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Episode Two Hundred Thirty Three: Lost in Space · The Death Of Journalism

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Speaker 1: Welcome to episode two hundred and thirty three of the
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Speaker 1: Death of Journalism Podcasts. My name is John Zigler. I'm
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Speaker 1: your host of today's show. Trump threatens impeachment for judges
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Speaker 1: who ruled against him and John Roberts claps back. The
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Speaker 1: JFK files start to finally get released, some big news
0:17
Speaker 1: in the never ending Michael Jackson case. The NCAA basketball
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Speaker 1: tournament gets underway, more evidence that the Sports Press conference
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Speaker 1: is doomed. Is Tiger Woods really dating a member of
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Speaker 1: the Trump family, And is Trump getting played by Putin
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Speaker 1: on Ukraine. We begin this episode of the podcast with
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Speaker 1: some really good news that I don't think got its due.
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Speaker 1: I'm referring to the spectacular return to Earth of the
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Speaker 1: astronauts who have been quote unquote stranded in space for
0:54
Speaker 1: many months that were returned in large part due to
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Speaker 1: the efforts of Elon Musk and SpaceX working in conjunction
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Speaker 1: with NASA. If you missed it, and it was a
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Speaker 1: lot easier to miss than I ever would have imagined,
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Speaker 1: it was really quite beautiful as they landed in the
1:15
Speaker 1: now newly named Gulf of America on a beautiful day,
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Speaker 1: blue waters with dolphins literally welcoming them, and it was
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Speaker 1: really just one of those great moments that show that
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Speaker 1: America is still capable of some level of greatness when
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Speaker 1: all sorts of factors combined. In this case, it was
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Speaker 1: the generosity and ingenuity, largely of Elon Musk. Now, liberals
1:43
Speaker 1: have tried to crap all over this by saying that
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Speaker 1: this was mostly a publicity stunt. The astronauts were perfectly
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Speaker 1: fine in space. They would have come back eventually anyway,
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Speaker 1: And was this really worth all the time and expense.
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Speaker 1: I'm not an extra on this, but here's what I
2:01
Speaker 1: do know that the space program, when it first became
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Speaker 1: very much prevalent in American life in the nineteen sixties,
2:11
Speaker 1: after John F. Kennedy declared that we would put a
2:13
Speaker 1: man on the Moon, was probably one of the great
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Speaker 1: unifying forces in this country. Now, I realize people get desensitized,
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Speaker 1: and I realize that's old news, but it's really kind
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Speaker 1: of remarkable and symbolic to see that this unifying force
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Speaker 1: of the space program has really now become a symbol
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Speaker 1: of how divided we are. Where this remarkable event that
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Speaker 1: should have been a communal experience and a feel good
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Speaker 1: moment for America becomes almost inherently partisan because the guy
2:49
Speaker 1: that is seen as being behind it is Elon Musk,
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Speaker 1: who is now seen understandably as basically Donald Trump's co
2:56
Speaker 1: president and a highly partisan figure, which is of course
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Speaker 1: bizarre on so many levels because it wasn't that long
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Speaker 1: ago that Elon Musk was seen as a liberal hero,
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Speaker 1: as the guy who founded Tesla, the most prominent electric
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Speaker 1: vehicle company. So we're living in a very strange world.
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Speaker 1: And I just I was, you know, simultaneously proud and
3:19
Speaker 1: depressed over what I saw, because I'm like, this is
3:22
Speaker 1: not making nearly the impact that it should. In fact,
3:27
Speaker 1: you know, my wife and my kids had no idea
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Speaker 1: that it had even happened late into the evening yesterday,
3:35
Speaker 1: you know, even on Twitter, which is obviously owned by
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Speaker 1: Elon Musk, it wasn't merely as big a story as
3:40
Speaker 1: I thought that it would, despite the spectacular photos. And again,
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Speaker 1: I just thought it was incredibly depressing to show just
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Speaker 1: how divided we have become and how almost it's impossible
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Speaker 1: for us to unite behind anything that has even the
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Speaker 1: smallest amount of political tinge to it. And this is
4:01
Speaker 1: not a situation that ought to be overtly political except
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Speaker 1: for the fact that they quote unquote got stranded during
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Speaker 1: the Biden administration, and now liberals are angst ridden over
4:11
Speaker 1: the fact that they're returning during the Trump administration because
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Speaker 1: of the private sector mostly and SpaceX and Elon Musk.
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Speaker 1: That makes them very, very nervous, and therefore they cannot
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Speaker 1: celebrate it. And it's pathetic and it's sad, and it's
4:29
Speaker 1: you know, it's by the way, it's consistent with another
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Speaker 1: Elon Musk related story that is making some waves on
4:37
Speaker 1: Twitter as of this morning and this taping on Wednesday morning,
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Speaker 1: and that is that former vice presidential candidate Tim Waltz
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Speaker 1: was at a public event where he was literally celebrating
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Speaker 1: the stock demise of Tesla, literally celebrating it, essentially telling
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Speaker 1: the crowd that whenever he's down, he in the dumps.
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Speaker 1: He looks on his app. He's very proud that he
5:03
Speaker 1: added this app to his phone, and he looks at
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Speaker 1: the Tesla stock price, which is basically had a collapse
5:11
Speaker 1: over the last couple of months. By the way, it
5:14
Speaker 1: has had a massive collapse, catastrophic in some ways, and
5:18
Speaker 1: yet it's still up year to year by a somewhat
5:23
Speaker 1: significant margin, just not nearly what it had been. But
5:26
Speaker 1: there's no question that Tesla, which is enduring all sorts
5:30
Speaker 1: of attacks, both verbal and terroristic and political. And you know,
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Speaker 1: here Elon Musk has tried to do something great for
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Speaker 1: the country, and we've got former vice presidential candidates cheering
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Speaker 1: the demise of the stock price of this effectively American company.
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Speaker 1: I mean, it's really amazing and quite enlightening as well
5:52
Speaker 1: as depressing as to the partisan nature of everything. Everything
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Speaker 1: is partisan, everything is political, and it's sad and pathetic.
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Speaker 1: But I really do think that when you look at
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Speaker 1: how the space program has somehow become incredibly partisan, where
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Speaker 1: this event that should have been unifying, should have been wonderful,
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Speaker 1: was largely just ignored by half the country, if not
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Speaker 1: shit on, while the other half of the country, the
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Speaker 1: Trump part of the country, is celebrating and giving Elon Musk,
6:26
Speaker 1: maybe even more credit than he deserves. But at this point,
6:29
Speaker 1: I'm kind of empathetic towards Elon Musk's flight. I mean,
6:32
Speaker 1: here's a guy who you may disagree with him, and
6:34
Speaker 1: I have concerns about it, and I think he's way
6:37
Speaker 1: too conspiratorial. I think he believes a lot of things
6:40
Speaker 1: that aren't true, and I don't have one hundred percent
6:44
Speaker 1: trust in his judgment, partially because I think he's spread
6:47
Speaker 1: incredibly thin, he's got way, way, way too much on
6:51
Speaker 1: his plate. But I do believe, and I've been wrong
6:55
Speaker 1: in the past, but I believe that he has his
6:57
Speaker 1: heart in the right place. I believe his intentions are good. Now,
7:02
Speaker 1: no human being is pure. Does he have a self interest, Yes,
7:06
Speaker 1: I'm sure that he does. But I really do believe
7:09
Speaker 1: he is doing what he thinks is best to try
7:12
Speaker 1: to save a country that he thinks is in peril.
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Speaker 1: And the way he's being treated is sad, it's unfair,
7:20
Speaker 1: and it's emblematic of so many of our problems and
7:22
Speaker 1: our culture and our media and our politics. Now, as
7:26
Speaker 1: of this taping, which I'm doing on March nineteen, now
7:32
Speaker 1: this is, in my opinion, the real fifth anniversary of
7:36
Speaker 1: the COVID panic. And there's been a lot of discussion,
7:41
Speaker 1: not maybe as much as I expected, but there's been
7:44
Speaker 1: a lot of discussion about the fifth year anniversary of COVID.
7:49
Speaker 1: Of course, the news media is still very, very hesitant
7:52
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that there even was a COVID panic. And
7:56
Speaker 1: all the things that they did wrong. One of the reasons,
8:00
Speaker 1: the main reason that I consider March nineteenth to be
8:03
Speaker 1: the real anniversary of the COVID panic is that is
8:06
Speaker 1: the day the California Governor, Gavin Newsom shut down our
8:10
Speaker 1: state here in California, which then created a domino effect
8:15
Speaker 1: where New York did the same, and all the other
8:17
Speaker 1: Blue states followed, and the most of the Red states
8:20
Speaker 1: had to follow after that, and Trump enabled the whole thing,
8:23
Speaker 1: and Fauci cheered it, and there was no going back
8:26
Speaker 1: at that point, and it was all based upon a catastrophic,
8:31
Speaker 1: totally absurd, statistical, catastrophically wrong, totally absurd statistical model that
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Speaker 1: Gavin Newsom put out there, in which I immediately rebuked in
8:42
Speaker 1: a very extensive column on Mediaite, where I was a
8:46
Speaker 1: senior conlumist at the time, which by the way, I
8:48
Speaker 1: had to fight hard for because no one wanted to
8:51
Speaker 1: fight against this emerging narrative of this unprecedented panic and
8:57
Speaker 1: catastrophe that COVID was going to be. But Gavin Newsom
9:02
Speaker 1: told President Trump that twenty six million plus Californians were
9:08
Speaker 1: going to get COVID in the next eight weeks. And
9:09
Speaker 1: of course nothing even remotely close to that happened. Ever,
9:13
Speaker 1: even years later that it never came close to happening.
9:17
Speaker 1: And I wrote that column and I tweeted it out
9:20
Speaker 1: today with an explanation as to why I consider this
9:23
Speaker 1: to be the fifth anniversary of the COVID panic. And
9:26
Speaker 1: as it turns out, I was one hundred percent right.
9:27
Speaker 1: Newsom was one hundred percent wrong. But there was absolutely
9:31
Speaker 1: no repercussion for that. Now, there was a recall effort
9:35
Speaker 1: against Newsom, but he easily survived that and then he
9:39
Speaker 1: got re elected. But their ninety nine point nine percent
9:44
Speaker 1: of the public has no idea this even happened, largely
9:47
Speaker 1: because the news media, even here locally, has never ever
9:51
Speaker 1: reported it. And it's it's absolutely infuriating, because, I mean,
9:56
Speaker 1: you cannot overstate how significant that act was. I believe
10:01
Speaker 1: it was the most significant act by a governor in
10:03
Speaker 1: the modern history of the United States of America because
10:08
Speaker 1: that's what started the real domino effect sports I think
10:12
Speaker 1: started the wildfire. But then you know, Avenuwsom exploded that
10:18
Speaker 1: wildfire by pouring a massive amount of gasoline on it,
10:22
Speaker 1: and by the time California is shut down, it was
10:26
Speaker 1: all over there's no going back from that, because once
10:28
Speaker 1: California and New York shut down, your country is basically
10:31
Speaker 1: shut down. Everyone else has enormous political pressure to follow.
10:36
Speaker 1: And that's what happened, and then we never got out
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Speaker 1: of it. We never got out of it here in
10:40
Speaker 1: California for basically two years. And in that period of
10:45
Speaker 1: time since then five years, we have learned that not
10:48
Speaker 1: just Newsom's statistical model was completely wrong, virtually everything we
10:53
Speaker 1: were told was wrong. Virtually everything we were told. And
10:56
Speaker 1: I get oh, John, we didn't know what we were
10:59
Speaker 1: dealing with. That, No, that's bullshit. That is a bullshit narrative.
11:04
Speaker 1: We knew very early on what we were dealing with
11:08
Speaker 1: for a bunch of reasons. Number one was we had
11:12
Speaker 1: the cruise ship data. There were two cruise ships. People
11:15
Speaker 1: forget about this. There were two cruise ships that had
11:19
Speaker 1: no idea COVID was coming, no preparations, no special rules.
11:25
Speaker 1: They were living life normally, and both ships got inundated
11:29
Speaker 1: with COVID, and so we knew exactly how deadly it was.
11:33
Speaker 1: We knew the demographics of the people on the ship,
11:36
Speaker 1: we knew how easily transmitted the virus was, and frankly,
11:42
Speaker 1: based upon the statistics from those two cruise ships. By
11:45
Speaker 1: the way, on one of the two cruise ships, nobody died. Nobody.
11:50
Speaker 1: This should have been a situation where we realized, Okay,
11:53
Speaker 1: this is a problem, we're gonna have to deal with it.
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Speaker 1: But this is not a life altered, fundamentally life altering event.
12:04
Speaker 1: And we also should have known what was not going
12:06
Speaker 1: to be effective and what was done purely for virtue
12:10
Speaker 1: signal reasons like for instance, masking and social distancing, total
12:15
Speaker 1: virtue signaling. Just to show just how big a deal
12:18
Speaker 1: this was. And frankly, as I've said many times, if
12:21
Speaker 1: Trump wasn't running for reelection, I don't think knew some
12:24
Speaker 1: shuts down California. I don't think a million other things
12:27
Speaker 1: happen in the aftermath of that, not consciously. I would
12:32
Speaker 1: like to give them some credit that this wasn't conscious,
12:34
Speaker 1: but it was subconscious that they all knew that this
12:37
Speaker 1: would be a good thing for them. All liberals knew
12:39
Speaker 1: this would be a good thing for them because they're
12:41
Speaker 1: going to destroy the economy and therefore to derail Trump's
12:45
Speaker 1: reelection bid. And the news media is terrible, terrible, especially
12:52
Speaker 1: the elite media, ever admitting when they are wrong, especially
12:56
Speaker 1: when they put an enormous amount of capital into a
13:01
Speaker 1: particular side or chips down on the table. I have
13:04
Speaker 1: said many, many times, the biggest problem among many when
13:08
Speaker 1: it comes to correcting the whole Penn State Joe Paterno
13:11
Speaker 1: jerryson Dusky fiasco is that the news media, especially the
13:16
Speaker 1: sports media, especially ESPN, put way too many chips down
13:20
Speaker 1: on the wrong side. So they can't correct this because
13:23
Speaker 1: it's just too humiliating. It would destroy too much of
13:27
Speaker 1: their credibility or what's left of their credibility. And COVID
13:32
Speaker 1: is very much the same way. You could even argue
13:34
Speaker 1: it's even greater than the Penn State Joe Paterna Jerrysondusky
13:37
Speaker 1: case with regard to the amount of chips that they
13:39
Speaker 1: put down, I mean they shut down our lives. They
13:42
Speaker 1: applauded this, The news media applauded this. Their job should
13:47
Speaker 1: have been to do what I did immediately after Gavin
13:51
Speaker 1: Newsom shut down California, is to scrutinize what we were
13:54
Speaker 1: being told. There was none of that. In fact, the
13:58
Speaker 1: only people that were scrutinized and the only people that
14:01
Speaker 1: were held accountable were those that were trying to shout
14:03
Speaker 1: a contrarian narrative. We were censored, we were mocked, we
14:09
Speaker 1: were called all sorts of names on behalf or by
14:13
Speaker 1: the news media that was citing one hundred percent. Even
14:17
Speaker 1: the right wing media, especially at the start, was citing
14:21
Speaker 1: one hundred percent. With those that were promoting the COVID panic,
14:27
Speaker 1: including Gavin Newsom and Donald Trump, played a huge role
14:31
Speaker 1: in that. And now we are five years later, and
14:36
Speaker 1: so much of what we were told we know was wrong.
14:38
Speaker 1: I mean, the social distancing was a complete joke. There
14:42
Speaker 1: was even fauci is acknowledged, although it doesn't get much
14:45
Speaker 1: publicity that that was just made up. They'll never admit
14:49
Speaker 1: that masks were a complete fraud. They are somewhat emitting
14:53
Speaker 1: on the fringe as well. You know, maybe we went
14:55
Speaker 1: too far with with vaccine mandates, and maybe there were
14:59
Speaker 1: some problems with the vaccine, but we were well intentioned,
15:02
Speaker 1: so that doesn't really matter. There's been some acknowledgment that
15:06
Speaker 1: shutting down schools was wrong and very catastrophic in the
15:12
Speaker 1: damage that it created, but there's never been a complete
15:15
Speaker 1: media culpa on that. There's never been any accountability on that,
15:20
Speaker 1: and so in that context, it was kind of surprising
15:23
Speaker 1: when the New York Times, which of course you know
15:26
Speaker 1: back in the day, back five years ago, they were
15:29
Speaker 1: still much more influential even than they are today, especially
15:32
Speaker 1: since New York was at the epicenter of the COVID
15:36
Speaker 1: panic for a long period of time. Especially at the beginning.
15:39
Speaker 1: The New York Times shocked a lot of people, including
15:42
Speaker 1: myself by running an opinion piece. This wasn't a news story,
15:46
Speaker 1: but still I think symbolically this matters. They ran an
15:49
Speaker 1: opinion piece with the headline, this was just a couple
15:52
Speaker 1: of days ago, we were badly misled about the event
15:56
Speaker 1: that changed our lives, referring obviously to the COVID panic
16:01
Speaker 1: of five years ago, and this specifically deals with the
16:05
Speaker 1: issue of the lab leak theory as to how COVID originated.
16:10
Speaker 1: And here's what the New York Times wrote. Since scientists
16:14
Speaker 1: first began playing around with dangerous pathogens in laboratories, the
16:19
Speaker 1: world has experienced four or five pandemics. Yet in twenty twenty,
16:23
Speaker 1: when people started speculating that a laboratory accident might have
16:28
Speaker 1: been the spark that started the COVID nineteen pandemic, they
16:32
Speaker 1: were treated like kooks and cranks. We have since learned, however,
16:37
Speaker 1: that to promote the appearance of consensus, some officials and
16:41
Speaker 1: scientists hid or understated crucial facts, misled at least one reporter,
16:49
Speaker 1: orchestrated campaigns of supposedly independent voices, and even compared notes
16:55
Speaker 1: about how to hide their communications in order to keep
16:59
Speaker 1: the public from hearing the whole story. To this day,
17:04
Speaker 1: there is no strong scientific evidence ruling out a lab
17:09
Speaker 1: league or proving that the virus arose from human animal
17:13
Speaker 1: contact in that seafood market. We may not know exactly
17:19
Speaker 1: how the COVID panic. Boy that's a Fortian stipp of
17:23
Speaker 1: bypar There Times wrote COVID pandemic. I refer to it
17:27
Speaker 1: as the COVID panic. We may never know. We may
17:30
Speaker 1: not know exactly how the COVID pandemic started, But if
17:33
Speaker 1: research activities were involved, that would mean two out of
17:38
Speaker 1: the last four or five pandemics were caused by our
17:43
Speaker 1: own scientific mishaps. That's The New York Times in an
17:50
Speaker 1: opinion piece headline, we were badly misled about the event
17:53
Speaker 1: that changed our lives. That's remarkable. Now, I have never
17:58
Speaker 1: been all that interested in the whole controversy over the
18:03
Speaker 1: lab league theory versus the bat in the wet market theory.
18:08
Speaker 1: I've been confused by it because, if you remember, the
18:12
Speaker 1: first narrative about the lab league theory was that this
18:15
Speaker 1: was wrong because it was racist. And if you're wondering
18:21
Speaker 1: what I'm basic that on, that wasn't just you know,
18:23
Speaker 1: kooks on the internet, The New York Times science reporter.
18:29
Speaker 1: The science reporter for the New York Times tweeted out
18:32
Speaker 1: in May of twenty twenty one, so this is well
18:37
Speaker 1: over a year after we were into this. She tweeted,
18:41
Speaker 1: someday we will stop talking about the lab league theory
18:45
Speaker 1: and maybe even admit its racist roots. But a last
18:50
Speaker 1: that day is not yet here, and she's still employed
18:55
Speaker 1: by the New York Times. It's absolutely amazing. This is her.
19:01
Speaker 1: It was alleged area of expertise, not just totally wrong,
19:06
Speaker 1: it appears, but claiming that if you believed what is
19:11
Speaker 1: now being considered to be the truth, even by the
19:13
Speaker 1: New York Times, that that's racist. And I've never under
19:17
Speaker 1: even stood the theory behind this, Because you mean me
19:21
Speaker 1: to tell me that it's not racist that a global
19:24
Speaker 1: pandemic started because of these you know incredibly dirty wet
19:31
Speaker 1: markets and bats and humans interacting, and how is that
19:37
Speaker 1: not racist? The wet market theory feels how a lot
19:40
Speaker 1: more racist than the fact that there was a coronavirus
19:44
Speaker 1: lab and Wooan ridiculously sloppy and something, and then it
19:50
Speaker 1: got out of the lab. And you know the reason
19:53
Speaker 1: why I started to believe that this theory was probably true,
19:58
Speaker 1: weirdly enough, k because of comedian John Stewart. I don't
20:01
Speaker 1: know if you've ever seen it, but if you have it,
20:03
Speaker 1: you should check it out. Fairly early on in all this,
20:06
Speaker 1: John Stewart went on Stephen Colbert's show on CBS and
20:11
Speaker 1: did a hilarious commentary about how obvious it was that
20:16
Speaker 1: there's a very good chance that the pandemic the pandemic
20:19
Speaker 1: started in the Wuhan lab. And I think he's probably right.
20:25
Speaker 1: It's the simplest explanation. And he was very, very funny
20:29
Speaker 1: in his telling of that theory. But the fact that
20:33
Speaker 1: John Stewart, a liberal, felt very comfortable making a big
20:38
Speaker 1: scene out of how ridiculous it was to disregard the
20:43
Speaker 1: lab league theory was very compelling to me. As strange
20:47
Speaker 1: as that is, because I've lost all trust and respect
20:50
Speaker 1: for the soul called experts. So that made sense to me. Okay,
20:52
Speaker 1: if John Stewart is doing this, there must really be
20:55
Speaker 1: something to the lab league theory. I've never been all
20:58
Speaker 1: that concerned about it. I was way more incensed by
21:02
Speaker 1: our reaction to the pandemic, which obviously was real. The
21:07
Speaker 1: pandemic was real. I just think it was greatly exaggerated,
21:11
Speaker 1: and I think it was also treated politically. And I
21:15
Speaker 1: also think here's the bottom line, because there are people
21:17
Speaker 1: probably even right now listen to I mean going, John
21:20
Speaker 1: was exaggerated. All these people died. Millions of people died,
21:24
Speaker 1: well over a million Americans died. Okay, yeah, thank you
21:28
Speaker 1: for acknowledging that nothing we did, despite going to extraordinary,
21:33
Speaker 1: unprecedented lens to destroy our lives, nothing we did made
21:39
Speaker 1: any difference. In fact, you could argue it actually harmed
21:44
Speaker 1: our performance because we didn't do any better. We did
21:46
Speaker 1: much worse than most countries. There were a lot of
21:49
Speaker 1: countries that did a lot better than us. Sweden, in
21:53
Speaker 1: the end, did a lot better than us, even though
21:55
Speaker 1: they got destroyed by the news media early on, because
21:58
Speaker 1: they had the audacity to large life not entirely but
22:01
Speaker 1: largely do nothing. Florida did just fine once Ron Desand
22:06
Speaker 1: has figured out what was really going on here. Georgia
22:09
Speaker 1: did just fine when the Republican governor, against the demands
22:14
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump, opened up Georgia. So, I mean, the
22:19
Speaker 1: reality is there's zero evidence, all these years later, five
22:23
Speaker 1: years later, that anything that we did curtailed any of
22:28
Speaker 1: the medical damage and may have made it actually worse.
22:32
Speaker 1: And I also believe that a lot of this was
22:34
Speaker 1: exaggerated because how we were defining deaths. And I will
22:39
Speaker 1: never I've done as much research on this as any civilian.
22:43
Speaker 1: I've never been able to figure out how to interpret
22:46
Speaker 1: the excess death data because it's never made any sense
22:50
Speaker 1: to me as far as the timing of it. And
22:52
Speaker 1: there weren't as many excess deaths as there should have
22:55
Speaker 1: been at the beginning, but then there were more excess
22:57
Speaker 1: deaths than there should have been towards the ended, even
23:00
Speaker 1: in the aftermath of COVID. So I've never been able
23:03
Speaker 1: to fully understand that. I'm open to any and all
23:07
Speaker 1: rational interpretations of that data. But as far as the
23:12
Speaker 1: lab league theory, you know, it never really mattered to
23:15
Speaker 1: me that much. But now that we're even seeing that
23:18
Speaker 1: The New York Times is willing to acknowledge, Yeah, we
23:20
Speaker 1: were wrong about that, and that's extraordinary. And the theory
23:26
Speaker 1: behind this is that this was all trying to protect
23:29
Speaker 1: gain of function research, that there was a conspiracy to
23:33
Speaker 1: cover up how COVID leaked out of the lab, because
23:37
Speaker 1: if that had been the perception, and then gain of
23:40
Speaker 1: function would obviously be blamed and there would be a
23:44
Speaker 1: shutdown of funding and what have you. And so the
23:47
Speaker 1: scientific community rallied around trying to combat that theory out
23:53
Speaker 1: of their own self preservation, which tells you an awful
23:56
Speaker 1: lot about what the so called experts of the so
24:00
Speaker 1: called science is really all about. It's about self preservation.
24:04
Speaker 1: It's about what's good for them. They're human beings, and
24:09
Speaker 1: you know, unfortunately, science, like so much else in our culture,
24:12
Speaker 1: has been corrupted by perverse self interests. We talk all
24:18
Speaker 1: the time when the issue comes up with regard to
24:21
Speaker 1: climate change, global warming, that all the so called experts
24:25
Speaker 1: are incentivized to go at least go along with that
24:28
Speaker 1: narrative if not promoted. Well, the same kind of thing happened,
24:32
Speaker 1: even though they're different people. It's the same incentive structure,
24:36
Speaker 1: and they're the same types of people, and they love
24:40
Speaker 1: their expert status and they don't want to get kicked
24:43
Speaker 1: out of the club. That's what's most important to these people.
24:47
Speaker 1: They've lived and worked their whole lives, gone to school
24:49
Speaker 1: for a long period of time to be considered experts,
24:53
Speaker 1: and they cannot be seen as wrong and they cannot
24:55
Speaker 1: be kicked out of the club. And that was a
24:58
Speaker 1: large part of what drove the panic and why when
25:02
Speaker 1: things went wrong and we were totally wrong about so
25:05
Speaker 1: much that we tried to do that, no one wanted
25:08
Speaker 1: to admit it because no one was incentivized to do so.
25:11
Speaker 1: And the media was a thousand percent complicit in this.
25:15
Speaker 1: So whatever little part the New York Times is doing
25:18
Speaker 1: now is way too late and way too little, way
25:22
Speaker 1: too little, way too late. The news media blew this story,
25:26
Speaker 1: as they always do. I always say one of my
25:28
Speaker 1: tenants are analyzing the news media. Is the bigger the
25:31
Speaker 1: news story is, the more likely the news media is
25:33
Speaker 1: going to blow it. And they catastrophically blew COVID from
25:38
Speaker 1: A to Z. And whatever little meager efforts are being
25:43
Speaker 1: made now five years later to correct the record, I
25:46
Speaker 1: think are interesting but are not impressive to me. And
25:51
Speaker 1: just one last thing, as far as the death numbers look,
25:56
Speaker 1: I don't know how many people actually died of COLDVID
26:00
Speaker 1: in the United States. I do know that the average
26:04
Speaker 1: age of the of people who died of COVID in
26:08
Speaker 1: the United States was about seventy eight to seventy nine
26:11
Speaker 1: years old. That was a statistic that was almost impossible
26:15
Speaker 1: to get. In fact, I'm still not one hundred percent
26:17
Speaker 1: sure what it is. To this day. You can google
26:20
Speaker 1: almost anything in the world. I haven't done this recently,
26:22
Speaker 1: but the entire pandemic. I kept googling what's the average
26:26
Speaker 1: age of COVID death of America. You could not get
26:30
Speaker 1: an answer that was clearly systematically censored by Google because
26:36
Speaker 1: the answer was incredibly problematic to the narrative. I truly
26:42
Speaker 1: believe that if every American understood and the media had
26:47
Speaker 1: reported on a consistent basis that the average age of
26:52
Speaker 1: those who aren't dying is around seventy nine years old
26:56
Speaker 1: and that they have other health factors involved codmorbidities. If
27:04
Speaker 1: every American had known that, I really believe we would
27:06
Speaker 1: have gotten out of this a hell of a lot faster.
27:09
Speaker 1: But that information was literally censored by the news media
27:14
Speaker 1: and specifically by Google. And so, you know, is dying
27:19
Speaker 1: at seventy nine when you're not in good health the
27:22
Speaker 1: same as dying at twenty five. Obviously not yet somehow
27:26
Speaker 1: in the news media, statistically that was all considered to
27:30
Speaker 1: be exactly the same. But here's the number one question.
27:35
Speaker 1: This is going to be strange coming from a Trump
27:37
Speaker 1: critic like myself, the number one question I would ask
27:40
Speaker 1: those who still to this day claimed that, you know,
27:43
Speaker 1: we had an extraordinary number of people who were still
27:47
Speaker 1: living viable lives die. And oh, by the way, liberals
27:51
Speaker 1: still to this day love believing this narrative that more
27:55
Speaker 1: people died in red states than died in blue states
27:58
Speaker 1: because they were engaged in riskier behavior. This is like
28:03
Speaker 1: still an article of faith among liberals, almost like you know,
28:07
Speaker 1: the idea that masks actually worked. They really believed this.
28:11
Speaker 1: And of course you can manipulate the statistics to find
28:14
Speaker 1: almost anything you want in this situation for a number
28:17
Speaker 1: of reasons. But this belief that there were more deaths
28:21
Speaker 1: among the Republicans or Conservatives or people who lived in
28:24
Speaker 1: red states than there were in blue states. Okay, you
28:28
Speaker 1: really believe that and you believe that over a million
28:33
Speaker 1: entirely adults because no children died. Basically, no children died
28:37
Speaker 1: during COVID, so over a million adults died. So please
28:42
Speaker 1: then explain to me if you believe this, if your
28:45
Speaker 1: theory is true, how is it that Donald Trump and
28:49
Speaker 1: the Republican Party did so much better in twenty twenty
28:53
Speaker 1: four after the pandemic than they did in twenty twenty
29:00
Speaker 1: beginning of the pandemic. How does that make any sense?
29:04
Speaker 1: If if Republicans and Red staters were dying at a
29:08
Speaker 1: significantly greater clip than people in blue states and Democrats
29:14
Speaker 1: were because Democrats were more likely to behave properly and
29:17
Speaker 1: therefore be safe. If that was really true, how did
29:21
Speaker 1: Trump do not just a little bit better, but so
29:24
Speaker 1: much better in twenty twenty four than he did in
29:28
Speaker 1: twenty twenty How did that happen? Now, that doesn't prove anything,
29:33
Speaker 1: but that's a question that deserves to be answered, which
29:36
Speaker 1: no one will ever answer moartly because no one will
29:39
Speaker 1: ever ask it. I'm the only one I've ever seen
29:40
Speaker 1: it even ask that question, and I think it's a
29:43
Speaker 1: legitimate one. By the way, I think it's possible the
29:47
Speaker 1: part of why Trump did better was because there were
29:50
Speaker 1: some people who were pissed off of Democrats for how
29:53
Speaker 1: they mishandled the whole situation. We'll never know how many
29:57
Speaker 1: people fit in that category, but I think that was
29:59
Speaker 1: a legitimate group of people. I would like to believe
30:04
Speaker 1: it was a significant group of people. It was not
30:06
Speaker 1: nearly as large as it should be, because, especially people
30:10
Speaker 1: who lived in California, we should never vote Democrat ever
30:13
Speaker 1: again after the way Gavenusom treated the whole situation. And
30:17
Speaker 1: I do believe I said this at the time. I
30:21
Speaker 1: believe that Nevada and Arizona may have gone for Trump
30:27
Speaker 1: in part they were very close elections, in part because
30:30
Speaker 1: of disaffected Californians pissed off at Gavin Newsom moving to
30:35
Speaker 1: Nevada and Arizona. Now, there are a lot of other factors,
30:38
Speaker 1: but in close election that can make a difference. Plus,
30:41
Speaker 1: people in Nevada and Arizona bordering California saw just how
30:46
Speaker 1: ridiculous the whole thing was, and that may have had
30:48
Speaker 1: at least a subconscious impact on people and their views
30:52
Speaker 1: of Democrats. But that's that's where we are. In the
30:57
Speaker 1: five year anniversary of the of the COVID PAN and
31:00
Speaker 1: I just wanted to share a few thoughts on that.
31:02
Speaker 1: It's obviously a situation that we've never experienced before, and
31:06
Speaker 1: I'm sure I'll talk about it again, but it was
31:09
Speaker 1: certainly worthy of at least a little bit of discussion
31:12
Speaker 1: on the fifth anniversary, especially given what the New York
31:14
Speaker 1: Times did regarding the lab League theory. Now transitioning to
31:20
Speaker 1: a couple of stories that involved Donald Trump, and one
31:23
Speaker 1: of the biggest that's occurred in the last couple of
31:26
Speaker 1: days is that we have seen once again that these
31:31
Speaker 1: court decisions in a variety of ways, are generally going
31:35
Speaker 1: against the Trump administration with all sorts of things that
31:39
Speaker 1: they're trying to do, whether it's in the realm of
31:41
Speaker 1: immigration or whether it's in the realm of government cutbacks
31:46
Speaker 1: and what DOGE is doing. And I can understand the
31:50
Speaker 1: Trump frustration here. Some of these rulings, almost all by
31:55
Speaker 1: liberal judges appointed by Biden or Obama, their dubious at best.
32:04
Speaker 1: I don't have enough expertise to know how they're going
32:08
Speaker 1: to be ruled on if they go all the way
32:10
Speaker 1: to the Supreme Court. I do know that they're creating
32:13
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of confusion these rulings are, especially when
32:16
Speaker 1: it comes to DOJE and USAID for instance. I mean,
32:21
Speaker 1: we're really in this incredibly bizarre and dangerous situation. Maybe
32:26
Speaker 1: dangerous is too strong a word, but very dysfunctional set
32:30
Speaker 1: of circumstances where now we've even got judges ordering people
32:35
Speaker 1: to get their jobs back, and so how does that
32:37
Speaker 1: even work because you know, let's say they get their
32:41
Speaker 1: jobs back, no one's going to listen to what they
32:45
Speaker 1: say because they've already been fired. It's going to be
32:49
Speaker 1: presumed that some other court is gonna eventually allow their
32:53
Speaker 1: firings to go through. Again, there's going to be confusion
32:57
Speaker 1: over who's in charge, you know, whatever savings when it
33:01
Speaker 1: comes to government money is being used up in all
33:05
Speaker 1: sorts of other ways. I mean, the amount of confusion
33:09
Speaker 1: and dysfunction here is almost off the charts. And I'm
33:14
Speaker 1: not defending the judges who are causing these decisions, especially
33:18
Speaker 1: when it comes to illegal immigration, because I do believe
33:22
Speaker 1: that the president ought to have wide and does have
33:24
Speaker 1: wide latitude in this area. But I also believe that
33:29
Speaker 1: there's a process, and unfortunately, you know, if the American process,
33:35
Speaker 1: in our American system is going to work. We have
33:38
Speaker 1: to respect that process. You can't just decide you don't
33:44
Speaker 1: like a judicial ruling and you're going to impeach a judge.
33:50
Speaker 1: But that's what Donald Trump is now threatening to do.
33:55
Speaker 1: And Justice Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,
33:59
Speaker 1: a guy who I am consistently said, and I think
34:02
Speaker 1: that this episode has further vindicated my belief. I have
34:06
Speaker 1: consistently say said that John Roberts has gone from a
34:10
Speaker 1: moderate conservative to a moderate liberal because he does not
34:14
Speaker 1: like Donald Trump. And I think his rulings and the
34:19
Speaker 1: evolution of his judicial philosophy is one hundred percent consistent
34:25
Speaker 1: with that view. And so Trump threatened publicly to impeach
34:30
Speaker 1: particularly one judge that made a ruling that I don't
34:33
Speaker 1: agree with involving the deportation of criminals from Venezuela. And
34:40
Speaker 1: Justice Roberts made the basically unprecedented move of putting out
34:46
Speaker 1: a public statement the Chief Jefferson is the Supreme Court
34:49
Speaker 1: does not do this except in extraordinary circumstances. And Roberts said, quote,
34:57
Speaker 1: for more than two centuries, it has been a established
35:00
Speaker 1: that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning
35:06
Speaker 1: a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for
35:12
Speaker 1: that purpose. Unquote. So two sentences and really just a
35:19
Speaker 1: statement of fact. And I agree with Justice Roberts. Doesn't
35:23
Speaker 1: mean I agree with the initial judicial ruling, but I
35:28
Speaker 1: think Roberts is right here. Now, was it the appropriate
35:32
Speaker 1: step to take to make this public statement, I don't know,
35:36
Speaker 1: because we're living in very strange times and we're so
35:39
Speaker 1: desensitized to insanity, and you know, I don't know how
35:44
Speaker 1: you make that decision. Okay, Trump's really stepped over the
35:47
Speaker 1: line here. I have to make a statement. But for
35:49
Speaker 1: whatever reason, Roberts decided to do so, and he is correct.
35:54
Speaker 1: He is correct. You have to endure these bad decisions,
35:59
Speaker 1: although wise the entire system collapses. And when I say endure,
36:03
Speaker 1: I mean you appeal them. You don't agree with it,
36:07
Speaker 1: you say you don't agree with it, that's fine, and
36:10
Speaker 1: you go to the next step in the judicial process,
36:14
Speaker 1: which in this case is almost certainly going to end
36:17
Speaker 1: up in the US Supreme Court, where guess who is
36:21
Speaker 1: going to have a major say, John Roberts, that's not
36:25
Speaker 1: a really great sound. I've said previously that one of
36:29
Speaker 1: the most comminous things that has happened in Trump two
36:32
Speaker 1: point zero, is that, at least when it comes to
36:35
Speaker 1: these issues of executive overreach, which you know, I'm certainly
36:42
Speaker 1: someone who is in the camp of I don't believe
36:44
Speaker 1: in kings, I don't believe in monarchs, and I think
36:46
Speaker 1: that Trump has probably exceeded his authority on several occasions.
36:51
Speaker 1: And I hate the whole idea of governing by executive order.
36:54
Speaker 1: But one of the most ominous things that has happened
36:57
Speaker 1: so far is that, in probably the biggest ruling the
37:00
Speaker 1: Supreme Court has made in this term, both Roberts and
37:05
Speaker 1: Barrett went against Trump. Now was that because of the
37:09
Speaker 1: specifics of that case, or was that because they are
37:12
Speaker 1: now predisposed to ruling against Trump on effectively a partisan basis.
37:19
Speaker 1: We don't know that yet. But Robert's statement certainly is
37:22
Speaker 1: not inconsistent with that idea, And so I don't know
37:27
Speaker 1: how this is all going to shake out. I mean,
37:30
Speaker 1: Trump clearly has four votes on the Court, but you
37:33
Speaker 1: need five, So you need either Barrett or Roberts to
37:36
Speaker 1: go along with you, because of course, the other three
37:39
Speaker 1: Democrats are never ever gonna do anything that is partisan
37:43
Speaker 1: on Trump's behalf, which they never get nearly enough criticism for.
37:48
Speaker 1: But that's another story for another day. The bottom line
37:51
Speaker 1: here is what Trump said is wrong. You do not
37:54
Speaker 1: impeach judges because they've made a decision you disagree with.
38:00
Speaker 1: That's an incredibly dangerous idea. It's a very very slippery slope.
38:05
Speaker 1: And what was really unfortunately expected and yet still depressing
38:11
Speaker 1: and frustrating, was that, based upon what I saw, nobody
38:15
Speaker 1: in the conservative media stood up for John Roberts on this.
38:20
Speaker 1: In fact, everyone shit all over him, and including a
38:23
Speaker 1: lot of people that should know him better, which tells me.
38:27
Speaker 1: You know, as I've said many times before, the right
38:29
Speaker 1: wing media is basically the pr arm of a cult
38:33
Speaker 1: at this point. Wherever Trump is perceived as being at
38:37
Speaker 1: that moment, that's the right position. Doesn't matter what the
38:42
Speaker 1: principles are, it doesn't matter what the law is, it
38:45
Speaker 1: doesn't matter what we've believed prior to Trump. Because I
38:48
Speaker 1: can guarantee empty you that if this was all reversed
38:53
Speaker 1: and it was Biden who was saying, impeach a conservative
38:56
Speaker 1: judge for making a decision that he disagree read with,
39:00
Speaker 1: and Roberts put out this statement, Roberts would be cheered
39:06
Speaker 1: cheered by the right wing media. And I'm not just
39:08
Speaker 1: saying it's necessarily saying he should be cheered here, but
39:11
Speaker 1: he shouldn't be shit on because what he said is
39:14
Speaker 1: one hundred percent right. And you know, and it's very
39:18
Speaker 1: troubling that the right wing is now just going along
39:22
Speaker 1: with this idea of Okay, we got to impeach a
39:24
Speaker 1: judge because we don't like their decision. Now, that's not
39:27
Speaker 1: the way the system works. The process matters if you
39:30
Speaker 1: want to keep this republic together in the long term.
39:33
Speaker 1: The process matters. I realized Trump doesn't care about the
39:37
Speaker 1: long term. And I realize this is very frustrated because
39:41
Speaker 1: even the Blaze has put out an article saying, you
39:45
Speaker 1: know what, the Trump's presidency could be failed because of
39:49
Speaker 1: all this. Daniel Horowitz, the guy who I normally respect,
39:53
Speaker 1: who was great on COVID, he wrote a column about
39:56
Speaker 1: basically that Trump has to defy the judiciary otherwise his
40:00
Speaker 1: presidency may fail. Well. I get the frustration, but this
40:05
Speaker 1: is why you do things through a legislative process. If
40:10
Speaker 1: you want things to happen fast and not get bogged
40:13
Speaker 1: out in court. You have a majority in the House
40:17
Speaker 1: that's minuscule and you have a small majority in the Senate.
40:20
Speaker 1: That's the way the system was designed. So you're making
40:24
Speaker 1: an in run around a system. Well, guess what you're
40:26
Speaker 1: gonna end up, you know, having some liberal judges to
40:30
Speaker 1: make partisan decisions because they know it's going to delay
40:34
Speaker 1: and obstruct you. That's terrible, that's wrong that that's what
40:39
Speaker 1: their intention is, and I believe it probably is. But
40:43
Speaker 1: that's the system. So are you Are you saying that
40:47
Speaker 1: you don't believe in the American system? You don't believe
40:50
Speaker 1: in you know, three different branches of power in our government,
40:56
Speaker 1: equal branches, checks and balances. If you don't believe in that,
41:01
Speaker 1: then you don't really believe in America. And so, you know,
41:06
Speaker 1: I get the frustration not agreeing with the original judicial rulings,
41:12
Speaker 1: but this has got to go through the process, and
41:16
Speaker 1: so do the best you can to get into the
41:18
Speaker 1: Supreme Court and hope that you haven't pissed off Roberts
41:21
Speaker 1: and Barrett so much that they're going to rule against
41:24
Speaker 1: you just for spite. Now there's a related issue to
41:28
Speaker 1: all this, regarding deportations and specifically of students who protested,
41:34
Speaker 1: for instance at Columbia or professors that participated in protests
41:40
Speaker 1: at places again like Columbia, where the visas have been
41:45
Speaker 1: revoked and they're being deported. And this has been seen,
41:51
Speaker 1: at least in the left wing media as an issue
41:53
Speaker 1: of free speech rights, which I don't agree with. I'm
41:56
Speaker 1: a free speech absolutist. However, I am a bit uncomfortable
42:03
Speaker 1: with the standards that are being used and created for
42:07
Speaker 1: how it is that we're going to revoke a green
42:09
Speaker 1: card or a visa and kick somebody out of the
42:12
Speaker 1: country for what appears to be their political beliefs, not
42:16
Speaker 1: their political actions or their illegal actions, but their beliefs
42:21
Speaker 1: or even for instance, in the case of one female
42:24
Speaker 1: professor going to the funeral of someone who is apparently
42:29
Speaker 1: a hamas terrorists. That's troubling to me. I always like
42:35
Speaker 1: to know, Okay, tell me what the rules are, what's
42:37
Speaker 1: the standard. I need to know exactly what the standard is.
42:40
Speaker 1: What exactly did they do to be kicked out of
42:45
Speaker 1: the country to lose the privilege of their visa. I
42:48
Speaker 1: get the privilege versus a right argument one hundred percent.
42:52
Speaker 1: If you're a citizen, that's a completely different ballgame. Then
42:57
Speaker 1: if you're in the country on a visa, that's a privilege.
43:02
Speaker 1: You don't have any rights really yet. That privilege can
43:05
Speaker 1: be revoked if we want to. But I still think
43:07
Speaker 1: it's important that there be a specific standard and that
43:11
Speaker 1: this not be based purely on we don't like your
43:14
Speaker 1: political beliefs. That's again, a very dangerous precedent and it's
43:19
Speaker 1: very slippery slope now. To me. The best counter argument
43:24
Speaker 1: to what liberals have been saying was put forward by
43:27
Speaker 1: Secretary of State Marca Rubio on CBS's Face the Nation,
43:32
Speaker 1: where Margaret Brennan just continually gets owned. Rubio has owned
43:38
Speaker 1: her on a couple of different occasions. JD. Vance has
43:41
Speaker 1: owned her on a couple of different occasions. She's obviously
43:45
Speaker 1: one of the most overtly liberal members of the elite media.
43:49
Speaker 1: She hosts Face the Nation on Sundays on CBS. And
43:52
Speaker 1: this is a fairly long clip, but I think it's
43:54
Speaker 1: pretty good. This is again I feel pretty good about
43:58
Speaker 1: Mark Rubio being Secretary of State. This is the guy
44:00
Speaker 1: that I supported for president in twenty sixteen, and I
44:04
Speaker 1: was shocked that he actually took the job and ended
44:07
Speaker 1: it would have been an incredibly long and successful career
44:10
Speaker 1: in the Senate. To take the very dangerous position of
44:14
Speaker 1: being Donald Trump's secretary of State because you never know
44:17
Speaker 1: how long that's going to last based upon Trump's track record.
44:21
Speaker 1: But here Rubio is really doing a great job of
44:25
Speaker 1: putting forward the counter argument when it comes to this
44:28
Speaker 1: issue of deportations of people who are here on visas.
44:33
Speaker 1: And here's what it sounded like this past weekend on CBS.
44:37
Speaker 2: I want to ask you about a decision you made
44:39
Speaker 2: to revoke a student visa for someone at Columbia University
44:43
Speaker 2: this past week. The Wall Street Journal editorial board writes,
44:46
Speaker 2: the administration needs to be careful. It's targeting real promoters
44:49
Speaker 2: of terrorism, not breaking the great promise of a green
44:52
Speaker 2: card by deporting anyone with controversial political views. Can you
44:57
Speaker 2: substantiate any form of mati curial support for terrorism, specifically
45:02
Speaker 2: to hamas from this Columbia student or was it simply
45:06
Speaker 2: that he was espousing a controversial political point of view.
45:10
Speaker 1: Well, not just the student. We're going to do more.
45:12
Speaker 3: In fact, every day now we're approving visa revocations, and
45:15
Speaker 3: if that visa led to a green card, the green
45:17
Speaker 3: card process as well.
45:18
Speaker 1: And here's why. It's very simple. When you apply to enter.
45:21
Speaker 3: The United States and you get a visa, you are
45:23
Speaker 3: a guest and you're coming as a student, you're coming
45:25
Speaker 3: as a tourist or what have you. And in it
45:27
Speaker 3: you have to make certain assertations. And if you tell
45:29
Speaker 3: us when you apply for a visa, I'm coming to
45:31
Speaker 3: the US to participate in pro HAAMAS events, that runs
45:35
Speaker 3: counter to the foreign policy interest to the United States
45:37
Speaker 3: of America.
45:38
Speaker 1: It's that simple. So you lied, you came.
45:40
Speaker 3: If you had told us that you were going to
45:41
Speaker 3: do that, we never would have given you the visa.
45:43
Speaker 3: Now you're here, Now you do it. You lied to us,
45:46
Speaker 3: You're out.
45:47
Speaker 1: It's that simple.
45:47
Speaker 2: But is there any but is there any evidence of
45:51
Speaker 2: a link to terrorism or is it just his your
45:53
Speaker 2: point of view?
45:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, they take over I mean do you not? I
45:57
Speaker 3: mean you should watch the news. These guys take over
46:00
Speaker 3: entire buildings. We can vandalize college, they shut.
46:02
Speaker 2: Down justification for the ravocation of his visa. Was there
46:07
Speaker 2: any indidential so was.
46:09
Speaker 3: The negotiator on negotiating on behalf of people that took
46:12
Speaker 3: over a campus, that vandalize buildings, negotiating over what that's
46:16
Speaker 3: a crime in and of itself that they're involved in.
46:18
Speaker 3: Being the negotiator of the spokesperson, this, that.
46:20
Speaker 1: And the other. We don't want it.
46:20
Speaker 3: We don't need these people in our country. That We
46:22
Speaker 3: never should have allowed him in the first place. If
46:24
Speaker 3: he had told us I'm going over there and I'm
46:26
Speaker 3: going over there to become the spokesperson and one of
46:29
Speaker 3: the leaders of a movement that's going to turn one
46:31
Speaker 3: of your allegedly elite colleges upside down. People can't even
46:34
Speaker 3: go to school, library buildings being vandalized. We never would
46:37
Speaker 3: have let him in.
46:38
Speaker 1: We never would have let him in to begin with.
46:40
Speaker 3: And now that he's doing it and he's here, he's
46:42
Speaker 3: going to leave, and so are others, and we're going
46:44
Speaker 3: to keep doing it here. And by the way, I
46:46
Speaker 3: find it ironic that a lot of these people out
46:47
Speaker 3: there defending the First Amendment speech, alleged free speech rights
46:51
Speaker 3: of these Hama sympathizers, they had no problem, okay, pressuring
46:55
Speaker 3: social media to censor American political speech. So it's I
47:00
Speaker 3: think it's ironic and hypocritical. But the bottom line is this,
47:03
Speaker 3: if you are in this country to promote Hamas, to
47:05
Speaker 3: promote terrorist organizations, to participate in vandalism, to participate in
47:09
Speaker 3: accent rebellion, and riots on campus.
47:12
Speaker 1: We never would have let you in if we had
47:13
Speaker 1: known that.
47:13
Speaker 2: And now those is not only pro Palestinian people who
47:16
Speaker 2: are going to have their visas remote provoked or other
47:19
Speaker 2: points of view as well.
47:20
Speaker 1: No, I think anybody who's here in favor.
47:22
Speaker 3: Look, we want to get rid of trained that Agua
47:24
Speaker 3: gang members.
47:24
Speaker 1: They're terrorists too.
47:26
Speaker 3: We the President designated them, asked me to designate and
47:28
Speaker 3: I did, as a terrorist organization. We want to get
47:31
Speaker 3: rid of them as well. We don't want terrorists in America.
47:34
Speaker 3: I don't know how hard that is to understand. We
47:36
Speaker 3: don't want people in our country they're going to be
47:38
Speaker 3: committing crimes and undermining our national security or the public safety.
47:42
Speaker 3: It's that simple, especially people that are here as guests.
47:45
Speaker 1: That is what a visa is.
47:46
Speaker 3: I don't know what we've gotten it in our head
47:48
Speaker 3: that a visa is some sort of birthright.
47:50
Speaker 1: It is not.
47:50
Speaker 3: It is a visitor into our country. And if you
47:53
Speaker 3: violate the terms of your visitation, you are going to leave.
47:56
Speaker 1: That's pretty darn good there by Secretary of State Mark
47:59
Speaker 1: or Rubio. And it makes me sad that there's a
48:03
Speaker 1: really good chance that if this doesn't go well, for
48:06
Speaker 1: Rubio that I don't know what his next political act is,
48:09
Speaker 1: because he's very, very good at this. He's a very
48:12
Speaker 1: smart guy. I don't like the fact that he went
48:15
Speaker 1: from being ardently anti Trump, never Trump in twenty sixteen
48:20
Speaker 1: to kissing Trump's ass all over the place and now
48:23
Speaker 1: ending up as his secretary of State, but I feel
48:26
Speaker 1: better that he's in the position so like so much
48:29
Speaker 1: is what happens with regard to Trump. You know, I'm conflicted.
48:33
Speaker 1: I'm conflicted that Ruby wo had to sell his soul
48:36
Speaker 1: to Trump, but I'm also glad that he's there and
48:39
Speaker 1: he proved exactly why there. Although I must say I
48:43
Speaker 1: am still ANTSI as a libertarian, as a free speech absolutist,
48:48
Speaker 1: I would like there to be a clear line, a
48:53
Speaker 1: clear line that is not based on we don't like
48:56
Speaker 1: your political beliefs. That to me, to keep the American
49:02
Speaker 1: principles alive. I think that's an important concept that seems
49:06
Speaker 1: to be getting lost. I see a lot of people
49:09
Speaker 1: online saying, oh my gosh, I can't believe Democrats are
49:12
Speaker 1: supporting terrorists. This is an eighty twenty issue. They're gonna
49:17
Speaker 1: die on this hill again. Well, maybe politically you're right,
49:20
Speaker 1: but there's still a principle that's auto matter at least
49:24
Speaker 1: used to matter, which used to make the United States different,
49:28
Speaker 1: and I'm concerned that we might be losing that. But again,
49:32
Speaker 1: I genuinely support what Mark Rubio said there to Margaret
49:35
Speaker 1: Brennan on CBS. In the last twenty four hours, they
49:40
Speaker 1: have finally begun to release the so called JFK files.
49:46
Speaker 1: This is obviously a subject that I have discussed numerous
49:49
Speaker 1: times because the JKA assassination is one of those topics
49:53
Speaker 1: on which I have spent much of my life analyzing,
49:59
Speaker 1: and I have had a dramatic evolution of thought on
50:03
Speaker 1: I have discussed that in great detail, if somehow you
50:07
Speaker 1: missed it. Episode seventy one of this podcast. The Death
50:11
Speaker 1: of Journalism podcast deals in large part with my really
50:16
Speaker 1: unique theory of what transpired when it came to the
50:21
Speaker 1: Kennedy assassination. The very very short version of my view
50:24
Speaker 1: is that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone for all intentsive purposes.
50:29
Speaker 1: He might have been urged on by some people in
50:32
Speaker 1: his orbit, but effectively he acted alone. There was no
50:36
Speaker 1: government conspiracy, but that the way that he did it,
50:40
Speaker 1: the logistics of the assassination itself are inconsistent with the
50:45
Speaker 1: conventional wisdom and the conclusions of the Warrant Commission. I
50:49
Speaker 1: believe that there was no magic bullet. I believe that
50:53
Speaker 1: the first shot hit Kennedy in the back and fell
50:56
Speaker 1: out that was the pristine bullet. I believe the second
50:58
Speaker 1: shot had Connelly alone and essentially disintegrated in his body,
51:03
Speaker 1: with a small fragment being found in his thigh. And
51:06
Speaker 1: I believe the third shot hit Kennedy in the head
51:09
Speaker 1: and killed him. And again, I go through basically two
51:13
Speaker 1: hours of analyzing what did and did not happen and
51:16
Speaker 1: why I believe my theory in episode seventy one, and
51:20
Speaker 1: then just a couple months after that, a secret service
51:23
Speaker 1: agent by the name of Paul Landis came out with
51:25
Speaker 1: a book that really did an extraordinary amount to substantiate
51:29
Speaker 1: my theory, even though he didn't even seem to intend
51:32
Speaker 1: to do that at all, because he claims that he
51:36
Speaker 1: found the pristine bullet exactly where I think it would
51:39
Speaker 1: have been, which was the back seat of the limousine
51:42
Speaker 1: where Kennedy was sitting. And that's all that changes from
51:47
Speaker 1: my theory is that I always figured that the pristine
51:51
Speaker 1: bullet fell out at Parkland Hospital. Well, according to Landis
51:55
Speaker 1: it may have fallen out in the limousine itself, which
51:58
Speaker 1: also makes total sense, and that Land has then placed
52:01
Speaker 1: it on Kennedy's stretcher gurney in the chaos at Parkland
52:07
Speaker 1: because he didn't know what to do with it, and
52:10
Speaker 1: then later on that gurney was misidentified as being Connolly's gurney,
52:17
Speaker 1: and that's how the whole single bullet theory came about.
52:20
Speaker 1: I don't believe any of that, but I believe the
52:22
Speaker 1: essence of the warrant commission, which is that Oswald acted alone.
52:27
Speaker 1: Three shots, one gunman.
52:29
Speaker 4: What have you.
52:29
Speaker 1: And I have also been rather outspoken that I don't
52:33
Speaker 1: believe anything all that significant is going to come from
52:36
Speaker 1: the JFK files. Supposedly, whatever this is, it's finally being released,
52:42
Speaker 1: and so far, so far, what I can tell is
52:46
Speaker 1: that there's nothing remotely close to a bombshell, although then
52:50
Speaker 1: this was easily predicted. There are fragments of information that
52:54
Speaker 1: people are trying to make mountains out of molehills to
52:59
Speaker 1: try to stantiate. One that there's something that has been
53:03
Speaker 1: hidden for all these years, and two that substantiates the
53:06
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories, because conspiracy theorists are incredibly stupper. They are very,
53:12
Speaker 1: very invested in the idea that somehow the government killed
53:16
Speaker 1: our president, and so any little tiny fragment, even if
53:21
Speaker 1: it's not even remotely new information, and so far, nothing
53:26
Speaker 1: I've seen is even new, and some of the documents
53:30
Speaker 1: were already released during a prior disclosure of so called
53:37
Speaker 1: JFK file documents, and so it's it's not even clear
53:41
Speaker 1: as of this taping how much of this is new.
53:43
Speaker 1: Some of it appears to be new information. I have
53:47
Speaker 1: been monitoring the Twitter feed of Gerald Posner, a guy
53:51
Speaker 1: who wrote a book called Case Close, which I think
53:55
Speaker 1: is a tremendous book, even though I think he's wrong
53:58
Speaker 1: about the single bullet theory. I've interviewed Gerald Posner. By
54:01
Speaker 1: the way, I have been efforting another interview with Gerald Posner.
54:06
Speaker 1: And I had a date ready to go in April,
54:10
Speaker 1: and then, unfortunately, much to my surprise, I qualified for
54:14
Speaker 1: a golf tournament that's going to be playing on the
54:16
Speaker 1: date that he and I had agreed to, So now
54:19
Speaker 1: we're trying to find another date. He's a very busy guy,
54:22
Speaker 1: especially now that the JFK files have dominated I'm sure
54:27
Speaker 1: his life and every other major JFK researcher's life based
54:33
Speaker 1: upon his Twitter feed. There's nothing all that extraordinary yet
54:36
Speaker 1: that has been revealed. I don't think there will be,
54:38
Speaker 1: but I'm quite confident that they're going to be people
54:42
Speaker 1: who are going to use whatever fragments they find to
54:45
Speaker 1: substantiate whatever bullshit theory they happen to already believe in.
54:50
Speaker 1: I mean, that's just the nature of humanity, and it's
54:52
Speaker 1: certainly the nature of conspiracy theorists. But so far, and
54:56
Speaker 1: I'm happy to change my view if I get evidence
55:00
Speaker 1: it causes me to do so, so far, there's there's
55:02
Speaker 1: nothing there, and there shouldn't be anything there because, frankly,
55:06
Speaker 1: the whole theory that there are these documents that prove
55:10
Speaker 1: some sort of a government conspiracy to kill JFK is
55:14
Speaker 1: inherently ridiculous, because if you were hiding the documents from
55:18
Speaker 1: public view, why wouldn't you just destroy them? If the
55:21
Speaker 1: conspiracy was that big and that strong and that deep,
55:25
Speaker 1: then why not just destroy the documents. I don't get it.
55:30
Speaker 1: I've never understood. So we're gonna preserve the evidence of
55:35
Speaker 1: this conspiracy to kill the president. But we're gonna fit
55:39
Speaker 1: it from the public. I mean, the reality is that
55:44
Speaker 1: if there had been a major conspiracy to kill JFK,
55:48
Speaker 1: here we are now, you know, almost sixty three years
55:51
Speaker 1: sixty two years later, almost sixty two years later, somebody
55:56
Speaker 1: would have talked about this, Somebody on their dead somebody
56:00
Speaker 1: in a journal that wouldn't come out until they died.
56:04
Speaker 1: Somebody credible would have discussed this. And that's never happened,
56:10
Speaker 1: and there's never been any evidence for it. There's never
56:12
Speaker 1: been any logic to it. Well, I shouldn't say there's
56:15
Speaker 1: never been any logic to it. I get. I fully
56:17
Speaker 1: understand because I was in this camp for a long time.
56:21
Speaker 1: When I was young and dumb and just starting to
56:24
Speaker 1: research the assassination, I believed in a lot of these conspiracies.
56:28
Speaker 1: I thought the mob conspiracy made some sense because of
56:33
Speaker 1: Robert Kennedy. But when you look at it carefully, it
56:36
Speaker 1: all falls apart. And by the way, the Mob is
56:40
Speaker 1: terrible at keeping secrets. You don't think that if the
56:43
Speaker 1: mob had killed JFK, all sorts of people would have
56:47
Speaker 1: been bragging about it. By the way, some people in
56:49
Speaker 1: the mob did brag him because even though they were lying,
56:53
Speaker 1: it wasn't real. But there's no chance there was a
56:58
Speaker 1: conspiracy to kill Jkay. By the way, if there was
57:01
Speaker 1: a mob conspiracy, why not just kill Roberts, which eventually didn't.
57:06
Speaker 1: There's no evidence the mob was behind that. But there's
57:10
Speaker 1: all sorts of problems with the mob theory and there's
57:12
Speaker 1: no evidence for it, and nobody has ever incredibly truly
57:17
Speaker 1: cop to it, which I think would have clearly been
57:20
Speaker 1: the case sixty two years later. So I am well
57:26
Speaker 1: prepared to endure the bullshit that's going to come from those,
57:31
Speaker 1: you know, people who love conspiracies, that they're going to
57:34
Speaker 1: suddenly find these little grains that are are proof of it.
57:38
Speaker 1: But I am very, very loath to be convinced by that,
57:43
Speaker 1: and I will be stunned if anything truly dramatic and
57:49
Speaker 1: real and new, because some of the stuff I'm seeing
57:52
Speaker 1: people going crazy over has been known for a very
57:55
Speaker 1: long time and was already long ago debumped. But that
57:59
Speaker 1: doesn't matter because we've created the impression that this is
58:02
Speaker 1: all new information that's been hidden from the public, and
58:06
Speaker 1: there's no reason for it to be hidden unless it's
58:08
Speaker 1: really significant, So it inherently gives these fragments of information
58:12
Speaker 1: way more power than they deserve. It's not because they
58:18
Speaker 1: were all that significant that they were hidden. There's a
58:21
Speaker 1: by the way, most of it wasn't hidden. That's the
58:24
Speaker 1: other part of this. It's frustrating. This was a lot
58:27
Speaker 1: of this stuff was already out in some form or fashion. So,
58:32
Speaker 1: you know, it's very frustrating dealing with these conspiracy theorists.
58:35
Speaker 1: They will always believe what they want to believe. There's
58:37
Speaker 1: no changing their minds. It doesn't matter how Barren ol
58:41
Speaker 1: Component's vault is to use that imagery with regard to
58:45
Speaker 1: the JK files, They're always going to believe it. And
58:48
Speaker 1: I'm sure they'll come up with some piece of information
58:51
Speaker 1: that they think substantiated, even though factually that will not
58:55
Speaker 1: be the case. Now the Epstein files have not yet
58:59
Speaker 1: been released, and they've been somewhat forgotten. I mean, this
59:03
Speaker 1: is really amazing, really frankly, where you know, after all
59:08
Speaker 1: of the speculation and all the hype and all the
59:11
Speaker 1: drama and all the promises of the Epstein files being released,
59:16
Speaker 1: and the battle between the Attorney General and the head
59:18
Speaker 1: of the FBI and everyone trying to figure out who
59:21
Speaker 1: to blame and how they can get out of the
59:24
Speaker 1: crosshairs of the conspiracy theorists who are desperate to prove
59:29
Speaker 1: that their mythology about Epstein and all the very prominent
59:33
Speaker 1: people that he lured into committing horrible crimes against young girls.
59:40
Speaker 1: You know, this is a narrative that they're deeply invested in,
59:43
Speaker 1: and no one wants any part of this. Well, as
59:46
Speaker 1: of this taping, there's no evidence that anything new has
59:49
Speaker 1: been released with regard to Epstein. I think probably because
59:53
Speaker 1: there's nothing new to release, because as I have gone
59:57
Speaker 1: through previously, I don't believe there's any there there. I
1:00:00
Speaker 1: think Epstein, much like Oswald, did alone for all intensive
1:00:05
Speaker 1: purposes disline, Maxwell was in prison for trafficking young girls
1:00:14
Speaker 1: in conjunction with Epstein. I'm not one hundred percent convinced
1:00:17
Speaker 1: that she's guilty. I don't think she got a fair trial.
1:00:20
Speaker 1: She may be guilty, I don't know, but I've never
1:00:23
Speaker 1: seen evidence that was all that compelling, and I think
1:00:26
Speaker 1: she got caught up largely in the outrage over Epstein's crimes,
1:00:33
Speaker 1: especially after Epstein killed himself in prison, which is exactly
1:00:36
Speaker 1: what happened, and that Maxwell, much like Prince Andrew ended
1:00:41
Speaker 1: up suffering the consequences because people needed justice, and they
1:00:45
Speaker 1: were connected both to each other and to Epstein obviously
1:00:49
Speaker 1: very very closely, and therefore his toxicity rubbed off on
1:00:53
Speaker 1: them and they got very unlucky. Now again, Maxwell might
1:00:57
Speaker 1: be guilty. I don't know. It's hard for me to
1:00:58
Speaker 1: imagine she didn't know what was going on. I'm just
1:01:00
Speaker 1: saying I don't think she got a fair trial, and
1:01:02
Speaker 1: the evidence against her wasn't that strong. But the bottom
1:01:05
Speaker 1: line is the narrative about Epstein has never made any
1:01:08
Speaker 1: sense to me. I'm not going to go into the
1:01:09
Speaker 1: details as to why I've done that previously, so my
1:01:12
Speaker 1: gut tells me the reason why the thing has been
1:01:15
Speaker 1: released about Epstein is that there's nothing really all that
1:01:18
Speaker 1: interesting to release about Epstein. But now the right wingers
1:01:23
Speaker 1: who have been promising that you know what has been
1:01:27
Speaker 1: hidden about Epstein. And it's always been very confusing to
1:01:31
Speaker 1: me as to why Trump fans are so into this issue,
1:01:34
Speaker 1: because there was no celebrity that was as close to
1:01:36
Speaker 1: Epstein during certain periods of time it's supposedly during the
1:01:39
Speaker 1: early two thousands, than Donald Trump was. So I've never
1:01:43
Speaker 1: understood what the motive here is, I don't understand what
1:01:45
Speaker 1: the mentality. I don't even understand what the narrative is.
1:01:48
Speaker 1: That is helpful, but you know, there are right wingers
1:01:52
Speaker 1: who now need an excuse for what's happened to the
1:01:56
Speaker 1: Epstein files. And hilariously, comer woman Anna Luna, who's most
1:02:02
Speaker 1: well known for being a swimsuit model and for wearing swimsuits,
1:02:06
Speaker 1: I must say extremely well, but she's also a right
1:02:09
Speaker 1: wing pro Trump congresswoman, and now she tweeted out with
1:02:14
Speaker 1: regard to the Epstein files. Fed's accused of destroying Epstein
1:02:19
Speaker 1: evidence put on notice by GOP firebrand Representative Anna Paulina Luna,
1:02:26
Speaker 1: Republican from Florida, once federal agents caught destroying or concealing
1:02:31
Speaker 1: government documents to be eligible for a life sentence in prison.
1:02:37
Speaker 1: And this is a story on foxnews dot com that
1:02:41
Speaker 1: about Luna's efforts that she tweeted out herself. Now, I
1:02:45
Speaker 1: found this to be hilarious because there's no evidence that
1:02:50
Speaker 1: any of this is actually happened, but she's she's wanting
1:02:55
Speaker 1: to put forward this idea that federal agents caught destroying
1:02:59
Speaker 1: or concealing government documents should be eligible for a life
1:03:02
Speaker 1: sentence in prison when there's no evidence that that has happened.
1:03:06
Speaker 1: But in order to make it look like there has
1:03:11
Speaker 1: actually been this rogue agency, whether it's the Southern District
1:03:15
Speaker 1: of New York or whatever, that has destroyed these these
1:03:18
Speaker 1: Epstein files, we need to really put on a good show,
1:03:22
Speaker 1: and so we're gonna go after people that we don't
1:03:25
Speaker 1: even have any evidence even exists. We have no evidence
1:03:29
Speaker 1: of a crime actually being committed. But this is all
1:03:32
Speaker 1: part of the show. This is all part of covering
1:03:35
Speaker 1: up the fact that there was no cover up. There's
1:03:38
Speaker 1: so many layers of insanity of this because there is
1:03:42
Speaker 1: no evidence or logic that anybody within the government has
1:03:47
Speaker 1: been getting rid of the Epstein files. And that's why
1:03:51
Speaker 1: when the Attorney General Van Bondi tried to release them,
1:03:55
Speaker 1: it was a disaster because there was nothing new. I
1:03:58
Speaker 1: think there was nothing new, most likely because there's nothing
1:04:02
Speaker 1: really there. But that's not acceptable to those millions of people,
1:04:07
Speaker 1: and it's an incredibly large number of people who have
1:04:10
Speaker 1: been thirsting for and have been incredibly invested in this
1:04:13
Speaker 1: whole idea that there's way more to the story. And
1:04:17
Speaker 1: we're going to prove that all these elites were engaged
1:04:21
Speaker 1: in sex trafficking with young girls, you know, the Bill
1:04:24
Speaker 1: Gates of the world, and you know, people like that
1:04:28
Speaker 1: when there's no evidence or logic of that, and so
1:04:34
Speaker 1: that saga continues. But to me, it's very obvious that
1:04:39
Speaker 1: there's a concerted effort by these right wing figures like
1:04:43
Speaker 1: Congressman Luna to create a cover story and go to
1:04:47
Speaker 1: great lens to create a cover story for why there's
1:04:51
Speaker 1: no so called Epstein files of any significance. Now, if
1:04:55
Speaker 1: I'm wrong on that, I'll be the first to admit it.
1:04:58
Speaker 1: But every sign I've se seen so far, including this
1:05:01
Speaker 1: very concerned effort to create a counter narrative to explain
1:05:05
Speaker 1: why there's no Epstein files, as one hundred percent consistent
1:05:08
Speaker 1: with my theory. And generally, you know, when it comes
1:05:12
Speaker 1: to betting against conspiracy theories, it's it's really a pretty
1:05:16
Speaker 1: darn good bet. It's like prime real estate. Eventually it's
1:05:20
Speaker 1: going to go up. You can't really lose in the
1:05:25
Speaker 1: long run, because the vast majority of these conspiracy theorists
1:05:29
Speaker 1: are bonkers. Their looney tunes and their theories turn out
1:05:34
Speaker 1: to be wrong. Now, they never accept that, because that's
1:05:36
Speaker 1: the beauty of being a conspiracy theorist. You never really
1:05:39
Speaker 1: had to accept the truth or the reality, and we're
1:05:41
Speaker 1: seeing that with regard to both JFK and Epstein. I
1:05:45
Speaker 1: want to turn now to a story that is I
1:05:49
Speaker 1: guess somewhat related in some people's minds, although I don't
1:05:51
Speaker 1: think it is that I have dealt with quite extensively
1:05:55
Speaker 1: in the past but have not talked about in a
1:05:58
Speaker 1: very long time, and that is the Michael Jackson case.
1:06:02
Speaker 1: And I have done a lot of work on the
1:06:04
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson case. Weirdly, it was all well after he died.
1:06:10
Speaker 1: I got deeply involved in that case in twenty nineteen
1:06:15
Speaker 1: after HBO put out a so called documentary, although I
1:06:20
Speaker 1: don't think that's the right word to describe it, called
1:06:22
Speaker 1: Leaving Neverland, a two part quote unquote documentary that importantly
1:06:27
Speaker 1: had Oprah Winfrey's Seal of Approval on it, which I
1:06:31
Speaker 1: think is why it was taken so seriously. Now today,
1:06:36
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that any of what happened with Leaving
1:06:39
Speaker 1: Neverland in twenty nineteen would have transpired, because I'm not
1:06:43
Speaker 1: sure that Oprah's Seal of Approval has the same kind
1:06:46
Speaker 1: of magic even within the media that it did in
1:06:49
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. I also think there's more skepticism of allegations
1:06:54
Speaker 1: of sexual abuse in the post Me two era, now
1:06:58
Speaker 1: that Me Too has died down. I could be wrong
1:07:02
Speaker 1: about that, but I really think that if the first
1:07:04
Speaker 1: Leaving Neverland had aired on HBO today that I'm not
1:07:08
Speaker 1: sure it would have had nearly the same impact. But
1:07:11
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen it had a huge influence on the
1:07:16
Speaker 1: news media and on a lot of the public. And
1:07:19
Speaker 1: the basic narrative of this so called documentary done by
1:07:23
Speaker 1: a guy by the name of Dan Reid, who I
1:07:26
Speaker 1: have huge problems with. I think Dan Reid is both
1:07:30
Speaker 1: dumb and lacking incredibility, but I also think he might
1:07:35
Speaker 1: be in favor of pedophilia, because the number one most
1:07:40
Speaker 1: bizarre element of Leaving Neverland from twenty nineteen is that
1:07:45
Speaker 1: the film is inherently pro pedophilia. That's not an exaggeration,
1:07:50
Speaker 1: that's not hyperbole. It's pro pedophilia. It's a huge part
1:07:54
Speaker 1: of the narrative was that pedophilia was so awesome for
1:07:58
Speaker 1: these guys having sex with Michael Jackson, for these two guys,
1:08:02
Speaker 1: Wade Robson and James Safchak, who you know, never said
1:08:05
Speaker 1: anything about this until they were way into adulthood and
1:08:07
Speaker 1: they were suing the Jackson estate for literally billions of dollars,
1:08:12
Speaker 1: that this was a pleasurable experience for them, and that's
1:08:15
Speaker 1: part of why they never said anything. It's a huge
1:08:18
Speaker 1: part of the narrative that no one wants to talk about.
1:08:21
Speaker 1: But I got involved in this because I watched Leaving
1:08:26
Speaker 1: Neverland and I saw the reaction to it, and I
1:08:29
Speaker 1: had always presumed way way back that Michael Jackson must
1:08:34
Speaker 1: be guilty of something. I covered his trial as a
1:08:37
Speaker 1: ready to talk show host at KFI and was shocked
1:08:39
Speaker 1: at how little evidence there was against him. And then
1:08:41
Speaker 1: when he got acquitted, even though it was in Santa
1:08:44
Speaker 1: Barbara with a mostly white jury, I thought, Okay, well
1:08:47
Speaker 1: maybe they just didn't prove it, but there's still something
1:08:50
Speaker 1: weird going on there. But I never given it a
1:08:52
Speaker 1: lot of thought. I'd never given it the full dive.
1:08:55
Speaker 1: And you know, post Sandusky, I really wasn't all that
1:08:58
Speaker 1: enthusiastic about getting involved in another high profile case of
1:09:03
Speaker 1: alleged sex abuse of children. Not something I really enjoyed
1:09:07
Speaker 1: doing at all. But no one else is willing to
1:09:09
Speaker 1: delve into it for obvious reasons, and it felt like
1:09:13
Speaker 1: there was an injustice going on because I'm like, the
1:09:15
Speaker 1: guy is dead, He's been long dead. And these two accusers,
1:09:19
Speaker 1: Wade Robson and James Safchuk, do not appear credible to me,
1:09:23
Speaker 1: I mean, just based upon the basic factual record. And
1:09:26
Speaker 1: I'm not going to spend that much time doing that
1:09:28
Speaker 1: right now. I've done it in the past another podcast.
1:09:31
Speaker 1: But Wade Robson, especially he was the first accuser, is
1:09:36
Speaker 1: a guy who has less credibility than even any of
1:09:40
Speaker 1: the major Sandusky accusers. I mean, it's hard to imagine
1:09:44
Speaker 1: a scenario where someone could have less credibility than Wade Robson.
1:09:49
Speaker 1: For instance, he testified on Michael Jackson's behalf at that
1:09:53
Speaker 1: criminal trial and was his strongest defender. And then when
1:09:56
Speaker 1: he died, he wrote one of the most glowing chapters
1:10:01
Speaker 1: in a book about Michael Jackson you could possibly imagine.
1:10:04
Speaker 1: And then when he lost out on a job that
1:10:07
Speaker 1: he had as the choreographer for the Michael Jackson Las
1:10:10
Speaker 1: Vegas Show, all of a sudden everything changed. I want
1:10:14
Speaker 1: to die and his story makes absolutely those sense. And
1:10:18
Speaker 1: I've interviewed Brandy Jackson Michael Jackson's niece who dated Wade
1:10:22
Speaker 1: Robson for an extensive period of time during the alleged
1:10:25
Speaker 1: period of time where he was being abused. They were
1:10:27
Speaker 1: put together by Michael Jackson himself. She's incredibly She's awesome
1:10:34
Speaker 1: in so many different ways. But I believe her story
1:10:37
Speaker 1: with a near one hundred percent certitude, and she is
1:10:40
Speaker 1: positive that Wade is a lying piece of shit and
1:10:44
Speaker 1: that this makes this story makes absolutely no sense. And
1:10:47
Speaker 1: then James Savechuck, who piggybacked off of Wade Robson's lawsuit,
1:10:52
Speaker 1: is also greatly lacking in credibility. Let me give there's
1:10:57
Speaker 1: one story about Save Chuck that I think is worthy
1:11:01
Speaker 1: of mention because it does somewhat relate to the Sandusky case,
1:11:05
Speaker 1: and that is that Safe Chuck in this movie Leaving Neverland.
1:11:09
Speaker 1: By the way, the reason why I'm talking about this
1:11:10
Speaker 1: now is because Leaving Neverland has a sequel out, but
1:11:14
Speaker 1: it's not going to air in America. It's not going
1:11:16
Speaker 1: to air on HBO, and in fact, the first version
1:11:21
Speaker 1: of Leaving Neverland is no longer going to air on
1:11:24
Speaker 1: HBO or even be available on HBO or Max on
1:11:28
Speaker 1: demand because of a legal settlement between Michael Jackson's estate
1:11:33
Speaker 1: and HBO. And by the way, there's a kind of
1:11:37
Speaker 1: a weird everything about this case is is weird and unfortunate,
1:11:44
Speaker 1: and you can never get a clear cut victory because,
1:11:48
Speaker 1: you know, you would think that Leaving Neverland being taken
1:11:51
Speaker 1: off of HBO or Max would be a huge win
1:11:55
Speaker 1: for what I believe to be the truth and for
1:11:57
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson's side of this story and really condemning the
1:12:01
Speaker 1: obvious frauds that are Wade Robson and James Safchuk who
1:12:05
Speaker 1: took part in this bogus, you know, fictional documentary. But
1:12:10
Speaker 1: the real reason appears to me that Michael Jackson, back
1:12:15
Speaker 1: when he did an HBO concert like in the nineties
1:12:20
Speaker 1: whatever it was, signed a contract with HBO that into perpetuity.
1:12:27
Speaker 1: Basically HBO could not defame him in any sort of way.
1:12:32
Speaker 1: And it always confused me as to how that didn't
1:12:35
Speaker 1: prevent HBO from airing Leaving Neverland to begin with. And now,
1:12:41
Speaker 1: after a very protracted legal battle, HBO is basically given
1:12:45
Speaker 1: up and is disavowing Leaving Neverland. Now, I would like
1:12:50
Speaker 1: to believe that part of why HBO did that is
1:12:52
Speaker 1: because they no longer really believe in the credibility of
1:12:55
Speaker 1: the film, but they're not forced apparently to actually say
1:12:58
Speaker 1: that publicly. But the reality is it does not exist
1:13:03
Speaker 1: under HBO or Max anymore, and even on on demand,
1:13:06
Speaker 1: which I think is a victory. But anyway, back to
1:13:09
Speaker 1: James Safchuck. So, James Safchuck, in Leaving Neverland makes the
1:13:15
Speaker 1: claim that he was sexually abused by Michael Jackson in
1:13:18
Speaker 1: various places with great emotion and allegedly detail. You know,
1:13:24
Speaker 1: details are always what people are saying, Oh my gosh,
1:13:28
Speaker 1: you there's too many details in this story for it
1:13:30
Speaker 1: to be false. I've never believed that to begin with,
1:13:34
Speaker 1: but that's something that people put a lot of credibility into.
1:13:37
Speaker 1: Oh you give me the details, then you must not
1:13:39
Speaker 1: be lying. Well. One of the places where safe Chuck
1:13:43
Speaker 1: claimed Michael Jackson, at the time probably the most famous,
1:13:48
Speaker 1: one of the most famous people in the world, sexually
1:13:51
Speaker 1: abused him was in the train station that Michael Jackson
1:13:57
Speaker 1: built on the Neverland Ranch. Now, if this actually happened,
1:14:02
Speaker 1: obviously that would be very memorable for you to be
1:14:06
Speaker 1: sexually abused by Michael Jackson as a younger boy. Almost
1:14:12
Speaker 1: I guess barely a teenage boy at this point to be,
1:14:16
Speaker 1: you know, sexually abused at the train station. Well, there's
1:14:19
Speaker 1: a problem, and that is that in the years that
1:14:22
Speaker 1: Save Chuck claimed that he was sexually abused by Michael Jackson,
1:14:27
Speaker 1: the train station did not exist. This is not a
1:14:30
Speaker 1: matter of controversy. This is so clear cut that Dan Reed.
1:14:34
Speaker 1: This is amazing to me that Dan Read, the director
1:14:38
Speaker 1: of the film, acknowledged that the train station did not
1:14:42
Speaker 1: exist when St James Safchuk claimed to have been sexually abused,
1:14:47
Speaker 1: and at the time I thought, wow, that's a remarkable admission. Clearly,
1:14:51
Speaker 1: what Reed is now going to claim is that Save
1:14:54
Speaker 1: Chuck's memory is flawed because of PTSD. That would be
1:14:59
Speaker 1: the same playbook, right. I mean, the primary lawyer, Andrew
1:15:05
Speaker 1: Shubin in the Sandusky case that we dealt with extensively
1:15:08
Speaker 1: in our podcast, with the benefic hindsight, would have been
1:15:11
Speaker 1: smart enough to immediately blame PTSD. And you know, memories
1:15:16
Speaker 1: are fuzzy, and that was just a false memory, and
1:15:19
Speaker 1: don't worry about it. It doesn't really affect the credibility
1:15:22
Speaker 1: of my client. Well, Read is such an idiot and
1:15:25
Speaker 1: is so deeply invested in his narrative and his you know,
1:15:30
Speaker 1: his star accusers not being inaccurate in what they're saying
1:15:36
Speaker 1: that he he changed the time period of when Save
1:15:41
Speaker 1: Chuck had been abused. Well, first, first of all, this
1:15:44
Speaker 1: is remarkable that a film director felt like he had
1:15:48
Speaker 1: the authority to speak for an accuser. That's absurd right
1:15:53
Speaker 1: off the bat. But you know, Reid claimed, oh no, no,
1:15:57
Speaker 1: Save Chuck didn't lie about being abused in the train station,
1:16:00
Speaker 1: He just got the years wrong. Well, of course, as
1:16:04
Speaker 1: we documented and with the benefit of hindsight, especially with
1:16:07
Speaker 1: victim number five, Michael Kajak, Michael Kajak did exactly the
1:16:11
Speaker 1: same thing. He moved the years significantly when he realized
1:16:14
Speaker 1: that he hadn't even met Sandusky yet. But the problem
1:16:17
Speaker 1: with that was his original story was that he didn't
1:16:21
Speaker 1: know what an erection was when Sadusky originally abused him. Well,
1:16:25
Speaker 1: that might have been plausible at the age of ten,
1:16:29
Speaker 1: but it wasn't plausible three or four years later at
1:16:31
Speaker 1: the age of thirteen or fourteen. So you've destroyed the
1:16:37
Speaker 1: essence and the credibility of your story by changing the years.
1:16:40
Speaker 1: Not to mention that changing years is always inherently suspect. Well,
1:16:45
Speaker 1: the entire narrative, the entire narrative of Leaving Neverland is
1:16:51
Speaker 1: that Michael Jackson would dump his victims once they hit puberty.
1:16:57
Speaker 1: It's a huge part of the film. And yet, in
1:17:00
Speaker 1: order to not acknowledge that Save Chuck lied about this
1:17:04
Speaker 1: train station not existing, redecided not a problem. We're going
1:17:10
Speaker 1: to have Save Chuck still be abused when he's like fifteen,
1:17:13
Speaker 1: sixteen years old. And by the way, he was a
1:17:15
Speaker 1: huge kid, huge at fifteen or sixteen. So now you've
1:17:23
Speaker 1: destroyed the entire narrative of your film just to try
1:17:28
Speaker 1: to do an end run around the fact that James
1:17:30
Speaker 1: Sinchuk lied, clearly lied about being abused in the Neverland
1:17:35
Speaker 1: train station. And this is just one example. There are
1:17:38
Speaker 1: many others. These guys are liars. They're total liars. And
1:17:43
Speaker 1: one of the things that I keep hammering home, and
1:17:46
Speaker 1: I've done this from the beginning of when the Neverland
1:17:49
Speaker 1: Leaving Neverland controversy began in twenty nineteen, and I started
1:17:53
Speaker 1: doing work on it and wrote several columns about it
1:17:56
Speaker 1: for Mediaite and did several interviews on national programs like
1:18:01
Speaker 1: Glenn Beck Show and others about why I believe these
1:18:04
Speaker 1: guys are liars. Is that Another narrative in this film
1:18:09
Speaker 1: is that by exposing Michael Jackson's serial sexual abuse well
1:18:15
Speaker 1: after he's dead, that this was going to provoke a
1:18:20
Speaker 1: whole new group of credible accusers to come forward. This,
1:18:26
Speaker 1: by the way, you may recall, was a huge part
1:18:28
Speaker 1: of the prosecution's theory on the Sandusky case, and it
1:18:31
Speaker 1: didn't turn out that way. They got a whole bunch
1:18:33
Speaker 1: of crap once the arrest was made and the nuclear
1:18:37
Speaker 1: explosion of the news media occurred, and you know, as
1:18:41
Speaker 1: it turned out, they used two accusers post arrest, number
1:18:45
Speaker 1: nine and number ten, neither of which were remotely credible.
1:18:49
Speaker 1: They were far less credible than even the original accusers,
1:18:53
Speaker 1: the six that existed at the time of Jerry Sandowsky's arrest.
1:18:58
Speaker 1: And I've always used that as a proof that there's
1:19:01
Speaker 1: the entire prosecution theory of the case is wrong. They
1:19:07
Speaker 1: didn't get better accusers, which they literally said in memos
1:19:10
Speaker 1: that they would after the whole world knew about this
1:19:14
Speaker 1: and that you know, the cover up was collapsed. They
1:19:17
Speaker 1: got crap. Well, leaving Neverland hasn't produced any new accusers,
1:19:25
Speaker 1: and in fact, leaving Neverland to the sequel, which is
1:19:28
Speaker 1: getting a lot of publicity in Great Britain but not
1:19:31
Speaker 1: airing here in America. And as I said, HBO is
1:19:34
Speaker 1: no longer a warehouse for the original version of this
1:19:38
Speaker 1: movie is being criticized as having nothing new. It's basically
1:19:43
Speaker 1: like the Epstein files of that so far, the JFK files.
1:19:46
Speaker 1: There's nothing new here. This is really just another way
1:19:50
Speaker 1: of trying to promote this lawsuit by Robson and safe Chuck,
1:19:54
Speaker 1: which is still ongoing, which apparently is headed for trial
1:19:57
Speaker 1: here in Los Angeles eventually, and there's no new accusers. Now, hilariously,
1:20:04
Speaker 1: Reid will try to claim and is trying to claim,
1:20:08
Speaker 1: and did so in an interview with Piers Morgan, who
1:20:12
Speaker 1: is frustratingly all over the map on this and other
1:20:15
Speaker 1: similar issues. But read the director has tried to claim
1:20:19
Speaker 1: that there were new accusers, that there was a settlement
1:20:23
Speaker 1: made by the estate for a group of people, basically
1:20:26
Speaker 1: a family of people who used to work for Michael Jackson.
1:20:30
Speaker 1: Now this gets complicated, but here's to me the essence
1:20:34
Speaker 1: of what's going on here. So you have this firestorm
1:20:38
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen and all this publicity surround leaving Neverland
1:20:42
Speaker 1: and Michael Jackson gets close to being canceled, largely because
1:20:47
Speaker 1: of Oprah Winfrey's blessing. So there's an enormous amount of
1:20:51
Speaker 1: pressure on the estate and these former workers for Jackson.
1:20:58
Speaker 1: They in my view, they get a lawyer that realizes
1:21:01
Speaker 1: the vulnerability of the estate and they come up with
1:21:05
Speaker 1: a story, not that anybody that we know of that
1:21:07
Speaker 1: any of them were actually abused, but apparently that they
1:21:11
Speaker 1: knew of things that allegedly happened. Nothing even specific. To
1:21:16
Speaker 1: this day, there's nobody in this group that has come
1:21:18
Speaker 1: forward and said they were sexually abused by Michael Jackson.
1:21:21
Speaker 1: They're just coming These are people, by the way, who
1:21:23
Speaker 1: have been incredibly supportive of Jackson in every possible way.
1:21:28
Speaker 1: But in the aftermath of the film, the atmosphere changes dramatically.
1:21:34
Speaker 1: The environment is radically altered, the estate is vulnerable, and
1:21:38
Speaker 1: they find a lawyer to exploit this and extort the
1:21:43
Speaker 1: Jackson estate for all intentsive purposes. This is similar to
1:21:46
Speaker 1: what I theorized happen with regard to the Epstein accuser
1:21:49
Speaker 1: and Prince Andrew. The lawyer knew that the royal family
1:21:53
Speaker 1: was completely dysfunctional and had a lot of money and
1:21:57
Speaker 1: they were just going to want to make this thing
1:21:59
Speaker 1: go away. Well, the Jackson was state was extremely vulnerable
1:22:03
Speaker 1: at that point, and so that I think is what
1:22:06
Speaker 1: transpired here. They gave him a bunch of money to
1:22:10
Speaker 1: go away. But there's never they're not part of this
1:22:12
Speaker 1: new movie. They've never made a public statement any of
1:22:14
Speaker 1: these people saying they were sexually abused by Michael Jackson.
1:22:17
Speaker 1: It was pure extortion. And it's hilarious to me that
1:22:20
Speaker 1: Reed is so dumb because he's actually used this as
1:22:24
Speaker 1: an example to show how credible his accusers Robson and
1:22:29
Speaker 1: Safchuck are because they didn't go to the estate for money.
1:22:34
Speaker 1: They sued in court, So therefore somehow this makes their
1:22:38
Speaker 1: claims it's more credible. And I'm like, are you this dumb?
1:22:43
Speaker 1: Dan Reid. Robson in Safe Chuck didn't have that option
1:22:48
Speaker 1: because the pressure on the estate didn't exist before leaving Neverland.
1:22:56
Speaker 1: His movie itself is what facilitated the extortion of the estate.
1:23:04
Speaker 1: So Robson and save Check don't get credibility points because
1:23:07
Speaker 1: they didn't take part in that. They didn't have the
1:23:09
Speaker 1: option to take part in that because that pressure didn't exist,
1:23:15
Speaker 1: and to claim that they're not in this for money
1:23:18
Speaker 1: when they're suing for literally billions of dollars that was
1:23:22
Speaker 1: the original effort of this lawsuit, is just patently absurd,
1:23:26
Speaker 1: especially when both of them are very much down on
1:23:29
Speaker 1: their luck financially, and that I think is the key
1:23:33
Speaker 1: element of this. And I'll finish this up by reiterating
1:23:38
Speaker 1: a story I don't think I've ever told this publicly.
1:23:40
Speaker 1: I may have remember for sure, but I had a
1:23:44
Speaker 1: lunch with Brian Freeman, a guy I've mentioned many times
1:23:46
Speaker 1: in this podcast because he represents basically everybody in the
1:23:49
Speaker 1: right wing media now, including Megan Kelly and Tucker Carlson
1:23:53
Speaker 1: and I think Sage Steele and some others. And he
1:23:58
Speaker 1: also happens to represent the Michael Jackson estate. And he
1:24:02
Speaker 1: asked me to come to lunch with him and Howard Weisman,
1:24:05
Speaker 1: who's no longer alive. Howard Weisman was O. J. Simpson's attorney,
1:24:10
Speaker 1: and we were having lunch right across the street from
1:24:12
Speaker 1: the now no longer in existence medsaloona restaurant where Nicole Brown,
1:24:18
Speaker 1: Simpson and Ronald Goldman were the Knight of the murders.
1:24:20
Speaker 1: That was kind of weird, But anyway, the point of
1:24:22
Speaker 1: all this was in this discussion that I was having
1:24:26
Speaker 1: with Howard Weisman and Brian Freeman, I put forward my
1:24:29
Speaker 1: theory as to what was really going on with Robson
1:24:33
Speaker 1: and Save Chuck, and my theory is basically this, there's
1:24:38
Speaker 1: the obvious money motive, but there has to be there
1:24:42
Speaker 1: has to be psychologically the ability for these guys to
1:24:48
Speaker 1: rationalize what they're doing. They have to believe that at
1:24:53
Speaker 1: some level they deserve this. And part of what made
1:24:58
Speaker 1: me think about this is you may recall, if you've
1:25:01
Speaker 1: listened to with the benefit of hindsight, I don't think
1:25:04
Speaker 1: it's a coincidence that a lot, not all, but a
1:25:08
Speaker 1: lot of the Sandusky accusers served in the military, and
1:25:13
Speaker 1: I think that that helped them rationalize what they were doing,
1:25:17
Speaker 1: that they deserve this because of their service to the country.
1:25:23
Speaker 1: Well in a not totally dissimilar way what I think
1:25:27
Speaker 1: happened with Robson and Save Chuck and others like them,
1:25:32
Speaker 1: but those were these are by far the most prominent
1:25:35
Speaker 1: because these both these guys. People forget Robson was a
1:25:38
Speaker 1: celebrity for all intentsive purposes because of his association with
1:25:43
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson. He did commercials and all sorts of things,
1:25:47
Speaker 1: and Save Chuck was living a remarkable life because of
1:25:50
Speaker 1: his connection to Michael Jackson. What I think happens in
1:25:55
Speaker 1: a situation where a young especially a boy, is put
1:25:59
Speaker 1: in this circumstance where they're living this incredible life where
1:26:06
Speaker 1: it's a dream your buddies with Michael Jackson. People, you're
1:26:11
Speaker 1: a celebrity. You're touching the magic, not literally but figuratively.
1:26:17
Speaker 1: You're touching the magic in a way people can only
1:26:20
Speaker 1: fantasize about to live that kind of life, to be
1:26:23
Speaker 1: buddies with Michael Jackson. And this creates a level of
1:26:28
Speaker 1: expectation for life that is unattainable that inherently dooms you
1:26:36
Speaker 1: to being unsatisfied with your life, to disappointment. You're doomed
1:26:43
Speaker 1: to disappointment. A little bit like what I talked about
1:26:47
Speaker 1: with DJ Daniel, the adorable kid that Trump made an
1:26:52
Speaker 1: honorary Secret Service agent at the so called State of
1:26:56
Speaker 1: the Union address. I'm concerned about what's going to happen
1:26:58
Speaker 1: next for him because there's going to be a massive
1:27:03
Speaker 1: drop off and a crash, and what happens at that
1:27:06
Speaker 1: point when once the attention is over well with what
1:27:11
Speaker 1: both Robson, especially Robson and Safe Chuck. That's what happened.
1:27:16
Speaker 1: They had the incredibly idealic childhoods and then that stopped
1:27:24
Speaker 1: once they became adults, and especially once when Jackson died,
1:27:29
Speaker 1: because once Jackson dies, that's over with. Especially once Robson
1:27:33
Speaker 1: doesn't get the job as the choreographer for the Las
1:27:36
Speaker 1: Vegas show, it's over. I think that creates, either consciously
1:27:41
Speaker 1: or subconsciously, an anger almost in a weird way, blaming
1:27:47
Speaker 1: Jackson for the lack of satisfaction in their life and
1:27:53
Speaker 1: the disappointment that they have, their feeling the anger that
1:27:56
Speaker 1: they're feeling. I mean, look, one of the only one
1:28:01
Speaker 1: of the few things worse than having a great child
1:28:03
Speaker 1: a bad child, it is having a great child, because
1:28:06
Speaker 1: I mean, if you have a bad childhood, at least
1:28:08
Speaker 1: you're set up for the rest of your life potentially
1:28:11
Speaker 1: you know, looking good by comparison, but you have a
1:28:13
Speaker 1: great childhood, adulthood is very unlikely to live up to that.
1:28:19
Speaker 1: And that's what happened, I believe to Robson and Save Chuck,
1:28:22
Speaker 1: and so I think that's part of how they rationalize
1:28:27
Speaker 1: or how they subconsciously are able to to claim, you know,
1:28:32
Speaker 1: in their minds that they're not doing the wrong thing,
1:28:35
Speaker 1: or what's partially what's motivating. Let's be clear, the money
1:28:38
Speaker 1: motivation is a huge part of it, and I think
1:28:40
Speaker 1: they missed calculated. I think they thought they would get
1:28:43
Speaker 1: a settlement, but now this thing became too big, so
1:28:46
Speaker 1: the estate can't possibly settle with them unless they're forced
1:28:50
Speaker 1: to at a trial. Anyway, I know, I hopefully in
1:28:55
Speaker 1: a much more articulate way. I went through my theory
1:28:59
Speaker 1: for for both Howard Whizman and Brian Freeman. And Brian
1:29:02
Speaker 1: Freeman I think articulated it in a very short manner,
1:29:07
Speaker 1: probably better than I just did when he said he
1:29:10
Speaker 1: thought about it for a second and he said, so
1:29:13
Speaker 1: they were promised more, And I think that's exactly my
1:29:18
Speaker 1: theory is that in their minds they were promised more
1:29:22
Speaker 1: from life and they didn't get it, and now this
1:29:25
Speaker 1: is their only vehicle to try to get some retribution
1:29:30
Speaker 1: or to be made whole, or to get what they
1:29:33
Speaker 1: subconsciously think they deserve. But I can assure you they
1:29:37
Speaker 1: were not abused by Michael Jackson. And because they were
1:29:40
Speaker 1: not abused by Michael Jackson. We're in a situation where
1:29:43
Speaker 1: at this point, if Michael Jackson had been anything close
1:29:45
Speaker 1: to what was claimed by Dan Reid, there would be
1:29:48
Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds of accusers because he had total and
1:29:53
Speaker 1: complete access to anybody he wanted to, and unlike Sandoski,
1:29:58
Speaker 1: was truly treated as a god. And you know, you
1:30:01
Speaker 1: could understand how he would be easily able to manipulate
1:30:05
Speaker 1: young children into being sexual abused and not saying anything
1:30:08
Speaker 1: about it, but it's absurd. At this point. We only have,
1:30:13
Speaker 1: if you include Robeson and Saychuk, we only have four
1:30:16
Speaker 1: people that have ever gone remotely on the record in
1:30:20
Speaker 1: ways that are not even credible, claiming that they were
1:30:23
Speaker 1: sexually abused by Michael Jackson. And if he had been
1:30:26
Speaker 1: a serial abuser, I submit that number would be astronomical
1:30:30
Speaker 1: at this point, but it's not because he wasn't. And
1:30:33
Speaker 1: if you look in the into the details of the case,
1:30:36
Speaker 1: you understand that he was weird, and he was a genius,
1:30:41
Speaker 1: and he had an enormous amount of a ridiculous amount
1:30:43
Speaker 1: of money. And when you combine extreme genius with extreme
1:30:48
Speaker 1: celebrity an extreme amount of money, weirdness is going to
1:30:52
Speaker 1: ensue and people took advantage of that weirdness by saying, well,
1:30:56
Speaker 1: it's easily believed that he would be as a molester
1:30:59
Speaker 1: of children because of his persona, and we're going to
1:31:02
Speaker 1: get some money out of this, and some people have
1:31:04
Speaker 1: been able to successfully extort money out of Michael Jackson
1:31:08
Speaker 1: and the estate. Hopefully Robson and Safechuck will not be
1:31:11
Speaker 1: in that group. And I'm glad that Leaving Neverland Too
1:31:14
Speaker 1: is not airing in America and that Leaving Neverland itself
1:31:18
Speaker 1: is no longer on HBO, so that's a small victory
1:31:20
Speaker 1: for the truth there. I'll keep you updated on anything
1:31:24
Speaker 1: else that happens on that case, but I hadn't talked
1:31:26
Speaker 1: about it in quite a while and felt like it
1:31:28
Speaker 1: was worthy of an update. We'll talk a little about
1:31:30
Speaker 1: the NCAA basketball tournament that is starting up as we speak.
1:31:35
Speaker 1: A lot of controversy over North Carolina making the field.
1:31:38
Speaker 1: I found this was interesting from a sports media perspective
1:31:40
Speaker 1: because it's pretty unusual for the sports media to be
1:31:44
Speaker 1: so critical and so openly critical of the committee because
1:31:49
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of conflicts of interest there. I agree
1:31:52
Speaker 1: that North Carolina did not deserve to get into the tournament,
1:31:55
Speaker 1: but they already played their first game, and they crushed
1:31:57
Speaker 1: their opponent who was at the same seating level for
1:32:02
Speaker 1: all intents and purposes, And so, you know, I don't
1:32:05
Speaker 1: know if you can say that that choice was vindicated,
1:32:07
Speaker 1: because it doesn't really change the reality of whether or
1:32:09
Speaker 1: not they deserve to get in. But I do found
1:32:12
Speaker 1: I found that to be interesting. The West Virginia governor
1:32:15
Speaker 1: in West Virginia did not get into the tournament, even
1:32:18
Speaker 1: threatened some sort of a legal action, which of course
1:32:21
Speaker 1: was always futile, but just shows how big a deal
1:32:26
Speaker 1: that selection of North Carolina was made into. I think
1:32:28
Speaker 1: partially because the head of the selection committee happens to
1:32:31
Speaker 1: be the athletic director at the University of North Carolina,
1:32:35
Speaker 1: and he gets a rather large bonus if the basketball
1:32:38
Speaker 1: team makes the tournament. Now, he did recuse himself allegedly
1:32:42
Speaker 1: I believe in truth from any consideration of North Carolina
1:32:46
Speaker 1: for the tournament, but people aren't going to buy that,
1:32:49
Speaker 1: especially in this very conspiratorial age. But you know, I
1:32:54
Speaker 1: found that to be interesting as far as the tournament itself.
1:32:56
Speaker 1: I used to be a huge, huge basket ball fan
1:33:00
Speaker 1: in general, and particularly college basketball obviously went to Georgetown
1:33:05
Speaker 1: University during the heyday of John Thompson and just after
1:33:08
Speaker 1: Patrick Ewing, and those were the days for Georgetown basketball,
1:33:13
Speaker 1: and I think it was also that was the greatest
1:33:15
Speaker 1: eraor for the Big East Basketball Conference and for college
1:33:19
Speaker 1: basketball itself. Since then, you know, we have players that
1:33:23
Speaker 1: rarely ever play four years. The best players usually play
1:33:27
Speaker 1: one and then are done. You know, there's no identity
1:33:32
Speaker 1: anymore for most of these programs. That legendary coaches are
1:33:35
Speaker 1: all gone. Even Jay Wright, who won a couple of
1:33:39
Speaker 1: national championships at Villanova, to whom I have a very
1:33:42
Speaker 1: weird connection that I've talked about in the past, back
1:33:45
Speaker 1: in my high school days because we went to high
1:33:49
Speaker 1: school in the same area of Bucks County in Pennsylvania.
1:33:53
Speaker 1: He decided to get out early. And Kisski has retired
1:33:57
Speaker 1: and Roy Williams has retired, and and you know, they're
1:34:01
Speaker 1: not being replaced by really any of the big name coaches.
1:34:06
Speaker 1: And you know, to me it you know, obviously nil.
1:34:09
Speaker 1: And it's the transfers. It's all dramatically changed, and so
1:34:13
Speaker 1: I don't follow it nearly as much as I used to.
1:34:15
Speaker 1: The regular season is a joke, but I still get
1:34:18
Speaker 1: into it in March a little bit. I have to
1:34:21
Speaker 1: say that, you know, I have been somewhat pleasantly surprised
1:34:25
Speaker 1: by the level of intensity in some of these conference
1:34:28
Speaker 1: tournament games that I saw, even though they don't really
1:34:32
Speaker 1: matter that much for NCAA tournament seedings. For instance, Duke
1:34:36
Speaker 1: ended up winning the ACC tournament without their best player,
1:34:39
Speaker 1: Cooper Flag, who was injured, and one of their other
1:34:41
Speaker 1: best players who was also injured, even though they didn't
1:34:44
Speaker 1: need to win the tournament, but they did. I thought, Okay,
1:34:47
Speaker 1: that's that's impressive. I mean, it's not a lot to
1:34:50
Speaker 1: ask that people give their full effort, but in this
1:34:52
Speaker 1: day and age, given the perverse incentive structures, I was
1:34:57
Speaker 1: pleasantly surprised by that. But it's hard for me to
1:35:00
Speaker 1: find something to root for, and I do think it's
1:35:03
Speaker 1: worthy and mentioned that I find myself in this particular
1:35:07
Speaker 1: tournament in a very bizarre situation where I'm probably most
1:35:13
Speaker 1: interested in how Saint John's is gonna do because their
1:35:18
Speaker 1: coach is Rick Patino. And if you bear with me
1:35:22
Speaker 1: for just a second, this is this is basically as
1:35:25
Speaker 1: weird as me finding myself rooting for Donald Trump in particular, situations,
1:35:30
Speaker 1: because if he had told me, for instance, in nineteen
1:35:33
Speaker 1: eighty seven, when Rick Patino was coaching Providence and ending,
1:35:38
Speaker 1: you know, my personal plans to go to the final
1:35:41
Speaker 1: four by beating my Georgetown oy is where I was
1:35:43
Speaker 1: attending school in the Elite eight and taking Providence to
1:35:48
Speaker 1: the final four in an upset over Georgetown, that in
1:35:51
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, my loan rooting interest in the NCAA
1:35:56
Speaker 1: tournament would be for Rick Patino and se Saint John's
1:36:01
Speaker 1: arrival of Georgetown, I would have told you it's more
1:36:04
Speaker 1: likely that Donald Trump had just been elected president for
1:36:07
Speaker 1: the second time. I mean, it's crazy, it's impossible, but
1:36:11
Speaker 1: this is where we are because there's so little for
1:36:14
Speaker 1: a guy like me to root for. And look, I
1:36:17
Speaker 1: have big problems with her Patino. He and I, you know,
1:36:21
Speaker 1: had some We didn't have a lot of interaction when
1:36:23
Speaker 1: he was at Louisville and I was a radio talk
1:36:26
Speaker 1: show host and a television host in Louisville. But the
1:36:28
Speaker 1: little interaction that we did have was not positive. I
1:36:32
Speaker 1: criticized him quite a bit on the air, which was
1:36:35
Speaker 1: very unusual, you know, because he was basically a god
1:36:39
Speaker 1: in Louisville. Even before he had won a national championship,
1:36:41
Speaker 1: because he had already done so at Kentucky just down
1:36:44
Speaker 1: the road in Lexington. He of course got involved in
1:36:49
Speaker 1: a number of scandals there, in fact one of them
1:36:52
Speaker 1: this really turned me off to Patino. He tried to
1:36:55
Speaker 1: wrap himself in nine to eleven to substantiate to get
1:37:00
Speaker 1: out of one particular scandal because he had a brother
1:37:03
Speaker 1: in law that died in nine to eleven, and that
1:37:06
Speaker 1: he claimed he came to Louisville after nine to eleven
1:37:09
Speaker 1: to try to unify people, and I was just like, Okay,
1:37:12
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I'm not buying that bullshit. So I
1:37:14
Speaker 1: never really trusted Patino and my personal interactions with him
1:37:19
Speaker 1: were not great. And then he wins a national championship
1:37:23
Speaker 1: at Louisville, which is later essentially revoked. Although everyone still
1:37:27
Speaker 1: accepts that Louisville won the national championship in twenty thirteen,
1:37:32
Speaker 1: that scandal ended up causing him to leave Louisville. Now
1:37:36
Speaker 1: he claims he's been exonerated by the NCAA. Look, it's
1:37:42
Speaker 1: hard for me to imagine that the things that were
1:37:44
Speaker 1: going on at Louisville's program were completely were things he
1:37:48
Speaker 1: was completely oblivious to as the guy who ran that program,
1:37:53
Speaker 1: and I realized that we're getting close to the Joe
1:37:55
Speaker 1: Paterno argument here. I don't think they're really inagurate analogous
1:38:00
Speaker 1: at all. I mean, this was systematic things that were
1:38:03
Speaker 1: really happening, as opposed to things that never happened with
1:38:06
Speaker 1: regard to Sandusky, Systematic things that really should never have
1:38:09
Speaker 1: been occurring with regard to the nature of the Louisville
1:38:13
Speaker 1: basketball program. But the NCAA did find no evidence that
1:38:18
Speaker 1: Rick Patino was directly involved in that, but it did
1:38:21
Speaker 1: cause him to lose this great gig and effectively got
1:38:25
Speaker 1: him kicked out of the game, and he went to Europe.
1:38:30
Speaker 1: You know, here's this legendary coach who's been a winner
1:38:33
Speaker 1: everywhere he's ever been, won national championships at Kentucky and
1:38:38
Speaker 1: at Louisville, and now he's being forced to coach in Europe.
1:38:43
Speaker 1: And you know, I remember, and I'm probably one of
1:38:46
Speaker 1: the very few people that remember this, but at the
1:38:49
Speaker 1: height of the pandemic in twenty twenty. This is just
1:38:53
Speaker 1: to show you how far off the grid Rick Patino
1:38:57
Speaker 1: was forced to go. All right, how you'd go on
1:39:00
Speaker 1: from the top of the game to being literally nowhere,
1:39:04
Speaker 1: almost literally nowhere. So at the height of the pandemic,
1:39:08
Speaker 1: the USGA delays the US Open and they finally play
1:39:13
Speaker 1: it at Wingfoot, just outside of New York City, and
1:39:17
Speaker 1: they have no crowds zero, which was absurd, completely insane,
1:39:22
Speaker 1: but that's you know, golf was afraid of its own shadow,
1:39:26
Speaker 1: because golf should never have been impacted at all by COVID,
1:39:30
Speaker 1: but you know, they had to go along with everybody else.
1:39:33
Speaker 1: And so they have no crowds at Wingfoot except one
1:39:39
Speaker 1: of the greens. I forget which hole this is, but
1:39:42
Speaker 1: one of the greens at Wingfoot backs up to a
1:39:45
Speaker 1: private property and whoever owned that property had put up
1:39:51
Speaker 1: a small bleacher behind the green so that they could
1:39:55
Speaker 1: have their friends over to watch the US Open. Literally,
1:40:00
Speaker 1: the only spectators at the US Open were the friends
1:40:04
Speaker 1: of whoever owned this property just off of one of
1:40:08
Speaker 1: the greens at Wingfoot Country Club. And of course this
1:40:12
Speaker 1: created a bit of interest among people who were watching, like,
1:40:16
Speaker 1: oh wow, this we actually have fans. These guys created
1:40:21
Speaker 1: their own set of bleachers and there's ten people maybe
1:40:26
Speaker 1: sitting on these bleachers watching the US Open, and one
1:40:30
Speaker 1: of them was Rick Patino, and people were like, oh
1:40:34
Speaker 1: my god, it's a Rick Patina siting. That's how far
1:40:38
Speaker 1: off the grid he was that, Oh my gosh, there's
1:40:43
Speaker 1: Rick Patino, remember him. He was completely off the radar
1:40:49
Speaker 1: that it was actually worthy of mentioned that he was
1:40:52
Speaker 1: sitting in the bleachers, you know, in a roague effort
1:40:56
Speaker 1: to watch the covid us open from the bleachers of
1:41:01
Speaker 1: a buddy's house. Apparently he lives in the neighborhood there,
1:41:04
Speaker 1: and he's obviously from New York originally. So then he
1:41:07
Speaker 1: gets the job at Iona, does well there, takes him
1:41:11
Speaker 1: to the NCAA tournament, and then he gets the job
1:41:13
Speaker 1: at Saint John's And now here we are, in his
1:41:17
Speaker 1: second year at Saint John's. They win the Big East
1:41:20
Speaker 1: Championship and there, frankly one of the teams that could
1:41:25
Speaker 1: be favored to win the whole thing. I don't think
1:41:27
Speaker 1: they are going to win the whole thing. So that's
1:41:30
Speaker 1: how far Patino has come from the ABYSS to now
1:41:36
Speaker 1: having a situation where he's leading Saint John's as a
1:41:40
Speaker 1: potential favorite to win the NCAA tournament. And while I
1:41:43
Speaker 1: don't trust Patino, I really respect someone who, especially at
1:41:48
Speaker 1: that age, he's a senior citizen now can come back
1:41:53
Speaker 1: from nowhere, never give up, and go up against everybody
1:42:00
Speaker 1: and prove everyone wrong and get your vindication, and that
1:42:04
Speaker 1: kind of stick toitiveness I respect now. To be clear,
1:42:09
Speaker 1: part of the reason why he's able to be successful
1:42:11
Speaker 1: in Saint John's is that he's got a buddy that
1:42:13
Speaker 1: is spending millions of dollars on nil. I get that.
1:42:16
Speaker 1: I'm not naive, but he's a very good basketball coach.
1:42:20
Speaker 1: I mean, his level of sustained success at six different
1:42:25
Speaker 1: schools is literally unprecedented in the history of the sport,
1:42:28
Speaker 1: and that can't be coincidental. And so well, I don't
1:42:33
Speaker 1: fully trust him, and you know, I still have issues
1:42:38
Speaker 1: with regard to some of the things that happened at Louisville,
1:42:41
Speaker 1: and you know, I'll never forgive him for beating Georgetown
1:42:44
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty seven, although I respect the fact that
1:42:47
Speaker 1: he's the last guy still standing from that glory era
1:42:51
Speaker 1: of the Big East and those legendary coaches. He's the
1:42:54
Speaker 1: only one that still has any institutional memory of coaching
1:42:57
Speaker 1: against all those guys Louis Carnision, Rolling Massamino, John Thompson,
1:43:02
Speaker 1: Jim Beheim, Jim Calhoun, PJ. Car Lissimo. I mean, that
1:43:05
Speaker 1: was the era of Big East basketball that will never
1:43:09
Speaker 1: be duplicated, and so in a weird way, I'm kind
1:43:12
Speaker 1: of rooting for Patino because of that. I also like
1:43:15
Speaker 1: the fact that he wears suits. I can't stand this
1:43:22
Speaker 1: trend that has happened over the last few years of
1:43:23
Speaker 1: college basketball where coaches are wearing basically sweatsuits. It's just
1:43:28
Speaker 1: ridiculous to me. I don't understand it. But Patino fights
1:43:31
Speaker 1: against that. And he also went viral earlier this year
1:43:36
Speaker 1: for a speech that he gave to his team that
1:43:40
Speaker 1: was really about as old school as you could possibly imagine.
1:43:44
Speaker 1: I mean, he essentially called his team a bunch of babies,
1:43:47
Speaker 1: and they were immature, and they were acting like children,
1:43:51
Speaker 1: and they weren't going to understand how to be successful
1:43:54
Speaker 1: in life if they continued down this path, which I
1:43:57
Speaker 1: thought was a great speech. I thought it was remarkable
1:44:01
Speaker 1: that it went viral, but it also reminded me just
1:44:04
Speaker 1: how important winning is, because if he had given that
1:44:07
Speaker 1: exact same speech to a team that, instead of doing
1:44:11
Speaker 1: very well and ended up winning the Big East regular
1:44:14
Speaker 1: season and conference tournament title, if Saint John's had had
1:44:18
Speaker 1: a losing record and was disappointing, and everyone was saying
1:44:22
Speaker 1: that Patino was washed up, and what's he doing coaching
1:44:26
Speaker 1: as a senior citizen, and you know, let the younger
1:44:29
Speaker 1: guys have a chance. If he had given that same speech,
1:44:32
Speaker 1: by the way, to a team that's almost all black
1:44:34
Speaker 1: and Patino is obviously white, had that occurred, I really
1:44:38
Speaker 1: think that speech could have been seen in a very,
1:44:42
Speaker 1: very different and far more negative light. But you know what,
1:44:46
Speaker 1: just win, baby. Winning is everything in life, and when
1:44:49
Speaker 1: you win, everything gets perceived in a different way. So
1:44:52
Speaker 1: I like the fact that he's got some semblance of
1:44:54
Speaker 1: old school principles, that he has institutional memory of the
1:44:57
Speaker 1: glory days of the Big East, that he win suits.
1:45:01
Speaker 1: This is this is how low my standard is for
1:45:03
Speaker 1: finding someone to root for in the NCAA basketball tournament.
1:45:08
Speaker 1: And the fact that he has come back from the
1:45:10
Speaker 1: ABYSS in a in a comeback story that's almost unprecedent.
1:45:14
Speaker 1: I mean, this would be basically, to put this in
1:45:16
Speaker 1: football terms, this would be like if John Gruden got
1:45:19
Speaker 1: back into the NFL and took his team to the
1:45:22
Speaker 1: super Bowl in his second season. That's essentially what Rick
1:45:26
Speaker 1: Patino has achieved here, so I respect that, even though
1:45:30
Speaker 1: I think hopefully I'm improving my objectivity here. I have
1:45:33
Speaker 1: all sorts of reasons to not like Rick Potito, but
1:45:35
Speaker 1: I'm actually rooting for Rick Potito at Saint John's in
1:45:37
Speaker 1: the NCAA Basketball Tournament, which tells you a lot, a lot.
1:45:41
Speaker 1: I think about a lot of different things, including how
1:45:44
Speaker 1: degraded my standards have become, and what happens when you
1:45:48
Speaker 1: become an old guy, as I am about to turn
1:45:50
Speaker 1: fifty eight years old, and you know, you'll latch onto anything.
1:45:54
Speaker 1: You'll latch onto basically anything that gives you a rooting interest,
1:45:58
Speaker 1: and that's you know, Rick Patino is basically my excuse
1:46:01
Speaker 1: this year. I don't think they're gonna win the whole thing.
1:46:04
Speaker 1: Duke's going to be awfully difficult to beat. But I
1:46:07
Speaker 1: do think Saint John's will probably at least make a run.
1:46:11
Speaker 1: It'll be interesting because it's a very good chance they're
1:46:13
Speaker 1: going to play Arkansas, a team coach by one of
1:46:17
Speaker 1: his rivals, John kyla Pari, in the second round. That'll
1:46:20
Speaker 1: get a lot of eyeballs for the NCAA Basketball Tournament.
1:46:25
Speaker 1: But you know, we'll see what happens. I'm mildly interested
1:46:29
Speaker 1: in what's going on there. I will follow it, I
1:46:31
Speaker 1: will talk about it on the podcast, and I will
1:46:33
Speaker 1: be at least somewhat rooting for Rick Patino and Saint
1:46:37
Speaker 1: John's things I never thought I would say was possible,
1:46:41
Speaker 1: especially back when I was a kid at Georgetown. Now,
1:46:45
Speaker 1: in keeping with the ever changing state of college basketball,
1:46:49
Speaker 1: there was a press conference by a coach from the
1:46:53
Speaker 1: University of Nevada, Steve Offord, who went viral, which went
1:46:58
Speaker 1: viral because he went off on just how absurd things
1:47:02
Speaker 1: are as I have been saying for a very long time,
1:47:05
Speaker 1: as they would be, as I predicted doom for what
1:47:08
Speaker 1: would happen to college sports because of the NIL and
1:47:11
Speaker 1: instant transfer era. And Alfred is an interesting character because
1:47:16
Speaker 1: he's most associated with Indiana basketball. He was at Indiana
1:47:20
Speaker 1: during Bobby Knight and it was a star in Indiana
1:47:22
Speaker 1: during Bobby Knight's last national championship at Indiana in the
1:47:27
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. He's almost sixty years old now, which is
1:47:30
Speaker 1: kind of he actually is sixty years old. It is startling,
1:47:34
Speaker 1: although if I had done the math, it shouldn't have
1:47:36
Speaker 1: been surprising. It's just another one of those oh my god,
1:47:39
Speaker 1: I can't believe how old I'm getting moments. But Steve Alfred,
1:47:42
Speaker 1: who still looks very young, decided that he was going
1:47:45
Speaker 1: to use a press conference to go off on the
1:47:48
Speaker 1: state of college basketball. And I was glad that this
1:47:51
Speaker 1: went somewhat viral because I agree with the vast majority
1:47:56
Speaker 1: of what Alfred said here is very consistent with all
1:47:59
Speaker 1: of my prediction sub doomed for what would happen if
1:48:03
Speaker 1: as has occurred, where liberals got duped that this was
1:48:07
Speaker 1: all a civil rights issue and conservatives got duped this
1:48:11
Speaker 1: was all somehow a free market issue, and that you
1:48:14
Speaker 1: were going to create a catastrophe in all of college
1:48:18
Speaker 1: athletics and specifically in college basketball, and the coaches are
1:48:23
Speaker 1: going to have no leverage whatsoever, and the players were
1:48:26
Speaker 1: going to be completely in control, and this was going
1:48:28
Speaker 1: to have all sorts of deleatoria's impacts on the nature
1:48:33
Speaker 1: of the sport. Well, here was Steve Alford, head coached
1:48:36
Speaker 1: at Nevada, with a fairly long but I think worthwhile
1:48:40
Speaker 1: analysis of what has happened to college basketball and is
1:48:44
Speaker 1: in the process of happening to college basketball because of
1:48:48
Speaker 1: nil and instant transfers.
1:48:51
Speaker 5: Now, I think you get a blueprint of what you know.
1:48:54
Speaker 5: We've been doing it a long time, and we develop
1:48:57
Speaker 5: a blueprint. Now blueprint changes and evolves. You know, it's
1:49:01
Speaker 5: five years ago. I wasn't, you know, on conversation saying
1:49:05
Speaker 5: how much you want to be paid? Never thought that
1:49:08
Speaker 5: would happen in college basketball. And I've always been a
1:49:11
Speaker 5: big proponent as the game and money has evolved and changed.
1:49:15
Speaker 5: I've never been one that said I don't believe student
1:49:18
Speaker 5: athletes shouldn't be paid. But the way it is now
1:49:20
Speaker 5: is ridiculous. It's utterly ridiculous, and it's it's changed our game,
1:49:25
Speaker 5: and so you got to adapt. We got to adapt.
1:49:28
Speaker 5: But every coach, you know, every handshake I have now
1:49:31
Speaker 5: before games, that's brought up every game that me and
1:49:36
Speaker 5: the opposing coach, you're going to talk about portal issues
1:49:39
Speaker 5: and you know, where's academics at? Like I've talked to
1:49:43
Speaker 5: my complixy guys. What's APR anymore? You can't control APR.
1:49:47
Speaker 5: It's a juco. You're gonna replace eight nine guys to
1:49:50
Speaker 5: a roster every year. The travel time that has crossed
1:49:54
Speaker 5: the country in these leagues, it's just it makes no
1:49:57
Speaker 5: sense for that to be our model, but that is
1:50:00
Speaker 5: our model. So more than us do we have to
1:50:03
Speaker 5: evolve as coaches? Yeah, we got involved of how now
1:50:06
Speaker 5: we recruit like you know, it used to be, Hey,
1:50:11
Speaker 5: what's my degree going to look like? What's your facilities
1:50:14
Speaker 5: look like? What's your relationship with the team look like?
1:50:18
Speaker 5: Do you are you there for all practices? Are you
1:50:21
Speaker 5: a coach that dives into relationships and you're going to
1:50:25
Speaker 5: care for my child? You might as well throw all
1:50:28
Speaker 5: that stuff out because the only question they're concerned about
1:50:31
Speaker 5: is what they're getting paid in the portal. And to me,
1:50:33
Speaker 5: that's a terrible model for an eighteen year old because
1:50:37
Speaker 5: truth be told, then a lot of eighteen and nineteen
1:50:40
Speaker 5: year olds are raising family members now and that's not
1:50:45
Speaker 5: what you go off to college for. That's just not
1:50:48
Speaker 5: And so that's frustrating because I don't like our model
1:50:51
Speaker 5: at all. I don't know how that's going to change
1:50:53
Speaker 5: now that the geniees out of the bottle. But you
1:50:55
Speaker 5: asked me a pertinent question, and I don't like the
1:50:59
Speaker 5: model that we currently have because it's not name, image
1:51:03
Speaker 5: and likeness. That's not what it is. There's not that
1:51:06
Speaker 5: many college players that have that evow as the name,
1:51:10
Speaker 5: image and likeness. Most of them are getting what they're
1:51:12
Speaker 5: getting before they ever produce, and that's not what you
1:51:15
Speaker 5: should have to produce then you receive. It's a bad
1:51:19
Speaker 5: lesson and we shouldn't be sending kids off to college
1:51:22
Speaker 5: academically or in our profession to teach them bad models
1:51:27
Speaker 5: for when they're twenty five and twenty six. Like I
1:51:30
Speaker 5: got five players. Now nil's done in two months, what
1:51:34
Speaker 5: happens to them? Are they going to be able to
1:51:36
Speaker 5: handle the real world now after having NIL for a
1:51:40
Speaker 5: couple of years at Nevada or wherever they've been. Are
1:51:43
Speaker 5: they going to really be prepared to handle the things that, Oh,
1:51:47
Speaker 5: I'm not getting that, I'm not getting that money. I
1:51:50
Speaker 5: have to go earn that money. We're not really teaching
1:51:53
Speaker 5: them that, And I think that's something that people way
1:51:57
Speaker 5: above me have to really look at because the NCUBLEA
1:52:01
Speaker 5: and collegiate athletics should be about teaching life lessons period
1:52:06
Speaker 5: through athletics.
1:52:08
Speaker 1: That was very well put by Steve Alford. I don't
1:52:11
Speaker 1: like the fact that every single one of these coaches,
1:52:14
Speaker 1: including Nick Saban, always have to say I'm in favor
1:52:17
Speaker 1: of players being paid. I realized that that horse has
1:52:20
Speaker 1: left the barn a long time ago. There's no going back.
1:52:24
Speaker 1: If this settlement is officially approved, there is some hope
1:52:30
Speaker 1: at least. Charlie Baker of the ncublea the president of
1:52:33
Speaker 1: NCUBA former governor of Massachusetts, in an interview with the
1:52:37
Speaker 1: CBS Evening News where he's hopeful that this will at
1:52:39
Speaker 1: least bring some semblance of stability. In my view, all
1:52:42
Speaker 1: it does is institutionalize insanity and stupidity. But that's where
1:52:46
Speaker 1: we are, and I guess organized stupidity is the best
1:52:49
Speaker 1: we can hope for when it comes to college sports.
1:52:52
Speaker 1: But this was all so easily predicted. This was all
1:52:57
Speaker 1: so easily foreseen, and it's just it's so frustrating to
1:53:00
Speaker 1: me that people did not see this coming, because it
1:53:03
Speaker 1: was just so obvious. If you understand anything about the
1:53:06
Speaker 1: nature of humanity and anything about the nature of college athletics,
1:53:09
Speaker 1: this was always going to be the case. It only
1:53:12
Speaker 1: happened a little bit faster and probably more dramatically than
1:53:15
Speaker 1: even I anticipated. Because I'm always the hopeless optimist. The
1:53:19
Speaker 1: only time I'm ever really wrong is when I'm overly optimistic.
1:53:23
Speaker 1: But this has been a disaster, and it's been the
1:53:26
Speaker 1: most nonsensical destruction of a great American institution that has
1:53:32
Speaker 1: happened in my lifetime. And you know, they're basically I
1:53:36
Speaker 1: think we're running on fumes, we're running on memories when
1:53:40
Speaker 1: it comes to passion for college tourists, and there's no
1:53:43
Speaker 1: going back now, and it's very sad. And yeah, we'll
1:53:47
Speaker 1: be a little bit better if they get some semblance
1:53:49
Speaker 1: of structure and it's essentially officially professional sports where the
1:53:53
Speaker 1: athletes now at least have some responsibilities for all the
1:53:57
Speaker 1: privileges that they're getting, all the money they're getting, and
1:53:59
Speaker 1: that they're you don't have no salary cap and unlimited
1:54:03
Speaker 1: free agency constantly, which is just complete lunacy. I guess so,
1:54:09
Speaker 1: But I still don't think it's right. I still don't
1:54:11
Speaker 1: think it's smart, and I don't think it was ever necessary,
1:54:13
Speaker 1: either legally or morally. Now, I did find it rather
1:54:19
Speaker 1: interesting and somewhat I don't know I'm appropriate it's the
1:54:23
Speaker 1: right word, but in karmick sort of way, I did
1:54:26
Speaker 1: find it to be. Well, I'm not sure what the
1:54:30
Speaker 1: right word would be. Ironic as a word most people
1:54:33
Speaker 1: would use, but that wouldn't be the proper use of
1:54:35
Speaker 1: the word ironic. But I found it interesting that John Feinstein,
1:54:40
Speaker 1: a very famous author who is most well known for
1:54:43
Speaker 1: writing a book about Steve Alford's Indiana team called Season
1:54:50
Speaker 1: on the Brink, that was the name of Feinstein's book,
1:54:53
Speaker 1: passed away last week. And the reason why I found
1:54:56
Speaker 1: this to be particularly interesting was because Feinstein's career was
1:55:00
Speaker 1: really made by Season on the Brink, which is a
1:55:03
Speaker 1: fantastic book about a season with Indiana and Bobby Knight
1:55:07
Speaker 1: that Bobby Knight was not happy he agreed to because
1:55:10
Speaker 1: it made Bobby Knight look like a lunatic. But it
1:55:13
Speaker 1: was a very well written book, very well received. It
1:55:16
Speaker 1: changed sports writing, I think in a very dramatic fashion.
1:55:20
Speaker 1: We still don't know why the way why Feinstein passed away.
1:55:24
Speaker 1: It presumed it was a heart attack, but I've not
1:55:26
Speaker 1: seen any official word on that. But he was a
1:55:29
Speaker 1: legendary sports author, and on the very same day that
1:55:32
Speaker 1: he died, effectively the Bobby Knight era at Indiana officially
1:55:38
Speaker 1: ended because the coach at Indiana had been a guy
1:55:41
Speaker 1: by name of Mike Woodson who played for Bobby Knight,
1:55:44
Speaker 1: revered Bobby Knight, and he announced that he was leaving Indiana,
1:55:48
Speaker 1: and they lost in the Big Ten Conference tournament, effectively
1:55:54
Speaker 1: ending any hope they had for making the NCAA's and
1:55:56
Speaker 1: they had announced that they were not going to take
1:55:58
Speaker 1: any other bids. So the game you could argue of
1:56:02
Speaker 1: the Bobby Knight era of you extend that to people
1:56:05
Speaker 1: who are coaching Indiana as his protege, was on the
1:56:08
Speaker 1: same day that John Feinstein dropped dead. I was only
1:56:12
Speaker 1: I'm sure I'm the only person that found that to
1:56:14
Speaker 1: be of interest, But I do, and I do think
1:56:18
Speaker 1: that Feinstein is an important character when it comes to
1:56:21
Speaker 1: sports journalism because I think he exposes how much things
1:56:24
Speaker 1: have changed, not necessarily for the better. I mean, for instance,
1:56:28
Speaker 1: Season on the Brink could never happen today for a
1:56:32
Speaker 1: number of reasons. Number one, first of all, Bobby Knight
1:56:36
Speaker 1: would have still alive, would have been smart enough to
1:56:39
Speaker 1: not let John Feinstein have complete access to his program
1:56:43
Speaker 1: for an entire year with no content restrictions. But now
1:56:49
Speaker 1: all these schools have these pseudo documentaries that are made
1:56:53
Speaker 1: all these teams. If you want to have an inside
1:56:56
Speaker 1: look at what happens with a team, you just have
1:56:59
Speaker 1: your own own camera crew recorded you have total editorial
1:57:04
Speaker 1: control over it. There's all sorts of platforms you can
1:57:07
Speaker 1: put this on, whether if a network doesn't pick it up,
1:57:09
Speaker 1: he just put it on YouTube or whatever. And so
1:57:11
Speaker 1: there's nothing all that interesting, all that's special about it,
1:57:15
Speaker 1: and there's total editorial control by the institution that's allowing it,
1:57:22
Speaker 1: which means it's inherently not going to be interesting. The
1:57:24
Speaker 1: whole reason why Season on the Brink was such a
1:57:27
Speaker 1: big deal in the realm of sports journalism was that,
1:57:31
Speaker 1: oh my god, We're getting an inside look at Bobby
1:57:33
Speaker 1: Knight's legendary program in an unvarnished, uncensored fashion. Well, no
1:57:40
Speaker 1: book author, no journalist is going to have the leverage
1:57:45
Speaker 1: to be able to pull that off. There's no need
1:57:48
Speaker 1: for any institution, any team to ever engage in that
1:57:53
Speaker 1: kind of agreement because they can have complete and total
1:57:56
Speaker 1: editorial control. Because technology is change, the outlets have changed.
1:58:02
Speaker 1: You know, a book is very unlikely to make anywhere
1:58:06
Speaker 1: near the impact that a Season on the Brink did.
1:58:10
Speaker 1: So books themselves have diminished. Sports Illustrated, for instance, is
1:58:14
Speaker 1: basically nonexistent. Sports writing in general has gone from being
1:58:21
Speaker 1: the most significant and impactful medium for sports to almost
1:58:27
Speaker 1: being irrelevant. I mean, sports writers used to control the day,
1:58:32
Speaker 1: they determine the narrative. My gosh, so back you know,
1:58:36
Speaker 1: one hundred years ago, like this was one hundred anniversary
1:58:39
Speaker 1: of the famous Four Horsemen of Notre Dame, which still
1:58:44
Speaker 1: has talked about today, which was based upon like two
1:58:48
Speaker 1: paragraphs in a newspaper story. I mean, that's how much
1:58:52
Speaker 1: power the written word had, especially when it came to
1:58:55
Speaker 1: sports and creating mythology and narratives. No sports author is
1:59:01
Speaker 1: ever going to have that kind of power, that kind
1:59:04
Speaker 1: of leverage. And Feinstein, to his credit, was probably the
1:59:08
Speaker 1: most versatile sports author of all time. I mean he
1:59:12
Speaker 1: wrote books about virtually every single sport, many of which
1:59:16
Speaker 1: were books that I wanted to write myself. I mean,
1:59:19
Speaker 1: he and I had very similar interests. He wrote a
1:59:22
Speaker 1: book not just about a season with a controversial coach,
1:59:26
Speaker 1: which I essentially emulated when I wrote a book about
1:59:29
Speaker 1: a high school football team with a not unlike Bobby
1:59:32
Speaker 1: Knight sort of coach in Stubenville, Ohio. I was inspired
1:59:36
Speaker 1: in large part by John Feinstein, also by HD Bissinger,
1:59:40
Speaker 1: who wrote Friday Night Lights. But Feinstein and that book
1:59:43
Speaker 1: Steason on the Brink had a big impact on me.
1:59:45
Speaker 1: But I also wanted to write a book about the
1:59:47
Speaker 1: Army Navy rivalry, which John Feinstein did a great job with.
1:59:50
Speaker 1: I wanted to write a book about Q School and
1:59:53
Speaker 1: on the PGA Tour in golf, which John Feinstein did
1:59:58
Speaker 1: a great job with. I probably read more books from
2:00:01
Speaker 1: John Finstein than any other author, because I don't read
2:00:04
Speaker 1: a lot of books because reading is not easy for me.
2:00:07
Speaker 1: But you know that being said, you know, Feinstein was
2:00:11
Speaker 1: an arrogant ass. I had a few interactions with him.
2:00:15
Speaker 1: I gave him an opportunity, like I did a lot
2:00:18
Speaker 1: of different media members to try to get it on
2:00:21
Speaker 1: the Joe Paterno angle of the Penn State scandal. I
2:00:24
Speaker 1: remember I called into his radio show at one point.
2:00:28
Speaker 1: I got nowhere on that because he was a liberal,
2:00:32
Speaker 1: he was anti contra you know, it was a contrarian
2:00:35
Speaker 1: type of thinker, and it was a smart guy. But
2:00:37
Speaker 1: he was never going to go outside of the and
2:00:40
Speaker 1: risk his place in the club by being one of
2:00:43
Speaker 1: those who said, wait a minute. You know, Joe Paterno
2:00:45
Speaker 1: got a raw deal here. So I was not surprised
2:00:49
Speaker 1: but disappointed in that. But I also had a couple
2:00:51
Speaker 1: of interactions with him covering golf. Very arrogant guy, but
2:00:57
Speaker 1: a very good writer, and the likes it, which is
2:01:00
Speaker 1: never going to be duplicated, not just because of his talent,
2:01:03
Speaker 1: but also because of the nature of sports writing and
2:01:06
Speaker 1: the leverage that has gone very much in the favor
2:01:09
Speaker 1: of the sports writer to now very much in favor
2:01:13
Speaker 1: of the sports team or the sports celebrity personality, where
2:01:18
Speaker 1: they now hold all the cards. And that leads me
2:01:23
Speaker 1: to a couple things that have happened in the last
2:01:26
Speaker 1: week that really substantiate my view that sports media is
2:01:32
Speaker 1: in as big a trouble, if not more trouble as
2:01:35
Speaker 1: news media, specifically when it comes to the relationship between
2:01:40
Speaker 1: the reporter or the commentator and the sports celebrity. Now,
2:01:44
Speaker 1: we saw this recently in basketball when Lebron James went
2:01:48
Speaker 1: after Steven A. Smith, and I thought Steve A. Smith
2:01:51
Speaker 1: acted like a woosy cuck and it was completely ridiculous
2:01:55
Speaker 1: that Lebron James went after him for basically just doing
2:01:58
Speaker 1: his job and stating the obvious Bronnie James doesn't deserve
2:02:01
Speaker 1: to be in the NBA. But I have often referenced,
2:02:05
Speaker 1: speaking of John Feinstein, the World of golf. Einstein wrote
2:02:08
Speaker 1: at least two very significant books about professional golf, and
2:02:13
Speaker 1: he covered golf for the Golf Channel for quite a while.
2:02:15
Speaker 1: I've always used the golf media as an example for
2:02:20
Speaker 1: the trouble that the general news or sports media is in,
2:02:25
Speaker 1: because I view golf as basically the rest of having
2:02:30
Speaker 1: some of the same problems that the rest of the
2:02:32
Speaker 1: news media has and the sports media has. It's just
2:02:34
Speaker 1: more exaggerated and more obvious there because the nature of
2:02:39
Speaker 1: the golf media is so incestuous and so steeply invested
2:02:46
Speaker 1: in commercial conflicts of interest, and where the stars are
2:02:51
Speaker 1: so powerful, especially in the Tiger Woods era. So it's
2:02:55
Speaker 1: not as if it's unique in the golf media. It's
2:02:59
Speaker 1: just more exactly And I think you're going to be
2:03:01
Speaker 1: able to see the future in the golf media because
2:03:05
Speaker 1: the problems that the golf media are having and have
2:03:08
Speaker 1: been having and will continue to have, I think are
2:03:10
Speaker 1: going to be seen elsewhere throughout all of the sports
2:03:14
Speaker 1: and news media. It's the same type of stuff. It's
2:03:17
Speaker 1: just more exaggerated. It's like it's on steroids in the
2:03:20
Speaker 1: golf world. And we saw two situations in the last
2:03:24
Speaker 1: week which really substantiate my view on this that occurred,
2:03:29
Speaker 1: one with Rory McElroy and the other with Colin Morikawa.
2:03:34
Speaker 1: Now I have said the past in this podcast that
2:03:36
Speaker 1: I have a love hate relationship with Rory McElroy. I
2:03:40
Speaker 1: loved his initial fight against Live, but now he's caved
2:03:44
Speaker 1: in to Live, and so I have disdain for him.
2:03:47
Speaker 1: And it's not just because he caved in on Live.
2:03:50
Speaker 1: There's always been a lot of things about Rory McElroy
2:03:53
Speaker 1: that troubled me. It's you know, we're on the five
2:03:55
Speaker 1: year anniversary of the Live the Covidanic not to Live
2:04:01
Speaker 1: panic a different sort of panic, the COVID panic, and
2:04:04
Speaker 1: people don't remember, but it was at the Tournament Players
2:04:07
Speaker 1: Championship in twenty twenty where Rory McElroy helped lobby the
2:04:13
Speaker 1: commissioner to shut down the tournament and it was I
2:04:17
Speaker 1: think a pivotal moment in the COVID panic when Golf
2:04:20
Speaker 1: decided at first they said, well, we just won't have crowds.
2:04:23
Speaker 1: We're going to continue with our tournament because it's our
2:04:25
Speaker 1: biggest tournament of the year that the PGA Tour runs,
2:04:28
Speaker 1: and then Rory McElroy apparently led the charge to say no,
2:04:32
Speaker 1: we got to shut down the whole thing, and at
2:04:34
Speaker 1: that point I knew we were doomed. It was over.
2:04:39
Speaker 1: This was a contagion, both literally and figuratively, for which
2:04:43
Speaker 1: there was no stopping and that's exactly what ended up transpiring.
2:04:47
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just Rory McElroy helping facilitate the COVID panic.
2:04:51
Speaker 1: I mean, this is this guy who's had some weird
2:04:53
Speaker 1: things happened in his personal life. You know, he ended
2:04:58
Speaker 1: his relationship with Caroline Wose in the ACTI the Tennis
2:05:01
Speaker 1: Player after like right after they put out invitations to
2:05:06
Speaker 1: their wedding, which, who knows, I might have been a
2:05:08
Speaker 1: good choice on his part. Maybe he dodged a bullet,
2:05:11
Speaker 1: but that was just really weird timing there. And then
2:05:15
Speaker 1: similarly last year, he suddenly announced that he was divorcing
2:05:20
Speaker 1: his wife, with whom he has a young child, and
2:05:22
Speaker 1: then he pulled that back. I mean, by the way,
2:05:25
Speaker 1: that to me is a great example of how pathetic
2:05:28
Speaker 1: the golf media is. I mean, that is a huge deal.
2:05:31
Speaker 1: When you're effectively a multinational corporation like Rory McElroy making
2:05:35
Speaker 1: a decision to divorce your wife, whether you have a
2:05:38
Speaker 1: young child or not is a huge one. And then
2:05:42
Speaker 1: to make that decision, make it public, put your white
2:05:45
Speaker 1: through that, and then like a month and a half later,
2:05:48
Speaker 1: pull it back and say never mind, I'm sorry. That's
2:05:52
Speaker 1: a big deal. There's something wrong there. There's something going
2:05:56
Speaker 1: on there. I don't know what it is, but of
2:05:58
Speaker 1: course we will never know because I want ever asked him.
2:06:00
Speaker 1: You're not allowed to ask Roy McElroy about what the
2:06:02
Speaker 1: hell that was all about? Why did you file for
2:06:05
Speaker 1: divorce from your wife? And then pull it back to
2:06:09
Speaker 1: what was going on there? We don't know because the
2:06:11
Speaker 1: sports media and the golf media is pathetic because they
2:06:14
Speaker 1: treat their stars like the right wing media treats Donald Trump.
2:06:18
Speaker 1: You're not allowed to criticize, You're not really to ask
2:06:21
Speaker 1: any difficult or uncomfortable questions.
2:06:25
Speaker 4: And so.
2:06:28
Speaker 1: You know, Roy McElroy was playing a practice round for
2:06:31
Speaker 1: the Tournament Players Championship, the biggest event on the PG Tour,
2:06:35
Speaker 1: an event that he would eventually win in a playoff,
2:06:38
Speaker 1: which I'll get to momentarily. But he was playing a
2:06:40
Speaker 1: practice round and he got heckled mildly. He got heckled
2:06:46
Speaker 1: because he hit a ball in the water in a
2:06:48
Speaker 1: practice round, and the heckler referenced that that was just
2:06:53
Speaker 1: like what happened during the twenty eleven Masters, which Roy
2:06:56
Speaker 1: McElroy was leading, and then he did a shot way
2:07:00
Speaker 1: left on number ten and it started a nightmare back
2:07:03
Speaker 1: nine and he ended up badly losing the tournament. And
2:07:07
Speaker 1: it's obviously, you know, something Roy McElroy doesn't want to
2:07:10
Speaker 1: have to think about, because he's never won the Masters,
2:07:13
Speaker 1: and that's the reason why he's never won the Grand Slam,
2:07:16
Speaker 1: and the Masters really is the last tournament he has
2:07:19
Speaker 1: to win to be considered one of the all time greats.
2:07:22
Speaker 1: But this is a practice route and this level of
2:07:26
Speaker 1: heckling is very mild. And I know this because I
2:07:30
Speaker 1: myself have heckled Tiger Woods in a far more dramatic
2:07:35
Speaker 1: situation at the twenty ten US Open. Now I know
2:07:39
Speaker 1: I've told that story in another podcast. I don't think
2:07:43
Speaker 1: I've ever told it in this podcast. It's an amazing story.
2:07:46
Speaker 1: I don't have time to tell it right now. But
2:07:49
Speaker 1: it ended up being talked about on the back page
2:07:52
Speaker 1: of Sports Illustrated back when Sports Illustrated was still a thing.
2:07:55
Speaker 1: My name was not associated with it on purpose because
2:08:00
Speaker 1: it was two weeks away from my wedding, and I
2:08:01
Speaker 1: didn't want my name associated with it. But I felt
2:08:04
Speaker 1: like Tiger Woods, coming off of his scandal, needed to
2:08:07
Speaker 1: be heckled. And I had a ticket to the US
2:08:10
Speaker 1: Open at Pebble Beach, and I very carefully planned it
2:08:13
Speaker 1: all out so that no one else would be disturbed.
2:08:16
Speaker 1: But that week he had said it was none of
2:08:18
Speaker 1: our business whether or not is off the course problems
2:08:22
Speaker 1: and caused him to not play as well. And my
2:08:27
Speaker 1: point was that you made it our business, Tiger, and
2:08:29
Speaker 1: that was the nature of my heckle. And this was,
2:08:33
Speaker 1: you know, after he hit a t shot off of
2:08:35
Speaker 1: number nine at Pebble Beach in the first round of
2:08:39
Speaker 1: the US Open, and I fully expected, by the way,
2:08:43
Speaker 1: because it was a very harsh heckle, that I would
2:08:46
Speaker 1: be escorted off the grounds of Pebble Beach. In fact,
2:08:49
Speaker 1: I was kind of hoping that that would happen because
2:08:52
Speaker 1: the parking lot was a long way away, and I,
2:08:55
Speaker 1: you know, I needed to get home because I was
2:08:58
Speaker 1: not staying in a hotel. Gotten up at a ridiculously
2:09:01
Speaker 1: early hour that morning, something like two or three in
2:09:04
Speaker 1: the morning to drive from Southern California all the way
2:09:07
Speaker 1: up to northern California and Pebble Beach, and I was
2:09:10
Speaker 1: driving back home that night. In fact, the drive was
2:09:14
Speaker 1: so long and so insane in both directions. This is
2:09:18
Speaker 1: getting really far afield. But to this day, my daughter
2:09:25
Speaker 1: Grace thinks when she is because she's been told this
2:09:28
Speaker 1: story by her mother many times, thinks that I was
2:09:32
Speaker 1: wearing a diaper on this trip back and forth to
2:09:37
Speaker 1: Pebble Beach to Heckel Tiger Woods. And the reason why
2:09:41
Speaker 1: she thinks I was wearing a diaper was because not
2:09:45
Speaker 1: long before this, there was this remarkable story of this
2:09:49
Speaker 1: female astronaut that was involved in a love triangle who
2:09:53
Speaker 1: drove from Houston, Texas to Florida on some sort of
2:09:58
Speaker 1: mission to get out her romantic rival, where she was
2:10:02
Speaker 1: going as fast as she could and she didn't want
2:10:04
Speaker 1: to stop for any restroom break, so she literally was
2:10:08
Speaker 1: wearing a diaper so she could she could go to
2:10:11
Speaker 1: the bathroom and not stop the car. And so my
2:10:15
Speaker 1: wife used that analogy to what I was doing with
2:10:18
Speaker 1: regard to Pebble Beach and Tiger Woods, which was not true.
2:10:21
Speaker 1: And my daughter still to this day refers to the
2:10:24
Speaker 1: time when I was wearing a diaper running to Pebble Beach. Anyway,
2:10:28
Speaker 1: the point of all this is I was actually hoping
2:10:31
Speaker 1: that I would be escorted off the grounds because I
2:10:34
Speaker 1: wanted to, you know, I was thinking I would get
2:10:36
Speaker 1: a cart ran back to the parking lot, which would
2:10:38
Speaker 1: save me some time to get home because the parking
2:10:41
Speaker 1: lot was a long way away from the ninety at
2:10:43
Speaker 1: Tubble Beach. I was not escorted at much to my surprise.
2:10:49
Speaker 1: Now the crowd around me was very, very negative towards
2:10:52
Speaker 1: me because they were very protective of Tiger Woods. But
2:10:55
Speaker 1: I just felt like somebody needed to make a statement
2:10:58
Speaker 1: that what Tiger had done was wrong and appropriate, destructive
2:11:02
Speaker 1: of what have you. And then he he wasn't gonna
2:11:04
Speaker 1: get away with his totally scott free. And I'm somebody
2:11:06
Speaker 1: who was the biggest Tiger Woods fan on the planet.
2:11:09
Speaker 1: I had a website devoted, you know, fictitiously to his
2:11:13
Speaker 1: divinity called Tiger Woods is Good dot com. I you know,
2:11:16
Speaker 1: but that's the way I am. I mean, I will
2:11:19
Speaker 1: love you to death, but if you turn on me,
2:11:21
Speaker 1: if you betray me, or if I feel like you've
2:11:23
Speaker 1: done something wrong, I'm going to actually go up against you,
2:11:26
Speaker 1: probably harder than anybody else will. And so I'm a
2:11:31
Speaker 1: bit of an expert when it comes to heckling star golfers,
2:11:36
Speaker 1: and this hackling was nothing, especially considering it was a
2:11:40
Speaker 1: practice round, a practice round, and Rory McElroy decided to
2:11:47
Speaker 1: take the phone of the person who heckled him, which
2:11:52
Speaker 1: I don't even know why the why the person gave
2:11:56
Speaker 1: Rory McElroy his phone, and I'm not even under sure
2:11:59
Speaker 1: one hundred percent sure way ended up happening to the phone,
2:12:01
Speaker 1: But it's just insane that Rory McElroy was so thin
2:12:06
Speaker 1: skinned that he takes the phone of the heckler. And
2:12:10
Speaker 1: now the heckler gets in big trouble. And as it
2:12:13
Speaker 1: turns out, the heckler was a golfer, a rather prominent
2:12:18
Speaker 1: golfer on the Texas College golf team, which is a
2:12:22
Speaker 1: huge golf powerhouse. And now this kid's life is being
2:12:27
Speaker 1: greatly disrupted, probably punished by the golf team, all because
2:12:34
Speaker 1: he mildly, I mean very mildly heckled Rory McElroy and
2:12:39
Speaker 1: had his phone taken. This was very similar to the
2:12:42
Speaker 1: Jason Kelcey situation where Kelsey, you know, except there was
2:12:46
Speaker 1: no use of the F word, and there was no
2:12:48
Speaker 1: apparent destruction of the phone. But you know, Jason Kelcey
2:12:51
Speaker 1: got away with that at Penn State last year with
2:12:55
Speaker 1: zero repercussions, which was amazing. But Rory McElroy got no
2:13:01
Speaker 1: criticism in the golf media for this at all, and
2:13:04
Speaker 1: in fact refused to answer questions about it, which is
2:13:08
Speaker 1: where I'm going with regard to this whole issue of
2:13:11
Speaker 1: the future of the relationship between the media and public
2:13:14
Speaker 1: figures and wearing golf. It's way worse sooner than elsewhere
2:13:20
Speaker 1: because of the unique nature of the golf media and
2:13:23
Speaker 1: the conflicts of interest and the power of the stars.
2:13:27
Speaker 1: So Rory acted, in my view, very inappropriately. There's no
2:13:31
Speaker 1: reason to take the kid's phone. There were some incidences
2:13:35
Speaker 1: later in the week where people were yelling at Rory,
2:13:38
Speaker 1: take my phone, take my phone, which I perceived as
2:13:42
Speaker 1: some sort of a counter protest against what Rory McElroy did.
2:13:46
Speaker 1: But Rory McElroy was asked, can you talk about it?
2:13:49
Speaker 1: He said no, and everyone just went along with it.
2:13:52
Speaker 1: And then he wins the tournament and it's never brought
2:13:54
Speaker 1: up again, never brought up again. He wins the tournament
2:13:58
Speaker 1: in a playoff, and no one ever mentions Oh, by
2:14:03
Speaker 1: the way, the week began with Rory McElroy almost ruining
2:14:07
Speaker 1: this kid's life because he's so thin skin that he
2:14:10
Speaker 1: couldn't take a mild heckling and install the kid's phone.
2:14:14
Speaker 1: It's it's it's unreal. But this is what's going to
2:14:18
Speaker 1: happen throughout all elements of the news media because the
2:14:21
Speaker 1: stars have all the power, the media has none. They
2:14:25
Speaker 1: have no leverage, no balls, no one to back them up.
2:14:30
Speaker 1: If the star says I don't want to talk, then
2:14:33
Speaker 1: there's nothing they can do. And there was another episode
2:14:36
Speaker 1: in golf that further illustrated this reality where Colin Morikawa
2:14:41
Speaker 1: the previous week. Colin mar Kalla is another guy I
2:14:45
Speaker 1: actually like. Colin mar Kalla was actually taught by my
2:14:49
Speaker 1: sister in law at high school in Lochagnyatta, California. He
2:14:54
Speaker 1: seems like a great guy. I really respect his game.
2:14:58
Speaker 1: But the week before the tournament players Chammpionship, he blew
2:15:01
Speaker 1: a back nine lead at bay Hill. Now it wasn't
2:15:04
Speaker 1: even a situation where he choked Russell Henley made a
2:15:08
Speaker 1: chip in for eagle and he ended up winning a tournament.
2:15:11
Speaker 1: I mean it was much more Henley ended up winning
2:15:13
Speaker 1: it than Morikwa ended up losing it. But Mori Kawa
2:15:17
Speaker 1: did not speak to the press after the loss, and
2:15:21
Speaker 1: then he said that he doesn't know anybody anything, he
2:15:25
Speaker 1: doesn't owe anybody anything, and therefore there's no obligation for
2:15:30
Speaker 1: him to talk when he doesn't want to talk after
2:15:32
Speaker 1: having lost a close tournament that he probably should have won.
2:15:38
Speaker 1: And then at a press conference at the TPC, he
2:15:42
Speaker 1: ended the press conference importantly not taking any questions about this,
2:15:46
Speaker 1: which I think was incredibly symbolic of this larger issue.
2:15:49
Speaker 1: He ended a press conference by saying, oh, by the way,
2:15:52
Speaker 1: I just want to address the criticism I've gotten for
2:15:56
Speaker 1: having said I don't owe you anything and for not
2:15:58
Speaker 1: having taken questions out after I lost. And here's what
2:16:02
Speaker 1: Morikawa said at that press conference before leaving without answering
2:16:07
Speaker 1: any more questions.
2:16:09
Speaker 6: And then I just want to add one more thing.
2:16:11
Speaker 6: You know, might bite my tongue after saying this, but
2:16:14
Speaker 6: you know, to the to the Brandle Schamblize, to the
2:16:17
Speaker 6: Paul mcginley's, to the rock immediate, to the world, I
2:16:21
Speaker 6: don't regret anything I said, you know, I might it
2:16:23
Speaker 6: might have been a little bit of hard, a little
2:16:25
Speaker 6: bit harsh that I don't owe anyone, but I I
2:16:27
Speaker 6: don't owe anyone, you know. I respect the fans. I'm
2:16:31
Speaker 6: very thankful for them. I'm grateful, you know. It makes
2:16:34
Speaker 6: me emotional, but it's just it hurts to hear people
2:16:37
Speaker 6: say this, and especially you guys, because I finished the
2:16:42
Speaker 6: round and I went to go sign for ten minutes,
2:16:44
Speaker 6: fifteen minutes for all the people after. Not a single
2:16:47
Speaker 6: person for media want to go follow me because I
2:16:50
Speaker 6: don't know, but that's that's me, you know. For so
2:16:53
Speaker 6: for people to be calling me out as it's interesting,
2:16:58
Speaker 6: you know, it just it doesn't show anything. I mean, look,
2:17:02
Speaker 6: I get what you guys are saying, but I was there.
2:17:05
Speaker 6: I was signing for every single person right after the round.
2:17:07
Speaker 6: Whether they wanted it or not. I finished second. They
2:17:10
Speaker 6: could care less, but yeah, I'm gonna leave it at that,
2:17:14
Speaker 6: all right, So thank you, guys.
2:17:16
Speaker 1: I mean, that's really something else. So you don't answer
2:17:19
Speaker 1: questions after losing. By the way, the news media sports
2:17:23
Speaker 1: media was never going to go after him while he's
2:17:26
Speaker 1: signing autographs because if they do that, then they're the
2:17:29
Speaker 1: bad guys. You say you don't owe anybody anything, and
2:17:34
Speaker 1: then you rip members of the sports media, Randall Chamblee
2:17:40
Speaker 1: and Paul McKinley, who had been somewhat critical of Marikawa,
2:17:45
Speaker 1: and then you don't answer any questions about it. You
2:17:47
Speaker 1: just leave. And then the Golf Channel, you know, they
2:17:51
Speaker 1: didn't rebuke Moricaoa. They just they almost literally said, well,
2:17:54
Speaker 1: we agree to disagree, and that was probably taking a
2:17:57
Speaker 1: strong stand in their minds. Well, I mean, this is
2:18:01
Speaker 1: a really problematic situation because if these guys get away
2:18:06
Speaker 1: with this, there's no going back. You don't have to
2:18:09
Speaker 1: answer questions under any circumstances. You just put out a
2:18:12
Speaker 1: social media post and your fans get to see what
2:18:16
Speaker 1: you think without you having to endure any uncomfortable questions,
2:18:21
Speaker 1: and the whole system falls apart. And so again I'm
2:18:26
Speaker 1: using golf as an example, but we're going to see
2:18:28
Speaker 1: this more and more in every walk of life, whether
2:18:31
Speaker 1: it's sports or politics or entertainment, where the stars have
2:18:35
Speaker 1: way too much power and because journalism is dead and
2:18:38
Speaker 1: they've lost all credibility and the business model is broken
2:18:41
Speaker 1: and their audiences have shrunk, they don't have any power
2:18:44
Speaker 1: or leverage and the stars are fully realizing it now,
2:18:49
Speaker 1: and so I will reiterate my prediction that at least
2:18:55
Speaker 1: in sports, I think the post game press conference is
2:19:00
Speaker 1: in grave jeopardy. Grave jeopardy. I mean, I mean, my god.
2:19:05
Speaker 1: You know, it's not like in golf you're going to
2:19:06
Speaker 1: face any difficult questions anyway. These are the most woosified
2:19:11
Speaker 1: members of the media that there is, because they're all
2:19:14
Speaker 1: deeply conflicted. There's all sorts of conflicts of interests that
2:19:19
Speaker 1: prevent them from doing real journalism or real questioning. And
2:19:22
Speaker 1: so if it's happening in golf, it's going to continue
2:19:25
Speaker 1: to happen in more dramatic ways in every single walk
2:19:29
Speaker 1: of life. Two other real quick golf notes that really
2:19:33
Speaker 1: have nothing to do with golf. There has been a
2:19:36
Speaker 1: report that Tiger Woods has a new girlfriend, and his
2:19:41
Speaker 1: new girlfriend is Vanessa Trump. Now, Vanessa Trump is Donald
2:19:47
Speaker 1: Trump Junior's former wife, and she is the mother of,
2:19:51
Speaker 1: among others, Ky Trump, who is Donald Trump's favorite granddaughter,
2:19:57
Speaker 1: who is a star golfer herself spoke at the Republican Convention,
2:20:02
Speaker 1: and I mentioned her a couple of weeks ago because
2:20:06
Speaker 1: I thought it was remarkable that Kai Trump showed up
2:20:11
Speaker 1: at the Genesis Invitational in San Diego, Tiger Woods's tournament
2:20:15
Speaker 1: that normally has played in Los Angeles at Riviera Country Club,
2:20:18
Speaker 1: but they couldn't play it this year because of the wildfires,
2:20:21
Speaker 1: so they moved at the Torrey Pines in La Jolla, California,
2:20:24
Speaker 1: near San Diego, and in the final round, Tiger Woods
2:20:27
Speaker 1: showed up walking, you know, right next to Kai Trump,
2:20:33
Speaker 1: and I joked on Twitter that, oh my gosh, this
2:20:36
Speaker 1: is a tremendous development because the twenty forty four Republican
2:20:41
Speaker 1: ticket can now be Donald Donald Trump's granddaughter in the
2:20:45
Speaker 1: vice presidential slot and Tiger Woods in the presidential slot.
2:20:48
Speaker 1: Tiger and Kai twenty forty four. You know that would
2:20:52
Speaker 1: she'd be constitutionally eligible by that, and I think she's
2:20:55
Speaker 1: got a great future. And obviously the Republican Party is
2:20:58
Speaker 1: a monarchy now, so this would all make sense. Again,
2:21:02
Speaker 1: I was doing this mostly half facetiously, but I did
2:21:05
Speaker 1: find it significant, especially given the nature of the negotiations
2:21:10
Speaker 1: between the PGA Tour and Live and the fact that
2:21:12
Speaker 1: Donald Trump has been deeply engaged in those. The Tiger
2:21:17
Speaker 1: Woods is so connected to the Trump family and to
2:21:19
Speaker 1: Donald Trump himself, having played golf with him the morning
2:21:22
Speaker 1: of the Super Bowl, that his favorite granddaughter would show
2:21:26
Speaker 1: up at the tournament and walk arm in arm to
2:21:30
Speaker 1: the event with Tiger Woods. So I felt that was noteworthy.
2:21:35
Speaker 1: I didn't know what exactly it meant, but I found
2:21:38
Speaker 1: like that was I thought that was significant. Well, then
2:21:42
Speaker 1: came the story a few days ago, and this was
2:21:44
Speaker 1: from the tabloid media. This has not been reported by
2:21:47
Speaker 1: what I would consider to be really credible media. It's
2:21:51
Speaker 1: mostly within the Murdoch you know, news Corp. Tabloid universe,
2:21:57
Speaker 1: but which of course obviously has some pretty good connection
2:22:01
Speaker 1: to the to the Trump family. So it's is possible
2:22:03
Speaker 1: that this is based in some reality. But their reporting
2:22:07
Speaker 1: is that that Tiger and Vanessa Trump have been quote
2:22:11
Speaker 1: unquote secretly dated. And I don't know what to do
2:22:16
Speaker 1: about this story. I don't know whether or not this
2:22:19
Speaker 1: story is real. Now it's possible that it's real. There's
2:22:27
Speaker 1: no there are no pictures of Tiger Woods and Vanessa
2:22:30
Speaker 1: Trump that I have seen together. In fact, in the
2:22:34
Speaker 1: photos in the video of Tiger and Kai entering the
2:22:38
Speaker 1: Genesis Invitational, Kai's mom, Vanessa is off to the side
2:22:44
Speaker 1: and behind them. Now you could argue that they were
2:22:48
Speaker 1: trying to hide their relationship by making sure that Vanessa
2:22:52
Speaker 1: was way far away from Tiger and that obviously no
2:22:56
Speaker 1: one was going to think that Tiger was dating guy
2:22:58
Speaker 1: because she's a t DA girl, and so you know,
2:23:02
Speaker 1: is it possible that that was all part of a russe. Yeah,
2:23:07
Speaker 1: that's possible. And you know, Vanessa Trump is an attractive woman.
2:23:12
Speaker 1: Steve Cortes, my friend apparently knows her and speaks very
2:23:16
Speaker 1: very highly of her, So I mean, she's a quality woman.
2:23:21
Speaker 1: So that certainly puts her in the realm of potentially
2:23:24
Speaker 1: being dated by Tiger Woods. She looks a lot like
2:23:28
Speaker 1: Lindsey Vaughn, who the skier who Tiger Woods dated for
2:23:33
Speaker 1: quite a while, so it's possible that she's his type.
2:23:37
Speaker 1: So it is possible that they're actually dating. But there's
2:23:41
Speaker 1: also another possibility here and that this was simply a
2:23:44
Speaker 1: clickbaiting story that was reverse engineered from the pictures of
2:23:51
Speaker 1: Kai and Tiger coming to that tournament together, because that
2:23:56
Speaker 1: did create quite a bit of stir and there were
2:23:59
Speaker 1: a lot of people that were interested in, Okay, what's
2:24:01
Speaker 1: really going on there? And Kai goes to the same
2:24:05
Speaker 1: school as Tiger's son, Charlie apparently, and you know, they're
2:24:11
Speaker 1: all living in the same basic area, And you can
2:24:14
Speaker 1: easily reverse engineer from Kai and Tiger showing up at
2:24:19
Speaker 1: a tournament together, and Kai and Charlie Woods having some
2:24:22
Speaker 1: sort of relationship and Kai being a big time golfer
2:24:27
Speaker 1: who's going to play in college. Now you know it's
2:24:30
Speaker 1: not difficult to extrapolate or reverse engineer from that. Well
2:24:35
Speaker 1: wait a minute, you know there's mode of an opportunity here.
2:24:39
Speaker 1: Tiger's not not dating anybody. Vanessa Trump isn't dating anybody.
2:24:43
Speaker 1: They're in the same sphere, the same you know, geography,
2:24:48
Speaker 1: they have all these connections, they're the same basic age.
2:24:52
Speaker 1: Maybe they're dating. And that's a story that obviously would sell,
2:24:56
Speaker 1: That would get a lot of clicks, a lot of attention.
2:25:00
Speaker 1: And all you need is a couple of anonymous sources
2:25:03
Speaker 1: within Trump world. Oh yeah, they're secretly dating. You don't
2:25:06
Speaker 1: even have to give any names, and people will at
2:25:09
Speaker 1: least plausibly will plausibly believe it. So I'm very much
2:25:14
Speaker 1: on the fence on this one. In fact, gun to
2:25:16
Speaker 1: my head, I don't think it's true. That doesn't mean
2:25:20
Speaker 1: I'm saying it's not true. It could very well be true.
2:25:23
Speaker 1: But gun to my head, this just feels too messy.
2:25:26
Speaker 1: I have to digress. It made some bad choices in
2:25:29
Speaker 1: the past when it comes to is romantic entanglements and
2:25:33
Speaker 1: being messy. But this feels problematic. That seems like a
2:25:40
Speaker 1: lot more trouble than it's worth. And you know, politically,
2:25:44
Speaker 1: there's some risk involved in that. I mean, you know,
2:25:48
Speaker 1: what if it goes badly, I mean, you could be
2:25:51
Speaker 1: theoretically risking the relationship. I don't know what Donald Trump's
2:25:53
Speaker 1: relationship is with Vanessa, but apparently she still has a
2:25:56
Speaker 1: very good relationship with Donald Trump Junior. You could be
2:25:58
Speaker 1: risking you know, so theoretically Trump's role in the entire
2:26:03
Speaker 1: PGA Tour live negotiations. You know, by the way, all
2:26:09
Speaker 1: this ends any hope of there ever being a twenty
2:26:12
Speaker 1: forty four Tiger Kai ticket, because no matter what happens,
2:26:15
Speaker 1: that's off the table. If they Ivness and Tiger end
2:26:18
Speaker 1: up being together in the long run, that's gonna be
2:26:20
Speaker 1: way too icky for Tiger and Ty to run together.
2:26:25
Speaker 1: And so, which, of course I was only meaning as
2:26:27
Speaker 1: a joke to begin with, but I think you get
2:26:29
Speaker 1: the point. So my professional opinion as a longtime avid
2:26:35
Speaker 1: Tiger watcher is that this story is not proven. It
2:26:39
Speaker 1: could be true, but it could also be reverse engineered
2:26:43
Speaker 1: and tabloid bullshit. One other golf related story, Donald Trump
2:26:48
Speaker 1: won yet another club championship, according to himself. He tweeted
2:26:53
Speaker 1: that he won a club championship at Trump International in Florida.
2:26:58
Speaker 1: And you know, there's been a lot of talk about
2:27:01
Speaker 1: how Trump cheats at golf, and that a lot of
2:27:04
Speaker 1: these club championships that he's won at clubs where he
2:27:06
Speaker 1: owns are basically rigged in his favor in all sorts
2:27:10
Speaker 1: of different ways. In fact, you know, there was one
2:27:12
Speaker 1: situation where he didn't even play. I remember this was
2:27:16
Speaker 1: maybe the most ridiculous. He couldn't make the first round
2:27:20
Speaker 1: of the tournament, so he got the club to use
2:27:24
Speaker 1: around that he had played by himself earlier in the week.
2:27:29
Speaker 1: I think it was I don't quote me on the details,
2:27:31
Speaker 1: but basically he did not play the same tournament as
2:27:34
Speaker 1: everybody else did, and he was declared the club champion
2:27:39
Speaker 1: of the club that he owns. Now, it's sketchy the
2:27:43
Speaker 1: details of what happened here, but from the photograph that
2:27:47
Speaker 1: was released, I think this was the photograph of this
2:27:50
Speaker 1: particular club championship. It looked like it. It appears as
2:27:55
Speaker 1: if it was a match play championship, and that Trump
2:27:58
Speaker 1: had to play at least three round and what I
2:28:01
Speaker 1: assume was two days over the weekend. That's normally the
2:28:04
Speaker 1: way you would do a match play club championship. I'm assuming,
2:28:07
Speaker 1: by the way, this is the senior club championship. As
2:28:11
Speaker 1: I put it all together, you know, Trump at seventy
2:28:14
Speaker 1: eight highly unlikely to win a regular club championship in
2:28:16
Speaker 1: a place like Trump International. But the part I'm willing
2:28:22
Speaker 1: to buy all of this, I'm willing to buy that
2:28:24
Speaker 1: he won the match play club championship. All in the
2:28:29
Speaker 1: up and up, I can totally see where you know,
2:28:31
Speaker 1: he's a decent golfer and people would be very intimidated
2:28:34
Speaker 1: playing match play against the president the United States. You
2:28:37
Speaker 1: got the Secret Service agents and everybody else out there,
2:28:40
Speaker 1: and match play is you know, it doesn't really matter
2:28:42
Speaker 1: what you shoot, it's whether or not you beat your
2:28:45
Speaker 1: opponent on a particular hole. And you're playing an opponent
2:28:48
Speaker 1: that's not playing particularly well, they're intimidated. You can easily win,
2:28:53
Speaker 1: and you know, you only have to win apparently three
2:28:55
Speaker 1: matches to win the championship. So I'm perfectly willing to
2:28:59
Speaker 1: buy that Trump is capable of that. I mean, he
2:29:02
Speaker 1: has a decent golf swing. I mean, he's got terrible backswing.
2:29:06
Speaker 1: But I had to tell you whoever told Donald Trump
2:29:10
Speaker 1: to maintain his spine angle through impact, which he does
2:29:14
Speaker 1: extremely well. I mean, somebody out there is the guy
2:29:17
Speaker 1: that convinced Donald Trump the key to his swing is
2:29:20
Speaker 1: maintain your spine angle through impact. Whoever did that could
2:29:24
Speaker 1: be the most powerful person in the world because they
2:29:26
Speaker 1: figured that way to get Donald Trump to do what
2:29:29
Speaker 1: they told them, because he does a great job of that.
2:29:32
Speaker 1: I don't know who that is. I'd like to know
2:29:34
Speaker 1: who it is, because they have the key to the
2:29:36
Speaker 1: universe in figuring out a way to get Donald Trump
2:29:39
Speaker 1: to listen to them. So, you know, he's a competent golfer.
2:29:43
Speaker 1: But here's my point on all this one. You know,
2:29:46
Speaker 1: we shouldn't have to question whether or at the President
2:29:48
Speaker 1: United States is telling the truth that he actually won
2:29:50
Speaker 1: a club championship on the up and up. My point is,
2:29:54
Speaker 1: how the hell did the president of the United States
2:29:56
Speaker 1: have the time to play three match matches on a weekend.
2:30:02
Speaker 1: I mean, at least that's at least seven eight nine
2:30:06
Speaker 1: hours of time, maybe more than that, depending on how
2:30:10
Speaker 1: long these matches went. They don't have to go eighteen holes,
2:30:13
Speaker 1: but presumably they went around eighteen holes. And that is
2:30:16
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of time for the President United States
2:30:19
Speaker 1: to be out of commission. And by the way, here's
2:30:24
Speaker 1: a guy who's been living in Washington, DC, busy as hell.
2:30:27
Speaker 1: How the hell is his game in good enough shape
2:30:30
Speaker 1: to win any sort of club championship. I mean, if
2:30:33
Speaker 1: I totally believe it, I have to give Trump kudos
2:30:36
Speaker 1: an admiration for this. I'd like to know more details
2:30:39
Speaker 1: on it, but mostly I'm just amazed at the amount
2:30:41
Speaker 1: of time that Trump had to be able to devote
2:30:44
Speaker 1: to this, and that his game was in good enough
2:30:47
Speaker 1: shape considering how unbelievably busy he has been to be
2:30:50
Speaker 1: able to make this work. Now, speaking of Trump, he's
2:30:55
Speaker 1: been doing a lot of trumpy and things when it
2:30:58
Speaker 1: comes to saying crazy stuff. He's going after Joe Biden's
2:31:02
Speaker 1: pardon because of the autopen, which I think is a
2:31:05
Speaker 1: ridiculous controversy. I mean, you know, if Biden said he
2:31:09
Speaker 1: didn't really mean to pardon those people. That would be
2:31:12
Speaker 1: one thing, but that's not the case. Doesn't really matter
2:31:14
Speaker 1: to me whether or not he signed the pardons with
2:31:18
Speaker 1: his actual pen or with an autopen although I don't
2:31:21
Speaker 1: think the president should be doing it via auto pen,
2:31:23
Speaker 1: but legally, I don't think Trump has any leg to
2:31:27
Speaker 1: stand on. He gave a very inappropriate speech at the
2:31:30
Speaker 1: Department of Justice where he attacked the media, including CNN
2:31:35
Speaker 1: and MSNBC, saying that he thinks that what they do
2:31:38
Speaker 1: is illegal because among those things, they don't give his
2:31:41
Speaker 1: victory the respect it deserves. This is the Department of
2:31:45
Speaker 1: Justice calling major media outlets CNN and MSNBC literally illegal
2:31:51
Speaker 1: at the Department of Justice. I mean, these are types
2:31:54
Speaker 1: of things that under normal circumstances would be all we
2:31:58
Speaker 1: would be talking about it. Certainly even I be talking
2:32:00
Speaker 1: a lot more about on the Death of Journalism podcast.
2:32:04
Speaker 1: Completely inappropriate stuff at a speech at the Department of
2:32:08
Speaker 1: Justice by the sitting president. But there are two clips
2:32:11
Speaker 1: that I want to play from Trump from This is
2:32:14
Speaker 1: from last night in an interview on Fox News Channel
2:32:17
Speaker 1: done by Laura Ingram that deal with the issue of Canada.
2:32:21
Speaker 1: And I believe that these clips, especially the second one
2:32:26
Speaker 1: deserve a lot more discussion, especially from conservatives, because even
2:32:32
Speaker 1: as desensitized as I have become by some of the
2:32:35
Speaker 1: insane things that Trump says, I'm pretty pissed off about,
2:32:40
Speaker 1: especially the second one regarding what's happening in Canadian politics.
2:32:45
Speaker 1: But the first one deals with the issue of Canada
2:32:49
Speaker 1: and why he's going after Canada, and his argument, once again,
2:32:54
Speaker 1: which appears to be real, and this has been going
2:32:56
Speaker 1: on way too long for this not to be real.
2:32:59
Speaker 1: In his mind, the Canada is meant to be the
2:33:03
Speaker 1: fifty first state of the United States. And to Laura
2:33:09
Speaker 1: Ingram's credit, she actually pushes back a little bit on Trump,
2:33:13
Speaker 1: saying that he's harsher on Canada our ally than a
2:33:17
Speaker 1: lot of other countries that are not our allies. And
2:33:21
Speaker 1: he responds by saying it because they should be our
2:33:24
Speaker 1: fifty first state. And here's what that sounded like on
2:33:28
Speaker 1: Fox News Channel with Laura Ingram.
2:33:30
Speaker 4: Here's my problem with Canada. Canada was meant to be
2:33:34
Speaker 4: the fifty first state because we subsidize Canada by two
2:33:38
Speaker 4: hundred billion dollars a year. We don't need their cars,
2:33:42
Speaker 4: we don't need their lumber. We have a lot of lumber.
2:33:45
Speaker 4: We freed it up, as you know last week. We're
2:33:47
Speaker 4: freeing it up so that you can actually cut down
2:33:50
Speaker 4: a tree without being, you know, given the death penalty,
2:33:53
Speaker 4: because what the what these radical environmentalists have done to
2:33:57
Speaker 4: our country, But we freed it up. We don't need
2:34:00
Speaker 4: their lumber, we don't need their energy, we don't need anything.
2:34:04
Speaker 4: We certainly don't want their automobiles. They make a lot
2:34:06
Speaker 4: of millions of automobiles are sent in. I'd rather have
2:34:10
Speaker 4: a maid in Michigan. I'd rather have the Maide in
2:34:12
Speaker 4: South Carolina or anyone of.
2:34:14
Speaker 7: Work tougher with Canada than you are with some because
2:34:17
Speaker 7: our biggest adversary.
2:34:18
Speaker 4: Is only because it's meant to be our fifty first rate.
2:34:21
Speaker 1: Now I do not understand this fifty first state business
2:34:25
Speaker 1: with regard to Canada. I have never believed that it
2:34:29
Speaker 1: was real, but now I'm starting to question that because
2:34:34
Speaker 1: he keeps saying it, and he keeps saying it emphatically,
2:34:37
Speaker 1: and he keeps saying it in a very serious fashion.
2:34:39
Speaker 1: He's not just trolling. I don't think it's realistic. I
2:34:43
Speaker 1: don't think it's going to happen. But at a certain
2:34:45
Speaker 1: point you have to take it seriously, and it's an
2:34:49
Speaker 1: insane idea. It's an insane idea at every level. But
2:34:54
Speaker 1: let's just pretend somehow, some way this actually happened. Making
2:35:00
Speaker 1: Canada the fifty first state would be catastraphic from an
2:35:07
Speaker 1: electoral perspective. You would be adding two Democratic US Senators,
2:35:14
Speaker 1: You'd be adding a slew of Democratic congress people. I
2:35:20
Speaker 1: can't even believe I'm taking this seriously. But let's just
2:35:22
Speaker 1: since Trump is being serious about this, let's consider this
2:35:26
Speaker 1: rationally for a second. So you would if this happened today.
2:35:31
Speaker 1: If this happened today, you would effectively hand the Democrats
2:35:36
Speaker 1: the House representatives, and you would eliminate the majority for
2:35:41
Speaker 1: the Republicans in the US Senate. For all intents and purposes,
2:35:45
Speaker 1: you would you'd be down to a margin of basically
2:35:49
Speaker 1: one or two. And in the future you'd cause all
2:35:53
Speaker 1: sorts of problems with regard to the electoral college, because
2:35:57
Speaker 1: you know, Canada would be a Democrat voting state if
2:36:02
Speaker 1: it ever existed as the fifty first state. So you'd
2:36:05
Speaker 1: be handing presidential elections a huge advantage to Democrats. You'd
2:36:10
Speaker 1: be handing them huge advantage in the House and in
2:36:13
Speaker 1: the Senate, and Trump doesn't seem to care about that.
2:36:17
Speaker 1: No one, to my knowledge, has even questioned him about it.
2:36:21
Speaker 1: The closest that anyone has come was Laura Ingram raising
2:36:26
Speaker 1: the issue of what has happened with regard to the
2:36:30
Speaker 1: Canadian political scene since Trump went after them with tariffs
2:36:36
Speaker 1: and this whole talk of being the fifty first state.
2:36:39
Speaker 1: Prior to that happening, it was presumed that Canada was
2:36:44
Speaker 1: going to elect the Conservative leader Pierre poliver as their
2:36:50
Speaker 1: new prime minister. He was leading in all the polls.
2:36:54
Speaker 1: Since Trump went on this anti candidate diatribe, he has
2:36:58
Speaker 1: collapsed and it has now presumed that Liberals are going
2:37:02
Speaker 1: to maintain control of Canada. And Trump was asked about this,
2:37:09
Speaker 1: and Trump not only doesn't care, he seems to be
2:37:15
Speaker 1: celebrating the defeat of the Conservative candidate for prime minister
2:37:21
Speaker 1: in Canada. Why because in his mind, Pierre Polivier hasn't
2:37:28
Speaker 1: been nice enough to Donald Trump. I'm not exaggerating. This
2:37:33
Speaker 1: is exactly almost word for word what he said. By
2:37:35
Speaker 1: the way, I'm not even one hundred percent familiar with
2:37:38
Speaker 1: what he's talking about. He hasn't kissed Trump's ass, But
2:37:43
Speaker 1: to my knowledge, he's never said anything all that horrible
2:37:46
Speaker 1: about Donald Trump. If I'm wrong about that, I'll correct it.
2:37:49
Speaker 1: But I'm I'm unaware to me that the sin that
2:37:53
Speaker 1: is alleged here by Trump is that he hasn't kissed
2:37:55
Speaker 1: my ass, as you know, hasn't treated me like the
2:37:59
Speaker 1: king that I am, and therefore I don't like him.
2:38:04
Speaker 1: Therefore I'm fine with him losing. And oh, by the way,
2:38:06
Speaker 1: I would prefer a liberal men in Canada. And here's
2:38:12
Speaker 1: what that sounded like on Fox News Channel.
2:38:14
Speaker 7: Well, liberal is going to win now in the next
2:38:17
Speaker 7: election most likely, and they were, they were down, and
2:38:20
Speaker 7: I out, Isn't that going to make them more hostile
2:38:23
Speaker 7: to us?
2:38:23
Speaker 1: Impossible?
2:38:24
Speaker 4: I'd rather deal with a liberal than.
2:38:25
Speaker 7: For China closer to Canada, and that would really put
2:38:28
Speaker 7: us in a bind.
2:38:29
Speaker 4: The conservative that's running is stupidly no friend of mine.
2:38:33
Speaker 4: I don't know, but he said negative things. So when
2:38:35
Speaker 4: he says negative things, I couldn't care less. I think
2:38:37
Speaker 4: it's easier to deal actually with a liberal.
2:38:41
Speaker 1: Folks, I'm sorry that pissed me off. That pisses me
2:38:45
Speaker 1: off right there. First of all, it matters. It would
2:38:49
Speaker 1: be a significant victory if a conservative had become the
2:38:54
Speaker 1: Prime Minister of Canada. That matters for the world and
2:39:00
Speaker 1: even matters for the United States. We would be in
2:39:04
Speaker 1: a better position if a conservative, and Pierre Poulivier is
2:39:10
Speaker 1: in to my analysis, is potentially great mean, I mean,
2:39:15
Speaker 1: I think very highly of this guy. And if he
2:39:19
Speaker 1: was the Prime Minister of Canada, or if he would
2:39:22
Speaker 1: have been, which he was on path to be until
2:39:24
Speaker 1: Trump screwed it up, that would be a positive for
2:39:27
Speaker 1: the continent, for our country and for the world. That
2:39:31
Speaker 1: would have been game changing. I don't know, but it
2:39:33
Speaker 1: would be a positive. But Trump doesn't want that because
2:39:38
Speaker 1: of purely personal ego. That's it, personal ego, and I
2:39:46
Speaker 1: don't even know what this sin be led sin was,
2:39:50
Speaker 1: and he would rather there be a liberal. This shows
2:39:55
Speaker 1: you how little Trump cares about philosophy or policy. It's
2:40:02
Speaker 1: all about him and he doesn't really even give a
2:40:06
Speaker 1: shit about the future of the country. It's about him.
2:40:11
Speaker 1: So we have this unique opportunity to end liberal rule
2:40:15
Speaker 1: in Canada, and Trump is actively happy about his sabotaging
2:40:20
Speaker 1: of it. Now, it is possible, as I psychoanalyze this,
2:40:25
Speaker 1: it is possible that here's what's really happening here that
2:40:30
Speaker 1: Trump didn't realize or didn't think about, what was going
2:40:35
Speaker 1: to happen politically in Canada because of his stance on
2:40:40
Speaker 1: tariffs and the fifty first state belowny, and that because
2:40:45
Speaker 1: it's now obvious that the Conservatives are highly unlikely to win,
2:40:49
Speaker 1: Trump doesn't want to take blame for that, either in
2:40:52
Speaker 1: the public's mind or in his own mind. So now
2:40:55
Speaker 1: he's rationalizing it and saying, no, no, no, this is
2:40:58
Speaker 1: actually a good thing. I didn't like this guy anyway
2:41:01
Speaker 1: because he said mean things about me, and I'd rather
2:41:04
Speaker 1: deal with a liberal. That's that feels like a rationalization
2:41:08
Speaker 1: to me. That feels like a situation where a guy
2:41:10
Speaker 1: knows he's screwed up. Somewhere deep down. No one's told
2:41:14
Speaker 1: him he's screwed up because he doesn't have anyone around
2:41:17
Speaker 1: him that has the balls to say that, which has
2:41:20
Speaker 1: always been my major concern about Trump two point zero.
2:41:23
Speaker 1: But at some level he knows that, and so now
2:41:26
Speaker 1: he's rationalizing that this is actually a good thing. I'm
2:41:29
Speaker 1: a fucking genius. I'm I'd actually rather deal with a liberal.
2:41:32
Speaker 1: This is good that I've now created this situation where
2:41:36
Speaker 1: a conservative can't win in Canada and then hilariously, and
2:41:40
Speaker 1: I think this was really Pauliver's only shot. Polyiver tweeted
2:41:46
Speaker 1: out that Trump has endorsed his opponent, which effectively he did,
2:41:50
Speaker 1: and then this might be the only chance that he
2:41:52
Speaker 1: has to get back in the race, because now essentially
2:41:57
Speaker 1: Trump was very unpopular in Canada for av reasons has
2:42:01
Speaker 1: endorsed his opponent, which would be rather hilarious if things
2:42:06
Speaker 1: then turned out to swing back in the other direction,
2:42:09
Speaker 1: which I actually hope. They do. Have no idea if
2:42:13
Speaker 1: they will or not. But this to me was a
2:42:16
Speaker 1: very very telling moment about who Donald Trump really is.
2:42:20
Speaker 1: His ego is way, way, way more important than policy
2:42:26
Speaker 1: or results or reality or what's good for the country
2:42:30
Speaker 1: or what's good for the world. And that is an
2:42:33
Speaker 1: incredibly dangerous place to be in. And that is really
2:42:37
Speaker 1: the essence of why I have never gotten on the
2:42:39
Speaker 1: Trump train. If you ask, which I get asked all
2:42:42
Speaker 1: the time, John, why don't you just get on the
2:42:44
Speaker 1: Trump train? This is why this is wrong. This is wrong,
2:42:50
Speaker 1: and this is damaging and Trump is causing damage here
2:42:54
Speaker 1: and he's doing so apparently for his own entertainment and
2:42:58
Speaker 1: out of his own ego. I mean, is he going
2:43:01
Speaker 1: to follow through with these tariffs to the point where
2:43:03
Speaker 1: there's a great victory to be had. I doubt it.
2:43:05
Speaker 1: My guess is he'll end them at some point in
2:43:07
Speaker 1: declare victory and his fans will cheer, but enormous damage
2:43:11
Speaker 1: will have been created, potentially economically, and clearly already in
2:43:15
Speaker 1: Canada politically and the idea of Canada as a fifty
2:43:19
Speaker 1: first state. It's just amazing to me that nobody in
2:43:22
Speaker 1: the right wing news media will even confront him on this.
2:43:27
Speaker 1: I've seen nothing, nothing from any of the major players
2:43:30
Speaker 1: in the right wing media saying, hey, Donald, this is
2:43:34
Speaker 1: a really stupid idea that would destroy all the games
2:43:38
Speaker 1: that you have made politically, because it would be the
2:43:42
Speaker 1: greatest thing that ever happened to the Democratic Party at
2:43:45
Speaker 1: every level Electoral College, Senate, and in the Congress. And
2:43:50
Speaker 1: Trump doesn't seem to care. In fact, he seems to
2:43:52
Speaker 1: be applauding the results in that particular direction. Now, one
2:43:57
Speaker 1: last thing on Trump. In the last steps of the podcast,
2:44:00
Speaker 1: I expressed confusion as to how Trump was dealing with
2:44:05
Speaker 1: the negotiations for a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, and
2:44:09
Speaker 1: he had gotten Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire first,
2:44:14
Speaker 1: and then was going to go to Putin and Russia.
2:44:16
Speaker 1: And this made no sense to me whatsoever, And I
2:44:18
Speaker 1: was very clear that I did not think it would work,
2:44:20
Speaker 1: because it makes no sense. You don't go to the
2:44:24
Speaker 1: party that has no leverage first. You go to the
2:44:28
Speaker 1: party with leverage first, find out what they will agree to,
2:44:32
Speaker 1: and then you go back to the party, in this
2:44:34
Speaker 1: case Ukraine that has no leverage, and you say, Okay,
2:44:37
Speaker 1: here's what I here's the best you I could get
2:44:39
Speaker 1: for you. Are you willing to eat your shit sandwich?
2:44:42
Speaker 1: And then you use the leverage you have to force
2:44:45
Speaker 1: them to eat the shit sandwich. But you don't get
2:44:47
Speaker 1: a deal first with Ukraine because Putin has absolutely, positively
2:44:53
Speaker 1: no reason whatsoever to agree to that. I don't care
2:44:55
Speaker 1: what are in the details. I don't care how great
2:44:57
Speaker 1: it might be for him, because he knows he has
2:45:00
Speaker 1: all the leverage. Trump already told them he has all
2:45:02
Speaker 1: the leverage in that meeting with Zelensky at the White House.
2:45:06
Speaker 1: So therefore any deal that's already been agreed to by
2:45:09
Speaker 1: Trump and Zelensky is inherently a non starter for Putin.
2:45:14
Speaker 1: Doesn't matter what the details are well, as it turned out.
2:45:18
Speaker 1: I believe I was one hundred percent right on this.
2:45:20
Speaker 1: Putin first of all, shit all over. Trump disrespected him
2:45:25
Speaker 1: with regard to the timing of the phone call, made
2:45:27
Speaker 1: him wait, they had a long phone call. He did
2:45:30
Speaker 1: not agree to a cease fire. He did agree to
2:45:33
Speaker 1: some limitations on hostilities, but the immediately went on the attack.
2:45:40
Speaker 1: And there's no indication whatsoever that Putin is holding back.
2:45:45
Speaker 1: He's basically, you know, a lot of different outlets. I
2:45:48
Speaker 1: realized it's liberal medias, and no one in the right
2:45:51
Speaker 1: is going to believe them are making the argument that
2:45:53
Speaker 1: Putin has once again played Trump. You know, I still
2:45:57
Speaker 1: think Trump could get a victory out of this his mind.
2:46:00
Speaker 1: I mean, Trump could get a ceasefire agreement eventually, because
2:46:06
Speaker 1: eventually he's gonna, you know, Putin will realize, Okay, I've
2:46:09
Speaker 1: won this, and I can get I'm not gonna be
2:46:12
Speaker 1: able to get any more than I've already gotten, and
2:46:14
Speaker 1: Zelensky will still have to eat just this shit sandwich.
2:46:17
Speaker 1: So I still think there's a pant for Trump to
2:46:19
Speaker 1: be the victor here. But so far I don't understand
2:46:23
Speaker 1: why Trump went down this path. It does not surprise
2:46:26
Speaker 1: me at all that Putin has not agreed to the ceasefire.
2:46:29
Speaker 1: You have to get an agreement with Putin first, and
2:46:33
Speaker 1: then you go to Zelenski, and then it's up to
2:46:36
Speaker 1: Zelenski to keep using the analogy. But I think it's
2:46:40
Speaker 1: the best one to eat this shit sandwich. You have
2:46:43
Speaker 1: the leverage is Trump to force Zelensky to do that.
2:46:46
Speaker 1: You do not have the leverage over Putin to force
2:46:49
Speaker 1: him to abide by an agreement or agree to something
2:46:54
Speaker 1: as stead of parameters that was agreed to first by
2:46:57
Speaker 1: Trump and Zelenski. It's inherently not going to be something
2:47:01
Speaker 1: he's going to feel like he needs to do because
2:47:03
Speaker 1: Trump already told him he has all the leverage. So
2:47:06
Speaker 1: at least so far, I think I've been dead on
2:47:09
Speaker 1: in analyzing what's going to happen or not happen with
2:47:12
Speaker 1: regard to Putin, Zelenski, Trump, and a cease five. One
2:47:16
Speaker 1: last story I got to share because it deals with
2:47:20
Speaker 1: one of my pet peeve topics, and that is the
2:47:23
Speaker 1: issue of climate change, global warming, and specifically how California
2:47:28
Speaker 1: continues to prove that climate change global warming is not real,
2:47:33
Speaker 1: certainly not catastrophic we are It looks like heading for
2:47:37
Speaker 1: our third straight winner, where we are at least at
2:47:40
Speaker 1: average or above average when it comes to snowpack, which
2:47:45
Speaker 1: you know, this is something that was never supposed to
2:47:47
Speaker 1: happen again because of global warming and because of a
2:47:51
Speaker 1: permanent drought that we were experiencing. But this particular weekend
2:47:56
Speaker 1: saw an absolutely hilarious headline that is so very, very
2:48:01
Speaker 1: telling and so incredibly ironic. This from the Orange County
2:48:05
Speaker 1: Register that was picked up in many other publications. This
2:48:09
Speaker 1: is a real story. This is not the Babylon b headline.
2:48:13
Speaker 1: Three hundred people rescued from climate conference amidst Big Bear snowstorm.
2:48:21
Speaker 1: The San Bernardino County Fire Department made three trips in
2:48:26
Speaker 1: a SnowCat to rescue some conference attendees after a snowstorm
2:48:32
Speaker 1: left them stranded. That's right in the middle of March.
2:48:36
Speaker 1: They held a climate conference at Big Bear here in
2:48:40
Speaker 1: southern California, and they had to rescue three hundred people
2:48:46
Speaker 1: because they were trapped in the snow. Now, that's the
2:48:50
Speaker 1: type of story that, if the mainstream news media was
2:48:53
Speaker 1: not so incredibly biased on the topic, would be known
2:48:59
Speaker 1: by basically the whole country. Because it's a hilarious headline
2:49:04
Speaker 1: nobody got hurt, and it shows these climate alarmists, these
2:49:11
Speaker 1: radical activists, these nutjobs, to be exposed as being totally
2:49:17
Speaker 1: wraw because here they are. You know, these are all
2:49:20
Speaker 1: people that believe in global warming. It's the middle of
2:49:22
Speaker 1: March during southern California, and there was a snowstorm that
2:49:25
Speaker 1: caused three hundred people to have to be rescued. But
2:49:29
Speaker 1: that's a story that will not make it into the
2:49:32
Speaker 1: radar of most Americans. And those kinds of stories happen
2:49:35
Speaker 1: all the time. You know, It's very easy to create
2:49:38
Speaker 1: a narrative when you ignore all the data points that
2:49:42
Speaker 1: might make anybody question the narrative, which this clearly anonymously would.
2:49:48
Speaker 1: But I just thought that was clearly the funniest story
2:49:51
Speaker 1: of the week and a good one to end on.
2:49:53
Speaker 1: So that'll do it for this episode of The Death
2:49:55
Speaker 1: of Journalism Podcast, Episode two hundred and thirty three. As
2:49:58
Speaker 1: is always the case, Thanks so much for listening, Thanks
2:50:01
Speaker 1: for being a subscriber. Until next time, so long. I'm
2:50:04
Speaker 1: John Zigler.