Latest / The Death Of Journalism / Episode One Hundred Fifteen: One Minute and Thirty-Two Seconds

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Episode One Hundred Fifteen: One Minute and Thirty-Two Seconds · The Death Of Journalism

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Welcome to episode number one hundred and fifteen of the Death of Journalism podcast.
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My name is John Zigler. I'm your host on today's show. Mike Donald
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Trump have dodged a major legal bullet. The mainstream media finally turns a bit
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on the President of Harvard. The most popular news stories of twenty twenty three
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are very telling and I do an extensive interview with my eleven year old daughter
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and it may have backfired before it was even made public. I'm known as
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want to grow your business, Peter can help. That's the Dutch Digital Marketingman
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dot com. And Hey, thanks for sponsoring the show. I hope you
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had a merry Christmas and your New Year's Eve preparations are going well as we
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head into twenty twenty four. This is our last episode of twenty twenty three,
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and we begin with what may have been some very significant news on the
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presidential front that happened just before the Christmas holiday. And this gets a bit
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complicated, but the bottom line is, and I always am hesitant to trust
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the conventional wisdom, but the conventional wisdom now with regard to Donald Trump's legal
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situation heading into twenty twenty four, which will obviously be one of the major
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stories and narratives of the next year, is that it appears as if the
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trial that was supposed to go first, and the trial that really was potentially
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the most lethal to Donald Trump's president aspirations, that being the federal charges in
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Washington, DC related to the twenty twenty election, those being brought by Special
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Counsel Jack Smith, that they are probably not going to be brought to trial
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before the twenty twenty four election. And this all stems from the Supreme Court
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deciding not to take up Jack Smith's request for an expedited hearing on issues related
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to that trial. So basically, what's going to happen is and I've always
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thought that this was likely. I mean, these were talking about such complex
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cases and so many different issues, and high priced and high profiled lawyers,
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and obviously everyone with huge incentives depending on which side of the political venture on
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to either get these trials done or to not get these trials done. I
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mean, there's so many different factors. I just always felt like there was
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a very good chance that there was going to be a delay. And it
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appears again underline appears nothing's official yet that there's no way that they're going to
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be able to do the federal DC trial at least before Trump is the Republican
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presidential nominee, which I think is important. I think there is an almost
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fundamental difference between Donald Trump going on trial even if he's the presumptive nominee.
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I think there's a difference between that and being the actual Republican presidential nominee post
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convention, where it's clearly official and it's obvious to the average person that this
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is for all intents and purposes, election interference, where you're putting on the
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major candidate from the Republican Party and potentially even the leading candidate to be president
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depending on where the polls are at this time on trial that that's just not
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going to sit well with a significant portion of the American people, and it's
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also not going to sit well with potential jurors. I've said many times that
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Trump's chances of acquittal or a hung jury in any of these trials is much
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greater if he is at least the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, if not the
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official presidential nominee and or front runner. And it looks like these delays now,
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the inevitable delays, are going to cause the DC federal trial to be
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pushed back, probably until after the election. And the timing of all this
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has always been inherently suspect here. I am an ardent Trump critic, an
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anti Trump conservative from the beginning, and even I well, I accept that
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some of these allegations are legitimate and should be adjudicated. The timing of all
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this thinks to high heaven. I mean, this DC case should have been
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brought at the end of twenty twenty one. There's no really new evidence.
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There was no reason why that case couldn't have been brought least by early twenty
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twenty two. And so you know the fact that you bring it essentially in
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the new era, essentially in an election year, because we now do elections
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president basically for two years instead of one, which is ridiculous, but that's
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the reality in which we now live. So now this timing has backfired apparently
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on Jack Smith because he delayed too long, and now it does not look,
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at least based upon the conventional wisdom, that there will be a d
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C federal trial before the election. Now that really leaves one major hurdle for
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Trump to be able to get into that general election other than winning the nomination,
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which doesn't appear to be a hurdle at all apparently unfortunately, but one
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major hurdle legally, and that is the twenty twenty case in Georgia. And
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the twenty twenty case in Georgia I think is a much more manageable situation for
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Donald Trump. First of all, it's not a federal case. I think
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perception wise that's different. I think the fact that it's in Georgia, Yes,
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it's going to be a very democratic jury pool, but I think the
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Democrat in Georgia is going to be different than the Democrat in the jury pool
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in DC. Yes, demographically, there might be a very similar makeup,
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but I just think that there's a difference in the type of person who would
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be on that jury. I think you're also a little bit more likely to
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get a Trump supporter, even in a very heavily democratic area in Georgia.
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And I just don't think that from a perception standpoint, the local DA who
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happens to be obviously a very liberal Democrat, a black female, I just
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don't think it has the same impact politically, even if successful, And I
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think that there's less of a chance of success when it comes. If your
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perspective is wanting to get Trump convicted. I just want justice. But if
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you're looking at this from the standpoint of will Trump ever get convicted of a
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felony before the election, which from a polling standpoint is very very important to
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determining his chances, I think that right now it's you know, it's I
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don't know. I don't know what chances I would put on it, but
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it's not much more than fifty percent that Trump ever gets convicted, in my
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opinion, in that case before the general election is finished, before there's actually
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a presidential election. And part of that's because all he needs is one or
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two jurors to hang on and get a hung jury. So the bottom line
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of all this is, while it looks ominous, I mean, there's so
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many storm clouds on the horizon for Trump at twenty twenty four. When it
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comes to legal matters. The New York case is going nowhere. Everyone knows
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it's a joke. That was the first indictment. The Florida case does not
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appear to be imminent, and frankly that I am in the camp of people
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who believe that there's no chance that Trump ever gets convicted by a South Florida
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jury if he's the Republican presidential nominee in that particular case, even if the
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evidence against him is strong, although it's much more of a technical case than
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a situation where there appears to have been real damage done regarding the classified documents.
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So if you wipe those two off the table for twenty twenty four,
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and if Jack Smith really has been stymied by this maneuver to the US Supreme
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Court, all that's really left all the only hurdle really left when it comes
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to legalities, and the twenty twenty four presidential election appears to be the Georgia
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case and while you know legally there may be merit to it, I think
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there is some merit to it. I think it is far from a slam
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dunk, even if that case does go to trial before the twenty twenty four
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president election, that Trump is ever convicted in that case, and of course
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if he avoids conviction, that will be seen as a big victory for him.
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So I think by and large, here we have if you're a Trump
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fan, I don't know how many Trump fans we have to listening to this
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podcast, but based upon my interaction on social media, we appear to have
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at least a few. This has been good news. How good we don't
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know yet, but it's certainly better news than what was apparently the case just
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a few weeks ago, where it looked like, for sure, or at
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least seemingly for sure, that he was going to at least have to face
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a trial, a federal trial in DC with a very very bad jury pool,
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in a case where the evidence seems to be pretty strong on at least
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some of the indictment counts. Now, there's other legal matters involving Trump.
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There always are, at least somewhat related to the twenty twenty election, if
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not directly related. Obviously, there's the Colorado case with regard to ballot access,
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and it seems to me that it's overwhelming. Talk about the conventional wisdom.
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It is overwhelming. Now almost so overwhelming, I get a little bit
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nervous. I might be wrong. I'm always hesitant to go with an overwhelming
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conventional wisdom. But in this particular case, the conventional wisdom is that the
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US Supreme Court is going to overturn what happened in Colorado and that it will
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at least be a six to three case. It's my view that if it
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goes six to three, that the you know, it'll still be seen as
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a right wing decision, even though the emphasis should be on the three liberal
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justices that did not do the obviously right thing by going along with the conservatives
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and putting Trump back on the ballot in Colorado. There has been a similar
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case in Michigan where the Michigan Supreme Court declined to do what the Colorado Supreme
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Court did, and they rejected this entire effort to take Trump off of the
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primary ballot in Michigan, and of course here in California, where trying to
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outwhoke everybody, and our Lieutenant Governor hilariously urged the Secretary of State to do
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everything possible to keep Trump off the ballot. But she did so by citing
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rather absurdly and hilariously and to much mockery, the idea that in order to
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be eligible for the ballad, you can't be an insurrectionist, and you have
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to at least be forty years old. She was trying to make a joke
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that those are the two basic requirements, and that Trump doesn't pass one the
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first requirement, which is you're not an insurrectionist. Well, she got it
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wrong on what the Constitution says about the other requirement. You have to be
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thirty five years old, not forty years old. Interestingly, Gavin Newsom has
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come out against this idea, which is weird, although some people are suggesting
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this is more a sign of how buddy buddy Newsom and Trump are. I
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never know in this I am as buff baffled as anybody by the relationship between
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Trump and Newsom, especially given the fact that Newsom's ex wife is now Donald
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Trump's favorite son's fiance. I mean, it's absolutely bizarre. I mean,
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they took a Christmas photo the Trump family did. There was no Milania Trump,
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but Gavin Newsom's ex wife was in the photo, So there's It's a
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very complex and probably a story that will eventually be told someday as to what's
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really going on between Gavin Newsom and Donald Trump. My theory has always been
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that Trump views Newsom as part of his tribe because of the fact that he
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was once married to Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is the fiance of Donald Trump Junior.
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And who knows why Newsom has caught cozied up to Trump at times.
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I'm not sure on that, except for the fact that during COVID, Trump
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gave him everything that he wanted and enabled Newsom shutting down the entire country.
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I do think that COVID played in an enormous role in that relationship in both
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directions, and it's an untold story, and it's a tory that frankly,
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the De Santis campaign should have taken advantage of, but never did for reasons
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that I'll probably never understand. As far as Trump and Christmas goes, I
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mean, he's famous for holiday postings on social media that are beyond bizarre,
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but this year may have taken the cake. And there were multiple posts that
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Trump made on True Social on Christmas Day, and they were all unhinged.
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But I want to share just one of them with you, because this is
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a guy who has not changed at all. In fact, he is probably
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even less hinged than he has ever been before under the pressure of four criminal
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indictments, and who knows, maybe his wife leaving him or certainly not really
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being very close to him these days, and obviously getting older and being very
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frustrated and very eager to get back into power so he can do his retribution
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tour. But this is one of the posts that Trump made on True Social
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on Christmas Day. On Christmas Day, not making this up, folks,
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This is real Merry Christmas to all, including crooked Joe, Biden's only hope,
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deranged Jack Smith, the out of control lunatic who just hired outside attorneys
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fresh from the swamp, unprecedented to help him with his poorly executed witch hunt.
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All capital letters, so you know it's true against Trump and MAGA included.
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Also our world leaders, both good and bad, but none of which
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are as evil and sick as the thugs we have inside our country who with
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their open borders inflation, Afghanistan, surrender, green news scam, high taxes,
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no energy, independence, woke military, Russia, Ukraine, Israel,
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Iran, all electric cars, lunacy, and so much more are looking to
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destroy our once great USA. May they rot in hell? All capital letters
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again. Merry Christmas exclamation. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. That
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is Donald Trump with his Christmas message for twenty twenty three. And I mean,
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it's funny, but this is a situation that is eventually going to rear
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its head in the general election because right now, even the news media isn't
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playing paying full attention to every little thing that Trump does, but certainly most
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voters are not, especially not during Christmas. So Trump will get away with
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this kind of stuff. And it's all theoretical right now about him being able
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to be president for a second term on his retribution tour. I'm a believer
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that the polling that we currently see, and I'm the first to acknowledge that
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the polls do show that Donald Trump would probably win on paper if Biden and
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Trump ran for election today, especially if they ran for election with a whole
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bunch of other people on the ballot, people like RFK Junior and a couple
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of other lefties who are going to try to get on the ballot if all
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that happened. I agree that if without a campaign, everyone was forced to
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vote in two days for now, I think Trump would probably win. I
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do not believe that Donald Trump is going to win the twenty twenty four presidential
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election, and I think part of it is that we haven't gone through that
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process of people paying close attention, thinking about it quite a bit, having
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all elements of the media pulling out every stop imaginable in order to make sure
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that Trump is not elected. Specifically, as I've stated many times to some
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mockery, though, I think people are starting to understand where I'm coming from
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on this, and other commentators have picked up on it as well, the
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tailor swift effect, which I think is going to be real in the twenty
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twenty four election. I also think that the polling is overestimating the amount of
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vote that Trump is likely to get from the black community, and we're seeing
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polls that regularly show him in up to thirty percent of the black vote,
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and there's just no historical precedent for that, no indication of that. The
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twenty twenty two midterm elections didn't indicate that there had been ajit dramatic change in
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the demographics of the country. Yes, I know there are people who think
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that because Trump has become a martyr and because he's been indicted four times,
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that this makes him a more appealing figure to elements of the black community,
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maybe temporarily, but I think that voting block will come home. I think
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Democrats will do everything they possibly can to make that happen and do a large
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extent, and I think they'll probably be successful. So I think in general,
18:03
the polls are probably overestimating Trump's appeal in the black community. I think
18:08
they're underestimating the impact of the Swifties, and we just haven't gone through this
18:15
campaign. I think people have not been forced to think about what a second
18:18
Trump term would be. And I'm even by the way at this point in
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my analysis, and I'll have more in our first episode of twenty twenty four
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where I kind of lay out how I think the year is going to go.
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So I don't want to go too deeply into it right now, but
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I'm actually projecting that Trump does not get convicted of a felony, based largely
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on what I've already talked about in this episode of the podcast. So this
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is under kind of the best case scenario for Trump. I still don't think
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he wins. I think we're probably looking at a very similar result to what
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happened in twenty twenty, maybe one or two states changes. But I don't
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think that even in the best of circumstances, Trump is likely to win.
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Could it be very very close. Yes. Part of my equation, by
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the way, is I don't think the economy is gonna get worse, And
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a lot of what's driving Joe Biden's bad poll numbers other than his age,
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is the fact that the economy has perceived as being very bad for a lot
19:18
of people. I don't think it's gonna get worse. I could be wrong
19:22
about that, and it may actually, in perception, get better. And
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if it does, I think that Biden's poll numbers would probably survive or resuscitate
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in some way, shape or form. But of course the age issue may
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be insurmountable. I mean that is, that's a tough one to get past.
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I mean, they can hide, and they're gonna hide everything they possibly
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can. In twenty twenty four, there will be no presidential debates between Biden
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and Trump for a lot of different reasons, but mainly because the Biden people
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are going to be afraid of that, and I think Trump opened up that
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precedent by not debating in the primary, and so I think Biden will be
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able to get away with that fairly easily. And I had an interesting situation
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happen over Christmas that I mentioned on Twitter, and I'll just briefly mention it
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here. You know, I am I'm a big believer in data. I
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don't think poles are perfect, but I think you need to take them into
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account, especially in their totality. But I also think that you should talk
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to real people. And when I say talk to real people, I'm not
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talking about you know what, the percentage of your friend group is going to
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vote for Trump or Biden or whatever. I'm talking about very specific types of
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people, people that fit into two particular demographics and might be representative of those
20:41
demographics. It's always dangerous to obviously extrapolate based upon a handful of people,
20:45
But you know, I think I was partially one of the reasons I was
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one of the first people, not the first person to declare DeSantis dead,
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was largely in because of two friends, Liz Abibe and Brittany Hopper, who
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are both in the media and both were very anti COVID restrictions, and both
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spent a lot of time in Florida, in fact, escaped to Florida at
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different times, and both, to my knowledge, are on the Trump train.
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Both of them should be DeSantis voters, especially Liz, given the fact
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that she and I have been very close for a very long time, and
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I've tried very hard to convince her to be a Santa supporter. I've stopped
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once I realized the election was over back in September. But you know,
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those two people, being women who should absolutely be in the Desantas camp but
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were not, that had a real big influence on me. I go by
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this rule. If de Santis is gonna be the nominee, he'd be getting
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Liz Abebe's vote for sure, and probably Brittany Hopper was a guest on this
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show and who was a news anchor reporter here in Los Angeles as well as
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Liz, and that was not going to happen. Well, I had a
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somewhat similar experience this Christmas where we had I guess, I guess you would
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say twelve people who were a voting age other than myself, and I kind
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of did an informal focus group, very soft. I didn't go hardcore on
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it. I was just kind of curious about it. And the best I
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could come up with in a group of all white people who are you know,
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above average education, above average income, above average conservatism, although there
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was a couple people were definitely liberals and probably consider themselves Democrats at this Christmas
22:36
table, but above these twelve, this is a group that Trump should dominate,
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right, I mean above average with regard to income, and definitely not
22:48
a woke person in the crowd, not one woke person in the crowd.
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And obviously, as I said, all white people, Trump should dominate this
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crowd, even though it's almost all people from California, two of them are
23:03
from another liberal state. But my count of those twelve was that Trump at
23:10
best. At best, this is assuming no criminal conviction or felany conviction,
23:17
and in these trials before the election, the best Trump was going to do
23:21
was six' four and two six votes for four votes for Biden and two
23:26
people who weren't going to vote for either or might vote for a third candidate
23:30
or just abstain that's not going to hack it. Now again, I realized
23:33
this is the ridiculously small example size, but I think a couple of these
23:37
people were representative of larger demographics. They definitely fit into the category of people
23:42
who I would say if Trump was going to win, he would be getting
23:47
their votes at least right now, and he's not, and so I'm just
23:52
not seeing it. I'm going to put more thought into it, and I'll
23:56
have more thoughts on it and more to say about it in our first episode
24:00
of twenty twenty four, and obviously before we end the podcast in mid February,
24:04
there's going to be some primaries and caucuses and we'll have a lot more
24:07
opportunity to talk about it. But as of right now, I'm just not
24:11
buying this very prevalent notion on the right that Trump is going to win and
24:18
may even win easily because Biden is so dead in the water. I guess
24:22
one of the other things I look at is, you know, Nicky Haley,
24:25
who's still doing very well in New Hampshire and will probably end up in
24:30
second place in the Republican nominating process when it all is said and done.
24:33
I don't know if she's gonna end up is Trump's VP, But there's some
24:37
talk of that which is really pissing off some Trump supporters, including Tucker Carlson.
24:41
But you know, Nicki Haley does much better than Trump against Joe Biden.
24:45
Now, most of that is because she's a woman who hasn't been really
24:48
attacked in the mainstream news media, But to me, that shows that Trump
24:55
is leaving way too much on the table from a polling standpoint. In other
25:00
words, if Trump was going to win, if he was maxing out Republican
25:06
vote, he would be doing almost as well as Haley. But he's not.
25:11
Haley in most of these posts, not all of them, does much
25:15
better than Trump does against Biden. And that just tells me that there's a
25:19
significant number of people, even in the current polling, who would be prone
25:26
to voting against Biden, but who just are not going to be able to
25:29
pull the trigger for Donald Trump. Now, speaking of Nicky Haley and her
25:33
poll numbers, those poll numbers may be moving in a downward direction after she
25:41
was asked a question at a New Hampshire event this week and it did not
25:45
go well. The question was what was the cause of the Civil War,
25:51
and basically Nicky Haley fumbled and gave essentially the states rights answer, which was
26:00
weird on a couple different levels. One because she was in New Hampshire,
26:04
obviously a northern state, and a state where there's especially in the Republican primary,
26:10
which is a primary where a lot of non very not very conservative Republicans
26:15
are going to be voting. So I don't understand why she did this in
26:19
New Hampshire, but she gave the answer that would maybe be more suitable to
26:26
a very southern audience. So that was odd, not to mention that you
26:30
could argue that it was factually incorrect because she did not mention slavery as a
26:37
primary cause of the Civil War. But to me, the most bizarre part
26:44
of the whole situation, and there were several elements that were very strange,
26:48
but the most bizarre is that Nicky Haley is probably most well known when she
26:55
was governor of South Carolina for rather famously or infant, depending on your perspective,
27:00
effectively killing the Confederate flag there. And you can argue over whether or
27:07
not that was the right thing to do or not, But I'm just wondering,
27:11
how does this make any sense? So you're surging in the polls in
27:15
New Hampshire. You get asked a question out of the blue about the Civil
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War and the causes of it. And here you are very much on record
27:26
as virtue signaling the end of the Confederate flag for all intentsive purposes in South
27:32
Carolina, and you go with the States rights answer. Well, the follow
27:37
up question I would ask is, Okay, if that's what you really believe
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about the causes of the Civil War, then why did you get rid of
27:45
the Confederate flag in South Carolina? And why did you do so in a
27:49
way that was so consistent with virtue signaling? Because that has always been my
27:55
major concern about Nicki Haley. She seems like a very politically correct virtue saying
28:00
Republican. Although I would take her over Joe Biden in a heartbeat, but
28:06
that would be the thing I would most want to know. Okay, Nikki
28:08
Haley, how do you square those two things? If you're in the states
28:15
rights camp and that slavery wasn't the primary cause of the Civil War, then
28:18
why are you so against the Confederate flag or have you somehow changed your mind
28:23
on that? Did you make a mistake when it came to the Confederate flag,
28:27
and as far as the Confederate flag is concerned, to me, the
28:33
legacy of that is that it was a terrible decision. Not because somehow historically
28:41
the Confederate flag is something that should be celebrated in America. It's because,
28:47
effectively, what happened when the Confederate Flag went down, it set off a
28:53
domino effect that is still going on today, where our entire history is being
29:00
literally dismantled and statues are being taken down, and frankly, I think it
29:06
goes even further than that. I think that effectively, when when everyone decided
29:12
to finally surrender on the Confederate flag and acknowledge, even in the South that
29:18
the Confederate flag as a racist symbol, which for many many people it was
29:22
not. But when the Confederate Flag went down and literally the white flag was
29:27
raised on that issue, even at NASCAR events, what essentially happened was the
29:33
South was admitting that everything about it was wrong, and everything about it was
29:41
racist, and that our past is inherently racist and should be not just forgotten
29:48
but are raised. And that had an enormous impact on our culture. And
29:52
I think you can make a strong argument that there's a direct line between those
29:57
types of things happening and the explosion of wokeness, the explosion of equity,
30:03
and the explosion of everything that's happened in the realm of race, none of
30:08
which has been good over the last decade or so, and Nikki Haley should
30:14
be held accountable for that. But for her to then go in the opposite
30:18
direction and cause a massive firestorm in New Hampshire by answering in the state's rights
30:25
direction was just incredibly weird, and it went viral on Twitter. She's getting
30:30
destroyed over it as we tape this episode of the podcast. I don't know
30:36
how much impact it's going to have on her nationally, but I got to
30:40
believe this is going to hurt her in New Hampshire because this is not the
30:44
type of issue that's going to resonate there. I've said a lot there that
30:48
I probably didn't even tend to, but this is obviously going to be an
30:52
ongoing subject for the duration of this podcast into earlier mid February. Another story
30:59
that we've been talking a lot lately, which had some developments over the Christmas
31:03
holidays, involves the president of Harvard university Clauding Gay. Now, for those
31:08
who don't remember, Clauding Gay was one of the three woke academics who got
31:15
in big trouble for their testimony to Congress about the issues related to genocide against
31:23
Jewish people. And you know, that's a whole nother story, which I
31:27
have a nuanced view of. I didn't really have that big of an issue
31:32
with what she said, because she said it required context to be able to
31:34
determine whether that was a violation of Harvard's code. But it turned into a
31:38
big controversy and the University of Pennsylvania female president, she was forced to resign.
31:45
Clauding Gay was not forced to resign, I believe, largely because she's
31:49
not just female, but she's a black female, and that her hire was
31:53
clearly part of affirmative action or DEI city equity and inclusion, and therefore she
32:02
was too big to fail. And it wasn't just her congressional testimony. It
32:07
was also allegations of plagiarism that were rather rampant, and the mainstream news media
32:15
did everything they possibly could to soft pedal what was really going on with these
32:21
allegations of plagiarism. I mean, the New York Times and the Washington Post
32:28
and other news outlets went out of their way to try to claim that,
32:32
you know, this was a situation where it wasn't really plagiarism. We're going
32:37
to use every verbiage we possibly can to not use the term plagiarism. Here
32:43
are a couple of headlines in the mainstream media's effort to try to minimize the
32:46
allegations against Claudine Gay. Harvard finds more instances of quote duplicative language in president's
32:55
work, and then the New York Times tweeted out, but Harvard found more
33:00
instances of insufficient citation and scholarly writing by its president Claudine Gay after reviewing her
33:07
nineteen ninety seven dissertation. So from a news standpoint, the main street news
33:15
media, specifically The New York Times, has been trying very very hard to
33:20
carry water for Clauding Gay because she is too big to fail. She is
33:24
representative of this entire DEI movement, and if she gets exposed and if she
33:30
is fired and force to resign, it's going to be a major threat to
33:35
their entire agenda. However, in the last few days, there's been some
33:40
breaks in the dam. Maybe some leaks and the dam may be about to
33:46
break, although it's always hard to tell over Christmas Break because stories that happen
33:52
over Christmas Break obviously have a much more of an ability to peter out because
33:58
there's no momentum. People aren't on campus, they're at home, people aren't
34:01
paying as much attention. But both the New York Times and the Washington Post
34:07
to put out op eds calling for claudiing Gay to resign, and it's for
34:14
a lot of reasons. One because the plagiarism, and that's the word that
34:17
should be used, which used to be a really big deal in elite academia,
34:22
but apparently is not when it comes to claudiing Gay because she needs to
34:24
be protected. But the plagiarism scandal has expanded, and there's even new allegations
34:34
since those two op eds to which I referred were published that I think are
34:39
a further indication that Clauding Gay should never have been hired in the first place,
34:43
and absolutely positively her hiring was a result of affirmative action and DEI headline
34:51
in the Daily Mail, Harvard President claudiing Gay is now accused of botching a
34:55
study that landed her major tenure at Stanford and refusing to share research with professors
35:04
who questioned her thesis over quote logical inconsistencies. Now, there's always a piling
35:12
on a fact. Once there's blood in the water, the sharks come swimming,
35:15
and that's kind of a natural progression of the media narrative, and so
35:22
I get that, But this seems to be another major allegation, an indication
35:28
that she never should have gotten the job in the first place, and it's
35:31
going to keep promoting this narrative that makes it very, very difficult for Clauding
35:37
Gay to continue in her job. I at first thought that she had survived,
35:43
and that she was going to survive because of the fact that she's a
35:45
black female, because she's a DEI higher, because she's too big to fail.
35:51
But we've now seen a progression in the narrative where I think it's going
35:54
to be difficult for her to survive. And mainly it's because of two things.
35:59
One, the facts. The facts don't matter as much as they used
36:01
to, or they should matter. They still matter at least a little bit,
36:05
but the facts make it untenable in a rational world for the president of
36:09
America's most prestigious university to continue in their job when they are seen nationally as
36:16
a joke when it comes to plagiarism. And it's becoming more and more obvious
36:22
that Harvard should never have hired her. They didn't do their due diligence.
36:24
There's a report in the New York Post that even Harvard's initial quote unquote investigation
36:31
of the plagiarism was a complete joke, that it didn't happen that effectively,
36:36
it was just to cover up that Harvard was saying we looked into it,
36:39
when they didn't really look into it. And so this was an obvious effort
36:45
to try to brush this under the rug because they needed to protect her as
36:51
a new president, as a black female president, for all the reasons I've
36:55
already stated too big to fail. So the amount of corruption here and that
37:02
the amount of wrongdoing and the number of things that she's been criticized for is
37:08
increasing in a very significant way where even though this is Christmas break gun to
37:15
my head, I think she eventually resigns on her own timetable. They'll give
37:21
her some dignity. She's not gonna be humiliated. She'll probably be turned into
37:23
a heroin for doing the right thing. And you know, even though she
37:29
really didn't have to, the left will always, you know, save face
37:35
here. There's no way they're going to admit total defeat. And she will,
37:38
I'm sure, get some other great position, either another university or within
37:44
Harvard. She's gonna be just fine. They're gonna protect her, so she's
37:47
not gonna be humiliated. But I just don't think she can continue on as
37:52
the president of Harvard for much longer given all of these allegations in any different
38:00
ways. And frankly, when it comes to the Dei thing, she went
38:05
from being too big to fail because it's too much of a devastating blow to
38:12
the entire Dei agenda to now almost having to go because her existence is now
38:19
becoming really the ultimate proof of what a fraud Dei is. It's becoming too
38:24
big, The story is becoming too big, too prominent, too obvious,
38:30
and so they're gonna have to get rid of her in the most dignified way
38:34
possible. I'm not positive of that, but I think that's the most likely
38:38
scenario here when this happens. I don't know. As of this taping,
38:43
it has not happened. And as I've said, because of the fact that
38:46
we're in the Christmas New Year's holiday. It's possible to survive these kinds of
38:52
allegations, especially in an academic setting, where you know, basically everyone's still
38:55
home for Christmas and will be for quite a while. Yet. Now,
39:00
speaking of the New York Times and the mainstream news media, obviously we're at
39:02
the end of twenty twenty three. Everyone is doing their end of the year
39:07
lists. I'm not going to have that much to say about the end of
39:09
this year, although I probably will a little bit after we play my interview
39:14
with my daughter Grace Ziggler. But I found it very interesting that the New
39:19
York Times put out a list of their most popular stories of twenty twenty three,
39:25
and this I found to be incredibly telling. And if you're a fan
39:30
of this podcast, you know that one of the basic tenants of the Death
39:35
of Journalism podcast is that truth is no longer the coin of the media realm,
39:40
that it's popularity that really rules the day. And so when the New
39:45
York Times put out their list of their most popular stories in twenty twenty three,
39:51
I was very curious one to see which stories were most popular, and
39:54
two what they said about journalism, and boy did they say a lot.
40:00
Here are the top five most read stories at the New York Times website.
40:07
Number one was Titan Submersible rescuers detect underwater noise in search area and redirect efforts.
40:19
That was regarding the so called Titanic sub that imploded on which everyone died.
40:25
Number two Matthew Perry Star Friends is dead at fifty four. Number three
40:30
DeMar Hamlin of Buffalo Bills in critical condition after collapsing during NFL game. Number
40:37
four Trump the cries charges after pleading not guilty to thirty four felony counts.
40:44
This was after the first criminal indictment and number five House adjourns again with no
40:50
resolution on Speaker of the House. Now that list is amazing. A couple
40:57
of those stories are really not particularly relevant, and at least eventually we're not
41:02
relevant from a news perspective. I mean, the House eventually did come up
41:07
with a speaker, although that speaker, Kevin McCarthy, didn't last very long,
41:09
so that never didn't really have much impact in the long run. The
41:15
first indictment of Trump has hardly ever even talked about anymore. You could argue
41:20
that it had a political impact in Trump's direction when it came to the Republican
41:24
nominating process. But that from a criminal standpoint, is by far the least
41:30
significant of the indictment's Trump faced this year. That was number four on the
41:35
New York Times list. Matthew Perry Dying. I mean, we talked about
41:38
the cultural impact of that on this podcast and the fact that it shows a
41:43
lot about the nature of television that the show hasn't been on for decades with
41:49
six different stars. You have one star, Die hasn't done all that much
41:53
in recent years, and it's a massive cultural story that's never going to happen
41:58
again in television because of the changes in television. But the death of Matthew
42:04
Perry is obviously in and of itself not a significant news story. Yet it
42:07
was the second most popular story at the New York Times. But then there're
42:12
the other two that are really fascinating. Number one, the Titan submersible.
42:19
That story, in its essence gave a totally false impression about what the truth
42:25
was about what reality was. I told you immediately in the first episode of
42:30
this podcast that we did after the submersible story broke, that those people were
42:37
dead, that everyone knew they were dead immediately. It was always obvious that
42:43
the sub imploded. There was no other plausible explanation. Every expert knew it,
42:49
and anyone who with common sense, including myself, knew it immediately.
42:53
It was clear cut. It was impossible for there to be any other scenario
42:59
for all series of reasons that I went through at the time. And I
43:04
told I told you that before it was official that that Yep, that's exactly
43:08
what happened. The sub imploded and everyone died. But I was positive of
43:13
it because the evidence was that overwhelming. So the number one most popular story
43:17
at the New York Times website this year gave a completely false impression about a
43:22
story. And I don't believe in conspiracies, and I don't think there was
43:28
a conspiracy per se here, But the way the entire news media industrial complex
43:35
handled that submarine story was classic classic of how broken journalism is. Because whether
43:44
they knew or whether they should have known, I'm not sure which was which
43:47
it was probably a mixture of both. The news media pretended for several days
43:53
that that sub might still be intact and we might still have a chance to
43:58
save them, which was never gonna happen. Even was still intact all because
44:01
everybody knew. Everyone in the media business knew it was a great story that
44:07
was getting a lot of views and a lot of interest, which is why
44:10
it ended up being the most read article of the entire year, a year
44:15
in which a lot of stuff happened at The New York Times. A story
44:20
that was completely false, at least in the impression that it was given,
44:24
that was the most popular. And that's why it was done because everyone in
44:29
the media business knew this was going to be a very popular narrative. It
44:35
was obvious, and we knew it, not just from got instinct, but
44:38
we knew it because of social media posts. Social media posts are now basically
44:43
focus groups for the news media. So if something is newsy and it explodes
44:49
online and you see exactly how many reach tweets and likes and shares and quote
44:53
tweets and everything else, it's within minutes you know whether or not a story
45:00
is exceedingly popular. Everybody knew this story was going to bring in non news
45:06
junkies, and it did in a huge way. And that's why they wouldn't
45:09
tell you the truth. They wouldn't tell you the truth because telling you the
45:14
truth would end the gravy train for whatever it was three four or five days
45:20
of this story being Mann from Heaven during a slow news period, and so
45:24
that being the number one most read story in twenty twenty three the New York
45:30
Times I found to be very telling. Almost as telling was the number three
45:36
story, the Toamar Hamblin story, because the number three story might be the
45:40
most botched story by the news media of all of twenty twenty three. An
45:46
amazing story. Damar Hamlin effectively dies live on television on the football field during
45:53
a Monday night football game between the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals. All
45:59
of the America held its breath. The game ended up getting canceled. It
46:04
was obviously a huge story. But the question that the news media has done
46:10
a pathetic beyond a pathetic job to pathetic a job even by their own lowly
46:16
standards of answering, is the question of what happened? What happened? How
46:24
is it that a perfectly healthy, world class athlete in his early twenties could
46:30
suddenly have a cardiac arrest and die on a football field, something we've never
46:36
seen before. How could that happen and then be revived thankfully and now is
46:42
almost in full recovery, basically a year later. How did that happen?
46:47
Why did that happen? The news media coverage of that has been, I
46:52
believe, purposely pathetic, purposely pathetic. We have the utterly bizarre inner view
47:00
given by Hamlin to Michael Strahan the weekend of the Super Bowl that did not
47:06
air on the Super Bowl coverage, even though Strainhand was working on the super
47:10
Bowl, so instead aired in Strayhand's full time job on Good Morning America on
47:15
a completely different network. Where if you had said, zig, if DeMar
47:22
Hamlin is trying to hide what really happened to cause his cardiac arrest, what
47:28
would that interview sound like? If I had given you a scenario, if
47:32
I had concocted one out of my wildest imagination, I could not have come
47:38
up with something because I would not have believed it. I could not have
47:42
come up with something nearly as bizarre as what actually transpired, and which the
47:47
rest of the news media never even mentioned. In a world where we had
47:53
anything close to real journalism, the entire news media industrial complex would have been
47:59
all over the Michael Strahand Tomorrow Hamlin interview, going what the hell was that?
48:06
Because Hamlin says, I don't want to get into what happened. I
48:08
don't even remember some of the quotes, but they were bonkers. It was
48:12
all basically, Look, I don't think this is not something I want to
48:15
talk about. It's not something I want to get into. You know,
48:19
he doesn't say anything about kommodio cordis at all, which is what you know
48:23
the doctor Fauci's of the world immediately rushed to decide was the cause, which
48:28
makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I've talked about this many times this year.
48:34
There's no chance, none, There's no logic at all. Did tomorrow Hamlin
48:39
had a cardiac arrest because of kommodio cordis. Look it up if you're interested
48:44
as to why. It's completely inconsistent with everything we know about commodiacordus, including
48:47
the fact that you if your heart stops because of kmodia cordis. There have
48:52
been professional athletes who won. A hockey player had this and was playing like
48:55
two days later, because the heart doesn't get damaged in that situ situation.
49:00
Not to mention, there was no evidence that anything could have caused the commodiacordis
49:05
and the tackle that was pretty routine that DeMar Hamlin was involved in. And
49:09
also he got up, it was at least a second or two between the
49:13
time he got up and the time he collapsed. None of this was consistent
49:16
with this, and to my knowledge, not one doctor whoever treated Tomar Hamlin
49:22
has ever publicly said it was kmodia cordis. And then all of a sudden,
49:25
a few months later tomorrow, Hamlin does a press conference and says rather
49:30
of factly, oh, yeah, by the way, it was commodiacordis.
49:34
And everyone goes, oh, okay, yeah, sure, yeah, that's
49:36
what we were told by the experts. It's kmodia cordis. No chance,
49:39
no chance, And so the interview was straighthand, combined with the bizarre way
49:45
in which the commodia cordis diagnosis was made public, to me, was as
49:52
suspicious as could possibly be. And I'm not a anti vax guy at all.
50:00
I was vaccinated, not the mRNA but the Johnson and Johnson. I
50:05
got my wife to be vaccinated, which she still gives me crap about.
50:08
But to me, the only logical scenario here is that there was evidence that
50:13
this was related to the vaccine, because that's the only way to explain tomorrow
50:17
Hamlin's interview with Straighthan and this bizarre, incorrect, illogical latching on to Commodio
50:29
Cordis as the reason for why it happened. And you know, I think
50:32
it's important to find out what that will happened. But to me, as
50:37
an immedia critic, the most significant element of this is the media colossally failed
50:44
on this story. Colossally failed, in my opinion, probably the most botched
50:51
story of twenty twenty three when you consider how big of a story it was
50:57
and how bad the media coverage of it was, and with an obvious agenda
51:01
behind it. This is one of those crimes better left unsolved. To quote
51:06
the movie's spinal tap, That's how they viewed the Tamar Hamlin situation, and
51:09
they were more than happy to go along with the Komodia Kordas situation because that's
51:15
what was best for everybody. That was what was best for it. And
51:19
I've always said the strangest part of the Kommodia Cordas situation is that if it
51:24
really was Kammodia Cordis, here we have a national football league terrified of concussions
51:30
and other ailments that people can injuries people get in football. I mean,
51:37
the sport is facing a mortal threat when it comes to parents not wanting their
51:40
kids to play. And now we have a brand new situation commodia cordish.
51:45
You mean you might get cardiac arrested if you simply tackle somebody, even though
51:51
you got a chest plate over your heart. My god, this sport is
51:55
dangerous. There was not one, not one one story about that at all,
52:02
And I looked it was almost as if there was a deal. Again,
52:07
I'm not a conspiracy person, but there may have been a wink wink,
52:09
nod nod deal. The NFL said, hey, look, we're gonna
52:14
not expose this as a vaccine issue because it's not in our interest to do
52:17
it. It's not in your interest to do it. It's no one interest
52:21
to do it in the establishment. But you, the media, you're not
52:23
going to actually act like this really was commodiachordus because that would be bad for
52:29
us too. So deal, deal, all right, Great, that's the
52:32
way something. I think something similar to that was how this worked out.
52:37
But isn't it amazing And isn't it really emblematic of how broken journalism is?
52:45
That the number one and the number three most popular stories of the New York
52:50
Times were in no way, shape or form situations where there was good journalism.
52:57
In fact, it was exactly the opposite. And I don't think that's
53:00
a coincidence, because good journalism doesn't pay bad journalism. Bad journalism often does
53:07
tell me lies, tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies. That
53:12
is the new business model of the modern journalism, and that's why journalism is
53:17
dead, among many other reasons. Now there is a study in involving the
53:22
news media and trust in the news media, and specifically specifically trust in news
53:30
media outlets. Now trust in the news media in general is at an all
53:34
time low, as it should be, in which we document each and every
53:37
episode of the Death of journalism podcasts, but trust in particular news outlets outlets
53:45
that people like is still at a somewhat significant and similar level to what it
53:52
has been in recent years. And specifically, there's a New York Times Siana
53:58
poll on this subject then indicates that Fox News Channel is weirdly, although not
54:06
surprisingly when you think about it, the news outlet that the most people turned
54:13
to for their news headline. In my old news media outlet, media eight.
54:19
Fox News beats cable and broadcast rivals as news source voters quote most often
54:23
turned to the media. Eyed article says the latest New York Times Siana Poul
54:30
found that Fox News was the single news source voters said they turned to most
54:36
often, beating out CNN, MSNBC, and a host of other news sources
54:40
in the December survey. And then it says that registered voters in the December
54:47
twenty twenty three pole were asked to select from a list of the single news
54:52
source that they turned to most often, and the Conservative News Corp flagship Fox
54:58
News garnered thirteen percent of the selections. So thirteen percent of people in this
55:05
New York Times poll say that the news source they turned to they essentially trust
55:09
the most is Fox News Channel. In comparison, rival cable network CNN pulled
55:16
ten percent and liberal MSNBC a mere three percent of the respondent preferences. Public
55:23
radio, NPR and PBS were grouped together in the poll and they got four
55:30
percent in total, while the national print and online news such as The New
55:35
York Times or The Wall Street Journal pulled eight percent. Interestingly, the responses
55:42
gave national news television network such as CBS, NBC or ABC one category.
55:51
In other words, you weren't even This is kind of pathetic when it comes
55:54
to the diminished nature of the so called big networks ABC, CBS, and
56:02
NBC. They didn't even get their own category, their own answer. They
56:07
were given the option. The poll respondents were national television networks such as CBS,
56:13
NBC, or ABC. So that group, that group came together at
56:19
thirteen percent, the same as Fox News Channel did. So bottom line on
56:24
this is you take all of the mainstream news media television networks, the formerly
56:31
big three NBCCBS, ABC, there are just as many people that turned to
56:37
them in total as turned to Fox News Channel, a cable news network individually.
56:45
Now what does this mean. I mean to me, it's not that
56:51
significant, because what you're really doing is you're judging and quantifying the cult like
57:00
status of each outlet. But this goes to the incentive structure in the modern
57:05
news media. I've often said we've gone from broadcasting to narrow casting, to
57:12
cult casting to micro cult casting. That's the evolution of the business model.
57:19
And in the broadcasting era, ABC, CBS, and NBC they were the
57:23
places you went in the television era, But now in the micro cult casting
57:29
era. Fox News Channel does very very well with thirteen percent of the public
57:34
turning to them because they give conservatives more of what they want than anybody else
57:39
does. And it's a bit like when annually people ask who's the most admired
57:45
person in American it's usually the President of the United States, but that doesn't
57:51
mean that they're the most popular person. You can be hated. Donald Trump
57:54
does very well and in most admired person because they're there a small percentage of
58:00
people, much less than fifty percent of the American populace that really loves Donald
58:06
Trump. So you're measuring how many people really love you. It has nothing
58:10
to do with how many people really hate you how many people really distrust you.
58:14
So it's real. But this is what the incentive structure is in the
58:19
modern media. It doesn't matter in Fox News Channel's case that eighty seven percent
58:23
of the public thinks that you're full of crap and doesn't trust you at all.
58:28
Not that that's the actual number. I'm just making that up because thirteen
58:31
percent view you as the place to turn to roll from an economic standpoint,
58:37
that's a winner winter winter chicken dinner. I mean, you can't do much
58:40
better than that in this day and age. And what's most interesting about this
58:45
is that this comes at a time period when at the beginning of this year,
58:50
in the spring, it looked like Fox News Channel was in big trouble
58:54
because they were hemorrhaging audience because of the firing of Tucker Carlson. And while
59:00
there's been some damage to Fox News Channel done by the firing of Tucker Carlson,
59:06
which is he's still lying about and people are lying about for him as
59:09
to why that happened because they want to fit whatever conspiracy theory works for him
59:14
on any particular day, but the reality is that Fox has largely survived the
59:20
firing of Tucker Carlson, and this poll is further indication of that. Now,
59:24
as far as Tucker Carlson's concerned, since I've talked a lot about it,
59:29
he's probably the media figure I've spoken most about in twenty twenty three,
59:32
and I believe correctly dubbed him the MVP of the Trump campaign in twenty twenty
59:38
three and then did so way way before anyone else saw that was coming.
59:43
I should mention at least two things that have occurred with Tucker Carlson in the
59:46
last week number one. He is tripled or quadrupled down on this entire bizarro
59:54
world, insane space aliens theory that he has that we've been clearly visited by
1:00:01
space aliens, that the US government is covering this up, and his explanation
1:00:07
for this is just incredibly strange. I don't know if he's lying. I
1:00:12
don't know if he's making it up. I don't know if he's mentally ill.
1:00:15
I honestly don't know. But people keep sending me all these different interviews
1:00:21
that Tucker has done or clips from his own show, where he's now promoting
1:00:27
this idea that everybody knows that aliens are real and have visited us, and
1:00:32
that the US government is covering it up. And I have said many,
1:00:36
many times that this makes no sense. But you know, the one area
1:00:37
where I haven't gone into enough detail and have not mentioned this element of the
1:00:45
fallacy in Tucker's thinking is this. And it's very obvious, it's very clear
1:00:51
cut, and I kicked myself for not mentioning it previously, And that is
1:00:54
the entire premise is absurd because it presumes that somehow the United States in and
1:01:01
of itself has the ability to keep this story under wraps. Let's pretend that
1:01:07
Tucker's right, which is not, and there's all sorts of scientific and physics
1:01:13
reasons as to why it's impossible. But let's just pretend that this happened,
1:01:17
right, So the Aliens, presumably you know, still exist, They're still
1:01:22
out there, and they came here, so you know, they had some
1:01:27
agenda. How is it that the United States alone happens to be the only
1:01:32
government that has this information and therefore has the ability to censor this information.
1:01:38
There's no other government that the Aliens decided to make themselves known to. There's
1:01:45
no other government out there that would find it to be incredibly prestigious to be
1:01:50
the first government to make contact with the aliens and make this known to the
1:01:54
rest of humanity, which would be the biggest story of the history of the
1:01:58
world. It's just it's laughable. And that's why I just it's hard for
1:02:05
me to believe someone is intelligent as Tucker really believes this. But I'm not
1:02:08
one hundred percent sure why he's going so far with it, because I get
1:02:14
that this is a popular belief, especially among Trump fans who he's appealing to,
1:02:19
and trying to become the heir to MAGA Inc. But to me,
1:02:22
the fact that he's going this far on it, tripling quadrupling down on it,
1:02:24
I just don't get it. I don't have a good explanation for it.
1:02:28
And it gets me back into the camp of maybe something's wrong with Tucker,
1:02:32
but I don't know. But Tucker Carlson is definitely the most interesting story
1:02:36
of twenty twenty three when it comes to the news media, and also,
1:02:39
in my view, the most depressing, because I really used to have a
1:02:43
great deal of admiration for Tucker's talent and his wisdom, and bizarrely and almost
1:02:49
laughably in retrospect, I thought that Tucker was going to go a completely different
1:02:52
direction when this year began, and I was one hundred percent wrong about that.
1:02:57
And speaking of Tucker Carlson, I have to mention just before Christmas,
1:03:01
he went viral with an interview he did I guess with Kevin Spacey. Although
1:03:07
Kevin Spacey, the very esteemed actor, although he has been largely canceled because
1:03:14
of what I believe to be and the court system has determined to be false
1:03:17
allegations of sex abuse, Spacey wasn't playing himself. Spacey was playing his character
1:03:25
from the Netflix series House of Cards, which was canceled because of these seemingly
1:03:31
false allegations of sex abuse against Kevin Spacey, and I guess the most important
1:03:37
things to mention about this were one the weirdness of it, the strange world
1:03:43
in which we live where Tucker Carlson is interviewing Kevin Spacey as his House of
1:03:49
Cards character, I guess because both of them consider themselves to have been partially
1:03:54
canceled and yet survivors of cancelation. I don't know if that's an accurate depiction,
1:04:00
but that seemed to be the basis of the two of them getting together
1:04:03
and maybe the oddest couple of twenty twenty three. But I also want to
1:04:09
mention it because if you haven't seen the video, it's a remarkable piece of
1:04:14
acting from Kevin Spacey because he did what I consider to be maybe one of
1:04:17
the most difficult things you can do in acting. He's playing a role that's
1:04:24
not him, his politician character from House of Cards, but he's doing a
1:04:30
spontaneous interview about real world events with Tucker Carlson where it's clear he doesn't really
1:04:36
know exactly where the conversation is going, and he pulls it off magnificently.
1:04:41
So I just wanted to mention, in case you haven't seen it, we're
1:04:45
now living in a very strange world where Tucker Carlson is interviewing Kevin Spacey as
1:04:50
his House of Cards character. And that's kind of a weird fitting way for
1:04:55
twenty twenty three to end, for this odyssey that Tucker Carlson has been on
1:04:59
in which we we've been documenting here on this podcast. One other story I
1:05:03
want to get to before our interview with Grace Zigler, actually a couple different
1:05:08
stories, but one news related story. You know, as the year ends
1:05:13
and I look back on, you know, what's happened this year and the
1:05:16
stories that the news media has done a poor job on or ignored, I
1:05:23
have to mention one more time what's happened with regard to the so called catastrophic
1:05:29
climate change here in California. I mean, we've got news articles in the
1:05:33
Washington Post just the other day that scientists now believe that global warming may be
1:05:40
speeding up climate change maybe speeding up as we head into twenty twenty four,
1:05:44
hottest year on record, And I just I don't buy the hottest year on
1:05:48
record. When they say that, by the way, they mean that in
1:05:50
the modern era, the very modern era, because we only have records that
1:05:56
go back so far. In my view, we only have about forty five
1:05:59
years records, which is consistent with, you know, the way we currently
1:06:03
do things because of satellite technology. But you know, they throw that term
1:06:09
out, their hottest year on record. Okay, let's pretend for a second
1:06:12
it's the hottest year on record. It's not, but let's pretend. And
1:06:15
by the way, I'm the first with knowledge. So far we're in in
1:06:18
the United States, we're having a very very mild winter. November and December
1:06:24
have been very mild. I don't know too many people are complaining about it
1:06:28
because we haven't had art to cold by and large in November and December as
1:06:32
we often do, and there's been very little snow. Because I watched this
1:06:38
very very carefully, so I all acknowledged that so far winter is off to
1:06:42
a very very mild start in the United States. That doesn't say anything about
1:06:45
climate change. That's just the nature of weather and cycles. And but who's
1:06:49
complaining. It's one of my pet peeves about climate changes. Who's complaining about
1:06:57
the weather. The weather's actually been quite livable at most of the United States
1:07:00
in November and December. But I go back to, Okay, if it's
1:07:05
really the hottest year on record, in the hottest error on record, right,
1:07:11
And we're told here in California by Gavin Newsom and all the environmentalists that
1:07:16
drought and wildfires are a huge part of this equation and that that's the smoking
1:07:23
gun that climate change is real. Look at California, the permanent drought and
1:07:27
all the horrible wildfires we've had. Well, then why is it that the
1:07:32
drought in twenty twenty three completely and totally ended, ended. One hundred percent
1:07:42
of California is no longer in any drought whatsoever, which is basically impossible given
1:07:46
the way that drought is determined in a place as dry as California. One
1:07:53
hundred percent and for two years in a row now, twenty twenty two and
1:07:58
twenty twenty three, and I'm the only person I know of that mentions this
1:08:01
on a regular basis. There have been no major wildfires two years in a
1:08:08
row, so our drought is done. And two years in a row with
1:08:12
no wildfires of any major significance at all. That's unbelievable. If it happened
1:08:18
in the other direction, it's all we would hear about. If the drought
1:08:23
was still horrible, and if we were still having terrible wildfires, the news
1:08:27
media would be all over this. I mean, I'll never forget. In
1:08:30
twenty eighteen, when we had bad wildfires in the fall, like we usually
1:08:33
do in California for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with global warming or
1:08:38
climate change, a so called conservative columnist at the Washington Post, Max Boot,
1:08:44
actually changed his position in a classic virtue signaling fashion, you know,
1:08:49
basically saying, I've I've realized the error of my ways. I'm going to
1:08:54
repent for my past sins. Why can't my fellow conservatives realize that, looking
1:09:00
at all these wildfires in California, that climate change is real and then we
1:09:03
need to do something about it. That's not even a bad paraphrase. That
1:09:08
is essentially what Max Boot did. And he got praised by the left.
1:09:12
And he was basically using these wildfires as an opportunity to get off of the
1:09:16
anti climate change bandwagon and get some points with liberals and the virtue signal,
1:09:19
and it worked out very very well for him. But I said at the
1:09:24
time, so, what's going to happen Max when we don't have wildfires for
1:09:27
several years? And I've tweeted at him numerous times on this, never gotten
1:09:31
a response. But for the last two years, we've had no wildfires.
1:09:35
So is Max boot now going to suddenly change his mind back that well?
1:09:40
Maybe he really wasn't about climate change. I mean, this is the hottest
1:09:43
year on record, yet for some reason, California has had no wildfires for
1:09:46
two full years. So you know, I have no ability to get this
1:09:51
into any major mainstream news media, but I did happen to message Alex Michaelson,
1:09:59
who's been a guest on this podcast before, who's the main anchor at
1:10:02
the Fox affiliate here in Los Angeles, And I said, Alex, is
1:10:05
anybody going to mention this situation regarding wildfires for the last two years? And
1:10:11
to his credit, this is why I like Alex. He mentioned it on
1:10:15
the air after I messaged him about it, and then he tweeted about it,
1:10:19
and he tweeted the following during our first major rainfall of the season in
1:10:25
southern California, which happened last week. It is worth pointing out how we
1:10:29
avoided major rush fires in October and November big Santa Ana wind driven fires never
1:10:36
materialized. The last few years have seen tremendous rainfall and almost no catastrophic blazes.
1:10:45
That was classic Alex, well intentioned, did a decent job. I
1:10:49
wish he would have gone further, and I actually tweeted in response, I
1:10:54
appreciate Alex trying to make this very important point, but this should be a
1:10:59
huge new story in California and nationally. Gavin Newsom constantly cites California drought and
1:11:04
wildfires is proof of quote unquote climate change. But the drought is one hundred
1:11:10
percent over and for two straight years we've had zero major wildfires. Again,
1:11:15
all I ever ask is tell both sides. Tell both sides of the story,
1:11:21
because again, if it was in reverse, the news media would be
1:11:26
all over this, all over it. But they're not, and so the
1:11:30
average person the only time they hear about this subject is when the evidence is
1:11:35
consistent with the news media's agenda, which is pro global warming, pro climate
1:11:42
change. So when we have a mild winter, we're gonna hear all about
1:11:45
that, and people will go, oh, yeah, okay, yeah,
1:11:48
because they haven't heard the other side of the story. They never told when
1:11:53
it's actually pretty cold in parts of the planet, or when California's drought is
1:11:58
over, or when we don't have one wildfires for two straight years in California.
1:12:02
And so of course, stupid people who aren't able to use their brains
1:12:06
and are manipulated easily are going to eventually, especially young people who know how
1:12:12
many contexts because they've only lived a short period of time, they think,
1:12:15
my god, this is all real, and that's why this matters. And
1:12:19
it's really a classic example of the death of journalism because they don't tell both
1:12:25
sides of the story. It's all I ever ask is tell both sides of
1:12:28
the story. Let people decide for themselves. They don't want to do that
1:12:31
because they realize that that would be too dangerous because it might turn out that
1:12:36
people don't buy this BS at least the majority of people don't buy it all.
1:12:42
Right now, before we get into my interview with my daughter Grace Zigler,
1:12:46
which I urge you to stick around for, I want to tackle a
1:12:51
topic that's not directly related to media, but I think there's a huge media
1:12:56
element to it, and it's clearly very timely and I waited until after the
1:13:00
Christmas holiday to get into this for reasons I think will be obvious as I
1:13:08
talk about it. But I want to talk about Santa and Jesus in a
1:13:13
way that you've probably never heard anybody else discuss. I don't know that,
1:13:18
but that's my guess, and I want to start this portion of the podcast
1:13:26
with admission that I'm a complete hypocrite and a bit of a paradox on these
1:13:32
two issues. I can't stand Santa Claus, as I've said many times before,
1:13:38
and the lessons that Santa teaches. However, when I became a dad,
1:13:44
I became the defender of Santa because my daughter Grace loved him so very
1:13:49
very much still does in some ways, which you'll hear in the interview.
1:13:55
And I am also somebody who is agnostic when it came to organize religion.
1:14:00
That's on a good day on a bad day, I'm a full on atheist.
1:14:03
And I grew up as a Catholic, but I no longer believe in
1:14:08
Catholicism. I no longer view Jesus Christ as the son of God. I
1:14:14
believe Jesus Christ was a historical figure. I have no problem with people who
1:14:17
believe that he's got in fact, paradoxically, somewhat hypocritically, I want people
1:14:24
to believe in Christianity. I think Christianity is a pretty darn good template for
1:14:30
a way for society to function. I think it makes people better people,
1:14:36
especially if they believe that there's going to be a reward in heaven for doing
1:14:42
good on earth it may be a punishment for doing bad, depending on your
1:14:45
religious beliefs. I think that is critical for a functioning society. And while
1:14:51
no religion is perfect, Christianity is pretty darn good. Of the religions that
1:14:57
I have studied, I think it's probably the best. Again, depending on
1:15:02
many different versions of Christianity, but I think that Christianity in general provides a
1:15:10
really good way for society to create its rules. I think the Old Testament
1:15:15
did a pretty good job based upon what its intention was at the time,
1:15:21
which was essentially, in my view, to create the rules for society.
1:15:27
And then the New Testament, which is very, very very different than the
1:15:30
Old Testament, kind of took that in a different direction through Jesus Christ.
1:15:34
And I wish more people acted like Christians. I want to make that clear.
1:15:41
Society would be better if more people acted like Christians. By the way,
1:15:45
I think the Republican Party would do a hell of a lot better if
1:15:48
more people were truly Christian. I think one of the problems with the Republican
1:15:54
Party and Trump is that Trump basically broke the religious right. That's another story
1:15:59
for another day, but I think the Shazam factor has gone out of the
1:16:03
religious right vote. I think we're going to see that with regard to how
1:16:09
well Trump does in comparison to Ron de Santus in Iowa, which is a
1:16:13
state which used to be controlled by the religious right. But I digress back
1:16:17
to Santa in Jesus. I think that there is a connection, and I've
1:16:24
always said that this is a dangerous thing for Christianity. A connection for how
1:16:31
children and people who are growing into adults view Santa and connecting Santa to Jesus,
1:16:41
and how the process of no longer believing in Santa has an impact,
1:16:47
if only subconsciously, on people no longer believing in Jesus. And part of
1:16:55
why I'm talking about this now is this came up with my daughter in the
1:17:00
Christmas season, and she and I discuss this in our interview. Now she
1:17:03
disagrees with my analysis here, but I don't think she's being totally honest with
1:17:11
herself. You can decide for yourself when you listen to the interview. But
1:17:15
I think that Christianity is fading fast as a cultural force, not just politically.
1:17:24
But there's all sorts of evidence for this, there's all sorts of reasons
1:17:28
for this. I think Trump is a part of it. I think the
1:17:30
Catholic Church scandal is a part of it. I actually think that the most
1:17:34
underrated part of why Christianity is fading as a cultural force, why people are
1:17:42
no longer attending church. I mean, my god, one of the most
1:17:45
underrated stories of the last ten years is the dramatic drop in church attendance in
1:17:51
America. But I think the most underrated element of this is we now have
1:17:57
almost an entire populationation that went through the process of believing in and then not
1:18:05
believing in Santa Claus, who was directly connected to the birth of Jesus.
1:18:13
And when I say that, that is based upon my pretty extensive study of
1:18:18
this topic, I mean, Santa has been around for a long time,
1:18:21
but it wasn't until the television age in the sixties and maybe into the seventies
1:18:28
when Santa Claus really became a massive cultural force and wasn't just symbolic, but
1:18:35
he was real. He was taught as real to a huge portion of American
1:18:43
kids. And the reason why that was is because there was a massive economic
1:18:47
motivation there. I mean, television realized that there was a lot of money
1:18:54
to be made from Santa Claus. The Charlie Brown Christmas Special was kind of
1:18:59
a reaction to that. But there's a reason why most of the classic Santa
1:19:04
Claus related TV specials were all made in the sixties and the seventies. One
1:19:10
that was the advent of television really becoming a major part of American culture and
1:19:17
most people getting television sets. But it was also a change in the nature
1:19:23
of how Santa was seen. And so now basically no one under the age
1:19:29
of sixty who grew up in the United States didn't go through this process of
1:19:34
at some level believing in Santa and then not believing in Santa. And that
1:19:42
cause is, I think, at least subconsciously, some level of trauma and
1:19:47
distrust for a lot of different things, and one of them is Jesus.
1:19:56
And you know, I'm not the only person that's stated that I was going
1:20:01
to talk about this anyway, but I decided, Okay, I've got to
1:20:04
talk about this because I recently came across a clip from comedian Bill Burr.
1:20:11
Now, to my knowledge, I've only ever played one other clip from a
1:20:15
comedian, at least in recent times in this podcast, and it was from
1:20:17
Bill Burr, who's, you know, kind of an anti woke, smart
1:20:21
guy, not really liberal or conservative, kind of middle of the road comedian.
1:20:28
And he does a skit a bit about how it was that as an
1:20:33
adult he realized what a load of crap instantaneously he realized what a load of
1:20:39
crap scientology is, and that he did not have the same reaction to what
1:20:47
it sounds like was Catholicism, because he learned that as a kid when he
1:20:53
was learning all sorts of other similar stories, like, for instance, the
1:20:59
story of Santa Claus. And here's just about a minute and a half portion
1:21:03
of that bid that Bill Byrd does. Again, he's referencing at the beginning
1:21:08
here what a load of craps scientology was, and how obvious it was to
1:21:12
him learning scientology as an adult that it was not based in any sort of
1:21:16
reality, but then it got him thinking about why that was, and I
1:21:23
found this to be really significant. So here's Bill Burr on this particular subject,
1:21:29
and I said, that is the dumbest shit I ever heard. Well,
1:21:30
simultaneously still kind of believing that a woman we never got fucked had a
1:21:34
baby that walked on water died. He came back three days later. That
1:21:41
made total sense to me. Don't just hit me. One day I was
1:21:44
just like, well, why does that make sense? And that shit doesn't
1:21:46
you know? They got a spaceship in theirs, you know, I we
1:21:51
had this space shuttle, you know, the sneakers. There's a lot of
1:21:54
shit I can relate to in this Why does that sound so dumb to me?
1:22:00
I don't know, you know what it is. I think it's because
1:22:01
I heard their story when I was an adult. I heard my story when
1:22:05
I was like four years old. Right when I heard my story, there
1:22:09
was still some fat fuck coming down the chimney giving me Christmas toys. If
1:22:12
I lost a tooth, There was a fairy, there was an easter bunny.
1:22:15
Why wouldn't there be some bearded baby moon walking across the lake throwing out
1:22:20
bottleless buckets, A shrimp or whatever whatever he did. Of course that makes
1:22:26
sense. But what happened was as I got older, all of that stuff
1:22:30
started to fall right like as on this there's no fat fuck at your mother
1:22:33
and I. Your mom's the tooth fairy rabbits don't have eggs, her tits
1:22:38
are fake. The NBA's fixed bakers are cuts close. Her drave fuck comes
1:22:43
true. Hi, And I was just like, Wow, this is how
1:22:46
the world is. And I just had to make a decision. What am
1:22:49
I gonna do? What am I gonna do with this? Am I gonna
1:22:53
cling to it? Be that person? You know that's very offensive to me?
1:22:56
And I'm they're Christians, you can damp become that douche, all right?
1:23:00
Now? That clip really hit home for me, mostly because of what
1:23:03
I'm dealing with with my daughter Grace, which again you're going to hear from
1:23:08
in just a few minutes, but also because it somewhat dovetailed with my own
1:23:14
experience, not one hundred percent, but similarly, because as you probably know,
1:23:20
I am someone who when I find something to be of interest and it
1:23:25
doesn't make total sense, I do a full investigation of it. I try
1:23:29
to figure out what really happened. And sometimes I actually come to I think
1:23:33
really coaching conclusions that very few people are willing or able to express, not
1:23:39
always, but a lot of times. And the story of Jesus, specifically
1:23:44
his birth that we celebrate with Christmas, is a perfect example of this.
1:23:49
I have done a deep dive into the story of Jesus and his birth,
1:23:56
and I have concluded that it is the most obviously reversed, engineered story of
1:24:02
all time. And I'm not going to go into all the details as to
1:24:05
why. It's not a situation where most people will be convinced anyway, because
1:24:11
people will believe whatever they want to believe. But again, I grew up
1:24:15
as a Catholic at one point, was a very practicing Catholic. My entire
1:24:18
family on both sides very very Catholic. But you know, the basics of
1:24:24
the Jesus birth story are almost ridiculous from a historical standpoint. It's only mentioned
1:24:32
in two different gospels, Matthew and Luke. And you would think if this
1:24:36
really happened, that this would be in every biography of Jesus Christ, who
1:24:42
I do think was a historical figure, and I think that the story of
1:24:45
his crucifixion is probably pretty darn historically accurate. But I think the story of
1:24:49
his birth was created in a way that I don't even think the writers intended
1:24:55
to be taken seriously. It was intended to be apoclar fall is intended to
1:25:00
be symbolic. That's what most biblical scholars believe, and I've been I've interviewed
1:25:05
in my career many biblical scholars about this story because I find it to be
1:25:11
really important. I mean, if the biblical story of Jesus is not historically
1:25:15
accurate, then you got to question everything about the religion in my view,
1:25:19
because it's at the heart of the whole thing. Not to mention the heart
1:25:23
of our biggest holiday of the year. But when you look at some of
1:25:28
the basics of the story, they're very different in each of the two Gospels.
1:25:32
They're inconsistent with one another, they're paradoxical with one another. And I'm
1:25:39
giving lots of leeway for the time period. And you know, obviously that
1:25:44
was very rudimentary fashion in which people were able to transcribe histories. But these
1:25:49
stories were not written during Jesus's life. They were not written when anyone who
1:25:55
witnessed this situation was still alive, and you know, they come way after
1:26:00
the crucifixion stories. You would think the burst story would come first. I
1:26:04
mean, if you think about it just from human standpoint, when Tiger Woods
1:26:09
went on the Mike Douglas Show at the age of two, people kept an
1:26:12
eye on him, and he turned out to be Tiger Woods. I had
1:26:15
a whole website called Tiger Woods is Good dot com, which was mostly facetious
1:26:20
and almost only semi serious, but we used that metaphor a lot that that
1:26:27
was kind of the birst story of Tiger. Well, if Jesus's birth had
1:26:30
really had all this kind of fanfare, people would have kept an eye on
1:26:34
him before the age of thirty. But that didn't happen because the story was
1:26:39
written way way after everyone was dead. It's a little bit like the Star
1:26:45
Wars trilogy, where you know, you don't start at the beginning. The
1:26:48
first stories that were made public were actually, I guess, in the middle,
1:26:53
and then they went back and wrote the beginning stories and that caused a
1:26:57
lot of problems with regard to plot lines. And you know, whether Princess
1:27:01
Leah and Luke Skywalker knew they were brothers and sister. That type of thing.
1:27:06
The reality here is the first story was created later as a way to
1:27:12
try to justify Jesus's divinity. That's why they allude to the prophecies, the
1:27:18
prophecies of a virgin birth, although it's my interpretation that that was actually a
1:27:26
misinterpretation of the prophecies, that there was a translation problem, and that there
1:27:30
really was no prophecy saying that the Messiah would be born of a virgin.
1:27:36
The entire virgin situation, if you want to get deep into it, you
1:27:40
want to do a deep dive on that. That is fascinating because you know,
1:27:44
there's two schools of thought on this. Either the virgin birth story was
1:27:50
an attempt to fulfill the prophecies and was a reaction to a writing about Jesus
1:27:59
that indicate that Mary, his mother, was not impregnated by Joseph, to
1:28:03
whom she was betrothed at the time, but not married, but actually by
1:28:08
a Roman soldier in what would have been defined at least in our terms as
1:28:13
rape. And that sounds horrible, but that is actually a very popular view
1:28:18
among biblical scholars as to what actually happened. And most interestingly, we even
1:28:23
have the name and the tombstone of the Roman soldier that may have been the
1:28:29
father of Jesus, And was the virgin birth story a reaction to this writing,
1:28:34
which was almost contemporaneous to Jesus becoming a major figure. Did the backers
1:28:42
of Jesus create the virgin birth to try to basically overwhelm the story of Mary
1:28:47
being impregnated by a Roman soldier or was it the opposite. Is it possible
1:28:55
that the Roman soldier's story was a reaction to this idea of a virgin birth.
1:29:01
It's impossible to know because we don't have timestamps on what was written.
1:29:08
But there's two schools of thought on that. And you know, the fact
1:29:12
is that in Catholicism, the virgin birth is actually a double virgin birth.
1:29:16
It's the birth of Jesus from a virgin and Mary herself was conceived without sex,
1:29:24
which is you know, that's really going overboard. Of course, it's
1:29:27
the immaculate conception that is the origin of the Immaculate reception, which was done
1:29:32
by my good friend, the late Great Frank o'haris. So there's always some
1:29:35
sort of ziglar connection somewhere. But as Bill Burr reference, is there the
1:29:43
virgin birth story is really difficult to accept on a number of levels. But
1:29:48
it doesn't stop there. I mean, the other prophecy that was apparently attempted
1:29:54
to be fulfilled by the writers of Matthew and Luke was the fact that this
1:29:59
occurred in Bethlehem. Well, the idea that it occurred in Bethlehem is absurd.
1:30:04
Jesus was known as Jesus of Nazareth. The trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem
1:30:11
would have been insane for a pregnant woman to take voluntarily. There was no
1:30:16
reason for Jesus, and I mean for Mary and Joseph and Jesus, who
1:30:20
was you know, obviously within Mary at that time, to go to Bethlehem
1:30:26
for this census. They weren't Roman citizens. There's no year in which that
1:30:30
census could have taken place that is consistent with Jesus' birth. In fact,
1:30:36
there's no year that is even consistent between Matthew and Luke. If you do
1:30:41
the detective work, there's no year in which Jesus could have been born that
1:30:45
isn't contradicted by either Matthew or Luke. In the Gospels, the killing of
1:30:51
the Innocence, which was allegedly ordered by King Herod is absurd because we have
1:30:58
all sorts of documentation of King Herod's life, and yet there's not one word
1:31:03
independent of the Gospels that indicates that he ever ordered hundreds of not thousands of
1:31:10
children to be killed in an effort to try to eliminate this new king that
1:31:14
was going to threaten his reign. That's just a story that was made up
1:31:18
in order to get people to think of Jesus as the new Moses, because
1:31:23
Moses had had a similar story in his background. So the whole thing is,
1:31:28
in my view, reverse engineered. Now does that make it evil or
1:31:33
wrong or it's a nice story. If people want to believe it, that's
1:31:36
fine. It doesn't even mean that Jesus wasn't God, although to me it
1:31:41
raises a lot of questions. Is to me, if you lie to me
1:31:44
in the first thing you tell me, then then I got problems believing anything
1:31:48
you say going forward. But the importance of this is the first story historically,
1:31:57
in my view, did not happen anything to as we think of it
1:32:01
today in Christianity and celebrate for Christmas. Forget about the fact that the date
1:32:08
December twenty fifth makes no sense whatsoever. But that's to me a minor issue.
1:32:12
You can celebrate it whenever you want, and remember this is the this
1:32:15
is the event on which our entire calendar is based. It's probably the wrong
1:32:19
year, it's definitely the wrong time of year, and like I said,
1:32:25
the circumstances of this probably did not happen in any way, shape or form
1:32:29
like we accept in popular culture. But back to why this is important for
1:32:35
people believing in Christianity and why it's connected to people believing in Santa Claus,
1:32:41
because I think Bill Burr is onto something I think, and I've always worried
1:32:46
about this that if you don't if you're buying into Santa Claus and you're connecting
1:32:53
him to Jesus, and you decide eventually that Santa Claus isn't real, then
1:32:59
how is it that you're going to not have the same questions about Jesus.
1:33:03
And this occurred with my daughter Grace right before Christmas, at a timing,
1:33:10
in a timing that I thought was very very relevant, which we get into
1:33:15
in our interview, not right at the beginning, but towards the first portion
1:33:21
of this interview, I question her about how it is that she started to
1:33:26
have these very same questions about Jesus that she's had about Santa Claus. And
1:33:30
to be clear, I want to make this very clear, I have never
1:33:34
had any conversation with Grace about any of the things I just stated about why
1:33:41
it is I do not believe the birth story of Jesus to be historically accurate.
1:33:45
I have never talked to her about this at all, and yet she
1:33:49
came up with this on her own in a way that I think is very
1:33:55
telling. And again I want to emphasize, I'm in a very weird spot
1:33:58
here because I you know, I have tried very hard to maintain the Christmas
1:34:03
magic when it comes to Santa Claus. Probably too hard. I'll have some
1:34:08
thoughts on that after you hear the interview with Grace. And I'm someone who
1:34:13
doesn't believe in Christianity as a religion, but I want people to believe in
1:34:17
it because I think our society would be better off. And I have been
1:34:21
perfectly fine with our children learning in the Christian tradition, and I think it
1:34:28
would be good for them if they believed, at least at first in Christianity.
1:34:31
If later on as adults they decide it's not for them, that's fine
1:34:35
with me as long as they think it through. So I have a very
1:34:39
nuanced view of all this. But I also think this is allowed me to
1:34:45
come up with a theory that is really kind of compelling. I mean,
1:34:49
the demise of religion and Christianity in American culture is really one of the most
1:34:58
underreported stories that there is. And you know, one of the most basic
1:35:00
pieces of evidence of this is take a look, if you ever get a
1:35:04
chance, take a look at how people name their children in America. Most
1:35:12
people don't remember, I guess, and maybe they do if they're older.
1:35:15
But through almost the entire twentieth century, the name Mary dominated American names,
1:35:25
and I mean dominated, and among boys, John and Joseph also were exceedingly
1:35:33
popular. Now those names still exist today, but nowhere near like they used
1:35:40
to. Mary was by far the dominant name for almost the entire twentieth century
1:35:47
in America, and it's nowhere. I don't even it's not even in the
1:35:51
top couple now. I haven't looked at it recently, and I don't think
1:35:56
that's coincidental. That is, you know, that is a correlation that I
1:36:00
think has some causation to it. That religion and specifically Christianity's role in American
1:36:05
life has diminished greatly, and I don't think that's a good thing. Even
1:36:10
though I don't personally believe in it, I don't think that's a good thing
1:36:14
at all, because that's what holds societies together, that's what gives us some
1:36:18
semblance of morality. Because government cannot dictate for over three hundred million people,
1:36:25
you know that you have to do right and wrong. People need to believe
1:36:28
that there's going to be something in the afterlife, something that's going to reward
1:36:30
them for good behavior, something that's going to punish them for bad behavior.
1:36:34
And like I said, Christianity that does a better job of that than any
1:36:38
other religion I'm aware of now that it's the only one, but you know,
1:36:42
that's the one that I'm most familiar with, and that's obviously the one
1:36:45
that's dominated American culture through its entire history. And so that's a lot of
1:36:50
context for this interview with Grace that you're about to hear. One more note
1:36:55
of context. We begin this interview with one of her favorite subjects, which
1:37:00
is Taylor Swift, and we get into the whole Kansas City Chief Travis Kelce
1:37:04
situation, which has really taken a turn, and maybe we don't know yet,
1:37:09
but may end up being one of the worst predictions I made in twenty
1:37:14
twenty three. I made a lot of good predictions. I made some bad
1:37:15
ones. But I thought that once the initial euphoria of the Taylor Swift Travis
1:37:23
Kelcey phenomenon began, the Kansas City Chiefs, the defending Super Bowl champions,
1:37:30
you know, going down a positive path because it got off to a good
1:37:32
start. I thought that momentum was going to be insurmountable in all sorts of
1:37:38
different ways. And I thought they were a locked to go to the super
1:37:41
Bowl because everyone would realize it was in the best interest of the NFL and
1:37:45
the television networks and then the Super Bowl itself for Taylor Swift to be there
1:37:49
with their boyfriend Travis Kelcey playing. Not that it would be a conspiracy,
1:37:53
but that just would be the nature of the way things work, especially when
1:37:57
I thought the Chiefs were probably one of the better teams to begin with.
1:38:00
Well, I was totally wrong at this point about this, because this is
1:38:04
now taken on a very negative momentum. The Chiefs are in almost a free
1:38:09
fall. They're not going to have home field advantage in the playoffs, which
1:38:13
means that they're not likely to make the super Bowl. It's not impossible,
1:38:18
but they are certainly no way to shape or form the favorites to make the
1:38:21
super Bowl at this point, and there's going to be a lot of people
1:38:25
that are going to start blaming the whole Taylor Swift, Travis Kelcey. Whether
1:38:29
that's real or not, I don't know, but that's the way narratives work.
1:38:32
And you know what, you know, you play with fire, sometimes
1:38:35
you get burned, and it seems like that's what's happening right now with the
1:38:39
Chiefs. So that's how we begin this interview. Afterwards, I'll have some
1:38:43
thoughts on what transpires during this interview, which I think are could find to
1:38:47
be rather unorthodox and rather compelling in a lot of different ways. Some of
1:38:53
it doesn't necessarily make me look particularly good, but that's okay because I don't
1:38:57
really care. The show is about providing truth that you're here anywhere else,
1:39:00
and I think this interview does a lot of that. So, without further
1:39:02
ado, here's an interview that I tape with my daughter, Grace, eleven
1:39:05
years old in fifth grade, the day after Christmas, which I thought of
1:39:10
the time had gone very very well, but things would immediately shift just after
1:39:15
this interview. Grace Ziggler, Welcome to the Death of Journalism podcast. Thank
1:39:21
you dad. All right, we're here just after Christmas, which is an
1:39:29
exciting time, although a difficult time. I know for you how much you
1:39:31
love Christmas, and we'll talk about Christmas in a little bit. But the
1:39:36
way I want to do this interview is I want to go through basically a
1:39:41
number of different topics, mostly celebrities, people that I know you have a
1:39:45
strong opinion on, and kind of get your take on each and every one
1:39:49
of them. Does that sound good? Yep? All right, So we're
1:39:54
going to start with I know one of your favorites. We're going to start
1:39:57
right in your wheelhouse. One of the the biggest news stories of this year
1:40:00
has been Taylor Swift. She's the Time Person of the Year. You suddenly
1:40:06
became a Swifty sometime in the middle of the year. I don't even know
1:40:10
how this happened, But tell me about Taylor's Swift and why you are such
1:40:15
a big fan. She's just amazing. She's like our songs are like great.
1:40:24
She has great boyfriends, she's pretty, and everyone else likes her.
1:40:30
It's like I need to get with the program. Wait a minute, hold
1:40:32
on, So you like her because everyone else likes her, that's the main
1:40:36
reason, not the main reason, part of the reason. Also, I
1:40:41
just like her. All right, Well, I want you to speak up
1:40:45
just a little bit. Okay, it'll be a little bit louder because we
1:40:47
were doing this interview with just one microphone, which is a little bit awkward.
1:40:51
But I think we can we can deal with it, all right.
1:40:54
So I'm a little bit concerned about this idea that because everyone else likes her,
1:40:59
you need to get with the program. But that part was a joke.
1:41:02
I mean it's a little bit like that, but not totally like that.
1:41:06
I mean, I love Taylor Swift. Her music is amazing, so
1:41:11
I make fun of her a lot, though, Like there are some things
1:41:14
where I can see that she has a huge ego, like like I make
1:41:17
fun of her cult, and they make fun of like her boyfriend and how
1:41:23
dramatic she is. And you are actually wearing a Taylor Swift sweatshirt that you
1:41:29
got for Christmas during this interview, Chrest, Yes, all right, bubblegum
1:41:31
pink and it's the sweater from the aerostour. All right, I'm glad you
1:41:38
got that nailed downforce. Now you mentioned her boyfriends. Obviously, one of
1:41:42
the biggest sports stories this year, bizarrely is that she is currently dating Kansas
1:41:47
City Chief type and Travis Kelcey. Let's go, Taylor's boyfriend. Let's go.
1:41:54
So what do you make of her dating a football player? And what
1:41:59
do you think of Travis Kelcey. I think he's good looking. He suits
1:42:04
her with the vaccine ads and all that, And I'm concerned with one thing.
1:42:14
He is very strong and very violent since she since he plays a very
1:42:20
violent game, and I'm worried that if they get into a fight, something
1:42:25
could happen to Taylor. Okay, wait a minute, hold on, you're
1:42:29
suggesting that because Taylor is a football player, that he might be more prone
1:42:32
to physically abusing Taylor. That well, maybe he can't control his temporani just
1:42:39
for as a fist. Okay, there's no evidence of that at all.
1:42:44
And I don't know where you're getting that from. It's a weird because TikTok
1:42:47
oh from TikTok someone on TikTok said it, so it must be true.
1:42:53
Yeah, okay. Well, maybe we'll talk about TikTok a little bit later
1:42:56
on, because that's a major concern I have as well. But as far
1:43:00
as dating a football player, you think that's bad because she might get beat
1:43:04
up because of it. Yeah, okay, but you've also told me that
1:43:10
you don't think that football is nearly as violent a game as it used to
1:43:14
be. Tell me about your thoughts on the state of football. They're all
1:43:19
lissies now. And where did you hear that? Did you hear that from
1:43:23
me? Because that's something I say a lot. No, I just I
1:43:28
was watching the football game yesterday and I'm just like, wow, it's basically
1:43:33
just a harsh scheme of tag. Okay, you did. You must be
1:43:39
quoting me. I'm not quoting you. That has to come from me,
1:43:43
right, How would you come up with that on your own? Because I'm
1:43:47
smart? Okay? So you think football has become wissified. Yeah, I
1:43:54
would say the other word, but I can't. Okay. And to be
1:43:59
fair, you've followed football pretty closely, even though you're not a huge fan.
1:44:02
You're now eleven years old. You know all about John Facenda and the
1:44:06
Autumn Wind. What team is the autumn wind about. It's the Raiders.
1:44:12
It's one of my favorite teams. But of course I like the Chiefs.
1:44:16
You like the Chiefs because of Travis Kelcey. Yeah, but I think they
1:44:20
might go to the end of not to the NFL, to the the Super
1:44:27
Bowl because of Taylor. I also like Steelers. I also like Cowboys and
1:44:36
Chargers. Okay. So you like this the Steelers because of Franco Harris,
1:44:41
Right, we'll talk about him a little bit later on. You met him
1:44:45
a couple of times. And you like the Cowboys because of the cheerleaders.
1:44:49
Hey, you were a cheerleader for Halloween last year. Although now you don't
1:44:54
care at all. I care about him. Now you've never mentioned that super
1:44:58
Chief Okay. You liked when Dolly Parton dressed up on Thanksgiving away as a
1:45:08
Dallas Cowboy cheerleader. Okay? And why? And you like the Chargers because
1:45:12
they're here in Los Angeles? Is that why you like the Chargers. Yeah,
1:45:15
the teacher likes the Chargers. They're just like a good team. Okay.
1:45:19
And what do you think that Taylor Swift becoming part of the Chiefs thing
1:45:24
has done to the team. They've started losing quite a bit. Do you
1:45:26
think she's hurting the team? I think maybe. I think maybe Travis Kelsey's
1:45:30
out of his head a bit when she's around, so maybe Also, like
1:45:38
legitimately, one of the most famous people on the earth is there, so
1:45:41
like get they're kind of out of it. So maybe like that, you
1:45:45
think they're nervous. Yeah, because it's Taylor Swift, even if you're not
1:45:50
as Swifty. It's crazy now when you saw Taylor Swift at Travis's game on
1:45:57
Christmas wearing a Elf cap with his number on it? What was your Santa
1:46:01
cap? And I'm they're getting married? You think that means they're getting married.
1:46:08
Christmas is famously Taylor Shift's favorite holiday, Like she loves it more than
1:46:15
any day in the whole world. And she missed basically the whole day to
1:46:23
sit and watch her boyfriend. I don't know if it's a fame stunt or
1:46:28
she's just in love with him and she wants to get married. He better
1:46:31
get her a ring, otherwise his life is going to be ruined, because
1:46:35
then the whole entire Colt is going he either marries her or faces the consequences
1:46:44
of getting demonetized. Demonetized Taylor Swift. Colt is going to demonetize yees,
1:46:51
he's going to get canceled. Okay, So married Taylor or face the consequences.
1:47:00
He would you be happy if she married him? Hell yeah, I'm
1:47:02
going to sneak into her wedding. Okay, good luck with that. All
1:47:05
right. Now, let's get to a little bit more serious topics. I
1:47:09
want to go through a series of politicians and get your reactions to them.
1:47:15
You you was a very little child, very little child. We actually did
1:47:20
a couple of videos about the whole Trump versus Hillary thing, and you did
1:47:26
not like Hillary because you thought she she was going to steal my tokens,
1:47:31
all your money. You're chucking cheese token, Yeah, chuck and cheese.
1:47:35
Okay, you actually said that in the video. And you and you kind
1:47:39
of liked Trump when he went up. I hate Trump. Okay, hold
1:47:43
on a second. So you you liked Trump in twenty sixteen when you're a
1:47:46
very little girl. That was a very long time ago. Now, but
1:47:50
you now now you say you hate Trump. Why do you hate Trump?
1:47:53
Taylor? Well, wait an, hold on a second. You've just you've
1:47:57
changed your mind on Trump because of Taylor Swift. Yeah, because why Taylor's
1:48:03
against him, and so therefore, because you're a Swift, do you feel
1:48:08
like you're obligated to be against Trump? Also, because are we really going
1:48:14
to have someone who has been like like gone to court like five times and
1:48:20
like like sentenced. He hasn't been sentenced anything. He hasn't been convicted.
1:48:27
He's Trump, so he can't get sentenced. But what does that mean?
1:48:31
He he was about he's what's the word I'm searching for. He's he's not,
1:48:39
he's gone. He's he's committed illegal crimes five times, been indicted four
1:48:45
times. He's been indicted four times, and we're going to have him as
1:48:53
presidents but not Disney World guy Ron desantisn So you like DeSantis over here?
1:49:03
Hell yeah, all right, Well we'll talk about the Santis in a second.
1:49:06
But I want to make clear. So you think that because Taylor Swift
1:49:12
is against Trump that you have to be against Trump too, Well, here's
1:49:15
the thing. She I need to follow some rules. So I find it
1:49:25
that I can be against someone that my dad is against while being against someone
1:49:30
Taylor's against. It's like a win. Okay, oh okay, So because
1:49:33
you know I don't like it, like I can't agree with her in some
1:49:36
stuff. Okay, so wait a minute, just to review. You know
1:49:40
I don't like Trump, right, He's better than like, what's his name
1:49:45
is? Old and CRIPPLEDI okay, hold on second, But you know I
1:49:49
don't like Trump, and you know Taylor doesn't like Trump, So that's why
1:49:54
you're against Trump. Yes, Also, he wants to build walls around the
1:50:00
Okay, well we already had a chance to do that and he didn't do
1:50:01
that, and that actually might have been one of his better ideas. But
1:50:04
okay, So so if do you think that if Taylor openly told her cult
1:50:12
to not vote for Trump and to vote for Biden in this coming election,
1:50:15
that that would hurt Trump? Do you think a lot of girls would do
1:50:18
the same. Yes, okay, But also a lot of her fans are
1:50:24
like young really well, they're too young to vote, some of them,
1:50:28
but a lot of them are not too young to vote. So you're too
1:50:30
young to vote, but a lot of her fans are not too young to
1:50:33
vote. So you no longer like Trump for reasons that I find interesting.
1:50:39
You mentioned Rond de Santis. Why do you like Rond de Santis? I'm
1:50:43
proud to be an American really shay sh to know, I wish free.
1:50:49
Okay, Now people associate that song with Trump. Now why did you just
1:50:55
quote that song with regard to this? But are you referring back to COVID
1:51:01
where we lost our freedom and DeSantis was the person who helped give it get
1:51:06
us back our freedom? Is that what you're referring to? Yes, Like,
1:51:12
I made a comic a while ago, like how COVID began. It
1:51:16
was kind of cool, but my mom forgot to print it and then she
1:51:19
lost it. But anyway, it's basically how COVID began. And I drew
1:51:25
a picture like most of all the whole entire country and it's like be like
1:51:30
it's exploding and it's like under chaos. And then I do like the state
1:51:38
of uh Florida, Florida, and it's just happy, happy, happy.
1:51:44
So you think Florida was happy while all the rest of us were panicking.
1:51:47
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that was because of the Santas. Yes,
1:51:51
so you like DeSantis over Trump. I hate to break it to you,
1:51:56
but DeSantis is not going to beat Trump. Does that make you sad?
1:52:00
I'm going to meet chump in the middle of the night. You're gonna
1:52:06
so he can have a chance. Oh well, okay, well good luck
1:52:10
with that. Trump is not going to lose the DeSantis unfortunately. I just
1:52:15
want I just want you to be prepared for that because that's going to happen
1:52:17
in the next month or so. So who who would you vote for?
1:52:21
And Trump or Biden? Okay, well we're about to get there because I
1:52:27
want to ask you about Biden. So, Biden's our president. What do
1:52:30
you think of President Joe Biden? He's old and crippled and he can barely
1:52:34
remember his name, okay, and so do you think that that means he
1:52:40
shouldn't be president? Again? He's older than my grandfather, who can barely
1:52:45
make a can of soup. Okay, well, that's actually technically not true.
1:52:50
He's slightly younger. He seems about as old as your grandfather. He
1:52:57
is as old as my grandfather. And and and not to mention all the
1:53:02
memes on TikTok going around about him and how he can barely walk, Like
1:53:08
there's this meme on TikTok he's like going up his private jet and then like
1:53:13
then the Marvel car is shooting bananas and he's just falling, right, he
1:53:17
does have a problem with stairs, especially when it comes to getting on and
1:53:21
off planes. Okay, so you don't think that he should be president.
1:53:26
So you he's old, so he's going to die. Okay, well that
1:53:30
might be part of the plan because you know, if he wins, then
1:53:32
that means Kamala Harris can be president. How do you how do you feel
1:53:36
about Kamala Harris? She's worse than all of harmas. Okay, what she's
1:53:45
not worse than Harmas? She is? Okay? Why do you not like
1:53:47
Kamala Harris? She murders? Okay, stop and grace, stop being stupid.
1:53:54
Why do you like? Why do you dislike Kamala Harris? He's just
1:53:56
a horrible human being? On what based on she like, she separates families
1:54:04
and she what are you talking about that? She said? Okay, you're
1:54:11
just talking gibberish. I don't like. Okay, that might be true,
1:54:16
but not for any of the reasons that you're giving. I mean, I
1:54:19
would think that you would actually like her because she speaks to people at your
1:54:23
level. She talks to everyone like their you know, you're in fifth grade,
1:54:27
so she I think she actually talks to most people like they're in third
1:54:30
grade. So you don't like that. I hate it when people talk to
1:54:35
me like I'm in third years. I had the teacher last year her I
1:54:40
want her to die in a pit. She would always say friends, come
1:54:44
on for friends. No, she should die in a hole. Okay,
1:54:47
Grace, you're being ridiculous. Stop. Don't go so crazy. You always
1:54:51
have to go too far. Grace always has to go too far. All
1:54:55
right, now, So you don't like Harris? Between Biden and Trump,
1:54:59
who would you be rooting for? You can't vote, but who would you
1:55:01
root for? Who would you want to win? Between Biden and Trump?
1:55:05
Two point zero? Are you allowed not to vote? Yes, you're allowed
1:55:11
not to vote No One, So you would not vote for either Biden or
1:55:15
Trump. I think a lot of people are in that same camp. Okay,
1:55:19
so I gotta ask you about Gavin Newsom. Can you confirm to me
1:55:25
what you and your younger sister Diana call Gavin Newsom. First of all,
1:55:30
I'm the reason why my sister calls her Gavin Poosum, and we call him
1:55:35
Gavin poossom. And what's the origins of that? His name runs poussum,
1:55:43
so Gavim poussom. But why don't you like Gavin pooshm or Newsom. I
1:55:48
feel like, if we're this far into the interview, people already know,
1:55:54
Well, why don't you tell us, tell us for the record why you
1:55:56
don't like Gavin Poussam. Because he's a mask, vaccine, very put together.
1:56:06
He probably looks at himself in the mirror for two hours to get his
1:56:10
hair ready. Person. So you don't like him because he likes masks and
1:56:15
he likes vaccines, and because he's in love with the way he looks and
1:56:18
he takes a long time with his hair. That's why you don't like him.
1:56:23
Everything above two Okay. Now, obviously Newsom was in charge here in
1:56:29
California during COVID, and that had a big impact on your life, right
1:56:33
tell us you know it's part of this I'm sure is starting to fade from
1:56:38
your memory. But as an eleven year old, take us through what you
1:56:43
remember of COVID and how the whole COVID situation impacted your life, specifically at
1:56:49
school, What do you remember of COVID. So I'm not very good at
1:56:55
making friends. I'm like kind of a nerd, and so like March,
1:57:02
I was like starting to make friends. Like we all shared a love of
1:57:06
like DC super Villains, and we would always play after like we were at
1:57:12
lunch. We would play like Kylie Quinn, Poison Ivy and like all that
1:57:15
stuff, and like I was really starting to make friends, and like I
1:57:19
never had a friend before, so this was like amazing. And then like
1:57:26
like legitimately, three weeks after I made like a friends, COVID hit.
1:57:31
So you remembering back to March of twenty twenty. In fact, you were
1:57:34
the star of the school play. Yes, that happened like a week before
1:57:40
the crap hit the fan when it came to COVID, and and so that
1:57:45
was not good timing for you, but you know that's sometimes life. Time.
1:57:47
Life is all about timing. But it just took a very long time.
1:57:51
So tell us about what it was like to go to Zoom school and
1:57:57
then fake Zoom school and then be mad in school and so what was that
1:58:00
all like in your memory? I remember feeling the hot hatred. I just
1:58:06
wanted to say all these horrible things to the teachers that are making me put
1:58:12
on this staper. So you really hated wearing the mask? Why did you
1:58:16
hate wearing the mask? I can't breathe as it is like I can't,
1:58:24
Like, there's a lot stuff in this in my nose. I can barely
1:58:27
breathe as it is, and they want me to put on a thick,
1:58:30
hot piece of fabric with my barely brushed teeth breathing out and me smelling all
1:58:35
my breath. Hellnah. And it didn't make it more difficult to speak,
1:58:43
yes, And it made more difficult to learn because like I like, I'm
1:58:46
just like sick, and I can't like focus properly, and I need to
1:58:49
be in a comfortable area for me to like at least try to read.
1:58:55
And if I'm like having a thick piece of shit on my face, I
1:58:58
can't. I can't read. Grace's let's cut down on the profanity, all
1:59:02
allow it because it's you know, masks during COVID, So if you can't
1:59:05
curse during that, you can't curse during anything. What about when the teacher's
1:59:10
wearing a mask? Did that make it more difficult to understand the teacher?
1:59:13
Yeah? And then like most of the time, the teachers weren't even like
1:59:16
wanting to teach, they were being so lazy. So you think teachers actually
1:59:20
kind of used COVID as an excuse not to teach. Hell, yeah,
1:59:27
I really want to talk about my teacher last year. I have a lot
1:59:30
to say about that girl. Well, can you be nice about it.
1:59:33
I'll try not to cuss. I'll use the nice cuss words. What was
1:59:39
your experience, like, Well, last year was actually a normal year.
1:59:42
So what was wrong with her? She was gone every single week because she
1:59:49
was getting married in like five months, So the whole entire class had to
1:59:57
suffer because she was getting married. Okay, So first full year you had
2:00:01
after COVID, I didn't warn I want to say that. I say,
2:00:06
schort, Bet, I can't Okay, but you know all right? And
2:00:10
so like me, you thought that maybe post COVID we should try to catch
2:00:15
up instead where I should go back to second grade, okay, And instead
2:00:21
we're acting like nothing ever happened, and teachers, young teachers are taking off
2:00:26
for weeks at a time to prepare for a summer wedding. Then you and
2:00:30
you found out to be wrong, Yes, very wrong. And she never
2:00:34
she was one of those teachers. She was kind of new, but like
2:00:38
she didn't she liked all the easy kids, like the kids that knew everything,
2:00:42
but like kids that like were struggling and she was like, read it
2:00:45
again and maybe you'll catch them, GARYL, I can't read. Okay,
2:00:51
So you feel like you fell way behind because of the timing of COVID.
2:00:57
Is that correct? Yes? And I will never like I will when she
2:01:02
like sided me in the hallway. Okay, let's not talk about that particular,
2:01:05
teacher. I'm more interested in your general experience. Is it fair to
2:01:10
say that you think you fell behind both academically as well as socially because of
2:01:15
the couple of years you lost due to COVID? Well maybe not socially.
2:01:20
Well, yeah, socially and yeah academically. I was popular for like last
2:01:28
year and then like I lost all my popularity this year. Oh, you
2:01:30
lost all your popularity? What happened? There? Can I say her name?
2:01:40
Well, it's up to you, Grace. Even Martinez happened into me.
2:01:43
Never be her friend. Her mom is crazy, Okay, all right?
2:01:45
Well, so you had a really really close friend named Eva for a
2:01:49
couple of years and then recently things went to crap over that, right,
2:01:57
But you're not even really sure why, And I know it's had a big
2:02:00
impact on you. I'm very sorry that's all happened, But I don't think
2:02:03
you should be quite so angry about Eva. It may not have been her.
2:02:06
I'm going to warn everyone on the Okay, Okay, Grace, stop
2:02:11
it. Grace. You still miss her, you were still you were,
2:02:15
you were told her, you missed her just a couple of weeks ago,
2:02:16
even just before you left for Christmas break. So I know you're hurt.
2:02:21
I know you're hurt, right, And so you're you're upset and you're angry,
2:02:27
and she was your best friend and now she's not. So that's unfortunate,
2:02:32
and that's something, you know, that's a lot of what life has
2:02:34
to to. We have to deal with a lot in life, and sometimes
2:02:39
we have to deal with really crappy stuff like that. So I'm sorry you've
2:02:42
been going through that, but let's not take it all out on Eva.
2:02:45
All right, Okay, Okay, this is an audio podcast, so I'm
2:02:48
shaking your head. Doesn't really help very much. Okay, I'm shaking my
2:02:51
head. Okay, all right, Now back to covid for a second.
2:02:56
So I have told the story several times on different platforms and different podcasts about
2:03:04
what happened in twenty twenty with the Christmas lights here in our neighborhood. I'm
2:03:10
curious, since I've told the story many times, what is the story of
2:03:15
our role in our local Christmas lights during the COVID year? From your perspective,
2:03:21
why don't you tell us the story as if no one's ever heard it
2:03:26
before. It was a long time ago. I was like eight, I
2:03:31
think, and it was like two days after Halloween, and I was excited
2:03:38
for Christmas, but my dad thought it was going to be pretty shitty.
2:03:44
So so what happened was he said, dreams, and would you to res
2:03:50
a note? Well, no, I'm going to read a note because no
2:03:55
one can read your spending, and I'm going to ret a note was your
2:03:58
name on it, and then we're going to send it to every house on
2:04:02
Jemini Street. And I was like, Dad, isn't that illegal? Isn't
2:04:06
that illegal? Oh no, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine.
2:04:11
So what happened was two days after Halloween, we all sent the note and
2:04:15
it was like saying, like, how shitty my Halloween was? And please,
2:04:19
I really want Christmas because this is my favorite part of Christmas. So
2:04:26
a bunch of people loved my note. There were some douche bags that the
2:04:30
shed died not to do it, and then the liberal lady Penguine put it
2:04:38
up, but she still had a bad and flag up held to her.
2:04:42
And then they put up signs saying Merry Christmas grace. Okay, wow,
2:04:46
all right, that is a really interesting I don't know what was with the
2:04:49
British accent there, What was that? What was that all about? Tell
2:04:55
people? Tell stories? Okay, so you got both the essence of it
2:05:00
right that After Halloween, you and I sent a letter to our neighborhood that
2:05:04
does the Christmas lights, trying to get people to do the Christmas lights,
2:05:10
even though we knew liberals like the Biden lady who began the tradition weren't going
2:05:14
to do it because of the COVID panic. And so many people appreciated your
2:05:18
letter that they did do it, and a couple of people even put up
2:05:23
signs for you and for your sister Diana, and one of them still has
2:05:28
the sign up even this year. They still have the Merry Christmas Grace sign
2:05:33
in their display prominently, all for you know, four Christmases or three Christmases
2:05:39
later, so they've done it now for four straight years. How does that
2:05:42
make you feel? When we walked the Christmas lights as we did nineteen times
2:05:45
this December, literally nineteen times. How does it feel when you walk past
2:05:49
the Merry Christmas Grace sign? I'm like, oh, who's that girl?
2:05:54
Grace? She sends impurgent. Oh okay, all right, that's hilarious.
2:06:04
So speaking of Christmas, Grace, you and I have had quite an experience
2:06:08
over the last couple of years related to Christmas and what your belief system is
2:06:14
about Christmas. And there's really two elements to that story. The first is
2:06:20
your elf named Eli, and then there's Santa Claus. And so last year,
2:06:30
last Christmas, not this Christmas. Last Christmas, you were super excited,
2:06:33
as you've always been. You know, you were a fourth grader at
2:06:36
that time, to see your elf Eli. I mean, let me preface
2:06:42
all this by saying, Grace, I have never seen anybody love anything as
2:06:45
much as you loved Eli, your elf. Tell me why you loved Eli
2:06:50
the elf so very much. I know it's cool, no, but come
2:06:55
on, gre Grace, will you tell me how excited you would get when
2:06:59
Eli the would show up on the first day of Christmas after we get the
2:07:01
tree. Eh. No, it's just like mystery kind of it's like fun
2:07:06
finding him, and it's like cool, and it's like he I bet he
2:07:15
Like I used to think that without him I would get cold because like I
2:07:21
know that he was lying to say, not about how good I was being.
2:07:25
So you felt like you had a relationship with this elf and that he
2:07:28
was protecting you because times you would be bad during Christmas and you would still
2:07:32
get good stuff for Christmas and he was on your side. That was always
2:07:35
my impression. Is that true? Is that how you looked at your elf?
2:07:40
Yes? And when we would say goodbye to your elf on Christmas Eve
2:07:43
every year, how would you react? I would cry? Yeah, you
2:07:48
would cry real tears and be very upset. And so last Christmas when Eli
2:07:56
showed up, you were excited. But then the next day you came up
2:08:03
to me and said to me, or asked me, Dad, is Eli
2:08:09
real? And and tell tell me what you remember about what happened next?
2:08:16
He uh basically said that he's a dull that Sana gave us He's not really
2:08:24
real. Now do you remember anything else about that conversation? Uh? I
2:08:31
cried, Yeah, but you don't remember anything about what I did, what
2:08:37
I what I said to you. Oh, like the wear are You Christmas?
2:08:41
Song? Yeah? What what do you remember about that? He basically
2:08:46
rewrote the rare Christmas song and replaced where are You Christmas? To where are
2:08:50
You Eli? And I had written this song for you or poem for you,
2:08:56
like a couple of years before, anticipating this moment of having to tell
2:09:00
you what Eli was really all about? And what did you do? You
2:09:03
remember anything about it? What did you make of what I did there?
2:09:09
What did you think of it? What did did you think? I was
2:09:11
crazy? What did you do? What did you think? I was kind
2:09:15
of pissed off it you? Why? Why were you telling me the truth?
2:09:20
So you were pissed off at me? But it didn't occur to you
2:09:22
that, Wow, Dad went to all this trouble to rewrite the song where
2:09:26
are You Christmas? To Where are You Eli? To explain to you what
2:09:33
this was really all about. That didn't occur to you. I was occurred
2:09:37
to me, villain. You didn't really need to tell me. I was
2:09:41
only like ten, okay, but you, grace you. It was clear
2:09:46
that something had clicked and that you were realizing. No, you didn't like
2:09:56
when I was like really young, like I knew he was real. I
2:10:00
thought he was real, but like like kind of like in second grade,
2:10:03
it kind of like what made you start to think that he wasn't real?
2:10:07
Well, like, as your brain matures, you sur realized who he was
2:10:11
generally looks like he's made out of fabric, but you would you certainly still
2:10:18
seemed as if you believed and you were still very emotional about him. Oh
2:10:24
okay, whatever, if you want to believe that, that's fine. Now.
2:10:28
After that, you I gave you the authority to control Eli, the
2:10:33
lp to so that your sister would still believe in the magic, right,
2:10:41
Yes, And sometimes I forget And sometimes it's really stressful keeping the secret,
2:10:48
because it is stressful, isn't it. I'm not sure it's really working though,
2:10:52
because I think Diana is even more skeptical than you. I mean,
2:10:58
you're a Roman, a romantic type person. You like to you know,
2:11:03
you like your fantasies. Diana, your little sister, she's six years old.
2:11:07
She seems much more cynical and skeptical. Would you agree with that?
2:11:11
Yeah, Like we were walking the lights and it's like, oh my gosh,
2:11:16
it's the star of Jesus. No, it's a plane. That's a
2:11:20
true story. Yes, you were waxing poetic about oh look it's the star,
2:11:26
the star that was showed Jesus, and your little sister says, nah,
2:11:31
it's just a plane. So I don't I don't think that. I
2:11:35
think that next year is going to be a problem for the ELM. I
2:11:39
think we got through this year with the Elf, but I think next year
2:11:43
Diana's gonna call BS. What do you think I will keep that from happening
2:11:48
and make a bunch of sheep. Okay, so you're you're you're determined to
2:11:52
try to keep this going for Diana. Yeah, until she's like twenty Yeah,
2:11:56
good luck with that. Okay. Yeah, I don't think we're even
2:12:00
gonna get I think we're gonna get to the second day next year, like
2:12:03
what happened with you last year, and the jig is gonna be up now.
2:12:07
Obviously there's a relationship between Eli, the elf who's supposed to be the
2:12:11
spy for Santa and Santa Claus, and so a little bit after last Christmas,
2:12:18
you and I had another talk, this one about Santa Claus and what
2:12:22
do you remember about that? Again? I was pissed up at you and
2:12:31
why wait a minute, you came to me, right, yeah, because
2:12:35
all of my friends were saying that he's fake, and you were pissed at
2:12:39
me because why you told me that Santa wasn't real? Well, it's not
2:12:46
exactly what I said. I mean, I said that he's not a human
2:12:50
being, right when you're ten years old and the day it says that if
2:12:58
it's not a human being, it's not real. It's a spirit. Yeah,
2:13:01
it's a spirit, but it's not a real person. So it's not
2:13:05
really like it's not really the same, like it's not really like I get
2:13:11
what you were going with, but like the ten year old brain basically,
2:13:18
it's just like, oh, so he's not real. He's not a real
2:13:20
person, so he doesn't exist. Shit, I'm gonna cry now. And
2:13:24
there were more tears, and you're saying you were pissed at me for telling
2:13:28
you the truth. Yes, okay, Now what should I have done Differently?
2:13:35
You should have said, maybe because Eva's never around during holidays, maybe
2:13:41
her parents just said, oh, he's fake, you'd just lied to me
2:13:46
like mom does. Okay, so you would have preferred me to lie to
2:13:50
you. Yes, okay, I take issue with that because I thought I
2:13:56
handled it about as well as I could under the circumstances. But now you're
2:14:01
saying now you're saying you were pissed at me with Eli and you're pissed at
2:14:05
me with Santa. Correct, yes, okay, well that's depressing. But
2:14:13
but you still love Christmas? Right, I mean, I mean it's not
2:14:18
the same. I know it's not the same. Now, this year you
2:14:20
took an interesting tact. It seemed like you knew in your brain what I
2:14:26
said with Santa about Santa was true, but that emotionally you still at least
2:14:33
pretended to believe. Is that true? Yes, it's my coping mechanism.
2:14:39
It's your coping mechanism. When like I can't get to sleep, I would
2:14:43
just pretend I'm asleep and then I'll just fall asleep. I see. Okay,
2:14:48
now did that work for you this Christmas? Yes? And then you
2:14:52
just kept shitting all over like what are you thinking of Santa? Trilla literally
2:14:56
just told you he's baked. That's not what I said using the curse words,
2:15:01
Grace, Okay, all right, that's come on, that's my job.
2:15:07
I use the curse words, not you. All right, I'm an
2:15:09
adult. You don't get to use them yet. All right, all right,
2:15:13
So so do you feel that something has changed for Christmas forever? I
2:15:20
mean, do you still you still seem to love it? Yeah? I
2:15:24
love it, and it's changed a lot. But I afrae you not talk
2:15:33
about all like stuff that I don't want to hear. Okay, all right,
2:15:37
so you're like a Trump voter. I understand, I got it.
2:15:41
So last thing on this. So how determined are you to protect the magic
2:15:48
for Diana? I would legitimately throw away my Teddy and blinky sa Diana believes.
2:15:54
So wow, that's a pretty big commitment there. All right, So
2:15:58
this is your job now going forward? Right, yes, all right,
2:16:01
we'll see how well you do. Okay, Now, something interesting happened this
2:16:07
Christmas when we had a very bad visit with a fake Santa at the Santa
2:16:13
Brunch by the way, how bad was that Santa? Horrendous? Okay?
2:16:18
And the next day you started to ask me about Jesus and Jesus Christ and
2:16:24
whether or not he was a mythical figure, whether or not he was real,
2:16:28
whether or not he was really born in Bethlehem, whether there was a
2:16:31
manger and three wise men and all of that. And I want to be
2:16:37
clear here. Can you verify that I have never addressed this issue with you
2:16:41
before you raise that question? Is that accurate? Yes, it's very accurate.
2:16:46
I've always kind of wondered, like, what so I'm just supposed to
2:16:50
believe that some baby was born five million years ago on this exact day,
2:17:00
and he was born in a manga and some angels, shit happened, and
2:17:05
then some riise hand came okay, grace, you cursed again, and by
2:17:09
the way you got the it wasn't five million years ago. Do you know
2:17:13
what year it is? This year? It's twenty twenty three. That's twenty
2:17:16
and twenty three. We our years are determined, although probably inaccurately, by
2:17:22
the birth of Jesus Christ. Are you aware of that? That's what you
2:17:28
did not know that? Well, howard Jews supposed to know what year it
2:17:31
is? Then? No, everywhere, we've just all accepted it. We've
2:17:35
just forgotten Christian, Jewish, Islam, whatever, Hindu, We're all just
2:17:43
accepting that this is the year. Now. We don't want to talk,
2:17:46
but this is one of the things we don't want to talk about. We
2:17:48
don't want to talk about what the origin of that year is. But for
2:17:50
simplicity purposes, for logistical reasons, we have just decided to accept that this
2:17:56
is the year twenty twenty three, so it wasn't five million years ago.
2:18:01
But I want to go back to the more important point, which is that
2:18:05
you all of a sudden had these questions about Jesus at exactly the same time
2:18:11
that you're accepting the truth about Santa Claus. And I'm wondering whether or not
2:18:16
the fact that Santa and Jesus are obviously connected through Christmas, whether or not
2:18:22
that has had nothing to do with it. It had nothing to do with
2:18:24
it. It's just a weird coincidence. Yeah, I have not and I've
2:18:31
not accepted it. You've not accepted what saying not being real. Okay,
2:18:37
well I didn't realize that. Okay, well, well, okay, good
2:18:41
for you and your coping mechanism. But as far as Jesus, you don't
2:18:46
think that there's any connection at all between you. Generally, I was in
2:18:50
math class. I was bored off my mind, so I was remember it
2:18:58
reposibility. Did Jesus did all these things? And he's gonna ask you,
2:19:03
Dad. He likes my questions. I do like your questions. You ask
2:19:07
very good questions. And to be clear, I did not tell you that
2:19:13
Jesus isn't real or Jesus wasn't God. I said you were asking good questions
2:19:18
about his story of his birth, because there are some good questions to be
2:19:22
asked about the story of his birth. Is that what I told you?
2:19:28
Yes, you don't remember? Oh? No, ive Hi, All right,
2:19:35
well we're wrapping up this interview, so realize you know you're gonna You're
2:19:37
gonna make it through. I realized this is as long as a class in
2:19:41
fifth grade, and you're probably exhausted at this point, especially just after Christmas,
2:19:46
which is a very difficult period for you anytime anyway. But so are
2:19:50
you questioning though, when not Jesus is a mythical figure? Is that that's
2:19:54
what you said to me? Is that? Is that? Yes? Am?
2:20:00
Why are you questioning that? I don't know? All right, you're
2:20:07
getting tired, You are really getting tired fast, Grace. Okay, this
2:20:13
is really kind of pathetic. All right, So let's move on from Jesus
2:20:18
then, because when we talk about mythical figures, since you were a little
2:20:22
girl, you have been really into Bigfoot and the Lockness Monster. Tell me,
2:20:30
first of all why you loved Bigfoot and the Lockness Monster so much when
2:20:33
you were a little girl, because I just really liked it, and I
2:20:41
liked how it was different, and I liked how like there was some steer
2:20:50
this stuff, and like I liked believing like there could be a missing link
2:20:54
and I can make money off of finding Bigfoot and Luckness Monster, and like
2:21:00
I was really in the Bigfoot because like the missing link, and like I
2:21:05
love all the Bigfoot movies and all that like stuff. And I grew up
2:21:09
in ye seventy, so it's like like I like every year like looking for
2:21:15
Bigfoot there. It's just fun, right, And you and I have done
2:21:18
a lot of investigation of Bigfoot and the Locknest Monster. Correct, yes,
2:21:24
every nap time. Me and my dad used to like go and investigate on
2:21:31
YouTube when your mom takes a nap, which which she likes to do,
2:21:35
right, And so we would do our investigation now again kind of like with
2:21:39
Jesus, I've noticed that since your view of Santa has changed, you don't
2:21:45
seem as interested in Bigfoot and the Lockness Monster. Is that a coincidence?
2:21:52
No, it's just we haven't had time to study him. Well, you
2:21:54
don't ask about Bigfoot in the Lockness Monster. I mean, occasionally i'll show
2:21:58
you purported new videos of I think I did one for the Lockness Monster a
2:22:03
few months ago, and you didn't seem very interested at all. Oh no,
2:22:13
I guess I've seen it all. I've legitally seen it at all.
2:22:18
And so what have you concluded about Bigfoot and the Lockness Monster? They are
2:22:20
real? Oh okay, so they're the real ones. Santa and Jesus not
2:22:26
so much, but Bigfoot and Lockedness Monster you're totally sold on. Yeah,
2:22:33
okay, that's interesting, all right. I didn't realize that. All right,
2:22:35
we'll continue our investigation then, a couple other topics before we go here,
2:22:41
because I know you wanted to add. I know you wanted to get
2:22:45
the chance to speak about a woman who has played two of your favorites in
2:22:50
movies, Margot Robbie. Now you're energized all of a sudden again, Margot
2:22:58
Robbie, who's a very beautiful actress, very good actress. She has recently
2:23:03
played two of your favorite characters, Barbie and Harley Hally Quinn and Harley Quinn.
2:23:09
Now I find it interesting that you love both Barbie and Harley Quinn because
2:23:13
they could not be more different. Actually, you think Barbie and Harley Quinn,
2:23:20
those two characters are similar characters. Yeah, tell me why they're blonde.
2:23:26
They've dealt with trauma, well I'm talking about the Barbie from that movie.
2:23:31
They've dealt with trauma and realizing who they are. Like when Joker breaks
2:23:35
up with Harley Quinn, she's like, what am I gonna do with my
2:23:37
life? I legitimately destroyed my life because of this crazy psychotic man. And
2:23:43
same thing with like her with Barbie, she like like she doesn't know what
2:23:48
to do with her life, Like she's kind of like falling into an endless
2:23:52
abyss where she doesn't really understand anything and like who she is? Wow,
2:23:58
that's the stuff. So you actually think that Barbie and Harley Quinn are fairly
2:24:03
similar to me. Barbie's like the goody two shoes character, and Harley Quinn
2:24:09
is a very demented almost evil uh you know ulterior side to the Barbie character.
2:24:18
I think they're opposites, but you think they're similar. Okay, now,
2:24:22
did you you've actually done a few Harley Quinn monologues? You want to
2:24:26
do one? Right? Here? Give me some Harley Quinn as Margaret Robbie
2:24:33
do my favorite one. First of all, no one's like me, if
2:24:39
he even once. To become close to being like me, you have to
2:24:41
go to medical school, become a psychiatrist, fond love with your patient,
2:24:48
break sit patient, out of the asylum, begin to love a crime,
2:24:52
get captured by the Batman, break out of jail, save the world,
2:24:54
get captured by the Batman again, save the rule again, and now I'm
2:24:58
here. Also, six bucks for a bottle of water with a pickle stuck
2:25:03
in it? What is this? Okay, that was not what I was
2:25:09
expecting. But that was an actual monologue? Is that true? Yes,
2:25:11
it's my favorite monologue. It's from Birds of Prey. I actually think you
2:25:16
do a better Harley Quinn in a in a different movie. But Suici's going
2:25:20
number two break out scene. Okay, but okay, fine. You're very
2:25:26
into Harley Quinn, and more so than Barbie, although you did get you
2:25:30
know, Barbie and Ken for Christmas. Yeah, yeah, I'm really excited
2:25:33
to take up them. I really love Barbie. Why do you love Barbie
2:25:35
so much? Because I look like her and I just love her, and
2:25:39
I love imagination and I love pink and fashion and all that stuff. See
2:25:45
there you go. I mean, so you have Barbie and Harley Quinn,
2:25:46
which are really two sides of a very different coin, but but you see
2:25:52
similarities into two of them, and I find that interesting. All right,
2:25:54
now, I've talked to you about and asked you about some well known figures
2:26:01
celebrities that you've never met. I want to ask you about two that you
2:26:03
have met before we end this podcast. The first I want to ask you
2:26:09
about is Matt Lower, who you have met, You had lunch with one
2:26:15
time, and you peppered him with questions, and you've talked to him on
2:26:18
the phone a couple of times. So what do you make of my friend
2:26:20
Matt Lower? I feel like you tried. You wanted me to talk to
2:26:26
him so I wouldn't want to be rich and famous. You've done the exact
2:26:30
opposite. He was like, yes, I have a yacht for fishing and
2:26:33
for just lounging. I met my daughter, horse, my girlfriend horse,
2:26:37
my girlfriend's friends, boyfriends. Stop it, Grace, you're exaggerating. I
2:26:45
know you're trying to be funny, but what did you think of so my
2:26:48
plan to have Matt disabuse you of wanting to become a celebrity failed. I
2:26:54
got that, although Matt did a very good job, didn't me. No,
2:26:58
he was talking about how that's not true, Grace. Why are you
2:27:01
being like this? That's not what happened at all. He talked to you
2:27:05
about how difficult being a celebrity is, and how people who are your friends
2:27:09
aren't really your friends, and you don't find out who your friends are until
2:27:13
something bad happens. You don't remember any of that? Yeah, I remember
2:27:16
that. It's like what kind of what happened with my friend Eva? See?
2:27:22
There you go. It was actually similar, so you Matt could have
2:27:24
prepared you for that. Now what do you make of Matt as a person?
2:27:30
Did you like him? I like him as a person. Yeah.
2:27:35
Did you have a good time meeting him? Yeah? I got to have
2:27:39
my chicken nuggets and rich Grace, Grace, you're being so silly? Is
2:27:46
this because you're tired? You like Matt? Why are you being so weird?
2:27:52
So that's Matt Lower another famous person that you've met. You actually met
2:27:56
him a couple of times and unfortunately is no longer with us. Is Frank
2:28:01
o'harris? So what do you remember about meeting Franco Harris. He was really
2:28:07
fun and chill. He was a very big guy. It was like,
2:28:13
very tall and scary. He was kind of cool meeting a famous quarterback.
2:28:18
Dude that did see he was a running back, not a quarter betting whatever.
2:28:24
But do you remember when we went to his super Bowl party? His
2:28:26
last super Bowl party? As it would turn out, right, So we
2:28:31
entered this jam packed room. There's hundreds of people around at his super Bowl
2:28:35
party. And do you remember what he did for you? He bought me
2:28:39
a betting ticket. Right. He immediately came over, Si Hai, took
2:28:43
his picture with you and your sister, bought you a twenty dollars betting ticket.
2:28:48
I mean that's pretty cool, don't you think? Yeah, it was
2:28:52
really cool. And then he got special seats for us to sit because there
2:28:56
was no place for us to sit because we showed up a little bit late.
2:29:00
I mean he really liked you, Yeah, I really liked How did
2:29:03
you How did it make you feel? And how did it make your dad
2:29:05
feel? When a year ago Franco passed away, it made me really sad
2:29:09
because you wanted to get to know him better. I mean I never really
2:29:15
see you crying like that was the ones I really saw you depressed. Well,
2:29:20
I think I missed that part. You weren't you weren't awake yet because
2:29:22
I woke up earlier than anybody else that day. Your mother saw that and
2:29:28
was rather confused by what was happening. But we miss Franco, don't we?
2:29:33
Yeah, I missed him too. All right. Now, as we
2:29:35
wrap up this interview with Grace, a couple of things I want to address
2:29:39
with people that you know much better than Franco or Matt Lauer. So tell
2:29:45
me about your mother. I mean, I've referenced your mother many many times
2:29:48
on this podcast, but I've never really talked in detail about her. Tell
2:29:52
people who don't know about your mother about who she is. She's the best
2:29:58
person in word. I thought that was Taylor Swift. She's up there,
2:30:05
Okay, So tell me why your mom is the best person in the world.
2:30:09
She's been mom, and she loves me, and she tells me the
2:30:13
truth, like not like how you tell me the truth, but like she
2:30:16
tells me like like she told me like before like a few months before you've
2:30:24
had broke up with me, Like her mom's kind of crazy. Maybe like
2:30:28
you should like be friends with her because like she I think she's gonna break
2:30:33
up with you and like stuff like like she and then like when she did,
2:30:37
she would like she understood how it felt. And she's very understanding and
2:30:43
she shares my imagination. You're very very connected to her, right yes,
2:30:48
I love her more than anyone in the world, right, especially more than
2:30:52
your dad right way more than my dad. Who's dad? Okay, and
2:30:58
what about your younger sister, Diana. Give us a description of her and
2:31:03
how you guys get along. I I really can't describe the devil. I
2:31:13
like, the devil is like kind of weird. She's like it's hard to
2:31:20
like you. I feel like you guys know what the devil is like like
2:31:24
he's she's she makes a lot. The devil also screams when uh, you
2:31:37
don't do what you want her to do, and she will she won't take
2:31:41
any crap and she will she will she will yell at you if you if
2:31:46
you don't, should be going. Okay, So you just described your sister
2:31:52
as the devil. She's not the devil. And by the way, when
2:31:56
you reference her making, she's she likes to make things right. People think
2:32:01
that making might mean like she's pooping. But but she she's a she's a
2:32:07
big maker of things, and she does she does quite a good job with
2:32:11
that. But she's very different from you in a lot of ways. You
2:32:15
agree with that, right, very very Okay, this is this is how
2:32:20
she's different. So everything I'm saying just picture the opposite of she's popular,
2:32:26
she is good at school, She everyone loves her, she gets whatever she
2:32:33
wants, and my mom loves her and my dad loves her. Like she
2:32:43
treats my dad like not just like crap, he no dog, crap that's
2:32:48
been sitting in the park for twelve days and is now collecting mats and gross
2:32:54
stuff and kids are playing in it, and then like they have to go
2:32:58
to the doctor because now they're sick. That's what she treats him like.
2:33:03
That's how Diana treats me. Yeah, now, okay, I don't disagree
2:33:09
that Diana looks at my role in her life very transactionally. She basically will
2:33:18
pretend to care about me in order to get what she wants. She's very
2:33:20
very very good at that. But the idea that you seem, you seem
2:33:26
to think that I love her more than I love you, is that true,
2:33:31
you No, No, you're misinterpreting. You're misinterpreting. I put up
2:33:39
with Diana for reasons that I don't fully understand. But she's the younger one.
2:33:45
So that's always what's going to happen. You and I have had five
2:33:48
years of experiences together that Diana and I are never going to have grace.
2:33:54
You know that, right, I'll probably die and then like you'll, you'll
2:34:01
die five years later. And where's you're getting Where are you getting that from?
2:34:05
That's not gonna happen. No, no, and and so look,
2:34:09
you guys are very very different, but I love you the same. Now,
2:34:15
she might be better at abusing me than you are because she's a better
2:34:18
manipulator, because she's younger, because she has more weapons of manipulation than you
2:34:24
do at eleven years old. Plus I'm kind of hip to your scam.
2:34:28
You understand all that. Yeah, Yeah, she's also she's how do I
2:34:39
describe it? She doesn't care what other people think? And remember remember remember
2:34:48
this is like everything I say, just picture the opposite of and that's me.
2:34:54
Uh so she she doesn't give a ship with people. Think grace,
2:34:58
stop the cursing. But you're right, she does not care what people think.
2:35:03
You care deeply about what people think. Yes, and if someone like
2:35:09
let's say her best one of her best friends is Hunter, she doesn't treat
2:35:13
her like a best friend should, but like she says, she's the best
2:35:16
friend. I swear if Hunter left her, she would basically move on with
2:35:22
her life, which is probably why people like her, because she's chill.
2:35:28
You are not chill you. No, I hate people. I hate people.
2:35:33
No, no, I hate people like like that, like you could
2:35:37
have an amazing friendship. This is what happened with my friend. We had
2:35:43
an amazing friendship. She was treating me like can I say it crap?
2:35:48
Just say crap cap? And so basically she basically wouldn't like I didn't know
2:35:56
where She just said I don't want to be friends with you anymore, as
2:36:00
like what? And then the next day like I didn't play with her because,
2:36:01
like she said, it was like really sad and like and then she
2:36:07
was like, why aren't you playing with me? And I was like,
2:36:09
oh, you said you didn't want to be friends to me. Good,
2:36:11
Okay, Well I think there was a lot going on with Eva that had
2:36:15
nothing to do with you, and probably more to do with her family being
2:36:18
in disarray, and unfortunately you were the the victim of all that. But
2:36:24
I do think that if you were more chill like Diana, No, if
2:36:30
she knew she could hold on a second, listen to me, if she
2:36:33
if she didn't think she could hurt you, Like if it was Diane where
2:36:37
you know, one of Diana's friends leaves her, She's like, oh,
2:36:41
okay, you're lost, bye, see you later. I was like,
2:36:45
no, Grace, You're a feeler. Everyone knows when you're hurt, and
2:36:50
it's understandable. It's okay to be hurt. But I do think there's a
2:36:54
lesson to be learned from your younger sister there. You don't see that people
2:37:00
like that will never really have a relation. Okay, well, no,
2:37:03
you're a feeler, so you can't change who you are. I get it.
2:37:09
There's going to be more difficult things that happen in your life because you're
2:37:13
such a strong feeler. Uh and Eva is one of those. But let
2:37:18
me get back to Diana. So do you love your sister? Come on,
2:37:24
Grace, you love your sister. You want something? Would you want
2:37:31
something? Grace? Will you promise me that you and Diana will always be
2:37:35
friends, Will you promise me that I promise you have your fingers crossed?
2:37:43
Are you? Why are you crossing your fingers? Grace? Come on,
2:37:48
all right, well, you know what my promise is. Your promise isn't
2:37:50
gonna mean anything. I'm not going to make you to make your promise,
2:37:54
but I would like I would like you, guys, I promise that you
2:37:58
will love Okay, all right. I realized that what I want means nothing.
2:38:03
That should be very very clear to me by everyone in our family.
2:38:07
But I would very much like it for you guys to be friends for the
2:38:09
rest of your lives. Do you understand that? Yes? Or no?
2:38:15
Okay? I realized I realized that that has no real impact on you.
2:38:18
Okay, So Grace, this is this is not the first time I've interviewed
2:38:22
you, but this is probably going to be the last time I interview you.
2:38:26
You should know that because I'm ending this podcast in about a month.
2:38:31
Yeah, I know you didn't know that, but I'm I'm going to end
2:38:33
the podcast and I'm going to stop doing this public commentating. For a lot
2:38:39
of different reasons, but I just I think it's better for the family.
2:38:43
Because I didn't want to get my mom to be so, so, do
2:38:50
you make money off of this? Not enough? Well, if you're making
2:38:54
money, you should still be doing it. No, it's costing money.
2:38:58
Well, Grace is referring to a famous line that she said at the end
2:39:03
of the nationally syndicated weekend radio show that I used to do back in twenty
2:39:09
sixteen, where you thought you were telling the whole world the real reason why
2:39:13
we were ending the program, which was it's costing money. Yes, we
2:39:16
were losing money, but Trump had just won and there was no point of
2:39:20
going on. It's not at this similar situation here because Trump is going to
2:39:24
win the Republican nomination. He might even win the presidency. I really have
2:39:28
no interest in commenting on that, and there's no way to make it profitable
2:39:33
or make it worthwhile from a monetary standpoint. But also, Grace, I
2:39:37
think it's going to be better for the family because I think you and me
2:39:41
and your mom will get in fewer fights. Because I'll be less frustrated by
2:39:48
doing this podcast twice a week and putting all that effort and energy into it.
2:39:52
I'll be more boring going forward, but I think there'll be less fights,
2:39:58
and I might even get less fights with you. I'm hoping, so
2:40:01
you never hope too much. I don't even know what that means, but
2:40:05
I just wanted to explain to you that that's what I was planning on doing
2:40:11
videos and stuff for you. You mean, that's what I know. That's
2:40:16
what you care about. You care about me videotaping you and posting it on
2:40:20
my YouTube. But that's what you care about, right, That's all you
2:40:22
care about. That's pathetic. That is you don't give a damn about Are
2:40:28
you still gonna do dance show, Dan Abrams? I doubt it. I
2:40:31
hope you do because and I'm going to become Lady so you okay? That
2:40:39
is that is really ridiculous. That is really that is a Diana like view
2:40:45
of the world right there. That is really pathetic. That is really hurtful.
2:40:50
Wow, how what a depressing way to end this interview, our last
2:40:52
interview together. And you're like, damn, this is going to hurt my
2:40:58
career. It's a fashion designer and my brand Lady Holliday, which you've already
2:41:03
created. That's really sad. Grace, That's really sad. Wow, that's
2:41:09
what That's what we're gonna end it. We're gonna end it. Lit's just
2:41:13
like that, Grace, is there anything else? Last thing you want to
2:41:16
say? You know the first time you ever interviewed by me, you wanted
2:41:20
the audience to know it's costing money. This is your last chance to tell
2:41:24
the audience something about the whatever you want to talk about. What's your This
2:41:28
is your last word, Grace, what do you want to tell the audience?
2:41:33
Don't blow it? Okay, come up with something. Always keep believing
2:41:39
even when people say it's not real. Wow, Okay, that's what you
2:41:46
want to leave us on. So like a journey song, don't stop believing,
2:41:52
don't stop believing, the words of whichdom from Gray Zigler. All right,
2:41:56
well, Grace, thanks so much for doing this interne you Merry Christmas.
2:42:01
I hope you have a happy new Year. I love you very much,
2:42:05
and thanks for coming on the podcast night now. I hope you enjoyed
2:42:11
that. It's obviously impossible for me to determine from a listener's perspective what's interesting,
2:42:16
what's important, what's not when it comes to an interview like that.
2:42:20
Part of why I did it was because I do realize it's very likely the
2:42:24
last chance I'll get to interview my daughter. We've done several interviews over the
2:42:28
last many years, and I wanted there to be one last chance to do
2:42:33
that, one last chance to put her on the record. She enjoys doing
2:42:35
it. She's very good at it the times, especially since we were only
2:42:39
dealing with one microphone there, which was a bit awkward, but I thought
2:42:43
she did a good job. Some of it was rather depressing, some of
2:42:48
the things that she said, but I want to address what happened afterwards.
2:42:54
So we had had a very good Christmas. Everyone was very excited and obviously
2:42:58
exhaust did Christmas night. There was a little bit of, you know,
2:43:03
the crash on the morning of the twenty sixth, which was just before we
2:43:07
tape that interview, but things were still okay. That's just the natural let
2:43:11
down of December twenty sixth when we put so much emphasis on this one day,
2:43:16
especially in our family where we do the Christmas lights nineteen times, as
2:43:18
we did in December, and there's a lot of build up and inevitably,
2:43:24
you know, there's that post Christmas crash. But it was all okay until
2:43:28
just after the interview, and I feel like the interview probably helped lead to
2:43:35
this crash at least I feel badly about it. But Gray's had a very
2:43:41
very difficult time through most of the rest of that day, and at one
2:43:45
point she was in front of the Christmas tree and she just started crying.
2:43:50
And of course, being a dad, you're in a no win situation there.
2:43:52
You know that you're not supposed to get involved, but you also you
2:43:56
feel badly that your kid is crying, especially the day after Christmas. You
2:44:01
feel guilt over when that may be the interview you just did could have contributed
2:44:05
to that, And you're also trying to fix it, right, That's the
2:44:07
nature of dads, even though you hardly ever able to fix anything, that's
2:44:11
your instinct. That's what you try to do. And so I probably just
2:44:16
made it worse by inquiring as to what was wrong. I should have realized
2:44:20
what was really happening, which was I think Grace my interpretation was mourning the
2:44:26
end of her childhood and that the innocence of that childhood and the magic of
2:44:31
that childhood being gone forever. I don't think I'm over analyzing this. That's
2:44:37
what it felt like, and it was gut wrenching, and again I felt
2:44:41
guilty because I thought is it possible that the interview may have further facilitated that,
2:44:46
at least subconsciously. I think there's a very good chance that that's indeed
2:44:50
what occurred. And I was beside myself and frustrated and sad. All sorts
2:44:58
of negative emotions were going through my body. And thank goodness for little Diana,
2:45:05
our six year old, who's hardly perfect, but boy, she has
2:45:09
a good head on her shoulder, and she's super smart and really figures out
2:45:13
things very quickly. And so Grace was there crying next to the Christmas tree
2:45:20
and Diana, and I've never seen her do anything like this. She is
2:45:22
not an emotional person. She's really not that big into empathy. She's not
2:45:28
big into hugs, at least not with her dad, which is a shame.
2:45:33
But she, unprovoked went up to her big sister Grace, who was
2:45:37
in tears, clearly mourning the end of Christmas, maybe mourning the end of
2:45:41
her childhood, and Diana, with no words, simply gave her a hug
2:45:50
that lasted a minute and thirty two seconds. I know because I taped most
2:45:56
of it without them even knowing it. I'll probably cherished that video for as
2:46:01
long as I live because it was remarkable, especially given what I know about
2:46:07
my two daughters. I mean, not one word was spoken, but there
2:46:11
was just a hug for a minute and thirty two seconds, and it seemed
2:46:15
to really help get Grace get through it. And I think Diana kind of
2:46:20
saved the day. By the end of the day, Grace had recovered.
2:46:24
So I don't think Christmas was killed in her eyes, or I don't think
2:46:28
Christmas was a disaster in her eyes. I think Diana did a great deed
2:46:33
in trying to salvage that. But there's no question that Christmas has now forever
2:46:37
changed. And when I look back on all this, I feel like a
2:46:41
complete jackass, a complete moron. I mean, you know, the road
2:46:48
to hell is paved with good intentions, and I've seen that happen many many
2:46:52
times in my life as a dad, and this might be the most glaring
2:46:56
example. I handled all this, probably very very poorly. I tried very
2:47:03
hard against my own instincts to try to both protect the magic of Santa and
2:47:09
Christmas while also navigating some semblance of a soft landing. I don't know if
2:47:13
you picked that up in the interview. That was my goal, and I
2:47:18
went to extraordinary lens to try to do this, you know, the writing
2:47:22
the poem about where are you Christmas? Or where are you Eli, to
2:47:28
answering her questions in a very honest, but you know, thoughtful way,
2:47:33
in a way that didn't crush Santa her Christmas immediately. It was kind of
2:47:39
a you know, soft landing theory was really my entire motivation, and I
2:47:45
want to make in my defense, I want to make one other point about
2:47:48
what I was trying to do. You probably heard there her talk about her
2:47:52
friend Eva, her now former best friend, expressing doubts about Santa herself,
2:47:58
and that that had a made your impact on Grace. Part of my motivation
2:48:05
was that I didn't want Grace to end up being the oldest kid in her
2:48:11
class who was still openly believing in Santa being magical. And so I do
2:48:22
think in my defense that that played a small role in what happened. It's
2:48:28
a part of Grace's brand, it's a part of Grace's persona that I don't
2:48:33
necessarily think did her any favors, And that's why I was trying to go
2:48:39
for the soft landing. Again, I don't think that was the deciding factor
2:48:43
in what happened with her best friend, and that has had a huge impact
2:48:46
on Grace's psychology, which, of course it's a little bit like COVID.
2:48:50
I've said this a lot in the course of this podcast. You know,
2:48:54
COVID made it very, very difficult to discipline kids because you felt like they
2:48:58
were being robbed of so much. And here in California that lasted two years,
2:49:03
and that's a may You don't recover from that, right, you don't
2:49:05
recover from that. You can't ever really go back to harsh parenting once you've
2:49:09
been soft during COVID. That's one of the many, many underdiscussed elements of
2:49:16
the of the COVID panic. It made parenting basically impossible and ends up creating
2:49:20
spoiled kids because of it. Similarly, when it came to Grace losing her
2:49:26
best friend, we also didn't want, you know, Christmas to be ruined,
2:49:31
So you know, I went along with things I probably wouldn't have gone
2:49:35
along with ordinarily. And I got to say, my wife and I were
2:49:39
not one hundred percent on the same team on this, and I don't think
2:49:41
I fully realized how much my wife and I weren't on the same team.
2:49:46
You probably heard Grace reference what my wife was telling her about Christmas and Santa
2:49:50
not being the same as what I was telling her, which I'm not particularly
2:49:54
thrilled with. But anyway, the bottom line of all this is screwed up,
2:50:00
obviously, and I don't know if there was a perfect way to handle
2:50:03
it, But if I had to do it all over again, I probably
2:50:05
would have done it differently. It probably would have been better to just stay
2:50:09
out of it. But as is usually the case, my sins were well
2:50:15
intended but probably ended in failure, a failure as a dad, and a
2:50:22
failure and a whole bunch of other aspects of life. But you live and
2:50:26
learn. Unfortunately, it might be a little too late for me at almost
2:50:28
fifty seven years old. But anyway, on the happier note, I do
2:50:35
think we're at this of this taping, we're in a better spot in the
2:50:37
post Christmas era than we were just after Grace and I did that interview,
2:50:43
So that's good, and hopefully we'll end twenty twenty three on a strong note.
2:50:48
I hope that you have a great end of the year and a good
2:50:52
start to twenty twenty four. We will not be doing an episode of the
2:50:56
podcast just after New Year's Day, but we will be doing episode number one
2:51:01
hundred and sixteen later on in that first week of twenty twenty four, and
2:51:05
I'll be really outlining the way I see the year twenty twenty four going,
2:51:09
as well as reviewing whatever news happens between now and then, as is always
2:51:15
the case. Thanks so much for listening. This has been the death of
2:51:16
Journalism podcast. My name is John Zickler.