12
to have a brick laid into the foundation of Penn State's legacy Plaza, presumably
1:52:18
forever. Of course, I'm sure they thought that the Paterno statue was going
1:52:23
to be there forever, and that didn't work out very well. It was
1:52:27
removed almost immediately after he died for having nothing to do with anything that never
1:52:31
even happened. As insane as that is. So, this legacy Plaza as
1:52:36
given the opportunity for Penn State fans to basically leave a message, you know,
1:52:44
in brick next to Beaver Stadium in State College, Pennsylvania. Now,
1:52:48
there have been obvious restrictions on the content of what can be on that brick,
1:52:55
and I can tell you firsthand that anything even remotely with Penn State has
1:53:01
been extremely, if not impossibly difficult to get through to even remotely question the
1:53:12
conventional narrative on the whole Paterno Sandusky scandal. I mean, this has been
1:53:18
Soviet like where anything that Penn State even remotely touches you cannot in any way,
1:53:26
shape or form question the conventional narrative of that story because everybody at Penn
1:53:30
State who's in charge is deeply, deeply, deeply invested in the fairy tale
1:53:36
and so when the Legacy Plaza was announced, there were a lot of people
1:53:41
that came to me and said, Hey, John, do you think I
1:53:44
should try to put this message in or this message in? And I said,
1:53:46
you can try, but there's no way that it's going to get approved.
1:53:50
And sure enough, there were at least some people who tried to put
1:53:55
in something to the effect of Sandusky is innocent, and that got rejected.
1:54:00
But there was one that got in that said Graham Spaniard and Joe Paterno,
1:54:04
grand spaniar and former president of Penn State, has done an interview on this
1:54:09
podcast as well as a very extensive interview with the Benefit of Hindsight podcast that
1:54:14
was actually accepted. And I thought that was great. Wow, at least
1:54:16
there's going to be a brick there next to Beaver Stadium forever. Was somebody
1:54:20
saying that, you know, Grant Spanier and Joe Paterno did nothing wrong.
1:54:24
I thought that was a victory. And that was about as far as I
1:54:27
thought anyone could possibly go and get away with a message on this permanent brick,
1:54:31
even though they were paying about five hundred dollars for the right to have
1:54:34
their brick be put down. In the Penn State Legacy Plaza. Well then,
1:54:40
much to my shock, and you know, and frankly I was honored
1:54:44
about this, two guys by the name of Jason Moss and Andy Faber.
1:54:48
They somehow, and I do not know how this occurred. In a way,
1:54:53
I'm almost insulted that this didn't get censored, because it indicates that somebody
1:54:59
didn't know what the well they were talking about, you know, with regard
1:55:02
to the message on the brick that Jason and Andy purchased, but they purchased
1:55:08
a brick that said Joe Paterno said find the truth in quotation marks, which
1:55:13
is true John Ziegler did, and then in quotes with the benefit of hindsight,
1:55:20
which frankly, they didn't ask me about this at all. But that
1:55:24
was about as perfect, given the limitations of the spacing, as anybody could
1:55:29
have possibly done. Also, with regard to potentially getting past the censors,
1:55:34
I'm still baffled as to how this got past the censors, because you know,
1:55:38
a two second Google search would have told you that this is not something
1:55:42
that the Penn State administration would remotely approve of. But now it's there,
1:55:46
theoretically permanently for all time. You know, I can certainly see Penn State
1:55:53
eventually one day digging this brick up once they fully understand the ramifications of it.
1:55:59
But assuming that it doesn't happen, it will make me sleep a little
1:56:01
bit better at night thinking about the fact that, you know, maybe decades
1:56:05
her now, somebody's going to be walking in the Penn State Legacy Plaza and
1:56:11
see the message Joe Paterno said, find the truth John Ziegler did with the
1:56:15
benefit of hindsight, and maybe they'll look into this and find out what really
1:56:18
happened. That's a fantasy, but at least it's it's theoretically plausible. But
1:56:25
regardless, it was very nice of Jason and Andy to do that. I
1:56:29
shared it online. People seem to be very excited about it. I dat
1:56:31
I'll ever get the State College to actually see it for myself. But that
1:56:35
kind of immortality, again, presuming they don't dig the brick up, is
1:56:40
something that I find to be valuable and much appreciated, and I'm honored that
1:56:45
occurred, and it's a it's a real testament to Mike Gagovino, our producer,
1:56:49
and Lizabebe, my co host with regard to the podcast with the Benefit
1:56:55
of Hindsight, which I strongly recommend you listen to if you've not done so
1:56:59
all ready. I want to finish with a couple more thoughts given the topic
1:57:03
of sports and the fact that the US Open tennis tournament is going on,
1:57:08
and specifically with what's going on involving Novak Djokovic, and getting back to ESPN
1:57:15
for a minute. ESPN carries the US Open, and Novak Djokovic was actually
1:57:19
allowed to play this year. He's, you know, probably the best player
1:57:24
of all time. There's an argument about that, but he's trying to make
1:57:27
it clear from his results in major championships that he is the best tennis player
1:57:31
of all time. Yet he has not played in the last couple of US
1:57:35
Opens. And the first part of the absurdity of ESPN's coverage of this is
1:57:41
if you if you were in a coma for the last several years and you
1:57:44
woke up and you were watching the US Open and you were wondering, well,
1:57:48
why did Novak Djokovic miss the last couple of US Opens? You would
1:57:53
have a very very difficult time, based upon ESPN's coverage, of figuring out
1:57:57
exactly why Novak Djokovic missed the last few US Opens. ESPN refers to it
1:58:03
occasionally, but they never tell you. And the reason was because he was
1:58:08
banned from the country because he made a private, prudent medical decision not to
1:58:14
take a vaccine that he didn't need regarding COVID, and this was of course
1:58:19
something that was promoted by ESPN, promoted by the sports media. It was
1:58:25
absolutely, completely and utterly absurd and insane that even in twenty twenty two,
1:58:30
the Biden administration did not change the rules allowing people to come in from foreign
1:58:34
countries who were not vaccinated for COVID. Bizarrely, in theory, Novak Djokovic
1:58:42
could have come into the country illegally, say through the Mexican Texas border,
1:58:48
made his way to New York and would have been allowed to play in the
1:58:53
US Open. He got no support from the tennis community other than a little
1:58:57
bit from John McEnroe, no support at all from ESPN and the sports media
1:59:03
industrial complex. He handled it like a champ. He somehow maintained his number
1:59:10
one or number two position in the world despite losing out on lots of money
1:59:15
and lots of opportunity for ranking points, as well as major championships, which
1:59:19
could decide whether or not he ends up having the most major championships in the
1:59:24
history of tennis, depending on how all this shakes out with Raphael Nadal,
1:59:29
who is currently injured. But it's just absolutely absurd that they just pretend.
1:59:36
We're just gonna pretend this is in keeping with the entire covid mL. We're
1:59:41
just gonna pretend that you know, this was unavoidable. We're not really sure
1:59:45
why it happened. Gee, it was a shame he missed the last two
1:59:48
US Opens. We're not gonna tell you why, and we're just gonna move
1:59:53
on. Let's just move on, because this is one of those crimes better
1:59:56
left unsolved, really and that would be bad enough, that would be bad
2:00:00
enough, but that's not where the ignominy ends here. So in his first
2:00:04
round match, Novak Djokovic ended up having to play. Now, granted he
2:00:11
was playing, you know, someone he was going to beat easily, but
2:00:14
it matters from your schedule, of your timing and your stamina and your sleeping
2:00:18
schedule, you're eating schedule. This is a two week or deal if you're
2:00:23
gonna win the whole thing, So when you play is important. His first
2:00:27
match started after eleven PM in New York. And why did that happen?
2:00:34
Not because matches, there was one match that went a little over time,
2:00:39
but mostly because in the middle of the evening play they made Novak Djokovic sit
2:00:46
around and wait for the US Open to go through a ceremony celebrating fifty years
2:00:55
of equal pay, equal pay between men's tennis and women's tennis. This featured,
2:01:01
uh, you know, this was Billy Jean King, and this was
2:01:08
missus Obama, and you know, all sorts of other liberal accolytes. All
2:01:14
you know, Michelle Obama talking about how great it is that we've achieved equity
2:01:18
and equality and women's and men's play for fifty years in tennis, and that
2:01:24
this achievement is so important and so great that we're going to have a ceremony
2:01:29
along with music and everything on the court while Novak Djokovic is waiting to play
2:01:34
his next match and forcing him to then play after eleven PM after all the
2:01:40
ignominy that he has suffered at the hands of the United States and the United
2:01:44
States Open over the last couple of years. This is their star. By
2:01:46
the way, They are actually using Djokovic to keep people in the seats so
2:01:51
they can endure this woke bullshit. That's that was the worst part of it
2:01:56
for me. The only people that were watching were waiting for Djokovic to take
2:02:00
the court, and they used it for political purposes. And this idea that
2:02:04
we're celebrating equality in men's and women's pay for tennis is just so disgusting to
2:02:13
me. Not that I'm against equal pay. I got two young daughters and
2:02:15
I'm all for equality, not equity, but when it comes to tennis,
2:02:21
it's maybe more ridiculous than any other sport. And of course no one from
2:02:26
ESPN will even ever dare to mention this. On what basis can you argue
2:02:30
that men and women should be paid the same in a tournament where men play
2:02:35
up to five sets and women play only three sets. I mean, this
2:02:42
is all about the content you're creating so you can sell commercial time. That's
2:02:45
the engine. You know, tickets too, But the engine of this is
2:02:50
television. Men create far more content that is watched by far more people than
2:02:58
women do. And in the proof of that is if only by virtue of
2:03:03
how long they play five sets best of five versus best of three. And
2:03:10
so to me, It's just an ultimate example of women and liberals cheering this
2:03:15
equality when it's actually frankly embarrassing to women if you think about it, because
2:03:25
if it's not equality of opportunity, it's equality of outcome, it's equity.
2:03:32
It's not equality because they're they're not the same sports. And there's no question
2:03:38
that in most years, the men's draws creates far more interest and far more
2:03:44
viewership then the women's drawing. I'm a fan of women's tennis. I try
2:03:47
to teach my daughter, Grace tennis all the time. I played tennis in
2:03:51
high school. I was captain of our high school team. I mean,
2:03:55
so I'm I'm a tennis fan. But this idea that somehow, this is
2:03:59
something to be celebrated when it's really the men subsidizing the women. And that's
2:04:04
happening in all sorts of different sports. So we can see this in soccer
2:04:08
where the men's World Cup effectively subsidize subsidizes the women's World Cup, and then
2:04:15
and the women's still bitch and moan about about how much they're getting paid in
2:04:18
comparison to the men, And to me, it just goes to who we
2:04:23
are as a society and this idea that equity has replaced equality, and it
2:04:29
was all liberal, woke bullshit and poor Djokovic. Now, granted, he
2:04:32
ended up winning very quickly, so he was out of there just after one
2:04:35
am, but it was insulting. It was insulting, especially given what this
2:04:41
guy has been put through over the last couple of years. And no one
2:04:45
will acknowledge it. No one will acknowledge the injustice of it. No one
2:04:49
because they put too many of their own chips down on this. They were
2:04:53
wrong, They were totally wrong, and they don't want to admit it,
2:04:56
although occasionally you'll see moments where the truth slips out. I was interested to
2:05:01
note, and I tweeted about this that ESPN's Chris McKendry, who, by
2:05:05
the way, six degrees of separation of John Ziegler, I used to be
2:05:10
the roommate of my post college girlfriend, and in fact drove with my college
2:05:15
girlfriend overnight to Steubenville, Ohio from the Washington, DC area to interview for
2:05:21
a job that would have been just below me on the totem pole at the
2:05:26
small TV station that Lizabebe and I were working for the NBC affiliate in Steubenville,
2:05:30
Ohile. Wheeling, West Virginia. So that's a small world story.
2:05:33
Well, Chris McKendry has been at ESPN now for a long time, and
2:05:39
she was talking just last night about Djokovic's next match, which is is a
2:05:46
rematch of a match he played against an American back in twenty twenty one in
2:05:53
the Australian Open. Well, I was very shocked when I was watching Chris
2:05:59
mckes recap of what happened in Australia in twenty twenty one. Remember, Australia
2:06:05
was even nuttier than the United States was when it came to COVID response.
2:06:10
I mean, it was probably the nuttiest country in the world. Australia was,
2:06:14
but they at least had an Australian Open in twenty twenty one. We
2:06:17
canceled most of our events in twenty twenty. At the beginning of twenty twenty
2:06:21
one, they had an Australian Open, which McKendry described as being quote super
2:06:28
weird. The whole tournament, she said, was super weird, and she
2:06:32
did so in a very you know, derissive sort of fashion, And I
2:06:38
thought, oh, really, so now you're going to be able to say
2:06:42
that the absurdity of what occurred with basically no crowds in the Australian Open,
2:06:48
with the crowds even having a curfew, so because the match went beyond ten
2:06:51
pm, there was literally no one watching, no one watching the number one
2:06:58
player in the world play on the Australian Open. That now we can call
2:07:02
that super weird. Now it's okay. When if you had said that back
2:07:08
in twenty twenty one, which you should have, and someone should have said,
2:07:11
this is nuts, what the hell are we doing, that would have
2:07:14
been seen as sack religious because that's what it turned out to be. It
2:07:16
was a religious response and the media went along with it. They applauded it,
2:07:23
they enabled it. They will never admit they were wrong because they don't
2:07:27
care about the truth. They only care about hanging onto their cushy gigs.
2:07:30
That's what the essence of it is, especially when it comes to the sports
2:07:32
media. So that'll do it for this episode of the Death of Journalism Podcast,
2:07:36
episode number eighty six. As is always the case, please remember to
2:07:41
subscribe, rate and review and share this podcast with others. If you do
2:07:44
so on social media, please tag me and I'll be happy to share your
2:07:47
post on Twitter and Facebook. Until next time. Thanks so much for listening.
2:07:53
My name is John Ziegler.