Latest / The Death Of Journalism / Episode One Hundred Sixty Two: Zig's Internal Clock
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome episode number one hundred and sixty two of the Death of Journalism podcast.
- 0:04My name is John Zigler. I'm your host. In today's show, the
- 0:07right wing media gets duped by an obvious hoax related to the Trump trial jury.
- 0:12Liberal comedian Chelsea Handler says, one of the most racist things you could
- 0:16possibly imagine. Caitlin Clark gets left off the Olympic basketball team. And it
- 0:23has now been thirty years since oj Simpson killed two people and mostly got away
- 0:28with it. We begin this episode of the podcast with a housekeeping note.
- 0:33We are taping this episode about fourteen fifteen hours earlier than normal, doing it
- 0:40to Sunday evening, early Sunday evening here on the West Coast because of logistical
- 0:46issues, and so if anything happened late Sunday early Monday, it did not
- 0:51make it into this podcast. But there's still plenty to talk about, and
- 0:55I want to begin by going back to the D Day commemoration, the eightieth
- 1:00anniversary of D Day and President Joe Biden's problems. And there were multiple problems
- 1:07with what happened with Joe Biden and the anniversary of D Day. Now there's
- 1:11been a lot of speculation online especially on the right, that during one particular
- 1:18bizarre episode where Biden started to sit down and then turned around and then had
- 1:23to leave early, that he may have crapped his pants. I have absolutely
- 1:27no idea if that's what happened. It's certainly consistent with that possibility, but
- 1:33I don't know what transpired there. I do know that if it had been
- 1:37Trump, the media would be trying to get to the bottom, so to
- 1:41speak, of what did or did not happen there, and that's not happening.
- 1:45We're never going to know because the media is not going to try to
- 1:48find out how strange it was that Biden did what he did During one of
- 1:53the ceremonies related to the eightieth anniversary of D Day. He also was accused
- 1:59of plagiaring Ronald Reagan from the fortieth anniversary of D Day, and the video,
- 2:07which has gone viral online, is pretty compelling that there seems to have
- 2:12been some plagiarism, although basically what Biden was doing was describing the events of
- 2:17the day, and so inherently you know they're going to sound alike because you're
- 2:23telling the same story about the same day. So I wasn't as agitated about
- 2:29the alleged plagiarism as some other people were. I thought it was kind of
- 2:32interesting as to some of the language that was used, but I wouldn't necessarily
- 2:36call it direct plagiarism. Frankly, given the standards of this president, we
- 2:42should all be glad that he didn't claim to actually have stormed the beach himself,
- 2:46which is certainly not outside the realm of possibility when it comes to Joe
- 2:51Biden's memory and his view of what has actually transpired in the history of his
- 2:57own life, which is often exaggerated and not completely fabricated. So he did
- 3:01not thankfully claim to have storm the beaches of Normandy himself. During his commemoration
- 3:07of the eightieth anniversary of D Day, Joe Biden also gave an interview with
- 3:13ABC's anchorman David Muir, and to say this was an interview is a bit
- 3:17of misnomer. This was really soft. I mean, this was basically a
- 3:23commercial for the Biden campaign. David Muir went out of his way to be
- 3:29super soft with Joe Biden, and still, despite Muir's best efforts, I
- 3:35thought Joe Biden came across as borderline out of it. He looked terrible.
- 3:42His eyes were basically closed. I don't know why. It didn't look like
- 3:46he was looking into the sun, but his eyes were essentially closed. He
- 3:50was whispering the whole time, which then created this weird dynamic where Muir himself
- 3:57was who already treating Biden with kid glows us, was lowering his own volume
- 4:01level. So I've never heard of an interview with a president and a major
- 4:06network anchor person that sounded like they were in a church, even though they
- 4:11were not. They were clearly alone and could have been as demonstrative as they
- 4:15wanted to be. But Mure, I think, was reacting to the weakness
- 4:19of Biden's speech, and so the way Biden looked and the way he sounded.
- 4:25Forget about the substance of it, which I had issues with as well,
- 4:30But I did not think that Joe Biden looked good at all in that
- 4:33particular interview. So in general, I would say that the D Day commemoration
- 4:40was a negative for Joe Biden. Of course, the media is not mainstream
- 4:44media is not portraying it that way, and I do think that a lot
- 4:47of this continues, this narrative of Joe Biden in mental decline, and in
- 4:54the last episode of the podcast, we talked about a Wall Street Journal report
- 4:58and extensive report that involved numerous unnamed sources, mostly on the Republican side,
- 5:08with congressional leaders talking about their experiences with Joe Biden and his diminishing mental capabilities.
- 5:15And I told you at that time that I was scheduled to do a
- 5:17television appearance that night on News Nation, the television network News Nation, on
- 5:25Dan Abrams show on Who on whose show I appear about every other week.
- 5:30And I was looking forward to this because I thought I was a good guest
- 5:34for this particular topic. One because I'm not a fan of Di Biden and
- 5:39I'm not a fan of Trump, and I can be objective, but also
- 5:43because I think the media is missing a lot here, and it's not just
- 5:48about where Joe Biden is today. It's about where Joe Biden's going to be
- 5:53likely in three or four years should he be re elected, which I know
- 5:57a lot of Trump fans think is highly unlikely. But I am not in
- 6:00that camp. I mean today, we may start this as a new feature.
- 6:03I'm thinking about it, maybe ending each episode of the podcast with my
- 6:08prediction for the election. Should be should it be held today. But if
- 6:12the election we're held today, I think Biden probably wins a very very close
- 6:15election. Probably two seventy to two sixty eight is as close as you possibly
- 6:19can. But I think Biden is still the favorite. And you know,
- 6:25obviously we still have the debates to go, and who knows what's going to
- 6:27happen with Trump sentencing and all sorts of other things could theoretically happen. But
- 6:31we're also seeing that the electorate is very very divided and very very invested in
- 6:38their current choice. And so I think that this is an issue that really
- 6:44is very important and needs to be dealt with honestly, especially with Kamala Harris
- 6:49waiting in the wings to take over in a second Joe Biden terms. So
- 6:54I want to play a clip from the appearance as it did happen that night
- 6:59on New Nation. And I'm playing this for a couple of different reasons.
- 7:01I fully acknowledge that what I say on New Nation has absolutely no real impact
- 7:08in the world as a whole, but I do think one you're going to
- 7:11find some of this to be enjoyable, maybe entertaining, but also it'll give
- 7:15you a sense as to the making of the sausage when it comes to these
- 7:19TV shows and how content actually gets created on the cable news networks. I
- 7:27want to set this up by actually acknowledging that I really missed an opportunity here,
- 7:32and I had a little bit of an excuses for why I was on
- 7:38with Danny Abrams, for whom I used to work at Mediaite as a senior
- 7:43columnist for several years, and Colby Hall, who I used to work with
- 7:47at Mediaite when he was an editor there. So this is a very incestuous,
- 7:53you know, interaction and interview situation where all three of us know each
- 7:58other very very well. Colby Hall is a liberal, and Colby was objecting
- 8:05to The Wall Street Journal's article not because of the subject matter, which he
- 8:09acknowledged was important and legitimate, but because it was almost all based upon Republican
- 8:16accounts. And I did not take him on on that issue. And the
- 8:22reason I didn't was basically twofold one. I could not hear everything he was
- 8:28saying, and we were having a technical problem where I was losing about every
- 8:33third or fourth word. And to give you a sense of how this happens,
- 8:39so I used to do these TV appearances from my house where they gave
- 8:45me an iPad and I click on a link and I set up my own
- 8:50studio. They gave me the studio equipment, and that had its pros and
- 8:54its cons. You may recall one time it was definitely a con because I
- 9:00the iPad up upside down and I was looking in the wrong direction. That
- 9:03was terrible. But I guess because I've been on so often, they've decided
- 9:09to start sending a studio truck to wherever I am. And the studio truck
- 9:16has a lot of advantages. You know, first of all, looks a
- 9:18lot better, it sounds a lot better, but it has a couple of
- 9:24disadvantages, one of which, by the way, is that it gets my
- 9:26neighbor very suspicious. We have a neighbor who's been very good to our kids,
- 9:31who's close to my wife, who is looking out for anything that's unusual
- 9:37in the neighborhood. And this truck that they said is very large, very
- 9:41white, It has no windows, and then they cover up the windows that
- 9:45exist for the driver so that there's no light coming into the studio, the
- 9:48television studio inside the truck. Well, to's someone who doesn't know what's going
- 9:52on. I can surely understand why it seems very very suspicious. So fairly
- 9:58our neighbor was texting my wife as to what the hell this very strange,
- 10:03suspicious looking van was doing outside of our house. That's just kind of a
- 10:07humorous side note to this. The downside to having the truck is that there
- 10:13is one a delay, and I don't understand why there's a delay. I
- 10:20hate that there's a delay because it always makes it look like I'm not responding
- 10:24quickly enough, and it also makes it very very difficult for me to interrupt
- 10:28because I'm on like a second second and a half delay, and so that's
- 10:35disconcerting. But in this particular situation, the feed that we were getting in
- 10:41was breaking up because it's all done via the Internet and instead of satellite.
- 10:48So because of that, I wasn't really sure what Colby was saying, And
- 10:52if I had heard what he was saying in totality, I would have made
- 10:58the point that at so what we're basically doing here is we're setting up a
- 11:01situation where unless Democrats admit that their own guy is losing it mentally, we're
- 11:07not allowed to report on that. I mean, that's a ridiculous standard,
- 11:11and not to mention that the article did indicate that there were some Democrats who
- 11:18were also saying this behind the scenes. Now, I said in last week's
- 11:22episode, episode one sixty one, that I wish that the Wall Street Journal
- 11:26had been more specific about the numbers how many Republicans and how many Democrats.
- 11:30But that was a regret I had in this particular television appearance, where I
- 11:35should have addressed that with Colby Hall. And I'm not making an excuse.
- 11:39I'm just saying that part of what happened here was that I could not hear
- 11:43every word that Colby was saying. And then also, I guess, in
- 11:46conjunction with that, because I could not hear every word, I decided to
- 11:50just go with what I was planning to say from the start because I was
- 11:54almost flying blind, and so that's partially why I went in the direction I
- 12:00did. So I'm going to play you about a little less than four minute
- 12:05clip here where it starts with my first answer, I'm responding to Colby Hall,
- 12:11although not in the way that I wish that I would have, And
- 12:13then you're gonna hear some interaction between me and Dan and Colby, and then
- 12:20they eventually come back to me, and I end it with a bit of
- 12:24a joke, a joke that I've used on this podcast before, which really
- 12:30kind of almost stopped the entire show and thankfully happened at the exact right time.
- 12:37Otherwise it might have been a detriment to the show. And I'm going
- 12:39to have some thoughts about how and why that happened the way that it did.
- 12:43After you listened to this clip, Jonzi, I disagree that. I
- 12:48think this is a very legitimate issue, and I think that the piece was
- 12:52sound. I actually would have focused a little bit more on why is it
- 12:56that Special Counsel Robert HER's interview is being prevented from being public by this administration?
- 13:01To me, that is almost an admission of guilt that there's something amiss
- 13:05here. I did find it a bit humorous that we have to look behind
- 13:07closed doors to see that Biden's mental acuty may be declining. Has anybody watched
- 13:13them in public recently, It's pretty obvious that you don't need behind closed doors
- 13:16stories to be able to tell that something is a miss. My biggest issue
- 13:20here, Dan, I think this is the part that's being missed. Is
- 13:22it's not about Joe Biden in twenty twenty four. He is running for reelection.
- 13:28If he is re elected, he will be president in twenty twenty eight,
- 13:33four years from now. This mental decline is going to be precipitous.
- 13:37Anybody knows anybody, especially men in their eighties, who start this decline,
- 13:41it's quite natural. There's no coming back from this. We need to be
- 13:46talking about what would Joe Biden be like in twenty twenty seven, twenty twenty
- 13:50eight, and it's not a good thing for the country to have somebody in
- 13:52that state as president of the United States. Let me play a piece of
- 13:56sound. This is from one of the authors of the piece. Chobn Us
- 14:00was on CNN earlier today. We heard from administration officials that McCarthy did say
- 14:07that the president was sharp in media. Our reporting also suggested that McCarthy was
- 14:13doing that tactically because he had to get along with President Biden at a time
- 14:16when the country was at really risk of a debt default if there was not
- 14:20some type of a deal. So you can take that for what it's worth.
- 14:22You can decide McCarthy is not credible or that he is, but that's
- 14:26what our reporting showed. And Colby, IM go ahead, Yeah, I
- 14:30mean that seems like it's stunning to me that well, first of all,
- 14:33she says that Kevin McCarthy said that tactically, Well then why would you say
- 14:39it privately? Of course he said it publicly also, but if he was
- 14:41saying it privately, that sort of undermines her case that this was a tactic.
- 14:46But also he's the only on the record source for this story, and
- 14:50she just called to question his own credibility, say take it with a grain
- 14:54of salt, which to me, I mean Kevin McCarthy is a political animal,
- 14:58so too is everyone. I agree with what John says. I suggest
- 15:01he listens instill more what I'm saying. I do think this is a gravely
- 15:05serious issue, one that should be reported, you know, fairly, with
- 15:09voices on both sides. And when you only put forth the you know,
- 15:13sort of the blind quotes from House Republicans, it's not telling the full story.
- 15:18I think there's more to it. But I just think that this piece,
- 15:20you know, it's a serious issue that deserves better journalism. God John,
- 15:28Well, my big thing here is that with Garden McCarthy men in their
- 15:31eighties. Some days are fantastic, other days are not. But Joe Biden
- 15:37was able to get it together for the State of the Union address. I
- 15:39actually think, politically, Dan, this article helps Joe Biden by reducing expectations
- 15:45for the debates. It's going to be a huge advantage to him for people
- 15:48to be thinking, well, this guy has dementia. Well no he doesn't.
- 15:50He looks just fine. Because men can get it together in a big
- 15:54event like this, and I think Biden probably will be able to do so.
- 15:58But we have a situation where we have a current president with a rotting
- 16:00brain, a former president with a broken brain, and a third party candidate
- 16:04who has a brain it's been eaten by worms. This is the best we
- 16:07can do in America. Congratulations everyone. Legally you planned that line, right,
- 16:12Yeah, that didn't just come naturally. Come on, you planned that
- 16:15line. It's a good line, John Day, I'm the best man.
- 16:19Come on, get in kolbe Hall. You have Tim Ryan laughing here in
- 16:25studio. Thank you bout very much for coming on. Appreciate it now.
- 16:30I was a little bit surprised how taken aback Dan was at my joke.
- 16:37It was fine that everyone thought it was funny that the next guest, Tim
- 16:41former Congressman Tim Ryan, thought it was funny. Colby thought it was funny.
- 16:45I think it's a good line, one that I've used at least once
- 16:48or twice on this podcast. It's one hundred percent accurate. But here's what
- 16:53I found to be interesting from a making the sausage element of this whole situation.
- 17:00That line would only work if it was the very last moment of that
- 17:07portion of the show, at the end of that segment. If I had
- 17:12dumped that line in the middle of the segment, as you can tell,
- 17:18things would have gone sideways. And you know how it's very difficult to recover
- 17:22from that situation. If literally you have a show stopper, that's what that
- 17:26line basically was, was a show stopper, then you're actually creating a disruption,
- 17:33and that would be negative because then Dan has got to figure out,
- 17:37Okay, how do I recover from this? And I've got to also figure
- 17:40out my timing because as you heard there, he's referencing Tim Ryan, who's
- 17:44in studio with him, who he's going to do an interview with on a
- 17:48related but different topic within the same segment. Now, What's interesting to me
- 17:55is I did not know that. I did not know that that's what they
- 17:59were going to do. In fact, I had never even had a conversation
- 18:03with a producer about how long the segment was going to be. This was
- 18:04the first segment of the show, which is generally the longest segment by far,
- 18:10and so I had every logical reason to think that the segment that we
- 18:17were doing was going to continue on for a little bit longer because I knew
- 18:22we had more time. I knew in my brain that this was not going
- 18:27to be the end of the first segment. Yet, weirdly, I knew
- 18:33this was the end of my portion of the show. I don't know why
- 18:37I knew that. It was just instinctive. It was, I guess from
- 18:41having done this so many times before. I just knew that this was the
- 18:47last thing I was going to say in this segment. Now, generally when
- 18:49I do these shows, I only get to speak two or three times.
- 18:55It's almost always two or three times. But in my brain, the pacing
- 18:59of this and the way Dan was handling the segment, I felt like,
- 19:03Okay, I can use this line without creating too much of a disruption,
- 19:08Because it's going to be an ender. It's going to be the way this
- 19:12particular segment ends, and therefore there's no big problem. I'm not creating a
- 19:18disruption, and that turned out to be true. Now why I knew that,
- 19:22I don't know. You know, when it comes to broadcasting, I
- 19:26have a lot of weaknesses. I'm sure you've figured them out for yourselves.
- 19:30I have a couple of strengths, one of which, if I have a
- 19:33superpower, it's probably my bullshit detector, which is finally tuned at this point,
- 19:38and that's probably what I'm most well known for, being able to figure
- 19:42out what's true and what's fake. And I'm going to do that again in
- 19:47this episode in short order, and my record on that is as good as
- 19:51anybody i'm aware of, maybe better than anybody that i'm aware of, mainly
- 19:55because of the situations that I've been in and because I have a unique set
- 20:00of self interest, because I don't care. I'm not beholden to anybody.
- 20:04I'm not part of any cult. I'm not afraid of pissing anybody off,
- 20:08so I'm free to come to contrarian conclusions. So that would be my greatest
- 20:15strength. If I have a secondary strength. It's probably that I have this
- 20:19weird internal clock. And one of the reasons I'm mentioning this is this is
- 20:25something that was picked up on by David Foster Wallace, the famous now dead
- 20:30and having committed suicide author who did a twenty three page cover story on me
- 20:34many years ago for then Atlantic Monthly magazine. This thing is exceedingly well known.
- 20:41It's probably in some circles it's the thing I'm most well known for,
- 20:47and that is being the subject of this article, this feature called the host
- 20:52or I think it may have just been called host by David Foster Wallace,
- 20:56who in left wing circles was a deity, you know, in the literary
- 21:00world, and then he killed himself not long after having spent quite a few
- 21:04months with me to write this article. I don't think that was related to
- 21:07his suicide, but I've all often wondered about that, and without getting into
- 21:12the whole David Foster, well, is this thing again, which is an
- 21:17amazing story. In the twenty three page cover story that he wrote, he
- 21:22goes into great detail for at least a page page and a half in my
- 21:26recollection about the timing the internal clock, that it takes to be a radio
- 21:33talk show host, and how he himself tried to do what he saw me
- 21:38do at KFI Radio in Los Angeles, which was basically to start talking about
- 21:44a subject and then end in a rational way in an eight eight and a
- 21:48half nine minute segment and be able to transition to something else. Now,
- 21:55how it is that you know I'm one of the people that can do this,
- 21:57I don't know, but I do think that that internal clock played a
- 22:03very key role in how that TV segment went because I don't know what was
- 22:07telling me that this was the last moment of the segment and it was okay
- 22:11for me to drop that joke, which I knew was going to create a
- 22:15disruption. But I just knew it. I was very confident of it,
- 22:19and that's the way it worked out, and for better or for worse,
- 22:23that's what happened. So I've thought a lot about why it is that David
- 22:27Foster Wallace found that to be so fascinating, because to me, it's not
- 22:33a big deal. But I guess that's why David Foster Wallace found it to
- 22:37be of interest because to him it was nearly impossible to do. But to
- 22:42me, I mean done it many, many, many times in many different
- 22:45ways. Then you know, it's just something that happens, and I have
- 22:49no real control over it, and it is kind of a remarkable thing that
- 22:55it's almost never wrong. I mean, that's the weirdest part of the whole
- 22:59thing. So I don't want to delve into it too deeply. It's a
- 23:02sidetrack issue. It sounds like, you know, I'm being egotistical. I'm
- 23:06not. It's just a weird phenomenon that occurred in this particular TV situation,
- 23:14And thankfully it did, because I do think that if I had done something
- 23:17like that and it created a bigger stir than I anticipated, if I had
- 23:21done that in the middle of the segment, it probably would have been a
- 23:23problem, but at the end it worked out just fine. Now I referenced
- 23:29the bullshit detector, and I think we have a classic example of where my
- 23:34finely tuned bullshit detector has easily sniffed out yet another situation where the right wing
- 23:42pro Trump media has humiliated themselves, humiliated themselves by jumping all over a story
- 23:52that is clearly and obviously bullshit. And what I'm referring to is a story
- 24:00that broke late on Friday, where the judge in the Trump trial, Judge
- 24:06Murshan, sent a letter to the lawyers in the case and made the letter
- 24:12public. And the letter started off by saying, dear counsel, today the
- 24:17court became aware of a comment that was posted on the Unified Court System's public
- 24:23Facebook page in which I now bring to your attention. In the comment,
- 24:29the user quote unquote Michael Anderson states quote my cousin is a juror and says
- 24:34Trump is getting convicted. Thank you, folks for all your hard work.
- 24:40Four exclamation points and a heart the comment. This is now back to the
- 24:45letter from Judge Murshan. The comment, now labeled one week old, responded
- 24:51to a routine UCS notice posted on May twenty ninth. Now, and then
- 24:57it goes on to basically go nowhere as far as anything sort of relevant content.
- 25:03But it's basically the judge informing the lawyers at hey, we found out
- 25:07about this Facebook post, and it is what it is. No editorial comment,
- 25:14no comment about whether or not we found out whether or not this Anderson
- 25:18character really is a cousin of a juror, nothing about any sort of hearing
- 25:23to discuss whether or not this will cause a mistrial, purely just Informationally,
- 25:30Hey, we found out about this comment and it is what it is,
- 25:36and my god, at least on Twitter, the pro Trump MAGA world right
- 25:41winger media commentators went bananas, and even some semi credible people people like Klay
- 25:51Travis, who I've talked about quite a bit, who frustrates the hell out
- 25:55of me, jumped all over this. Even guy Benson, who doesn't even
- 25:59like Trump I have respect for, gave some credibility to this idea. And
- 26:04so for about twenty four hours in Magaworld, it was a done deal Trump's
- 26:11getting a mistrial because the judge would never possibly make this public unless it had
- 26:15already been vetted, and we therefore know this guy is the cousin of a
- 26:21jur. We therefore know that the jur actually said this, and that because
- 26:26of the timing of the post, this proves that the jury was out to
- 26:30get Trump, and that therefore there should be a mistrial and the conviction should
- 26:37be erased and all will be good in magaworld, and in about three seconds,
- 26:42it was obvious that this story is garbage, that there's zero chance,
- 26:49zero chance that this post is legitimate that this post was from the quote unquote
- 26:56cousin of a jur and a juror actually said this to this particular person,
- 27:04And frankly I knew this immediately just from the context of the Facebook post itself.
- 27:15Forget about who it is, this Michael Anderson guy who I'll get to
- 27:18in a second. Just the content itself makes this story obviously not true,
- 27:26because if it was true, that is not the way the person would write
- 27:33this post. First of all, they wouldn't even write the post. No,
- 27:36no one would do this because they would obviously be in a situation where
- 27:41they would be creating a massive problem for the result that they want. So
- 27:48the only way this would happen in theory, right is if for some reason
- 27:55somebody close to adjuror got this information and they were upset about it, which
- 28:00this poster clearly was not, with the exclamation points and the heart, So
- 28:06nobody who was excited about this would post it, especially before the actual verdict.
- 28:12That's number one. Number two, the use of the word cousin was
- 28:18an immediate alarm bell, massive alarm bell to me, because you're unlikely.
- 28:26First of all, you're unlikely if you're a jury to tell anybody this.
- 28:30I mean, people are stupid, they do dumb things all the time,
- 28:33so it's possible. But in the list of people that you're likely to tell,
- 28:37a cousin is very unlikely. By the way, this is not in
- 28:41the South here, this is a New York City jury. Cousins are different
- 28:45in New York City than they might be in the South, So a cousin
- 28:51is not near the top of the list to somebody that you're going to tell
- 28:53this kind of thing too, even if you have the wherewithal or the inclination
- 28:59to do so. So that doesn't disprove it, but that makes me go,
- 29:03a cousin really. But here's where cousin is really important and why I
- 29:10think it goes to the immediate conclusion that this is bullshit. Because if you
- 29:15are creating a prank, if the post is not real, and you are
- 29:22looking to create a situation where you are given at least a semblance of credibility
- 29:26by whoever's reading this, cousin is exactly what you would use. Cousin is
- 29:33perfect for that. It's perfect for a fake post for a prank. Why
- 29:38Because cousin, in people's minds gives the poster immediate at least some credibility.
- 29:48Oh okay, so you're a relative of the juror, and so that gives
- 29:53a reason for why they might tell you such explosive information that they're going to
- 29:59convey trump that to people, especially if they want to believe something. Let's
- 30:04be clear, when people want to believe something, they're very likely to believe
- 30:08it. They're gonna stop using rational thought, and any red flags are gonna
- 30:14be ignored. But in this particular situation, cousin gives the post some semblance
- 30:19of credibility, and it's impossible to refute. See, that's the beauty of
- 30:26the word cousin if you're a prankster, because cousin, at least for in
- 30:33the short run, cannot be disproven. Why Well, because, first of
- 30:40all, cousin can mean different things to different people. But most importantly,
- 30:44there's a very good chance you don't have the same last name as the jur
- 30:47Now we don't know the names of the jurors. But which is another reason
- 30:51why this It was inherently suspect, right, because this gives the opportunity for
- 30:57a prankster to to say anything they want because everything's plausible. But just to
- 31:04give themselves extra deniability, or at least you'll make it much more difficult for
- 31:11anybody to prove that this post is a prank. If you say cousin,
- 31:15then your last name is irrelevant to this. There doesn't have to be a
- 31:22juror by the name of Anderson, which is what this guy's name is,
- 31:26Michael Anderson, because obviously cousins may or may not have the last name.
- 31:32Oftentimes don't, so cousin is the perfect word to use if it's a prank.
- 31:40It's perfect. It gives a semblance of credibility while making it impossible to
- 31:45disprove, at least in the short run. And in this situation, because
- 31:51we don't even know the names of the jurors, it makes it basically impossible
- 31:55to disprove. So if you're just looking to create chaos, if you're just
- 31:59looking for your fifteen seconds of fame, if you're just looking for people to
- 32:04give you some attention, or to create a fake news story, this is
- 32:08exactly how you would do it. That's not how you would do it.
- 32:13If it was real, you would not be posting. By the way,
- 32:15the Facebook page had nothing directly to do with the Trump case and you wouldn't
- 32:22do it in such a jovial fashion, especially again if you were somebody who
- 32:29wanted that outcome, unless you were a completing potal imbecile, because that would
- 32:34create inherent suspicion. Unless the only way you would do this is if you
- 32:38were pissed off, and I doubt that that's the way you would do this.
- 32:43You wouldn't post on Facebook. You would go to the authorities if you
- 32:46were pissed off that you found out that a juror will had it out for
- 32:52Trump and that the whole jury was planning on convicting him. But then we
- 32:57go to Michael Anderson himself, and that's when this becomes laughable, because Michael
- 33:05Anderson, in multiple social media platforms, has referred to himself as effectively a
- 33:12professional shit poster. That's a quote, a shit poster. And it appears
- 33:20as if Michael Anderson is a Trump fan. Well, there it is game
- 33:28set match. This is total bullshit. This guy is a prankster. This
- 33:34is guy is a Trump fan. He was trying to create a news story
- 33:38for whatever reason. What his anticipation for this was, I have no idea
- 33:43what his expectations were. I don't know what you know, but it's obvious
- 33:47that this is a Trump fan creating a fake post, using the word cousin
- 33:54for some semblance of credibility, and then being all excited like he's a liberal
- 34:01that yay, thank you Jerry for getting Donald Trump exclamation point exclamation point exclamation
- 34:07point, exclamation point heart emoji. Well, obviously that's not consistent with a
- 34:15Trump supporter. And when the person making the post refers to them as a
- 34:21shit poster, and has even done so after this became a story, we
- 34:28know this is all ridiculous. This is all bullshit, And I would normally
- 34:34not even have maybe mention this other than that it's just ridiculous and absurd and
- 34:40kind of humorous if not for the fact that so many right wing media MAGA
- 34:47influencers bought in, almost in totality on this. Now that a lot of
- 34:53them said if true or if verified, this will lead to a mistrial.
- 35:00This is huge, and I'm like, oh my god. First of all,
- 35:04by the way, let's pretend for a second that you're a moron and
- 35:08you just accept that this post is true and that the person posting it really
- 35:14is the cousin of a jur and they really were told this by a jury
- 35:19member themselves. Even if all that's true, which it was obvious to me
- 35:22it was not. Even if all that's true, that doesn't get you to
- 35:28a mistrial. You would still have a huge bridge to cross, which was
- 35:34to prove that this person was actually told this by the juror, and that
- 35:40evidence would have to be clear cut and dramatic to no and void the entire
- 35:47verdict, especially with this judge, Judge Marshawan, who you know, Maga
- 35:52world has hated for months. That's maybe the most hilarious part of this whole
- 35:59situation is all of a sudden, Megaworld, who's hated Judge Marchon because Trump
- 36:05has been all over him, and not without some good reasons. All of
- 36:08a sudden was putting all the credibility on this story on the idea that Judgemarshon
- 36:15would not have made this public unless it was vetted and real. What you
- 36:21people are such fucking hympocrats? Are you listening to yourselves? You already believe
- 36:27that Judge Murshon is not a credible person. So how is it that him
- 36:30writing a very short letter that's obviously a butt covering maneuver? That's clearly what
- 36:36this is. This is obviously a situation where the judge found out about this
- 36:43and he wants to make it public because if it comes out through right wing
- 36:47media somehow, it's gonna make it look like they're hiding something. It's gonna
- 36:52make it look like this is a cover up. So he's actually probably doing
- 36:59the right thing, being proactive about this and saying, hey, look,
- 37:02this was found. You know, he doesn't say this is nothing, but
- 37:06he's just he's making a record of it, covering his own ass. And
- 37:10maybe, by the way, who knows. I don't know whether or not
- 37:15this judge thinks this way, but it wouldn't be a stretch for this judge
- 37:17to also think, boy, the right wing media is gonna go bananas with
- 37:22this bullshit and they're gonna look like idiots. Who knows, but that's effectively
- 37:25what has happened. So and it wasn't just one or two, it was
- 37:30dozens and dozens. I mean, everybody, even tangentially related to Magaworld jumped
- 37:37all over this. And to my knowledge, I was one of the few
- 37:42conservatives to stand up and go immediately, guys, this is bullshit. There
- 37:46is no chance that this is real There is no chance this is going to
- 37:52lead to a Trump mistrial zero, nor should it, because it's obviously not
- 38:00a real thing. And I guess one of the reasons I'm so passionate about
- 38:07this is that of all the many impacts that Donald Trump has had on the
- 38:13Republican Party or the conservative movement or whatever the hell you want to call it
- 38:16these days, I think that the one that probably upsets me the most is
- 38:22the whole notion of buying into conspiracy theories constantly, even when they're obviously wrong.
- 38:30And now, unfortunately, and this is the media's own damn fault,
- 38:35because so many of these so called conspiracy theories have turned out to be at
- 38:39least partially true, if not completely true, and because you know, Russia
- 38:44Gate totally blew up in their faces. And I get it that there are
- 38:49a lot of people now that are much more skeptical and understandably so rationally so
- 38:54of any narrative that the media jumps all over that's anti Trump. I guess
- 39:00that one hundred percent. And I've attacked the media for blowing their own credibility
- 39:05on this. But then within the Trump world, within the Trump cult members,
- 39:09there's this very illogical reaction to that, and that is that we go
- 39:15from well, because some conspiracy theories are things that were labeled conspiracy theories have
- 39:20turned out to be true, that means all conspiracy theories are now inherently true
- 39:27unless proven wrong. And that is not a stretch. That is really what
- 39:30the base Trump cult member believes. And the reaction to this story proved it
- 39:37yet again, because I can't tell you it had to be at least dozens
- 39:43and dozens and dozens of times I had people calling me the idiot, calling
- 39:51me the person who was being duped, because I was telling people this story
- 39:55is not true and it is not going to result in a mistrial. These
- 40:00Trump cult members are so positive that they're right even when they are completely and
- 40:06totally wrong. These people are fucking morons and they drive me crazy. And
- 40:13the idea that this is the base of the Republican Party now is just so
- 40:17sad and so aggravated. These are just dumb people. You have to be
- 40:23an imbecile to buy into this story and then to pretend that somehow, people
- 40:30like me, we're the dumb ones, We're the people that are being the
- 40:36useful idiots that it's obvious that this is going to lead to a mistrial,
- 40:42especially given what they believe about Judge Marshawn is just it's just flat out hilarious
- 40:47if it wasn't so sad too, because it's totally sad. These are just
- 40:52incredibly dumb people. The average Trump cult member on social media and Twitter are
- 41:00among the dumbest people I have ever come across. And this whole situation was
- 41:07yet another great example of that. And you know, we talk a lot
- 41:12about how broken the left wing media is, but the right wing media is
- 41:15broken just as badly, but in different ways, largely because their base of
- 41:22support are a bunch of fucking morons, and because the people who are running
- 41:27the right wing media aren't very bright themselves. And we know I've already stated
- 41:32I cannot believe I honestly was shocked. I shouldn't have been. How many
- 41:37semi credible media commentators we're giving any kind of credibility to this BS report about
- 41:46a self professed shit poster that's never going to result in anything close to a
- 41:52mistrial. And you know, there's been a lot of problems in the right
- 41:55wing media. NBC News actually just did a whole expo about all the things
- 42:00that have happened in the right wing media in recent weeks that are showing just
- 42:06how fundamentally broken and in crisis the right wing media is. Here's a partial
- 42:13list of what they went through. Gateway Pundit a guy I met many many
- 42:16years ago, these nuts. He's completely insane, and somehow he became very
- 42:22successful, largely because he got some credibility from Andrew Breitbart and from Matt Drudge,
- 42:29and he's super conspiracy oriented. Well, he's just declared bankruptcy. You
- 42:34have the one American news network settling with Smart Mattic. This wasn't mentioned directly,
- 42:39but you have a Newsmax still dealing with the Dominion voting system's lawsuit situation,
- 42:46where they clearly know they are very vulnerable after what happened with the settlement
- 42:52between Dominion and Fox NewsChannel. You have Salem, which I've dealt with extensively
- 42:57and have no respect for whatsoever, retracting Densh Desuza's two thousand mules for fear
- 43:04of lawsuits. You have Alex Jones, the conspiracy pro Trump nutjob, agreeing
- 43:08to sell off assets because of the verdict and the Sandy Hook case. You've
- 43:15got the FEDS alleging a top Epic Times executive laundered sixty seven million dollars using
- 43:23the Epic Times as the base of operations there. So you have a fundamentally
- 43:30broken right wing media. The right wing media started as a reaction to the
- 43:37left wing or the mainstream media, the mainstream meda becoming more and more openly
- 43:42left wing. And so it started off with the best of intentions, and
- 43:45it started off being about the truth. And now here we are a couple
- 43:50decades later and basically three decades later, and it's completely corrupted. And part
- 43:59of that's because of Trump. Part of that's a reaction to Trump. Part
- 44:02of that's Trump realizing that there was a vulnerability within the right wing media and
- 44:07taking advantage of it brilliantly in twenty sixteen and then now taking it over and
- 44:13essentially running the right wing media. But it's not about truth. And unfortunately
- 44:17it has given the mainstream laft wing media, which is in huge financial crisis,
- 44:22it has given them a massive break because the right wing has no credibility
- 44:29with average voters none, and understandably so, largely because of many of the
- 44:35things I just told you, and because of the pension for grabbing on to
- 44:38bullshit conspiracy theories like this idea that somehow the Trump trial is going to be
- 44:44declared a mistrial because of this shit poster named Michael Anderson. By the way,
- 44:50one of the reasons why you know that story was bullshit is because Trump
- 44:52himself never really responded to it. He put out on Trump on truth social
- 44:59trump social whatever you would have called untrue social. He put out the word
- 45:02mistrial, exclamation point, that was it, which was classic and perfect Trump
- 45:08because his fans are thinking he's reacting to the same story that they're obsessing about.
- 45:15But he has total plausible deniability because he never mentions the story specifically because
- 45:20he himself knows it's bullshit, because if it wasn't bullshit, he'd be talking
- 45:23about twenty four to seven, but he's not. Just drives me crazy.
- 45:30Thanks for listening to today's free drop of the abbreviated show. If you're interested
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