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Episode One Hundred Eighty One: The Party Of Democracy · The Death Of Journalism

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Speaker 1: Welcome to episode number one hundred and eighty, one of
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Speaker 1: the denth the Journalism podcasts. My name is John Zigler.
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Speaker 1: I'm your host on today's show. Is the traditional news
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Speaker 1: interview with presidential candidates now totally antiquated. President Biden finally
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Speaker 1: admits that he was the victim of a coup and
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Speaker 1: no one seems to care, some high profile COVID cases
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Speaker 1: don't get nearly the attention they deserve, and some final
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Speaker 1: thoughts on how the Paris Summer Olympics were simply too
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Speaker 1: big to fail. Beginning this episode of the podcast with
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Speaker 1: a bit of an apology and an explanation for why
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Speaker 1: this episode is out a day later than it normally
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Speaker 1: would be. I did give you notice of that in
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Speaker 1: episode number one hundred and eighty, but apparently a few
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Speaker 1: of our subscribers did not listen to the entire podcast,
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Speaker 1: which is totally understandable more than you're right, but they
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Speaker 1: missed the fact that I had alerted you that we
0:58
Speaker 1: would be delayed in this episode by about a day
1:02
Speaker 1: because I was returning from a trip, a trip that
1:06
Speaker 1: our family took to Mexico Port of Iarta, Mexico for
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Speaker 1: about a week. So the last couple of episodes have
1:14
Speaker 1: really been an effort on my part to try to
1:16
Speaker 1: make sure that we continued our normal content routine, while
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Speaker 1: also realizing that for about a week I would be
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Speaker 1: unable to create any content. But now we're back from
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Speaker 1: Mexico and hopefully getting back on a normal schedule. As
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Speaker 1: far as the trip was concerned, my kids loved it,
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Speaker 1: my wife loved it. I survived it, and as the dad,
1:40
Speaker 1: that's basically the definition of a successful vacation. There really
1:44
Speaker 1: is no part of the vacation that's good for me,
1:47
Speaker 1: especially given what I do. It's basically how much I'm
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Speaker 1: going to miss? How many opportunities do I miss? How
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Speaker 1: many golf tournaments do I miss? How many things in
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Speaker 1: my professional life are screwed up because of it was
2:01
Speaker 1: fairly limited damage. I was asked to do one television
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Speaker 1: appearance which I couldn't do, and there were some other
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Speaker 1: things that were annoying. The biggest part, though, for me,
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Speaker 1: I guess this is the only I guess you would
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Speaker 1: call it. A commentary that I have on the vacation
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Speaker 1: is that when you're a tourist in a foreign country,
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Speaker 1: and I think this is more exaggerated in Mexico, although
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Speaker 1: my wife tells me that it's not she's been to
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Speaker 1: more foreign countries than I have been. But based upon
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Speaker 1: my experience, I've been to Mexico three times. About once
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Speaker 1: a decade, I seemingly go to Mexico. There is a
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Speaker 1: culture there that really when they see you as an
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Speaker 1: obvious tourist, and you know, having two little blonde girls
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Speaker 1: and a blond wife or mostly blond wife, and me
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Speaker 1: the golf dad, you know, we basically have targets on
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Speaker 1: our back for people to take advantage of us in
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Speaker 1: all sorts of different ways. And so as the dad,
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Speaker 1: you're kind of on edge for an entire week trying
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Speaker 1: to make sure that your family does not get taken
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Speaker 1: advantage of. We didn't get through completely unscathed, but mostly unscathed.
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Speaker 1: I don't know whether or not that's more prevalent in
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Speaker 1: the Mexican culture, or whether or not it happens worldwide,
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Speaker 1: but there does seem to be a business model that
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Speaker 1: if you get especially naive American tourists with some money
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Speaker 1: in a situation where they're vulnerable or maybe even held
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Speaker 1: hostage figuratively speaking, you can take advantage of them. And
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Speaker 1: that's annoying, But other than that, the kids had a
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Speaker 1: good time, my wife had a good time, and so
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Speaker 1: that's all that really matters, especially now that school will
3:43
Speaker 1: be starting in the next few days. As far as
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Speaker 1: the news that has occurred over the last week or so,
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Speaker 1: and there's a lot to get to and I'm going
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Speaker 1: to try to get to as much of it as
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Speaker 1: I possibly can. I would say that thematically, and especially
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Speaker 1: related to the Death of Journalism podcast, the biggest issue
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Speaker 1: right now is the fact that we are seeing a
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Speaker 1: sea change when it comes to the definition of the
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Speaker 1: news interview, especially when it comes to presidential candidates. Now,
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Speaker 1: you know, I've talked about the death of the news
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Speaker 1: interview in general terms many times on this podcast. I've
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Speaker 1: talked about it in the context of the fact that
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Speaker 1: Matt Lauer is no longer in the business and he
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Speaker 1: was the best interviewer there was, and how there is
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Speaker 1: no more leverage on the part of news outlets or
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Speaker 1: news interviewers like there was in the heyday of Matt
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Speaker 1: Lauer in the Today Show, where you basically were forced
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Speaker 1: to do an interview if you were a newsmaker, especially
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Speaker 1: a presidential candidate with a Matt Lauer, or with the
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Speaker 1: Today Show or with the Sunday morning shows, and those
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Speaker 1: days are now clearly over, and dramatically so and remarkably quickly, frankly,
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Speaker 1: from a cultural perspective. Now, this has happened for a
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Speaker 1: lot of different reasons. Fragmentation in the news media is
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Speaker 1: number one. I talk all the time about the impacts
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Speaker 1: of fragmentation, and that has caused a very clear power
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Speaker 1: shift away from the outlet, away from the interviewer and
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Speaker 1: to the interviewee, especially when thanks to social media, the interviewee,
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Speaker 1: if they're a presidential candidate, has all sorts of different
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Speaker 1: options to get their message out and really no need
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Speaker 1: to put themselves in a situation where they're vulnerable to
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Speaker 1: being forced or seemingly forced to answer questions that they
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Speaker 1: don't like, even if they're a Democratic presidential candidate that's
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Speaker 1: getting incredibly positive news coverage, and they have all sorts
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Speaker 1: of options of liberal media news figures who would be
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Speaker 1: thrilled to give up their credibility or their perception of
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Speaker 1: credibility by giving them a softball interview. And yet, despite
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Speaker 1: that being the reality, as this taping, Kamala Harris has
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Speaker 1: never done an interview Tim Waltz has never done an
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Speaker 1: interview since being the vice presidential nominee for Kamala Harris,
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Speaker 1: and there's no immediate plan to do so, at least
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Speaker 1: until after next week's Democratic Convention in Chicago. And that
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Speaker 1: is astonishing. That is a brand new development with regard
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Speaker 1: to the tactics of campaigning. It used to be the
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Speaker 1: you know, at the very least, presidential candidates and vice
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Speaker 1: presidential candidates were guilted into doing interviews because my gosh,
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Speaker 1: you have to do it. It's one of those things
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Speaker 1: that's just required, you know, there's it's the right thing
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Speaker 1: to do. You have to get your message out there,
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Speaker 1: you have to agree to the vetting process. Well, all
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Speaker 1: this was unofficial, there were no rules dictating this. And
6:55
Speaker 1: now that we no longer live in a world where
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Speaker 1: people do things simply because of the right thing to do,
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Speaker 1: or because they were done previously, or because their tradition. Now,
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Speaker 1: all of a sudden, campaigns are saying, well, why should
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Speaker 1: we do this. There's no reason for it. Why, especially
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Speaker 1: since things are working so well polling wise for the
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Speaker 1: Harris campaign, Why would you make yourself vulnerable to answering questions?
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Speaker 1: Because that can only really work against you, especially when
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Speaker 1: you're someone like Kamala Harris who's not particularly good at
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Speaker 1: answering questions. And what's really amazing and different about this
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Speaker 1: development is that the media is not only not pushing
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Speaker 1: back against the strategy of the Harris campaign to avoid
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Speaker 1: all adversarial questions at any and all costs, they're actually
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Speaker 1: supporting this, acting, as I have said previously, much like
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Speaker 1: they are the campaign managers for Kamala Harris and Tim Waltz.
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Speaker 1: For instance, the Associated Press. The Associated Press had a
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Speaker 1: headline the other day, meet the Press, question mark hold
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Speaker 1: that thought the candidates sit down interview ain't what it
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Speaker 1: used to be. Oh so basically no, no, no, that's old, antiquated.
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Speaker 1: No one does that anymore. There's no need to actually
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Speaker 1: do an interview and face adversarial questions. That's not part
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Speaker 1: of our vibe. That's not part of the Harris Waltz vibe.
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Speaker 1: And we're seeing this throughout the news media narrative about
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Speaker 1: Harris not taking any legitimate questions, and we're also seeing
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Speaker 1: it among liberal elites. I'm seeing all sorts of examples
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Speaker 1: of liberal elites who are applauding this as a strategic move, which,
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Speaker 1: by the way, it might be a smart strategic move
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Speaker 1: depending on how she would do in these interviews. Of course,
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Speaker 1: I'm actually skeptical as to what is there to really
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Speaker 1: fear here, because anybody at this point who interviews Kamala
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Speaker 1: Harris in the mainstream news media is going to be
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Speaker 1: protective of her, especially now that liberals have accepted that
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Speaker 1: she's the favorite to be the next president and the
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Speaker 1: favorite to keep Donald Trump out of office. No one's
9:26
Speaker 1: going to destroy their reputation by going out of their
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Speaker 1: way to try to dismantle that, to sabotage that. So
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Speaker 1: they're all sorts of left wing media figures that would
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Speaker 1: be thrilled to serve up softballs to Kamala Harrison. So
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Speaker 1: I don't even know what the heck she's really afraid of.
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Speaker 1: But here's where we are on the Democratic Party, the
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Speaker 1: Party of Democracy, the Party of Democracy. This is the
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Speaker 1: part that's so amazing, so infuriating, and so hypocritical. The
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Speaker 1: Party of Democracy, quote unquote, who has just had a
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Speaker 1: coup with their popularly elected nominee Joe Biden. They then
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Speaker 1: handed through party elites who never even made public statements.
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Speaker 1: They just did this behind closed doors. They all gathered
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Speaker 1: around and said, we are coalescing around Kamala Harris because
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Speaker 1: we can't possibly have an open convention. That would be
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Speaker 1: a complete disaster. We can't let our crazy out in public.
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Speaker 1: So US Party elites without even really making many public statements,
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Speaker 1: no transparency, no open process, no open convention. We're just
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Speaker 1: going to hand the presidential nomination to a person who
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Speaker 1: has never received an actual vote for president in her life,
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Speaker 1: Kamala Harris. And now we're applauding that person, not taking
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Speaker 1: any questions. And this is the Party of Democracy. And
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Speaker 1: there's almost no negative media coverage about this, other than
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Speaker 1: in the conservative media. There's nobody on the left with
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Speaker 1: a conscience strong enough to say, hey, hey, wait a minute,
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Speaker 1: what are we doing here. Aren't we a bunch of
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Speaker 1: freaking hypocrites. Look what we did to Biden, Look what
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Speaker 1: we did to hand Harris denomination. And don't we believe
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Speaker 1: in a free discourse, a strong forth, a state oppressed
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Speaker 1: to ask tough questions. Don't we believe in vetting? Don't
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Speaker 1: we believe in going through the traditional process of making
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Speaker 1: sure someone is actually prepared to be president of the
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Speaker 1: United States? Because if any of this was on the
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Speaker 1: other foot, if any of this was happening with Trump
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Speaker 1: or the Republican candidate, there's no chance in the world
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Speaker 1: that Democrats would put up with this. But we're creating
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Speaker 1: new rules right before our eyes. These are the new rules,
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Speaker 1: and they're not good for quote unquote democracy. They're certainly
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Speaker 1: not good for the vetting process. And I maintain Kamala Harris,
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Speaker 1: largely because she originated in California and partially because of
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Speaker 1: her gender and her perceived race, is the least vetted
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Speaker 1: presidential nominee in modern history, and it's not even close.
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Speaker 1: Barack Obama was actually far more vetted because at least
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Speaker 1: he had to go through the Hillary Clinton campaign, even
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Speaker 1: though they were very much woosified because they were afraid
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Speaker 1: of running against the black, charismatic candidate, but at least
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Speaker 1: they tried. Harris has never faced an adversarial campaign, never
12:32
Speaker 1: faced the navisarial press, especially not coming from here in California,
12:36
Speaker 1: where we have no media. There is no vetting for
12:39
Speaker 1: Democratic candidates statewide. So this idea that somehow she gets
12:43
Speaker 1: credit for being the attorney general or being elected senator
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Speaker 1: in California is just preposterous. There's no vetting in any
12:51
Speaker 1: of that here in California, especially not for a Democratic
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Speaker 1: woman of color. So we're changing all the rules here.
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Speaker 1: And it's particularly amazing for someone like myself who spent
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Speaker 1: an enormous amount of their life trying to document the
13:08
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight election, which is increasingly being repeated
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Speaker 1: here in twenty twenty four, and who went through the
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Speaker 1: Sarah Palin wars more than anybody else did, because for
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Speaker 1: about a year, although it seems like a completely different
13:21
Speaker 1: lifetime now, for about a year I was perceived as
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Speaker 1: Sarah Palin's de facto spokesperson after the two thousand and
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Speaker 1: eight campaign. It is really quite mind blowing to look
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Speaker 1: back on two thousand and eight and see what happened
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Speaker 1: to Sarah Palin. And for those who may say, well,
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Speaker 1: there's no comparison, John, between Kamala Harris and Sarah Palin
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Speaker 1: or Tim Waltz, there are absolutely comparisons to be made. Yes,
13:48
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris was much better known because she was vice president,
13:52
Speaker 1: but she was no barely better vetted than Sarah Palin.
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Speaker 1: Tim Waltz was not any better known nationally than Sarah
14:00
Speaker 1: Palin was governor of a fairly small, not that important state.
14:05
Speaker 1: I mean obviously not geographically small when it comes to Alaska,
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Speaker 1: but population wise. With regard to Sarah Palin, and Tim
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Speaker 1: Waltz hasn't done any interviews, and certainly Harris hasn't done
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Speaker 1: any interview since being handed the presidential nomination. Yet. Sarah
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Speaker 1: Palin when she was suddenly announced shockingly just before the
14:27
Speaker 1: Republican Convention, which I attended as a as a delegate
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Speaker 1: from the California delegation and an alternate delegate, and so
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Speaker 1: I witnessed all that firsthand in Minnesota, ironically enough, and
14:42
Speaker 1: Sarah Palin was announced by John McCain. She gave that
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Speaker 1: amazing convention speech, scared the hell out of everybody in
14:50
Speaker 1: the news media because it was the first and only
14:52
Speaker 1: time John McCain took the lead over Barack Obama after
14:55
Speaker 1: that convention speech, and they then they went on a
14:58
Speaker 1: search and destroy mission Sarah Palin. And one of the
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Speaker 1: main ways that Sarah Palin was brought down was through
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Speaker 1: the Katie Kuric one on one interview of multiple interviews. Now,
15:13
Speaker 1: I don't want to maybe at some point, you know,
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Speaker 1: in later weeks, as this continues on, I'll go into
15:18
Speaker 1: a greater detail what really happened when it came to
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Speaker 1: Sarah Palin and Katie Kirk. But in retrospect, especially now
15:26
Speaker 1: that we're creating new rules, the Sarah Palin decision, the
15:31
Speaker 1: decision to put Sarah Palin in front of Katie Kirk,
15:35
Speaker 1: a decision that was seemingly made by two people who
15:38
Speaker 1: ever since have made their careers as liberal commentators, Steve
15:42
Speaker 1: Schmidt and Nicole Wallace, who've spent the last fifteen years,
15:46
Speaker 1: most of it on MSNBC. They were the people that
15:49
Speaker 1: were responsible for the Sarah Palin media outreach and her
15:55
Speaker 1: preparation and where she got absolutely massacred by Katie Kirk,
16:01
Speaker 1: not completely because of her own doing. It was absolutely
16:06
Speaker 1: absurd even at the time, but now in retrospect, based
16:09
Speaker 1: upon these new rules, to have Sarah Palin do multiple
16:13
Speaker 1: sit down taped interviews with Katie Kirk, who had a
16:16
Speaker 1: massive incentive in every intention to take Sarah Palin out,
16:22
Speaker 1: and she did that. Now, did Sarah Palin give some
16:25
Speaker 1: bad answers, Absolutely, but there was some very nefarious editing.
16:30
Speaker 1: It was obvious that the intent was there by Kirk
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Speaker 1: to take Palin out. Kirk was richly rewarded for this,
16:38
Speaker 1: even being given journalism awards by USC University of Southern California,
16:44
Speaker 1: a situation where I actually got temporarily arrested for essentially
16:49
Speaker 1: protesting her getting this journalism award for this This hack job,
16:54
Speaker 1: that's hatchet job. That was the series of Sarah Palin interviews,
16:58
Speaker 1: and if you're you know, you find it online my
17:02
Speaker 1: documentary Mediam Malpractice. Helbama got elected and Palin was targeted.
17:05
Speaker 1: I go into great detail in my interview with Sarah
17:08
Speaker 1: Palin after the two thousand and eight election talking about
17:11
Speaker 1: all the problems with the Katie Kirk interview from a
17:15
Speaker 1: journalistic standpoint, and all the things that really happened as
17:19
Speaker 1: opposed to the way they were perceived. But that's essentially
17:24
Speaker 1: what the Harris Waltz campaign is avoiding. They're avoiding a
17:27
Speaker 1: potential repeat of what happened with Sarah Palin and Katie Kirk,
17:31
Speaker 1: even though there's no fear for them, because the Katie
17:35
Speaker 1: Kirks of today have no interest in taking down Harris
17:39
Speaker 1: or Waltz at all. But that was an absolute search
17:45
Speaker 1: and destroy mission that Katie Kirk went on and Sarah
17:48
Speaker 1: Palin was put in a very bad position, one that
17:51
Speaker 1: she was not fully prepared for, one she couldn't possibly
17:55
Speaker 1: have been fully prepared for, but one which today apparently
17:59
Speaker 1: could be easily been avoided.
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Speaker 2: Now.
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Speaker 1: I don't know when that the new rules exist for
18:04
Speaker 1: Republican candidates or this is just Democratic candidates that we're
18:08
Speaker 1: creating these very dangerous rules for. But I gotta believe
18:13
Speaker 1: Sarah Palin is looking around going, what the heck is
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Speaker 1: this all about? Why did I do that Katie KURRK interview?
18:20
Speaker 1: There's no need for it now. The media landscape has
18:24
Speaker 1: changed in sixteen years, and the ability to get your
18:27
Speaker 1: own message out has certainly increased thanks to social media.
18:30
Speaker 1: In fact, Harris and Waltz have not, as of this taping,
18:34
Speaker 1: done any sort of adversarial interviews, but they are releasing
18:38
Speaker 1: a conversation with each other, so they're effectively interviewing each other,
18:44
Speaker 1: and I guess that's going to count as an interview.
18:47
Speaker 1: They're basically making a mockery of the traditional legacy news media,
18:52
Speaker 1: and they're getting away with it. Meanwhile, jd Vance has
18:56
Speaker 1: done a series of traditional legacy media interviews and has
19:01
Speaker 1: kicked ass Now it may be too little, too late.
19:05
Speaker 1: For JD. Vans, because perception is everything, and you know,
19:09
Speaker 1: once you create a perception, it's very difficult to undo.
19:12
Speaker 1: And they've lied enough about JD. Vance in the mainstream
19:16
Speaker 1: news media to where his negative ratings are high enough
19:21
Speaker 1: where he's probably not going to be a positive impact
19:24
Speaker 1: on the Trump Vance ticket. But he's at least a
19:27
Speaker 1: good spokesperson. He's at least staying disciplined, he's on message,
19:31
Speaker 1: he makes better arguments than Trump does, and it was
19:35
Speaker 1: clear from the multiple traditional legacy media interviews that Advance
19:39
Speaker 1: did that the people interviewing him were very frustrated by
19:43
Speaker 1: the fact that he's very, very good and he's probably
19:46
Speaker 1: going to kick Tim Waltz's ass in the debate. My
19:49
Speaker 1: guess is that they're probably going to claim he was
19:52
Speaker 1: lying where this was unfair because he's a law graduate
19:55
Speaker 1: from Yale Law School, So it's just not fair to
19:58
Speaker 1: put up someone like Tim Waltz, who's just a public
20:02
Speaker 1: school teacher up against a graduate of yeh Law School.
20:06
Speaker 1: I mean, that's going to probably be the excuse of
20:08
Speaker 1: the narrative for why Vance kicks Waltz's ass, And then
20:12
Speaker 1: of course it's going to be you know, a story
20:14
Speaker 1: that's quickly over with. We're going to not do any analysis,
20:17
Speaker 1: so that we're just going to move on as soon
20:19
Speaker 1: as Vance does that to Waltz, which seems to be
20:22
Speaker 1: inevitable at this point. Now, all of this is in
20:26
Speaker 1: the context of a major I guess you would call
20:29
Speaker 1: it media event that occurred this week, which was that
20:33
Speaker 1: Elon Musk hosted a conversation, if you will, with Donald Trump,
20:38
Speaker 1: and he did so via the Twitter or x spaces platform. Now,
20:44
Speaker 1: I will acknowledge as I start my analysis this that
20:48
Speaker 1: I have a bad case of PTSD from when Musk
20:54
Speaker 1: did basically this same thing to launch the Ron de
20:58
Speaker 1: Santis campaign, which was a complete and total disaster from
21:02
Speaker 1: a technological perspective and a political standpoint. And while it's
21:06
Speaker 1: not the reason why Ron Desandis was not the Republican
21:10
Speaker 1: presidential nominee, it was pretty clear right then to me
21:15
Speaker 1: that this wasn't gonna work, that you needed everything to
21:17
Speaker 1: go perfectly, and Musk fucked it up. Musk very casually
21:22
Speaker 1: allowed DeSantis to be put in a very very bad
21:26
Speaker 1: situation where his campaign launch literally didn't launch because there
21:31
Speaker 1: were so many technical problems. And I've never even understood
21:34
Speaker 1: what the great allure of it was to begin with,
21:37
Speaker 1: when it's just audio, it's not even video. We're living
21:40
Speaker 1: in a video age. The audio wasn't even any good,
21:44
Speaker 1: and it didn't start on time. And we had a
21:46
Speaker 1: repeat of that history when it came to the much
21:50
Speaker 1: anticipated Musk Trump conversation. There was a delay. There was
21:56
Speaker 1: apparently an attack, a DOS attack which I experience many
22:01
Speaker 1: years ago related to the whole Penn State Joe Paterna
22:04
Speaker 1: Jerry Sandusky situation, just after my first Today's Show appearance.
22:08
Speaker 1: That was horrendous. It's one of the great mysteries of
22:11
Speaker 1: my involved in that case is to Okay, who the
22:14
Speaker 1: hell was behind that? How did they time it so well?
22:17
Speaker 1: You know, my webmaster said it was one of the
22:19
Speaker 1: worst attacks you'd ever seen. I don't have any proof
22:23
Speaker 1: that that's what happened with Twitter or ex but that's
22:26
Speaker 1: what Musk claimed was part of the problem. I'd love
22:30
Speaker 1: to know who was behind that. I'd love for Musk
22:32
Speaker 1: to be able to identify and let everyone know who
22:37
Speaker 1: was behind that, because that would be very interesting information,
22:40
Speaker 1: assuming it's actually true. But regardless of why, there were
22:44
Speaker 1: obviously very significant technical problems the audio sounded like crap.
22:51
Speaker 1: It was delayed. You couldn't get onto it for quite
22:54
Speaker 1: a while. I have not listened to the whole thing.
22:58
Speaker 1: I listened to parts of it and highlights of it.
23:03
Speaker 1: To me, I don't understand what the big deal was,
23:06
Speaker 1: other than the fact that, in theory, you're reaching a
23:11
Speaker 1: very very large audience of people that might not all
23:15
Speaker 1: be within the Trump cult. Now, it's impossible to know that.
23:19
Speaker 1: It's also impossible to know how many people actually listen
23:22
Speaker 1: to this thing, because the way Twitter X does their
23:26
Speaker 1: their numbers, to me, it's very deceiving. You know, impressions
23:32
Speaker 1: basically means nothing. But it's clear that millions of people
23:37
Speaker 1: listen to at least portions of this Musk and Trump conversation.
23:42
Speaker 1: How many millions? Who knows? I'm willing to say it's
23:45
Speaker 1: probably tens of millions listened to at least parts of it,
23:49
Speaker 1: which would dwarf a normal television audience for an interview
23:56
Speaker 1: in almost every case in the modern era. But what
24:00
Speaker 1: actors that have and who are these people?
24:02
Speaker 3: Now?
24:02
Speaker 1: Musk release some demographic information and indicated that the average
24:06
Speaker 1: listener was much younger and much more female than you
24:10
Speaker 1: might expect. And certainly much younger than you would get
24:13
Speaker 1: on cable news television or even legacy traditional mainstream news media.
24:20
Speaker 1: So you know, that's at least theoretically lausibly effective for
24:24
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, because that's a demographic that he is struggling
24:27
Speaker 1: with right now. That Kamala Harris is doing very very well.
24:30
Speaker 1: In fact, almost all of her momentum is with younger
24:34
Speaker 1: voters who were just obviously not energized at all by
24:38
Speaker 1: eighty one year old Joe Biden. But I am skeptical
24:42
Speaker 1: that this Musk Trump conversation really moved the needle very much.
24:48
Speaker 1: It elicited an enormous amount of negative media coverage. I mean,
24:53
Speaker 1: the media was obviously very very jealous, very concerned. They
24:58
Speaker 1: hate how huge Musk's audience is. It's especially since his
25:04
Speaker 1: audience generally dwarfs theirs, that he's the new power broker.
25:09
Speaker 1: They hate that he's now out as a conservative. He's
25:11
Speaker 1: a former liberal elite darling and now he's seen as
25:16
Speaker 1: a conservative figure helping Trump, and so they they did
25:20
Speaker 1: everything they could to try to diminish the Musk Trump conversation,
25:24
Speaker 1: and frankly, that's part of you know, the blame I
25:27
Speaker 1: put on Musk. When you know you got to target
25:30
Speaker 1: on your back, you shouldn't give them an easy narrative.
25:34
Speaker 1: And an easy narrative is there were technical problems with
25:37
Speaker 1: just this audio conversation, not even video. So wouldn't you
25:42
Speaker 1: make sure, like you should have done with Ron de Santis,
25:46
Speaker 1: that this wasn't a major problem. I mean, my god,
25:49
Speaker 1: he's the richest man in the world. You think he'd
25:51
Speaker 1: be able to put on a goddamn audio conversation on
25:56
Speaker 1: Twitter between him and Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee.
26:02
Speaker 1: But he was not able to do that, and that
26:03
Speaker 1: handed a weapon to the news media. They took advantage
26:06
Speaker 1: of it. So almost all of the media coverage of
26:08
Speaker 1: this was very negative. They touted the technical problems, and
26:13
Speaker 1: understandably so, but it wasn't just the liberal mainstream news
26:17
Speaker 1: media that had negative things to say about this. Megan Kelly,
26:21
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, described Trump as boring and rambling during this
26:28
Speaker 1: conversation with Elon Musk, and even indicated that that his
26:33
Speaker 1: boringness and rambling may have been because of his advanced age. Now,
26:38
Speaker 1: this is a woman who had literally put out love
26:42
Speaker 1: letters to Donald Trump during the primary season, which we
26:46
Speaker 1: documented here on this podcast, and who unfortunately has gone
26:50
Speaker 1: back and forth on Donald Trump many many times over
26:53
Speaker 1: the years, but knows where her bread is buttered, and
26:56
Speaker 1: when it came down to it, was very supportive of
26:59
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. I don't know what to make of the
27:01
Speaker 1: fact that she was not very supportive of this particular interview.
27:06
Speaker 1: There is some context to that. But I am starting
27:09
Speaker 1: to potentially see where major conservative media members are starting
27:15
Speaker 1: to look down the road and go, you know what,
27:17
Speaker 1: maybe eight years of Kamal Harris won't be too bad
27:20
Speaker 1: for us economically, gives us lots of content, lots of
27:24
Speaker 1: things to bitch and moan about. The Obama years were
27:27
Speaker 1: very very good for us economically. Maybe we can have
27:30
Speaker 1: a repeat of the Obama years, only with someone who's
27:34
Speaker 1: even easier to attack because she's not nearly as smart
27:37
Speaker 1: as Barack Obama was and certainly not nearly as good
27:40
Speaker 1: as speaker as Barack Obama was. But it was interesting
27:44
Speaker 1: to point out that Megan Kelly had some criticisms of
27:47
Speaker 1: Trump during his conversation with Elon Musk. And I don't
27:50
Speaker 1: want to crap all over it. I mean, look, must
27:55
Speaker 1: brings a huge audience, not all of it it's in America,
27:59
Speaker 1: and so that's important thing to point out. But I'm
28:03
Speaker 1: just I'm just not enamored with the technological aspect of this.
28:06
Speaker 1: I mean, to me, the audio again, the audio sucked.
28:09
Speaker 1: It's not video. You weren't able to get it up
28:12
Speaker 1: on time. They are all sorts of technical snapfoos. Maybe
28:15
Speaker 1: they weren't your fault, but this shouldn't be that difficult.
28:19
Speaker 1: And the fact that this happened with Ron DeSantis and
28:22
Speaker 1: now happens again with Donald Trump, that's particularly frustrating. But
28:26
Speaker 1: maybe the most remarkable and noteworthy thing that happened with
28:32
Speaker 1: regard to the entire Musk Trump conversation was the media
28:37
Speaker 1: reaction to it before it even happened, and that was
28:43
Speaker 1: most dramatically displayed by a Washington Post White House reporter
28:48
Speaker 1: by the name of Cleeve Woodson, Wootson, Cleve Woodson. And this,
28:53
Speaker 1: you can't make this up. This is the stuff of parody.
28:57
Speaker 1: This is Cleeve Woodson basically pleading to the White House
29:02
Speaker 1: Press Secretary Kareem Jean Pierre, pleading with her, essentially for
29:08
Speaker 1: the White House to do something to shut down the
29:12
Speaker 1: disinformation or the misinformation that is sure to come from
29:17
Speaker 1: the Elon Musk Donald Trump conversation. Again, I want to
29:23
Speaker 1: just make sure the context is clear. This is a
29:26
Speaker 1: White House reporter pleading to the White House Press Secretary
29:32
Speaker 1: to stop or to do something about a conversation, an
29:38
Speaker 1: audio conversation between the richest man in the world and
29:41
Speaker 1: the Republican presidential nominee. I mean, this is unfathomable just
29:46
Speaker 1: a few years ago, but this actually happened. And here's
29:50
Speaker 1: what that sounded like.
29:52
Speaker 4: Elon Musk is slated to interview Donald Trump tomorrow tonight
29:56
Speaker 4: on X. I don't know if the President is going
29:59
Speaker 4: today to say if he is or not, but I
30:03
Speaker 4: think that misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign issue.
30:09
Speaker 1: It's a you know, it's.
30:10
Speaker 4: An America issue. What role does the White House or
30:15
Speaker 4: the President have in sort of stopping that, or stopping
30:18
Speaker 4: the spread of that, or sort of intervening in that.
30:22
Speaker 4: Some of that was about campaign misinformation, but you know
30:25
Speaker 4: it's a wider thing.
30:26
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah.
30:26
Speaker 5: No, And you've heard us talk about this many times
30:29
Speaker 5: from here about the responsibilities that social media platforms have
30:34
Speaker 5: when it comes to misinformation disinformation. Don't have anything to
30:38
Speaker 5: read out from here about specific ways that we're working
30:42
Speaker 5: on it, but we believe that that they have the responsibility. Uh,
30:45
Speaker 5: these are private companies, so we're also mindful of that too,
30:49
Speaker 5: But look, it is I think it is incredibly important
30:55
Speaker 5: to call that out as you're you're doing. I just
30:57
Speaker 5: don't have any specifics on what we've been doing internally
31:01
Speaker 5: as it relates to the interviews, and that's something that
31:04
Speaker 5: I'm tracking and I'm sure the President's not tracking it either.
31:06
Speaker 1: Now. Maybe the most amazing part of that very depressing
31:12
Speaker 1: clip was the fact that Karine Jean Pierre turns into
31:17
Speaker 1: the voice of reason. She's the voice of reason. She's
31:21
Speaker 1: the one that actually to somewhat push back and go, well,
31:26
Speaker 1: you know, your point is well taken, but it is
31:29
Speaker 1: a private company and it's really not our role to
31:34
Speaker 1: actually be doing something about this, but we appreciate your sentiment.
31:38
Speaker 1: That's my paraphrase of Karine Jean Pierre's reaction to this.
31:43
Speaker 1: So when Karine Jean Pierre is the voice of reason,
31:46
Speaker 1: you know you've lost the plot. And Ben Shapiro, among
31:52
Speaker 1: many other people who commented on this, I thought made
31:54
Speaker 1: a really good point and it sounds pretty obvious, but
31:59
Speaker 1: I feel like it was worthy of me sharing with
32:03
Speaker 1: you on this podcast, because you know, the initial reaction,
32:07
Speaker 1: the natural reaction, the knee jerk reaction to a Washington
32:10
Speaker 1: Post reporter saying this to the Press secretary would be
32:14
Speaker 1: don't these reporters believe in free speech? Don't they understand
32:21
Speaker 1: how integral that is to their own jobs and their
32:24
Speaker 1: own existence. Don't they get it? And Shapiro's point on
32:29
Speaker 1: Twitter was, that's really not it. They believe in free speech,
32:36
Speaker 1: but only for themselves. See, they're confident that their free
32:41
Speaker 1: speech is never by the way they shouldn't be. That's
32:44
Speaker 1: a problem right there. It's kind of naive and delusional.
32:47
Speaker 1: But in their minds, their free speech is not going
32:51
Speaker 1: to be curtailed. They don't have to worry about it.
32:55
Speaker 1: So they don't care about your free speech or my
32:59
Speaker 1: free speech each or Elon Musk's free speech, or Donald
33:02
Speaker 1: Trump's or people that they disagree with. They only care
33:06
Speaker 1: about the fact that they have free speech, and so
33:11
Speaker 1: they don't even look at it the way that you
33:14
Speaker 1: may look at it, or that I may look at
33:16
Speaker 1: it and go, wait a minute, we're all in the
33:18
Speaker 1: same boat here. How do you not see that your
33:22
Speaker 1: literal business depends on protecting free speech because they're that naive,
33:29
Speaker 1: that delusional, that narcissistic, and that this is my interpretation
33:34
Speaker 1: of what Ben Shapiro said, They don't even look at
33:38
Speaker 1: it that way. They just think they're the only ones
33:43
Speaker 1: that should have free speech. And because Elon Musk is
33:47
Speaker 1: not technically quote unquote a journalist, whatever the hell that
33:51
Speaker 1: means in twenty twenty four, that therefore somehow he doesn't
33:54
Speaker 1: have the right to have a conversation with Donald Trump
33:58
Speaker 1: on his own platform that he owns. And let's be clear,
34:02
Speaker 1: the only reason why the news media was very, very
34:05
Speaker 1: concerned about this is because of the fact that they
34:08
Speaker 1: know Musk has a huge reach and he still has
34:11
Speaker 1: at least a little bit of lingering liberal elitism that
34:17
Speaker 1: is attached to him because he owns Tesla, and so
34:21
Speaker 1: he's not, you know, one hundred percent perceived as a
34:24
Speaker 1: complete right winger or maga guy. And so therefore they
34:29
Speaker 1: see this as a threat, a threat to their former
34:32
Speaker 1: monopoly when it comes to the media news media, and
34:36
Speaker 1: also a theoretical threat politically, because if this had gone really,
34:40
Speaker 1: really well, maybe it would have energized a portion of
34:45
Speaker 1: a Trump electorate that doesn't currently exist. Now, there's no
34:49
Speaker 1: evidence that that's what ended up happening, but that's what
34:51
Speaker 1: the news media was afraid of, and that's why they
34:55
Speaker 1: freaked out about this so much. And it's really amazing
35:01
Speaker 1: when you consider what the Trump team gets destroyed for
35:05
Speaker 1: attempting to do a basic conversation with Elon Musk, and
35:10
Speaker 1: yet the Harris team simultaneously is involved in manipulating Google results,
35:18
Speaker 1: not just the Google results, but manipulating news media reports
35:24
Speaker 1: via Google to make it look even more positive towards
35:28
Speaker 1: them than reality, claiming that this was okay because it
35:35
Speaker 1: was it was identified as an AD, and that therefore
35:39
Speaker 1: people would understand that this was an AD, as if
35:42
Speaker 1: lying and manipulating makes it okay if you identify it
35:47
Speaker 1: as an AD. Google has sense claimed that this was
35:50
Speaker 1: some sort of a glitch. I'm not really buying that,
35:53
Speaker 1: because why did it just happen to conform exactly to
35:57
Speaker 1: what the Harris campaign would have wanted it to be.
36:01
Speaker 1: But we're living in just a bizarrow alice in wonderland
36:05
Speaker 1: world where Musk and Trump have a conversation and it's
36:10
Speaker 1: nearly the end of the world. Meanwhile, Axios reports that
36:15
Speaker 1: the Harris campaign is manipulating Google results, and the reporter
36:20
Speaker 1: who broke the story basically crapped on her own story
36:25
Speaker 1: because liberals freaked out about it and said, it really
36:28
Speaker 1: wasn't that big of a deal. You just can't make
36:32
Speaker 1: this shit up anymore. And you know, I don't think
36:36
Speaker 1: it was directly related, although maybe indirectly it was to
36:40
Speaker 1: the juxtaposition between the reaction to the Musk Trump conversation
36:46
Speaker 1: and what happened with the Harris campaign manipulating Google results.
36:50
Speaker 1: But Musk shared, I don't know if you would call
36:53
Speaker 1: this a meme or and I don't think he wrote this,
36:56
Speaker 1: but he he, I'll call it a meme. Sar something
37:01
Speaker 1: on social media that I found to be very interesting
37:04
Speaker 1: and very appropriate and something that I've talked previously about
37:09
Speaker 1: when it came to the COVID panic. One of the
37:12
Speaker 1: things that really many many things that really stunned me
37:15
Speaker 1: and perplexed me about the lack of any backlash to
37:20
Speaker 1: the COVID panic was I thought about all of the
37:25
Speaker 1: movies over the years that have had within them the
37:29
Speaker 1: theme or a theme that was very consistent with the
37:34
Speaker 1: idea of going up against the man. I mean, basically
37:37
Speaker 1: every teenage movie that was ever popular had as its
37:40
Speaker 1: theme going up against the man, fighting authority, not accepting
37:45
Speaker 1: what you're being told on face value, questioning things, and
37:50
Speaker 1: there's so many different examples of this. Well. Similarly, Musk
37:56
Speaker 1: was asking via Twitter for people to think about me movies,
38:00
Speaker 1: and he wasn't thinking about necessarily teenage movies, although a
38:04
Speaker 1: couple of these might be characterized characterized as teenage movies.
38:07
Speaker 1: But he went in a slightly different direction with this,
38:11
Speaker 1: and I think it was much more along the lines
38:13
Speaker 1: of what's happening with regard to the George Orwell like
38:17
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, like meady environment, where we're just not
38:23
Speaker 1: fully understanding what's happening to us, where we're living through
38:28
Speaker 1: what seems to be nineteen eighty four, the book, the
38:31
Speaker 1: George Orwell Book, which was obviously very much in play
38:35
Speaker 1: during the whole COVID panic. And so here's what Musk
38:39
Speaker 1: shared on Twitter. Are now known as X. You watched
38:44
Speaker 1: The Hunger Games and sided with the Resistance. You watched
38:48
Speaker 1: Star Wars and sided with the Resistance. You watched The
38:53
Speaker 1: Matrix and sided with the Resistance. You watched Divergen, which
38:59
Speaker 1: I'm not even familiar with, but I'll take his word
39:02
Speaker 1: for it and sided with the resistance. You watched V
39:06
Speaker 1: for Vendetta and sided with the resistance. By the way,
39:10
Speaker 1: V for Vendetta was a movie that I thought was
39:11
Speaker 1: going to become much more popular during the COVID panic
39:15
Speaker 1: as a symbol of the resistance, but it never really did.
39:19
Speaker 1: And then finally, when it's fiction, you understand, yet you
39:24
Speaker 1: refuse to see it when it's the reality you're living
39:28
Speaker 1: in wild And again, that's from Elon Musk's Twitter feed.
39:33
Speaker 1: I don't know who actually wrote that, but I think
39:36
Speaker 1: that that's incredibly appropriate, appropriate, and it really does raise
39:41
Speaker 1: a very disturbing and perplexing question, which is why are
39:47
Speaker 1: more people not getting what's happening here? We're seeing the
39:51
Speaker 1: same themes over and over again. And the most important
39:54
Speaker 1: part of this part of the equation is we are
39:57
Speaker 1: losing our free speech rights on almost daily basis. We've
40:01
Speaker 1: seen what happened in England. My god, people are threatening
40:05
Speaker 1: putting Elon Muskin jail, partially over allowing Donald Trump to speak,
40:10
Speaker 1: but also you know, alleging that he must get facilitated
40:15
Speaker 1: right wing protests and riots, and they're just changing all
40:19
Speaker 1: the rules trying to intimidate him. Thankfully, Musk has so
40:23
Speaker 1: far not been intimidated. We're just losing so many of
40:28
Speaker 1: our Western principles, free speech foremost among them. And it
40:33
Speaker 1: is really scary stuff. And it you know, I say
40:37
Speaker 1: all the time, as someone who is clearly an ardent
40:40
Speaker 1: media critic, I don't want the media to collapse. I
40:44
Speaker 1: don't want the traditional legacy media to be completely gone,
40:51
Speaker 1: because there's important roles to be played, and one of
40:53
Speaker 1: them is to vet our presidential and vice presidential candidates.
40:58
Speaker 1: And they're not just right now, they're not even trying,
41:04
Speaker 1: and they're going along with these new rules that they
41:07
Speaker 1: don't even seem to understand are going to be the
41:10
Speaker 1: death to them, whether it's free speech or whether it's
41:15
Speaker 1: you don't really have to speak to the press, you
41:17
Speaker 1: don't have to do interviews, you don't have to do
41:18
Speaker 1: press conferences. They're creating their own path to death, their
41:26
Speaker 1: own path to total irrelevance and powerlessness, and they don't
41:31
Speaker 1: even seem to understand or don't seem to care, which
41:34
Speaker 1: is really quite remarkable. Now. One of the things that
41:39
Speaker 1: I've been talking about recently when it comes to not
41:41
Speaker 1: doing interviews is how the hell can President Joe Biden
41:46
Speaker 1: make maybe the biggest decision in the modern history of
41:50
Speaker 1: politics to suddenly drop out of the presidential race just
41:55
Speaker 1: after the Republican Convention and not do an interview about it,
42:01
Speaker 1: just write a letter to a short, canned teleprompter speech
42:07
Speaker 1: that didn't address any of the questions at all, didn't
42:09
Speaker 1: answer anything that people wanted to know about this decision,
42:14
Speaker 1: and you just hand your nomination without even an open process,
42:18
Speaker 1: no open convention, to somebody else, and you're not gonna
42:23
Speaker 1: talk about it. You're not going to answer any questions
42:25
Speaker 1: about it. Well, Joe Biden finally did, and I did
42:28
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about this in the last episode
42:30
Speaker 1: of the podcast, but at that time only one clip
42:33
Speaker 1: had leaked out about what Biden had said, and it
42:36
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with any of the major issues
42:39
Speaker 1: that people were interested in, related to the attempted coup
42:43
Speaker 1: and how it is that he withdrew from the rais
42:45
Speaker 1: and how it is that Kamala Harris ended up with
42:47
Speaker 1: the nomination. Well, now that interview has been released, it
42:51
Speaker 1: was just as bad as I predicted that it would be.
42:55
Speaker 1: It was done by Robert Costa of CBS he did
42:59
Speaker 1: a terrible job. Terrible job. He allowed Biden, among other things,
43:04
Speaker 1: to lie once again about the Charlottesville situation and what
43:08
Speaker 1: Trump allegedly said with very fine people, which is a
43:11
Speaker 1: complete fabrication. I think just as offensively, he allowed Biden
43:16
Speaker 1: to claim once again that Trump has promised bloodshed if
43:22
Speaker 1: he loses the election. That's not what he said. That
43:25
Speaker 1: was regarding what would happen to the auto industry if
43:28
Speaker 1: he lost the election. But there was one clip that
43:33
Speaker 1: was related wasn't even that long related to the whole
43:37
Speaker 1: reason why Biden was doing the interview to begin with,
43:41
Speaker 1: And that's the issue of Okay, what the hell happened?
43:45
Speaker 1: Why did you decide to withdraw from the race? And
43:49
Speaker 1: in the clip, effectively, Joe Biden admits that there was
43:54
Speaker 1: a coup, a coup led by, among others, Nancy Pelosi.
44:00
Speaker 1: Now he doesn't really answer a lot of the questions
44:03
Speaker 1: I would have had, like, for instance, what the hell
44:06
Speaker 1: happened to the standard that the Lord Almighty would have
44:10
Speaker 1: to tell you to get out of the race. What
44:12
Speaker 1: happened to that? Boy? I would have loved to have
44:16
Speaker 1: also asked, okay, so when George Stephanopolis said to you,
44:21
Speaker 1: are you sure that there's not going to be a
44:23
Speaker 1: coup among congressional leaders? And you said, that's not going
44:27
Speaker 1: to happen, or actually I guess it was a reverse
44:29
Speaker 1: of that. He says that's not going to happen, and
44:31
Speaker 1: he said to you, are you sure? And you reiterated
44:35
Speaker 1: you didn't think it was going to happen, and then
44:37
Speaker 1: it did happen. Have you thought back to that moment
44:39
Speaker 1: or can you even remember that moment based upon your
44:42
Speaker 1: eighty one year old declining memory. But there are all
44:46
Speaker 1: sorts of questions I would have loved to have asked
44:49
Speaker 1: about how this all went down. Robert Costa didn't follow
44:53
Speaker 1: up properly on any of this. But for the record,
44:56
Speaker 1: here is the current president of the United States, by way,
45:00
Speaker 1: no pressure at all about why he's still president, no
45:05
Speaker 1: concern at all that for five or six months he's
45:08
Speaker 1: going to be running the country even though he's not
45:11
Speaker 1: capable of running for reelection. Biden lies about the state
45:16
Speaker 1: of the race when he decided to drop out. But
45:19
Speaker 1: the key part here is he does acknowledge, reading between
45:22
Speaker 1: the lines, that there was a democratic coup. And here's
45:26
Speaker 1: what all that sounded like.
45:28
Speaker 2: We're living through history.
45:29
Speaker 1: We really are.
45:31
Speaker 2: Let's begin with your decision. You're at your home Rohobeth Beach, Delaware,
45:37
Speaker 2: late July with your family, and you make this historic decision.
45:43
Speaker 1: Tell me the story.
45:45
Speaker 6: Look of fourth We had showed that it was neck
45:49
Speaker 6: and neck race would have been down to the wire.
45:52
Speaker 6: But what happened was a number of my Democratic colleagues
45:57
Speaker 6: in the House of Senates thought that I was going
46:00
Speaker 6: to hurt them and the races, and I was concerned
46:03
Speaker 6: if I stayed in the race, that would be the
46:07
Speaker 6: topic you being interviewing about why did Nancy Pelosi say?
46:11
Speaker 6: Why did so? And I thought it'd be a real distraction.
46:15
Speaker 6: Number one. Number two. When I ran the first time,
46:19
Speaker 6: I thought of myself as being a transition president. I
46:22
Speaker 6: can't even say how old I am. It's hard for
46:24
Speaker 6: me to get out of my mouth. But things got
46:29
Speaker 6: moving so quickly it didn't happen. And the combination was
46:34
Speaker 6: that I thought is a critical issue for me. Still
46:37
Speaker 6: is not a joke, maintaining this democracy. But I thought
46:42
Speaker 6: it was important because although I was a great honor
46:45
Speaker 6: being president, I think I'm an obligation to the country
46:49
Speaker 6: to do what I the most important thing to can do,
46:52
Speaker 6: and that is we must, we must, we must defeat them.
46:55
Speaker 1: To me, this is one of the many prices we
46:58
Speaker 1: pay for the death of journalism because Robert Costa was
47:02
Speaker 1: not capable of doing a proper interview here. And this
47:06
Speaker 1: is an important part of history. I mean, that's how
47:09
Speaker 1: they started that portion of the interview. We're living through
47:13
Speaker 1: history here, yet we're not getting to the truth of
47:16
Speaker 1: history because we don't even have somebody who can ask
47:19
Speaker 1: basic follow up questions that are incredibly obvious to try
47:25
Speaker 1: to figure out, okay, what really happened here. And one
47:30
Speaker 1: of the many problems is that Biden is allowed to
47:32
Speaker 1: create a false history, a false narrative that he was
47:36
Speaker 1: tied and he might have ended up winning, we just
47:39
Speaker 1: don't know, but he didn't want to be a distraction.
47:43
Speaker 1: That's false. Biden was going to lose. We now know
47:49
Speaker 1: that more certainly than we did at the time because
47:52
Speaker 1: of the Harris polling surge. So it's now very very
47:56
Speaker 1: clear in retrospect that there's a there was a huge
48:00
Speaker 1: portion of the electorate that was willing to vote for
48:03
Speaker 1: the Democratic presidential nominee but was never going to vote
48:07
Speaker 1: for Joe Biden because they did not think he was
48:09
Speaker 1: physically capable of serving for another four years. So Biden
48:16
Speaker 1: was going to be a certain loser. Pelosi and others
48:20
Speaker 1: figured that out, and they sabotaged Biden, and they did
48:25
Speaker 1: so systematically and consistently over a three week period of time. Now,
48:30
Speaker 1: it is my belief that if Trump doesn't get shot
48:35
Speaker 1: and survive in dramatic fashion, and if Biden doesn't then
48:39
Speaker 1: immediately get COVID in a situation that apparently was far
48:42
Speaker 1: more serious than first thought, based upon some recordings that
48:47
Speaker 1: have been released from Las Vegas, where there was obviously
48:51
Speaker 1: some sort of a medical emergency involving Biden in this
48:53
Speaker 1: exact timeframe. And of course we don't know because Costa
48:58
Speaker 1: didn't ask any of these questions. But to me, the
49:01
Speaker 1: Trump assassination aftermath and the COVID circumstance is what sent
49:06
Speaker 1: this over the edge. That without those two things happening
49:10
Speaker 1: when they did, I don't think Biden never gets out
49:13
Speaker 1: of the race, and I think he's almost certainly the
49:17
Speaker 1: loser to Donald Trump. But from a political standpoint, one
49:22
Speaker 1: of the most frustrating aspects of this whole thing is
49:24
Speaker 1: we can't get any real answers out of Biden, even
49:28
Speaker 1: when he admits effectively to a coup led by Nancy Pelosi.
49:33
Speaker 1: And we also can't get any answers from Nancy Pelosi,
49:36
Speaker 1: even though Nancy Pelosi has been doing all sorts of interviews.
49:40
Speaker 1: I think she's promoting some sort of a book, so
49:43
Speaker 1: she's had to make herself vulnerable to questions. A few
49:46
Speaker 1: people have tried to nail her down on this. This
49:50
Speaker 1: clip here is it's a montage of responses that Pelosi
49:58
Speaker 1: gave to Leslie's Star from sixty minutes and CBS, and
50:04
Speaker 1: once again, Pelosi is never forced to actually answer to
50:08
Speaker 1: what she did. She continues to promote this narrative of
50:12
Speaker 1: she was just giving the president the option to come
50:16
Speaker 1: up with the right decision, which was we're just going
50:20
Speaker 1: to keep asking you for a decision until you finally
50:22
Speaker 1: realize what the right one is, which is to get
50:25
Speaker 1: out of the race. And so there's no accountability, there's
50:29
Speaker 1: no certainty about what actually transpired here, and consequently, there's
50:33
Speaker 1: no price to pay at all for the Democratic Party
50:37
Speaker 1: and how they were able to slip out of this
50:39
Speaker 1: news particley because Trump blew it at his own GOP convention.
50:43
Speaker 1: But here was about a week old clip now of
50:46
Speaker 1: Leslie Stall and Nancy Pelosi, and Pelosi being allowed to
50:50
Speaker 1: get away with this BS narrative with no accountability for
50:54
Speaker 1: what actually happened here.
50:56
Speaker 7: Please tell us what you told President Biden to persuade
51:01
Speaker 7: him to step aside.
51:03
Speaker 8: Well, I've never come I've never shared any conversations with
51:06
Speaker 8: the President of the United States publicly.
51:09
Speaker 7: No, it's said that he's furious at you, is he?
51:14
Speaker 8: Well, he knows that I love him very much.
51:16
Speaker 7: I understand that you don't want to own this, but
51:21
Speaker 7: it is so well reported that you were the leader
51:25
Speaker 7: of a pressure campaign.
51:27
Speaker 8: No, I wasn't a leader of any prescious party. Well,
51:29
Speaker 8: let me say things that I didn't do. I didn't
51:32
Speaker 8: call one person. I did not call one person I
51:35
Speaker 8: could always say to him. I never called anybody. What
51:39
Speaker 8: I'm saying is I had confidence that the president would
51:42
Speaker 8: make the proper choice for our country, whatever that would be,
51:46
Speaker 8: And I said that whatever that is will go with.
51:49
Speaker 7: Had you seen a decline in Joe Biden and did
51:54
Speaker 7: you think he needed to step aside?
52:01
Speaker 8: My whole point was, whatever he decides, but we have
52:05
Speaker 8: to have a more aggressive campaign.
52:09
Speaker 1: So I guess that's how we're gonna leave it, folks,
52:11
Speaker 1: biggest political development in modern American history, and we're never
52:16
Speaker 1: really gonna know what happened. This just all magically happened.
52:20
Speaker 1: Nobody really facilitated it. There's really no accountability. We're gonna
52:25
Speaker 1: pretend Biden might have won anyway. And now, by the way,
52:28
Speaker 1: we're gonna kiss Biden's ass for forever so that he
52:33
Speaker 1: doesn't feel badly about this, and really importantly, he doesn't
52:38
Speaker 1: make some sort of rogue comment going forward that you know,
52:43
Speaker 1: he was forced out, so they got to kiss his
52:46
Speaker 1: ass constantly. My god, the ass kissing you're going to
52:50
Speaker 1: see next week at the Democratic Convention when Joe Biden
52:53
Speaker 1: speaks is going to be off the charts. The news media,
52:57
Speaker 1: Democratic leaders. He's going to be hailed as a tremendous hero.
53:02
Speaker 1: They're going to constantly stroke his ego to make sure
53:07
Speaker 1: he does not go rogue. The most rogue we're going
53:10
Speaker 1: to see from him is him acknowledging that Nancy Pelosi
53:14
Speaker 1: basically pushed him out in that interview, and that's going
53:17
Speaker 1: to be it, And you know, they're gonna hope that
53:20
Speaker 1: he just forgets about it. And one of the things
53:22
Speaker 1: that's been most disturbing to me as someone who doesn't
53:26
Speaker 1: want Harris to be president and I guess effectively is
53:29
Speaker 1: forced to root for Donald Trump to win in this election,
53:33
Speaker 1: is seeing Donald Trump on social media and at his rallies.
53:38
Speaker 3: Delusionally, delusionally fantasizing that at the Democratic Convention, Joe Biden's
53:46
Speaker 3: going to try to get his nomination back, and.
53:49
Speaker 1: Trump seems to be serious about this, which is so
53:53
Speaker 1: out of touch, so dangerously out of touch, that to me,
53:57
Speaker 1: it indicates that Trump is not up to this challenge.
54:00
Speaker 1: Maybe nobody's going to be up to this challenge because
54:03
Speaker 1: of the rules that are being set and the media
54:08
Speaker 1: title wave behind Kamala Harris. But I have no confidence
54:12
Speaker 1: that either Trump or his team are up to this challenge,
54:16
Speaker 1: especially when Trump appears to really believe that Biden might
54:21
Speaker 1: try to get his nomination back at the convention. I mean,
54:24
Speaker 1: there is literally zero chance of that happening, and zero
54:29
Speaker 1: chance that Biden could pull it off if he wanted
54:31
Speaker 1: it to happen. Zero. The Democratic Party has moved on,
54:36
Speaker 1: especially since they're seeing these very positive poll numbers for
54:40
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris and so as somebody who thinks that history
54:46
Speaker 1: is important and likes to figure out what the hell
54:49
Speaker 1: actually happened. This is all very frustrating, very depressing, and
54:54
Speaker 1: so typical of our broken media age. Well, we're just
54:58
Speaker 1: never going to know exactly what really happened. Now, what
55:01
Speaker 1: I think is pretty obvious what happened is that the
55:05
Speaker 1: Democratic leadership made it clear that hey, look, we're not
55:11
Speaker 1: gonna fight for you if you're the nominee and you're
55:15
Speaker 1: going to lose. I mean, the way I the analogy
55:18
Speaker 1: I've said is that Biden was basically a pitcher in
55:20
Speaker 1: a baseball game who didn't want to be taken out.
55:24
Speaker 1: The manager came out and said give me the ball.
55:26
Speaker 1: He said, go pound sand. The manager went back into
55:30
Speaker 1: the dugout, you know, figured out, Okay, how what are
55:33
Speaker 1: we going to do here? We got a pitcher that
55:35
Speaker 1: can't win this game. Here's what we're gonna do. We're
55:38
Speaker 1: gonna order our outfielders to lay down on the field.
55:41
Speaker 1: Maybe the infielders too, but we're gonna start with the outfielders.
55:44
Speaker 1: They're just gonna lay down, and eventually the pitcher's going
55:47
Speaker 1: to realize he can't win the game with outfielders that
55:50
Speaker 1: are laying down on the field and clearly have decided
55:54
Speaker 1: that they're not going to play, so we're gonna take
55:57
Speaker 1: a dive. And it was basically a mutual destruction pack
56:04
Speaker 1: that I thought Biden was going to win because I
56:07
Speaker 1: thought Democrats would the Democratic elite would cry uncle first,
56:13
Speaker 1: and that's not what ended up happening. Biden cried uncle,
56:16
Speaker 1: and I think the reason why he cried uncle was
56:18
Speaker 1: partially because of the COVID situation, the medical emergency circumstance,
56:23
Speaker 1: and all this, of course happening in the aftermath of
56:26
Speaker 1: Trump heroically surviving an assassination attempt. Plus the old man
56:31
Speaker 1: just got tired, he got beaten down after three weeks
56:33
Speaker 1: and finally decided to give up the car keys. So
56:36
Speaker 1: that's basically what happened. But the fact that there's been
56:38
Speaker 1: no accountability, no one wants to take credit or blame
56:41
Speaker 1: for this is quite amazing but also very very typical
56:45
Speaker 1: of this broken media era in which we now live. Now,
56:50
Speaker 1: I do want to address one other thing, because I've
56:53
Speaker 1: been predicting this for quite a while with regard to
56:57
Speaker 1: Joe Biden and why it is that he he didn't
57:00
Speaker 1: get out immediately, and I referenced numerous times that part
57:04
Speaker 1: of the problem here is that Joe has to worry
57:08
Speaker 1: about Hunter Biden's pardon. And you know, he has said
57:13
Speaker 1: he's not gonna pardon Hunter Biden. But what about Kamala
57:17
Speaker 1: Harris pardoning Hunter Biden? Now, See, I don't buy we
57:22
Speaker 1: won't live in a world anymore where Biden saying through
57:26
Speaker 1: a spokesperson, through you know, Karen Jean Pierre, that he's
57:31
Speaker 1: not going to pardon Hunter Biden. That doesn't mean anything anymore.
57:36
Speaker 1: I mean, he used to mean something, but especially when
57:38
Speaker 1: it's not even out of your own mouth, that doesn't
57:41
Speaker 1: have any significance to me at all. See. I think
57:44
Speaker 1: that if Harris were to lose, I think there is
57:48
Speaker 1: an extremely good chance that Joe Biden would then pardon
57:53
Speaker 1: Hunter Biden. Between the election and his inauguration. What would
57:58
Speaker 1: he have to lose At that point, he was already
58:00
Speaker 1: humiliated into giving up his nomination. He's not obviously, he's
58:05
Speaker 1: eighty one years old. There's no next chapter of his life.
58:09
Speaker 1: He's been praised constantly because he got out of the race,
58:12
Speaker 1: and he gets to say, see, I told you so.
58:15
Speaker 1: The person you replaced me with didn't win either. Under
58:18
Speaker 1: that circumstance, he's gonna pardon Hunter Biden in my opinion.
58:22
Speaker 1: But should Harris win, which is looking increasingly likely, I
58:27
Speaker 1: think there's a very very good chance that Harris will
58:31
Speaker 1: pardon Hunter Biden. This is one of the many things
58:35
Speaker 1: that I think Trump should have made a bigger issue
58:37
Speaker 1: out of, and still should make an issue out of,
58:39
Speaker 1: if only to show what a hypocrite Harris is. Should
58:43
Speaker 1: she win, because I think starting off her presidency with
58:47
Speaker 1: a pardon of Hunter Biden would not be a very
58:50
Speaker 1: good look. But it's only going to be a not
58:53
Speaker 1: very good look if you force her into a situation
58:56
Speaker 1: where she's exposed as a liar. My guess is Harris
59:00
Speaker 1: is never gonna have to actually answer this question. And
59:05
Speaker 1: Kreem Jean Pierre was asked this question and she balked.
59:08
Speaker 1: She use the pitching analogy. She decided not to answer it,
59:13
Speaker 1: saying well, I don't speak for the Harris campaign. You'll
59:15
Speaker 1: have to ask them. We have no information on what
59:17
Speaker 1: Harris would do, basically is what I'm paraphrasing. But there
59:21
Speaker 1: was a non answer. There was a non answer, So
59:25
Speaker 1: I think that we're still looking very much at a
59:28
Speaker 1: situation where if Harris loses, Biden pardons Hunter Biden and
59:34
Speaker 1: just takes it on the chin for his son with
59:37
Speaker 1: nothing really to lose as he goes out of office.
59:40
Speaker 1: And if Harris wins, I think Harris should at the
59:43
Speaker 1: very least be forced to be exposed as a liar
59:47
Speaker 1: and a hypocrite if she pardons Hunter Biden, which, by
59:51
Speaker 1: the way, you know, Biden could do it himself regardless
59:54
Speaker 1: of whether not Harris wins. It just it's you know,
59:57
Speaker 1: makes it a lot easier for him to make that
1:00:01
Speaker 1: decision on his own if he knows Trump's going to
1:00:03
Speaker 1: be the next president as opposed to Harris. If Harris
1:00:06
Speaker 1: is the next president, then it looks like it's a
1:00:08
Speaker 1: quid pro quo, which it probably was. But my primary
1:00:12
Speaker 1: point here is Harris should be nailed down on whether
1:00:15
Speaker 1: or not that's something she would do, so that if
1:00:18
Speaker 1: in fact she ends up doing it, at least there's
1:00:20
Speaker 1: some semblance of a price to be paid for that.
1:00:23
Speaker 1: But so far, the Trump team has been terrible at
1:00:26
Speaker 1: forcing circumstances where either Biden or especially Harris are forced
1:00:32
Speaker 1: to pay any price for how this all goes down.
1:00:36
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