Latest / The Death Of Journalism / Episode One Hundred Twenty Two: Uncomfortable Truths

Transcript

Episode One Hundred Twenty Two: Uncomfortable Truths · The Death Of Journalism

• 0:00
  Welcome to episode number one hundred and twenty two of the Dept of Journalism podcasts.
• 0:04
  My name is John Zigler. On today's show, Trump wins New Hampshire,
• 0:09
  but by less than I predicted. Has he stupidly disqualified Nicky Haley as
• 0:14
  his vice presidential candidate. Trump pulls a remarkable double sumrsault on his COVID record,
• 0:21
  and I speak with my friend Steve Cortes, who flipped from Trump to
• 0:25
  the Santas and back again. I'm known as the Dutch Digital marketing Man.
• 0:31
  I'm a digital advertising SEO and email marketing specialist that also happens to be a
• 0:36
  big fan of John Zigler and the Death of Journalism. Do you need help
• 0:40
  reaching your target audience? Let me help you develop the riot messaging and colfated
• 0:45
  messages in the best channels for your business. Please visit my website, the
• 0:50
  Dutchdigital Marketingman dot com and let me help you tell your story. The website
• 0:56
  is the Dutch Digital Marketingman dot com. If you want to grow your business,
• 1:00
  Peter can help. That's the Dutch Digital Marketingman dot com. And hey,
• 1:06
  thanks for sponsoring the show. So the results of the New Hampshire primary
• 1:11
  are in and Donald Trump, as I have been saying for a very long
• 1:15
  time, did in fact win the New Hampshire primary. However, it was
• 1:19
  by less than I predicted. I had predicted that he would get sixty two
• 1:25
  percent of the vote because I thought there would be a rallying around Trump effect,
• 1:30
  especially with a fake Obama Swamy and Ron DeSantis now out of the race,
• 1:34
  and that there would be a desire to finish this process off, and
• 1:40
  that Nikky Hanley was not capable of getting more than forty percent of the vote,
• 1:46
  even in a place like New Hampshire where independents famously tend to run the
• 1:51
  show. Well, I was wrong. Trump ended up with about fifty five
• 1:57
  percent of the vote. That might actually be you know, rounding up in
• 2:00
  his favor. Haley ended up with a forty three percent, So it was
• 2:05
  about eleven or twelve point victory for Trump, and fifty five percent is you
• 2:10
  know, seven points less than what I thought he would get. I mean,
• 2:14
  it's more than enough for Trump to be the nominee. When you win
• 2:19
  Iowa and New Hampshire and you're a former president, it's over. You know.
• 2:23
  Haley has said that she's not going to get out, and Haley's performance
• 2:28
  was much better than some, including myself, expected. I don't think it
• 2:32
  changes the trajectory of the race at all. I think the only significance of
• 2:38
  it is what it may or may not do to the chances that Nikki Haley
• 2:42
  is Trump's vice presidential nominee, which I'll talk about in just a bit,
• 2:46
  But first I want to theorize about why it is that Trump didn't, at
• 2:52
  least from a percentage standpoint, do as well as I thought he would,
• 2:57
  and many other commentators thought he would as well. And I have to say
• 3:02
  that, number one, it's kind of weird for a guy who is accused
• 3:07
  of having Trump derangement syndrome on a regular basis on social media that I overestimated
• 3:15
  Trump's percentage total by seven points. It's kind of weird if you have Trump
• 3:20
  derangement syndrome, you know, wouldn't that go work in the opposite direction?
• 3:23
  But okay, I digress. But more importantly than that, I have consistently
• 3:30
  proven in my view that I'm very objective, very willing to admit when I'm
• 3:36
  wrong, and also to change my viewpoint based upon new data. And this
• 3:42
  happened even as the New Hampshire results were coming in on social media. My
• 3:49
  first reaction to this closer than anticipated result in New Hampshire, and let's be
• 3:54
  clear, I mean, it was close, but it wasn't that close.
• 3:58
  And again, it's not going to change anything. Trump's going to be the
• 4:00
  nominee and he'll end up winning every single primary and caucus, and Haley will
• 4:04
  eventually get out when I'm not one hundred percent sure, but so this in
• 4:09
  no way, shape or form changes anything about what's going to happen in the
• 4:12
  race. But as I was looking at the results coming in, I took
• 4:17
  the view that this was a very disappointing result for Trump and that this was
• 4:23
  an indication that he really is a dead duck in November, that the enthusiasm
• 4:31
  just isn't quite there. He's not appealing to voters outside of his cult,
• 4:36
  and that if even Nikki Haley, someone who doesn't even have anything remotely close
• 4:44
  to a large passionate following, if she can almost beat him, then he's
• 4:49
  not going to win the presidency. That was kind of my view. I
• 4:53
  mean, that's a ridiculous leap to jump to based upon the results of one
• 4:58
  primary, but it, you know, initial reaction was, this does not
• 5:03
  look good for Trump. But then, and as a part of that,
• 5:09
  you know, there was this narrative forming on Twitter among Trump fans that,
• 5:14
  aha, this is all part of a scheme to get Trump, which I'm
• 5:16
  always very skeptical of because first of all, these people have no credibility.
• 5:20
  A lot of them are complete maga morons, and they're also cult members,
• 5:27
  so they're gonna, you know, come up with whatever they can to rationalize
• 5:30
  what doesn't fit their worldview or mint which makes them feel uncomfortable and hear their
• 5:34
  cult leader is only beating Nikki Haley by you know, eleven points or whatever
• 5:40
  it ends up being. In fact, most of the night it was less
• 5:43
  than ten points. It was in single digits most of the night before the
• 5:47
  rural votes started to come in late in the night in New Hampshire, and
• 5:51
  there was this narrative that these were not really Republican voters. And my first
• 5:58
  reaction to that is, Okay, this sounds like shit. I mean,
• 6:00
  first of all, the way the rules are in New Hampshire is that the
• 6:05
  majority of voters are always undeclared, because that gives you the right to decide
• 6:12
  which primary you're going to vote in and so the culture there is to not
• 6:16
  be a registered Republican or a registered Democrat. And there was this videos.
• 6:24
  It's hilarious that since it was on MSNBC that Trump fans would be, you
• 6:29
  know, joyously sharing a video from MSNBC. But they talked about how the
• 6:34
  majority of the voters were not registered Republicans, and they cited that based upon
• 6:42
  entry or exit polls, not not actual polls, but you know polls the
• 6:46
  posters take of voters after they leave the polling station. So it's self reported
• 6:53
  that eight percent or thereabouts of New Hampshire voters in the Republican primary were self
• 6:59
  described I have Democrats and now eight percent, you know, that's a number
• 7:03
  that seems small but can also be rather significant, especially when you're talking about
• 7:10
  Democrats in a Republican primary and with Trump. It's always difficult to interpret these
• 7:16
  things because in theory, there are a lot of people the old school,
• 7:21
  you know, middle class white Democrats who might consider themselves now to be Maga
• 7:28
  cult members. So you know, it's difficult to interpret what that means.
• 7:32
  And at first I was dismissive of that element of an explanation for why Trump's
• 7:41
  margin was so relatively small in New Hampshire, and even tweeted about this.
• 7:46
  Well this morning, now that I've gotten a chance to look at all the
• 7:49
  data, I sent out another tweet for whatever it's worth, basically saying that
• 7:55
  I was wrong in my initial analysis because that analysis was based in part on
• 8:01
  a presumption that turned out not to be true. And this is an area
• 8:05
  where election night reporting is very, very poor, very poor, and that
• 8:13
  is that we did not know what the turnout was. That the turnout seemed
• 8:22
  as if it was medium or even low. And I was looking at that
• 8:28
  and going okay, if the turnout is not great, maybe even lower than
• 8:33
  normal, then how could you possibly have a significant influx of people who were
• 8:39
  not really Republicans who were voting in this primary Partisa because Democrats didn't really even
• 8:45
  have their own primary. They did technically Biden wasn't even on the ballot,
• 8:48
  although he won via writing ballots, but for all intentsive purposes, the only
• 8:54
  game in town was the Republican primary. So if you had this influx of
• 9:00
  Democrats, then turnout should be much higher than normal, and that was not
• 9:07
  what was being perceived as the votes were being counted. However, this morning
• 9:11
  we now have basically the full vote tabulations, and there were well over three
• 9:20
  hundred thousand votes cast in the Republican primary in New Hampshire, which is not
• 9:28
  just a record, as far as I can tell, it's clearly a record.
• 9:31
  Trump is going to end up with over one hundred and seventy thousand votes,
• 9:37
  which is also, by everything I can tell, clearly a record no
• 9:43
  one has ever gotten in the modern era or any era that I'm aware of,
• 9:46
  anywhere close to one hundred and seventy thousand votes in a Republican primary in
• 9:50
  New Hampshire. For comparison's sake, Trump got one hundred thousand votes in twenty
• 9:58
  sixteen when and he also won the Republican primary in New Hampshire. Although he
• 10:03
  won then because it was a very crowded race, he won there with like
• 10:07
  thirty five thirty six percent of the vote as opposed to fifty five percent,
• 10:11
  so he did twenty points better eight years later with many fewer candidates. It's
• 10:18
  also important to point out, and this goes to the idea that Trump's win
• 10:24
  really wasn't that impressive. You know, Let's look at what's happened over the
• 10:28
  last eight years since Trump won in New Hampshire. Before the twenty sixteen New
• 10:35
  Hampshire primary, Trump had never won any kind of election. He lost in
• 10:41
  Iowa the week before. He had never been held any elected office. He
• 10:46
  had never won a presidential nomination. He had never beaten Hillary Clinton, he
• 10:52
  had never been president of the United States. I mean, there's all sorts
• 10:56
  of different things that Trump had never done at that point. He also had
• 11:01
  no endorsements back in twenty sixteen. You know, now he had all sorts
• 11:05
  of endorsements from a you know, significant establishment Republican figures, even though he's
• 11:11
  supposedly still the anti establishment candidate. And so, you know, when you
• 11:16
  compare twenty twenty four to twenty sixteen, the Donald Trump of today is a
• 11:20
  completely different character with a lot more advantages. And he only got you know,
• 11:26
  twenty points higher when it came to the overall vote total in a much
• 11:33
  less crowded field. He only had one opponent this time around in twenty twenty
• 11:37
  four, as opposed to five or six significant opponents in twenty sixteen. So
• 11:43
  from that standpoint, winning fifty five percent under the circumstances that Trump has going
• 11:50
  for him is really not that great. It really is not. So I
• 11:54
  don't want to completely, you know, change my view one hundred and eighty
• 11:58
  degrees that somehow this was a tremendous victory for Trump. It was not.
• 12:03
  My point here is that when you consider that the turnout was really very high,
• 12:11
  then that opens the door for the idea that, okay, maybe there
• 12:15
  were a lot of Democrats who were voting in this primary, and the same
• 12:20
  exit polls also show that a massive portion of those people were voting for Nicki
• 12:28
  Haley. Now were those Democrats just trying to cause mischief? I have no
• 12:33
  idea. Is it possible that Nicki Haley really appeals to liberal or moderates or
• 12:41
  independents or people that may call themselves conservative Democrats to the extent that those people
• 12:46
  still exist, that's also possible, and I think, you know, that's
• 12:50
  something that should be kept in mind if you actually want to win an election.
• 12:54
  Haley does seem to appeal to those kinds of people. But given the
• 12:58
  very very high nature of the turnout, I have to at least give some
• 13:05
  credibility to this idea that this New Hampshire electorate is really not representative of Republicans.
• 13:13
  Nationwide. Now, it should be pointed out that's part of the design
• 13:18
  of the New Hampshire primary back when we used to care about independent voters and
• 13:24
  when Republicans used to realize that independent and moderate voters determine who win presidential elections.
• 13:31
  That's why you had the New Hampshire primary. You have Iowa caucuses to
• 13:35
  show with the hardcore social conservatives thing, and then you have the New Hampshire
• 13:41
  primary to show what voters who may actually determine the election think, and that
• 13:46
  the two of them combined theoretically you're going to give you a candidate who can
• 13:50
  win in November. So that's no longer the world we live in. We're
• 13:56
  now living in a cult based world and some now you know you don't want
• 14:01
  independent or moderate or liberal voters to vote for you, which is a very
• 14:05
  odd thing if you're somebody who really wants to win elections, which I'm not
• 14:09
  convinced Republicans or Trump people really want to do. There's another aspect to what
• 14:16
  happened, which I should have been able to pinpoint but did not, And
• 14:20
  because I've talked about this constantly in the past, that historically New Hampshire does
• 14:26
  like a an underdog, especially a moderate underdog. They don't like ending the
• 14:33
  process there, And it does feel like the turnout was almost a dead cat
• 14:39
  bounce for the Old Republican Party, like a last stand to voice opposition to
• 14:48
  Donald Trump. And while it's very difficult to prove that based upon the data,
• 14:54
  and I'm always very skeptical of anecdotal evidence, there was a video that
• 14:58
  went viral of an interview that was done by CNN of a seventy eight year
• 15:03
  old woman who had just voted in New Hampshire, a woman who you know,
• 15:07
  seemed very credible, didn't seem like a plan at all, and had
• 15:11
  talked about how she voted for Donald Trump in twenty sixteen, but now she
• 15:16
  was voting for Nikki Haley purely as a vote against Donald Trump because she feared
• 15:24
  for the system of government that the United States might have in the future and
• 15:28
  for her children and her grandchildren and her great grandchildren. And it went viral.
• 15:33
  I'm sure it went viral on the left. It didn't go viral on
• 15:35
  the right, especially since it originated from CNN. And it's very very dangerous
• 15:41
  to be drawing conclusions based upon one interview with one voter but that's a demographic,
• 15:46
  This seventy eight year old lady, former Trump voter for president who now
• 15:52
  apparently will vote for anybody except Donald Trump, which you know, in a
• 15:56
  rastional world people would be looking at on the Republican sign going uh oh,
• 16:03
  that's problematic. If that's representative of a larger number of people, then we
• 16:08
  have trouble. And the results are indicative of the idea that she's not alone,
• 16:15
  because Nikki Haley got forty three percent of the vote in a high turnout
• 16:22
  election. Again, Trump is an amazing motivator in both directions, both for
• 16:32
  and against. He's a turnout machine even today, and so the fact that
• 16:37
  the turnout here was well over three hundred thousand voters, there's several reasons for
• 16:42
  that. Again, there was no real Democratic primary. Maybe he had some
• 16:47
  Democrats crossing over to cast some chaos. I think he had a dead cat
• 16:52
  bounce for the old guard and the people that are just trying to make one
• 16:56
  last stand against Donald Trump fully taking over the republic Looking party. I think
• 17:00
  all of that contributes to what happened in New Hampshire. I also think,
• 17:06
  although this might be counterintuitive to the turnout argument and there's no way to prove
• 17:11
  this either way. But from a percentage standpoint, I think part of why
• 17:15
  I overestimated what Trump was going to do is that I thought that the DeSantis
• 17:19
  voters, and there was probably eight to ten percent of the electorate that was
• 17:25
  going to vote for Ron DeSantis in that primary until he dropped out two days
• 17:30
  before, I thought most of those people would vote for Trump. It's also
• 17:33
  possible that they were just demoralized in the stayed home. That makes sense as
• 17:38
  well. Again, there's almost no way to possibly prove that, and that
• 17:41
  would also come up with an explanation or provide an explanation for why Trump failed
• 17:48
  to completely blow the doors off of this. And so this is interesting.
• 17:52
  It's mostly academic. I think it's also important from this standpoint of what might
• 18:00
  have been. I mean, I really believe, again, it's no way
• 18:06
  to there's no possible way to prove this, but based upon these results of
• 18:11
  Trump winning New Hampshire by eleven points, and you know, Hindsight's twenty twenty,
• 18:15
  you know, would it could have, should have? What have you?
• 18:18
  I really think that if DeSantis had stayed in and the fake Obama Swamy
• 18:25
  had stayed in, I think there's a chance Nicky Haley at least comes within
• 18:32
  a whisker of beating Trump from a percentage standpoint, because her vote total would
• 18:37
  not have been impacted at all. None of those DeSantis or fake Obama Swamy
• 18:42
  voters would have ever voted for Nicky Haley in the New Hampshire primary, so
• 18:47
  she would have had essentially the same percentage. But Trump's fifty five might have
• 18:52
  dipped down to forty five, and you know, then it's it's on a
• 18:59
  razor's edge, which so I do think that that could have happened, and
• 19:03
  Trump ought to be thanking for fake Obama Swamy and Ron de Santis for dropping
• 19:10
  out. Now, when Trump gave his victory speech, which was nowhere near
• 19:15
  his conciliatory as he was in Iowa, he had for fake Obama Swamy standing
• 19:21
  behind him. He gave him literally one minute, patted him on the head,
• 19:25
  and admonished him, you only get to speak for one minute, which
• 19:27
  I think was a seminal moment. I think it was a very telling moment
• 19:33
  when it comes to the way that Trump views his surrogate, vivaq one,
• 19:38
  that he doesn't have a lot of respect for him and two that he does.
• 19:41
  I think consider him to be a threat from a verbal perspective, because
• 19:45
  he is a good talker, and I think he knows that part of his
• 19:49
  base really really likes for fake Obama Swamy. And it's very obvious, very
• 19:56
  obvious that Fake was forced out of the race immediately after Iowa because Trump was
• 20:02
  just annoyed by losing whatever percentage points Vaveke was getting because he viewed, I
• 20:08
  think rightly so that those are his voters, and Veveke getting out in New
• 20:12
  Hampshire. It didn't provide the margin of victory for Trump, but it made
• 20:18
  it a lot safer than it would have been. If Trump had not admonished
• 20:22
  the fake to get out, this could have been a closer race than it
• 20:29
  was. And again, if the Santas had stayed in, it might have
• 20:32
  been really really close. But the bottom line here is Trump got a lot
• 20:37
  of votes, more votes than he's ever gotten in New Hampshire before in twenty
• 20:41
  sixteen or in twenty twenty, and the turnout was high. The victory well,
• 20:49
  not that impressive, is impressive enough. Trump is going to be the
• 20:55
  nominee. However, I do think, and this goes back to twenty twenty
• 21:00
  hindsight what it could have should have. I do think that the results showed
• 21:07
  he was theoretically beatable in this Republican primary. I mean, everything would have
• 21:15
  had to have gone perfectly, And I do believe, as I've said previously,
• 21:22
  and as I'm going to get into in our interview with Steve Cortes later
• 21:26
  on in this episode, I do think that the window of opportunity was from
• 21:30
  the twenty twenty two midterm elections until that first indictment. It was during that
• 21:37
  time period where DeSantis lost any real chance to pull this off. It would
• 21:44
  have taken. It would have taken loose Uke Skywalker in the Death Star in
• 21:48
  Star Wars, you know, the one shot that you get to blow up
• 21:52
  the Death Star, That's what it would have taken. And I guess if
• 21:56
  you're in the Santas camp as I have been, the frustration here is that
• 22:00
  Desand has never even got a shot off, right. Luke Skywalker's you know,
• 22:07
  his fighter jet got blown up somewhere on the way to getting into that
• 22:14
  canal to try to blow up the Death Star, by Darth Vader or by
• 22:18
  whoever. And that's frustrating. But had the Santus gotten his shot off at
• 22:26
  the right time, which would have been between the twenty twenty two midterm elections
• 22:30
  and the first indictment. I think this could have worked. I mean,
• 22:36
  it would have had to have been executed perfectly. But if you just take
• 22:40
  a look at the results in New Hampshire, let's theorize right, let's play
• 22:47
  per tend per second. Let's pretend that DeSantis won does not sign the six
• 22:52
  week abortion band, which killed him in New Hampshire. I mean, especially
• 22:57
  once he lost momentum nationally. He was a dead duck in New Hampshire because
• 23:03
  of the fact that moderate voters dominate a Republican primary in New Hampshire. And
• 23:10
  I told you that many many times, many months ago. Get the hell
• 23:14
  out of New Hampshire. But let's pretend that doesn't happen. And then let's
• 23:18
  pretend that right off the bat, DeSantis tries to win over the anti Trump
• 23:26
  portion of the Republican Party. I've said before, it now appears as if
• 23:30
  the party is split forty forty twenty forty percent Trump cult members, forty percent
• 23:37
  Trump like members, and twenty percent anti Trump members. Desantus, I think
• 23:45
  had the strategy of going for the middle group. I'm gonna go for the
• 23:51
  Trump likers. I'm not gonna do anything. I'm gonna do everything I cannot
• 23:53
  to offend those people or even really address the Trump cult member. And I'm
• 24:00
  just going to presume that the anti Trump group is going to gravitate towards me
• 24:06
  because I will be the only alternative to Trump. Well, the problem with
• 24:11
  that strategy was it allowed that lane of anti Trumpers people like me. But
• 24:19
  you know, I'm in a very very unique situation because of how I view
• 24:23
  things. There's not a lot of people like me, for better or for
• 24:26
  worse. But if de Santas had gone first for the anti Trump lane of
• 24:33
  the Republican Party, established that he was that guy and just forgot about the
• 24:38
  cult, just give up on the cult, and then had the trumpkers gravitate
• 24:47
  towards him instead of the anti Trump people gravitate towards him. In theory,
• 24:52
  this might have worked. And here's how it would have gone down. So
• 24:56
  by taking over the anti Trump lane, you eliminate Christy and you eliminate Nikki
• 25:03
  Haley. You give them no oxygen. They get no fundraising because there's no
• 25:10
  path for them. There's no Lane. So in theory they get out,
• 25:15
  there is no Nicky Haley or Chris Christie. There wasn't a Chris Christy by
• 25:19
  the time Iowa came around. But Christy and Haley are gone, And in
• 25:26
  this world you're left with what Trump, DeSantis and the fake Obama swamy.
• 25:34
  Now, maybe under this scenario, Trump forces for fake Obama swamy out sooner,
• 25:41
  but I'm just theorizing about what could have happened here. So under this
• 25:45
  scenario where Dessandas establishes himself as the anti Trump, and the people in the
• 25:52
  middle, especially post indictments, are going, oh, wait a minute,
• 25:55
  is this is this really what we need to do? Here? Is this?
• 25:57
  Is there another option? And he seems awfully trumpy and he did a
• 26:02
  hell of a job with Florida and COVID and he won by twenty points while
• 26:06
  we got our asses kicked in the twenty twenty two midterms. I mean,
• 26:08
  all this would had to have gone perfectly. But if that had happened under
• 26:15
  that scenario, DeSantis probably barely loses Iowa. I mean, if it was
• 26:22
  a three person race Trump, because remember Trump only got fifty one percent of
• 26:26
  the vote. Vivek was in the single digits, so you know, the
• 26:32
  Santas would have been at least in the mid forties. And if he had
• 26:34
  made any inroads at all with the core Trumpers, he might have won Iowa,
• 26:40
  but it would have been clearly close enough for Desanders to keep going.
• 26:45
  And then if you look at last night's results again, if it's still a
• 26:48
  three person race, Trump, Desandis and Vevey, Obama Swami, and you
• 26:55
  know, it's clear that a huge portion of that forty three percent that went
• 27:00
  for Haley they weren't really voting for Nicky Haley. I mean, sure they
• 27:03
  find her in offensive and useful, and they like her positions, especially on
• 27:10
  abortion, but it's not like there's a huge Nicky Haley fan club out there.
• 27:15
  Those people were largely voting against Donald Trump. And so if you go
• 27:22
  under that theory and Vivek's still in there, I think Desanda's had a hell
• 27:27
  of a shot in New Hampshire because he had the ability to appeal to Trump
• 27:33
  fans much more effectively than Haley ever did or still does to this day,
• 27:38
  which is why she has no path. All right, she has no path
• 27:44
  and everybody knows this. I mean, even Tim Scott as pathetic as this,
• 27:47
  I mean, well, there were so many pathetic moments, but one
• 27:49
  of the most pathetic moments in this whole process was Tim Scott, Senator from
• 27:53
  South Carolina, who was made a senator from South Carolina by Nikky Haley,
• 28:02
  standing behind Donald Trump on the victory podium beaming, and then Trump references the
• 28:08
  fact that Scott got his job because of Nicky Haley and says, well,
• 28:12
  you must really hate her, I mean, which is just unbelievable that in
• 28:18
  presidential candidate would do that about somebody whose voters he's gonna need and in theory
• 28:22
  he should be considering strongly to be his vice presidential nominee. And then Scott
• 28:29
  takes the podium and says, I just love you. I guess he thought
• 28:33
  that was the only, you know, way for him to save some sort
• 28:37
  of face because obviously he has a relationship with Haley and he's, you know,
• 28:41
  fellow South Carolinian. It's just so pathetic and it just shows what a
• 28:45
  cult the whole thing is. And you know, so that was what was
• 28:49
  going on with regard to Trump, and Trump's statements about Haley were off the
• 28:56
  rails, even by Trump's own stand I mean, he strongly implied that if
• 29:03
  she won the nomination, she would be investigated by the Democrats for some alleged
• 29:11
  legal improprieties. He went after the way she dresses and the quality of her
• 29:18
  dresses. You know, he said he would get revenge on her. I
• 29:22
  mean, it was very much like a mob boss talking about somebody who had
• 29:27
  defied him. And you know, with Trump, it's always very difficult to
• 29:32
  tell. Does that mean that she's disqualifying from being his vice presidential nominee?
• 29:37
  I mean, under normal circumstances, one hundred percent, that would end it.
• 29:42
  How could you possibly go back and make this person your vice presidential nominee?
• 29:48
  However, I am now completely convinced, and I talk more about this
• 29:55
  in my interview with Steve Cortez later in this episode. I am now completely
• 30:00
  convinced that Nikki Haley is the right choice. If Trump only is concerned about
• 30:07
  winning the election in November, and he said last night, as he says
• 30:11
  all the time, that if he doesn't win, we've lost the country.
• 30:15
  Now that may or may not be true. We may have lost the country
• 30:18
  regardless of what happens in November. But if you really believe that, if
• 30:22
  you really believe that, then you better do whatever it takes to win,
• 30:29
  regardless of what it says about your ego or anything having to do with your
• 30:33
  own self interest. And Nicki Haley proved last night that she is the perfect
• 30:38
  about as perfect as you can get, political compliment to him. She appeals
• 30:45
  to voters he is not getting, not just moderates, but specifically suburban white
• 30:51
  women who determine elections in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, and
• 30:59
  so Nicky Haley, and it shows in how she does against Joe Biden.
• 31:03
  I mean, Trump is now lying, as he often does, about what
• 31:07
  the polls are saying regarding Nicki Haley. He's claiming that now Nicki Haley no
• 31:11
  longer beats Joe Biden by larger margins head to head than he does. That's
• 31:17
  not true. Now the polling regarding Haley is less consistent because she's less well
• 31:22
  known. And I have no doubt that if she ever went through a general
• 31:26
  election that things would be different because she would be attacked because she would be
• 31:30
  going up against Joe Biden, and the media, of course always wants the
• 31:33
  Democrat to win. So I'm not being naive here, but the data is
• 31:38
  clear. I mean, just the other day there was a Virginia pol.
• 31:42
  This Virginia pole, I thought was very telling because to me, for one
• 31:47
  thing, it showed not just that Haley is way more popular with a general
• 31:51
  election electorate than Trump is, but it also told me this narrative that Trump
• 31:56
  is going to win against Biden is very dubious. And the reason why I
• 32:02
  felt that way about this result was that Haley was outperforming Trump against Biden had
• 32:08
  to head in Virginia by eight points. Now, eight points is huge in
• 32:15
  a swing state in a presidential election. And Virginia, you know, traditionally
• 32:21
  in the modern era has now been a safely democratic state because of all the
• 32:24
  government workers, the federal government workers in northern Virginia, it's almost impossible for
• 32:30
  Republicans to win a presidential election. The Republican is the governor in Virginia is
• 32:36
  a Republican, but he's a moderate Republican. And that's on a state level
• 32:39
  because the federal workers don't care as much who their governor is because their jobs
• 32:44
  aren't on the line. So Northern Virginia is basically all Democrat because they almost
• 32:50
  all work for the federal government. Anyway, the point of this is that
• 32:54
  when you give up eight points, as Trump is doing, he's leaving eight
• 32:58
  points on the table in theory, right, Haley represents what is theoretically possible
• 33:04
  in Virginia against Joe Biden, and Haley outperforms Trump by eight points. You
• 33:09
  can't leave eight points on the table if you're Donald Trump and still expect to
• 33:15
  win not just Virginia but nationwide unless everything possible goes your way. And so
• 33:24
  when you look at poles like that one in Virginia, which Trump is now
• 33:28
  claiming doesn't exist, and you look at the results in New Hampshire, it
• 33:32
  is obvious that Haley is the vice presidential pick. She's a woman, she's
• 33:39
  perceived as a moderate. She's tied enough to Trump to where, well,
• 33:44
  MAGA voters will hate it. They'll certainly go along with it. They'll go
• 33:47
  along with anything Trump does. I mean the idea that somehow MAGA voters would
• 33:52
  revolt because Nikky Haley was chosen as VP as just ludicrous. It's absurd.
• 33:58
  They let him do anything he wants. I'm convinced he told get away with
• 34:01
  John Fetterman, who would probably carry Pennsylvania and maybe Michigan and Wisconsin now that
• 34:08
  he's turned into a very moderate, almost conservative Democrat after recovering from his stroke.
• 34:14
  But that's not gonna happen. But Haley. Haley provides him with all
• 34:20
  the things that he would need if winning is the most important thing. And
• 34:23
  I also I think Trump should be interested in the fact that Haley is not
• 34:30
  a threat to him within magaworld. She can't take over MAGA Inc. Or
• 34:36
  even the MAGA political machinery should they lose. Like for instance, I'm sure
• 34:42
  that one of the things that Trump is concerned about is, Okay, if
• 34:45
  I pick somebody and I lose, does that end me? Do they usert
• 34:51
  me in the movement as I get older? Well, that's not gonna happen
• 34:55
  with Nicki Haley. Nikki Haley in that way is almost the perfect vice presidential
• 35:02
  nominee because she's not a threat to what Trump seems to really care about.
• 35:09
  She's only there one to potentially create victory, and two because she could actually
• 35:15
  be president if something happened. I mean, she's vetted, she's a former
• 35:20
  governor, former UN ambassador, she's gone through a presidential campaign, you know,
• 35:24
  so it's all there. I don't think it's gonna happen. One because
• 35:30
  nothing logical ever happens in this day and age anymore. But also because I
• 35:35
  think that Trump's statements last night went beyond the pale. I mean, they
• 35:40
  got personal, and it's clear that Trump felt a bit threatened by the small
• 35:46
  margin of victory. And it's weird. With Trump, you never know,
• 35:51
  Okay, if you really challenge him, is that a good thing because you
• 35:54
  get more respect in his eyes? It's in my perception, the best thing
• 36:00
  to do with Trump is to put up a good fight, but not a
• 36:06
  really good fight. Right. He's been pretty conciliatory towards Ron de Santis,
• 36:12
  especially after Iowa, and I think part of that is because, hey,
• 36:16
  you know, he stood up. He didn't, he didn't completely collapse.
• 36:21
  He finished second, he got over twenty percent, but I still won by
• 36:23
  thirty. So I'm comfortable with it, and I can at least respect a
• 36:28
  little bit that he ran a tough race. That's the kind of level that
• 36:31
  I think Trump is comfortable with. But when Nikki Hanley gets within eleven or
• 36:37
  twelve points and spends most of the night only behind by seven or eight points,
• 36:43
  when you're expecting to win by more than that. Then I think Trump
• 36:45
  gets a bit uncomfortable. It hits a little bit too close to home.
• 36:50
  And so even though last night should have increased Haley's stock when it comes to
• 36:55
  the vice presidential nomination, it probably worked in the opposite direction, because everything
• 37:00
  works in the opposite direction in this day and age, and so I don't
• 37:06
  know who Trump is going to pick as his vice presidential nominee. Steve Cortes
• 37:10
  and I have a very interesting conversation towards the end of our interview later on
• 37:16
  in this episode of the podcast, so I'll save that for them, but
• 37:21
  I urge you to take a listen to it. One of the other things
• 37:23
  that Steve and I talk a lot about in our interview is Trump on COVID,
• 37:29
  And obviously COVID is a topic of great interest and passion for me and
• 37:36
  something that I have discussed continually and what I believe was at the core of
• 37:39
  why Ron DeSantis not only had to run for president, but why it's a
• 37:45
  shame that his candidacy flamed out. And I think there will be ramifications for
• 37:51
  that for a very very long time, because we now know that there will
• 37:54
  be no COVID accountability. And we have a situation where we have a rematch
• 38:01
  of twenty twenty, where we have two presidents that were both terrible on COVID.
• 38:08
  Terrible. Trump was awful when it actually happened. He handed over his
• 38:14
  presidency to Fauci, He spent like a drunken sailor. He completely effectively changed
• 38:21
  the system of government, at least temporarily to almost pure socialism, literally handing
• 38:28
  out checks to people with his name on it for staying at home. You
• 38:32
  know, he was inconsistent on masks and on mandates. He was very very
• 38:37
  pro vaccine and still brags about the vaccines. I mean, so there's all
• 38:44
  sorts of things that Trump did wrong during COVID, and I think he got
• 38:47
  played and I think he lost his balls, and I think he was naive,
• 38:53
  and I think, you know, he did not trust his instincts,
• 38:57
  and I think he deserves an awful lot of blame. I think, I
• 39:00
  frankly think he crapped the bed for the most part during COVID, with very
• 39:05
  very rare exceptions. And I think that the Left used COVID as a weapon
• 39:08
  to destroy him, and he was not capable of combating that. Now,
• 39:13
  would that have been a difficult fight, Yeah, but rond Dea Santis had
• 39:16
  a very similar fight in Florida, and Ronda Santis won. Donald Trump did
• 39:22
  not. Donald Trump lost, And so the fact that DeSantis goes down this
• 39:29
  issue of COVID accountability is at least should be very much at the forefront people's
• 39:35
  mindset, because now we have Trump and Biden, who was at least as
• 39:38
  bad, if not worse, especially when it came to mandates as Trump,
• 39:44
  and because obviously the vaccines came in just as Biden was taking office. But
• 39:49
  Biden is even worse on COVID in my opinion, than Trump was in twenty
• 39:54
  twenty. So we have two terrible candidates in general, both are on the
• 40:00
  issue of the COVID panic. And so I was particularly interested in pretty much
• 40:07
  aghast when I saw two extremely different statements put out by Donald Trump on the
• 40:14
  topic of the COVID panic on what appeared to be the same day. Now
• 40:20
  it's hard to tell when Trump taps a truth Social statement or a post that
• 40:27
  he makes on true Social which is basically his version of Twitter, and he'll
• 40:30
  release it via his email list. Some media outlets will pick it up.
• 40:36
  But there are two clips, I'm going to play for you, and again,
• 40:38
  I don't know from a timeline standpoint which of these was done first,
• 40:44
  but I'm going to play for you first, the statement that Donald Trump made,
• 40:50
  which is clearly scripted, and this was a situation where he's making a
• 40:58
  statement and he's that we're gonna see a revisiting of COVID in twenty twenty four
• 41:07
  because it's an election year and Democrats used it so effectively in twenty twenty that
• 41:14
  they're going to use it again in twenty twenty four, which I want to
• 41:16
  make clear doesn't even make any sense and is an indication to me that Trump
• 41:23
  still doesn't get it, or maybe he's making this up because he realizes this
• 41:30
  is a narrative that his fans will lap up and will get him off the
• 41:35
  hook for what happened in twenty twenty. But let's be clear, Trump is
• 41:39
  not the incumbent. Trump is the challenger. Biden's the incumbent. So there's
• 41:46
  not going to be any sort of massive anti COVID reaction right now. There's
• 41:53
  not gonna be mandates of any sort going forward because there's no need to because
• 42:00
  those the people that want them are all going to vote for Biden anyway.
• 42:05
  And there are at least some independent people that we're like, oh wait a
• 42:07
  minute, here we go again. I don't want to go through this crap
• 42:09
  again. You know, maybe Trump is worth enduring, so I don't have
• 42:15
  to do this again. So there's no political incentive for Democrats to do what
• 42:19
  Trump is claiming that they're going to do. I mean, there's some very
• 42:22
  small indications, like hospitals are going back to mask mandates, which is just
• 42:28
  insane because masks don't work. And you know, hospitals are supposed to be
• 42:31
  run by smart people and they've obviously been completely overtaken by politics. And you
• 42:39
  know, science and medicine means nothing. But we should know for one hundred
• 42:44
  percent certainty now after we have years of data, real world data to prove
• 42:47
  it. The masks do not work. I mean. So there's certain things
• 42:51
  happening on the edges that substantiate what Trump is talking about here, but the
• 42:57
  main point is completely loo. But the most extraordinary part of this is what
• 43:02
  you're about to hear is Donald Trump sounding like Ron DeSantis when it comes to
• 43:08
  the whole issue of the COVID panic. Almost Ron DeSantis on steroids, and
• 43:15
  I just even I was stunned at what I saw. This was Donald Trump,
• 43:21
  just a couple of days ago, warning the country that were headed towards
• 43:24
  another COVID paddock. Because this is an election year, left wing lunatics are
• 43:30
  trying very hard to bring back COVID lockdowns and mandates with all of their sudden
• 43:36
  fear bongering about the new variants that are coming. Gee whiz, you know
• 43:39
  what else is coming? An election? They want to restart the COVID hysterias
• 43:44
  so they can justify more lockdowns, more censorship, more illegal dropboxes, more
• 43:50
  mail in ballots, and trillions of dollars in payoffs to their political allies heading
• 43:54
  into the twenty twenty four election. Does that sound familiar? These are bad
• 43:59
  people, These are sick people we're dealing with. But to every COVID tyrant
• 44:02
  who wants to take away our freedom hear these words, we will not comply,
• 44:09
  so don't even think about it. We will not shut down our schools,
• 44:13
  we will not accept your lockdowns, we will not abide by your mask
• 44:17
  mandates, and we will not tolerate your vaccine mandates. They rig the twenty
• 44:22
  twenty election and now they're trying to do the same thing all over again by
• 44:28
  rigging the most important election in the history of our country, the twenty twenty
• 44:32
  four election, even if it means trying to bring back COVID. But they
• 44:37
  will fail because we will not let it happen. When I'm back in the
• 44:42
  White House, I will use every available authority to cut federal funding to any
• 44:45
  school, college, airline, or public transportation system that imposes a mask mandate
• 44:52
  or a vaccine mandate. Thank you very much. Now, that is just
• 44:59
  stunn u, just stunning that that's the guy who was in charge when the
• 45:06
  original COVID panic happened and facilitated so much of the insanity that he's now decrying.
• 45:13
  Where was that Donald Trump when we needed him. I kept saying this
• 45:16
  during twenty twenty I was told there would be balls, there were none.
• 45:23
  There were no balls by Donald Trump. And now all of a sudden,
• 45:28
  in twenty twenty four, that's exactly the message that should have been stated by
• 45:34
  Trump back in twenty twenty. So, Okay, maybe he's learned right,
• 45:38
  Maybe he's learned it's not really in keeping who he is, but that's possible.
• 45:44
  Maybe he's learned his lesson. Maybe he just doesn't want to admit that
• 45:47
  he was wrong. But then on what appears to have been the same day
• 45:52
  or certainly within twenty four hours, Trump did an interview and he in the
• 45:59
  interview, who starts bragging about what a great job he did during COVID,
• 46:04
  that he never gets the credit he deserves during COVID, And you know,
• 46:08
  this is something that he's very proud of, which again, you know,
• 46:15
  we're in a alis in Wonderland, upside down world here. This is gaslighting
• 46:21
  in the extreme. Of course, he's been gasleting on COVID all on lying
• 46:24
  about Ron DeSantis's record, but now claiming that somehow he did great on COVID.
• 46:30
  And here's what that sounded like. I think we did a fantastic job
• 46:34
  on COVID. Nobody knew. You know, I've been given tremendous credit for
• 46:37
  the economy, for the military, for foreign policy. The one thing I've
• 46:42
  never been given credit for was the job we did in COVID. We did
• 46:45
  a fantastic job with all of the all of the medicines, and if you
• 46:50
  look at regeneron all of the things that we did, we did a fantastic
• 46:52
  job. Have never been given the credit for that, and basically I allowed
• 46:58
  the governors to do their states, and people like Henry McMaster who was here
• 47:00
  yesterday, who, by the way, endorsed me. You know, he's
• 47:02
  the governor of South Carolina. Almost every politician in South Carolina endorsed me,
• 47:08
  which is a little bit tough for Nicky. But I just don't know how
• 47:10
  you possibly, even in a Trump world, reconcile those two statements. I
• 47:17
  mean, it's hard for me in this day and age, where I've been
• 47:21
  so desensitized to insanity to be able to go, oh, okay, well
• 47:25
  now that's outrageous, but that really is outrageous. I mean that is complete
• 47:31
  gaslighting. And I guess it works because the right wing media is not going
• 47:37
  to call Trump out on it, especially now that he's clearly the nomineque,
• 47:40
  So there'll be no criticism of Trump going forward. We're not going to hear
• 47:45
  anything about what a terrible job Trump did in twenty twenty regarding COVID ever,
• 47:50
  again, especially now that Ron De Santis is out of the race. But
• 47:53
  how he can, on one hand claim he did a great job, on
• 48:00
  the other hand condemn everything that happened because of COVID is beyond even me,
• 48:07
  even I cannot comprehend how you can possibly get away with that. I mean,
• 48:13
  it's the cognitive dissonance is off the charts, the lack of self awareness
• 48:16
  is off the charts. The level of lying and gaslighting is off the charts.
• 48:23
  But this is where we are. And as I said, Steve Cortez
• 48:27
  gives his view, which is he was right there when this all happened,
• 48:30
  right within the Trump inner circle. He gives his view of Trump's actual perception
• 48:37
  of what happened with COVID, which I found to be very interesting, in
• 48:39
  which you can hear in that interview in just a few moments from now.
• 48:45
  As far as Ron de Santis is concerned, you know, Trump has been,
• 48:49
  as I've already stated, fairly gracious regarding the Santra's defeat. The media
• 48:53
  coverage has not been gracious regarding Ronda Santis. The New York Times probably had
• 49:00
  the most egregious of all of the headlines. They had a story entitled the
• 49:06
  emasculation of Ron DeSantis by the Bully Donald Trump. The emasculation of Ronda Santis
• 49:15
  by the bully Donald Trump. And I think that's an exaggeration. I don't
• 49:20
  think that's really what happened. Although clearly DeSantis allowed himself to be the beta
• 49:25
  to Donald Trump's alpha, which was always a great fear of mine. But
• 49:30
  my greatest gripe with the media when it comes to the autopsies of Ronda Santis
• 49:38
  is that they are not, in any way, shape or form even contemplating
• 49:44
  their own role in this murder. They never came close to giving DeSantis his
• 49:52
  due on COVID or correcting the record on COVID. They just pretended that COVID
• 49:58
  never really happened. They just pretend that DeSantis wasn't right, and they weren't
• 50:02
  totally wrong. This was something I was always warning about. The media will
• 50:07
  never correct the record on this. Their self interest is very much at stake
• 50:13
  here. They're deeply, deeply, deeply invested in the bogus narrative surrounding COVID
• 50:20
  and that Ron de Santis is a massive threat to their personal self interest.
• 50:24
  If he's the nominee, COVID will be revisited, there will be at least
• 50:30
  some semblance of COVID accountability. The media does not want that, so they
• 50:35
  sat by and allowed him to effectively be emasculated by Donald Trump. Because if
• 50:39
  they had done their fucking jobs, the whole country would have known without the
• 50:45
  Santas having to even try or worry about it. That. Oh, by
• 50:49
  the way, the whole world got it wrong, or most of the world
• 50:52
  got it wrong, and Ronda Santis got it right. That story was never
• 50:55
  told, you know. In two thousand and eight, Baraco Bob wrote a
• 51:00
  hurricane wind that was driven by the news media that allowed him to beat Hillary
• 51:07
  Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. Barack Obama never did anything. He gave
• 51:14
  a speech to the Democratic Convention in two thousand and four and beat a terrible
• 51:17
  candidate in Illinois, a Democratic state, and he was a first term US
• 51:22
  senator with no accomplishments. And the news media in totality other than the right
• 51:30
  wing back when they still had more power than they clearly do today, a
• 51:34
  lot more power than they do today, which is why I made a whole
• 51:37
  documentary film about this called mediam Malpractice. How Obama got elected. They carried
• 51:42
  Obama to the Democratic nomination and to a general election victory against John McCain in
• 51:49
  two thousand and eight. He never did anything. Ron DeSantis deserved at least
• 51:55
  that kind of treatment because of the fact that he he was right during COVID
• 52:00
  and they were wrong. He never got anything close to not even remotely close
• 52:05
  to that. We said he wasn't gona get anything close to that, even
• 52:07
  though there were some the Sandus fans who theorized that he might, which I
• 52:12
  always thought was hilarious and adorable. That was never ever going to happen.
• 52:15
  So we have a world where Obama accomplishes nothing except being a multi racial man
• 52:22
  who perceived as being black. And therefore, you know, he's you know,
• 52:27
  he's a good speaker, and he's magical, and that's all the media
• 52:30
  cares about. They fall in love with him, and then they facilitate and
• 52:35
  manifest this Obama mania, which carries him to the nomination and the presidency.
• 52:40
  They did the opposite with Rond de Sandis. So I don't want to hear
• 52:45
  anything from the mainstream media or even the right wing media, which did a
• 52:47
  lousy job on this too, because they were afraid of criticizing Trump. If
• 52:52
  the real story had been widely and correctly told regarding the COVID response Rohand de
• 52:59
  Sanders, it would not have been emasculated by Donald Trump. That was only
• 53:04
  allowed to happen because the media didn't create the proper narrative or framework for the
• 53:10
  race, and I think that a Santa's people were naive about this, and
• 53:15
  I get into that as well in the interview with Steve Cortes. But I
• 53:19
  want to play one other clip before we get to the interview, actually two
• 53:22
  other clips, but one directly related to DeSantis, before we get to the
• 53:27
  Steve Cortes interview. I've talked a lot about people's perceptions of COVID and how
• 53:34
  I knew that DeSantis was cooked because there were a lot of people that should
• 53:40
  have been in the Desanta's camp who were not, even though they had escaped
• 53:45
  to Florida. Literally, they hated the COVID restrictions. They escaped to Florida
• 53:52
  on numerous occasions. My former co host on this podcast, as well as
• 53:55
  my co host on With the Benefit of Hindsight, Liz Abebe, is one
• 54:00
  who's a great example of this. You know, she was someone who really
• 54:02
  liked DeSantis, has family in Florida, escaped to Florida multiple times, and
• 54:08
  I could never get her to fully get on the DeSantis train. And when
• 54:14
  she made it clear she was still on the Trump train, I realized,
• 54:16
  Okay, there's no hope here, because if even I can't influence Liz after
• 54:22
  I convinced her that Jerry Sedovsky was innocent, and here she is someone who
• 54:28
  hated the whole COVID insanity and escaped to Florida on numerous occasions and spent a
• 54:35
  lot of time there, then there's no hope. Well, there was a
• 54:38
  fascinating moment that occurred on a serious radio show that's hosted by Andy Cohen.
• 54:45
  Andy Cohen is a very well known liberal, happens to be gay, medium
• 54:51
  mogul on bribe, basically runs Bravo and all those reality TV shows. He's
• 55:00
  very well connected within the Hampton's media mafia. He and Matt Lower, my
• 55:06
  friend, are still good friends, and so he's a very well known and
• 55:09
  influential guy. And I want to play for you this clip that my wife
• 55:15
  happened here, and so she shared it with me and I took a video
• 55:20
  of the audio basically and posted on Twitter. But I'm going to use it
• 55:23
  on the podcast now because I just think this is so very very telling.
• 55:30
  This is the news guy on Andy Cohen's radio show telling him that Ron DeSantis
• 55:37
  has dropped out of the race and then chiding him for once being a DeSantis
• 55:43
  supporter, if you will, during COVID, and now that, of course
• 55:46
  COVID in perception is totally over. Cohen has a hard time believing that he
• 55:52
  ever really did support ron de Santis, especially after the media created a misperception
• 56:00
  of the Sanda. So this to me, you know, this belongs in
• 56:01
  a museum of the of the COVID panic reaction and how people's views evolved based
• 56:07
  upon their own self interest. And here's what that sounded like. Rhonda Santus
• 56:12
  suspended his twenty twenty four campaign and back's Trump. What a pussy. Remember
• 56:17
  when you said, uh, maybe Rhonda Santis has the right idea about everything
• 56:22
  and he should be during COVID, You're like, he has the right idea.
• 56:29
  You know what our views of halved? Yeah, views of all.
• 56:32
  I mean, I knew he was a monster, but I was just here
• 56:36
  in New York under lockdown looking at it. I was like, wait a
• 56:39
  minute, but yes, I yes, I recant that. I recuse what
• 56:45
  I said. Of course, I had predicted that what was going to happen
• 56:52
  to Ronda Santis and COVID was very, very similar to what happened with Winston
• 56:55
  Churchill, who was the Prime Minister of Great Britin during World War Two.
• 57:00
  After the war was over. I said this many many months ago, that
• 57:07
  you know, when people think the war is over, they might be grateful
• 57:09
  to you for having won it, but you know, if you're not useful
• 57:15
  now or in the future, and if the people's self interests or a line
• 57:19
  elsewhere, they're going to abandon you. And that's what happened to Churchill,
• 57:23
  although he was brought back later on in life before he died as Prime minister,
• 57:29
  but he was basically kicked out of the job not long after World War
• 57:32
  Two ended. And I think it's a very similar set of circumstances with regard
• 57:39
  to the Santas. I found it ironic that in his message withdrawing from the
• 57:45
  Race, De Santas tweeted a Winston Churchill quote in the tweet that had the
• 57:51
  video of him withdrawing from the race. So I would very be very curious
• 57:57
  to see or to know whether that the Sanders agree with me in my comparison
• 58:01
  to him and COVID and Churchill and World War Two. But that Cohen SoundBite,
• 58:08
  to me, that was so telling, not just because it's Andy Cohen.
• 58:14
  I mean, Andy Cohen was probably never going to vote for Ronda Sanders
• 58:16
  in a general election, but there are a lot of people that were in
• 58:20
  that vote, and I think that's why he won by twenty points in Florida.
• 58:24
  They were not Republican voters. They were just people who were rational and
• 58:29
  go and were thankful that some semblance of rationality had won out and there was
• 58:35
  a refuge from the insanity that was going on in much of the rest of
• 58:38
  the country. And it was because of what Rond De Santis did in Florida.
• 58:45
  But also I think there are a lot of Republicans like elizabeev and other
• 58:49
  people I know who fell into this same category. And it's it's very naive
• 58:54
  because COVID is not over. COVID is over from the standpoint of, you
• 59:00
  know, our direct response to the virus. But what they learned because of
• 59:06
  COVID is gonna happen again. It's already happening with regard to climate change and
• 59:09
  global warming, and it's going to happen again the next time they get a
• 59:15
  virus or a disease that they can use for their own self interest. I
• 59:19
  mean, it's not a conspiracy, folks, This is just human nature.
• 59:22
  When people realize they can get away with something, they're gonna do it again.
• 59:28
  And so to think that the war is over is ridiculous. This was
• 59:32
  the opening salvo of the war. They realized, oh my god, look
• 59:37
  how weak the defenses are. And then temporarily, you know, it's no
• 59:43
  longer in their self interest to be pursuing this directly again. I think they're
• 59:45
  focusing more on climate change, global warming, but this is gonna happen again.
• 59:51
  It's gonna happen again. And unfortunately, you know, we're now faced
• 59:55
  with exactly what I've been predicting all along. It's gonna be Trump versus Biden,
• 1:00:00
  two candidates who were absolutely awful when it came to the COVID panic.
• 1:00:06
  And I do think it's important to point out that it's not really Trump versus
• 1:00:10
  Biden, it's Trump versus Biden, Harris, because it is becoming more and
• 1:00:17
  more obvious that there's no chance, none, that Joe Biden serves out a
• 1:00:24
  full second term. Now, the media is going to do a terrible job,
• 1:00:28
  in my opinion, the mainstream media do a terrible job of framing this
• 1:00:32
  issue. For the average voter. Now, maybe they're going to be able
• 1:00:35
  to figure it out on their own. That's why the age issue is so
• 1:00:37
  dangerous for Democrats, because everyone has their own experiences with people in their eighties
• 1:00:42
  and they can see it. And even though Biden won't do debates against Trump,
• 1:00:45
  that's my prediction, and they're going to keep him as underground and in
• 1:00:50
  the basement as much as possible. I do think it'll still be a very
• 1:00:54
  difficult issue for them to avoid. But by and large, I don't think
• 1:00:59
  we're going to see the narrative that a vote for Biden is really a vote
• 1:01:04
  for Harris. Because if Biden does win, and I predicted this many times
• 1:01:07
  before, and I'm more positive now than I ever have been before. If
• 1:01:13
  Biden wins, they're gonna do everything they possibly can to get him into early
• 1:01:17
  twenty twenty seven, and then he's gonna resign and Kamala Harris is gonna be
• 1:01:22
  the president the United States, and she's gonna be an historic first female president
• 1:01:28
  under that scenario. And while she is awful and her numbers are just as
• 1:01:32
  bad as Biden's, I believe Republicans, conservatives, right wingers, Trump fans,
• 1:01:38
  whatever, right wing media are underestimating Kamala Harris, not because she's all
• 1:01:45
  that great. I mean, she's terrible. Although I do think the fact
• 1:01:47
  that she speaks like a kindergarten teacher, or at best, a third grade
• 1:01:52
  teacher, may be more to her advantage than people realize, because unfortunately,
• 1:01:58
  most Americans are moron and so I'm not sure that that hurts her quite as
• 1:02:02
  much with the voters who determine presidential elections as we would like to believe.
• 1:02:07
  But the other element of this is, and I've been warning about this,
• 1:02:12
  is that the media is more than willing and able. They may not be
• 1:02:16
  as able as they were, certainly in two thousand and eight, but they
• 1:02:19
  are more than willing to try to do for Harris what they did for Barack
• 1:02:24
  Obama. And she brings an extra element to the table. She's not just
• 1:02:29
  a woman of color, but she's obviously a woman. Barack Obama was a
• 1:02:35
  man, and you know, we hadn't ever had, and still haven't never
• 1:02:38
  had, a female president. Now we have a female vice president in Kamala
• 1:02:45
  Harris. She was a DEI pick, But as we've talked a lot about
• 1:02:47
  when it comes to DEI picks, this is the most maddening element of this
• 1:02:52
  situation. You get chosen for your race, or your gender or what have
• 1:02:58
  you, and then when it's shown that you're not good at the job,
• 1:03:01
  any criticism you get is why, Well, it's because of my race,
• 1:03:07
  or my gender or my sexuality. That's the only logical explanation for why I'm
• 1:03:12
  being criticized. And if you think I'm kidding, listen to this clip from
• 1:03:16
  CNN. Laura Coates, who happens to be a woman of color, is
• 1:03:22
  interviewing Kamala Harris after an event, and she is slobbering all over Kamala Harris.
• 1:03:30
  I mean, slobbering, I mean, and flashbacks to the difference in
• 1:03:35
  the way that Katie Kuric interviewed Sarah Palin when she had just come off the
• 1:03:38
  stage and an event during the two thousand and eight presidential election, which was
• 1:03:44
  completely and totally different. It was a search and destroy mission for which Palin
• 1:03:49
  was ill prepared. But we have Laura Coates slobbering all over Kamala Harris and
• 1:03:54
  just wondering how it could possibly be that people don't think that she's wonderful,
• 1:04:00
  And of course Harris's response the only one she can give is well, it's
• 1:04:04
  because I'm a woman, and she's not even subtle about it. And here's
• 1:04:09
  what that sounded like on CNN. Let me ask you one more question.
• 1:04:12
  I'm struck just in your presence. I was watching you on stage, watching
• 1:04:16
  the reactions from the crowd, looking you in the eye, with your passion
• 1:04:21
  that you were displaying and talking about so many issues. And yet you hear
• 1:04:28
  candidates suggesting that a vote for President Biden because of his age is somehow a
• 1:04:33
  vote for you, and that is hurled as an insult. It's intended to
• 1:04:40
  demonstrate some negative viewpoint towards you. What is your reaction to this thought that,
• 1:04:46
  with your background, in particular with your career, that there is some
• 1:04:51
  thought that you are incapable. Well, I think that most women who have
• 1:05:00
  grisen in their profession, who are leaders in their profession, have had similar
• 1:05:05
  experiences. I was the first woman to be elected district attorney, I was
• 1:05:12
  the first woman to be elected attorney general in the state of California, and
• 1:05:15
  I'm the first woman to be vice president. And I love my job.
• 1:05:21
  So that really is going to be the twenty twenty four race. It's really
• 1:05:27
  Biden Harris in capital letters against Trump and whoever he picks, and I don't.
• 1:05:33
  I'm not very confident that Trump's going to make a good selection when it
• 1:05:38
  comes to the vice presidential nominee. And I discussed that subject quite a bit,
• 1:05:44
  as well as many other very interesting topics in an interview I just taped
• 1:05:48
  with Steve Cortez. And Steve Cortez is a guy who has been on this
• 1:05:53
  program before. I believe, in fact, this is the first time I've
• 1:05:55
  ever had a guest on a second time in the basic now short lived history
• 1:06:01
  of the podcast, which only has about six episodes left to go, as
• 1:06:04
  I planned to leave this podcast and public life in mid February after the Super
• 1:06:11
  Bowl. And Steve is someone who I've never met, but you know,
• 1:06:15
  I've done interviews with him. He interviewed me on Newsmax several times. We
• 1:06:18
  got to know each other because he was a fan of the With the Benefit
• 1:06:24
  of Hindsight podcast. We went to the same college, Georgetown University, at
• 1:06:28
  different times. He played football there and that was partially why he was interested
• 1:06:32
  in the podcast With the Benefit of Hindsight. He and I have had quite
• 1:06:36
  an interesting relationship and ride when it comes to the whole Trump versus the Santas
• 1:06:42
  situation. Because he left the Team Trump, went to Team Desandis went to
• 1:06:48
  work for Never Back Down. And then last week, after having left Never
• 1:06:56
  Backed Down several months ago, he came out with an op ed in titled
• 1:07:00
  only Trump Can Save America, where he urged everyone else to get out of
• 1:07:04
  the race and everyone to rally around Donald Trump. I had some major problems
• 1:07:10
  with the timing and execution of that. I taped a podcast before Steve and
• 1:07:16
  I had a chance to talk about that, where I was rather critical of
• 1:07:20
  Steve, and then before that podcast was released, he and I had a
• 1:07:25
  chance to finally talk on the phone. He apologized, which I very much
• 1:07:28
  appreciated, and then he agreed to do an interview with me about basically this
• 1:07:35
  entire campaign and where we are and where we're headed. And the result is
• 1:07:40
  a really, really I think fascinating interview, and thankfully we were able to
• 1:07:45
  get through it without out further damaging the personal relationship, which I do think
• 1:07:49
  is fine, largely because Steve apologized for the way that his flip back to
• 1:07:56
  Trump went down, not just publicly but also privately, and that I think
• 1:08:00
  I thought I deserved, given all the circumstances, at least the heads up
• 1:08:03
  which he acknowledged both privately and again in this interview that you're about to hear,
• 1:08:09
  because we really have had an extraordinary relationship on this entire front. So
• 1:08:14
  what you're about to hear is a very unique interview on a lot of different
• 1:08:18
  levels. I hope you'll get as much out of it as I think as
• 1:08:23
  possible, because I do think there's a lot of important and fascinating stuff here.
• 1:08:28
  So here is the interview that I literally just moments ago taped with Steve
• 1:08:32
  Cortes, formerly have never back down the DeSantis Political Action Committee, and now
• 1:08:38
  someone who very publicly is back on the Trump train. Steve Cortes, Welcome
• 1:08:43
  back to the Death of Journalism podcast. John. I appreciate it, so
• 1:08:47
  happy to be here. I am one of your most avid listeners out there.
• 1:08:51
  I listen to every word, not always in a timely manner. Sometimes
• 1:08:55
  it takes me a few days to get to your podcast. But and I,
• 1:08:58
  for one just want to tell you I have learned a lot from it,
• 1:09:00
  and I have enjoyed it thoroughly, and I'm really really going to miss
• 1:09:03
  it. When you're done. Well, I appreciate all that. So I
• 1:09:08
  assume that means you must have heard the episode that I recorded after you came
• 1:09:13
  back out for Trump, but before we actually had a chance to speak.
• 1:09:16
  Is that accurate? I did? Okay? So what so what was your
• 1:09:20
  reaction to that particular episode. Well, listen, you know, I wasn't
• 1:09:26
  thrilled, you know, with hearing it. But I also look, John,
• 1:09:30
  You're my friend, and I have great respect for you, and I
• 1:09:31
  respect your opinion even when it's you know, delivering a harsh message to me.
• 1:09:38
  You know, I particularly wish that you hadn't told your daughter that I
• 1:09:40
  disappointed you that you know, sort of hurt me. But again I also
• 1:09:45
  I get it, and I was I was wrong to not let you know
• 1:09:47
  ahead of time that I was posting that editorial, and that was my mistake,
• 1:09:51
  clearly, And so I'm not trying to equivocate in any way on that.
• 1:09:56
  You have been an incredible ally and friend, giving me great throughout this
• 1:10:00
  entire process of going into the Santus world and now leading the Santas world,
• 1:10:04
  and I appreciate all of that. You absolutely, you know, deserved heads
• 1:10:09
  up, and so you were understandably irked about that, which again I get
• 1:10:13
  it, but hopefully you and I have a friendship that's gonna you know,
• 1:10:16
  last well past that hiccup. Well, when we did speak after I recorded
• 1:10:21
  that episode, you did apologize proactively, and you know, I was impressed
• 1:10:27
  by that, and I told you we're fine. So let's hopefully we'll be
• 1:10:30
  fine at the end of this interview. And by the way, my daughter
• 1:10:33
  is also perfectly fine with you, so that you don't have anything to worry
• 1:10:36
  about with Grace. But let's go I want to take this in a linear
• 1:10:41
  fashion because there's a lot to talk about here, and you've already alluded to
• 1:10:45
  some of it. So let's go back to the very beginning, and now
• 1:10:48
  that you were a little bit more free to talk about this, you and
• 1:10:51
  I had a lot of discussions off of the air. We did an interview
• 1:10:56
  when you joined Never Back Down, the Political Action Committee for Rhonda Santis.
• 1:11:00
  But before that and during that whole process, you and I talked an awful
• 1:11:05
  lot. And I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I've
• 1:11:08
  already alluded to the fact that I was in a very strange position because obviously
• 1:11:13
  I was a DeSantis supporter, and I would love for somebody like you to
• 1:11:17
  flip from Trump to DeSantis, and so politically, I very much wanted you
• 1:11:23
  to do what you ended up doing. But can you confirm for the audience
• 1:11:29
  what I was telling you off the air that is counterintuitive to somebody with my
• 1:11:34
  political beliefs. What is your recollection of how that all went down? No,
• 1:11:40
  you strongly advise that I stay with Team Trump, which I'm sure would
• 1:11:44
  shock a lot of the audience, given your clear antagonism toward toward Trump.
• 1:11:49
  And I think you did it for two reasons. Number one was personal.
• 1:11:53
  You were worried about me as a friend, of the risks of coming out
• 1:11:58
  publicly in favor of Roonda Santas leaving Team Trump. And then secondly, I
• 1:12:00
  think as a patriot, you really wanted somebody in Trump's inner circle who you
• 1:12:04
  thought was willing to speak the truth to him. And you know, I'm
• 1:12:08
  willing to be honest with him about issues and policies, you know, and
• 1:12:12
  all of it. So you were you were quite emphatic as a matter of
• 1:12:15
  fact, and that again would probably shock a lot of the audience that you
• 1:12:19
  wanted me to stay with Team Trump. For for personal and patriotic reasons,
• 1:12:24
  and at the core of that was my belief at that time. I remember,
• 1:12:28
  you have to remember the timeline. Timeline is everything, because now we're
• 1:12:31
  into the late spring area or early spring, depending on where you live in
• 1:12:35
  the country, somewhere in the springtime area, when I have already become convinced
• 1:12:42
  at that point that the window for DeSantis to beat Trump had been closed.
• 1:12:48
  And this is this is post the first indictment. And I'm curious at the
• 1:12:55
  time, did you believe me? Did you think I might be right?
• 1:13:00
  Was how much of your equation was built on the idea that I might not
• 1:13:04
  be correct in my analysis of what was going to happen here? Right?
• 1:13:11
  No, listen, I thought you might be right, Clearly, I also
• 1:13:14
  made the decision that you weren't entirely right, or I would not a publicly
• 1:13:16
  joined team of sands because you're actly right in terms of the timeline we're talking.
• 1:13:20
  Early March of twenty twenty three was when I first made overtures to the
• 1:13:25
  Desamas campaign, went down to see him in Tallahassee. I believe in the
• 1:13:29
  second half of March, made my public announcement in the beginning of May.
• 1:13:33
  So you're exactly correct. There was one indictment, the Alvin Bragg indictment in
• 1:13:36
  New York, which I think all of the indictments are ridiculous, but that
• 1:13:40
  is by far the most absurd of the four indictments against Trump. I think
• 1:13:44
  even Trump haters will concede that that indictment is really shaky at best. And
• 1:13:49
  so anyway, the only that indictment had come down, I was not yet
• 1:13:53
  of the view, and you were correct, by the way, Okay,
• 1:13:56
  I was wrong. You were correct. You thought that that window was already
• 1:13:59
  closing, that whatever window had opened after the twenty twenty two midterms in November
• 1:14:01
  of twenty So, if we take the timeline back a few more months,
• 1:14:04
  whatever window had opened post November of twenty twenty two, you were very concerned,
• 1:14:12
  and I think accurately so that by March or you know, the early
• 1:14:15
  months of say, the end of quarter one of twenty twenty three, that
• 1:14:19
  that window had closed. I did not believe that at the time, because
• 1:14:24
  and with only one indictment, which I thought was you know, ludicrous on
• 1:14:27
  its face, I didn't necessarily think that those indictments or that indictment and any
• 1:14:31
  loomin indictments would propel Trump to the front of the field the way it did
• 1:14:36
  the way they did eventually. So you know, I made the decision at
• 1:14:41
  that time incorrectly that the Republican Electorate was ready for a post Trump chapter of
• 1:14:47
  the America First Movement, for having a leader who had almost all of the
• 1:14:51
  same positions and principles as President Trump without some of the baggage that goes with
• 1:14:58
  President Trump. I was making the the wager at that time, the very
• 1:15:00
  public wager, with my reputation and my my work, that the Republican electorate
• 1:15:05
  was ready for that. That changed dramatically, and particularly as the next three
• 1:15:10
  indictments came down, and by that time, by by the middle of summer,
• 1:15:14
  it was very clear to me that you were correct in the spring that
• 1:15:17
  there was simply no way for Ron DeSantis to win this race. Now,
• 1:15:20
  when you joined never back down the Desandas Political Action Committee, And I can't
• 1:15:27
  remember all the details, but I remember very specifically there was a period of
• 1:15:30
  time between when you had actually made a deal to join them and it was
• 1:15:36
  announced that you still had apprehensions and that there were there were there were warning
• 1:15:42
  signs that things weren't going to go well that that This is my interpretation that
• 1:15:47
  you know, there was something fundamentally amiss with the organization, and it was
• 1:15:54
  at that point. I don't know if you remember this. I made a
• 1:15:57
  last plea, get out of this, don't do this. What can you
• 1:16:01
  tell us now about the very publicly known dysfunction surrounding never back Down and its
• 1:16:11
  role in why the Destantas campaign was never really able to become fully competitive with
• 1:16:16
  Donald Trump. Sure, and listen, John, I view when I go
• 1:16:21
  to work for candidates, and I've spent most of my political career, and
• 1:16:27
  by the way, I haven't been in politics all that long. I got
• 1:16:29
  into politics with Donald Trump. I was in TV before that, but I
• 1:16:30
  got them with Donald Trump. So I've worked mostly for Donald Trump. I've
• 1:16:33
  also worked for other candidates for governorships across America, Senate candidates now obviously Ron
• 1:16:40
  DeSantis. I view, here's how I take my responsibility. When I am
• 1:16:44
  working for them. The inner workings of what happens, I think should stay
• 1:16:47
  confidential. I just do. I think I owe that to them as part
• 1:16:51
  of working for them. So I'm certain I'm not going to reveal anything scandalous
• 1:16:57
  about never back down. And by the way, let me just also stay
• 1:16:59
  for the record regarding Governor DeSantis himself, I have nothing but positive things to
• 1:17:02
  say about him. I think he's the most amazing, principled leader and politician
• 1:17:09
  that you could find, and I have just the highest of praise for him.
• 1:17:12
  I think he's the best governor in all of America, and Florida is
• 1:17:15
  very lucky to get him back as being full time governor. What I will
• 1:17:17
  tell you about never back Down is that, unfortunately, John, there were
• 1:17:23
  a lot of folks who were involved political people who did not believe philosophically what
• 1:17:30
  in what Rond de Santans believed in, who were not, in my view,
• 1:17:32
  even conservatives certainly did not put the best interests of the candidate in front
• 1:17:38
  of their own selfish self interests and financial self interest. And unfortunately, it
• 1:17:45
  just was it was not the right organization, it was not correctly staffed for
• 1:17:49
  that kind of of mission. And you know, I say, this is
• 1:17:53
  somebody who was a true believer and took a lot of personal risk by by
• 1:17:58
  moving over there, and you know, unfortunately it just it didn't work.
• 1:18:01
  But again, I also think it's important I really believe this John a flawless
• 1:18:05
  campaign. I don't believe beats a four times indicted Donald Trump. I believe
• 1:18:11
  that the Republican voter reaction and the rally toward Trump was so intense, was
• 1:18:15
  so emotional, and was so swift that I don't know that any candidate and
• 1:18:21
  any campaign operation could have overcome it. You and I are going to disagree
• 1:18:26
  slightly on that, and I actually think that last night's New Hampshire results kind
• 1:18:32
  of go a little bit more in my favor on this argument. I'm seeing
• 1:18:36
  that there was a slim and it would have had to have been perfect,
• 1:18:43
  perfectly executed path for DeSantis. I think where maybe you and I look at
• 1:18:47
  this differently is I'm looking at this as the whole thing starting on election night
• 1:18:54
  twenty twenty two, not when Ron DeSantis finally announced in twenty twenty three.
• 1:19:00
  I think that there, I think there was a window of opportunity. It
• 1:19:04
  was an area where Trump was vulnerable. Trump was on I referred to it
• 1:19:11
  as on one knee after the loss in the twenty twenty two midterm, and
• 1:19:15
  DeSantis was riding high as the only Republican who really had a huge victory that
• 1:19:19
  night, and obviously hindsight is twenty twenty. But I was saying a lot
• 1:19:24
  of this stuff at the time, correct that this was this was the time
• 1:19:28
  when you strike. And if Trump had been buried, buried on COVID,
• 1:19:34
  buried on election losses in early twenty twenty three, I think the the indictments
• 1:19:42
  are then seen through at least a slightly different prism instead of if you hit.
• 1:19:47
  If the If Trump gets indicted while he's losing in the polls, I
• 1:19:53
  think a lot of people go, Okay, it's time to move on.
• 1:19:57
  But because he's indicted while he's win in the polls, it looks like election
• 1:20:01
  interference and we must rally around our guy because we can't let the Democrats decermine
• 1:20:09
  who are candidate is going to be. Do you see where I'm coming from
• 1:20:12
  on that? Totally? And yeah, listen, that's an important point you
• 1:20:15
  made, I guess I and yeah, let me add that covey at then.
• 1:20:18
  I mean, a properly a perfectly executed campaign from the time Desantus actually
• 1:20:23
  started campaigning. But you're right, if he had gone into campaign mode immediately
• 1:20:28
  after winning in November of twenty twenty two, we might have had very different
• 1:20:31
  outcomes and instead, by the way Donald Trump, and he did this very
• 1:20:34
  skillfully. Donald Trump really went pretty scorched earth against Ron DeSantis, right,
• 1:20:41
  attacking DeSantis harshly and frequently, right from November of twenty twenty two into early
• 1:20:48
  twenty twenty three, and very very effectively, with almost no response from Governor
• 1:20:54
  DeSantis. And I think there was the view within the DeSantis camp and I
• 1:20:57
  wasn't involved with them yet at that time, right, I have no community
• 1:21:00
  with them, is just watching the way you're watching the way anybody is as
• 1:21:02
  an observer. I think they were of the view that number one, they
• 1:21:05
  could sort of stay above the fray and you know, not engage in mustling
• 1:21:10
  a number two focused on being an amazing governor during a really active legislative session,
• 1:21:15
  which it was right, and put policy wins on the board in Florida,
• 1:21:18
  and that that would speak louder than the attacks that were coming against them
• 1:21:23
  from Donald Trump. And I think in hindsight that was a massive error,
• 1:21:27
  right, It just it was a mistake, and whatever momentum could have been
• 1:21:30
  seized coming out of the twenty twenty two midterms was lost largely or entirely,
• 1:21:35
  maybe even by the spring of twenty twenty three. I agreed because you know,
• 1:21:39
  listen, I was in twenty twenty two. I was working primarily for
• 1:21:42
  jd Vance for Senate in the United States, and very proud of what I
• 1:21:45
  was able to do there to help him win. I think he's the best
• 1:21:47
  senator in America. I think the best governor in America is Ronda Santas.
• 1:21:51
  The best Senator in America right now is Jade Vance as far as I'm concerned.
• 1:21:55
  But we were watching election returns that night. I was with him in
• 1:21:57
  Columbus, Ohio, and he won big election night victory, which was expected
• 1:22:02
  to be honest in Ohio. The hard part for him really was the primary.
• 1:22:04
  But anyway, as we're watching the returns come in, it really did
• 1:22:09
  dawn on me that I'm like, Holy Cole, like this is nothing but
• 1:22:12
  disappointment, except for Florida, right where it wasn't just as sad as he
• 1:22:15
  had coattails too. Every state office, every state wide elected official in Florida
• 1:22:21
  is a Republican, and it's the first time since the reconstruction era that that's
• 1:22:25
  true. So it's not just that he won this huge victory after barely winning
• 1:22:29
  the first time around, won by nineteen percent, but that it was broad
• 1:22:31
  and that it had co tails and to me, there was momentum there and
• 1:22:34
  it really was a bit of a light bulb moment for me to say,
• 1:22:38
  okay, is this the next iteration of this movement? And again, it
• 1:22:41
  wasn't me turning on President Trump, because I had then and I have now
• 1:22:46
  enormous regard for President Trump, and you and I will obviously disagree on that,
• 1:22:50
  but I think he's an incredible man. I think he's a warrior for
• 1:22:55
  the movement, and I want him to now be president again, which you
• 1:22:58
  know clearly you and I are not on the same page on that. But
• 1:23:00
  my point is I wasn't turning against Trump. I just believe that the next
• 1:23:04
  natural evolution and I had that light bulb moment that night was Ron DeSantis.
• 1:23:09
  And in hindsight, in you know, looking backward in retrospection, massive mistake
• 1:23:14
  for him to not basically go into campaign mode immediately, even if it wasn't
• 1:23:17
  officially a campaign. That's my might be. And so I agree with you
• 1:23:21
  and you were saying that contemporaneously. I want to give you full credit on
• 1:23:25
  that. Well, I appreciate that, but I think that when you take
• 1:23:28
  this out of the theoretical and you put into more practical terms, you've already
• 1:23:32
  alluded to one of the two great miscalculations or naivete on the part of the
• 1:23:40
  the Santas team, in my opinion, And I want to get your thoughts
• 1:23:43
  on this. You've already implied that they thought and by the way, I
• 1:23:47
  thought this too. They thought that incumbency was a strength because Trump's out of
• 1:23:56
  office, He's out of power. You know, He's just hanging out a
• 1:24:00
  lago and Florida doing basically nothing, playing golf while he is having this amazing
• 1:24:06
  legislative session in Florida, unprecedented getting things done that most conservatives would be thrilled
• 1:24:13
  about. And I think they thought that that was going to be a huge
• 1:24:17
  feather in their cap and instead it actually backfired, and in my view,
• 1:24:24
  pretty spectacularly, because one, it gave critics all sorts of things to distort
• 1:24:30
  and nitpick and lie about. And it also the six week abortion band politically,
• 1:24:38
  and I know you've you've had conversations with Ronda Santis about this very issue,
• 1:24:43
  where it was a matter of principle for him that he understood. It's
• 1:24:45
  my understanding politically this was very dangerous. But what do you agree that in
• 1:24:51
  retrospect, incumbency bizarrely was actually a negative impact onto the same this campaign.
• 1:25:00
  And you know, this is the upside upside down world we live in now.
• 1:25:03
  And I had not thought about this until you started pointing it out on
• 1:25:08
  your podcast. And I think you are one hundred percent correct that incumbency,
• 1:25:12
  which should be one of the best attributes right one of the claims, the
• 1:25:16
  most important claims that somebody like Ron de Sanders could make regarding his application to
• 1:25:21
  being president of the United States, and to say, look, I have
• 1:25:24
  already run as an executive one of the largest, most important states in America,
• 1:25:29
  have done so remarkably well. That should be, you know, one
• 1:25:32
  of the most positive aspects of his candidacy, and I think you're exactly correct.
• 1:25:38
  Instead, paradoxically, it actually worked against him. And it's probably not
• 1:25:43
  a coincidence that the two remaining Republicans right now, Nikki Haley and President Trump,
• 1:25:47
  neither one is an incumbent, right and so neither one is burdened with
• 1:25:51
  having to actually run something, with having a current present day administration and having
• 1:25:58
  to go on the record making laws. And you're exactly right, because,
• 1:26:01
  you know, while I, as a right winger, think what rond De
• 1:26:04
  Santis did in Florida during that legislative session was amazing, there were a lot
• 1:26:09
  of aspects of it that were easily distorted by the corporate media. You know.
• 1:26:12
  For example, the biggest, the most significant example, I think is
• 1:26:15
  the quote never say gay bill, which, of course, by the way,
• 1:26:17
  the word gay is not even in the legislation if you actually read the
• 1:26:20
  legislation, has nothing to do with homosexuality in any sense. What it what
• 1:26:25
  it actually said and stipulated in law, is that there will be no sexualized
• 1:26:30
  instruction of any kind of young children in Florida, which I think is something
• 1:26:33
  totally reasonable, totally correct, and any any person of goodwill you know,
• 1:26:39
  will agree with. But it was badly distorted. And yeah, let me
• 1:26:42
  just mention this too, because uh, you know again, I won't reveal
• 1:26:46
  private conversations or you know, inner workings of the pack or the campaign that
• 1:26:51
  I think are harmful to President descend or excuse me, to Governor Desands,
• 1:26:55
  but I certainly will reveal conversations I had with him which I think speak to
• 1:26:58
  his honor and his integrity, and on that issue of abortion specifically, he
• 1:27:02
  and I spoke about that in the Governor's mansion, and he was completely aware
• 1:27:06
  of the political peril of a six week abortion ban, and particularly if he
• 1:27:11
  did make it, if he were going to be the Republican nominee, what
• 1:27:14
  a massive problem that could be in the general election. And he just simply,
• 1:27:18
  you know, looked at me in the eye and says, Steve,
• 1:27:19
  I have to do this on principle. It's you know, it's what I
• 1:27:21
  believe, it's what I promised, and we'll let the political chips fall where
• 1:27:26
  they may. So it was. It was one of the reasons, not
• 1:27:29
  the only reason, but one of the reasons that I so believed in this
• 1:27:31
  man, and that I was willing to take the risk of ticking off a
• 1:27:34
  lot of Team Trump and a lot of the fans that I had accrued over
• 1:27:39
  the years to go with with DeSantis. And by the way, I still
• 1:27:42
  think, you know, taking it to the present day, abortion to me
• 1:27:45
  is the biggest risk factor for the Republicans in this election. And I hope
• 1:27:49
  I get the chance to talk to President Trump. I don't know if that's
• 1:27:51
  going to happen or not. If I do, I want to tell him,
• 1:27:55
  mister President, lean on federalism when it comes to abortion. This is
• 1:28:00
  an issue which we argued for decades should be back in the states, and
• 1:28:03
  that was always the correct argument. Then it's the correct argument now it should
• 1:28:08
  be in the States. And California is a place where nothing has changed since
• 1:28:13
  the Dobson decision. Right Tennessee, where I live, very very different.
• 1:28:15
  There's no abortions being private in the state of Tennessee, and that is what
• 1:28:20
  the voters of Tennessee want. Let federalism work taken out of the federal issue,
• 1:28:25
  because I think it's the biggest risk not just to Trump, but to
• 1:28:28
  other federal office holders in the Republican side as well. Now, the second
• 1:28:32
  maybe the first, depending on your perspective, area of naive ta. In
• 1:28:36
  my view that was shown by the Santus campaign was in the area of COVID,
• 1:28:44
  And you and I both know I agree. I think that without COVID
• 1:28:48
  there is no ron De Santis presidential campaign. By the way, do you
• 1:28:53
  agree with that? Just totally? Okay, totally, So there's no COVID,
• 1:28:57
  there's no Rana Santis presidential campaign, especially with Donald Trump running. I
• 1:29:00
  mean, there would be no there'd be no argument for DeSantis to run in
• 1:29:05
  twenty twenty four against Donald Trump. But it is my view, and now
• 1:29:12
  we've had a little bit of time to kind of let it all soak in.
• 1:29:15
  I have a theory. I'm very curious as to your reaction to it.
• 1:29:20
  I have a theory that the Trump people. Let me back up,
• 1:29:26
  I think that DeSantis people thought everybody knew that they won COVID, Like everybody
• 1:29:32
  in the Republican side knew. This was just like common knowledge among Republicans.
• 1:29:38
  DeSantis was awesome on COVID and that's why he won in Florida, and that
• 1:29:43
  therefore, from the Desanta's side of things, it's there's not a huge need
• 1:29:47
  to tell that story. Conversely, conversely, I think the Trump team either
• 1:29:56
  intuitively maybe they got lucky, or I think they got a focus group where
• 1:30:00
  they went, holy shit, Republicans don't know desantiss COVID record. We can
• 1:30:09
  lie our asses off on this. The right wing media won't correct us because
• 1:30:14
  they're in the tank for us, and we can destroy DeSantis on his number
• 1:30:18
  one issue. What do you make of that theory? You know, regarding
• 1:30:23
  the Desanta side of that equation. You know, let me say that I
• 1:30:27
  totally agree with you. I think that we on Team DeSantis assumed that the
• 1:30:30
  public knew more than it did about what Ron DeSantis did during COVID. You're
• 1:30:33
  you're one hundred percent correct, and we assume that people were as well informed
• 1:30:39
  as people who listen to every one of your podcasts right about COVID, And
• 1:30:43
  that's just not reality. That wasn't correct. That was a bad assumption by
• 1:30:47
  me, by others, you know, on the team. But secondarily,
• 1:30:50
  and this is again where I will admit I was wrong. I thought that
• 1:30:55
  the issue would matter a lot more to Republican voters because it matters so much
• 1:30:59
  to me. Okay, And this is where I made a mistake. I
• 1:31:01
  think of personalizing politics because I paid enormous prices for taking strong stances against mandates
• 1:31:08
  and against COVID tyranny. And by the way, I moved my family largely
• 1:31:12
  because of what happened in twenty twenty with lockdowns and used to live in I'm
• 1:31:15
  born and raised and lived my entire life until I was fifty years old in
• 1:31:18
  Chicago, and moved largely because of the tyranny of what happened there during COVID
• 1:31:24
  soul. I mean, this issue is is just it's massive for me.
• 1:31:26
  It's hard for me to exaggerate how important the issue is for me. I
• 1:31:30
  assumed incorrectly that it was going to be just as important to a lot of
• 1:31:33
  Republican voters, and that just wasn't the case. And we saw that in
• 1:31:36
  our polling, we saw that in our focus groups, we saw it on
• 1:31:40
  the results, you know, of what happened in the election. It just
• 1:31:43
  wasn't, unfortunately, that important to people. And John, here's what I
• 1:31:46
  believe. I don't have data yet at least you know, to prove this,
• 1:31:50
  but I think for a lot of America, the whole, especially conservative
• 1:31:55
  America. Right, so let's talk about our voters, the whole experience was
• 1:31:59
  so terrible, was so awful, that we'd rather not think about it.
• 1:32:01
  I really believe that there's almost a psychology out there of rather than deal with
• 1:32:06
  this really harsh truth of what we allowed as a country to happen, right,
• 1:32:11
  the kinds of abuses that we tolerated that were inflicted upon our children,
• 1:32:15
  for example. Unfortunately, I think it's part of human nature rather than grapple
• 1:32:19
  with that hard truth, and rather than deal with that really uncomfortable reality,
• 1:32:25
  we'd rather just forget about it and just be glad that it's gone and it's
• 1:32:28
  done right. And I think there's unfortunately, Steve, Steve, I think
• 1:32:31
  one hundred percent, there's something to be said for that. And I've even
• 1:32:34
  predicted many months ago that the Sanders would be treated basically like Winston Churchill was
• 1:32:41
  after World War Two. You know, the Nazis are gone, so there's
• 1:32:44
  no need to keep the Nazi, you know, the feeder around, and
• 1:32:48
  so COVID is gone, the tyranny is gone, Let's move on. And
• 1:32:53
  I think that's a naive view and it's absurd to not reward the Sanders,
• 1:32:58
  but I want to. I just want to give you one lass chance,
• 1:33:00
  though, because you are somebody knows Trump very well. I am curious,
• 1:33:05
  you know, just this week, I don't know if you saw this.
• 1:33:08
  You probably have, and we talked about it earlier in this episode of the
• 1:33:11
  podcast. Before this interview, Trump has made two very declarative statements about his
• 1:33:16
  COVID record that are completely different from one another. He put out a statement
• 1:33:21
  of truth social that sounds like Ron DeSantis on steroids, and then he made
• 1:33:27
  a statement to a reporter where he's defending what happened during COVID and saying he's
• 1:33:32
  not getting enough credit for his COVID response. So can you help me understand
• 1:33:40
  where Donald Trump stands on what happened during COVID. Yeah, you know,
• 1:33:46
  I think I can provide some insight here because I certainly had significant conversations with
• 1:33:50
  President Trump, you know, during the COVID crisis and afterward, and I
• 1:33:58
  think he realizes now, whether he'll admit it publicly or not, I think
• 1:34:01
  he realizes that he absolutely gave far too much power to Tony Fauci. And
• 1:34:08
  it wasn't necessarily statutory power. It wasn't necessarily you know, administrative power.
• 1:34:12
  It was media power, right, which you've talked about very eloquently on your
• 1:34:15
  show. And I grew with you one hundred percent what once Fauci was elevated
• 1:34:19
  to being, you know, effectively the face of COVID response for all of
• 1:34:24
  America, and at a time when all of America was forced essentially to tune
• 1:34:30
  into TV, right, you know, on a daily basis, So Fauci
• 1:34:32
  on every channel every day, you know, in front of Super Bowl size
• 1:34:38
  audiences. That was a creation, unfortunately of Donald Trump. And again,
• 1:34:45
  whether or not he'll admit it publicly, I think he realizes that privately,
• 1:34:48
  and U and I am optimistic, maybe you know, mistakenly so, but
• 1:34:53
  I am optimistic that he is going to have if he if he does win,
• 1:34:57
  if he prevails in November, that he's going to have a much much
• 1:34:59
  better second term on personnel issues broadly, but specifically in areas like that,
• 1:35:05
  where he handed agents of the administrative state far more credibility and a far bigger
• 1:35:12
  platform than they ever deserved, and it had really harmful effects in the United
• 1:35:15
  States. Well that you know, you mentioned Fauci, and you and I
• 1:35:18
  have talked about this off the air, and I've mentioned it on the podcast.
• 1:35:24
  I think this was maybe my greatest miscalculation of the campaign, and I
• 1:35:30
  think you had a similar view. We thought that attacking Fauci was an effective
• 1:35:38
  way to go after Trump because you're attacking Trump without mentioning his name, and
• 1:35:43
  that people would understandably give Trump some blame for what he did vis A Vifauci.
• 1:35:49
  But instead, what appears to have happened among most Republicans is that blaming
• 1:35:56
  Fauci actually got Trump off the hook because it was Fauci's fault, not Trump's.
• 1:36:02
  Do you agree that that's what happened? Totally? It had the exact
• 1:36:06
  opposite effect of what a lot of us in Team Desanta's thought would be the
• 1:36:11
  case. Because Fauci is so anti Trump himself, right, and because he
• 1:36:15
  is so beloved by people who are virulently anti Trump, right the whole MSNBC
• 1:36:20
  crowd, because he is so revered by the most strident Trump haters out there,
• 1:36:27
  attacking Fauci from the Dessanta's campaign paradoxically helped Donald Trump rather than hurt Donald
• 1:36:33
  Trump. And that's just the reality. And again that was a miscalculation by
• 1:36:39
  a lot of folks. And I you know, listen, it's always easy
• 1:36:43
  to be Monday morning quarterback, right and said, well, should have done
• 1:36:45
  this xyz. Like I thought it was a very credible, reasonable strategy to
• 1:36:50
  try going after Fauci right during the campaign. But it was it was very
• 1:36:55
  clear very early that it just was not working, you know, like other
• 1:36:58
  tactics in the desame his campaign. And I also just want to say,
• 1:37:00
  you know, just for the record, because I'd like this to be out
• 1:37:03
  there. I mean, I realized, you know, partly because of what
• 1:37:05
  you were telling me, but for a lot of reasons. I realized by
• 1:37:09
  summer July August of twenty twenty three that this just was not working, that
• 1:37:14
  it was impossible for Ron Desantas to beat Donald Trump, and I advised him
• 1:37:17
  at the time that he should get out then. And I ended up leaving
• 1:37:21
  Team Desantas in September very quietly. I mean, I didn't make a big
• 1:37:26
  deal about it, and I agreed to remain quiet about the race until the
• 1:37:30
  Iowa Caucus, and I've honored that commitment and did not speak publicly. Anybody
• 1:37:32
  who you know, looks at my work, my social media posts, my
• 1:37:34
  writing, my interviews. I did not talk about the race from you know,
• 1:37:36
  roughly September until until January fifteenth, you know, per my agreement.
• 1:37:43
  So you know, I saw that I was wrong. I saw that Desantas
• 1:37:46
  was wrong. I saw that that Trump was unbeatable by summertime for a lot
• 1:37:53
  of these reasons that we're talking about. And it was my view at that
• 1:37:56
  time that it was in the governor's best interests and it was in the party's
• 1:37:59
  best interest for us to get out and to unite as quickly as possible behind
• 1:38:03
  President Trump. What was the reaction when you told Team de Sands, by
• 1:38:08
  the way, did you tell Ron directly or do his team desands that the
• 1:38:13
  campaign on an end. What was the reaction to that? I told the
• 1:38:17
  team. I did try to get to the governor, and at that time,
• 1:38:21
  unfortunately relations had already soured, you know, internally, so I wasn't
• 1:38:25
  able to get to him. But I told the team, and the reaction
• 1:38:28
  was probably as you would expect, which was basically, you know at Cortesko
• 1:38:30
  pound Sand And you know, when you've made that kind of statement, you've
• 1:38:34
  talked yourself out of a job right effectively. And I've done that before,
• 1:38:40
  like you, I've been I've been fired in my share of times, and
• 1:38:43
  I'm not and I'm not embarrassed by that, by the way. I mean,
• 1:38:45
  I think when you take principal stands, that's going to happen. But
• 1:38:47
  I did think too that I was one of the few people I hope at
• 1:38:51
  least that I was well, I know, I was one of the few
• 1:38:54
  people within Desantus world who was willing to deliver to the governor an uncomfortable truth.
• 1:39:00
  You know, and that that was the reality, and I thought that
• 1:39:01
  it would be better for him, better for the party, better for the
• 1:39:03
  country. And I also thought, and this is crucial, because he had
• 1:39:06
  such a massive war chest. John, he had such a you know,
• 1:39:09
  never back down, was the best funded superpack in the history of superpacks,
• 1:39:13
  you know, particularly from its creation, because eighty million dollars I mean amountain
• 1:39:16
  of money was was moved over from his gubernatorial race that he frankly didn't need
• 1:39:21
  because he just romped, you know, so in such big fashion in the
• 1:39:27
  gubernatorial race. I also wanted that money to be saved because Ronda Santis could
• 1:39:30
  use that. It's an incredible political weapon, and he could use that in
• 1:39:35
  future races if he decides to run for president again, if he decides to
• 1:39:39
  run for Senate, he could give it to other candidates who he believes and
• 1:39:42
  he could be, you know, effectively a super pack of super packs around
• 1:39:45
  the country. There's just there's all kinds of options with that kind of a
• 1:39:48
  war chest. And I thought it was foolish to waste that war chest on
• 1:39:54
  what was, to me, very apparently by by summertime, you know,
• 1:39:59
  a doomed effort. So well, he certainly would be in a better position
• 1:40:03
  politically today if he had listened to you. And unfortunately, in my experience,
• 1:40:09
  you know, most politicians, even good ones, don't really like the
• 1:40:14
  unpopular truths, the uncomfortable truths. You would I thought, you know,
• 1:40:18
  when I was young and naive, that that a really good leader would want
• 1:40:23
  that kind of counsel. But in my experience that's not the case. And
• 1:40:28
  you know, you could argue the problem though, you know, obviously all
• 1:40:30
  this is twenty twenty hindsight. I get one hundred percent where you're coming from.
• 1:40:34
  That you save your money, you save the embarrassment, but there would
• 1:40:40
  always be that what if. And with Trump, see this is this is
• 1:40:45
  you know where Trump is such a complicated problem. You never know with one
• 1:40:50
  hundred percent certainty what's going to happen with him, and so you're not dealing
• 1:40:56
  with a normal traditional campaign. I mean, especially with all the indictments,
• 1:41:00
  and he's an older man and his health could become an issue. I mean,
• 1:41:04
  so sure, there's there's always gonna be that thought of if I drop
• 1:41:10
  out in September and I you know, and I take a one week humiliation,
• 1:41:15
  but I save all this money, what happens if something really dramatic occurs
• 1:41:18
  between then and the Iowa Caucus and and something could have changed. You see
• 1:41:24
  what I'm saying. I mean, no, I get it. I get
• 1:41:26
  it. And by the way, if I can make a point here,
• 1:41:28
  uh and uh, you might be surprised by this, the audience might be
• 1:41:31
  surprised by this. But let me make a point defending Donald Trump because of
• 1:41:34
  what you said previously about most politicians don't want to hear you know, disagreement,
• 1:41:39
  right, Okay, Donald Trump, to his credit, okay, And
• 1:41:43
  and he's somebody who until I did this with the Santus, Okay, I
• 1:41:45
  had a pretty close relationship with Donald Trump. I could get him on the
• 1:41:48
  phone, you know, basically at any time. And I did, you
• 1:41:51
  know, he and I talked a lot while he was a candidate and while
• 1:41:56
  he was President of the United States. I had a special phone number that
• 1:42:00
  went right to him basically, and thankfully he you know, he really listened
• 1:42:04
  to me. I almost every conversation I had with him John was me disagreeing
• 1:42:10
  with him, okay, privately trying to urge him to do something that he
• 1:42:14
  wasn't doing or that he didn't want to do. Like, for example,
• 1:42:15
  I always wanted him to be much tougher on tech. I always wanted to
• 1:42:20
  be tougher on China, to be tougher on trade, I mean, on
• 1:42:24
  and on to the point where I mean, I think I was almost a
• 1:42:27
  bit of a nag to him, okay. And he would even say sometimes
• 1:42:30
  you know, when he answered, I said, okay, what I do
• 1:42:31
  wrong now, Cortes, you know, that's how he would begin the conversation.
• 1:42:34
  Yet he never caught me off right. I mean, I was always
• 1:42:38
  in the inner circle and always until I did this with the Sanda. So
• 1:42:42
  just to let you know, and that, like I said, that might
• 1:42:44
  surprise you and I you know, I know how poorly you think of President
• 1:42:46
  Trump overall, but I can tell you that, as somebody who was anything
• 1:42:51
  but a yes man, okay, I gave him a lot of harsh advice
• 1:42:56
  over the years. He always took it, he always considered it, and
• 1:43:00
  I was always welcome back until the dissatis. Well, that's that's good news.
• 1:43:06
  I believe it because you and I have had similar conversations privately, and
• 1:43:12
  of course, as you've already said, that's a large part of why I
• 1:43:15
  wanted you to stay with Team Trump. It wasn't just that I thought Desandas
• 1:43:19
  wasn't going to be able to pull this off. It's that it sounded to
• 1:43:21
  me like you might have been a lone voice of dissent within the inner workings
• 1:43:28
  of Team Trump. And I think that's incredibly valuable, because, especially given
• 1:43:33
  Trump's persona, I'm sure that most people around him are very much afraid to
• 1:43:41
  give him bad news, especially when he famously responds very well to compliments.
• 1:43:46
  Correct, I mean, have you had yeah, listen, He's He's an
• 1:43:51
  incredibly intimidating figure, right, I mean, he just iss. I mean,
• 1:43:54
  I think anybody knows that who just watches him on television, right,
• 1:43:57
  I mean, he just is. Now. I also do think that part
• 1:44:00
  of why he was willing to accept criticism for me privately is because I went
• 1:44:04
  on air publicly and you know, defended him really effectively. Right, And
• 1:44:09
  there's no better way to get in with Donald Trump than to go on television,
• 1:44:12
  to go in front of the camera and defend him. And by the
• 1:44:14
  way, I was happy to do that. I'm happy to do it again
• 1:44:17
  because I want him to win this election. So and whether I do that
• 1:44:20
  just on my own as an outsider who wants him to win, or whether
• 1:44:24
  I do that in some formal role is you know, yet to be seen.
• 1:44:28
  But I'm happy to do it again. But I do want, you
• 1:44:30
  know, you to know, and I want your audience to know, which
• 1:44:32
  again might surprise a lot of the Trump detractors. He was absolutely willing to
• 1:44:40
  hear a lot of harsh advice from me, and you know, I can
• 1:44:44
  tell you that that's almost all I gave him. I never called him to
• 1:44:46
  say, hey, mister president, you know you did great, ten out
• 1:44:49
  of ten, you know, goodbye. No, I mean I called him
• 1:44:51
  because I wanted to do something different, right, almost exclusively. Almost all
• 1:44:56
  of our conversations were that. And again I was never dismis or excluded,
• 1:45:00
  in fact, quite the opposite. You know. It seemed like over time
• 1:45:02
  I got closer and closer with him as I was delivering, you know,
• 1:45:06
  at times uncomfortable messages to UH to the boss. And I think part of
• 1:45:12
  that, too, John, is that you know, thankfully, I mean,
• 1:45:14
  I guess I'm not that new to politics now. I've been doing it
• 1:45:15
  for you know, nine years or so, but I still don't consid know.
• 1:45:19
  I had a mid life career shift into politics. I was a Wall
• 1:45:24
  Street guy, and I still view politics, while it's incredibly important, as
• 1:45:29
  somewhat of a project for me, If that makes sense, it's not it's
• 1:45:31
  not my life, it's not my living. And if it went away tomorrow,
• 1:45:34
  well so be it. I mean, it was a good run.
• 1:45:35
  I did what I could to try to help the country. So you know,
• 1:45:39
  I take that view, and and almost no one in politics, uh
• 1:45:44
  takes that view. In other words, politics is the is intrinsically who they
• 1:45:47
  are and uh, and it forms them to the point of almost being a
• 1:45:51
  weird religion of you know, almost being a faith for them. Uh.
• 1:45:56
  And for those folks, I think it's impossible to tell a team intimidating figure,
• 1:46:01
  who by the way, is the President of the United States, with
• 1:46:03
  all the trappings that go around that, to tell them something that they don't
• 1:46:06
  necessarily want to hear. That's I think really good information and well said.
• 1:46:11
  So let's move the story forward. As we both expected, Trump wins Iowa
• 1:46:17
  pretty handily. The Santas does finish second. He does get into the twenties,
• 1:46:23
  which was better than some people had thought was likely. In the last
• 1:46:27
  couple of weeks of the campaign, and I knew because you told me that
• 1:46:32
  you were going to come out for Trump. After that, I maybe because
• 1:46:36
  we were talking about so many other things that are unrelated directly, I didn't
• 1:46:42
  fully understand what that meant, or I had not envisioned in my mind what
• 1:46:46
  that was going to look like, or I didn't know the exact timing.
• 1:46:50
  But literally the next day you come out with a column in Real Clear Politics
• 1:46:59
  entitled only Trump can Save America and you you fully endors Donald Trump. Uh
• 1:47:06
  you know really in my view, well, DeSantis, dead body. You
• 1:47:11
  know, it is still warm. He hasn't dropped out of the race yet.
• 1:47:15
  Uh. He would a few days later, but you know, he's
• 1:47:18
  he's just you know, withstood an bombardment of unprecedented proportions in Iowa and and
• 1:47:26
  at least was on his two feet after that. And when I woke up
• 1:47:30
  and I saw that, I was like, oh god. I mean the
• 1:47:32
  timing of it upset me a bit, The title upset me a lot.
• 1:47:39
  Uh and uh and also you know, the the fact that you didn't tell
• 1:47:45
  me you were doing this upset me. But you've apologized for that, so
• 1:47:46
  I'm fine with that. You know, you know it's a miss, you
• 1:47:49
  know, a misplay, and you've apologized. I'm perfectly cool with that.
• 1:47:54
  I get it. That's the way the world works, and and we're and
• 1:47:56
  I'm one hundred percent okay with that part. But as far as the timing
• 1:48:00
  and the content of that article, can you help me understand what was going
• 1:48:06
  on there? And do you understand my concerns about it? Sure? No,
• 1:48:12
  I totally understand your concerns. And you know, I thought long and
• 1:48:16
  hard about that about you know, how do I do my public reveal?
• 1:48:20
  And I thought it was important, you know, Number one, I'd promised
• 1:48:24
  the team that I would wait until Iowa, So of course I was bombed
• 1:48:26
  by that. I thought it was important as soon as possible after Iowa to
• 1:48:30
  be public, in part because I wanted to encourage the candidate himself. I
• 1:48:34
  wanted to encourage the governor to do what I think is the only right thing
• 1:48:38
  to do at that point, which is drop out. But I also wanted
• 1:48:41
  to encourage people like me, people who had supported other candidates, to now
• 1:48:46
  unify and call less behind President Trump because and I you know, you and
• 1:48:49
  I clearly are not going to agree on this. I do think he's the
• 1:48:51
  only person that can save America right now. When I look at particularly the
• 1:48:57
  border, there's a lot of important issues, but to me, number one
• 1:49:00
  issue by far as the border. It's definitely the number one issue for Republican
• 1:49:02
  voters. We've seen that overwhelmingly in a lot of very you know, solid
• 1:49:05
  polling. When we look at the border, we look at the December three
• 1:49:10
  hundred thousand illegals crossing into the United States. We're not just allowed to enter,
• 1:49:14
  but in fact incentivized and welcome by the Biden administration. If we continue
• 1:49:18
  at that pace, the damage to this country is going to be totally irreversible,
• 1:49:23
  if it isn't already. So I believe we're at that kind of fulcrum
• 1:49:28
  moment where the let me, let me stop you there. Ever a second,
• 1:49:30
  I agree with you. I agree with you on the border. However,
• 1:49:34
  when you say only Trump can save America, I say, okay,
• 1:49:40
  Steve, how is it that Biden got the power to open up the border.
• 1:49:45
  Biden got the power to open up the border because he was able to
• 1:49:49
  win an election, because Donald Trump was so hated that Biden got eighty one
• 1:49:55
  million votes and one so Biden only had has the ability to do this because
• 1:50:00
  he was given that ability by Donald Trump. And oh, by the way,
• 1:50:05
  Donald Trump got elected promising every single day to build a wall, which
• 1:50:12
  even though he had a Republican House and a Republican Senate, he didn't do.
• 1:50:15
  So if he had done what he promised to do, we would have
• 1:50:19
  a lot better ability to fend off this bign invasion even with Biden being president.
• 1:50:25
  But Biden is president because of Donald Trump, Steve Well, So how
• 1:50:30
  do you square that? Yeah, I'll disagree with you there. I think
• 1:50:32
  Biden can disagree. It's It's obviously true. He's president because of COVID,
• 1:50:38
  John, He's president because of COVID. Right without COVID and and without the
• 1:50:42
  mistakes, the massive mistakes of the Trump administration and others, you know,
• 1:50:47
  regarding the reaction to COVID, the panic of COVID. That is why Joe
• 1:50:51
  Biden is president of the United States, not because of Donald Trump. So
• 1:50:56
  I mean, I would just I would disagree with you there. I mean
• 1:50:59
  I just without COVID, Trump was cruising to re election and was going too
• 1:51:03
  easily in my view when reelection, you know, as of February of twenty
• 1:51:10
  twenty and things then changed. I will agree with COVID. I will agree
• 1:51:14
  that COVID made it way more difficult, and that COVID and you and I
• 1:51:16
  know we know very well because we've talked about this a lot. Where hot
• 1:51:23
  if this election in twenty twenty was quote unquote stolen, it was stolen because
• 1:51:28
  COVID was used as a weapon. But Trump wasn't able to fend off that
• 1:51:32
  assault because he didn't know what the hell he was doing. So so,
• 1:51:36
  I mean, and Biden got any one million votes or thereabouts because Trump was
• 1:51:43
  so hated, you got Trump has to take some responsibility for that, Steve
• 1:51:47
  Joe. Biden is a is a potted plan at best, and he got
• 1:51:51
  any one million votes. It wasn't because people were voting for Biden. They
• 1:51:56
  were voting against Trump. Well, see, I don't agree with that.
• 1:52:00
  Then what about voting against lockdowns? They were voting against COVID. I mean,
• 1:52:03
  what about okay, what about the wall issue? Then? How does
• 1:52:06
  Trump not get any responsibility to building his vaunted wall? Listen, I try
• 1:52:12
  to be very reasonable and I try to be objective even though I'm again,
• 1:52:15
  you know, advocating for President Trump. Let me be objective and honest here
• 1:52:18
  and blunt that was the biggest miss of the first term was not building the
• 1:52:23
  wall, and there's no way to sugarcoat that. It was the biggest miss
• 1:52:26
  and it must be rectified if there is a second Trump term. See,
• 1:52:30
  but I just don't know how I'm supposed to go. Oh, well,
• 1:52:34
  he screwed up so badly on his core issues the first time around, it's
• 1:52:39
  going to be much better the second time around, when nobody credible is going
• 1:52:44
  to work for him. And you've already you know, with the defauci you've
• 1:52:46
  already said, well, maybe this time around he'll do a better job when
• 1:52:49
  it comes to personnel, Steve, Steve, be serious with me here.
• 1:52:55
  I mean, I realize that Trump fans hate the establishment and hate the old
• 1:53:00
  guard Republicans, and therefore everybody who had a falling out with Trump the first
• 1:53:04
  time around, they're a rhino or they're an establishment figure or whatever. Even
• 1:53:10
  you know, even Jeff Session somehow is a is a rhino establishment guy.
• 1:53:15
  I mean, it's just unbelievable. You know what Trump can get away with
• 1:53:18
  here? Who is gonna work for Donald Trump in a second term? I
• 1:53:23
  mean, even you currently are not in an inner circle anymore. You know,
• 1:53:26
  that may change, who knows going forward, But who the hell is
• 1:53:30
  gonna work for him? Steve? Yeah, listen, Personnel issues were some
• 1:53:35
  of the most problematic aspects of the first term. I do believe it's going
• 1:53:40
  to be far, far better this time because there's so much preparation going in,
• 1:53:44
  particularly by outside groups. Heritage Foundation, for example, is leading,
• 1:53:47
  you know, a huge effort right now on staffing purely. There's a lot
• 1:53:51
  of money and time and smart people who are invested in this. That didn't
• 1:53:56
  happen the first time because Donald Trump was this outsider who, lets face it,
• 1:54:00
  you know, I think even he himself probably thought couldn't win the election,
• 1:54:02
  and you know, a political neo fyight at that time. And that's
• 1:54:06
  not the case now. And you know, but to answer your question,
• 1:54:09
  you know, very specifically, you know who would work for him? Gosh,
• 1:54:13
  I would, you know, And not that I want to move to
• 1:54:15
  Washington, d C. Or that I want a government job necessarily, but
• 1:54:17
  again out of patriotism to save this country, Yeah, I would, and
• 1:54:21
  I think other people would step up. And I've made that exact criticism when
• 1:54:25
  I was working for Dissas. I made that exact criticism of Donald Trump.
• 1:54:28
  So I'm you know, I'm on the record. You can find my posts,
• 1:54:30
  you know, out there. Plenty of Trump people are thrown them back
• 1:54:32
  at me on social media these days, and I'm taking tons of hate.
• 1:54:35
  By the way, John, I think a lot of the MAGA crowd is
• 1:54:38
  actually nastier to me now that I've come back than when I left, which
• 1:54:42
  is kind of you know, so I've successfully made everyone mad, you know.
• 1:54:45
  Apparently you've got some experience with that, so they know all about that
• 1:54:49
  phenomenon unfortunately. But anyway, my point is I would work for him,
• 1:54:56
  and I think I think a lot of other serious people would, even if
• 1:54:59
  they have misgivings about Trump, because they realize the peril that our country is
• 1:55:03
  in. And that would also be my message, John, to you and
• 1:55:05
  to people who think like you, who have tons of problems with Trump.
• 1:55:10
  Now, clearly I don't at all, right, as a matter fact,
• 1:55:12
  I'm thrilled to have Trump as a nominee. But for those people who do
• 1:55:15
  have serious qualms about Trump, but who are thoughtful people who are at least
• 1:55:18
  conservative leaning, if not you know, actually right wing, I guess I
• 1:55:24
  would try to impress upon them you know, realize the gravity of the moment,
• 1:55:28
  and realize that it is at this point a binary choice. Right,
• 1:55:30
  It is not you know, candidate C who you'd like to run. No,
• 1:55:34
  it is A and b A right, it is Biden and Trump.
• 1:55:38
  And given those two, even for folks who have problems with Trump, I
• 1:55:41
  hope it's clear that he is the better alternative than Joe Biden. I want
• 1:55:45
  to get back to personnel and specifically the vice presidential choice that Trump is going
• 1:55:50
  to make in a moment, But first I just want to I just want
• 1:55:54
  to revisit one last time. You're you know, rejoining team Trump at least
• 1:55:59
  in with this calumn. Only Trump can save America. And by the way,
• 1:56:02
  you told me you didn't choose that title, correct, That is right,
• 1:56:06
  And that's that's the norm I think, as you know, you've done
• 1:56:10
  so much writing, generally the platform chooses the title, correct, right,
• 1:56:13
  Okay, So I mean I wasn't really thrilled with the title, especially given
• 1:56:16
  the timing, and I know this is not the way the world works,
• 1:56:19
  and you've already stated that part of your your strategy here was to maybe get
• 1:56:27
  people to drop out and to unify around Donald Trump. But had you known
• 1:56:32
  that de Sandas was on his own going to withdraw just before New Hampshire,
• 1:56:39
  just a few days after you wrote that, would you have held off until
• 1:56:43
  he had actually dropped out? Yes, no, out of respect for him,
• 1:56:46
  I would have correct, Okay, all right, you know what?
• 1:56:49
  Then then we're good because and because that that that was another part of that
• 1:56:54
  whole thing that bothered me was that I thought, I thought that the Sanders
• 1:56:57
  deserved at least the op opportunity to do this on his own. And and
• 1:57:02
  you didn't know, you there was no way for you to know that that
• 1:57:06
  was what was going to happen. And by the way, you know,
• 1:57:09
  and maybe in some small way, your your column helped facilitate that. And
• 1:57:14
  so it's a it's an impossible thing to know. But I'm glad to hear
• 1:57:16
  you say that because and I'm not surprised because I respect you as a person,
• 1:57:20
  and so I figured that would be your response. All right, So
• 1:57:24
  let's go back to where we are. All Right, The past has passed.
• 1:57:29
  We're in a we're in a pickle in this country. You and I
• 1:57:30
  agree on that one hundred percent. Uh, you know, we may be
• 1:57:34
  in a in a very big problem depending on how this all goes down and
• 1:57:39
  h as far as personnel issues are concerned. Obviously, the most prominent decision
• 1:57:44
  Trump is going to have to make is his vice presidential nominee. I,
• 1:57:49
  especially after last night and New Hampshire's results, I am now convinced. And
• 1:57:55
  you know, I don't really like Nicky Haley, but I'm convinced that if
• 1:57:59
  Trump really wants to win, if that's his goal, and he said last
• 1:58:02
  night that you know, the country is no more if I don't win,
• 1:58:06
  so you know, the stakes couldn't be hired to me. Even though Trump
• 1:58:12
  people aren't going to like this, Nicky Haley clearly compliments him from a voter
• 1:58:17
  demographic standpoint in a way that nobody else at that level does, and that
• 1:58:24
  if he wants to win, she's the choice. I'm curious what your reaction
• 1:58:29
  to that is and who you actually think the choice will be, because I
• 1:58:32
  don't think it's going to be Haley. What is your view on that?
• 1:58:35
  As a political operative, Yes, I unfortunately have to agree with you.
• 1:58:41
  I cannot stand Nicky Haley. I disagree with her on almost every single issue,
• 1:58:45
  but I have to concede she politically would absolutely be the best pick,
• 1:58:50
  because you're exactly right. She compliments Trump in the correct ways and picks up
• 1:58:57
  voters who Trump probably can't earn on his own, so that you know that
• 1:59:01
  is the reality. But here, let me tell you this too, before
• 1:59:03
  I tell you who I think you know he should and will pick. Here's
• 1:59:08
  why this is so important. You've talked a lot about this, about how
• 1:59:10
  it might be the most important presidential vice presidential pick ever, and I agree
• 1:59:13
  with you, But I'm going to add a wrinkle to that that I don't
• 1:59:15
  think you've talked about. Okay, if we I believe we're going to lose
• 1:59:18
  the House the Republicans, okay, particularly because I think Republican Okay, I
• 1:59:24
  think Republican incumbents in blue states and places like California and New York are going
• 1:59:28
  to get buried with Trump at the top of the ticket. Okay, So
• 1:59:30
  I think we lose the House. I also believe that a speaker Jeffries will
• 1:59:35
  impeach Trump in a nanosecond, Okay, And I literally I think he will
• 1:59:40
  be. Let's if he wins, he will be sworn into office, and
• 1:59:43
  I think he will be impeached almost immediately, and there will at least be
• 1:59:46
  a veneer of you know, something genuine there, because I believe I also
• 1:59:51
  believe that Trump will be convicted in New York. I think that New York
• 1:59:55
  State case from Alvin Bragg is ridiculous as it is, I think will result
• 2:00:00
  in a conviction before he is elected. So they will at least have the
• 2:00:02
  veneer of, you know, some substance in terms of that impeachment. If
• 2:00:06
  his vice president is somebody who is acceptable to the Republicans in the Senate,
• 2:00:12
  and a President Haley would be very acceptable to those moderate Republicans in the Senate,
• 2:00:15
  they will remove him. They will remove him from office. I believe
• 2:00:18
  that that is no, that is such a conspiratorial view, because I've actually
• 2:00:25
  seen other people already state this, that Haley can't be the nominee because the
• 2:00:29
  Establishment will do a coup on Trump and he'll be replaced. That that's just
• 2:00:34
  but it's not a coup. It's in the open, John. I mean,
• 2:00:38
  I believe that firmly. And if I get a chance to talk to
• 2:00:41
  President Trump, I'm going to tell him that he has to pick somebody who
• 2:00:43
  is totally unacceptable to those to those Republicans in the Senate, they'll remove him.
• 2:00:47
  But obviously you and I are going to agree on that. Let me
• 2:00:50
  tell you, I think who I think he's going to pick. I think
• 2:00:51
  he's going to pick Ben Carson, and certainly the folks that I talk to
• 2:00:56
  who are high up in Team Trump tell me that that is looking increasingly likely.
• 2:01:01
  There is a residency issue, ben Carson or Trump. One of them
• 2:01:03
  would have to switch the residency out of Florida. But it looks like they're
• 2:01:08
  going to pick him. But by the way, who should he pick.
• 2:01:10
  It should be Rond De Santis. I have no doubt it should be Ronda
• 2:01:13
  Santis. Now is that electorally beneficial? Probably not, because Desanta's voters are
• 2:01:17
  almost uniformly I think, going to go over to be Trump voters, So
• 2:01:19
  it's not necessarily a political pickup. But in terms of what's best for the
• 2:01:25
  country, Ron de Santas should be the vice president of the United States,
• 2:01:28
  and I think he could be a very effective you know, most vice president,
• 2:01:30
  let's face it, they don't do anything right. It would be very
• 2:01:32
  different. I think if Rond de Santis were the vice president, he could
• 2:01:35
  effectively Trump could effectively outsource a lot of the day to day operations of the
• 2:01:40
  administration to effectively as a COO. Who could be Ron de Santis and there'd
• 2:01:45
  be nobody better at it, you know, in the country than Governor de
• 2:01:48
  Satas. Now, is that going to happen? I don't think so,
• 2:01:50
  but I think it should. All right, you said a lot there,
• 2:01:54
  Okay, okay, So I want to take this. First of all,
• 2:01:59
  It's not going to be Santas, and Trump's ego could never allow it to
• 2:02:02
  be De Santas and and frankly, I'm not sure Dessantas would want to be
• 2:02:06
  vice president to Trump instead of being governor of Florida for two years. I
• 2:02:11
  don't know. I don't know that. I don't know DeSantis at all now,
• 2:02:14
  and I don't know everything. But that's not going to happen. That's
• 2:02:16
  not that's not plausible. Before I get the Carson, I want to go
• 2:02:20
  back to Haley for just a second. I mean, I really don't buy
• 2:02:24
  this idea that Haley would set Trump up, uh you know, for some
• 2:02:29
  sort of uh you know, Republican coup. But with regard to Haley,
• 2:02:33
  one of the things, you know, again, in a magical world where
• 2:02:38
  where I was having a conversation with Trump, trying to convince him that if
• 2:02:41
  he wants to win, Haley's the person. To me, one of the
• 2:02:44
  reasons why Haley is a attract of candidate for Trump is she's not a threat
• 2:02:50
  to take over Maga Inc. See, that's I think, And I'm curious
• 2:02:55
  about your view of this, because you you know how Trump thinks. Right.
• 2:02:59
  The part of this decision is he's picking in a political heir depending on
• 2:03:04
  who he chooses, right, So it's not gonna be Viveke Ramaswami because the
• 2:03:09
  Veke will take over Maga Inc. Right, And Trump knows this, so
• 2:03:13
  he padded Viveke on the head last night and said, you get one minute.
• 2:03:16
  That's it, all right. So it's not gonna be the fake because
• 2:03:20
  the fake is a threat. Nikki Haley has no cachet within Maga world,
• 2:03:27
  so she's not a threat to take it over. Yet she can help him
• 2:03:30
  win. I'm curious what your take is on on that. No, that's
• 2:03:35
  an interesting theory, and I think he might be onto something there, And
• 2:03:38
  yeah, no doubt. I mean, here's the thing. I think if
• 2:03:41
  he names her, I think that would be a massive mistake. I'd be
• 2:03:44
  super disappointed. But let me also say this, John, I'm hearing from
• 2:03:45
  a lot of sort of maga folks like you know, Oh, it's a
• 2:03:47
  deal killer. It is not a deal killer. Okay. His people will
• 2:03:50
  stay with him. They won't like it, but they'll exactly swallow that bitter
• 2:03:56
  pill. Okay, they will. But they will never love her. So
• 2:04:00
  I think you're exactly correct. They will never rally to her. But again,
• 2:04:03
  I think much better of Donald Trump than you do, so I don't
• 2:04:08
  believe he's looking for that angle in who he selects as vice president. But
• 2:04:13
  we'll see. All right, let's talk about a far more cynical view than
• 2:04:15
  I do. You know, clearly, Okay, all right, let's talk
• 2:04:17
  about Carson for a second. I've heard other people say Carson's name too,
• 2:04:21
  and I blew it off until you just said it, because I thought this
• 2:04:27
  makes no sense at all. Carson brings nothing to the table. I mean,
• 2:04:32
  other than I guess the fact that he's a black man. You know,
• 2:04:36
  maybe from a perception standpoint, if you're trying to make a play for
• 2:04:41
  black voters, I guess that helps. But he's seventy two years old.
• 2:04:45
  The number one issue in this campaign is Joe Biden is eighty one, You're
• 2:04:51
  seventy seven, and you're gonna pick a seventy two year old as your vice
• 2:04:58
  presidential domine advocating for Ben Carson, I'm just relaying, you know what I'm
• 2:05:03
  hearing. That's all. I'm not having anything. How does that make any
• 2:05:06
  sense? Steve? Yeah, No, I agree, and listen. I
• 2:05:09
  think Ben Carson's an amazing man. I think he's literally one of the most
• 2:05:13
  inspiring stories in America. That doesn't mean that he's the right pick for vice
• 2:05:15
  president. He's a gaff machine. That's number one. I mean you,
• 2:05:20
  I mean, I'm not gonna ask you to go on the record on that,
• 2:05:24
  but he's a gaff machine. He's seventy two years old, he's never
• 2:05:28
  been elected to any office, and I mean, I like him, but
• 2:05:32
  there's it would be absurd for Donald Trump to make him the vice president.
• 2:05:39
  Now, of course, he's no threat to take over MAGA world, partially
• 2:05:42
  because of who he is, partially because he's seventy two years old. But
• 2:05:45
  I just I don't understand how that would make any sense if it's not Nikki
• 2:05:50
  Haley, which I don't think it will be, although it should be and
• 2:05:54
  it's not Ben Carson for the reasons I just stated. Is there somebody else
• 2:05:57
  that you think? I mean, who would you pick if you were him?
• 2:06:00
  Ron de Santas, right, I mean that's just told you no,
• 2:06:03
  no, no, no, it's not in the realistic worlds deemed It's okay,
• 2:06:08
  Like, so, who do I think can get picked that should be
• 2:06:11
  picked? You know, in the real world. Let me tell you this.
• 2:06:14
  Jd Vance, who I mentioned earlier in the podcast, you know who
• 2:06:16
  I'm quite close with, and I think he is absolutely being considered, is
• 2:06:19
  absolutely in the mix. Is I believe, what thirty nine years old,
• 2:06:24
  so you know, literally you know, half the age right of Trump and
• 2:06:28
  Biden. An incredibly dynamic man who did get elected, right who you know
• 2:06:32
  who holds statewide office doesn't have to leave his seat in Ohio to do it,
• 2:06:36
  has been super super loyal to Trump. And let me, by the
• 2:06:40
  way, just tell you this too. You know, in my experience in
• 2:06:43
  politics, you know, since I got in with Trump in twenty sixteen,
• 2:06:45
  I have met a lot of rats, okay in politics, and I have
• 2:06:48
  not met many really admirable people. Okay, I just have it. That's
• 2:06:51
  just the reality of politics. But the outlier, the most admirable person I
• 2:06:57
  have met by far in politics is j Vance, you know, And I
• 2:07:00
  say that about him personally as well as what he has done publicly, and
• 2:07:04
  I have told him many times personally, and it always gets mad at me
• 2:07:06
  when I say this, that he's going to be president of United States and
• 2:07:10
  it would be it would be an honor for the United States to have him
• 2:07:13
  as president, and a big step toward getting there might dang well be as
• 2:07:18
  Trump's vice president. So in terms of the people who I think could be
• 2:07:21
  selected, you know, realistically and should be JD. Vance at the top
• 2:07:25
  of my list. And by the way, one other point in Haley's favor
• 2:07:30
  is she's not in an elected office, so he's not taking a major Republican
• 2:07:34
  like would be the case with Vance out of their office and making it theoretically
• 2:07:39
  vulnerable to a Democratic pickup. So you know, I you know, there's
• 2:07:45
  all sorts of reasons why I think it ought to be Haley, even though
• 2:07:47
  I don't think it will be, and even though I don't even like Nikki
• 2:07:50
  Haley, but it will be fascinated to see who that choice is, and
• 2:07:55
  if it's Carson I'm going to be completely at a loss to how that makes
• 2:08:00
  any any sense, all right now? And so we got through an hour
• 2:08:05
  talking about this and we're still friends, So that's cool. I want to
• 2:08:09
  be I want to I want to finish on a on a couple of football
• 2:08:13
  related notes, because you know you you played football at Georgetown. You and
• 2:08:20
  I talk a lot about football. I know you you find my football segments
• 2:08:22
  to be compelling on the podcast, and uh, and I'm I'm very curious
• 2:08:28
  because you have a daughter that goes to University of Alabama. You you went
• 2:08:33
  to the Rose Bowl game where Alabama lost to Michigan. It turned out to
• 2:08:37
  be Nick Saban's last game, which you had no idea was going to be
• 2:08:41
  the case when that happened. And I'm curious because I'm sure you're at least
• 2:08:46
  aware of this, because even I am stunned. I mean, as you
• 2:08:48
  know, I am someone who is extremely critical and pessimistic about the state of
• 2:08:52
  college football and where it's headed. But even I have been stunned to see
• 2:08:58
  what has happened at Alabama after Nick Saban has retired, where basically the entire
• 2:09:03
  team has either declared for the draft or the transfer portal, including major recruits,
• 2:09:11
  including a quarterback from from here in southern California that was supposed to be
• 2:09:15
  a huge deals is no longer going to Alabama. They're going to go to
• 2:09:18
  Ohio State. I mean, this is extraordinary given the fact that they hired
• 2:09:24
  the guy who lost in the National Championship Game. What is your view about
• 2:09:28
  what has happened at Alabama post Nick saban retirement and what it says about the
• 2:09:35
  state of college football? John, It is so sad. I mean,
• 2:09:39
  we are we are killing an organization, an entity, a you know,
• 2:09:43
  a cultural icon of America, which is college football. And it just makes
• 2:09:48
  me so damn depressed that it's honestly hard for me to even really think a
• 2:09:52
  lot about it. And you've done such incredible work and Saban, I believe
• 2:09:56
  that Saban's retirement, you know, in time in history, will be marked
• 2:10:01
  as the death of college football. Right that he left largely because of what's
• 2:10:05
  going on and because he doesn't like operating understandably so in this new era of
• 2:10:09
  endless transfers combined with unlimited nil money, it's just it's a toxic brew that
• 2:10:18
  is ruining what was the pageantry and the regionalism that made college football special and
• 2:10:26
  made it different from pro football. What we're ending up with, unfortunately,
• 2:10:30
  is a pro league, JV pro league that is actually even worse though than
• 2:10:35
  the NFL, like it has the worst excesses of what's wrong with the NFL
• 2:10:39
  are accentuated at the college level because they're not even signed to contracts. I
• 2:10:41
  mean, at least in the NFL, like you have to stay for three
• 2:10:45
  years. If you just signed a three year contract, there's no getting out
• 2:10:46
  of it. You can hold out, you cannot play. But if you're
• 2:10:48
  signed a contract with the Packers, you can't go play for the Bears.
• 2:10:52
  Okay, in college you can. I mean it's it's literally it's ludicrous what's
• 2:10:56
  happening. And by the way, I want to make this a political issue,
• 2:10:58
  and again I hope I get the chance to talk to President Trump for
• 2:11:01
  a lot of reasons, but I want to bring this up to him because
• 2:11:03
  I know knowing President Trump pretty well, and he loves football, and I
• 2:11:07
  think he understands these issues, and I know he'll at least give me a
• 2:11:11
  serious listen on this because there needs to be a political fix because it's remember
• 2:11:15
  these problems came from the political arena. It was because of what Gavin Newsom
• 2:11:18
  first started in California and then because of a Supreme Court decision regarding anti trust.
• 2:11:22
  I think a lot of people don't realize this. Regarding NIL at least
• 2:11:26
  the NCAA's hands are tied right now. I can't do anything but the schools.
• 2:11:31
  There is a legislative fix where the schools can get back involved if we
• 2:11:35
  had a president and a Congress so aligned and then the nc doubile does have
• 2:11:39
  power over the transfer portal, and that's where it needs to Absolutely here's what
• 2:11:43
  I would I'm going to propose if I get the chance to President Trump,
• 2:11:46
  and I'll do it here publicly on your show. I'm going to propose to
• 2:11:48
  him that he establish a commission that he promised this as a campaign issue,
• 2:11:52
  by the way, that he will establish a commission that should be chaired by
• 2:11:56
  Nick Saban. Okay, nobody better to do it. That will be chaired
• 2:11:58
  by Saban to come up with a reform package of how to save college football
• 2:12:05
  and the legislation then that is necessary. It's the best lawyers and parliamentarians on
• 2:12:09
  it that can survive court tests to save this American institution. And here's why
• 2:12:15
  I think it. Some of the libertarians out there might say, we wait,
• 2:12:18
  a sayd quytest, what the hell, you know, orld does the
• 2:12:20
  government have in this? We subsidize these universities to such a massive degree,
• 2:12:24
  including the private ones, which a lot of people don't realize just how much
• 2:12:28
  the federal government subsidized is higher education in this country, including private institutions,
• 2:12:31
  that we absolutely have a stake in this game, you know, this literal
• 2:12:35
  game of college football. And I also would argue that it is so important
• 2:12:39
  to America culturally that it is absolutely worth political intervention because it's political intervention that
• 2:12:46
  started its undoing political invention. I think can can at least try to save
• 2:12:52
  this, and I hope it does, because Yeah, what's happening at Alabama
• 2:12:56
  is an absolute tragedy, and it's a shame for all a Obama fans,
• 2:13:00
  but it's happening, you know, all over the country. And by the
• 2:13:01
  way, I'm on the other side of this in a way. And so
• 2:13:05
  my daughter goes to our third daughter goes to Alabama. Our son is a
• 2:13:07
  very excellent, thankfully high school football player who's junior in high school and started
• 2:13:13
  to get recruited quite a bit. And on the on that side of the
• 2:13:16
  equation, Okay, you know the portal and the nil and and I don't
• 2:13:18
  know John that he's going to be some huge nil draw. I'm not saying
• 2:13:22
  that, but I'm just saying from the player perspective and the player parent perspective,
• 2:13:26
  like right now, the world's great in terms of what's going on for
• 2:13:30
  them. But I also, as a fan and as an American and as
• 2:13:33
  a Patriot, realized that what's going on to college football is a shame,
• 2:13:37
  and I think we've got to try to do something to save it. I
• 2:13:41
  love a lot of what you just said there, and I do hope you
• 2:13:43
  get a chance to speak to Donald Trump. You have actually been someone who
• 2:13:48
  in the past has influenced Trump on football related issues. In that during COVID,
• 2:13:56
  you played a role in Trump realizing the importance of playing some semblance of
• 2:14:00
  a college football season that year. Correct, That is correct. And you
• 2:14:03
  know, I was working for the campaign in twenty twenty, and when the
• 2:14:07
  Big Ten was debating whether or not it was going to get going to play
• 2:14:09
  college football, the SEC was already playing. And that was true. You
• 2:14:11
  know, basically from the get go, which you know, I give the
• 2:14:13
  SEC all the credit it deserves for that. But at that time, in
• 2:14:18
  the summer of twenty twenty, it looked like it was going to be an
• 2:14:20
  SEC only season, and the Big Ten was really the kind of the deciding
• 2:14:22
  conference because if they decided to play, the other Power five conferences then were
• 2:14:28
  going to follow their suit. They weren't going to be left out. And
• 2:14:31
  it really came down to the Big Ten. And I actually had some moles
• 2:14:33
  in the operation. I had some sources who were deeply involved in those negotiations
• 2:14:37
  and knew that it was roughly at fifty to fifty coin flip at that time
• 2:14:43
  between the Big Ten schools of whether or not they were going to play.
• 2:14:45
  So I went directly to President Trump and I said, number one, this
• 2:14:48
  is the right thing for us to do. Okay, you need to intervene.
• 2:14:50
  And I said this to him and not you. By the way,
• 2:14:54
  this is where Fauci can actually be valuable for us, because these university presidents
• 2:14:58
  actually revere Fauci. So let's put Fauci and his team in front of them
• 2:15:01
  about, Hey, here's how we can safely play a college football season.
• 2:15:05
  And that's where that. You know, that task force, you know,
• 2:15:07
  for once served a valuable function, maybe the only time it did. And
• 2:15:11
  President Trump, to his credit, was all over it. And I said,
• 2:15:15
  and also, by the way, these big ten states are places where
• 2:15:18
  we're trying to compete, right we want to win Michigan and Wisconsin. If
• 2:15:20
  we save the college football season for the Wolverines and the Spartans and the Badgers,
• 2:15:24
  we can remind people about that like crazy into election day. And so
• 2:15:30
  he got it, you know, both as the right thing to do and
• 2:15:31
  politically expedient. And I give President Trump tremendous credit, you know, I
• 2:15:37
  think, at my urging, you know, the two of us were instrumental,
• 2:15:41
  you know, behind the scenes in saving that college football season. And
• 2:15:45
  I'll be proud of that until the day I died. That we we did
• 2:15:48
  play college football that fall, thank goodness, and you deserve a lot of
• 2:15:50
  credit for that. However, I do think that issue kind of shows the
• 2:15:56
  double edged sword of Donald Trump and and how you look at him differently than
• 2:16:01
  I do. I look at that situation and I go, Okay, good
• 2:16:07
  thing for Trump to salvage some semblance of a college football season. It was
• 2:16:11
  not a real college football season. You know, it was fauciized. There
• 2:16:16
  were no crowds, the games were canceled, willy nilly, schedules were diminished.
• 2:16:20
  But more importantly than that, Steve, Yeah, correct, I believe.
• 2:16:24
  I believe that if Hillary Clinton had been running for reelection that there would
• 2:16:31
  been a full, normal college football season because the people making those decisions are
• 2:16:37
  all academic liberals, and they had a massive conflict on their brains. They
• 2:16:45
  knew that anything that normalized what was happening in twenty twenty was going to be
• 2:16:50
  good for Donald Trump. But they also wanted to play football from a monetary
• 2:16:56
  standpoint, and you know, to appease their their fan base and their clientele.
• 2:17:03
  So you guys kind of won that battle, but it was a battle
• 2:17:07
  that only existed because you had to force a bunch of anti Trump people academia
• 2:17:16
  to actually do the right thing, which they didn't want to do because they
• 2:17:18
  knew it would be good for Trump. What's your reaction to that, Yeah,
• 2:17:24
  no, I get your reason in there. The incentives lined up,
• 2:17:28
  unfortunately for so many powerful people, whether they were blue state governors or university
• 2:17:33
  presidents or teachers' union heads. Right across the country. The incentives lined up
• 2:17:39
  for them to do the absolute most illogical, least scientific thing regarding lockdowns and
• 2:17:46
  regarding the tyranny of COVID, all in an effort to punish Trump. And
• 2:17:52
  it was so totally politicized. But I guess here's where you and I would
• 2:17:56
  disagree. They're like, but I don't think you can blame Trump for them,
• 2:18:00
  for the fact that these leftists prioritized hating Trump overdoing the right thing for
• 2:18:05
  their whatever their constituency was, Like, that's I don't think at his feet.
• 2:18:09
  And this might be the core, the core difference that you and I
• 2:18:13
  have on Trump. I think Trump needs to take responsibility for the fact that
• 2:18:18
  he's hated by fifty five percent of the public. So you you look at
• 2:18:22
  it and you go, that's on them, right, these are the these
• 2:18:26
  leftists. They hate Trump because he's trying to save America and make America great
• 2:18:30
  again. I look at it, and they go, at least ten percent
• 2:18:33
  of that is because Trump can be an asshole for no apparent reason and just
• 2:18:39
  to be an agitator, and and so therefore, you know, if Trump
• 2:18:45
  wasn't that toxic, Like, for instance, I know you've taken you've given
• 2:18:48
  me more time than I asked for. But I think this is an important
• 2:18:52
  issue. Granted, the world was different on nine to eleven, right,
• 2:18:56
  totally different than nine to eleven, But it wasn't that long ago. George
• 2:19:00
  W. Bush was hated because of what happened with the Florida recount and you
• 2:19:05
  know, distrusted, whatever. But George W. Bush after nine to eleven
• 2:19:09
  had an eighty nine percent approval rating. Right, if nine to eleven happened
• 2:19:15
  under Trump, he would never get over fifty two percent approval because he's that
• 2:19:22
  unbelievably hated. All Right, there's nothing that could happen. I'm gonna I'm
• 2:19:28
  gonna disagree with you there, John, and not that he would. I'm
• 2:19:31
  not disagreeing with your with your conclusion, but I'm not saying that's not Trump's
• 2:19:35
  fault. America is not in the place where it was two decades ago philosophically,
• 2:19:39
  right, in other words, almost every single issue. We're a forty
• 2:19:43
  five forty five nation right in fighting over you know, roughly that middle ten
• 2:19:48
  percent. I mean, we agree on nothing, right, we'reas polarized as
• 2:19:50
  we have been since the Civil War in the United States. So I don't
• 2:19:52
  think any leader right or left is ever going to be able to get that
• 2:19:56
  kind of I shouldn't say ever, but for the foreseeable future is gonna to
• 2:20:00
  be able to get that kind of consensus that George W. Bush had after
• 2:20:01
  not eleven. I just don't You're probably right about the country, but you're
• 2:20:07
  probably right, but it's not even close. And I guess my major point
• 2:20:11
  is that Trump was the first president in modern time they didn't even try to
• 2:20:18
  appeal to people that weren't in his camp. He basically tried to agitate them
• 2:20:26
  because his camp loved it so much. And by the way, that's why
• 2:20:30
  he won the nomination and it worked in beating Hillary. But eventually there's a
• 2:20:35
  price to pay for that. And in a crisis. I always said that
• 2:20:39
  about Trump, what's going to happen in a crisis, because when fifty five
• 2:20:45
  percent of the American people hate your guts, you can't govern. And that's
• 2:20:50
  why, in my view, he was not able to handle the COVID panic
• 2:20:56
  and the challenge that presented to him. But look, realize you and I
• 2:21:00
  are not going to agree on that, And more importantly, I appreciate you
• 2:21:03
  coming on and giving us our time and being straightforward with your answers. I'm
• 2:21:07
  sure this wasn't that any easy an interview for you to do, but I'm
• 2:21:13
  glad we got through it without any bloodshed and we're still friends, and I
• 2:21:18
  very much appreciate that. And look, I hope Steve that somehow, some
• 2:21:22
  way you end up back in a significant way on Team Trump. I hope
• 2:21:28
  that happens. And I appreciate you coming on the show very much. John,
• 2:21:33
  Thank you so much. I appreciate your friendship, your wisdom. Even
• 2:21:37
  when we disagree, you are always so incredibly thoughtful, and you're patriotic,
• 2:21:41
  and I know you want what's best for this country. And I, for
• 2:21:43
  one, am going to really really miss your podcast because I listen to every
• 2:21:48
  word of every episode and it's going to be missed. So thank you for
• 2:21:54
  having me, and thank you for everything you do. Thanks again to Steve
• 2:21:58
  for his time. And I do think that that was a very productive and
• 2:22:03
  interesting interview. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did engaging with
• 2:22:07
  Steve in that conversation. And I do wish him all the best, and
• 2:22:11
  I do hope that if it works out, that he ends up working for
• 2:22:13
  Team Trump. At least in a way that is significant enough where he can
• 2:22:18
  have his voice, his contrarian voice heard by Donald Trump, whether it's during
• 2:22:22
  this campaign or if Trump were to win and get back in the White House,
• 2:22:28
  give him counsel while he is President of the United States. Speaking of
• 2:22:33
  a football, which was the last topic that Steve and I discussed in the
• 2:22:37
  previous episode of this podcast, I made a prediction that the National Football League
• 2:22:41
  has a major perception of conflict of interest problem on its hands this weekend with
• 2:22:48
  regard to the Kansas City Chiefs Baltimore Ravens AFC Championship game, because there is
• 2:22:54
  absolutely no doubt that the NFL has a massive incentive for the Chiefs to win
• 2:23:01
  and they get a Super Bowl involving, you know, not just the defending
• 2:23:03
  champions, but Travis Kelcey and his girlfriend Taylor Swift, and his brother Jason
• 2:23:09
  Kelsey, who's now a major media star, and all that that would entail
• 2:23:16
  when it comes to the Super Bowl. And by the way, I want
• 2:23:18
  to make something clear, because I did not make this as obvious as I
• 2:23:20
  should have in the previous episode. It's not just about what the audience for
• 2:23:26
  the Super Bowl would be If the Chiefs win, Taylor Swift is bringing in
• 2:23:33
  a completely new and extremely potentially valuable demographic for the National Football League that may
• 2:23:41
  go beyond just a one shot deal. I mean she may be creating new
• 2:23:46
  fans for the league in young women, which is incredibly important, not just
• 2:23:52
  from a financial standpoint, but culturally, because we're living in a culture that
• 2:23:58
  is more and more or female dominated. Wives dominate men, and it is
• 2:24:05
  critical for the long term survival of the National Football League that men still be
• 2:24:09
  allowed to watch football when they want. And that sounds like something that's not
• 2:24:16
  that big of a deal. It's a huge deal depending on the nature of
• 2:24:18
  your marriage and your children. But I can just tell you in my personal
• 2:24:24
  experience, you know, it's often difficult for me to get, you know,
• 2:24:28
  full ownership of the television and I have to really want to watch a
• 2:24:33
  particular football game to do that in a household with two young daughters and a
• 2:24:37
  wife who don't really particularly like football. But if the Chiefs are on,
• 2:24:43
  I have a complete pass because it's all about Taylor Swift, because of my
• 2:24:48
  eleven year old daughter, Grace. And so that's just a small example.
• 2:24:52
  But I'm telling you the NFL will benefit enormously. Chiefs win on Sunday,
• 2:25:01
  and I predicted this is going to create a massive at least appearance of conflict
• 2:25:05
  of interest and potentially a major problem depending on how that game goes down.
• 2:25:11
  Will Already there has been a viral tweet regarding who has been named to referee
• 2:25:20
  that game. And I don't even know if any of this is remotely true
• 2:25:22
  or relevant, but there was a tweet by a football insider who was criticizing
• 2:25:28
  the choice of Sean Smith as the referee for this game because he is notoriously
• 2:25:35
  favorable to the road team. The away team, which is the Chiefs are
• 2:25:39
  the away team against the Ravens. Again, I don't know if any of
• 2:25:43
  this is based in reality or whatever, but it's had millions and millions of
• 2:25:48
  views on this particular tweet. It was picked up by other outlets. This
• 2:25:52
  is becoming a narrative, at least underground that somehow the National Football League is
• 2:25:58
  purposely putting this guy as of the the referee of this game in order to
• 2:26:05
  try to stack the deck in the Chiefs favor. I do not believe that
• 2:26:09
  it's possible. Yeah, but the point of this is this whole situation has
• 2:26:15
  created a massive conflict of interest, and depending on how this goes down,
• 2:26:22
  it is a combustible situation where if the Chiefs are seen as winning because of
• 2:26:28
  the officiating, the National Football League is going to have a big problem on
• 2:26:33
  its hands. And so that's something to watch this weekend with regard to the
• 2:26:39
  two championship games. And of course, you know, the NFL would really
• 2:26:43
  love probably to have Detroit play against Kansas City because then you have eminem with
• 2:26:48
  the Lions and the Cinderella Lions story and the Chiefs and Taylor Swift. I
• 2:26:52
  mean, you really can't get much better than that. But we'll see what
• 2:26:56
  happens and I'll talk about it in the next episode of the podcast. I
• 2:27:01
  also wanted to at least mention the Oscar nominations, and there were two elements
• 2:27:07
  to the Oscar nominations that I wanted to mention. Now, first of all,
• 2:27:11
  the Oscars are nowhere near as significant as they used to be. The
• 2:27:15
  broadcast has nowhere near the audience that it used to have, so therefore everything
• 2:27:18
  gets watered down, and you know, things that used to change people's lives
• 2:27:24
  forever really are not that impactful because you know, while the media still considers
• 2:27:28
  the Oscars to be very important, it doesn't have anywhere near the same cultural
• 2:27:33
  significance or the impact or doesn't make the same kind of mark that it used
• 2:27:39
  to because you don't have It's like the super Bowl. I mean, if
• 2:27:41
  the super Bowl had half of its audience making, the super Bowl wouldn't be
• 2:27:46
  nearly as big a deal, and whatever happens in the super Bowl wouldn't have
• 2:27:48
  nearly the impact going forward. Well, the Oscars has lost so much audience
• 2:27:54
  over the last several years that there really isn't that much significants. But I
• 2:28:01
  do think there were a couple of things worthy of mention. What's getting the
• 2:28:05
  most attention is this hilarious situation where super woke Hollywood has basically screwed itself by
• 2:28:13
  bizarrely not nominating either Margo Robbie as an elite actress in Barbie, or the
• 2:28:22
  female director of Barbie, the most highly grossing film by far of twenty twenty
• 2:28:30
  three. They don't get nominations. Now, I would be fine with that
• 2:28:33
  because Barbie is not a traditional Oscar Academy Awards winning type of movie. I
• 2:28:39
  actually think it was underrated by conservatives, and I said this at the time
• 2:28:43
  that Ben Shapiro was totally wrong in the movie would actually do tremendous box office.
• 2:28:48
  It would not be a bomb. My daughters loved it, My wife
• 2:28:50
  cried at Barbie. I was not that offended by it. I was mildly
• 2:28:56
  amused by it. But it was not an Oscar type movie, at least
• 2:29:01
  in the traditional sense. So I would have been fine with Margaret Robbie not
• 2:29:05
  getting nominated or the director not getting nominated. But stupidly, hilariously, this
• 2:29:11
  movie about female empowerment and the entire Barbie phenomenon doesn't have the two women most
• 2:29:20
  associated with it nominated, although there was a supporting actress that got nominated because
• 2:29:26
  she's a Latina and so that's very politically correct. But they don't get nominated.
• 2:29:31
  But the white straight guy, Ryan Gosling does get nominated and his song
• 2:29:37
  got So this is an absolutely hilarious situation. And I'm one hundred percent sure
• 2:29:45
  it was not because of some sort of you know, sexism within the voters
• 2:29:48
  of the Academy. It's just one of those things that kind of happened because
• 2:29:52
  of the nature of who was potentially up for each category. But in perception,
• 2:29:58
  this is just awful, and even Ryan Gosling felt obligated to basically condemn
• 2:30:03
  the entire process. He's in Paris that he's nominated, but Marco Robbie and
• 2:30:09
  the female director or not. So that's just hilarious and I kind of,
• 2:30:13
  you know, there's definitely something to be said, probably with being hoisted in
• 2:30:18
  its own petard of political correctness there. And then the other element that I
• 2:30:24
  wanted to mention is that a movie that I have touted previously a couple of
• 2:30:28
  weeks ago on this podcast because they had a chance to watch it via a
• 2:30:33
  screener that was given to me by a friend who gets these screeners because they
• 2:30:37
  vote for some of these awards. And you know, every Christmas season,
• 2:30:41
  my wife and I don't get to watch any movies because we have two young
• 2:30:43
  kids and have no social life. We get to actually watch a few movies.
• 2:30:48
  Well, one of those that we saw, and about the only one
• 2:30:50
  we really liked, was a movie called American Fiction. And American Fiction is
• 2:30:56
  one of the ten movies nominated for Best Picture. Now, well you know
• 2:31:00
  they've expanded that particular category to ten, so it's nowhere near as prestigious as
• 2:31:05
  it used to be to be nominated for Best Picture Oscar. I mean,
• 2:31:09
  you know, ten movies in this day and age is very rare to get
• 2:31:13
  ten really good movies in any particular year. But I do think it's still
• 2:31:20
  relevant, not just because I mentioned that I liked American Fiction, but I'm
• 2:31:24
  still wondering when somebody in the conservative media is going to pick up on the
• 2:31:30
  fact that American Fiction, in its essence is an extremely anti woke movie,
• 2:31:37
  extremely anti woke and frankly hilarious in its condemnation of woke white liberals, specifically
• 2:31:48
  in the media and in the book publishing industry and in Hollywood itself. And
• 2:31:54
  I've not seen anybody in the conservative media even mentioned this. My guess is
• 2:31:58
  they haven't seen it and so therefore hasn't become a narrative. And I'll be
• 2:32:03
  very curious because if somebody lights this spark, it could end up, you
• 2:32:09
  know, becoming a pretty big story. It probably wouldn't help it win the
• 2:32:13
  Academy Award. I don't think there's any chance it wins the Academy Award.
• 2:32:18
  But you know, it's an interesting film one because it's anti woke, but
• 2:32:22
  it's about a black writer, and there are other subplots that go I think
• 2:32:26
  too far and trying to basically protect its backside by giving it enough PC points
• 2:32:33
  to where it can get away with being anti woke. I mean, there's
• 2:32:37
  a subplot about a gay brother that I don't even really understand and didn't think
• 2:32:43
  it was very effective, But the essence of the movie is very anti woke.
• 2:32:48
  And I will be very curious between now and when the Academy Awards actually
• 2:32:52
  airs whether anybody in the conservative movement finally wakes up and goes, Hey,
• 2:32:56
  what the hell is this about American fiction? It's amazing, And I do
• 2:33:01
  think that it would be significant to do that, because a movie like that
• 2:33:05
  has to be supported for it to be repeated, and conservatives have made a
• 2:33:09
  mistake in totally abandoning Hollywood, where there's no incentive for mainstream Hollywood to make
• 2:33:16
  anything other than leftist crap because even when they do so, there's no benefit
• 2:33:24
  to it. Well, here's a situation where American fiction could theoretically be the
• 2:33:28
  exception to that. If someone picks up the ball and runs with it,
• 2:33:33
  it's certainly not going to be me, because I'm not significant but somebody really
• 2:33:37
  ought to do so. And if you haven't yet, check out the movie
• 2:33:39
  American Fiction. That'll do it. For this episode of the podcast, it's
• 2:33:45
  episode number one hundred and twenty two. Thanks so much for listening. I'll
• 2:33:50
  be back next week with our final few episodes. It looks like we'll have
• 2:33:52
  six more between now and the middle of February, when we plan on ending
• 2:33:58
  this particular podcast, and then unless we have a black swan event, I'll
• 2:34:01
  be dropping out of public life, probably forever, for better or for worse.
• 2:34:05
  But until next week, thanks so much for listening. My name is
• 2:34:09
  John Ziegler.