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The Death Of Jopurnalism Episode One Hundred Thirty Four: A Box Of Chocolates · The Death Of Journalism

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Welcome to episode number one hundred and thirty four of the Death of Journalism podcasts.
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My name is John Zigler. On today's show, Super Tuesday goes mostly
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as expected and Nikky Hanley drops out. The liberal media meltdown over the most
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recent Supreme Court ruling is even worse than I originally thought, Michelle Obama is
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officially out of the presidential race. Yeah, no kidding, And the cancerous
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impact of nil money is seemingly growing even further in supposedly scholastic athletics. Before
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we get to the news of the day, I want to start this episode
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with a short personal note or story which may or may not impact how this
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episode goes. Yesterday I went to go play golf, which normally would not
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be a noteworthy event except for a couple of reasons. One, I have
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not actually been on a course since I think before Christmas, which is unusual
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for me as a tournament golfer, and the main reasons for this are basically
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twofold. One the weather here in California has been terrible over the winter,
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and two I've been trying to save money and the course where I'm a member
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basically requires you to take a cart because it's so hilly and so but i'll
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pay for a cart. I don't have a cart fee. But yesterday the
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weather was good, so I decided maybe i'll play nine holes because tournament season
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is starting soon. And I got a lot of rust to shake off here,
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and I went out to go play nine holes, and it didn't go
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particularly well to start, because I was in a heated text exchange with our
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executive producer, Mike Agavino, over things related to transitioning this podcast to a
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paid subscription format, a format which you probably already know I am not a
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fan of, and so that was kind of take away from whatever benefits finally
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getting on the golf course was supposed to have. But then on the sixth
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green of the nine holes that I was expecting to play, I had something
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extremely strange and disconcerting happened where I suddenly got a really tight sensation in my
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chest and I had like this flash of light, and I got very dizzy,
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and I almost fell over. And again I'm running a cart, I'm
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on the green. I'm playing alone, by the way, which is important
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for the context of this story. And I don't fall to the ground,
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and I do recover but I'm still dizzy and disoriented and rather disconcerted as to
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what the hell just happened. Now. I have never had a heart attack
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or a stroke. Some people are surprised by that based upon how excited I
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get at particular moments, even on this podcast. I'm sure sometimes it sounds
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like I'm about to have a stroke, but was. This was very concerning,
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and I didn't know exactly how to handle it. So I immediately googled,
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you know, what the symptoms are for a mild heart attack, or
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I guess what sometimes is called a silent heart attack, and it seemed to
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fit. What happened to me seemed to fit some not all, of those
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symptoms. But I, even though I was disoriented, I thought, Okay,
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you know, I'm going to continue on. I don't know whether or
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not I should call somebody, And I kept playing, and weirdly, I
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actually played probably a little bit better for the vital three holes of the nine
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holes. But in the process of coming back to the clubhouse and still feeling
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dizzy and disoriented and very confused, I had a text exchange with a friend
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of mine, and I've mentioned on the podcast before, a high school friend
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by the name of Dave Petrucco, who's an avid subscriber to the podcast,
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and I happened to have been texting with him when this happened. We were
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talking about the Michelle Obama story that I promoted at the beginning of this episode,
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in which I'll get to a little bit later on. And I don't
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even know why. Maybe it was my disorientation, but I didn't know who
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to ask about what I should do, and I, you know, day's
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my age. I thought, have you ever had anything like this happen?
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Because I think I might have just had a mild heart attack, and he
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got very agitated, which I thought was nice of him, I guess,
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and he got a doctor on the phone, and then he was urging me
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to go to urgent care. And I don't really need to do that.
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I think I'm fine, But because Dave was so adamant about it, I
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called a doctor friend of mine who was local, and he agreed with Dave
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that I need to go to urgent care and checked out, and I kind
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of thought, I don't really need to do this. I think I'm fine.
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I'm just confused as to what the hell happened here. And I think
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part of why I was more concerned than I would be normally as well,
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one, I'm almost fifty seven years old and I'm not in as good as
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shape as I should be, able to gain some weight over the winter months
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as I normally do, but more so this year than normal. And also
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the last year and a half has been extremely mentally stressful. I mean extremely
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and this podcast is part of it. In fact, part of the reason
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why I wanted to end the podcast and get away from public life entirely was
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because I wanted to end fruitless stress in my life. And you know,
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the podcast is extremely stressful to do at a high level. But also,
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as I've alluded to a couple of times, I have this incredibly bizarre what
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I refer to is black swan event that has been hanging over my head for
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about the same year and a half long period that we've been doing this podcast,
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and that has really taken a toll on me mentally and psychologically, and
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is still as of this day hanging over my head, although I have tried
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mightily to just ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist, because I don't believe
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that it will ever actually come to fruition, but because I'm aware of my
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age and fitness level and stress level over the last year and a half,
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I was particularly concerned, Okay, well, maybe did I actually have some
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sort of cardiac episode, And because I had two friends urging me to go
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to urgent care, I did do that, and I did get an EKG
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test and it turned out to be normal, And the doctor there had a
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couple of theories about what may or may not have happened, and I'm not
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convinced any of them make total sense. So I don't know what happened.
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I do know something happened, and I do know that it was more than
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off putting, and it was certainly real. My wife clearly wasn't all that
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concerned about it because last night, as we always do on Tuesday nights,
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after the girls go to gymnastics, we still went out to Burger King for
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hamburgers and French fries. So it's not like she was particularly agitated by the
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potential cardiac episode or non episode that I experienced while on the golf course.
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But other than the context of the story maybe having significance regarding my life in
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general, there may also be a small impact when it comes to this episode
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of the podcast because I may not get quite as excited as I normally do
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during the two hour plus excursion that is the death of journalism podcasts, at
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least subconsciously, I may be dialing it back just a hair Who knows.
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I'm not sure about that. I'm not making any promises, but if you
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notice that, that's the reason for it. But the good news is there's
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apparently nothing fundamentally wrong. But I do think I need to lose some weight,
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and I do need to figure out a way to reduce stress in my
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life. I don't know how to do that based upon the reality. But
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that's another story for another day. Now to the news of the day,
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and obviously the big political story is the results of Super Tuesday, which were
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not very surprising in the macro or in the global. However, there were
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a few things that were interesting, and we do have a development the next
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day this Wednesday morning, as we tape this episode of the podcast, where
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Nikki Haley has dropped out of the race, even though she actually arguably did
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better on Super Tuesday than many expected and better than I expected. I had
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made a prediction after South Carolina that that would be the last state state,
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not DC or Territory, the last state where Haley got over forty percent of
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the vote. Even there she really didn't get forty percent but rounded up to
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forty percent. So I gave her forty percent for that, But I thought
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that was going to be her high water mark for the rest of the way.
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That prediction turned out to be false. She got over forty percent in
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Utah. But there's a little bit of an asterisk there because that's a caucus
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and obviously Utah is a very unique state. But I'll give it to her.
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So she made my prediction come out to be false in Utah. But
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even more significantly than what happened in Utah, she won the Vermont primary.
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Now, the Vermont primary is a bit odd. It's a completely open prime.
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I have no doubt that the average person who voted in the Vermont primary
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would be considered to be a Democrat by certainly mainstream Republicans. And by the
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way, what I mean by mainstream Republicans in this day and age is maga
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Republicans. That's now the mainstream sadly enough, so the average Republican voter or
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voter who in the Republican primary in Vermont is way more quote unquote liberal,
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however you define that in this day and age, than the average Republican voter
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nationwide. But Haley one, and she won with basically fifty percent or thereabouts
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fifty percent of the vote. So in two different states, Utah and Vermont,
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she proved my prediction to be false. And I think her winning Vermont
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has at least some significance. One, it shows that Trump is not completely
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invincible. You know, here somebody with no chance of winning the nomination still
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defeated Donald Trump in a Republican primary. But also once again shows what I've
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been talking about throughout this primary process regarding Trump's results, and that is that
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Trump's results are almost always a little bit weaker than what the polling would indicate.
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Now, there wasn't a lot of polling in Vermont, but it's obvious
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that he underperformed expectations in Vermont, and he underperformed expectations in a couple other
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states. There were many other states where he blew the doors off. It
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did exactly as expected. You know, I think the red, red red
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states which don't really matter in a general election, trump does just as well
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as is expected. But it's those not red states the purple states that are
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going to matter. And is there something in the polling methodology that is not
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showing up that is actually biased towards Donald Trump. We don't know that.
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We may not know that until it's too late if you're a Trump fan,
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because by the time you have enough data to determine that one certainty, the
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election's over. And obviously Trump is the nominee and was going to be the
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nominee since I believe last September when I called it officially on this podcast,
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and that's turned out to be exactly true. So I don't want to take
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anything away from from Trump's victories. He won hugely. He's obviously the nominee.
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He was always going to be the nominee, just as I've said,
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But it should be pointed out that he lost Vermont, and you know,
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Haley did very well in Utah and through many of these states. There are
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still fifteen twenty thirty percent of Republican voters that are not on board, and
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a lot of them are saying in exit polls that they will not vote for
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Trump and the general election. Now, is that true? That's hard to
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say, you know, it's to me the Hailey voter is not really a
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Hailey voter. The Hailey voter is generally someone who is never Trump, who
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you know, is making essentially a protest vote vote. And so, you
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know, I think there's a perception in Trump camp that she doesn't have a
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lot of say over what her own voters may do in the general election.
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I think she could help, you know, she when she dropped out of
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the race, she did not make a speech. I thought it was very
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odd. I've been confused by the Haley strategy or what their goal is for
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a long time. At the very very beginning of this process, I thought
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she was running for vice president. That's what made sense to me. But
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you know, that seems to be an impossibility now and last night, I
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mean, she could have plausibly done a lot of different things than what she
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did do. I mean, she could have given a speech and dropped out
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then, and she could have endorsed Donald Trump, and she could have potentially
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bridged the gap between the two of them. I mean, Trump and his
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speech did talk about unity quite a bit. He did not mention Haley by
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name, but he also didn't dunk on her. He didn't spike the football,
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which for Trump is a big victory. So there was the smallest,
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slightest bit of opening, and Haley did not take it. She waited to
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the next day to basically release a statement saying that she's dropping out of the
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race. It did not include an endorsement of Donald Trump. So I don't
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know what leverage she still has. The only leverage she still has is that
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she's probably the candidate that would one be a good compliment to Trump with regard
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to him winning the election, but also be willing and able to do the
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job, as she's seemingly qualified as a two time governor and former UN ambassador,
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so she fits the role of vice president very very well. I mean,
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those are the two most important parts of the job. Can you help
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win the election and can you do the job if needed? And Nikki Haley
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is I think yes, clearly yes on both those camps ounce But she's not
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going to be the person and maybe she already knows that, maybe that's why
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she's not even trying at this point, but I don't. I am completely
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baffled as to what her end goal has been really since she decided not to
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drop out after New Hampshire. I mean, I got the whole. Okay,
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give it a shot in New Hampshire, but why get your butt beat
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in your home state of South Carolina, don't. I don't get it.
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I don't know what her next play is, her next chapter is, especially
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since I don't think Trump is going to do the right thing and make her
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the vice presidential nominee. So, you know, Trump won every race except
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Vermont, and he wins the nomination. He's now unopposed. It's officially over
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third straight time. Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. I was talking
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with my daughter Grace this morning. You know, she's about to turn twelve
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years old, and she has never known She's always been very interested in politics,
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I'm sure mostly because of me, but she has never known a moment
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of her conscious life when Donald Trump was not either the presumptive or the actual
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Republican presidential nominee. And she won't know that until she's almost sixteen years old,
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maybe past when she's sixteen years old. So, I mean, that's
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just a remarkable reality that I think shows the impact of all this. I
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mean, we're really talking about an entire generation of Americans who will think that
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the Republican Party is nothing more than Donald Trump. He is the party.
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And you know, there's in my view, more negative to that, much
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more negative than there is positive to that. Now, on the Democratic side,
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it should be noted that while Joe Biden blew the doors off of his
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opponents in every state, he did lose a territory. He lost America Samoa.
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American Samoa, which had a total of less than one hundred votes.
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You know, I guess it was a cocca system. But Joe Biden,
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the incumbent president, lost American Samoa to a guy nobody had ever heard of
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before, a guy the name of Jason Palmer. Now this would be remarkable
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if what had actually happened was what I thought or perceived or presumed had happened.
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But that's not the case. What I presumed had happened when I heard
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this is I thought, oh, okay, somebody figured out a way to
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scam the system that in other words, you go to the smallest jurisdiction possible,
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and you know, you spend a lot of time there. You basically,
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you know, buy a lot of commercial time. You basically pay people
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off, you know, they become your friends, and basically on a lark,
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if you know, you can win a quote unquote primary with only fifty
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one votes, then that's something that could be done, and it would be
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a publicity stunt effectively that it really wouldn't mean anything. It was basically getting
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her fifteen seconds of fame and a footnote in history. But that's not apparently
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what happened here. Apparently Palmer never even went to America, Samoa and so,
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and he did his entire campaign via zoom calls. He said, So,
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I don't even know how to explain what really transpired there, other than
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there's a lot of discontent at least in that American territory about among Democrats and
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Joe Biden being the Democratic nominee. So this is the first time from a
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historical perspective, this is the first time that an incumbent president has lost a
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primary of any kind sense nineteen eighty and Jimmy Carter. So that's a long
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time. And of course Jimmy Carter lost in nineteen eighty to Ronald Reagan.
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Now I don't know that that's necessarily going to repeat itself here and Trump is
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no Reagan, but you know that it's one hilarious. But I do also
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think there's at least some level of significance here, because that's the type of
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stuff that would not happen if there was not at least some discontent even within
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the Democratic Party about Joe Biden being the Democratic nominee. Now, when it
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comes to evaluating these results, I have to say that I look at these
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primaries a bit differently than I think almost anybody else in the media does.
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And I don't know that my view is correct, but it's clearly unique.
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And one of the reasons why I know it's unique is that it's it's almost
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literally impossible, as simple as this is about the sound to even find even
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in this Internet era of instant communication and information, it's almost impossible to find
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the data that I think is the most significant and really the most obviously significant
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when it comes to these primary results and how they may translate to the general
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election in November. And what I'm referring to there is simply the raw vote
20:32
totals in each state and comparing how many people voted for Donald Trump and how
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many people voted for Joe Biden in states that might actually theoretically matter or might
20:45
be able to tell you something about the nature of the electorate. I mean
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to me, that matters. We had an election yesterday. How many people
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cast ballots for Trump in a particular state and how many people cast ballots for
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Biden in a particular state. Now, obviously, because it's a primary,
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that doesn't tell you for sure in any way, shape or form, who's
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going to win that state in November. But I think it's more telling than
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the media gives it credit for, because the media completely ignores this entire topic,
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this entire data point, to the point where literally I spend twenty minutes
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at least last night trying to find a website that would give me, okay,
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what are the actual vote totals in each state for the Democratic primary contestants
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and the Republican primary contestants, And the only one I could find was a
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TV station in Arizona. None of the major networks did this. I have
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no idea why. It's really not difficult, but the results are really kind
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of astonishing. Now, now they're a couple of caveats. Obviously, the
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Republican primary is perceived, or was perceived, as being more competitive than the
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Democratic primary. But I would take issue with that because I don't think anybody
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really thought that the Republican primary yesterday especially was competitive. I mean, there
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was no special reason for Trump voters to get out and vote, or to
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mail in their ballots or what have you. Everyone knew he was going to
22:26
win, so I don't necessarily buy that. And there were down ballot races
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on both the Democratic and Republican sides in basically every single state that also gave
22:37
you a reason to vote if you're a Democrat. So just because people knew
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the name of Trump's opponent as opposed to the couple people trying to run against
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Biden on the Democratic side, I don't know, is really all that significant.
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And it's important to point out the numbers are about to give you completely
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ignore Nicky Hanley's vote, tall completely ignore them. So there are a ton
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of votes that, in theory, could end up going to Donald Trump in
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November that I'm not even accounting for. I'm just talking about how many people
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voted for Donald Trump, how many people voted for Joe Biden. And I
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think mail in balloting also kind of destroys the counter argument to what I'm saying
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here, because in the olden days before COVID, where basically everybody had to
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show up and vote on the day of an election. Okay, I get
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that you really can't have these numbers be relevant because there's a whole lot of
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reasons in a non competitive primary, regardless of down ballot if you're a Democrat,
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why bother. But in most cases now all you got to do is
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put your ballot in the mail, and you can do it for weeks beforehand.
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So to me, the Trump versus Biden number, while not definitive,
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is significant. How significant I don't know, But let me just share some
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of these results with you. Most hilariously, in Colorado, where Donald Trump
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wasn't even as short of being on the ballot until a day before the primary
24:18
election, more people voted for Donald Trump than voted for Joe Biden by a
24:25
fairly significant margin. Now, does that mean Trump's gonna win Colorado? No,
24:30
and Colorado is definitely a bluish purplish state. It used to be competitive,
24:36
But I think that's remarkable that Trump got more votes than Joe Biden did.
24:41
Minnesota, another formerly semi competitive state that's now basically given to the Democrats.
24:48
On the presidential side, more people voted for Trump than voted for Joe
24:52
Biden. North Carolina, a theoretical swing state, one that I have said
24:57
doesn't really matter that much because if Trump were to lose North Carolina, then
25:02
the election's already over. None of these other states matter. Donald Trump got
25:07
one hundred and ninety thousand more votes than Joe Biden. One hundred and ninety
25:14
thousand. To me, that tells you Joe Biden ain't win North Carolina barring
25:21
some sort of huge black swan event, so that I found to be significant.
25:26
We hear a lot about how Texas could be competitive, Texas might go
25:32
blue based upon yesterday. That's a load of bullshit. Joe Biden got one
25:41
million. It looks like one million fewer votes than Donald Trump in Texas,
25:48
one million, and that again discounts Nicky Haley's votes entirely, so there was
25:57
a one million vote vote gap. Trump ain't losing Texas, folks, There's
26:03
no concerns about that. Even though sometimes you'll see a poll then indicates that
26:08
it's kind of close. It's not Trump's winning Texas. Virginia another state that
26:15
used to be competitive, but since you know, all of northern Virginia's made
26:21
up of federal employees who were never going to vote Republican again in their lives
26:25
because their jobs depend on it. Virginia, Trump got one hundred and thirty
26:32
thousand more votes than Joe Biden did one hundred and thirty thousand. Again,
26:37
that's a state where Nikki Haley did very well. Republicans had way more ballots
26:42
cast than Democrats in Virginia. And then Maine. Now, Maine is a
26:48
state that I have talked a lot about because I think the electoral college vote
26:52
that Maine provides in the second congressional district for Donald Trump is potentially very significant,
26:59
and could he to put this whole thing into a two hundred and sixty
27:03
nine two hundred and sixty nine tie, which would presume, by the way,
27:06
that Trump wins all the Nebraska electoral college votes, which is not a
27:10
certainty because he did not do that in twenty twenty, but he did do
27:12
that in twenty sixteen, and I think there's a pretty good chance he wins
27:17
the Omaha, Nebraska congressional district, although I've not seen any recent polling on
27:21
that. But in Maine, Donald Trump got more votes statewide than Joe Biden
27:29
did by a not insignificant margin, I think about fifteen thousand votes, with
27:34
a few votes yet to be counted. Now that to me again, because
27:40
if Maine as a state goes to Trump, which is not insane, no
27:45
one really puts it out there as a possibility. There was a poll a
27:48
couple weeks ago indicating Trump was winning Maine, but it was a weird poll
27:52
both I think, I think both candidates were in the thirties, which is
27:55
always strange. It means obviously there's a ton of undecided voters, but it's
28:00
not an impossibility. Maine, being a very weird state, does occasionally elect
28:06
a Republican. And you know, this was one of the states where Trump
28:10
was kicked off the ballot by an insane female secretary of state in the state,
28:15
which I think could back you know, create backlash in favor of Donald
28:21
Trump, because I think some people will be offended by that, especially once
28:23
the Supreme Court ruled so decisively against the entire concept of taking him off the
28:29
ballot. But you know, Donald Trump got more votes in Maine than Joe
28:33
Biden did. Again, I want to emphasize none of this is definitive at
28:40
all. It's just something that the media completely ignores, and the main reason
28:45
why it happens is Donald Trump gets his vote out. Donald Trump is a
28:49
turnout machine. He's a turnout machine for his voters. He's also a turnout
28:55
machine for the other side. And Nikki Haley has been benefiting from that because
29:00
she's had very little money, very little resources, almost impossible for her to
29:06
get on conservative media. And while she's got good name recognition, she doesn't
29:11
have tremendous name recognition, not like Trump does. And yet she was still
29:15
able to get, you know, fifteen to twenty twenty five to thirty percent
29:18
of the vote in all of these states, even some of the really red
29:23
states. Why well, because there's still a contingent of anti Trump Republicans out
29:30
there, and Trump drives them to the polls too. So I don't want
29:34
to overemphasize this point me. One of the main reasons I'm making it is
29:38
because no one else will. And I'm always trying to provide unique content and
29:45
perspectives to this podcast, but I guarantee you there's nobody else that's gonna go
29:51
through what happened on Super Tuesday and tell you the most basic of all facts,
29:55
who got more votes Trump or Biden. And by and large, except
30:00
for the really blue states like here in California, Trump got more votes than
30:07
Biden did, and in many states it wasn't even close. By the way.
30:11
As someone who voted for Rond de Santis in the California primary, I
30:15
do think it's funny that, as I did the math this morning, it
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looks for sure as if Ron de Santis will get more votes here in California
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long aftery is dropped out, then Trump will get in Vermont. I take
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some weird joy in that little stat Thanks for listening to today's free drop of
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the abbreviated show. If you're interested in listening to the entire show, you
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