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Episode Fifty: Ask Zig Anything · The Death Of Journalism

• 0:00
  Welcome to episode number fifty of the Death of Journalism podcast. My name is
• 0:04
  John Ziggler and today our first ever edition of Ask John Anything Right. Promise
• 0:10
  a totally honest answer to any reasonable question from you our podcast audience, and
• 0:15
  there are some good ones plus the Pentagon leaker and the latest in the Republican
• 0:20
  presidential Race. I'm known as the Dutch Digital marketing Man. I'm a digital
• 0:26
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• 0:31
  John Ziggler and the Death of journalisten. Do you need help preaching your talk
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  in the best channels for your business. Please visit my website, the Dutch
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  website is the Dutch Digital marketing Man dot com. If you want to grow
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  your business, Peter can help. That's the Dutch Digital marketing Man dot com.
• 1:00
  And hey, thanks for sponsoring the show. But before we get to
• 1:03
  Ask John Anything, two stories I want to discuss. First, the Pentagon
• 1:07
  Ukrainian War leaker and the latest in the Republican presidential race. Basically right now
• 1:12
  between Donald Trump and Ron De Santis. The Pentagon Ukrainian leaker case is bizarre
• 1:21
  and obviously deserves a deeper dive at a later date, but I just want
• 1:26
  to briefly touch on it because the media reaction to it is incredibly telling and
• 1:32
  more than a bit disturbing. Now, the basics of the story are that
• 1:36
  there was a leak on the Internet of some seemingly rather damaging information about how
• 1:42
  the war in Ukraine is going. Now, the content of that has basically
• 1:46
  been lost in all this. The content makes it look very bad for Ukraine,
• 1:51
  and it makes it look like the United States government has been effectively lying
• 1:56
  about the state of the war. Now, this has all been pinned on
• 1:59
  a twenty one year old Massachusetts Air National guardsman by the name of Jack Texi
• 2:05
  Area. And this story is so strange and so weird that again, I'm
• 2:13
  going to leave it to others to break that part of it down. But
• 2:15
  the media response and the media basically taking the government's side of this, ignoring
• 2:23
  the content of the league itself, patting itself on the back for going after
• 2:30
  this twenty one year old Massachusetts Air National Government and you know, it's still
• 2:34
  ambiguous as to which came first, the government or the media tracking him down.
• 2:39
  And I don't even I'm going to presume for the sake of this argument
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  that he is in fact the person who was the source of the league.
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  It's very very strange that he would have access to this kind of classified information,
• 2:52
  although he did have a security clearance. But you know, this was
• 2:55
  seemingly very significant information that got leaked in a very weird way. There were
• 3:01
  video games involved, and it was basically a story of young kids. It
• 3:06
  seems like basically, you know, taking this information and bragging about it.
• 3:12
  It appears and you know, let's talking about a security breach. But it's
• 3:16
  more than a security breach. It's an issue of Okay, what the hell's
• 3:20
  the truth here, what's actually happening? And you would think that while the
• 3:25
  breach itself, the leak itself, you know, the classified documents being put
• 3:31
  online is a story, it's an element of this whole story. And you
• 3:37
  know, the government's quest to try to quash any discussion of the content is
• 3:44
  you know, relevant, and the boy did they do so. I mean,
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  the government tried very hard to convince the media that this is not something
• 3:52
  that should be talked about, that this is a very dangerous situation, and
• 3:55
  by and large not entirely, but the media went along with that. So
• 4:00
  the media took the side of the government in this league instead of oh hey,
• 4:03
  wait a minute, this is obviously the league itself is concerning. You
• 4:09
  know, how this happened is concerning, But what about the content. And
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  the content is that we are being lied to about the status of the war
• 4:17
  in Ukraine. We are spending billions and billions of dollars on what appears to
• 4:21
  be a losing effort and our government's not being straight with us about it.
• 4:29
  Now, that used to be decide that the media would take. And you
• 4:32
  know, this has happened before with regard to wars and Pentagon leagues. I
• 4:36
  mean, there's a very famous case called the Pentagon Papers dealing largely with the
• 4:42
  Vietnam War. That situation was so hailed by the news media that it actually
• 4:46
  got a Tom Hanks and Meryl Street movie. That's not going to happen here.
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  This is how much the media has changed. And you know, I'm
• 4:56
  not supporting leagues. If it's illegal and it's proven, there should be stiff
• 5:00
  punishment for that. But what about the content. And in the Pentagon Papers
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  case, it was a massive story that changed the course of the Vietnam War
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  and American support for it. And but here we have a situation where the
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  media is very invested in the Ukrainian effort, and I think that plays a
• 5:24
  major, major role. I mean, can you imagine I mean a similar
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  situation happening once the public opinion and especially the media opinion turned on a rock,
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  that we had a similar leak, the content would be the focus.
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  But here the content is not the focus. Instead it's you know, leaks
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  be damned and let's do the work of the government. And I guess this
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  is particularly telling and particularly upsetting in wake of COVID, because COVID, even
• 5:55
  though it doesn't have anything directly to do with the Pentagon League, it was
• 5:58
  certainly the first time in my life where the news media openly and actively and
• 6:05
  blindly took the side of the government, oftentimes against the people. In the
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  media was allegedly supposed to be the voice of the people, keeping the government
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  in line, and now the roles have completely shifted. And this leak,
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  separating the bizarreness of the story from this element of it this league really exposes
• 6:30
  that. And again I want to save as I like to learn more about
• 6:33
  a story where I take a deep die. Plus I've got other things planned
• 6:38
  for this episode, but so I expected as the things gone on, I'll
• 6:43
  revisit this. But there's another element of the story that I wanted to touch
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  on today because it was discussed on Bill Maher's HBO show. Now, this
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  doesn't really have that much to do with the Pentagon leaker, except for the
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  fact that he's a twenty one year old kid who was into video games and
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  appeared to be, you know, putting it out there on the Internet for
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  whatever reason. In the mindset of Bill Maher and his guest, at least
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  one of his guests, who was Piers Morgan, that this was emblematic of
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  kids putting everything on social media for likes and affirmation and look at me and
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  a little bit of fame. And the third person of their panel was Katie
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  Porter, who's a Democratic congressman person here in California and who's running for the
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  US Senate seat that Diane Feinstein is eventually finally going to give up. And
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  so it's Bill Maher, Piers Morgan, and Katie Porter and they kind of
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  take this leak issue and make it into a generational thing, which I think
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  is an incredibly important and underdiscussed issue, which I'll get to momentarily. But
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  here is about two minutes of Elmer, Piers Morgan and Katie Porter talking about
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  this youngest generation and whether or not it's okay, I guess to criticize them
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  if you're over a certain age. And here's what that sounded like on HBO.
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  Okay, to do something for the likes? You know that disease that
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  happened to America, that every kid has to do something for the likes.
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  I just think our kids are not mature. Well, I think that they're
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  constantly seeking affirmation. This is because of things like Instagram. You post something
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  and people validate you. But the newest national security secrets. For that,
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  it could be a bit the level of a bad judgment. But the real
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  old that's sorry, yeah are That's why they're kid a twenty one. All
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  over the world, you're a different sure, that's why we don't well,
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  you're used drink until they're twenty one. That's why some of us don't think
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  that twenty year olds or nineteen year olds want to be able to go get
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  a R fifteen. They can go fight. I think there are in the
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  army. Well, I think that's a discussion we should have because I think
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  you can. We know about I thought if your vote, you should be
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  able to have a certain level of maturity. They're deciding whether you should be
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  in Congress or not. Well, I i and by the way, I
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  win those votes, and I win those votes, and I'm proud of it.
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  But I want to win the votes of the immature. Well, but
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  the immature. First off, immature, he's not necessarily an age thing.
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  You can be immature. Well, you just played the age card. You
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  were like, our argument sucks because we're old, which is I couldn't say
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  that I was getting boring? Should should not down? Shouldn't we critique each
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  other on the content of our ideas, not on those identities politics things like
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  you're old, you couldn't possibly have the right idema. Well, you're a
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  whole complainte that they're young. I mean if I said that about women or
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  something, that wouldn't be right. Your whole complaint is that this person is
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  you point if my complaints are young, are immature compared to other countries and
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  other times in history we raise very immature people because we coddle them. We
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  give a sense of entitlement. They don't have to learn anything in school.
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  Now, this topic is a pet peeve of mine. I kind of alluded
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  to it after the Masters when I talked about the Brooks Kepka controversy that I
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  got embroiled in. Not to get too deeply back into that, but just
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  the whole issue of me on Twitter being a stickler for the rules and wanting
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  the rules to be adhered to and believing that there should be consequences. And
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  I can't tell you how many times I got called a boomer, but technically
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  I'm not, by the way, as a fifty six year old. But
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  that's a now standard response when they have nothing else, when they don't want
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  to attack you on this substance, You're just an old man. The other
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  one I go at all the time is the old man yells at a cloud,
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  you know that meme, which again is ridiculous. So it's as if
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  now the way to defend whatever the youngest generation does is to simply discredit those
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  criticizing them by saying, well, you're old, you're out of touch,
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  you don't get it, nothing on the substance as was alluded to in the
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  clip, but simply attacking based upon age. And unfortunately this works for a
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  couple of reasons, but one of which is you know, this youngest generation
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  is being protected by the news media. Why, well, because they are
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  the future customers. They are the ones who are going to be spending the
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  money in the near future, if not now. It is traditionally always been
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  a critical period for media and advertisers to grab people at a certain age so
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  you redically have them for life. I don't know if that's still true anymore,
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  but that's always been the way that it has been done. And I
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  actually think what's happening here and this is again another topic for another day and
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  a deeper dive, but I really think that one of the problems in analyzing
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  the issues with this younger generation today is that there has always been it's a
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  cliche that every generation thinks the younger generation is flawed or fundamentally broken or heading
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  in the wrong direction. And there's truth to that. That has always been
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  the case, but because that has become a cliche, I actually believe that
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  our ability to sound the alarms about what's happening with this youngest generation is greatly
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  muted because I do think there's something fundamentally different. And of course, you
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  know, people might say, well, of course you're fifty six, you're
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  getting old. This is just the way the world works. Every generation said
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  that. No, no, no, no, no no no. There
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  are fundamental differences about what's going on with this generation. They have had to
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  deal with things and not deal with things that are unique that have never happened
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  before in modern history, most of them having to do with technology. I
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  mean, I'll take boys for instance. Boys teenage boys now are basically obsessed
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  with video games and now have access effectively to pornography whenever they want. Now,
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  this has had a massive fundamental impact on the nature of boys, and
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  it's impacting girls too, because you know, I'm you know, my wife's
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  a school teacher. It appears as if and it's not just an adultal evidence,
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  but there's other evidence of this as well. The boys really aren't even
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  interested in girls anymore. They're not interested in cars. Getting your life isn't
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  even not big of a deal to the average kid anymore, apparently. I
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  mean, these are fundamental changes the technology has wrought and social media plays a
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  huge role, video games, pornography, especially for boys. Obviously, these
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  are things that are new and different, not to mention it coincides with the
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  coddling of this generation, the participation trophy phenomenon, and all these things.
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  Plus you know, we've got more to parents working all sorts of issues that
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  are different and at least somewhat unique that are creating a generation that is broken.
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  Not to mention communist, which is another problem I have with this generation.
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  So again, I don't want to get too deeply into it today,
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  but I did find that that discussion between Bill Maher and Piers Morgan and Katie
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  Porter was really emblematic of a much large your reality. And it was not
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  surprising that Katie Porter, or the Democrat who her basic only argument was,
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  you know, get you're getting, you're old, We shouldn't, we don't
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  need to listen to you. Well, as they retorted, what about the
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  substance of the argument, And you know, the substance apparently doesn't matter anymore.
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  It's it's all about identity politics and young beats old, especially when that's
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  the demographic that the media cherishes the most. All right, I want to
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  shift more towards what's going on with the presidential race between Donald Trump and the
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  yet to be announced Ron de Santis. I guess I'll start with something that's
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  not directly involved but certainly became somewhat related to it, and that's the entire
• 15:43
  bud Light controversy and bud Light getting attacked by mostly conservatives for hiring Dylan mulvaaney,
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  who's a man pretending to be a woman or a girl and has made
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  a lot of money from from this whatever the hell they're doing, and them
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  becoming a spokesperson for bud Light, and this controversy has exploded. Now I'm
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  not as convinced as other conservatives are that this is really destroying Anheuser Busch and
• 16:15
  bud Light. I mean, there's some evidence of that, but it has
• 16:18
  I haven't seen overwhelming evidence yet. Maybe it is happening. I'm seeing a
• 16:22
  lot of online indications, you know, viral posts of people protesting bud Light.
• 16:30
  But bud Light got an interesting defender over the last few days, and
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  that was Donald Trump Junior. That's right, Donald Trump's favorite son. He
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  came out and very vocally online supported Anheuser Busch, saying basically, hey,
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  look, lay off of them, leave them alone. They actually give more
• 16:51
  money to Republicans than Democrats. We shouldn't be going after them. They're not
• 16:56
  actually the worst offenders. Now, he's mostly been criticized for this, which
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  I think is good. My first reaction to this decision by Donald Trump Junior
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  to hop on the pro bud Light bandwagon, if there is such a thing,
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  is that within the last week, let's let's do the math on this,
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  folks. Within the last week, Donald Trump the candidate kissed up to
• 17:22
  Gavin Newsom on Fox News with Tucker Carlson, who's basically enemy number one in
• 17:29
  the culture wars. So Donald Trump is kissing up to Gavin Newsom and basically
• 17:33
  saying that he likes him because Newsom kisses up to him. And then,
• 17:38
  of course there's the whole subplot of the fact that Newsom used to be married
• 17:41
  to Donald Trump Junior's fiance but that happened. And then Donald Trump Junior defends
• 17:49
  bud Light. So the heavy heavy favorite to be the Republican presidential nominee within
• 17:56
  less than a week's period of time, support it's Gavin Newsom enemy number one,
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  and Donald Trump Junior supports bud Light, which at the moment was basically
• 18:07
  cultural enemy number one, and I do it'll have any impact at all on
• 18:12
  the race, which is amazing. Can you imagine. Can you imagine if
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  Rhonda Santis and his wife had done anything close to this, If Rhonda Santis
• 18:23
  had praised Gavin Newsom and his wife had said lay off bud Light, It'd
• 18:30
  be over. The entire campaign would be over. And yet this is the
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  untouchable nature of Donald Trump as far as the substance of the issue. Look,
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  you know, this isn't the biggest thing to me. I can't believe
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  that bud Light did this, and I have no problem with them being punished.
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  But here's where I am that's different from Donald Trump Junior. You can't
• 18:55
  really pick your opportunities right to draw a line, and for whatever reason,
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  this one really hit a nerve with a lot of people and some prominent people,
• 19:06
  especially in the music industry, and so some celebrities got involved. And
• 19:11
  so this was a chance to draw a line in the sand with a company
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  that I actually think that to Donald Trump Junior's point, it goes in the
• 19:22
  opposite direction, because this is a company that at least has been somewhat reasonable
• 19:26
  in the past. They've been very much about Americana in the past. So
• 19:32
  the circumstances conspired to allow this as an opportunity to draw an important line in
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  the sand, and so I'm all for it. I'm not a beer drinker,
• 19:42
  so it doesn't matter to me. I don't drink bud Light when I
• 19:47
  do drink beer, which is very rarely. But I support making sure that
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  there's some marker that some marker gets said that okay, you can't do this
• 19:59
  to at least may other companies think two or three times before they do it
• 20:04
  too, Because if bud Light gets away with this, especially now then Katie
• 20:11
  barred the door, why would any other company be hesitant to do anything similar.
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  If even bud Light can get away with this, given their past,
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  and given the amount of controversy this created, then there's nothing to fear.
• 20:27
  And conservatives are terrible historically at Boycott's and so I think this is actually important.
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  This has become important. And Donald Trump Junior is wrong. And I'm
• 20:40
  not just saying that because I loathe the Trump's I just think substantively he's wrong.
• 20:45
  I doubt that there'll be any political price to pay, but that's the
• 20:48
  reality of the situation as I see it now as far as what's going on
• 20:53
  in the race itself, and if you haven't already, I urge you to
• 20:57
  check out episode number forty nine. I do a very very deep dive into
• 21:02
  the Republican mostly the Republican presidential race, somewhat the Democratic presidential race, and
• 21:07
  in the general election as well. I think it's a very unique take.
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  A lot of people, I'm sure, thought, well, this is premature.
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  I make a very strong case. I believe that it's not premature,
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  that we were at a very very very critical juncture in this situation, and
• 21:23
  that Donald Trump is very very close to clinching denomination already now strong to Santa's
• 21:30
  fans think I'm crazy for that, But they don't understand the way this is
• 21:33
  going down. They don't understand how important leverage is and how much leverage Trump
• 21:38
  has gotten back in the last month or so, especially since his indictment,
• 21:45
  and that the explosion that that has created in the polls. But because Trump
• 21:49
  is a unique figure, because his alpha male status is so incredibly important to
• 21:56
  his persona, who he is and his appeal, him taking a big lead
• 22:02
  has such a larger impact than it would with, for instance, an unknown
• 22:07
  candidate that was just the flavor of the month, which has happened previously with
• 22:12
  regard to Republican nominating processes in recent cycles. It happened in the twenty twelve
• 22:18
  cycle, it happened in the twenty sixteen cycle. But this is a completely
• 22:22
  different animal. We've never had a former president with one hundred percent name recognition
• 22:29
  and a massive cult and a media that has invested in him and terrified the
• 22:36
  right wing media of crossing him. Those circumstances have never occurred before, and
• 22:41
  so this massive bump, it's more than a bump. I mean, this
• 22:45
  massive increase in his polling advantage is really very very significant, and it might
• 22:53
  be insurmountable. I'm not saying it is, and I will get to that
• 22:59
  in a little bit as to what the proper way for the DeSantis people to
• 23:03
  handle this should be. In fact, that that's one of our ask jar
• 23:06
  on Anything questions. But I want to go through two poles very quickly,
• 23:10
  because these two poles are so emblematic of everything I've been talking about, and
• 23:15
  I think in many ways, our tremendous vindication for what I've been saying on
• 23:19
  this podcast about the nature of this race. The first poll I want to
• 23:23
  discuss comes from the University of Georgia. It's a poll out of Georgia.
• 23:27
  It's got a you know, almost a thousand likely voters, so it's a
• 23:30
  legitimate poll. It was taken in the early part of April. And when
• 23:36
  they put all the candidates in the race, and they put everybody in.
• 23:40
  They put Nicky Haley, Mike Penns, Tim Scott Pompeo, who decided he's
• 23:45
  not going to run, so that's not even relevant anymore, Chris Christie,
• 23:48
  Noam Hutchinson, Sinnunu yun Ken, and of course obviously Trump and DeSantis.
• 23:53
  When you have all those people in the race, although the vague Ramaswami didn't
• 23:59
  seem to show. I'm not sure he was listed or not, because they
• 24:02
  do list people who got zero percent, so they didn't put Vague in there.
• 24:04
  But almost everybody who's going to be a likely candidate and could potentially be
• 24:08
  on that debate stage was in this poll. And Georgia is an incredibly significant
• 24:15
  state, one because it's critical for the general election, and two because to
• 24:19
  me, it's the ultimate proof of Trump's toxicity in a general election, because
• 24:26
  in the twenty twenty two election, similar to what happened in twenty twenty and
• 24:32
  twenty twenty, we lost two The Republicans did two Senate seats in a runoff,
• 24:40
  largely because of Donald Trump, so he cost us two Senate seats in
• 24:45
  Georgia in twenty twenty, and then one of those Senate seats was back up
• 24:49
  for election in twenty twenty two, as was the governor, Brian Kemp,
• 24:53
  who is not a Trump guy. In fact, just over the weekend he
• 24:59
  basically anti endorsed Donald Trump in the Republican race, and Kemp, the governor,
• 25:06
  won re election fairly easily, and the senatorial candidate picked by Donald Trump,
• 25:11
  herschell Walker, who I liked, lost twice by at least two points
• 25:18
  each time, so it wasn't even that close. And so Georgia proves Trump's
• 25:23
  toxicity. The anti Trump governor wins, the pro Trump senatorial candidate loses,
• 25:30
  and there's about a six or seven point differential there if you want to measure
• 25:37
  Trump's toxicity. So Georgia must win in the general election, and really the
• 25:42
  epicenter of proving Trump's toxicity. And here are the results in the multi candidate
• 25:48
  race, Trump currently wins by twenty one points over to Santis and he gets
• 25:55
  over fifty fifty one to thirty. That is is horrific because if there's any
• 26:03
  state that ought to understand that Trump can't win or under normal circumstances in the
• 26:08
  general election, or very very unlikely to win under normal circumstances in the general
• 26:15
  election, obviously depending on Joe Biden's health or something crazy happening, but all
• 26:21
  things being equal, not going to win the general election as things currently are,
• 26:26
  and it could be very very ugly. And Georgians ought to understand that
• 26:30
  Georgians ought to understand how important their state is. Well apparently at least fifty
• 26:37
  one percent of them don't. And it's a twenty one point margin for Trump.
• 26:41
  And then even if you if you knock it down head to head,
• 26:42
  which it could be just two people by the time Georgia comes along in the
• 26:48
  primary process, which is you know, pretty much in the middle, the
• 26:53
  head to head is Trump stays at fifty one percent, which is so telling.
• 26:56
  I mean, Trump picks up no support once you get rid of all
• 27:00
  the other candidates, but the Santist picks up eleven points which again goes to
• 27:04
  exactly what I've been saying many other people have been saying that a multi candidate
• 27:08
  race is obviously and totally in Donald Trump's favor. But even head to head
• 27:15
  in Georgia, Trump leaves fifty one forty one with the rest undecided. That's
• 27:21
  not terrible, but it's also not good, and part of that could just
• 27:25
  be the afterglow of all the publicity surrounding the indictment. So I'm not panicked
• 27:30
  about the numbers so much, but the fact that this is Georgia, it
• 27:33
  just shows that people aren't getting the electability issue. Because if they're not getting
• 27:40
  in Georgia how toxic Trump can be in a general election, I don't know
• 27:45
  how they're going to get it elsewhere. And the proof of this toxicity could
• 27:48
  not have been illustrated any better than in another poll that came out over the
• 27:53
  weekend. This was from Public Opinion Strategies. Now, Public Opinion Strategies is
• 27:57
  a conservative pulling outlet, I'm fairly familiar with them. I don't think in
• 28:04
  this case that that should discredit what they came up with at all, because
• 28:11
  this is not about the issue of how how many Republicans there are or Republicans
• 28:17
  doing better than Biden in the general election. That's not the issue. The
• 28:22
  issue is the disparity between how Trump does and how the Santist does against Joe
• 28:29
  Biden. And it could not be more stark, it could not be more
• 28:33
  clear, and it could not be more in keeping with the twenty twenty two
• 28:36
  results in Georgia. Now, they didn't pick Georgia, which was about the
• 28:41
  only part of this poll I didn't like. They picked Arizona and Pennsylvania to
• 28:45
  do this comparison. And here's what they found. Donald Trump versus Joe Biden
• 28:51
  in Arizona, Biden wins by one point forty four. How does rand De
• 28:57
  Santist do in Arizona against Joe Biden? He wins by six a differential of
• 29:03
  you guessed seven points in Rohn Descantis's favor in Arizona. Arizona, of course
• 29:11
  a state that's not dissimilar from Georgia with regard to the twenty twenty two results
• 29:17
  where a Trump backed gubernatorial candidate and a Trump backed senatorial candidate both lost winnable
• 29:23
  races in Arizona. So seven points to the Santis' favor in a general election
• 29:30
  in Arizona. Then they polled Pennsylvania Trump. Remember Pennsylvania was the key,
• 29:37
  the keystone, if you will, to his Donald Trump's twenty sixteen presidential victory.
• 29:44
  Well, this poll has Biden beating Trump forty six forty two. So
• 29:48
  Trump loses by four to Biden in Pennsylvania. How does the Santist do?
• 29:55
  The Santists beats Biden forty five forty two. Let's do the math on that.
• 30:00
  That's four points down for Trump, three points up for DeSantis. Four
• 30:06
  plus three equals seven. So once again we got Georgia in twenty twenty two,
• 30:14
  and then these two pole results out of Arizona and Pennsylvania saying exactly the
• 30:18
  same thing that Trump is effectively about a seven point handicap on Republicans in a
• 30:29
  general election. Seven points in a country that's divided is obviously massive, and
• 30:36
  it doesn't even stop at the presidential ticket. This poll also asked Arizonans,
• 30:42
  Now, I'm a little bit less convinced about the credibility of this number because
• 30:48
  we're talking about a fairly small sample size, and this seems a little too
• 30:53
  dramatic to me. So, I mean, even though it it is something
• 30:59
  that I obviously I've been saying, and you know, it makes me feel
• 31:03
  vindicated. I always get hesitant when data does that, especially when it's so
• 31:08
  dramatic, but I will at least mention it because it's incredibly important if it
• 31:14
  has any truth at all. In Arizona, they not only were able to
• 31:21
  discern that the Santis did better than Trump in a general election, they asked
• 31:26
  about congressional candidates congressional candidates if De Santis was at the top of the ticket
• 31:32
  against Biden or if Trump was at the top of the ticket against Biden.
• 31:37
  In a situation where De Santis was up against Biden in Arizona, a generic
• 31:45
  GOP candidate was preferred for Congress over a generic Democratic candidate by forty seven thirty
• 31:52
  eight nine points. When they did the same thing for Trump versus by guess
• 32:00
  what happened, the Democratic generic candidate held an edge over the Republican generic candidate
• 32:07
  forty two forty one. So that there Trump has a ten point toxicity rating,
• 32:15
  if you will, when it comes to congressional candidates, which is really
• 32:20
  kind of amazing when you think about it, that in theory his toxicity is
• 32:23
  greater down ballot than it is even for his own race. Again, I
• 32:30
  don't want to put too much in this, but it really goes to the
• 32:34
  heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is, Okay, who
• 32:38
  has the better chance of winning, Who has the better chance of defeating Joe
• 32:43
  Biden, Who has a chance to put a stop to this seemingly endless slide
• 32:47
  towards socialism or Marxism or Wokeism or whatever the hell you want to call it,
• 32:53
  that the country seems to be barreling towards and it's not even close.
• 33:00
  It's not close. It's the most obvious. I mean, this is basically
• 33:05
  trying to figure out, Okay, what's the answer to two plus three?
• 33:07
  It's five? Okay, de Santas ought to be the candidate over Trump.
• 33:12
  It's that's simple. But of course, there are many, many psychological factors,
• 33:16
  including the cult, that will prevent massive numbers of Republicans from being able
• 33:22
  to do the two plus three equals five equation. And the conservative quote unquote
• 33:28
  conservative media is going to be largely to blame for this because they're not going
• 33:31
  to emphasize this poll. I mean some I'm sure it will reference it,
• 33:37
  but it's not going to be a drumbeat, not every repub now nowhere near
• 33:39
  every Republican voter is going to even know this pole existed because there's nothing in
• 33:44
  it for the conservative media to educate their consumer base about it. And obviously
• 33:52
  I'm exercised about this. I have been for weeks. I see where this
• 33:55
  race is going to me. If you make Donald Trump the nominee, you
• 34:00
  might as well re elect Joe Biden under normal circumstances. I want to make
• 34:05
  it clear. I think Trump would have a chance, but it would really
• 34:08
  take I mean, it would be a bigger miracle, if you will.
• 34:14
  Then what happened in twenty sixteen, And the twenty sixteen miracle plays such a
• 34:17
  huge role in the psychology here among Trump supporters. They really think that,
• 34:23
  you know, he pulled off this miracle in twenty sixteen because he's magic.
• 34:28
  Twenty twenty was rigged or stolen, and so it doesn't really count. They
• 34:32
  don't give him any blame for twenty eighteen or twenty twenty two, so they
• 34:37
  still think that his magic from twenty sixteen is still in play. And you
• 34:43
  know, twenty sixteen was a massive fluke and an extraordinary inside straight in poker
• 34:49
  terms, And you know that Democrats made all sorts of mistakes, but that
• 34:53
  is that's the specter of twenty sixteen still plays a huge role in the psychology
• 35:00
  of Trump friendly Republicans and it's not good. Well, I want to before
• 35:07
  I start officially with the ask John anything questions. I did get a few
• 35:10
  questions about, Okay, did Tucker Carlson respond after episode forty nine about your
• 35:17
  text message exchange? And after I taped episode number forty nine of this podcast,
• 35:23
  I actually went on news Nation TV to talk more about Tucker Carlson and
• 35:29
  I referenced the text message exchange that I had with Tucker. If you missed
• 35:32
  that, go back and listen to episode number forty nine. I want to
• 35:36
  play two clips of my appearance with Dan Abrams on NEWSNA television and for a
• 35:43
  couple of different reasons. One because the substance here is pretty important. Also,
• 35:47
  you're gonna You're gonna here. Although the audio is not great because I
• 35:51
  had to record this off my own television because News Nation did not make the
• 35:54
  entire appearance available online, the audio is okay. It's not gonna be great,
• 36:00
  but it's okay. You could be a way to certainly be able to
• 36:02
  understand it all. But you're not going to hear this kind of passion or
• 36:07
  maybe frankly anger in any mainstream television outlet maybe ever. And it's all genuine.
• 36:15
  I think you know that if you're obviously a listener to this podcast.
• 36:20
  And then there's an interesting backstory to how this appearance came down, which Dan
• 36:24
  references at the end of the appearance, but here's the start of it.
• 36:30
  This is after Dan has done his intro about the hypocrisy of Tucker Carlson,
• 36:35
  who has said in the Dominion Voting System's lawsuit, which by the way,
• 36:39
  may or may not get settled, there was supposed to go to trial this
• 36:44
  week. The news media was all excited about that the judge is delayed the
• 36:50
  actual trial like apparently because there could be a settlement, which would make the
• 36:52
  news media very very upset. They were so looking forward to a trial between
• 36:57
  Fox News and Dominion Votings. But in the discovery of that, there were
• 37:04
  text messages from Tucker that indicated how much he hated Donald Trump passionately and was
• 37:08
  so looking forward to being able to ignore him. Blah blah blah. So
• 37:13
  Dan Abrams went through the hypocrisy element of Tucker now being very very supportive of
• 37:20
  Trump, especially during an interview that he did down in Marlago last week.
• 37:24
  And I took what Dan did and I stepped it up two or three notches.
• 37:30
  And here was my initial analysis on Dan Abrams show on News Nation Television
• 37:37
  last week. Joining us now it's John Ziegler, conservative media commentator and the
• 37:42
  co host of the Death of Journalism podcast. John, thanks for coming back
• 37:45
  on the program. Appreciate all right, So, what did you make of
• 37:49
  Tucker's handling of the interview last night? What he said and didn't say.
• 37:53
  Then You've handled the hypocrisy issue very well. But for me, this hit
• 37:58
  a lot closer to home and created a lot more anger for me because I
• 38:04
  like you. I'm a fan of Tucker Carlson. I respect him greatly as
• 38:07
  a talent. I've been friendly with him for many years work for many years
• 38:10
  ago at the Daily Caller. But I know that he loves Donald Trump.
• 38:15
  Everyone knows this, and we were at a critical juncture of this process,
• 38:20
  far more critical than the average person understands. I believe we are very very
• 38:24
  close to Donald Trump clinching the twenty twenty four Republican nomination. And it's largely
• 38:30
  because of Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson has reshaped the narrative on the right.
• 38:35
  On January sixth, he shaped the narrative of the Manhattan Day's indictment with igorsagree
• 38:39
  with and I think you have problems with as well, But he has shaped
• 38:43
  it in the way that makes it effectively a test for Republicans to nominate Trump,
• 38:49
  to make sure that the left can't do this again, which is absolutely
• 38:52
  asinine. And then last night's interview was for me the final straw. So
• 38:57
  I texted Tucker Carlson. I say him a respectful, heats seeking missile about
• 39:02
  what he has done, explaining to him because I know these people live in
• 39:06
  a bubble and that no one's gonna tell him the truth. And so I
• 39:08
  said, Tucker, you are re electing Joe Biden. You aren't destroying what
• 39:13
  has left to this Republic if Donald Trump is the nominee in twenty twenty four.
• 39:17
  And I hope it's worth it to you because it's good for Fox's ratings,
• 39:21
  maintaining the audience, not offending the Trump cult that watches Box on a
• 39:25
  regular basis. But I hope you sleep well and I hope the ratings are
• 39:30
  worth and we have an extraordinary exchange because he played the I'm just a talk
• 39:35
  show host card. I don't have any influence, I'm not important, And
• 39:39
  I'm thinking this is beneath even Tucker Carlson, he's even a cable news though,
• 39:45
  because this is the most important media figure there is on the right,
• 39:47
  and he has set up Donald Trump to be the nominee in twenty twenty four.
• 39:52
  We are dangerously close to that happening for a lot of reasons other than
• 39:57
  just Tucker Carlson. Well, what we saw last night, it's really hard
• 40:00
  to imagine. How does Donald Trump get taken down when even Fox News channels
• 40:05
  not just not being agnostic and they're not taking him out, they're now fluffing
• 40:08
  him up at a critical juncture. I just don't see how it happens,
• 40:13
  and that is a very very dangerous thing for the nation. Then later on
• 40:17
  Dan played an old clip of Tucker Carlson on c Span many many years.
• 40:22
  I think it was like twenty years ago, where you know, bow Tie
• 40:25
  Tucker, where he's talking about Bill o'reiley and that if Bill O'Reilly ever got
• 40:31
  found out as not really being a populist, that it would be all over
• 40:36
  by the way, it's interesting to point out that that's not the case anymore.
• 40:39
  Maybe back in twenty years ago it would have been where we've seemed to
• 40:44
  take hypocrisy much more seriously, but today it doesn't seem to matter. Well,
• 40:47
  you could make the obvious parallels between what he was saying about Bill O'Reilly
• 40:52
  and how Tucker has handled has handled Donald Trump because the Dominions Voting System's lawsuit
• 41:00
  that he's a total hypocrite on the issue of populisms and more specifically Donald Trump.
• 41:07
  And so that was how Dan basically set me up for my final answer,
• 41:12
  and it'll hear at the end, Dan spill the beans on how this
• 41:16
  appearance actually happened. And I got to say what Dan says here is one
• 41:21
  hundred percent accurate, in which I'll amplify after you listen to this. I
• 41:25
  think that's part of it. But I also think Dan, and I think
• 41:29
  you'll understand this because you know people in the media even better than I do.
• 41:32
  But when you become that big and that powerful and make that much money
• 41:37
  and you're that famous and people are kissing your ass all over the place,
• 41:40
  he is really taught. To give that up and to threaten that by potentially
• 41:45
  pissing off the Trump called is a very dangerous situation. No one ever wants
• 41:50
  to give that up once they've dated. And it doesn't matter that the country
• 41:52
  will be harmed by this. That's the part that really putsman, what about
• 41:55
  the damn country here? Okay, you may be you'll lose twenty thirty percent
• 42:00
  of your audience. You're not gonna start. We're in a serious time here.
• 42:05
  This is a very serious issue. And if Donald Trump, regardless of
• 42:07
  your political beliefs, if Donald Trump is the nominee in twenty twenty four for
• 42:12
  the Republican Party, the outcomer is not going to be good, regardless of
• 42:15
  what you believe politically, no matter who is, there's no good scenario there.
• 42:20
  And so it's just that's why I was so i rate and why I
• 42:23
  took an unprecedented step for me to send Tucker that kind of a text.
• 42:28
  I'll probably never talk to him again, but I don't care, because I
• 42:30
  wanted somebody to tell him that he's not getting away with this, that we
• 42:35
  understand what's really happening, and that there ought to be some level of at
• 42:37
  least guilt, if not accountability for what's going on here. A little bit
• 42:43
  of how the sausage just made here. We actually called John Ziegler to talk
• 42:45
  about a different topic today and he said, no, no, he goaues
• 42:49
  if you want me, I'm going to talk about Tucker Cross, and we
• 42:52
  said, we're talking about doctor. So we'd love to have you on,
• 42:54
  John Ziegler. Thank you, appreciate it, Thank you. D I was
• 42:59
  really very surprised when Dan did that. What he said was one hundred percent
• 43:02
  true. Just for the record, I had been called earlier that day on
• 43:08
  another subject and I said, look, I'm not that into that subject.
• 43:14
  And I do this all the time, by the way. I don't get
• 43:16
  asked very often anymore other than a News Nation. But if there's a subject
• 43:22
  that I'm not into, you know, some people will say, okay,
• 43:25
  well what do you want me to say? And because they want to be
• 43:28
  on TV, and that's just I don't care about that. Frankly. Even
• 43:31
  the News Nation appearance is oftentimes screw with our dinner plans, so so you
• 43:37
  know, unless I'm really into the subject, it's not that big of a
• 43:39
  deal. I like doing the show. Dan's really good, and you know,
• 43:44
  if it's important, I'll do it. But I said to them,
• 43:46
  look, I can't believe you're not calling me about the Tucker Carlson thing.
• 43:53
  And they said, well, we aren't talking about Tucker Carlson. I said,
• 43:55
  well, you're gonna want to talk to me. I promise you you're
• 44:00
  gonna want to talk to me, and somewhat to my surprise, that's all
• 44:02
  it took. The producer went back to Dan, and I guess Dan has
• 44:07
  enough trust in me, because I never talked to Dan about this to they
• 44:14
  basically rearranged the entire show and put another guest on the other topic and trusted
• 44:21
  me that I was going to bring it. And I don't make promises I
• 44:24
  can't keep, and I think they know that, and I'm pretty sure I
• 44:29
  kept that promise. Dan actually, who's not well known for this kind of
• 44:31
  thing, sent me a nice note afterwards indicating that a friend of his thought
• 44:37
  that the appearance was extraordinary. So that was that was nice and um,
• 44:42
  but it was also interesting that that Dan kind of let the cat out of
• 44:45
  the bag or the making of the sausage there, because that is important the
• 44:49
  way these cable news interviews go. I mean, one of these days I'll
• 44:52
  do a deeper dive on on that entire subject, because it often is very
• 44:58
  corrupt and very talent about how and why the news media is so broken.
• 45:01
  But in that particular situation, it was the opposite. It was actually a
• 45:07
  situation where it worked. It worked for a healthy discussion that would not have
• 45:12
  happened otherwise. And the only reason why it happened was because two things,
• 45:16
  I was willing to say, no, that's not what you want to talk
• 45:20
  to me about, and two they were willing and able to trust me that
• 45:24
  there was a good reason why I was saying this, and so that actually
• 45:29
  worked out very very well. All right, Now let's go more officially to
• 45:32
  ask John anything. I did get a few questions on Tucker Carlson, and
• 45:36
  by the way, he did not respond to my texts any further response than
• 45:40
  what he had already done, and did not respond at all to the News
• 45:45
  Nation appearance or anything else that was related to that particular subject. And that
• 45:51
  didn't surprise me at all. I've also gotten a lot of questions, by
• 45:54
  the way, before I get officially into the questions, I did get a
• 45:58
  ton of questions for ask John Anything. And I'm not sure how long this
• 46:00
  episode is going to be as I'm currently taping it. I'm hoping it's not
• 46:04
  going to be three hours long, but I want to try to answer all
• 46:07
  reasonable questions. I had to say that, Well, I got more questions
• 46:12
  than I expected. They were not substantively what I expected. They were all
• 46:16
  over the map, and a lot of them don't have that much to do
• 46:20
  with journalism or the news media, which I guess there's good and bad to
• 46:22
  that, but because obviously we talked more than just about journalism, but that's
• 46:29
  usually the key focus of almost any subject I discussed. Obviously, a lot
• 46:35
  of what I've been discussing recently has been the Republican nominating process, and I'll
• 46:38
  start with that because there has been one other major development in that front,
• 46:44
  and so I saved it for the first question for Ask John Anything, Renee
• 46:47
  asks, And this was one of many I got on this subject. Do
• 46:52
  you think the fact that Ron De Santis signed the six week abortion bill in
• 46:57
  Florida will hurt his chance as to win the nomination and to the general election.
• 47:00
  I can see Trump coming out with more a more moderate stance, just
• 47:05
  to stick it to de Santis. All right, Now, I was a
• 47:09
  bit surprised. I had not been following this issue that closely. I knew
• 47:15
  that there was an abortion bill that was waking its way through the Florida legislature.
• 47:20
  I did not realize that it had a six week I guess you call
• 47:24
  waiting period six weeks, well, not unprecedented. There are other states,
• 47:30
  major states that have passed six week waiting period bills. That's politically, I
• 47:38
  don't get it. I don't get politically what the value. I mean again,
• 47:43
  you know, you can morally make the argument, and I'm one of
• 47:46
  these people that believes that life begins at conception, although I'm not as zealot
• 47:51
  on abortion. That sounds contradictory. It's obviously an incredibly complex issue. But
• 47:55
  well, here's what the part I don't get morally, what's the difference between
• 48:00
  six weeks and twelve weeks or fifteen weeks? I don't. I don't get
• 48:06
  that. I mean, if you're at six weeks, then why not ban
• 48:09
  it totally? And I mean so that I don't, I honestly don't understand
• 48:15
  that. And politically, twelve or fifteen weeks is so much more palatable than
• 48:22
  six weeks, because let's face it, a lot of women don't even know
• 48:27
  they're pregnant yet by six weeks. Six weeks gives you almost no time.
• 48:34
  And now there are some exceptions, and obviously you know enforcement, I mean,
• 48:40
  how do you how do you even prove what six weeks, seven weeks,
• 48:44
  eight weeks? I mean, so, I mean it's it's more of
• 48:46
  a guideline. The reality is perception is reality, right, And to me,
• 48:53
  six weeks the other side can much more easily claim is effectively a ban
• 49:00
  on abortion. It's not, but they can come close to saying that,
• 49:06
  or they can say it's close to that for sure. And and so I
• 49:14
  absolutely agree that if ron de Santis gets into a general election, or in
• 49:20
  particular states like maybe New Hampshire where there's not a huge contingent of pro life
• 49:28
  Republicans who are voting in the voting populace is more independent, then I can
• 49:34
  see it hurting him. Now I'm already on record saying that the chances are
• 49:38
  that's never going to be an issue because Trump's going to very likely be the
• 49:43
  nominee. Hasn't clinched it yet, but he's getting close. And I'm still
• 49:46
  hopeful and I'm still fighting a good fight, and I still think there's a
• 49:50
  path to the nomination. But this is not going to help in the general
• 49:53
  election. And I actually know somebody who was recently told Rohnd de Santis to
• 49:58
  his face that this is not going to help. And Rohn de Santis's response
• 50:02
  was, yeah, I know, but so what? And I want to
• 50:06
  play this clip from Rona Santis. He's not directly talking about the abortion band,
• 50:12
  but it's right around the same time period, and it's obvious that this
• 50:15
  is what he's referencing. This is a sound bit of him talking about his
• 50:17
  decision making process and how he does not care about polls. By the way,
• 50:22
  in this clip, which I found to be very interesting, because this
• 50:24
  is another situation where again I'm sure just coincidentally, I have made a suggestion
• 50:32
  to the Santis campaign, not that they're listening, and almost immediately the Santis
• 50:38
  says something very consistent with what I was saying. I really do believe that
• 50:44
  one of the issues going forward here has to be who's going to work in
• 50:47
  Donald Trump's administration. I mean, there's nobody working on his campaign, and
• 50:53
  nobody's gonna come back from the previous administration to work for him in high profile
• 50:58
  positions. Again, we're talking about the d team, and so in this
• 51:02
  clip, the Santa's deals with both of those issues in a way that I
• 51:07
  thought was rather compelling. To this day as governor, I've never taken a
• 51:10
  poll about any issue my entire time. Leaders are not captive to poll results.
• 51:20
  Leaders Leaders set out a vision, Leaders execute that vision, and leaders
• 51:29
  deliver results. And when you do that, it doesn't matter what the polls
• 51:34
  were before that you can change public opinion. People will support you if they
• 51:38
  see you're doing a good job. We also understood that as governor, you
• 51:44
  can make the best decisions in the world. You could have the best policies
• 51:47
  in the world. But if you don't have a cadre of people serving in
• 51:51
  your administration who shares the mission and is going to put the mission over their
• 51:57
  own personal interests, none of this stuff's gonna end up getting carried out.
• 52:00
  So we made it very clear anyone serving in our administration, if you're bringing
• 52:05
  any other agenda other than the best interests of the people of Florida, pack
• 52:10
  your bags right now and we will show you the door. We also said
• 52:20
  that we're not just gonna sit back and try to avoid issues or hope that
• 52:24
  issues get resolved, not want to wade into things because we're worried about creating
• 52:30
  any type of blowback. Any decision you make as a leader, there's gonna
• 52:34
  be some people that like it. There's gonna be other people that don't.
• 52:37
  And some elected officials think, well, if I just don't make decisions and
• 52:42
  I'm just not out and about, then fewer people are are gonna disapprove of
• 52:46
  some of the decisions that you make. Now you got to respect that,
• 52:52
  you know, and I think the Santist post COVID has a lot of confidence
• 52:58
  in his ability to convince his electorate because that's what happened with Covid. He
• 53:05
  took on the world and he won and ended up getting reelected by almost twenty
• 53:08
  points. And part of the reason he did that was because he doesn't just
• 53:14
  do these things. He makes the case and he sometimes has to go around
• 53:19
  the media. Sometimes he has to go through the media, but he made
• 53:22
  the case and to almost sixty percent of Floridians that was a case that one.
• 53:29
  Now, can he do that to the country, especially with a very
• 53:31
  liberal media against him? Help there's a lot of liberal media outlets in Florida,
• 53:37
  and Florida's obviously a huge state, so if he can do it in
• 53:38
  Florida's at least got a chance to do it nationwide. But I agree that
• 53:45
  this is not going to help. The abortion band situation is not going to
• 53:47
  help in a general election, and I don't think it's going to help in
• 53:51
  New Hampshire. And I had a conversation with a person who met with DeSantis
• 53:58
  in New Hampshire over the weekend. A lot of other people that's where de
• 54:01
  Santist was. He seems to be everywhere all the time, but he was
• 54:05
  in New Hampshire this past weekend, and you know, he's clearly getting ready
• 54:09
  to announce a run. And this person told me a couple of things about
• 54:14
  what's going on in Hampshire that I did not realize. One was the issue
• 54:17
  that the abortion law would probably hurt Desantists even in a Republican primary, because
• 54:23
  of the nature of the independent voters there. But the much bigger issue,
• 54:28
  I think is that I knew that the Democratic Party was now going to put
• 54:34
  South Carolina first, but I did not realize how that was likely. This
• 54:38
  is not official yet, but likely to play out in New Hampshire, So
• 54:45
  the details aren't that important, but the bottom line here is there is very
• 54:50
  likely to be a Democratic primary, but without any of the major assuming Joe
• 54:55
  Biden is the candidate, without Biden on the ballot. And here's why this
• 55:02
  is important. It's important for a couple of reasons. In New Hampshire,
• 55:07
  if you're undeclared, you can vote in either primary. So if Democrats have
• 55:13
  nothing to do on that primary day in New Hampshire, who are they gonna
• 55:17
  go ahead and vote for? Who are some gonna go ahead and vote for.
• 55:22
  They're gonna go vote for Donald Trump because they want him to be the
• 55:24
  nominee And so the chances of mischief here are great. Number two is that
• 55:34
  the Democrats will still have a quote unquote primary and RFK Junior, Robert Kennedy
• 55:40
  Junior, the anti vax candidate, will be on the ballot. So now
• 55:45
  you're gonna have a whole bunch of people who are anti vaxers. Now,
• 55:51
  you know a lot of these wouldn't be Republican voters to begin with, but
• 55:53
  you're gonna have some who would be pissed off at Trump over his support for
• 55:59
  the vac scene who are obviously anti COVID people who would be very prone to
• 56:05
  voting for Ron De Santis, but they're gonna be lord into voting for,
• 56:08
  symbolically for RFK Jr. In this bogus Democratic primary. So De Santis is
• 56:16
  very likely to get hit from both sides. He's gonna have undeclared Democrats voting
• 56:23
  in a Republican primary for Donald Trump to sabotage anybody but Trump because they know
• 56:29
  he's the easier candidate to beat. And I'm not talking about tons and tons
• 56:32
  of people, but any number that significant matters here. And I don't think
• 56:38
  this is stretched that people are gonna do this and the anti vax crowd is
• 56:44
  going to vote for RFK Jr. So I am. I am very very
• 56:47
  concerned about New Hampshire, you know, the abortion thing, the RK Junior
• 56:52
  thing, the crossing over to vote for Trump thing, so much so that
• 56:59
  I am really kind of radically altered my view of how De Santist ought to
• 57:04
  run this race. And actually goes to the second question for asked John anything.
• 57:09
  Barbara asked, what strategy would you advise for the DeSantis campaign right now?
• 57:15
  And I up until the last month or so, I had been in
• 57:20
  the category of you must attack immediately, you must attack hard, there must
• 57:24
  be blood. The quarterback must go down, and he must go down hard,
• 57:28
  to use the words of the famous Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis in the
• 57:34
  first portion of the football game. That was my view. And I also
• 57:37
  thought, avoid Iowa because Iowa was going to be a problem because it's a
• 57:43
  caucus state. I played the clip from the town hall, not even an
• 57:46
  official town hall, but a restaurant in Fox and Friends in Florida De Santis
• 57:52
  Country, where you know, the Desantist people were afraid to express their support
• 57:55
  for him, and the Trump people were very very vocal about their Trump support
• 58:00
  and it created kind of an intimidating atmosphere or environment. And so I was
• 58:06
  afraid of Iowa well in the last month, actually just in the last few
• 58:09
  days. I mean, I'm somebody who will shift gears when I get new
• 58:14
  data, new information. I now believe that the better strategy is exactly the
• 58:20
  opposite of what I was suggesting a month or two ago. I now believe
• 58:24
  that Iowa has to be the place. Iowa has got to be the place.
• 58:31
  If it's not Iowa, then I don't think it's going to happen because
• 58:36
  I just outlined why I think New Hampshire is a big problem and the abortion
• 58:42
  quote unquote ban will help. In Iowa. There's a strong evangelical vote in
• 58:46
  Iowa. Those are caucus goers, and so I think that combined with the
• 58:52
  fact that in theory, de Santis is going to have a lot of money.
• 58:55
  Although the media is doing their damnedest to try to create this narrative that
• 59:00
  that Santas donors are getting cold feet, I predicted that this would happen.
• 59:06
  I've been talking about this for weeks. So this is the way that the
• 59:08
  media creates mischief. They know that DeSantis is lone grade advantage is in fundraising
• 59:15
  in theory, and if they can dismantle that, then you know Trump's going
• 59:19
  to be the nominee. And Trump knows this, by the way, so
• 59:22
  I'm sure Trump is also trying very hard, you know, underneath the radar
• 59:27
  to screw with the Santis is fundraising and the polling data plays a huge role
• 59:31
  in that because there's an anti momentum that gets created, especially in fundraising and
• 59:36
  the psychology of it. But my current strategy, if I was advising the
• 59:42
  De Santa's campaign would be, um, here's here's the only way we can
• 59:46
  go. We had to put everything into Iowa, even though Iowa has a
• 59:51
  terrible, terrible history of picking the winners for on both sides. But um.
• 59:57
  But there's an interesting phenomenon that New Hampshire tends to go in the opposite
• 1:00:01
  direction of Iowa. And so my goal would be a strong second place in
• 1:00:07
  Iowa and then hope that New Hampshire, because their general pre election is to
• 1:00:15
  not end the process and to stick it in the eye of Iowa, that
• 1:00:19
  that doesn't create enormous momentum for Trump, and that you're able to hold on
• 1:00:23
  to another strong second in New Hampshire, and then you wipe out the rest
• 1:00:28
  of the field so that you know, after two strong seconds in Iowa and
• 1:00:32
  New Hampshire, it's now Manuamano. No one else can make it to Nevada
• 1:00:37
  or South Carolina because they won't have any money or media attention, and hopefully
• 1:00:42
  they'll start to very quickly drop out. That to me is at this point
• 1:00:46
  almost the best case scenario. But you've got to make a strong mark in
• 1:00:52
  Iowa. Yeah, the caucus doesn't help, but organization matters there, and
• 1:00:57
  you might be able to be more competent. Trump's campaign is basically non existent,
• 1:01:02
  and so you might be able to be more competent. You might have
• 1:01:06
  the money for organization, you might be able to get your people there in
• 1:01:09
  a way that at least keeps you in the ball game. I'm not saying
• 1:01:14
  you win, but you've got a very very strong second place there, and
• 1:01:17
  you know, I think you're You're okay as far as the way I would
• 1:01:22
  do it. I have now actually come up with a name for my current
• 1:01:27
  view of how de Santis ought to handle the beginning of his campaign. I'm
• 1:01:30
  calling it the Whoville campaign. You're like, what Whoville? Yeah, the
• 1:01:35
  Grinch? You stole Christmas? Remember Whoville at the end of the movie Grinch?
• 1:01:40
  Grinch. Obviously, Trump in this analogy thinks he's stolen Christmas. And
• 1:01:45
  the people of Whoville go out there, they do their own thing, They
• 1:01:49
  sing around the tree. It doesn't matter that they don't have any presents or
• 1:01:52
  food or decorations or anything else. It's Christmas. They're going to just do
• 1:01:57
  their own thing, and they're going to ignore or the Grinch, and it's
• 1:02:00
  going to drive the grinch crazy. I no longer think you can attack Donald
• 1:02:05
  Trump full frontal, right off the bat, because you don't have standing.
• 1:02:08
  You're not at his eye level anymore, and those attacks will have to wait.
• 1:02:14
  Now. You can defend your record, but you can't attack, attack,
• 1:02:16
  attack, right off the bat from a position of weakness. You have
• 1:02:20
  to wait till you get your footing back. And the way you get your
• 1:02:22
  footing back is you tell your story. And you know you're not gonna look
• 1:02:28
  like a whoosee because you're gonna have lots of people coming forward to talk about
• 1:02:30
  the balls you showed in Florida during COVID, and you're gonna tell your story,
• 1:02:35
  and you're gonna make the electability argument. That's the only thing you're gonna
• 1:02:39
  attack Trump on is electability. Electability, electability, electability. And my story,
• 1:02:45
  my story. I win, I win. We haven't been winning.
• 1:02:52
  I win. Here's how I won, here's my story. And get back
• 1:02:58
  into the race. Once you get back on your footing, once you get
• 1:03:01
  back to eye level, then you attack, attack, attack, attack,
• 1:03:06
  attack until you have no more ammunition left. But you cannot do that now
• 1:03:09
  because it will not work. So that's my Huville strategy for Pran de Santis.
• 1:03:15
  I have no idea if that's even being contemplated. My guess as it's
• 1:03:20
  not. All right now. I got to get through these questions much more
• 1:03:22
  quickly, and I plan to do so. Otherwise this is going to be
• 1:03:25
  a five hour episode. But so I may not be able to give very
• 1:03:29
  substantive answers to these questions, but I do want to at least try to
• 1:03:32
  address them, because I got a lot of them, and some of them
• 1:03:36
  are good. Some of them are pretty pointed, but that's fine, all
• 1:03:39
  right. So boss Man writes, do you think Trump should have been handcuffed
• 1:03:44
  and mug shot shotted? No, I don't think there was any need for
• 1:03:49
  that, and it would have only played right into his hand. James has
• 1:03:52
  a series of questions that boy he came in spikes spikes up to use an
• 1:03:58
  old baseball term. He's apt to me for some reason. He I'm guessing
• 1:04:01
  as an African American gentleman, because his questions seemingly have an implication that I
• 1:04:10
  guess I'm a racist. I don't know, but he's Here are some of
• 1:04:13
  his questions. The first one, will you allow your daughters to watch the
• 1:04:17
  little Mermaid. Now they're remaking The Little Mermaid Disney is with a black female
• 1:04:24
  character. It's a ridiculous question. If they want to watch The Little Mermaid.
• 1:04:29
  Sure, I actually don't think they're gonna want to watch The Little Mermaid.
• 1:04:31
  They might the animation looks interesting, but I do think having nothing to
• 1:04:39
  do with me or my wife that you know, at least my older daughter,
• 1:04:43
  Grace, who's almost eleven now, she immediately immediately looks at this and
• 1:04:46
  goes, wait a minute. It's not that the Little Mermaid is black.
• 1:04:50
  It's that they're screwing with her. She knows this. She's very, very,
• 1:04:57
  very aware of what's going on in society, and so even she is
• 1:05:01
  an eleven year almost eleven year old, is able to go effectively wait a
• 1:05:05
  minute, why why are they going whoke? Why is this an affirmative action
• 1:05:10
  decision to turn Marriel into a black girl. But if it's a good movie
• 1:05:15
  and everyone's buzzing about it, I'm sure they'll see it. I couldn't care
• 1:05:18
  less. I just think it was a bad decision by Disney, simply because
• 1:05:24
  it's so obviously effectively racist. They decided that they could they wanted to turn
• 1:05:30
  one of their princesses into a black girl. So they picked the Little Mermaid,
• 1:05:34
  And I doubt very seriously that they ever considered anybody else for the role.
• 1:05:40
  If they if they opened it up, and the best actress they could
• 1:05:43
  find to fit all the right parameters happened to be black. And I believe
• 1:05:47
  that I'd be Okay, great, fan fantastic, this will be interesting.
• 1:05:50
  But I don't believe that's what happened, because I'm living in the real world.
• 1:05:54
  Now, James goes on, which is what convinces me that you think
• 1:05:58
  some sort of racist. Do you feel you live in a bubble? Do
• 1:06:01
  you have any black close friends? How do they feel about your comments and
• 1:06:06
  tweets? Now, this is an area where basically shows you, as as
• 1:06:11
  a white male, how screwed you are. How do you prove you're not
• 1:06:14
  a racist? And as soon as you go down the path of you know,
• 1:06:17
  some of my closest friends are black, then you're completely host But for
• 1:06:21
  the record, because I don't fear any of this, I do have black
• 1:06:26
  friends. I mean, Larry Wilmore is a friend who we had on this
• 1:06:29
  podcast. I hope you listen to that particular interview. James he's a black
• 1:06:33
  comedian. We also had Chickernandez on recently. He doesn't even know what his
• 1:06:39
  race is, but people perceive him as a black person, and I've known
• 1:06:43
  him for many, many years. My best friend as a kid for quite
• 1:06:46
  a while was Jimmy Selling, who was our next door neighbor. He was
• 1:06:49
  a black kid. I mean, Frank o' Harris was a very close friend
• 1:06:57
  of mine until he died recently. He was Frican American. So I don't
• 1:07:02
  know how you're supposed to disprove this. I mean, I I've been to
• 1:07:06
  three black funerals in my life, which is an extraordinary experience. I would
• 1:07:12
  recommend it to anybody. It's a completely completely different situation than, for instance,
• 1:07:17
  what I grew up in and the white Catholic background or environment. But
• 1:07:24
  I mean, going to a black funeral is an extraordinary, very very memorable
• 1:07:30
  event, and I've been to three of those. I've testified in front of
• 1:07:33
  the Los Angeles City Council against my old old employer, KFI Radio in Los
• 1:07:40
  Angeles on behalf of a group of black activists who were trying to diversify KFI.
• 1:07:49
  So I mean, I don't know how much more street cred I could
• 1:07:51
  have on this particular issue as as a as a white guy. As far
• 1:07:57
  as my comments and tweets, I mean, I know I've never said anything
• 1:08:00
  racist because I'm not racist. Now do I say things that have now been
• 1:08:04
  deemed to somehow be racially tinged because the rules have changed? I guess.
• 1:08:09
  So, I guess that's happened. But I don't care because I know I'm
• 1:08:14
  not a racist. I am the furthest thing from a racist. I want
• 1:08:16
  everyone to be treated equally, equal opportunity, not equity of outcome. And
• 1:08:24
  I think it's actually demeaning to black people with the direction that we are going
• 1:08:29
  in so many ways when it comes to our culture and effectively affirmative action,
• 1:08:34
  whether it's in the media, or academia or ore many other elements of life.
• 1:08:40
  I think it's incredibly destructive. I think we're going backwards when it comes
• 1:08:44
  to race relations. So do I live in a bubble? I think we
• 1:08:47
  all live in a bubble to some degree, But I would say that I
• 1:08:50
  do not live in a bubble on race nearly as much as you appear to
• 1:08:56
  have perceived me, James, for reasons that I've already articulated but James continues
• 1:09:01
  on, well, he's really after me. Why do you rarely talk about
• 1:09:06
  your family's connections with Nazi Germany? Now, don't I don't think I rarely
• 1:09:14
  talk about I'm not sure how relevant. And by the way, the connections
• 1:09:18
  to Nazi Germany sounds very ominous. As I've referenced previously on this podcast,
• 1:09:24
  my grandfather on my father's side, my father's father was a rather famous rocket
• 1:09:30
  scientist, Hans kay Ziggler, and look him up. He's got a Wikipedia
• 1:09:35
  page, an extraordinary story of how our first satellites went into space. You
• 1:09:41
  know who funded those satellites for whom he was working the US Army. There
• 1:09:47
  was no NASA at that time. It was done by the Navy. In
• 1:09:49
  the Army, my grandfather received the highest civilian honor that the army gives.
• 1:09:56
  He was you know, you argue he was a military hero for the United
• 1:10:00
  States. Now, he came over to the United States in Operation paper Clip
• 1:10:05
  with Von Brown, a very famous rocket scientist. And you know, there
• 1:10:10
  are a lot of people who have made up a whole mythology surrounding Operation paper
• 1:10:15
  Clip and Von Brown. The reality was these were German scientists who the United
• 1:10:20
  States brought over near the end of the war, and my grandfather was one
• 1:10:26
  of those, and that's how my father came to this country. And I
• 1:10:31
  think he was six or seven years old when he came to the United States
• 1:10:34
  of America. And so the idea that somehow this makes hast gives me a
• 1:10:40
  connection to Nazi Charmany is pretty ridiculous. Although I will say, I mean,
• 1:10:45
  I'm not afraid to talk about this because it's an extraordinary story. And
• 1:10:49
  I don't think I've talked about this. I can't remember the last time I
• 1:10:53
  talked about this publicly, but I've certainly never hit it. But this is
• 1:10:55
  an amazing story and it really has nothing to do with a connection to Nazi
• 1:10:59
  Germany. It just shows you, I don't know you can determine what it
• 1:11:02
  shows you. But my grandmother, who died in a nineteen ninety four,
• 1:11:08
  okay nineteen ninety four, she received until her death a monthly stipend from the
• 1:11:17
  German government for having birth my father. And you're like, what, yeah,
• 1:11:26
  I know, And the best we can figure this out, the best
• 1:11:29
  my father understands it, is it because my grandfather was at of a certain
• 1:11:33
  status as a as a esteemed German scientist. The German government was promising these
• 1:11:44
  stipends to any woman who gave birth to a boy who would affect you know,
• 1:11:50
  this is I guess this is where you're getting into the you know,
• 1:11:55
  the entire eugenics issue. I guess I'm guessing here with regard to Nazi Germany
• 1:12:00
  that by birthing a mail of a certain status, the government was promising women
• 1:12:09
  these monthly stipends, and the German government even after World War Two, they
• 1:12:15
  lived by all their promises, even under the Nazi regime. And my grandmother
• 1:12:21
  it wasn't a lot of money, but my grandmother was very proud of this.
• 1:12:25
  In fact, she would use this monthly stipend to go on her yearly
• 1:12:28
  vacation for having birth my father. So I mean, I'm not I know,
• 1:12:33
  I have nothing to do with this. I wasn't even born. I
• 1:12:36
  find it historically to be fascinating. But there was no sympathy for the Nazi
• 1:12:43
  government. There was no you know, participating in the Holocaust or anything crazy
• 1:12:47
  like that. And so I mean again, my grandfather, while he was
• 1:12:53
  an asshole, was a brilliant man and has a lot to be proud of.
• 1:12:57
  With regard to his service to this country. So I don't know if
• 1:13:00
  that answers your question, but that's the best I can do, all right.
• 1:13:04
  When he finally he also asked, would you do a weekly political debate
• 1:13:08
  show with someone like Roland Martin? Roland Martin is a black commentator who used
• 1:13:12
  to be on CNN, who used to give me all sorts of crap on
• 1:13:16
  on Twitter, and I mean really went after me hard. He's long ago,
• 1:13:23
  I guess forgotten about me, or I'm off his radar. I would
• 1:13:27
  love to do a show with a black liberal, but Roland Martin, it
• 1:13:30
  would not work because I mean, he's he's an idiot, and he's way
• 1:13:34
  too far out there and we just wouldn't have anything in common to be able
• 1:13:40
  to it has to be some common ground. Like if you listen to the
• 1:13:43
  interview I did with Larry Wilmore, there was a lot of common ground there.
• 1:13:46
  We disagreed a lot, but you can't you can't just be living in
• 1:13:51
  two completely different worlds and from a philosophical standpoint, and that's where I would
• 1:13:57
  be with someone like Roland Martin. All Right, Keith asks I was developing
• 1:14:01
  a crush on Liza Bee, before she vanished without explanation. She need not
• 1:14:06
  worry. I'm happily married. Can you tell us what happened and whether she'll
• 1:14:10
  be back. You're quite obviously extremely intelligent, but you do seem a way
• 1:14:15
  of pissing off almost everyone. Your wife must be the same. That last
• 1:14:23
  part is for sure true. As far as Lizza Beebe, I've talked about
• 1:14:27
  this twice previously. I explained at the beginning of this year that Liz was
• 1:14:33
  no longer doing this podcast, largely because she was living in three different states
• 1:14:39
  and starting a brand new full time job in a completely different industry, and
• 1:14:44
  logistically it was becoming very, very difficult to figure out when we could tape
• 1:14:49
  this now. We tried, We tried hard, and there were philosophical issues
• 1:14:55
  that were making that effort more difficult than it probably needed to, But I
• 1:15:00
  don't think those were the primary reason why we decided that we couldn't keep doing
• 1:15:04
  this. It was mostly logistical, And I even referenced a couple of podcast
• 1:15:10
  episodes ago that we were trying to get or I was trying to get Liz
• 1:15:15
  back on the podcast as a guest to talk about her experience in academia as
• 1:15:19
  a conservative, she was enthusiastic about doing that, and then she gave me
• 1:15:25
  the runaround about when she could tape, and you know, and it just
• 1:15:29
  brought up a whole bunch of bad memories as far as the logistical issues we
• 1:15:32
  were having to begin with. And also it coincided with her texting me that,
• 1:15:40
  you know, she was very excited about the way Trump was handling his
• 1:15:44
  indictment. And then she had previously told me that she was on the the
• 1:15:46
  Santa's train, off the Trump train, and now it appeared and she's back
• 1:15:49
  on the Trump train, which bothered me, but it wouldn't have prevented me
• 1:15:53
  from having her on the show. But I think my guess is I could
• 1:15:58
  be wrong about this. My guess is that her fear of being confronted about
• 1:16:03
  her Drump's support suddenly gave her cold feet about coming on the podcast. Or
• 1:16:10
  she was just you know, being high maintenance. I don't know, she
• 1:16:13
  and I can both be very high maintenance, and and so I just said,
• 1:16:16
  look, thanks, but let's forget it. So my guess is you're
• 1:16:20
  not going to hear Liz on this podcast. She's welcome if she would be
• 1:16:24
  willing to schedule it the way it wouldn't cost me problems. But my guess
• 1:16:30
  is, knowing Liz the way that I do for most of the last thirty
• 1:16:33
  some years, it's probably not going to happen. We are in some ways
• 1:16:38
  very very similar. We're both very stubborn. We're like an old married couple.
• 1:16:42
  That's the way we were when we did with the benefit of hindsight,
• 1:16:45
  for which I am eternally grateful that she participated in that and the beginning of
• 1:16:50
  the death of journalism. But there's no hard feelings towards Liz. I have
• 1:16:55
  great respect for her, and I think we're still going to communicate in the
• 1:17:00
  future. She recently tweeted something about the Sandusky case, which I retweeted,
• 1:17:05
  So I mean, I I'd be happy to have Liz back on the podcast.
• 1:17:10
  There's there's nohing close to a band or anything like that. It's just
• 1:17:14
  that, you know, like I said, Liz and I are very stubborn
• 1:17:17
  people, and you know, often you know, against sometimes combustible when we
• 1:17:21
  get together, both in a positive and a negative direction. And I just
• 1:17:26
  I had lost patience, and so that's why you didn't hear Liz when it
• 1:17:31
  came to to coming back on the show as a as a guest, at
• 1:17:34
  least not yet, although I'm I'm happy to do it if she wants to
• 1:17:38
  do it. But yes, my wife is a saint. And yeah,
• 1:17:43
  I guess I do have a way of pissing people off. I guess in
• 1:17:45
  my defense on that. Um, I think the issue here is that I
• 1:17:50
  don't have a problem blowing up relationships anymore. And this is I'm sure a
• 1:17:57
  negative, But I mean, let's take the Tucker Carlson thing right now,
• 1:18:02
  that's a somewhat unique situation. We didn't have a very close relationship, but
• 1:18:05
  we were friendly, texted back and forth, you know, occasionally, sometimes
• 1:18:11
  in significant ways. But to me, Tucker is doing something very very dangerous
• 1:18:16
  and very very detrimental to the country. So you're dead. To me,
• 1:18:21
  you're done. Same thing with John Yarmat. John Armuth was one of my
• 1:18:25
  best friends. Congressman from Louisville. He was the chairman of the House Budget
• 1:18:29
  Committee for several years, and after COVID hit and he didn't do anything to
• 1:18:34
  stand up, we just stopped talking. And I don't know if I'll ever
• 1:18:38
  talk to him again. I'm not going to be the first person to reach
• 1:18:40
  out, that's for sure, because I'm I'm done. Yeah, I mean,
• 1:18:45
  we were very close. He was one of my very closest friends,
• 1:18:48
  and you know, so I'm sure it's a flaw. But I have a
• 1:18:56
  very high standard for friendship, and when you know, people fall out of
• 1:19:01
  that, I okay, you're done, you know. So I'm not I'm
• 1:19:06
  not really defending that. It's just that's the way I look at it.
• 1:19:10
  So it's not a really a matter of me pissing people off. It's a
• 1:19:13
  matter of me being very willing to go, Okay, all right, you
• 1:19:17
  don't want to be friends anymore, you're no longer worthy of friendship, and
• 1:19:23
  okay, move on, because I've long ago learned that all human beings are
• 1:19:28
  flawed and and you know, you can pretty much deal with at least I
• 1:19:32
  have learned you can deal with almost anybody falling out of your life. I'm
• 1:19:39
  a loner to begin with, and so you know, it's it's a philosophy
• 1:19:44
  that's not been I will now it has not been successful as far as where
• 1:19:47
  I go in life. But I guess at this point, um, I
• 1:19:51
  kind of just lost my patience, you know, I mean, the way
• 1:19:55
  I see things going you know, I have very little patients for bullshit.
• 1:20:02
  I guess that's the bottom line. And I also I have no ego.
• 1:20:06
  My ego is of no I mean people. I'm sure they think anybody in
• 1:20:12
  this business has a massive ego, and you got to have some ego to
• 1:20:15
  be able to do it with any proficiency. But the greatest misconception about me
• 1:20:20
  is that I have a big ego. I have the smallest ego on the
• 1:20:24
  planet, and so it really doesn't matter to me, you know, how
• 1:20:28
  many friends I have, or who they are, or how important they are.
• 1:20:32
  I mean some you know, it's people who are or in the public
• 1:20:36
  light are often more interesting, and that's you know that I think helps in
• 1:20:43
  forging a relationship, because I'm an interesting person and you tend to gravitate towards
• 1:20:47
  people who, uh you know, are also interesting and in the same kind
• 1:20:50
  of work that you're in. But I have no hesitancy to blow up a
• 1:20:56
  relationship if it's over an issue that's important, and that seems to happen more
• 1:21:01
  and more as I get older. So that's that issue. Tim asks,
• 1:21:06
  and this is certainly related to my wife being a saint. Do you plan
• 1:21:10
  to stay in California. Now, I'll get this question a lot, and
• 1:21:16
  it's a problem because I while the weather not this past winter, but normally
• 1:21:21
  the weather here in California is great. And because normally I'm a pretty avid
• 1:21:27
  golfer, that is enables me to put up with a lot of bullshit when
• 1:21:31
  it comes to the insanity that is California. But I have no choice if
• 1:21:36
  I want to remain married because my wife is from here, her parents are
• 1:21:41
  still alive, she still has two siblings in the area, and so there's
• 1:21:45
  just no chance to move now. At the beginning of COVID, where we
• 1:21:49
  saw things were going, we talked about moving. We talked about maybe moving
• 1:21:54
  back to Louisville, Kentucky, back when I still had a good relationship with
• 1:21:57
  Congressman Yarmouth. But Kentucky turned out to be almost as insane as California,
• 1:22:02
  so we quickly dropped that. We talked about Jacksonville, Florida, where I
• 1:22:08
  used to live, but my wife then got cold feet and we decided we
• 1:22:13
  would endure the insanity that was California. And now that we've gotten through COVID,
• 1:22:19
  you know, I really and my wife has a job and she's seemingly
• 1:22:24
  about to get tenure as a teacher. So we're basically stuck here, and
• 1:22:30
  that's going to be a bigger issued I think for me going forward, one
• 1:22:33
  as golf becomes maybe very quickly a much smaller part of my life for a
• 1:22:40
  number of reasons, and also because I think things are just going to get
• 1:22:45
  crazier and crazier here in California, and so I can see this becoming a
• 1:22:49
  major issue. Now. You know what happens after my in law's pass.
• 1:22:54
  I don't know if that's going to change the equation or not, but it's
• 1:22:57
  really not an option for us to move out of California right now. The
• 1:23:00
  next question is from Chris in Cincinnati, Ohio. He's a Penn State graduate,
• 1:23:06
  he says, and then he thanks me for my work on the Penn
• 1:23:11
  State case. I do not care for former President Donald Trump personally or working
• 1:23:15
  style, but I voted for him twice. Because of the Supreme Court appointments.
• 1:23:19
  You have stayed on your podcast that you wish Hillary Clinton had won,
• 1:23:23
  Yet we would not have Gorsch, Kavanaugh or Comy Barrett on the bench.
• 1:23:27
  In fact, we may have Marrek Garland and other activist judges. I'm curious
• 1:23:30
  for your take on that issue. Thank you for your unique and provocative analysis
• 1:23:34
  of current events and so called journalism. All right, this is a really
• 1:23:39
  great question and one that I could talk about for hours, but I won't.
• 1:23:44
  Let me just address. There's two issues here as far as and I
• 1:23:46
  still very strongly believed that America would be much much better off if Hillary Clinton
• 1:23:53
  had won the twenty sixteen election. But I realize that from a conservative perspective.
• 1:23:59
  The week in that argument is the Supreme Court. Let me counter that,
• 1:24:03
  Okay, So there have been four Supreme Court nominations sends that election,
• 1:24:12
  one that was held over during the election when Scalia died. But there have
• 1:24:15
  been four appointments. Three have been alleged conservatives, although you know, at
• 1:24:23
  times Kavanaugh and Gorsag should even have not been all that conservative. And we
• 1:24:28
  don't really know enough about Comy Barrett yet to know for sure, but I'll
• 1:24:32
  acknowledge that, you know, Trump got three, okay, and then Biden
• 1:24:38
  got a complete lefty whack job who may not even been really qualified for the
• 1:24:43
  job. So we have four appointments. Three you would call them republican,
• 1:24:50
  one you would call socialist. All right, So if Hillary had won,
• 1:24:57
  let me let me let's game plan this out, and let's pretend that Kennedy
• 1:25:01
  did retire just as he did. One of the reason Kennedy retires because Trump
• 1:25:05
  had won. But I'm willing to accept it at some point here, Kennedy
• 1:25:10
  would have retired. All right. So you had those four Supreme Court nominations
• 1:25:15
  and Hillary would have been choosing them. But Hillary would have been choosing them
• 1:25:20
  with a Republican Senate. There is no argument that the Senate ever would have
• 1:25:28
  gone democratic if Hillary Clinton had one. Hell, twenty six out of twenty
• 1:25:33
  sixteen, Republicans held the White House, the House of Representatives, and the
• 1:25:38
  Senate. They would have held that to this day and probably created a greater
• 1:25:45
  majority in the US Senate. And so the point of that is Hillary would
• 1:25:50
  not have been able to nominate any far left whack jobs because they would not
• 1:25:57
  have gotten through. So those four would have all been moderates. Now I'm
• 1:26:03
  not pretending that they wouldn't be moderate liberals, but they would at least be
• 1:26:09
  rational liberals. Okay, So you would take those four and you would get
• 1:26:15
  rid of the activist nut job, and you'd also get rid of the three
• 1:26:19
  Republicans, but you'd have four quote unquote moderates and you would still have three
• 1:26:27
  conservatives on the bench. Now, there's no question that the balance of the
• 1:26:33
  court would be much more on paper liberal today than it currently is. But
• 1:26:41
  let me throw another monkey wrench into this argument. I believe that Justice Roberts
• 1:26:46
  has become a liberal largely in reaction to Donald Trump being president. Now I
• 1:26:54
  can't prove that, but if you look at his record, it's pretty damn
• 1:26:57
  clear that Roberts was very anti Trump and viewed the conservative movement far more suspiciously
• 1:27:06
  because Trump was president. And so the idea that Roberts is somehow still counted
• 1:27:12
  as a conservative to this point is kind of ludicrous. It's really not sixty
• 1:27:16
  three. It's only sixty three on very clearly constitutional issues, but anything that's
• 1:27:23
  at all political, it's five four conservative. So under my argument, you
• 1:27:29
  would add four moderates and you would not lose Roberts as a conservative. So
• 1:27:38
  the shift in the court wouldn't be all that dramatic. It would effectively be
• 1:27:43
  going from five four conservative to five four liberal. But you might actually theoretically,
• 1:27:48
  because you have a lot more moderates on the court, you would actually
• 1:27:51
  have a situation where the court would have more credibility, especially when it went
• 1:27:57
  in a conservative direction. And let's be clear, you wouldn't have the abortion
• 1:28:00
  ruling. And if you don't get rid of Roe v. Wade, it's
• 1:28:04
  pretty clear Republicans do a lot better than the twenty twenty two midterm elections.
• 1:28:11
  So I would argue that from a political standpoint, unless you're really, really,
• 1:28:15
  really ardent about the abortion issue, the Supreme having a conservative Supreme Court
• 1:28:21
  has done us no favors. They did nothing during COVID, and I'm not
• 1:28:25
  just talking about you know, the vaccines and the masks and the school closings
• 1:28:29
  and all that. They did nothing about the fact that you couldn't even charge
• 1:28:34
  rent as a as a landlord. I mean, the basically property rights were
• 1:28:43
  dropped. You think the banks couldn't collect mortgages. I mean, there were
• 1:28:46
  all sorts of COVID related court cases where the Supreme Court, I mean,
• 1:28:51
  these were decisions made by the fucking CDC. For God's sakes, the Supreme
• 1:28:58
  Court was have been all over some of this stuff, and they effectively did
• 1:29:03
  nothing. So you know, I'm as into the Supreme Court as anybody.
• 1:29:10
  But I don't know what the benefit has been of this great, you know,
• 1:29:14
  conservative awakening that Trump gave us in the Supreme Court. I don't see
• 1:29:17
  it. They came up empty during COVID, they screwed us in the twenty
• 1:29:23
  twenty two midterms, and you know, and so it's really hard for me
• 1:29:30
  to get all excited about what Trump provided. There one other thing on Hillary,
• 1:29:34
  and this is going to really show you what a contrarian I am.
• 1:29:39
  And I'm not defending Hillary Clinton. My first documentary film was about nine to
• 1:29:45
  eleven. It was about the censorship of a film called Blocking. My documentary
• 1:29:50
  was called Blocking the Path in nine eleven, which was about an ABC docudrama
• 1:29:55
  called The Path to nine eleven, the best film ever made about nine to
• 1:29:58
  eleven, which the Clintons effectively got Disney to censor because it told the real
• 1:30:02
  story of Bill Clinton not taking out of some of it laden when he had
• 1:30:06
  the chance. And it was funded as an anti Hillary Clinton movie because it
• 1:30:10
  was presumed she was going to be the twenty eight Democratic nominee. So Citizens
• 1:30:15
  United clearly funded my documentary as an anti Hillary film. I also consulted on
• 1:30:24
  literally Hillary the movie which became a huge part and was the centerpiece of the
• 1:30:30
  Citizens the famous Citizens United Supreme Court case. So my street cred on being
• 1:30:36
  anti Hillary Clinton is pretty darned strong. Yet I consider Hillary Clinton in retrospect
• 1:30:45
  especially, but I felt this way at the time to be effectively a goddamn
• 1:30:49
  conservative in comparison to the where Democrats are today. I mean, let's be
• 1:30:56
  clear of who Hillary Clinton really was. I mean, it's been a mythology
• 1:31:00
  that's been created about her. There's an industry of Hillary hatred that made a
• 1:31:04
  lot of people a lot of money for many years on the right. This
• 1:31:08
  was a woman who was a Goldwater girl. A Goldwater girl, Barry Goldwater,
• 1:31:15
  the most conservative Republican presidential nominee, maybe certainly in modern times, but
• 1:31:20
  maybe ever she was a Goldwater girl, not as an eight year old,
• 1:31:25
  but in her I believe, in her teenage years or maybe even college.
• 1:31:30
  I mean, so so she's not a whack job liberal. Her father played
• 1:31:36
  college football and was the quarterback at Penn State. She was the first Lady
• 1:31:44
  of Arkansas. I mean, this is not a San Francisco Liberal. This
• 1:31:47
  is somebody who at least accepted the basic premises of American society and capitalism and
• 1:31:55
  and you know some of these, I mean, the whole boatload of the
• 1:32:00
  crop that comes out of the woke Democratic Party never would have even been considered
• 1:32:03
  by Hillary Clinton. So if Hillary had been president with a Republican majority in
• 1:32:09
  both houses, none of this woke crap would have happened. And as I've
• 1:32:13
  said previously in episodes two and three of this podcast, COVID would have been
• 1:32:17
  totally different, completely different, because liberals would have viewed everything through the prism
• 1:32:24
  of her getting re elected instead of Trump being reelected, and the media would
• 1:32:29
  have reacted differently, and the White House would have had more power to say,
• 1:32:32
  hold on, we're we're not going to panic here. We're not gonna
• 1:32:35
  give up our principles of liberty and freedom and bravery and all that. So
• 1:32:41
  I feel as strongly today and I believe the facts and reality have vindicated my
• 1:32:46
  very controversial view that we would be far better off if Hillary had won the
• 1:32:51
  twenty sixteen election. Plus, the Republican Party wouldn't be saddled with Donald Trump
• 1:32:56
  until his death, because that's the entire reason why Donald Trump still controls the
• 1:33:01
  party. It's the miracle of twenty sixteen, it's like a religious situation.
• 1:33:05
  It's like hanaka for God's sake or something. I mean, that's the way
• 1:33:12
  the right views the twenty sixteen election, and none that I would have happened
• 1:33:16
  if Hillary had won. All right, Matthew asks, do you think Michael
• 1:33:23
  Jackson is innocent? This isn't obviously an incredibly complex answer, but the answer
• 1:33:28
  is yes. I do believe he is innocent. And the main reason is,
• 1:33:31
  while there's a multitude of other reasons, is if Michael Jackson was guilty,
• 1:33:36
  being as rich and as famous and having as much access to children as
• 1:33:43
  he had over an extended portion of his adult life, if he was guilty,
• 1:33:47
  given the amount of money that's involved here, and the incentive for people
• 1:33:51
  to come forward, especially with a willing media that was more than more than
• 1:33:58
  happy to amplify any allegations against him, especially in death when he can't defend
• 1:34:01
  himself, there would be more than four quote unquote credible accusers, and even
• 1:34:06
  those four are not credible at all. There would be way more than four,
• 1:34:12
  and the credibility of those that came from would be far greater than the
• 1:34:15
  credibility of the four who are at least publicly known as Michael Jackson accusers.
• 1:34:20
  So I do believe that Michael Jackson is innocent. I'm not as positive as
• 1:34:26
  I'm with Jerry Sanduski, because the level of weirdness there with Jackson makes you
• 1:34:30
  always have a little bit of doubt. But I'm pretty darn confident that Michael
• 1:34:33
  Jackson never molested any children. Chris asks, what do you think of the
• 1:34:40
  theory that O. J. Simpson's son did the murders and not him.
• 1:34:45
  I think it's idiotic. I think it's it's incredibly depressing that that theory gets
• 1:34:49
  a hell of a lot more public traction than my theory that Jerry Zanduski is
• 1:34:56
  innocent, which I know to be true. It's an absolute asinine theory from
• 1:35:01
  so many different respectives, both from the evidence standpoint as well as just the
• 1:35:08
  idea that OJ Simpson one of the most narcissistic people in the planet. It
• 1:35:12
  was going to take the fall for his son, who had no real motive
• 1:35:16
  to do the murder of his of OJ's ex wife, and unfortunately Ron Goldman,
• 1:35:21
  who just happened to I believe, be at the wrong place at the
• 1:35:25
  wrong time. And let's I mean once I go down this path, I'll
• 1:35:29
  never stopped. But I mean, there would be tons of evidence if it
• 1:35:32
  was his son, there would be other footprints at the scene other than just
• 1:35:35
  the Bruno Maglias shoes that Oj was wearing. It didn't happen, and there's
• 1:35:41
  no logic to it happening, and it's just ridiculous, all right. An
• 1:35:46
  unknown person asks about the Penn State Board of Trustees alumni election controversy involving Jay
• 1:35:54
  Paterno, Anthony Lebrono, and Alice Pope. Apparently some are calling from them
• 1:35:57
  to be ousted in this election cycle because of name, image and likeness disagreements.
• 1:36:01
  What do you know about this development and what implications are there regarding the
• 1:36:05
  Sandusky Paterno fiasco. I actually get it. Another question about this as well.
• 1:36:12
  Matt asks new president and new ad at Penn State, what's the next
• 1:36:15
  move in the Penn State paternal relationship? Nothing question mark name field, question
• 1:36:19
  mark brings statue back, question mark need Zig's prediction. These are obviously related
• 1:36:25
  questions and have to do with our previous podcast. With the benefit of hindsight,
• 1:36:30
  I do not have any insight into the details of this controversy. Involving
• 1:36:34
  the Board of Trustees election, I'm aware of it, and I you know,
• 1:36:41
  look, I am I've been very critical of Jay Paterno as a whoosie
• 1:36:45
  who knows Jerry Zanduski is innocent, but as afraid to say it. I've
• 1:36:48
  had issues with Anthony Lebrono, who has at times been very very supportive of
• 1:36:54
  me, but he and I haven't spoken for years. But if they were
• 1:36:59
  to lose, and it would be rather ironic if they lost over this nil
• 1:37:03
  issue, it would definitely harm I think the effort to try to make Joe
• 1:37:11
  paternal whole, because they have been three of the biggest supporters of Joe paternal
• 1:37:15
  I don't think it impacts Jerry Sandusky at all because none of those people are
• 1:37:19
  going to ever touch Jerry Zandusky publicly, unless somehow the court system exonerates Sandusky,
• 1:37:25
  which is incredibly unlikely to happen. But I have said previously and I'll
• 1:37:30
  say it again that it is one of the great ironies in the history of
• 1:37:34
  sports. If it happens that nil money, which Joe Paterno would have loathed
• 1:37:41
  and would have probably fought to the death to stop, maybe the only way
• 1:37:46
  that Joe Paterno's legacy gets somewhat salvaged. And that's largely because the people who
• 1:37:53
  who can provide nil money to Penn State are all older white guys basically who
• 1:37:59
  are Joe paternal fans and who now finally have some leverage in this fight,
• 1:38:04
  and so they're willing. Apparently, from what I've heard from very reputable sources
• 1:38:10
  close to the situation, they are willing to say, Hey, look,
• 1:38:14
  if Penn State's going to compete in the nil playing field, then we need
• 1:38:17
  Joe Paterno taken care of. Now what that looks like, I don't know.
• 1:38:20
  Graham Spaniard has told me that he believes that the field will be named
• 1:38:27
  for Joe Paterno and that the statue might be brought back. I don't know
• 1:38:31
  how the former president of Penn State, how well connected he is, he
• 1:38:35
  sounded very confident that this was what was going to happen. He's had meetings
• 1:38:40
  with Penn State where they've told him they know he did nothing wrong, even
• 1:38:44
  after having listened to the four hour interview that he and I did for with
• 1:38:47
  the benefit of hindsight. So I can only go by what Graham and some
• 1:38:51
  others have told me, and at this point, if I had to guess,
• 1:38:56
  I would say the field will be named for Joe Paterno. I think
• 1:38:59
  the statue is too toxic to bring back, unfortunately, but I do think
• 1:39:03
  that they will do something significant like naming the field for Joe Paterno. Pete
• 1:39:10
  asks, the last time I sent you a question to this email account it
• 1:39:14
  was twenty ten, thirteen years ago. So that goes to show how long
• 1:39:18
  I have been a listener and reader of years. And then he asked I
• 1:39:24
  got kind of mocked him in my response to okay, after thirteen years,
• 1:39:28
  this is the question you're gonna ask for an average week. How many rounds
• 1:39:30
  of golf do you usually play? Do you stick to just one course and
• 1:39:33
  move around? Do you have regular playing partners to make up your foursome?
• 1:39:38
  Would we know any of them? Well? This has changed rather dramatically recently
• 1:39:43
  because I have left the golf club where I've been a member for many years
• 1:39:49
  for a couple of reasons. One because I couldn't stand the management there,
• 1:39:53
  a bunch of lunatics, but also because financially it just didn't make any sense
• 1:39:58
  anymore. The inflation has really taken a toll on everybody. But you know,
• 1:40:03
  in the Zigler household, I had everything pretty much set up based upon
• 1:40:09
  a reality that does not exist anymore. And since I'm making basically no money
• 1:40:14
  and my wife is working a job as a teacher, which hopefully they're going
• 1:40:18
  to get a raise based upon inflation, but that hasn't happened yet, I
• 1:40:23
  decided to make the executive decision to cut out the golf membership, which is
• 1:40:28
  a big deal for me. Most of my adult life I've been a member
• 1:40:31
  at some club, which here in southern California is basically mandatory for you to
• 1:40:35
  be able to play on a consistent basis, because playing public, public course
• 1:40:42
  golf is very, very difficult, especially when you don't know anybody. I
• 1:40:45
  mean, I'm not of that world. I've been a member of the same
• 1:40:46
  club for a long time, so you know, basically, I now have
• 1:40:49
  to go and try to make a tea time as a single at a public
• 1:40:54
  course where you're gonna play long rounds, and I have a very limited window
• 1:40:57
  as to when I can play, so as I've already applied earlier in this
• 1:41:00
  episode, golf is in trouble my life. I'm fifty six, I still
• 1:41:06
  try to play competitively in amateur qualifiers now at the senior level, and you
• 1:41:14
  know, I'm gonna try to do that this year despite not being a member
• 1:41:17
  of a club. I don't know how realistic that is. I will see,
• 1:41:23
  and if it doesn't work out well this year, I may give up
• 1:41:26
  golf completely because if I can't play at a competitive level, then you know,
• 1:41:31
  there's really no point to it other than getting, guess, some exercise.
• 1:41:35
  But it's a very expensive sport, and unless something dramatically changes in my
• 1:41:42
  career situation, I don't know how I can go about doing it because I
• 1:41:45
  basically destroyed my career over the last ten to eleven years with the whole Jerry
• 1:41:51
  Sandusky story. So golf is really kind of at a crossroads. I am
• 1:41:57
  playing okay, and like I said, I'm scheduled to play in a lot
• 1:42:00
  of both state and national amateur qualifier events and that kind of thing. But
• 1:42:06
  I'm not particularly optimistic about how that's all going to work out. But it
• 1:42:12
  seems to be going. Everything seems to be going in that negative direction.
• 1:42:16
  We'll see if it continues. Hopefully it won't, but I can see that
• 1:42:20
  that's where it seems like that things are heading on the Gulf front. Dave
• 1:42:26
  from hershey Pa asks, well, I understand at least the appeal of socialism
• 1:42:30
  to certain segments of the population, not my segment, Like most logical people
• 1:42:34
  with the brain at least a half understanding of history. What I do not
• 1:42:39
  understand is the theory behind the George Sorow's back da agendas. Why does anyone
• 1:42:45
  want criminals out on the street. I just don't even have a clue why
• 1:42:48
  anyone wants that. Can you possibly explain why that's a thing? Question?
• 1:42:55
  Mark? I love your podcast, Keep up the great work, and hope
• 1:42:57
  you're wrong about the twenty twenty four presidential race. Um, Dave, I
• 1:43:00
  wish I had a good explanation for this. I do not. Um.
• 1:43:06
  I'm an anti conspiracy person, but I gotta say that, Um, those
• 1:43:12
  who believe that there is a larger effort or plan to destabilize the United States
• 1:43:20
  and to basically bring about its destruction, those that point to what's happening on
• 1:43:28
  that front, I think have an argument. Now. I don't consider George
• 1:43:31
  Soros to be the you know, as large a boogie man on the on
• 1:43:35
  the right as as most people do. Um. I mean, I don't
• 1:43:40
  like the guy at all, by the way. I mean, you know,
• 1:43:43
  Trump Trump blasts them all the time, and George Soros help fund the
• 1:43:47
  Trump Tower in Chicago. Trump will never tell you that. But um,
• 1:43:53
  but there's no question that this da thing, and there's one here in Los
• 1:43:56
  Angeles is is unbelievable. I mean, it's it's a little bit like the
• 1:44:00
  transgender situation, where how did this happen? I mean, who who is
• 1:44:05
  benefiting from this? Who who would be supporting this? I mean, I
• 1:44:11
  mean politically, I guess there's some impetus to, you know, to f
• 1:44:15
  a racial grounds to claim that the entire system is rigged against minorities. I
• 1:44:21
  mean, that's the only theoretical, philosophical underpinning that I can find. But
• 1:44:29
  the results are catastrophic, and by the way, they tend to harm minority
• 1:44:33
  communities far more than even wider Asian communities or Hispanic communities whatever. I mean,
• 1:44:41
  it's just the whole thing is upside down. So I honestly don't have
• 1:44:44
  a great explanation for this, but I am willing to listen to conspiracy theories
• 1:44:48
  on it because it makes that little sense. Andy wants to know I want
• 1:44:56
  to know more about your memory. Is it encyclopedic, is it didactic?
• 1:45:00
  I don't know the difference, but it blows my mind. A few episodes
• 1:45:03
  ago, you mentioned your memory and went on to explaining great te tail past
• 1:45:08
  presidential election events, like with Marco Rubio with perfect recall. You know,
• 1:45:14
  it's funny that Andy asked about that, because, as I do this podcast,
• 1:45:18
  as you're probably aware, if you haven't thought about this, I don't
• 1:45:21
  have a script. I really have one page of one line notes just giving
• 1:45:28
  me the subject matter, and so a lot of it is done by memory.
• 1:45:32
  And it's funny that he mentioned the Marco Rubio presidential election recall because I
• 1:45:38
  was kicking myself because I'm pretty sure that I misspoke about what happened in Iowa
• 1:45:45
  in twenty sixteen and then related it to New Hampshire. I think I might
• 1:45:50
  have said erroneously that Marco Rubio finished fourth, just behind Donald Trump in Iowa.
• 1:45:57
  I knew that wasn't true. It was third lost to Trump and Iowa,
• 1:46:01
  and I think that would have maybe changed the course of the entire campaign
• 1:46:05
  if Rubio had beaten Trump in Iowa and finished second instead of third. I'm
• 1:46:10
  not one hundred percent sure I screwed that up, but I know that I
• 1:46:13
  had a very strong memory of it was you know, Cruise, then Trump,
• 1:46:16
  then Rubio in Iowa. But I didn't even intend to talk about it
• 1:46:23
  in that particular podcast, So it was done by memory. So it's funny
• 1:46:27
  that Andy's referencing something that I think I might have misstated, although not one
• 1:46:30
  hundred percent sure on that. Look In some things, I have a very
• 1:46:34
  good memory things on which I have done deep dives in life, I have
• 1:46:40
  a tremendous amount of knowledge, and I tend to retain that knowledge on things
• 1:46:45
  that I'm not that interested in, I have terrible memory. Interestingly, my
• 1:46:50
  wife has a remarkable memory for song lyrics. I have a terrible memory for
• 1:46:57
  song lyrics. Yet when it comes to issues where I have done deep dives
• 1:47:03
  or were the things that were really important in my life, I do have
• 1:47:09
  seemingly a pretty remarkable memory. I mean, if it's about you know,
• 1:47:14
  these are the things I've done deep dives on, in order of their historical
• 1:47:17
  timeline. I've done deep dives into the birth of Jesus Christ, the Kennedy
• 1:47:24
  assassination, the O. J. Simpson case, the Clinton impeachment at nine
• 1:47:27
  to eleven, the two thousand and eight election, the two twenty sixteen election,
• 1:47:30
  COVID, the career of Tiger Woods, and anything that happened in the
• 1:47:35
  year nineteen eighty, which was when I turned thirteen was the greatest year of
• 1:47:39
  my life. A special it relates to Philadelphia sports. So any of those
• 1:47:44
  subjects, I have a greatly educated view, a very deep level of knowledge,
• 1:47:51
  and an extraordinary memory. If it's outside of those things, not so
• 1:47:57
  much. And my wife will be the first person to tell you that.
• 1:48:00
  So that's just the way my memory tends to work, and so I don't
• 1:48:04
  think it's anything extraordinary, but it does help me at times in this particular
• 1:48:09
  podcast, because most of this podcast is done via memory and none of it
• 1:48:14
  is actually scripted. And by the way, speaking of my allegedly great memory,
• 1:48:17
  in just listing those deep dives, I actually forgot too one of which
• 1:48:23
  was really really important. The first would have been the Florida recount in two
• 1:48:28
  thousand and the two thousand presidential elections. So basically every major presidential election I've
• 1:48:32
  taken a very deep dive into, and was even living part of the time
• 1:48:35
  in Florida. When that recount happened. And then of course there is goes
• 1:48:40
  without saying the subject of my last podcast before this, with the benefit of
• 1:48:45
  hindsight, the entire Penn State Joe Paterno Jerry Sandusky quote unquote scandal, which
• 1:48:49
  was the deep dive to end all deep dives. So even while recounting my
• 1:48:55
  allegedly great memory on certain subjects, I have forgot to list all of them,
• 1:49:00
  at least in my first attempt. So hopefully I've fixed that. But
• 1:49:03
  the point of this is that if I'm really into something, I never forget
• 1:49:09
  it. If I'm not, I don't, and that's a frailty I have.
• 1:49:15
  And I don't know that the memory is encyclopedic, didactic, normal,
• 1:49:19
  whatever, But I'm just very passionate about certain things, and that which I'm
• 1:49:24
  passionate about, I tend to have a very good memory. Scott asks what
• 1:49:29
  happens with the podcast if Trump is the GOP nominee. That's a good question,
• 1:49:36
  because I don't know the answer to that. I don't think I can
• 1:49:40
  continue to do this podcast if it's going to be Trump versus Biden. Who
• 1:49:45
  the hell knows what will be happening. Assuming the podcast gets to that point.
• 1:49:48
  Maybe there are other things that I can talk about that are of interest,
• 1:49:53
  But psychologically, I just don't know how ideal with that. I don't
• 1:49:58
  even know how I would do that deal with that legit gistically as far as
• 1:50:00
  okay, you're talking about two scenarios that are terrible. There's nothing to root
• 1:50:08
  for, and I just think that would be very, very difficult. So,
• 1:50:12
  if Trump is the nominee, I've been very open about this, I
• 1:50:15
  may and it's not a threat, this is just reality. I may just
• 1:50:18
  drop out of public life. I've been thinking about dropping out of public life
• 1:50:21
  for quite some time. It's just I don't know what else the hell I
• 1:50:26
  would do, especially now that golf seems to be a fading away. So
• 1:50:30
  you know, so I consider all options, and you never take anything totally
• 1:50:36
  off the table, but it would not be a good thing for this podcast
• 1:50:41
  if Trump was the nominee, that's for sure. Jacob asks, did you
• 1:50:45
  buy Jerry Jones? This is the owner of the Dallas Cowboys. Jerry Jones
• 1:50:48
  explanation regarding his school segregation photograph. This was a controversy get towards the end
• 1:50:56
  of football season back in the day. What would you have done in a
• 1:50:59
  situation asian like that. I thought the photo was much ado about nothing.
• 1:51:02
  He was in the back. He seemed to be doing exactly what he said,
• 1:51:05
  which was curious as to the situation. It was a confrontation between white
• 1:51:11
  kids and black kids. It was obviously a million years ago. I thought
• 1:51:15
  it was much ado about nothing. I'm not a Jerry Jones fan as far
• 1:51:21
  as what I would have done in that. I mean, he's way older
• 1:51:24
  than I am, But I mean I mean I was. I would like
• 1:51:28
  to believe I would. I would have done the right thing and not been
• 1:51:30
  supportive of what appears to be going on in that photograph. But you know,
• 1:51:35
  how can anybody possibly know in retrospect like that? Chris asked, what
• 1:51:41
  was the moment like when you finally realized that Jerry Sinuski was truly innocent?
• 1:51:45
  Well, I talked about this quite a bit. I've talked about it on
• 1:51:48
  the podcast and in many interviews. I'm not going to get into great detail,
• 1:51:51
  but it basically the final one sure moment that Jerry Sanduski was innocent occurred
• 1:51:59
  in my second prison interview with him, when he was with his wife Dottie.
• 1:52:02
  I asked them both simultaneously, what was the first moment that they thought
• 1:52:08
  this might not turn out okay for them? They both told me exactly the
• 1:52:12
  same thing, with tears streaming down their eyes, in great detail, that
• 1:52:15
  it was the reading of the criminal trial verdicts. And I've explained in great
• 1:52:20
  detail why that answer is one hundred percent consistent with innocence and one hundred percent
• 1:52:28
  not consistent with guilt, given the unique nature of this case and the fact
• 1:52:31
  that they're both religious and that they honestly thought that God or Jesus was going
• 1:52:36
  to save them the whole time. And I was pretty much certain that before
• 1:52:42
  that moment, but that was the moment I was one hundred percent positive,
• 1:52:45
  especially when I got out of prison, and I called Joe Mendola, their
• 1:52:48
  former criminal defense attorney, and I said, I asked Jerry and Donnie what
• 1:52:51
  was the first moment that they thought this might not all turn out okay for
• 1:52:56
  them? And he paused for about a second and a half and was at
• 1:53:00
  the reading of the verdicts, and I said, there you go. Yep,
• 1:53:03
  it was the reading of the verdicts, so that that was the moment.
• 1:53:06
  But it's important to point out that there was a couple of years of
• 1:53:10
  investigation that led up to that that was just getting an endo the end zone,
• 1:53:15
  although an end zone analogy might be really bad because it might have actually
• 1:53:19
  been a safety not a touchdown. Tyler asks. One of my earliest memories
• 1:53:27
  of the media covering as essential sensational story was that of the death of John
• 1:53:31
  Benet Ramsey. Do you have a theory who killed her? And why were
• 1:53:35
  the parents involved? Now? Interestingly, while my deep dive into John Bona
• 1:53:42
  Ramsey doesn't reach the level of the other deep dives I've already referenced, I
• 1:53:45
  am very educated on that case. I found it to be fascinating, and
• 1:53:50
  I have changed my opinion, as I often do, I have changed my
• 1:53:54
  opinion about what happened with John Boney Ramsey. For those who don't remember,
• 1:53:58
  she was the little beauty queen and Kyl Boulder, Colorado who was found dead
• 1:54:04
  on Christmas Day and her and her family home and um and so long story
• 1:54:13
  short on John Benny Ramsey. I was in the camp early on. It
• 1:54:17
  had to be an accident, and that the mother concocted this crazy ransom note.
• 1:54:26
  Because the note was actually clearly written on paper that was there the the
• 1:54:30
  you know that it's an incredibly long note and um, and you know,
• 1:54:36
  the handwriting appeared to be at least somewhat consistent with her handwriting, and so
• 1:54:43
  that made some sense to me. Okay, so you you kill your your
• 1:54:47
  daughter in a rage, and you you want to cover it up, and
• 1:54:51
  you create this concoct this this intruder theory and this bizarre ransom note, and
• 1:54:58
  the ransom notes got every specific amounts of money that are related to the bonus
• 1:55:02
  that your husband got at the end of the year. And so that made
• 1:55:08
  sense to me. And as I got more deeply into it, I no
• 1:55:12
  longer believe that, and I no longer believe that for a number of reasons.
• 1:55:16
  One, the handwriting does not, in my view, proved that the
• 1:55:23
  John Benye Ramsey's mother wrote the ransom note, But most importantly, the fact
• 1:55:29
  that the Ramsey's never got a divorce, never never called the other one out,
• 1:55:36
  makes the theory of what would happen there basically impossible. I mean,
• 1:55:43
  if that had occurred, both parents would know about it, both parents would
• 1:55:48
  have to have participated in it, and especially once one is dead, as
• 1:55:54
  Patsy Ramsey is, then the cover up would fall apart, and I just
• 1:56:00
  don't see how they could possibly have stayed together. It's a miracle they stayed
• 1:56:03
  together as it was, because generally, when parents of a young child die
• 1:56:09
  under tragic circumstances, they usually end up getting divorced. And so the fact
• 1:56:14
  that they were able to maintain that relationship under incredible media scrutiny and under obvious
• 1:56:20
  enormous tension and stress almost ipso facto disproved the cover up theory. By way,
• 1:56:29
  the theory that the brother did it is insane, and Jim Clemente,
• 1:56:32
  my nemesis, one of my many nemesis from the Penn State case, who
• 1:56:39
  was the paternal family sex crimes expert, as a total fraud. He did
• 1:56:43
  a CBS primetime special for which he got sued and they had to settle out
• 1:56:47
  of court in claiming that it was the brother who killed his sister. That
• 1:56:51
  theory is just completely insane, and it's insane for no other reason. Then
• 1:56:58
  the parents would have had to have known that, and the parents allowed their
• 1:57:03
  very awkward young son to be interviewed alone by a detective immediately before the body
• 1:57:13
  was even found, and the son had no idea that his sister was dead.
• 1:57:19
  So the brother theory doesn't even get out of the goddamn batter's box.
• 1:57:25
  And that's how stupid Jim Clementi is. But my theory and what happened is
• 1:57:29
  I think this was the greatest, you know, the most evil, but
• 1:57:32
  in many ways the greatest crime ever, because I think there was an intruder
• 1:57:38
  who knew the family was out celebrating Christmas. The family had had people from
• 1:57:45
  the public in their home for the previous weeks to view their their Christmas decorations.
• 1:57:51
  There was basically a tourist attraction. And I think there was an intruder
• 1:57:57
  who knew about John Benet, who hit out there, who wrote the note,
• 1:58:02
  who wrote a brilliant note, knowing that it would buy time and it
• 1:58:08
  would probably even create suspicion on people within the house, specifically the parents,
• 1:58:14
  And I think that the intruder did the assault, did the murder, and
• 1:58:20
  got out of there, and because because of the note and the law enforcement
• 1:58:27
  reaction to it, was able to get away with effectively the perfect crime.
• 1:58:32
  That's my view. I could I am more than willing to be shifted on
• 1:58:35
  that, but I do not believe it was the parents, and I don't
• 1:58:39
  believe we're ever going to know who killed John Benny Ramsey, Darren asks,
• 1:58:45
  what amends situation first made you start questioning media coverage. What was your opinion
• 1:58:49
  of media coverage before that moment. I think I may have mentioned this previously
• 1:58:56
  in the podcast where I talked about when I was a kid in third grade
• 1:59:01
  having a newspaper reporter come to talk to us about the hit show on ABC,
• 1:59:08
  Charlie's Angels, and how this was the you know, the biggest controversy
• 1:59:13
  sweeping the nation where these the three women with big boobs were dominating the primetime
• 1:59:19
  television schedule and you know, at that time, you know, women with
• 1:59:25
  boobs, Wow, this is this is too much sex appeal, and they
• 1:59:29
  wanted to get kids opinions on this. And I had never seen the show.
• 1:59:32
  My bedtime was like eight o'clock and or maybe even earlier than that,
• 1:59:36
  and I certainly wasn't watching Charlie's Angels. But for some reason, I you
• 1:59:40
  know, I wanted to be part of the article and I could sense,
• 1:59:44
  for whatever reason, I could sense what the reporter wanted. So I expressed
• 1:59:47
  some outrage about Charlie's Angels being on television and guess who led the article?
• 1:59:55
  I did, and I, you know, I thought that was hilarious that
• 1:59:58
  this reporter of a major newspaper in the I think it was the Trenton Times.
• 2:00:02
  I'm not one hundreds in sure about that, but we were living right
• 2:00:05
  on the border between Pennsylvania and New Jersey. And the fact that you know,
• 2:00:12
  they bought this and quoted me when I knew nothing at all really other
• 2:00:17
  than what I had heard about the show, I found to be hilarious.
• 2:00:20
  And from that moment on, I basically lived the next forty five for fifty
• 2:00:28
  years of my life, learning more and more about just how corrupt and broken
• 2:00:31
  the news media really is. Susan asks, why don't you consider yourself to
• 2:00:38
  be a Catholic or a Christian anymore? And the answer to that is obviously
• 2:00:43
  very complex. The short answer is, I was forced to read the Old
• 2:00:47
  Testament in high school as a student at Holy Ghost Prep, my high school
• 2:00:55
  in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. And the Old Testament
• 2:01:00
  is not only whackadoodle, but it's completely inconsistent with the New Testament. So,
• 2:01:08
  you know, never I could never figure out how it is that God
• 2:01:11
  could be so completely inconsistent. You know, I have such a massive personality
• 2:01:15
  change once Jesus came along in the New Testament, and then the Jesus element
• 2:01:24
  of this. I mean, you could argue, okay, you know,
• 2:01:26
  maybe the Old Testament was just a bunch of stories and that's more related to
• 2:01:30
  Judaism, but Christianity adopted that, and you know, who knows. There
• 2:01:35
  are all sorts of theories as to how that could happen. But it was
• 2:01:39
  the birth story of Jesus, which I alluded to in a previous answer to
• 2:01:44
  a question, that really impacted me because I did a deep dive into the
• 2:01:47
  birth story of Jesus, and without getting into all the details now, it's
• 2:01:54
  the most obviously reverse engineered story that you could possibly come up with. It
• 2:01:59
  did not happen. It was not written at the time. It's only in
• 2:02:01
  two of the four Gospels. It was written well after Jesus's death. The
• 2:02:04
  two stories in Matthew and Luke are completely inconsistent with one another. They can't
• 2:02:10
  even come up with a year that are consistent with both tellings of the story.
• 2:02:15
  So it did not happen. It was made up to make Jesus into
• 2:02:18
  a into a Messiah figure. And by the way, if anything close to
• 2:02:25
  either Matthew or Luke had happened, pretty sure that would have been in all
• 2:02:29
  of Jesus's biographies. But a couple of biographies left that completely out. Why
• 2:02:34
  because it didn't happen. And so when you're lying to me that blatantly right
• 2:02:39
  off the bat, you know, and obviously the burden is on you to
• 2:02:44
  prove, you know, something spectacular, that somebody was God or the son
• 2:02:47
  of God, I don't believe you. And so that's why not. Also,
• 2:02:55
  the nature of the world is completely inconsistent with an act of God.
• 2:02:58
  Now, could there be a God, Sure, there could be a God,
• 2:03:00
  you know, could there be I doubt there's an afterlife, but there
• 2:03:03
  could be, I guess, But I've seen no evidence of it, and
• 2:03:08
  I don't think any organized religion has figured it out. Because to me,
• 2:03:13
  if you're, you know, the Word of God, it ought to be
• 2:03:15
  at least somewhat fallible, infallible, and clearly, as I've already stated,
• 2:03:20
  the Christian Bible is far from that, and no other religion is remotely infallible
• 2:03:26
  either. So I'm agnostic when it comes to God. I Gosh. I
• 2:03:30
  wish, I wish there was a God. I've seen no evidence that God
• 2:03:34
  has any impact on what happens on earth. I wish that God did,
• 2:03:41
  but I don't see any evidence of it. So that's why I'm in the
• 2:03:45
  agnostic category and no longer consider myself a Christian or a Catholic. One of
• 2:03:50
  the questions we got was from a guest of this podcast, one of my
• 2:03:55
  favorite guests, David Schuster, who has been on basically every single cable news
• 2:03:59
  network as an anchor, and David as a pet peeve about the news media.
• 2:04:02
  It's interesting how few questions I got about the news media. Few which
• 2:04:06
  will get to eventually as I move along here, but Dave as a pet
• 2:04:12
  peeve about the news media, which he asks about. He says, Hey,
• 2:04:15
  John, I'm looking forward to your podcast. Why do you think the
• 2:04:18
  broadcast network newscasts crop on basic grammar and proper English and write report in a
• 2:04:26
  way nobody speaks. And basically what I think David is saying there is that
• 2:04:30
  when it comes to basic grammar, the news media is terrible. Well,
• 2:04:35
  I'm living in a glasshouse here because I am terrible in this particular regard partially
• 2:04:43
  because I talk extemporaneously and it's much more difficult to have perfect grammar when you're
• 2:04:47
  doing that and you're not using a script. But as a newscast which is
• 2:04:50
  based on a script, you know there ought to be much better grammar.
• 2:04:55
  I will agree with that. I'm not a grammar nazi, but I get
• 2:05:00
  David's point, and I think that it's consistent with the dropping of professional standards
• 2:05:04
  everywhere, but especially in the news media. But a lot of it has
• 2:05:08
  to do with time and resources and the competency of people and the educational level
• 2:05:15
  of the people who are involved, as well as priorities. It's just not
• 2:05:18
  a priority, and when you're feeding the monster twenty four to seven and you're
• 2:05:25
  responsible for a lot more content, these are the types of details that fall
• 2:05:29
  through the cracks. And so I think it's emblematic of a much larger reality
• 2:05:33
  that the people involved are overworked and underqualified, not particularly bright, not particularly
• 2:05:41
  educated, and they don't prioritize things like grammar. And so David makes a
• 2:05:45
  good point, and I'm glad that somebody's speaking up about it, because I
• 2:05:49
  do think that standards are important. Standards are incredibly important, especially when it
• 2:05:56
  comes to the news, because when you start to relax standards in that area,
• 2:06:00
  then it's much easier to relax standards in other areas, like, for
• 2:06:03
  instance, what's the truth, what's the level of sourcing? You know,
• 2:06:08
  what are we telling the other side of the story? And so it all
• 2:06:12
  kind of flows from there. And so David Schuster, as usual, makes
• 2:06:15
  a very good point at this juncture, I'm gonna pause and I'm gonna save
• 2:06:24
  the rest of these questions for our next episode. So in the next episode
• 2:06:30
  of the podcast, because I end a feeling this was going to take longer
• 2:06:33
  than I expect, because I like to respond substantively to all these questions,
• 2:06:38
  but if I do so, it's going to be too long of an episode.
• 2:06:41
  So what I'm going to do is hold off until episode fifty one.
• 2:06:45
  There's still several really good questions to go. Plus we have a great guest
• 2:06:48
  schedule for episode fifty one, Brittany Hopper, who is a former television newscaster
• 2:06:54
  here in Los Angeles. She will be our guest in episode fifty one,
• 2:06:58
  so lots to look forward to. There, So more of Asked John Anything,
• 2:07:01
  plus Brittany Hopper, plus whatever else is happening in the news. Until
• 2:07:04
  then, thanks so much for listening. Please remember to subscribe, rate and
• 2:07:09
  review this episode and others, and share it. If you shared it on
• 2:07:12
  social media and tag me, I'll be happy to do the same. Until
• 2:07:15
  next time, thanks so much for listening. My name is John Sigler.
• 2:07:17
  This is the Depth of Journalism podcast