Latest / The Death Of Journalism / Episode Forty Six: Let Your Freak Flag fly

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Episode Forty Six: Let Your Freak Flag fly · The Death Of Journalism

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Welcome to episode number forty six, so the Death of Journalism podcast. My
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name is John Ziegler. I am your host, and on this episode,
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for the second time in half a year, we have learned everything about the
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horrible state of race relations and our broken news media from a women's college sporting
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effect. But first, the big news of the last few days. Donald
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Trump was indeed finally indicted by a Manhattan grand jury and the Manhattan DA apparently
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related to hush money to Stormy Daniels, the former porn star during the two
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sixteen election. Now, as of this taping, we still don't know much
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more than that. Apparently there are thirty counts. The indictment has not been
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made public. Trump has not been arrested. That is all supposedly going to
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happen in the next day or two. So maybe by episode forty seven we'll
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have more information to be able to actually come to some conclusions. But of
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course we don't live in a world where we wait for all the information to
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come to conclusions. Everybody has already come to their assessment of this, and
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on the right with almost universal shouting from the mountaintops, without any concern or
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confusion whatsoever. No hesitation. Everyone is saying that this is a bunch of
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bullcrap, This is outrageous, this is un American, this is going to
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help Donald Trump. This is being echoed all over, especially at the right
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and even in some left wing media circles. And if you listen to episode
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forty five, you know that my working theory of what was going on here
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was that this had been contrived by Donald Trump, at least in part.
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The part that was I I viewed and still do as completely contrived was the
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fact that he had exclaimed a couple of weekends ago, in very uncertain terms
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and capital letters, very excitedly that he was going to be arrested on the
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following Tuesday, and that did not happen. And then there was a week
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or so of nothing happening, and I started to say, look, this
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looks like, based upon what we know about Donald Trump, this looks like
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a situation where he was manipulating the media, where he realized at least thought
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this was my working theory, that he thought that there wasn't going to be
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an indictment and that he was manipulating the process. The SEC received the grand
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jury proceedings to be able to take credit for when that did not happen,
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because he would be seen as having intimidated them into not indicting him, because
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he knew that when he put out that all Points bulletin that everyone would rush
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to his defense. It would be a massive news story. There would be
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a rally round the flag effect for Republicans. By the way, he would
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also get donations just before the quarterly reporting period was over, and his punt
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fundraising to that point was pathetic, And so that may have played a potential
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role in all of this, and that he picked the day on Tuesday because
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that gave the media an anchor point. It also caused the Manhattan Police to
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put up barricades and make it look like the story was even more legitimate than
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just Trump saying this on a social media site. By the way, it
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should be pointed out that is spokesperson backed away almost immediately from the assessment that
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Trump had given the prediction the declaration that he was going to be arrested on
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that Tuesday. But most people seem to ignore that. Well, when I
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did the podcast an episode number forty five, I was starting to come to
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the conclusion I never said that he would never be indicted but I was certainly
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in the camp of, look, this is looking like he's not going to
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get indicted, at least not anytime soon, because it had been reported that
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the Great Jury was going to take an extensive break, and when you put
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all the pieces together, this certainly looked like a situation classic Trump, where
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he was an idiot savant and he took advantage of the situation, manipulated the
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media and got what he wanted and that at least in the short run,
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there was not going to be an indictment. Well, I was wrong about
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that, and I said in the last podcast, if I was wrong,
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which was certainly possible, that I would acknowledge that I did that immediately on
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social media, and I'm doing that here in episode number forty six. You
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know what's really interesting about this is, you know who else was wrong about
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the theory that Trump wasn't going to get indicted at least nine at the time
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soon, Donald Trump and Donald Trump's lawyers. This according to not just the
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Washington Post, which is obviously always suspect, apparently especially when it comes to
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anything related to Donald Trump. I do not inherently trust the Washington Post,
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but their sourcing seemed to be pretty good. They were pretty declarative about it.
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They said that Trump's lawyers and Trump himself were shocked by the indictment,
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and in fact, just before the indictment, Donald Trump had been praising the
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Grand jurors. It wasn't just the Washington Post either. Maggie Haberman, the
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Trump's favorite reporter for the New York Time Times, famously has access to Trump
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and the Trump world. She was also very clear in her reporting that Trump
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world was shocked by the indictment, that Trump himself was shaken and shocked by
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the indictment. Well, how does that make any sense? If you are
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putting it out there on social media without hesitation, help, help, I'm
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gonna be arrested, and I'm gonna be arrested on Tuesday. How can you
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then be shocked when you get indicted almost two weeks later? How does that
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work? So I'm not positive at all that my theory was wrong as far
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as what was going on here. It's possible, and I'm not. Look,
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I'm the first to acknowledge when I'm wrong. I'm married, so I
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acknowledge when I'm wrong all the time. But I would like to acknowledge when
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I'm wrong when I'm actually wrong, and I'm still not positive that what didn't
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happen here was that Trump simply miscalculated. Now, it's gonna work out for
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him, because it always seems to work out for him, at least in
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Republican circles. But there is still a very logical scenario here where Trump did
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exactly as I suggested. It just didn't turn out the way he expected because
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it was based on a false premise because his lawyers have been telling him.
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I think reading between the lines and the tea leaves here that this wasn't going
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to happen. The case was imploding in the Grand jury. We're gonna be
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in the clear here, and then all of a sudden, despite or maybe
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even because of all the attention to the Scott, the Grand Jury and the
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DA have apparently come back with an indictment. Now again we don't know the
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details, and I gotta tell you, you know, thirty counts. Of
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course, you can come up with thirty counts in any situation. You know,
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whether there's a basically a pinball machine of points, and you know one
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leads to another, leads to another, leads to another. So the thirty
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counts may be significant, or it may not be significant. My gut tells
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me here's what I'm gonna make. You know, I realized I made a
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basically a bad prediction in saying that Trump was not going to be indicted anytime
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soon on this in the last episode. But undeterred, I'm going to make
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another prediction. I will predict that when this indictment is unsealed, that they
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will be major media, especially on the left, who will will immediately declare,
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wait a minute, this is a lot more than what we were originally
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told to expect. That there's stuff in here that is not just directly related
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to the hush hush money payments to Stormy Daniels during the twenty sixteen campaign.
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That I'll make that prediction. I'm not positive of that again, but it's
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a gut feeling I have that you know, this guy can't be this dumb
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the Manhattan DA yet. Look he's it smells to high Heaven. I'm right
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there with you. He can't paigned on investigating Trump. You know, he's
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a terrible DA. He's not prosecuting real crimes. I get it. I'm
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totally on board. This seems like a Bullcraft prosecution. It seems political in
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its origins, that is dangers, that is scary, that is un American.
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Now that doesn't mean Trump should be above the law. After all,
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this is the same guy that was leading his cult and chance during the twenty
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sixteen campaign of lock her Up, Lock her Up, Lock her Up about
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Hillary Clinton, and then when he got elected, there wasn't one word ever
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said about prosecuting Hillary Clinton, and she was never even president in the United
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States. So, I mean, the hypocrisy here is all over the map.
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Everybody's a hypocrite. Everybody's contradicting themselves. All of a sudden, Republicans
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that were in Trump cult members who were channing lock her Up in twenty sixteen
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have their their hands clutching their pearls. Oh my god, a political prosecution.
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Well, what the hell was lock her up about? Lock her up?
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Was about revenge on a political opponent. And you know, for some
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reason, not one but two Trump appointed Attorney generals, Jeff Sessions and Bill
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Barr, never even bothered to look into it. I mean, so,
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I don't want to get sidetracked, but the reality here is that I think
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there's a good chance that there's got to be something more here, because either
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that or the DA is even dumber than he appears to be, Because if
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you're going to really after all that firestorm, you're gonna go down this path,
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and and let's be clear, I mean, all it's going to take
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is two Trump fans on any potential jury, assuming he gets to trial and
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there's no chance of a conviction. Now, getting two Trump fans in Manhattan
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might not be that easy, especially given the Wadir process, but that's all
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it would take because just like you know, you can have a political prosecution,
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you can also have jury nullification based on politics. And if it goes
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all we go through all of this and there's not a conviction on anything,
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then you know, Braxton going to look like a complete idiot, which maybe
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he is. So I'm guessing that there's at least going to be the perception
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or a narrative out there that there's something more than just the direct issues related
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to the Stormy Daniel hush money payment in twenty sixteen. That being said,
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I'm still very prone to believing this is mostly, if not totally bullcrap and
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definitely politically motivated, and it's also definitely going to help Donald Trump at least
10:22
in the short run here, and it's obvious it's going to help him in
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the short run and already has if you look at the polling, which I'll
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get to momentarily with regard to the race of the Republican nomination in twenty twenty
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four. And why is it going to help Donald Trump? Well, you
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know, there's the whole rally around the flag effect. A lot of this
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is, by the way, this is a lot of us feels very similar
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to the release of the Moular Report, doesn't it, where you know,
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Bill Barr was able to diffuse any negative Trump narratives, even though on the
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left if you remember, even the left got fooled by Bill Barr putting out
10:58
that summary of the Molar where there was an extended period of time from the
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time that the Mula Report was done and the time that it actually got released,
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even more so than what will probably be the case with regard to this
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indictment. Well, similarly, there's this gap, this void where there's this
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indictment and we're waiting to find out what's in it, and during that time
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period, the narrative gets set, and the narrative gets set in a way
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very much in the favor of Donald Trump. Well, as it turned out,
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Bill Barr was very deceitful in that summary of the MULA report, and
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much like I'm predicting with regard to this indictment, there was a lot more
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to it than what Barr had suggested in his very very biased pro Trump summary
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that even as I said, fooled some people on the left didn't fool me
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by the way. I was one of those screaming at the immediately that this
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didn't make sense, that the summary that Barr put out there was not going
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to be the full story. And maybe that's why I'm predicting what I am
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about the indictment, because it feels remarkably similar, even though it's obviously two
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very different situations. But back to the impact of this, there was very
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predictable and it absolutely happened, and it is happening as we speak. That
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there has been a rally around the flag impact or effect on behalf of Donald
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Trump. And there's a lot of examples that I could provide for you from
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the conservative media, but by far the best or worst example came on Tucker
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Carlson's show, and this was the night that we learned that Trump had been
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indicted, and it's Glenn Beck on with Tucker Carlson. This is on Tucker
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Carlson's Fox News show. Now. Just by the virtue of the fact that
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that Beck is going on with Tucker Carlson is interesting. You know, Beck
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obviously used to host a show on Fox News Channel. Now is on The
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Blaze. And of course Beck had been very very anti Trump in twenty sixteen
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and then eventually flipped in order to save the Blaze. He and I have
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had many conversations about this, both on the air and off the air.
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I have given Glenn basically a pass because his situation was rather unique because of
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all the people that were employed at The Blaze, whose livelihoods were threatened by
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the fact that the audience was leaving them in droves because they were seen as
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not on the Trump train, and they weren't on the Trump train even during
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the first part of the Trump presidency. And you just can't do conservative media
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in that environment and be successful from a financial standpoint. It's just not possible.
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And you know, the more that Glenn got on the Trump train,
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the more frustrated I got. And I've tried to not let it impact our
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relationship. It has caused a couple of ripples from time to time, but
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we've been able to get over it. Not that we're that close, but
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the reality is that he's aware of what I say, and obviously where I'm
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very much aware of what he says on this issue. So it's it's interesting
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from that context that we're talking about a guy who was seen as very anti
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Trump paid a huge price for being anti Trump. On the show of Tucker
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Carlson, who in the Dominion Voting System's lawsuit, there's a text message of
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him saying that he hates Trump passionately, which he's now, you know,
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basically atoned for. And I think much of his content since that came out
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has been about atoning for that and basically signaling his virtue to the Trump fans
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as much as he possibly can. I personally believe that that is very much
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Tucker Carlson's view on Trump, that he hates him passionately. It's obvious that
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he has no love for him, that he does not respect him, that
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he knows he's bad for the Republican Party. I know Tucker a little bit,
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not as well as I know Glenn. We comun actually communicate probably more
14:46
with Tucker these days than I do with Glenn Beck. But these are two
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guys that don't like Donald Trump, who are very smart people who understand how
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corrosive he is to the party, at least the party that they grew up
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with and to America, as well as how much of a burden he is
15:07
to winning. I mean, because they know the results of the two eighteen
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to two twenty two twenty two elections. They were all terrible and it's all
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largely, if not totally, because of Donald Trump. So that's the context
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here. And so Beck goes on with Tucker Carlson and wow, does he
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lay it out over two minutes. At one point in this clip that you
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are about to hear Beck literally don's a maga hat. Now, he famously
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did this a couple of years ago to signify when he was officially on the
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Trump train, and you know, from that point on the content of his
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show and the Blaze dramatically change in the pro Trump direction. But you know
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he's doing it again here. You'll be able to hear when that happens when
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you're listening to this clip. But it's not just the donning of the magat
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which is the ultimate virtue signal when it comes to the Trump world, but
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it's also the content. Now. Glenn has always been even more pessimistic and
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you know, apocalyptic than even I am, and has gotten increasingly so recently.
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And you know, he's more much more conspiratorial than I am. By
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the way, Tucker Carlson has gotten way more conspiratorial than I even realized.
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I didn't realize that Tucker's now now he does not only believes that the CIA
16:30
killed JFK, he believes that the UFOs are real from you know, aliens
16:33
from outer space. He believes Epstein was clearly murdered in prison. I mean,
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this is just crazy stuff that even when I hear him talk about it,
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I know, if I had a chance to discuss it with him,
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I could convince him that he's likely of not totally wrong, because there's massive
16:51
holes in his thinking. And it's very strange for a guy who's very,
16:53
very smart. I don't know what's happening. It feels like something is happening
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with Tucker Carlson. When you reach that level of success and money and fame
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and power, strange things happen to your brain and that might be what's transpiring
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with Tucker Carlson, But anyway, you've got two people who are very,
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very prone to apocalyptic thought and conspiracies. And you know, Glenn Beck goes
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off here on a lot of different directions, but the main and the most
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important element of this is he's making the argument that America is going to rally
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around Donald Trump and not put up with this, and then at the end
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even makes this kind of weird prediction that he doesn't know if it's going to
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be Trump, because I think he's holding open the door just in case somehow
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the Santis knocks him off, but that America is going to respond in such
17:45
a negative way to this indictment that a hundred million people will step over broken
17:51
glass to vote out the Democrats were what they're doing here? And then here's
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what that sounded like on Fox News Channel a few nights ago. Are the
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Republicans? Where are the decent Democrats that can see this is this is insanity
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Donald Trump. The reason why this is going to help Donald Trump, and
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that's why I don't think they're doing it so he can't run. They're doing
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it because they want people to strike out. Please turn to God, repent,
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pray for our country, pray for peace. Put on the full armor
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of God. But here's what's really what they miss. Donald Trump is not
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even a person anymore. He is a symbol. He is a symbol of
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the average everyday guy that keeps getting screwed every single time watches other people screw
18:49
up big banks, screw up their companies and get away with it. They
18:53
see people all the time doing stuff that they know if they did, they'd
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be in prison for twenty years, but because they're not part of the elite,
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they get away with it. Donald Trump has taken arrow after arrow,
19:08
and that's why this is the way the average American feels tonight. I hope
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that there's a few republic or Democrats out there, but this guy has been
19:22
taking the bullets for the average person now for years, and people on the
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right feel like he's the only guy that really gets what the people are feeling.
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And it's it's not gonna It's not gonna end well for the Democrats in
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the next election. It's just not I don't know if Donald Trump is the
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winner or not, but I will tell you this, You're not going to
19:51
stop a hundred million people this country is in shambles, and there's gonna be
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a hundred million people that will walk on broken glass and through fire to vote
20:03
for someone other than this corrupt Banana Republic administration. I wish I could say
20:11
that I was shocked or even surprised when I saw that. I was actually
20:17
more surprised that Tucker had glenned back on considering the timing and the history of
20:21
the whole thing. But I guess I understand why he did it. It
20:25
was pretty jarring for me to see two guys who I know loathe Trump and
20:30
who understand that he is likely death in the twenty twenty four election for Republicans.
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Here they are virtue signaling. That's really what this is. This is
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right wing virtue signaling, signaling their virtue to the Trump cult. And this
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is, you know, from a strategic standpoint, this makes a lot of
20:51
sense, right if which is kind of weird to me. Why Glenn didn't
20:55
just say, you know, Trump's going to be the nominee. Why why
20:57
he hesitated it at all and didn't go all the way here, I don't
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know, Because this is a great opportunity, right, I mean, if
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you know that Trump is going to be the nominee, which the likelihood is
21:08
very very strong he will be barring major health problems. If you know,
21:14
he's going to be the nominee, which means that he is going to be
21:17
the meal ticket for the right wing media at least through November of twenty twenty
21:23
four, at least. So it's a year and a half right of content,
21:27
a year and a half of your content looking forward is going to be
21:32
all basically pro Trump. Then you know, this is a tremendous opportunity to
21:37
say, you know what, this is my marker, this is too much.
21:42
I can't go beyond this. You know what, DeSantis, here's the
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argument they're gonna use. You know, DeSantis is a really good governor,
21:49
and under normal circumstances maybe he would have been the guy to go with.
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But we just have to not allow them to do this to Trump, because
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if they can do this to Trump, they can do it to us.
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And the whole system is broken down and we're a banana republic. And so
22:07
therefore, because he's entitled unfairly in an indictment we don't even know the details
22:11
regarding yet, we must nominate him. Again, that's reading between the lines.
22:18
Basically what's happening here. But from a strategic standpoint as a media person,
22:22
it makes sense because now you have been able to make an argument that
22:27
makes sense to the normal right wing media consumer that, you know what,
22:33
I might have been on the fence before, but now I'm going to use
22:37
this opportunity to signal my virtue and show you know what, we are not
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living in normal times anymore. In normal times, maybe de Santis would have
22:47
been the guy, and maybe we would move on from Trump. But we
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must show these bastards they can't get away with this. And this is almost
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exactly the same argument that Tucker Carlson may when news of the indictment first broke
23:03
or from Trump and I played the clip on this podcast. They said,
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Oh, here we go. This narrative of we must nominate Trump, even
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coming from a an guy who's on the record as hating Trump passionately, is
23:19
really really, really bad news. I don't know how you get around that.
23:26
When the two guys who are the smartest and maybe the most prominent and
23:33
most obvious critics of Trump historically, and they're the ones making the argument that
23:40
this indictment not only shouldn't end him, which you know, there would have
23:44
been a time not too long ago, when getting indicted by anybody for hush
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money payments to a porn star, you know, during an election, when,
23:56
by the way, the affair with the porn star happened right after your
24:00
supermodel wife gave birth to your son. That would have been a disqualifier in
24:06
in a Republican presidential primary. But now it's actually a feature. Apparently,
24:11
not only is it a feature, but we must rally around you, we
24:15
must make you the nominee. And oh, by the way, both these
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guys know that the Trump's the nominee. It's very likely we get four more
24:23
years of Biden and probably at least another term, if not two terms,
24:30
or maybe nine years of Harris. If Biden resigns in twenty twenty seven.
24:34
That it would actually allow Harris to run as an incumbent in twenty twenty eight
24:38
and still run for two more terms, which is something that most people are
24:44
not thinking about, but seems really very obvious to me that that's going to
24:48
be the scenario, given Biden's age and health. And of course under that
24:52
scenario it's terrible for the country, terrible, but guess who, it's good
24:57
for it's from Fox News Channel. It's probably good for the Blaze, especially
25:03
if you fought the good fight and you're on board with Donald Trump. So
25:07
you know what, as there's always the case, it's the number one rule
25:11
of a politically ideological media, you don't want your guy in charge, and
25:17
ironically Trump kind of breaks that rule because he's so different and he's so interesting
25:22
and so dramatic and there's always chaos that he's one of the few guys on
25:27
your side that you would actually want in office because he's good for ratings and
25:33
interest and energy and all that. So they can't lose right in a Trump
25:37
Biden matchup. They really can't lose in the right wing media. The only
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people they're gonna lose, the only entity that's gonna lose, of course,
25:45
is the country. And they don't seem to give a crap. Of course,
25:48
they claim constantly that's what they care about, but they don't really,
25:51
they don't. It's all about protecting their their piece of the pie, their
25:56
gig, their prestige, their money. There see power, and I'm you
26:02
know, it's very sad. And look I have I've tried to be as
26:06
nice as I possibly can to Glen over the years. But and he gave
26:11
himself the slightest out there saying that he doesn't know if it's going to be
26:15
Trump. But I'm actually surprised that he even did that, because from a
26:19
strategic standpoint, he might as well have just gone all the way. You're
26:23
gonna go that far, you might as well go all the way. And
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that was a I think a very very talent moment about the nature the corrupt
26:32
nature of the media in general, the right wing media in particular, as
26:34
well as where we're headed in this whole thing. And it really is virtue
26:40
signaling, and this indictment has provided a great opportunity for all sorts of right
26:47
wing figures to virtue signal. Vapue Raswammy, Ramis Swammy, Vague Ramis Swammy,
26:53
who is the Indian businessman who is also announced for president, who sing
26:59
a lot of great things, things that are going to appeal to a lot
27:00
of conservatives, things that substantively appeal to me. But he's doing it in
27:04
a very swarmy way. I have already very much soured on Vavesk. I've
27:11
learned a little bit more about him by the way he wrote a column in
27:14
the Wall Street Journal in January of twenty twenty two, saying that masks work,
27:18
which to me is about as disqualifying as it gets. But he used
27:23
he is already using this indictment as a way to virtue signal, you know,
27:27
saying, oh, well, I'm an opponent Donald Trump, but even
27:30
I must acknowledge that this is outrageous. And he's even used it to attack
27:36
Ron de Santis, which is something that I predicted was going to be what
27:40
Vavek was going to be all about, that he was basically a Trump schill
27:44
and that he knows that Trump is gonna win the nomination that he's betting on,
27:48
that he wants a piece of the Trump called pie. He wants a
27:52
potential job, I guess in a Trump administration, and he's going to be
27:56
effectively a big problem or you know, if there is even a race at
28:00
this point. But Vegua is not going to be helpful to Ron de Santras's
28:04
cause. He's going to be helpful to Donald Trump's cause because he sees where
28:08
this is all going. He's a smart guy, he knows where the audience
28:11
is and he's definitely a grifter and not to be trusted now. So far,
28:17
he's not showing up in any major polls, but if he gets on
28:19
the debate stage, he's going to be a problem. And I called that
28:23
right from the start, and his reaction to the indictment, I think has
28:26
proven that I'm exactly correct. Now, I've been thinking a lot about about
28:34
all of this, and you know how it's all going to turn out,
28:38
And I still intend to do an entire episode breaking down the way this is
28:42
all going to turn out, the different scenarios for the race for the Republican
28:47
nomination in twenty twenty four. Things keep happening, and so I might not
28:51
be able to do that till next week sometime. But one of the things
28:55
I've been thinking about here is the Trump cult and Trump's unofficial campaign slogan,
29:06
I am your retribution. And I kind of mocked that when it happened.
29:11
A lot of people did. I wasn't really mocking it. It was more
29:14
like, can you believe this is where we are? That the Republican frontrunner
29:18
for the presidency United States has as his unofficial campaign slogan, I am your
29:22
retributions. It's an astonishing thing, but I gotta say, based upon the
29:30
way the reaction of this indictment has gone down so far, it was a
29:34
brilliant move. I mean, that is a tremendous messaging on Trump's part when
29:41
it comes to his relationship with his cult, because his cult does not care
29:48
about the substance of anything. It doesn't matter about policy, it doesn't matter
29:53
about hypocrisy or consistency philosophically, it doesn't even matter about results. It doesn't
30:00
even matter that he's lost three straight elections effectively in twenty eighteen, twenty twenty,
30:06
and twenty twenty two. None of that matters. They are just so
30:10
angry, understandably so, with what they consider to be the establishment, that
30:18
they just want someone to punch the other side in the nose, stick it
30:22
in their eye or worse, that's all they want. They are so frustrated
30:26
with their lives. They feel as if they've been so done wrong. This
30:30
is why being a victim for Trump. You know, you would think that
30:33
being an alpha male and also embracing victimhood wouldn't work, but it does work
30:38
because it's exactly the same concept as the Trump average Trump cult member. They
30:45
see themselves as victims of the way American society has evolved. There's a lot
30:52
of white male grievance. I do a lot of white male grievance on his
30:56
podcast as a white male. There's a lot of things to be you know,
31:00
to be bitching about. And you're not wrong, but that there's a
31:04
lot of victimhood now on the right because of the way the laft has completely
31:11
overplayed their hand and is divided America. So I'm understanding of this, I
31:15
get it, but it's caused a level of mental illness that I just don't
31:21
know how we recover from. And Trump understands it better than anybody and has
31:26
taken advantage of it. And this is why his cult is not going to
31:30
leave him. And it really is about retribution. It's not about winning.
31:36
It's not about fixing the country. You're saving America from, you know this
31:40
Marxism that we're very quickly headed towards. No, No, it's simply about
31:45
pissing on the other guy. It's simply about dunking on them if possible,
31:51
not even by winning, just by pissing them off. Basically liberal tears.
31:56
Apparently, it seems to be the main goal here, and a lot of
32:00
it's unfortunately based in the idea complete catastrophic misunderstanding of the political realities and how
32:07
realistic it is that Trump could beat Biden given what we already know from the
32:12
twenty twenty election in the twenty twenty two mid terms. But in reaction to
32:15
this, the news of this indictment, let me give you just one paragraph
32:20
from a statement put out by the New York Young Republican Club. Now,
32:24
I have no idea how big this club is, but you know, it's
32:28
New York Young Republican Club, so it sounds impressive, and it got some
32:31
media coverage. But this one paragraph, two sentences really that they put out
32:37
in response to the news of the indictment really says it all about the relationship
32:45
between Trump and his cult. They write, President Trump embodies the American people
32:51
are psyche from it to super ego, as does no other figure. His
32:58
soul is told be bonded with our core values and emotions emotions, and he
33:06
is our total and indisputable champion. This tremendous connection threatens the established order.
33:17
Okay, wow, all right, I'm not even gonna bother to break that
33:21
down. Although I think the word emotions is quite remarkable given what conservatism and
33:25
Republicanism was supposed to be, or was until Trump came around. But the
33:30
last sentence is really quite ironic. This tremendous connection threatens the established order,
33:37
when in fact the established order is buttressed, it is salvaged by this unique
33:45
connection, this tremendous connection. Without Trump, Democrats would not hold the US
33:52
Senate. They would might not even hold the presidency at this point, but
33:55
they certainly wouldn't be favored to hold the presidency in twenty twenty four. They
34:00
probably wouldn't have gotten away with COVID. I mean, there's all sorts of
34:04
things, but most importantly, we wouldn't be looking at four to twelve more
34:07
years of Biden Harris if not for this tremendous connection between Trump and his cult,
34:15
because that's what's going to facilitate Biden and Harris getting four to twelve more
34:21
years. So it's it's exactly the opposite of reality, but that's often the
34:24
time. Oftentimes that's exactly the world we live in. Where people aren't just
34:30
wrong, there are one hundred and eighty degrees from the truth, and that's
34:34
the reality with regard to the Trump called. In fact, let me give
34:39
you another great example of this This is from April Fool's Day, April first,
34:45
a few days ago. As we take this on April third, this
34:49
is an April Fool's joke by a prominent pro Trump Twitter account. Okay,
34:55
red Eagle Politics, it's verified. I don't even know if that was paid
35:00
for our legacy verification. By the way, I'm gonna get to the verification
35:02
controversy on Twitter and a little bit later on in the episode. But this
35:07
was an April Fools joke. Now listen to that. I found this fast
35:12
thing because it took an April Fools joke for a Trump fan to actually tell
35:17
the truth about the situation regarding the twenty twenty four nominating process. This is
35:23
what they wrote Twitter, the tweet from Red Eagle Politics, I am switching
35:29
my twenty twenty four endorsement to de Santis, obviously from Trump. Then they
35:34
write de Santis stood up the fauci and one reelection by a lot, whereas
35:39
Trump is a criminal who does not have what it takes to win. He
35:44
cost us the mid terms, and Brandon meaning Joe Biden will destroy him worse
35:50
than he did in twenty twenty exclamation point. Now, this is an April
35:55
fools joke. And that's the most truthful thing this guy has probably ever posted
36:01
on Twitter about Donald Trump. That is an absolute fact right there. Everything
36:07
he said is true about the Santists and Faunci and Trump and not gonna win
36:14
and cost them mid terms and Biden will beat him. Now, am I
36:17
a thousand percent sure that Biden will beat him? No, it could be
36:22
an economic depression. Biden's health could really deteriorate. I mean, there are
36:25
things that could happen. But if the election were held now, Trump would
36:31
lose and lose bigley, as he might say, and for sure, for
36:37
sure he would lose, and the Santists very likely would not. And so
36:45
there's no question the chances that the Santists would be Biden are better than than
36:52
Trump, although of course that gets complicated by whether or not Trump would support
36:55
the Santis and whether or not the Trump colt would support him. But even
37:00
based upon all the attacks that Trump has levied against DeSantis is not even in
37:04
the race yet, the polls still indicate that DeSantis would be due significantly better
37:09
against Trump, I mean, sorry, against Biden, and Trump would do
37:13
against Biden. I'll get to the polling data momentarily, But I do want
37:15
to get to the Santis more specifically, because you know what, the real
37:21
benefit, the real benefit of getting indicted. I can't even believe we're talking
37:24
about the benefits of getting indicted, But the real benefit other than the two
37:29
basic benefits for Trump in this the rally around the flag, increasing the poll
37:35
numbers at a critical point, and forcing the right wing media to prove their
37:39
loyalty to Trump. It's basically a loyalty test. You must signal your virtue
37:45
towards the King Donald Trump, otherwise you're going to get a lot of crap
37:51
from the right wing media consumer base. So that's what the indictment has done,
37:55
and that's very significant and very positive towards Trump. But the other part
38:00
of this, other than consolidating the conservative media around Trump and forcing them to
38:07
prove their loyalty to him, the other aspect of this is that it puts
38:12
to Santis in a very awkward spot. Once again, I've said this constantly
38:15
that whenever something happens the Trump, the real benefit is going to be it
38:20
puts the Santist in a box. What is he supposed to do? How
38:24
is he supposed to react? And some of these situations are almost impossible because
38:28
you're dand if you do dand if you don't. And the indictment is a
38:31
pretty good example of this where De Santis I think has handled it about as
38:37
well as it possibly could. To review. He didn't put out a statement
38:40
right away, but a day later when after Trump lied about getting arrested on
38:46
Tuesday, it was the day before that day he was supposed to get arrested
38:51
but never was. The Santis was asked a question of the press conference.
38:54
He very calmly responded, kind of passive aggressively, mentioning the each of the
39:00
allegations he doesn't have any expertise in it, but also condemning the political nature
39:05
of the indictment. The George Soros backed DA in Manhattan, and I thought
39:10
he did a really good job, especially considering we didn't know that there was
39:15
even going to be an indictment yet, so in the rational world he wouldn't
39:17
even be forced to respond. He's not a candidate for president, he's not
39:22
a party in this matter, and there's not an actual indictment yet. So
39:25
given all that, I thought the Santists did a really good job. Well,
39:30
then when it got Wider reported that yes, in fact, there is
39:34
going to be an indictment. The Santists was much more forceful. He put
39:38
out a written statement that was very forceful, very much condemning the prosecution.
39:44
He went further on this extradition issue that I would have liked him too,
39:47
but I think he was trying to signal his virtue to Trump's supporters by saying
39:52
he would not help Florida, would not help in the expedition the extradition of
40:00
Trump to New York. Now that's not even gonna be relevant because Trump apparently
40:04
is going to go up to New York himself. It's very questionable as to
40:08
win. Not Florida had any real authority to stop this to begin with.
40:13
And I think saying you're not gonna help is different than you're gonna stop the
40:16
extradition of somebody. So I thought that was, again, under the circumstances,
40:22
about as well as the Sanders could do. He raises this issue,
40:25
he's trying to be supportive. He was much more forceful on camera, very
40:30
passionately arguing against the nature of the indictment. And the Soros back Da Bragg
40:36
and in Manhattan, and and so I don't know what else you could possibly
40:40
ask for. Of course, he didn't use Donald Trump's name, and so
40:45
to the Trump's supporters, that's aha, you you rhino, you cook,
40:52
you know you're you're, You're a scumbag. Not using Donald Trump's name.
40:57
He referred to him as a former president. So I mean again, De
41:00
Santis can't win for losing in this situation. And that's one of the major
41:05
benefits to Trump in all this and getting indicted. It's forcing the Santis into
41:09
a difficult situation, a situation that he has actually handled I think very very
41:15
well under the circumstances. Whether it's going to help or not, I have
41:20
very grave doubts, but he's doing the best that he can. And speaking
41:24
of the Santis and the strategy that he has to have, if he's gonna
41:29
have any chance to pull off what is now looking more and more like a
41:34
would take a miracle to win the Republican nomination barring major health issues on Trump's
41:39
behalf or with regarding to Trump and his health. Barring that, I do
41:45
think it's a very long shot at this point for Trump to lose the nomination
41:50
to the Santis. But I still think that the Santis should give it a
41:52
shot and run a principal campaign and at least be there in case something dramatic
41:59
happens, whether it's health wise or something other related, maybe other indictments.
42:04
Maybe there could be so many indictments that there becomes a tiring effect and then
42:09
enough Republicans decide, you know what, this is just not worth all the
42:13
drama. That's certainly possible. I don't think the substance of any of these
42:15
indictments is going to matter very much, unfortunately, because we don't care about
42:20
substance. But there could be a threshold beyond which, you know, the
42:24
non Trump cult member has just had too much and they're they're just too tired.
42:30
Who knows. So I'm very supportive of the Santists trying to do this,
42:35
and how he's going to do it, you know, is going to
42:38
be It's going to be a very very difficult ask. I mean, trying
42:40
to thread this needle, navigate this minefield is going to be exceedingly tough.
42:45
But one of the things I have suggested that the Santists do, and I'm
42:51
not at all implying that the Santist or anybody close to him listens to this
42:54
podcast, although I do know that there is there are people who listen who
42:59
are within his sphere, so stranger things have happened. A couple of episodes
43:05
ago, I made the argument that DeSantis needs to expand the COVID issue to
43:12
beyond Florida. I said, Look, the rest of the country needs to
43:16
know this wasn't just a Florida thing. And he didn't just benefit Florida by
43:22
standing up and going against Trump and Fauci and the medical establishment in the news
43:29
media and opening up Florida far sooner than any other major state. Now,
43:32
to be clear, South Dakota never shut down, and they deserve credit.
43:37
And Georgia opened up first and they deserve credit. But Florida followed soon after
43:43
because De Santa's understood what was going on. He was willing to fix his
43:46
mistakes and reverse course. And he was right and they were wrong. We
43:52
were right. They were wrong. As a hell of a campaign slogan.
43:55
If reality mattered, fractionality mattered, if facts mattered, I'm not sure that
44:00
they do, but you know, that's a great argument to be able to
44:04
make, at least in a pre twenty sixteen Republican party. And whether by
44:09
coincidence or not, the Santists happened to make a statement that was exactly in
44:14
keeping with what I suggested in this podcast he should do with regard to making
44:20
the argument, Hey, look people, if not for Georgia and Florida,
44:24
the country would still be under major restrictions today. We are the ones that
44:30
allowed or forced all of those other states to have the cave because we made
44:36
them look bad, and eventually they'd had no choice. They wanted us to
44:42
fail. We didn't fail, and after a year or so of not failing,
44:45
they had the cry uncle. They had the way. The white flag
44:49
quietly and using the vaccines is cover. But that's effectively what happened. And
44:53
I am absolutely in the camp that, especially here in California, we would
44:58
still be under major COVID restrictions today if it was not for Georgia and Florida
45:04
showing the way and humiliating Governor Newsom in California and Fauci and all the other
45:09
supposed experts that were completely wrong when nothing significant happened in Florida or Georgia.
45:15
And here's de Santis making that exact point. And I really believe if it
45:21
won't for states like Georgia and Florida. People like Fauci would have won.
45:25
You would have had all this happened throughout the entire country. They wanted to
45:30
do rolling lockdowns. You know, China was just doing lockdowns a couple of
45:34
months ago for this. It's insane what they wanted to do. They wanted
45:38
to use this to exercise control. So what did we do in Florida to
45:43
serve as the roadblock for this? We were one of the first, if
45:45
not the first states in the country to ban any COVID shot mandates for school
45:51
children. We are not going to have this mandated now. I don't know
45:58
what impact that's going to have, especially when he's not a candidate yet.
46:01
I am becoming convinced that the COVID issue is a really, really good issue,
46:06
but it is not a knockout blow. Unfortunately, it should be a
46:09
knockout blow for Trump, but I don't think it is. I think not
46:14
enough people understand it. I don't think De Santis's footprint was big enough during
46:21
nationally when it happened. It should have been, but the national news media
46:24
prevented that. I mean, heck, even De Santis is amazing victory speech
46:30
on election night after the midterms was only carried live on Fox News Channel.
46:34
It was not carried on any of the other networks. And obviously, you
46:38
know, at least half the country is still living under the delusion that we
46:42
basically did the right thing during COVID, we just might have gotten some of
46:45
the details wrong. And so you know, in a Republican primary, that's
46:51
a very potent issue. I don't think unfortunately, in and of itself it's
46:54
a knockout blow to Trump. It should be one hundred percent should be.
46:59
I don't think that it necessarily is. It's also there's a subtext here that
47:05
I think is significant when you consider the fact that Gavin Newsom are king here
47:09
in California just this week announced his plans to go on basically a red state
47:15
lecturing tour. I mean, there's no question the Santists it lives rent free
47:20
in the mind of Gavin Newsom because of what we just talked about. If
47:23
it wasn't for De Santis, Newsom could still be living under this delusion that
47:29
what California did was somehow effective and right. And so that's why the Santists
47:35
gets under Newsome's skin so dramatically. Well he's he's basically running a shadow presidential
47:40
campaign. Newsom is now, and he's basically running the same, in a
47:45
weird way, the same campaign that the Santis say is hoping for the front
47:49
runner to die now and he's not. No, I don't think Newsome is
47:52
despicable enough where he might actually be hoping for Biden to die. I don't
47:57
think that that's the case with the Santis. But if you're gonna be the
48:00
nominee and president, really that's what Newsom in the Santis. That's the same
48:06
situation they're both in. I mean, there's really no path within the boat
48:09
to either of them be both the nominee and the next president unless their front
48:14
runner dies or becomes physically incapacitated. That's by far the most you know,
48:19
the most likely event that would cause that path to open up, especially for
48:22
Newsome, because Newsom can't run again. It's a healthy incumbent president. So
48:30
unless Biden decides not to run, which there's no indications that he's going to
48:35
make that decision, then you know, Newsome is pretty much blocked. But
48:39
he's running this shadow presidential campaign just in case, justin case. To mention
48:45
Joe, either for some reason decides not to run, or you know,
48:51
he becomes physically incapacitated and or dies, and that's, you know, pretty
48:57
creepy, but that's the way we that's the situation we're in now, where
49:00
we got a president who's ancient and the Rebublican frontrunner who's almost ancient, although
49:05
seemingly still very energetic, and we've got two young challengers. And if you're
49:10
on the far left, I mean, as much as I despise Gavin us
49:14
and I can certainly understand why a young, clueless lefty might think that he's
49:19
great for especially for the way that he was such a tyrant during COVID.
49:23
But the reality here is that Gavin Newsom, barring something dramatic happening with Joe
49:30
Biden, is not going to be the Democratic nominee. But he's he's acting
49:34
like he's going to be there in case something dramatic happens and he can pick
49:37
up the pieces, which I think is an interesting part of this narrative,
49:42
especially as the Santis tries to make the argument that everybody else was wrong and
49:46
that the rest of the country would not have figured this out without Georgia and
49:50
Florida because California is a massive, massive part of that equation. Now,
49:54
as far as the polling data is concerned with regard to De Santis and Trump,
50:00
there have been five national polls that have come out since our last podcast.
50:06
Now, none of these have the indictment fully imbedded into them, baked
50:13
into the cake. I mean, heck, I don't even think we're gonna
50:15
have polling that fully takes into account the Trump indictment for a couple of weeks
50:20
yet, because again, I'd like to at least open the leave open the
50:23
possibility that substance has some semblance of significance and what's actually in the indictment,
50:29
what he's actually charged with, might have something to do with people's perceptions,
50:35
even just a small number of people in this world where we already make our
50:38
conclusions before we even know what the hell is going on. I realized that
50:42
might be a little bit naive. But we also you have to let the
50:45
news seep in a little bit and people have to, you know, get
50:50
together and talk about it. And because there weren't kind of an uncharted territory
50:52
here, we're even in Republican post Trump circles. So these five national polls
51:00
are clearly aware that the indictment issue is at the forefront of the news.
51:02
But we don't even know during the responses to most of these polls whether or
51:08
not Trump is actually going to be indicted. But at least it's an issue,
51:13
and it gives you some indication. And of these five national polls,
51:17
three of them are total blowouts for Donald Trump. He's over fifty percent.
51:22
He's winning over to Sanders by over thirty percent. And if they're remotely true,
51:28
this is over. I mean, if those three polls hold and they
51:34
are solid, and they are an accurate reflection of the post indictment environment,
51:40
then it's over. Trump is going to be the nominee. I realize national
51:46
polls don't mean anything in a primary. It's all about Iowa and New Hampshire.
51:51
I get all that, But we're dealing with a unique character here,
51:54
a former president who has one hundred percent name recognition that everybody the Republican Party
52:00
has voted for at some point over the last eight years, and everybody has
52:05
strong opinions about So if he's already at over fifty percent in this environment,
52:13
and then I don't know how you overcome that. I just I don't see
52:17
a path. I don't. Now, there are two other polls that are
52:22
different. One has Trump up by thirteen, which is not good, but
52:25
it's not horrendous. Another only has them up by five. Now what I
52:30
found to be most frustrating is then in the same pile of polling data,
52:36
there was a poll out of North Carolina. Buy a pro Republican polster.
52:39
Okay, so this is not some sort of left wing polster trying to make
52:44
trouble in a Republican primary. These people are probably actually pro Trump, at
52:49
least they have been previously. And it's a North Carolina poll of a general
52:53
election. Now, to be clear, North Carolina is one of the top
53:00
three or four most important states. You cannot possibly beat Biden if you're a
53:07
Republican without winning North Carolina. It is impossible, impossible. It would be
53:13
like losing Florida or Texas. There's just no chance. There's no path whatsoever.
53:22
And in this North Carolina pole, the Santists beats Biden by three with
53:28
a lot of undecideds, Biden beats Trump by two. There's a five point
53:35
differential in how the Santist does against Biden versus how Trump does against Biden in
53:40
the Santis's favor five points. That's the difference between winning and losing. That's
53:45
the difference between having a shot to pull this off and getting your grass blown
53:50
out, because if you lose North Carolina, it's over. It's done,
53:54
and it might be done for the entire country. And that's where we are.
53:59
And to be clear, you're talking about somebody with a hundred percent name
54:02
recognition in Trump and obviously with Biden as well, and well before he gets
54:07
one hundred percent name recognition to Santist is already beating Biden by three and this
54:14
will have no impact, no impact on the Republican electorate. Right there,
54:19
That result right there, combine you know, with a bunch of other polling
54:23
data and the midterm results, specifically in Georgia, which is another must win
54:28
state. If you're going to beat beat Biden in twenty twenty four, ought
54:31
to any logical person make it as clear as day that the nominee has got
54:37
to be to Santists. But that's not gonna be highlighted by anyone in the
54:40
right wing media. That's not going to get a lot of attention. It's
54:45
not going to convince people because the trumpsters, they whatever polls work for them,
54:50
they embrace whatever polls don't work for them, or you know, propaganda
54:53
not to be believed. There's just there's just no way to get through to
54:58
them now, you know. On the positive side, Just yesterday, my
55:02
wife's family had a birthday party for her mother, and you know, I've
55:07
mentioned previously that most of her family or Trump supporters. I wouldn't call them
55:14
Trump cult members, but some of them are pretty strong Trump supporters. Of
55:17
course, at a certain point I asked the question, okay, where are
55:20
we Trump or de Santis? And most of them were firmly into the Santa's
55:25
camp. Interestingly, her mother, an older lady who's celebrating her birthday.
55:30
Her reaction was fascinating because when we asked her, her reaction was clearly emotional
55:38
and knee jerk, and you could almost see it in her head. She
55:42
was reacting to her anger to the indictment, and she's no, I'm voting
55:46
for Trump, and we were all like what And it was obviously an emotional
55:52
reaction. It was so clear to me that she was a classic example of
55:58
someone who was so angered by this what she'd been told in the conservative media,
56:05
is a bogus indictment, and that she was having that rally around the
56:08
flag effect that you know Tucker Carlson and Glenn Beck were talking about. She
56:13
she was that person. And you know, my mother in law's a smart
56:17
woman. She doesn't get into the details, but she's she often comes to
56:21
the right conclusion. And she's very very close to my wife, and my
56:24
wife, who almost never confronts her on anything, really pushed back hard,
56:30
like Mom, what the heck are you talking about? And she starts to
56:32
make the arguments in favor of the Santis over Trump. And it took a
56:38
couple of minutes, but eventually we talked her off the ledge and she all
56:45
of a sudden was firmly in the Santist camp. The reason why I found
56:49
this to be significant was it was almost like I could see the emotion of
56:55
the indictment where off and rationality eventually win out. Now, is that going
57:01
to be duplicated over a much longer period of time with the average Republican voter.
57:07
Maybe possibly It gave me some hope that there's going to be some of
57:13
that, that this is a temporary impact of all this coverage surrounding the indictment
57:17
and that over time, and this kind of goes to the theory that if
57:22
there's even more indictments, maybe people will just go, Okay, you know
57:25
what, maybe we just move on here. Maybe this just isn't worth all
57:30
the chaos and the drama. Now, is there going to be enough enough
57:32
people in that category to make a difference in a multi candidate race. I
57:38
have my grave doubts, but it's at least a possibility, and it gave
57:43
me some hope to get through, to get through the rest of the day,
57:46
because there's not been a lot of really good news when it comes to
57:50
this issue over the last couple of weeks. So that'll that's enough for the
57:53
Republican presidential race for today. I do have a lot of other things I
57:59
want to talk about, including the aftermath of the Nashville shooting and obviously the
58:07
tragedy that occurred in Nashville at a Christian school where a woman transitioning to being
58:12
a man killed six people, including three innocent children, and them was killed
58:17
by police, and the media coverage is pretty much died down ever since Trump's
58:23
indictment was announced. So we're going to move on from that, not as
58:29
quickly as I predicted or thought would happen, because you know, once the
58:32
media found out that this was a transgender person, I thought they would realize
58:36
this was a losing battle for them. They were undeterred, and they brazenly
58:40
just decided to create the narrative that fit for them, ignore whatever didn't fit
58:45
that in that narrative, and just you know, make the best out of
58:49
it. And there was an extraordinary There's so many extraordinary things that have happened
58:53
in relation to this, but one of them is that there were pro transgender
58:59
protests in multiple states in reaction to laws or bills that are proposed that they
59:08
perceive as being anti trans when in fact they're really just trying to protect innocent
59:15
children from surgeries that they're going to later or likely or later regret in life,
59:20
which I fully support and I think most Americans fully support. But you
59:23
know, you would think you would think that with a massive story in the
59:30
news of a person transitioning killing six people in a Christian school, you might
59:35
take a pass on the protests, especially when you're invading state capitals and you
59:42
know, you looks certainly looks like an insurrection based upon the way the media
59:46
describe January six, although there are differences. I'm not someone who buys that
59:52
as being totally analogous, because on January six, we were finalizing a presidential
59:57
election and that process was stopped because of the whatever you want to call it,
1:00:02
the riots or the invasion of the capitol, whatever you certainly wasn't tourism
1:00:07
is as Tucker Carlson has described it. But I get the analogy. And
1:00:12
in Tennessee, even Tennessee, you would think they would take a pass on
1:00:16
this in Tennessee, but oh no, no, no, these people are
1:00:20
very entitled, and you know, based upon the media covers they get who
1:00:22
would blame them, so they not only invade the state capital, but many
1:00:30
of them even put up seven fingers seven fingers. Now, this guy completely
1:00:36
ignored by the mainstream news media, but it certainly appeared as if what they
1:00:40
were saying was there were seven victims in this attack, including the shooter.
1:00:49
Some of the words in their minds the victims. I mean, I don't
1:00:53
even know how you make this work, but I guess under their theory because
1:01:00
as this person was transgender, they were what forced into into shooting six citizen
1:01:06
people. And then of course they were shot by police, which makes them
1:01:08
a victim. They were shot by police because they killed six citizen people.
1:01:14
I mean, we're so far outside the realm of the orbit of the rational
1:01:22
Earth, the gravitational pull of the rational Earth. I don't even know how
1:01:25
to comprehend or describe it. But that's that's where we are now. And
1:01:31
you know, the idea that they had the audacity to do this in this
1:01:36
time period, in this news cycle, again, you would think if they
1:01:40
had any self awareness, they go, you know what, maybe maybe we
1:01:43
hold off on these protests for now, maybe we just take a pass in
1:01:47
this come back in a couple of weeks. But no, they seemed emboldened
1:01:52
by the shooting, and again the news media was giving them all sorts of
1:01:57
reasons to be emboldened, because the news media was care wearing their water for
1:02:00
them on what should have been the narrative with regard to the Nashural shooting.
1:02:05
So then we go to the White House Press secretary, Karen Jean Pierre.
1:02:09
Karen Jean Pierre, who is an absolute imbecile, worst press secretary of all
1:02:15
time, happens to be lesbian and black herself, And and I want to
1:02:22
make clear the context of this clip we're about to play, she is not,
1:02:29
although some people I think purposely misinterpreted this online, she is not talking
1:02:34
about when she says transgender people are under attack, She's not talking about the
1:02:37
transgender person that committed the mass murder in Nashville. But you would think from
1:02:45
a sensitivity standpoint, that you would refrain from that kind of language in the
1:02:52
after immediate, immediate aftermath, even if you forget about the fact that you're
1:02:55
wrong substantively on the issue. You would think that a press secretary would refrain
1:03:00
from the phrase that transgender people are under attack right after a transgender person just
1:03:07
killed in a six inencent people in a Christian church. You would think that
1:03:09
that would be like Press secretary one O one. But no, no,
1:03:14
no, no, We're not living in that world, especially when it comes
1:03:17
to the Biden White House. But the most interesting and significant part of this
1:03:22
clip is at the beginning, where Karen Jean Pierre references the mid term elections
1:03:31
as the reason or justification for basically why it is that the White House is
1:03:40
supporting these pro transgender activists in these state capitals. And here's what that sounded
1:03:49
like just a few days ago, and one of the things that we saw
1:03:52
during the midterm elections is that people don't want their freedoms to be taken.
1:03:55
They want us to fight for their freedoms. And so is shameful, It
1:04:00
is disturbing, and our hearts go out to those the trans community as they
1:04:06
are under attack right now. But now, the reason why I found that
1:04:11
to be a chilling statement is it was actually maybe one of the most honest
1:04:16
things that Karene Jean Pierre has said, at least recently. That was one
1:04:23
of those moments where they said the quiet part out loud. Hey look,
1:04:30
And this is how I interpreted that. Hey, look, we thought we
1:04:33
were going to get our asses handed to us in the mid terms because of
1:04:36
all this insanity that we've been perpetrating on all sorts of fronts, whether it's
1:04:43
race or gender or sexuality or you know, socialism or COVID or whatever it
1:04:48
is. We we thought we had so overplayed our hand that we were like,
1:04:54
WHOA, I can't believe that. You know, we held the Senate,
1:04:58
we barely lost the House. We actually pick up seats and state legislatures.
1:05:01
This is this was a miracle. So basically what she's saying, there
1:05:04
is Look, we learned from the mid terms. We can let our freak
1:05:10
flag fly freely and there's never gonna be any repercussions. There's never gonna be
1:05:15
any backlash, especially with the news media carrying our water protecting us here.
1:05:20
We learned that there's really no danger here in the vast majority of the country.
1:05:26
Yeah, there was a there was a pocket in South Florida and a
1:05:28
pocket in the on Long Island in New York, where you know, there
1:05:31
was some semblance of a backlash, but other than that, we got away
1:05:35
with this. So we're just gonna keep doing what makes us feel good.
1:05:40
Well, we're just gonna keep doing you know what, you know what.
1:05:44
We're gonna gonna keep signaling our virtue. We're gonna keep pushing this radical agenda
1:05:50
until we're stopped. It's gonna keep going. And we're gonna support transgender protests
1:05:56
claim they're under attack in the aftermath of a situation where a transgender person killed
1:06:00
six instant people in a Christian church in Nashville, Tennessee, because we know
1:06:05
there's not gonna be any blowback. We know that's not gonna cause I can
1:06:09
say that and there's not gonna be a massive controversy, at least not in
1:06:13
any place that matters, because we're not living in such silos where it's a
1:06:16
big issue on the right. They don't care. That's not impacting any votes
1:06:20
or any any polling results, or influencing any politicians that matter, because everyone's
1:06:30
isolated and most of the country isn't paying attention. Most of the country will
1:06:32
never know that. The Press Secretary said that under those circumstances, and those
1:06:38
that find out about it weren't probably supporting the Biden White House to begin with.
1:06:43
So there's no actual impact, there's no danger, there's no blowback.
1:06:46
And now once they've realized that, that's when we're really screwed. And let's
1:06:51
be clear about why this has happened. There's no police force, right,
1:06:56
I mean I used that metaphorically. There's no police force because the news media
1:07:00
is broken. You know, the first line of policing here should be the
1:07:04
news media. In the rational world where journalism wasn't dead, the news media
1:07:10
would take that clip and go wow. The Press Secretary just really made an
1:07:15
incredibly bold statement about how they perceived the American public on this issue of transgenderism
1:07:20
and being attacked, and that they now believe that they're untouchable, and that
1:07:26
this would become an issue, This would be something that the American people would
1:07:29
know about, there would be a debate about it. Well, that's long
1:07:32
gone. That's dead. So the police force is not on the job anymore.
1:07:39
The news media and the Republican Party, largely because they are burdened by
1:07:44
Donald Trump, has become impotent when it comes to being able to stop the
1:07:48
insanity. We don't control the Senate, the Conservatives and Republicans don't. And
1:07:54
you know, I'm sure the Biden White House is pretty dawn confident they're going
1:07:57
to be able to hold the White House for another term. It's with Donald
1:08:00
Trump as the as the front runner. They just gained in state legislatures.
1:08:04
They had no blowback at all, and so the only two forces that could
1:08:10
curtail or contain or stop this, the news media and the Republican Party,
1:08:15
are effectively neutered. And so I don't blame them. I'm just amazed that
1:08:18
they admitted to it. But the danger of it is extraordinary because once they
1:08:23
realized that there's nothing to fear, wow, look out. I mean,
1:08:27
I gotta tell you. Before COVID and when John Yarmouth, the former Democratic
1:08:32
Chairman of the House Budget Committee, former television co host in Louisville, Kentucky,
1:08:36
he and I would talk all the time, all the time about how
1:08:42
Democrats were deathly afraid of going too far towards what they really believe, or
1:08:48
at least what they're you know, the most liberal politicians really believe, because
1:08:54
they knew, or at least there many of them knew that the country wasn't
1:08:58
with them. And you know, it was kind of like you know,
1:09:00
touching a touching a hot stove. They were always afraid that the stove,
1:09:06
you know, if they went too far on the stove, it would get
1:09:09
too hot and they get burned. Well, now that fear is gone,
1:09:13
because the stove is off and they've touched it several times and they've done everything
1:09:17
they can with that stove and they don't get burned. So now there's no
1:09:23
fear at all. And that is where things really get dangerous, and that's
1:09:26
why things are spinning out of control. That's why things are accelerating because in
1:09:30
the last two election cycles, and COVID obviously being a huge part of this,
1:09:34
they realized, Holy hell, the stove is off, the police forces
1:09:40
off the job. Republicans are totally impotent. With Trump's saddled, you know,
1:09:45
burning them and albatross around their neck. There's nothing that can happen to
1:09:49
us. Happy days, glory days. This is awesome. We get to
1:09:55
be who we really are. Let our freak flag fly. That's what's happening
1:10:00
when it comes to the transgender issue. Now, there has been a John
1:10:04
Fetterman sighting. Yes, the Senator from Pennsylvania is now finally out of the
1:10:09
hospital after going in there several weeks ago for severe depression. Because, after
1:10:14
all, he just took over the job as the Senator from Pennsylvania after being
1:10:17
elected after having had a stroke, and the media telling everyone that no,
1:10:23
no, don't worry about it, He's going to be fine. This is
1:10:25
just a temporary situation. Don't pay any attention to that horrendous debate that he
1:10:29
had where he couldn't communicate even with the help of a computer. And don't
1:10:33
be worried about the fact that he's missed almost every day of the job.
1:10:38
Here we are just a couple of months into his term. No, no,
1:10:42
it's all going to be just fine, well, he's now finally out
1:10:44
of the hospital, and he did an interview with CBS Sunday Morning Show and
1:10:49
Jane Polly. Amazing that Jane Pauly is still on the air, but she
1:10:54
is. But I have to tell you that the report on John's return to
1:11:00
the US Senate was every bit as absurd as you would have expected. In
1:11:05
fact, that it was worse. In fact, I honestly thought there was
1:11:10
a chance that what I was viewing online had to be wrong. There had
1:11:15
to be something out of context here that or maybe this was even a spoof.
1:11:18
It even occurred to me, is this is this a parody somehow?
1:11:20
Is this like a deep fake? I mean, because it is so insanely
1:11:26
over the top with regard to extreme bias towards Fetterman that it's literally laughable.
1:11:33
I'm gonna play two clips. The first is from Jane Pauly's introduction to her
1:11:40
interview with John Fetterman and his wife Giselle. And look, I get it,
1:11:45
you gotta be sensitive in this day and age. He's coming out of
1:11:46
the hospital, so you get some level of sympathy. But if this intro
1:11:54
had been written by members of his staff in his Senate office for John Fetterman,
1:12:00
it would not have been much different than this. Senator John Fetterman is
1:12:03
home in Braddock, Pennsylvania, six weeks after he was hospitalized for depression at
1:12:10
Walter Reid National Military Medical Center. Where we talked with him this past week.
1:12:16
I found Senator Fetterman hopeful, optimistic, ready to return to the United
1:12:21
States Senate and his role as a dad now as soft and as ridiculous as
1:12:28
that is. And let's be clear, I mean, as far as this
1:12:30
issue of depression is concerned, I have suffered from depression quite significantly my life,
1:12:36
especially after my mother was killed in a car accident in nineteen ninety four.
1:12:40
I went on zoloft and therapy and all that, and I've battled with
1:12:45
it on and off for a long period of time. I get it.
1:12:48
I'm sorry. I have no sympathy for this issue with regard to John Fetterman.
1:12:55
I mean, either one, you don't take the job or you resign
1:12:58
from the job if you can't do it. But two, I've never,
1:13:01
even in my worst throes of depression, I have never been not able to
1:13:05
function in a job. And let's be clear, functioning as a US Senator.
1:13:10
Isn't that difficult. I mean, you show up the meetings, tell
1:13:14
people what you think, you instruct staff. I mean, you've got a
1:13:16
massive staff to do most of your work. I mean showing up is like
1:13:20
ninety seven percent of the deal. And he's not able to do that,
1:13:25
or at least hasn't been for the last several weeks. And these are critical
1:13:28
weeks, especially the first few weeks of his term of six years in office.
1:13:32
So I really don't have any sympathy for this. But we're not living
1:13:34
in the media world where having mental issues is a shield, it's a benefit.
1:13:44
You get praised. I mean, we saw it during the last Olympics
1:13:47
when the US Olympic gymnast, you know, Simone Biles, superstar. Most
1:13:54
of the pre Olympic converage was about her, and she basically quit on her
1:13:58
team in her country because she was having mental issues I guess you could say
1:14:02
related to either anxiety or depression, and she got praised. I'm not saying
1:14:06
you have to torture a person because they were unable to function to mental or
1:14:13
depression issues, but protecting them, praising them, and then in this clip
1:14:17
suggesting that the next step for them would be president of the United States.
1:14:24
I mean, holy stuff, you just can't make up Batman. Here is
1:14:28
Jane paul deciding that a guy who hasn't even been able to show up for
1:14:33
work for the first two months of his job. I mean, imagine that
1:14:39
you start a brand new job and you can't even show up for work after
1:14:45
telling us you were going to be fine for two different reasons for an extended
1:14:51
period of time, You're just ao, You're just off the charts, you're
1:14:57
gone, You're you're in the hospital, you're wall and you're going to get
1:15:02
a promotion. A promotion because I guess you know, j Paulie needs to
1:15:06
signal or virtue as to wow, this is just so amazing. You've overcome
1:15:11
depression. So the next step is how about president? So here it is.
1:15:15
You can't make it up, but this is what it sounded like on
1:15:18
CBS's Morning Show. Your trajectory from mayor to lieutenant governor. United States Senator
1:15:28
was still pointing up at fifty three in politics, that's a young man.
1:15:32
Can you have aspirations? Can you serve beyond the United States Senate? You
1:15:38
know, my aspiration is to take my son to the restaurant that we were
1:15:45
supposed to go during his birthday but couldn't because I had checked myself in for
1:15:49
a depression and being the kind of dad, the kind of husband, and
1:15:57
the kind of senator that Pennsylvania deserve. I don't even know how to describe
1:16:01
that. I mean, even Federman wouldn't take that bait. I mean,
1:16:04
in a weird way, Fetterman's response kind of told you everything you need to
1:16:10
know about where he is. I mean, he basically said, President,
1:16:13
forget about President. I'm just trying to make up a promise to my kid
1:16:16
to go to a restaurant. I mean, I mean, you know,
1:16:19
Holly. I mean again, we're living in such bizarre times you can't even
1:16:24
wrap your brain around this. But how in the world does a network interviewer
1:16:30
decide that we're we're gonna go to when's the John Fennerman presidential campaign going to
1:16:35
start? Because after all, missing work for a couple of months due to
1:16:40
depression right at the start of your new job. I guess that's a qualification
1:16:44
now, I guess that's a qualification for president. That's that's where we are
1:16:47
now. But I mean, can you imagine can you imagine a Republican ever
1:16:53
getting that kind of treatment. I mean, we just went through a mid
1:16:58
term election where herschel Walker was destroyed on a regular basis because of perceived mental
1:17:05
deficiencies that were nowhere near as bad as what Fetterman has been experienced over the
1:17:11
same time period. While you know, Walker lost largely because of horrendous media
1:17:15
coverage and Fetterman one largely because of glowing media coverage. Gee, I wonder
1:17:20
why that happened. Could it be because Walker was a Trump Republican and Fetterman
1:17:25
was a critical Democrat to keep the Senate in Democratic hands? Gee? And
1:17:31
I think I think you can figure that one out for yourself. Now.
1:17:35
The biggest cultural story of the last few days that the media has both enabled
1:17:42
and facilitated but also ignored in a lot of ways. And what I mean
1:17:45
by ignored is that they have they have tried to pretend that the very clear
1:17:50
implications that are there culturally really aren't because it would be too hot for them
1:17:56
to handle if they openly admitted what's really going on have come in the realm
1:18:01
of women's college basketball now, it's remarkable, and hopefully you are aware,
1:18:08
if you're a consistent listener to this podcast, you know that our very first
1:18:11
episode of the Death of Journalism dealt with the bogus controversy and an allegation involving
1:18:18
a Duke BYU women's volleyball game in twenty twenty two where a Duke player or
1:18:27
players allegedly, although they never actually said this, publicly claimed that the BYU
1:18:31
fans were hurling racial epithets and the N word at them. Again, Rachel
1:18:38
Richardson, the Duke volleyball player, never actually said that publicly, her godmother
1:18:43
did, and Lebron James retweeted that, and a media firestorm ensued and everyone
1:18:48
got invested in a false narrative. It did not happen, in my very
1:18:53
very very strong opinion. BYU eventually did an investigation that came to that same
1:18:58
conclusion. The media refused to accept that loss and then try to pretend that
1:19:03
there were other racial incidents that BYU women's soccer games which were just as bogus
1:19:09
as the claim involving the volleyball game. It never happened, and the news
1:19:15
media completely blew it. They never corrected the story, They never acknowledge defeat.
1:19:20
Duke never acknowledged defeat. It was a classic story about how broken our
1:19:26
news media is and how bad race relations are in this country and are getting
1:19:30
worse. Well, we had a remarkable repeat only in a much, much,
1:19:35
much bigger stage when it came to the Final Four of the women's college
1:19:42
basketball tournament. And interestingly enough, one of the characters from the BYU Duke
1:19:48
fiasco was very much a central figure in what happened with regard to the women's
1:19:55
college basketball Final Four. That her name is Don Staley. She is the
1:20:00
basketball coach at South Carolina. Don Staley, in response to this bogus narrative
1:20:05
involving BYU do Volleyball, had actually canceled a basketball game with BYU, saying
1:20:13
I guess it was unsafe for her her basketball players to play at BYU.
1:20:17
Completely ridiculous. She got no media blowback whatsoever. She probably only got applauded
1:20:24
within the woke media world. And here she is, you know, at
1:20:28
South Carolina, which is a very conservative state, but she's running her own
1:20:31
little fiefdom there. She's got a very successful program. South Carolina went into
1:20:36
the Final four undefeated, ranked number one. They were the favorites to win
1:20:42
it all, and they happened to be a team that is almost exclusively black,
1:20:45
and as far as I can tell, that every player would have that
1:20:48
at least plays would be considered to be a black player for South Carolina.
1:20:55
And in the semi finals they were playing Iowa, a team that was almost
1:21:00
exclusively white and was headed by a superstar by the name of Caitlin Clark.
1:21:08
Now I had never heard of Caitlin Clark until a couple of weeks ago,
1:21:12
but she is really extraordinary. I mean, I don't think I've ever seen
1:21:16
man or woman a shooter as good from super long range as she is.
1:21:23
And it's not just her outside shooting, but she was the player of the
1:21:26
year and she's remarkable. And what's amazing about her is if she was walking
1:21:31
down the street, you probably wouldn't even pick her out as as a basketball
1:21:35
player or maybe even an athlete. I mean, there's nothing. I mean,
1:21:39
she's pretty tall and she's in good shape, but she's kind of skinny
1:21:43
and very very very very normal looking girl, you know, and nothing's special
1:21:49
about her. And she's white, which normally would mean in basketball that you
1:21:55
know, you're not looking at that person as being the superstar for reasons that
1:21:58
we're not allowed to talk about having nothing to do at all, which with
1:22:00
genetics. Let's be clear about that, right, folks. So, um,
1:22:05
you know, we have Caitlin Clark, this superstar white player who's who's
1:22:10
you know, nothing extraordinary about her physically except she's amazing on the basketball court,
1:22:15
and this basketball game ends up getting the highest ratings of any ESPN basketball
1:22:25
game, male or female since two thousand and eight. Now, I figured
1:22:31
that the ratings for this thing had to be big because I was interested,
1:22:36
right, And I, you know, almost never watch a women's college basketball
1:22:40
game. I actually did play by play for the women's team at Georgetown back
1:22:45
a million years ago when I was I was there working for the college radio
1:22:48
station. So I know a lot about women's college basketball, but I don't
1:22:53
I don't watch it. I hardly watch any sports anymore for other reasons,
1:22:57
since we've destroyed sports in every possible way. But you know, if it's
1:23:00
a good game, it catches my interest, I'll watch. And but the
1:23:03
ratings for this thing were off the charts, and let's be clear why they
1:23:06
were off the charts. They were off the charts. Well, yes,
1:23:11
South Carolina undefeated, ranked number one, IOWA has Caitlyn Clark a superstar.
1:23:16
So that's compelling right there. But the fuel the fire, very obvious to
1:23:25
me, was you had a black team against a white team. Now that's
1:23:31
partially human nature when you have, you know, an inherent narrative like that,
1:23:38
where you're gonna have people very passionately interested white people or black people.
1:23:43
And I'm not even saying this was all conscious. Some of this is subconscious,
1:23:46
but it could not be more obvious to you know, watch the game
1:23:50
for three seconds, and this is a pretty unique situation. Basically an all
1:23:56
black team against basically an all white team. Black coach, white coach.
1:24:00
That's inherently compelling, right, I mean, this is this is not rocket
1:24:08
scientists, This is not something that should be all that controversial. That's just
1:24:12
the nature of humanity. You got two basic tribes going at each other,
1:24:16
and you've got a superstar and you've got an undefeated team. So that's very
1:24:21
compelling matchup. And it was a really good game. And it turned out
1:24:28
that iowa one. Now I was watching this game. I was intending to
1:24:32
mention something that now seems very very small in retrospect, because all hell broke
1:24:40
loose over the next two days, which I'll get to momentarily. But we
1:24:45
are living in such a politically divided world, and I, by the way,
1:24:47
I don't want to make this clear. I hate that we now have
1:24:50
to see everything through the politics, the prism of politics and the prism of
1:24:56
race, especially even in sports. I can't stand it. But I'm also
1:25:00
not going to ignore it when it's obvious. And so here we had a
1:25:05
situation where Iowa, a white team, was playing against South Carolina, a
1:25:11
black team, and a team where their coach is super woke and is a
1:25:16
media darling. Right, one of the referees. Now, all the referees
1:25:21
that apparently at least in the two games in the final two games are women,
1:25:27
which I'm sure is an obvious political decision, right. I mean,
1:25:30
it's women's Final four, So I guess they decide we're gonna have all women
1:25:33
referees. Didn't always used to be the case, used to have men refereeing
1:25:39
women's games all the time. But okay, so I guess as a virtue
1:25:42
signal, we're going with all women referees. One of the referees in the
1:25:47
Iowa South Carolina game was wearing a mask. Now I'm like, what the
1:25:56
living hell is going on here. You're running up and down the court in
1:26:00
March April of twenty twenty three, and you're wearing a mask. First of
1:26:06
all, you're an imbecile. I mean, right off the bat, you're
1:26:11
not smart enough to be refereeing a women's Final four basketball game. But more
1:26:15
importantly than that, you might as well be wearing a T shirt that indicates
1:26:23
that, yes, I am super progressive liberal that's what I am. That
1:26:29
you are has become such a symbol of your politics that you are signaling your
1:26:33
virtue to the whole world, and you are signaling your politics. Now,
1:26:38
why does that matter here? Normally it might not matter at all in a
1:26:43
basketball game, because normally you wouldn't have two teams that are clearly divided by
1:26:48
some sort of political issue. But in this particular case, that was not
1:26:54
the situation. And I even tweeted out if I am Iowa, I am
1:27:00
exceedingly concerned about that referee wearing a mask. Not because they're an idiot,
1:27:04
that's part of it, but more importantly, they are so liberal that they
1:27:11
are willing to wear a goddamn mask while running up and down a court simply
1:27:15
to signal their virtue. Well, what else are they willing to do to
1:27:20
promote their politics and to signal their virtue. It's hardly a stretch that in
1:27:27
a very subjective endeavor, which refereeing basketball is, and I refereed basketball in
1:27:34
my bizarre world, actually refereed the first game of America ever played by Dickimbey.
1:27:40
Mutumbo ended up going to the World Basketball Hall of Fame and unfortunately currently
1:27:45
has brain cans or someday I'll tell you that amazing story. But I know
1:27:48
something of refereeing basketball, and it's an incredibly subjective endeavor, and you are
1:27:54
very prone to conscious or even subconscious influences. And so when you've got a
1:28:01
super woke, very outspoken, media darling head coach and an all black South
1:28:08
Carolina team going up against the all white IOWA team, I'm sorry in the
1:28:13
world that we now live in. Unfortunately, as much as I hate this,
1:28:17
if I'm Iowa, I am scared out of my mind over what's going
1:28:20
to happen with that referee. Now, there were a couple of questionable calls,
1:28:25
and I even got responses from people both on Twitter as well as friends
1:28:29
on tech saying, zig, You're right, this is a bad situation for
1:28:32
Iowa, and this referee is not doing them any favors. Now, of
1:28:38
course, that could be our own bias that we're looking at it going,
1:28:41
okay, this is a suspicious situation, so we're now subjecting that referee to
1:28:46
more scrutiny. But this is I think the most important part of this is
1:28:50
this is the world we now live in, which I hate that we even
1:28:54
have to consider this, but I thought it was a very legitimate consideration.
1:29:00
And Iowa ended up winning to spite some very questionable calls towards the end,
1:29:03
including one that came directly from the referee with the mask. But I thought,
1:29:09
okay, you know, the better team one Iowa wins. I'm thinking,
1:29:15
you know, they they survived the mask referee, They're going to the
1:29:18
final game. This is great. But then Don Staley, the aforementioned super
1:29:26
woke and African American coach for South Carolina, does her press conference, and
1:29:32
you know, normally in this situation, the press conference would be boy boy,
1:29:38
hats off to Iowa. They did a great job and we had a
1:29:42
great season. I'm sorry we didn't win a better luck next year, or
1:29:45
you know, thank you to my seniors, that that would be that would
1:29:49
be the focus right at that should be the focus. We had a great
1:29:53
year, but Iowa just got the better of us tonight. Well, Staley
1:29:59
gets a question from a reporter and I don't know the race of the reporter.
1:30:03
It sounds to me like the person could be black, But I don't
1:30:05
know this, but I'm very confident that the question was a setup and the
1:30:12
question and this is a classic media manipulation, classic by the on the part
1:30:18
of Staley and maybe in coots with this reporter. And if you listen carefully,
1:30:24
it's very obvious that Staley is at least thrilled with the question, if
1:30:29
not had been anticipating the question, because it all sounds very much like a
1:30:33
setup. But the question is about her team being referred to as bullies.
1:30:41
Now, this is where words really matter and how we go whisper down the
1:30:45
lane here and we get from something that is innocuous and not controversial and certainly
1:30:50
not racist, there's something that comes out at the other end when it goes
1:30:55
through the woke machine suddenly being racist. So the porter asks Staley about her
1:31:00
team being referred to as bullies. That's not accurate at least not from statements
1:31:08
that were made publicly on the record. Nobody called South Carolina a bunch of
1:31:14
bullies. There was an opposing coach who said playing South Carolina was like being
1:31:20
in a bar fight. Now, South Carolina is a very, very big
1:31:25
and physical team. Staley would be the first to acknowledge that, and she
1:31:30
does actually in the clip that I'm about to play for you. But that's
1:31:33
not something that is anything but complimentary. You say playing a team is like
1:31:41
being in a bar fight, then that's generally a compliment. It's tough to
1:31:45
play them, we get beat up, you better come ready to play that
1:31:49
type of thing. It's certainly not negative, and it's really definitely not racist,
1:31:56
and it's also not saying bullies. But here's what happened. It's so
1:32:00
frustrating and fascinating and dangerous and so emblematic of how these narratives take hold.
1:32:08
So bar fight gets turned into bullies, and then Staley turns bullies into thugs
1:32:18
and references her team being called monkeys. Now, obviously, monkeys is a
1:32:28
huge buzzword when it comes to issues of race. I've never understood why,
1:32:32
because, frankly, to me, if you're somebody who automatically equates monkeys with
1:32:38
black people, you're the real racist, right, But that's another story for
1:32:42
another day. The reality is, there's no question that anybody in the media
1:32:47
who she's referring to here. And it's also an interesting shift that Staley makes.
1:32:51
Staley shifts from an innocuous statement made by another coach to talking about members
1:32:58
of the media. Now she's not referring here to anything that was said publicly
1:33:04
on the record. I got approached by another member of the sports media who
1:33:11
claims inside knowledge on this that there actually is a female reporter that Staley was
1:33:17
specifically referring to, who supposedly had privately referenced her team as monkeys. Now,
1:33:28
this person who contacted me was vehemently, vehemently convinced that this did not
1:33:34
happen, that they knew the female reporter. They didn't tell me how they
1:33:39
knew that this reporter was the person in question, but they seem very very
1:33:43
confident. I know the reporter. It's a female. I know she did
1:33:46
not use the word monkeys to describe the South Carolina basketball team, which,
1:33:53
of course I had no problem believing because there's not a chance in goddamn hell
1:33:59
that any member of the super woke sports media covering a women's college basketball final
1:34:04
four is going to describe the number one team in the country and all black
1:34:09
team as a bunch of monkeys. That's never, ever, ever gonna happen.
1:34:13
Even if by chance that word came into their brain, there's no way
1:34:17
they would say it, And if they did, it would instantaneously be a
1:34:21
massive news story. If they said it to another member of the media,
1:34:25
or even if the media found out about the second or third hand, that
1:34:28
would be a great story for them. They would destroy this person. So
1:34:30
there's no way this happened. But Staley repeats what it's effectively at best a
1:34:36
rumor, claiming it to be fact, as if this is what the media
1:34:41
is saying about her team. She references, don't judge us by the color
1:34:46
of our skin, and then she makes basically a threat against the media.
1:34:51
I interpreted it is you know, I hear you. I hear you,
1:34:57
basically threatening anybody in the media that if they dare to criticize South Carolina,
1:35:01
I'm gonna hit you with the racism charge. And I'm I'm gonna back up
1:35:08
that threat by already doing it while not mentioning anybody's name, without any anything
1:35:13
to back this up, no evidence that it actually happened. But here I
1:35:16
am, as you know, as a team that just lost in the final
1:35:19
four, where I should be praising Iowa, I'm gonna make this about race,
1:35:24
and I'm gonna use races somehow an excuse and the criticism we get for
1:35:28
the way we play as an excuse for effectively I guess why we lost,
1:35:33
or at least a distraction for why we lost despite being the favored against Iowa,
1:35:40
and make it all about race when there's no evidence at all that South
1:35:44
Carolina was targeted, certainly by the media on a racial basis. And here's
1:35:48
what that sounded like. Just after the game against Iowa, toms other coaches
1:35:53
or colleagues have sitting in that spot and talked about you all being bullies.
1:35:58
What's the truth about your team? The truth about our team? Okay,
1:36:04
that's a good question. Okay, Um, we're not bar fighters, we're
1:36:13
not thugs, we're not monkeys, we're not street fighters. Um. This
1:36:20
team exemplifies how you need to approach basketball on the court and off the court.
1:36:30
And I do think that I do think that that's sometimes brought into the
1:36:35
game and it and it and it hurts. Okay, Um, And I
1:36:44
do think that some of h I'm gonna say it because I said I was
1:36:47
gonna say it whether we lost or whether we won. Some of the people
1:36:53
in the media, when you're gathering in public, you're saying things about our
1:36:59
team, and you're being heard, and it's being brought back to me.
1:37:04
Okay. And these are the people that write nationally for our for our sport,
1:37:11
So you can you cannot like our team, Okay, you cannot like
1:37:15
me, um. But when you say things that you probably should be saying
1:37:20
um in your home, on the phone or texting out in public, and
1:37:25
you're being heard and you are a national writer for our sport, it just
1:37:32
confirms, just confirms what we already know. So watch what you say when
1:37:43
you're in public and you're talking about my team in particular, Just watch what
1:37:49
you say about our team, because it's wrong. You got young lives who
1:37:54
are really if you really knew them, if you really knew them, like
1:38:01
you really want to know other players that represent this game, you would think
1:38:08
differently. So don't judge us by the color of our skin. Okay,
1:38:13
judge us by how we approach the game, and you may not like how
1:38:16
we play the game, may not like it. That's the way we play,
1:38:20
that's the way, that's the way I coach, not changing. We
1:38:27
found success in it, and maybe some days like today, we end up
1:38:30
on the losing side of the stick. Guess what we literal to see another
1:38:35
day? We live to see to come back next year and try to do
1:38:41
this again because I'm not changing. I'm not changing. But I hear you,
1:38:45
I hear you, I hear you. Now. I found that to
1:38:50
be exceedingly outrageous. Even without the BYU do controversy, I would find to
1:39:00
be obscene and incredibly counterproductive. And I would presume that Staley is lying about
1:39:09
these rumors that she's claiming members of the media is saying things like monkeys about
1:39:14
her team. But when you consider the context of the BYU Duke's circumstance,
1:39:19
then it becomes very obvious that she's lying and that this is all about her
1:39:24
woke agenda. Now, this is where bad media coverage begets more bad media
1:39:30
coverage. If the Duke BYU thing had been covered properly and she had been
1:39:35
publicly castigated for having canceled the game with BYU for no reason, then it
1:39:44
would be a lot easier to criticize her, or she would probably be more
1:39:47
hesitant to go down this path because she would be immediately criticized for Oh,
1:39:55
here we go again, don Staley playing the false race card. But because
1:40:00
was the media did her bidding for her on BYU Duke, that's not part
1:40:03
of the narrative. So now she feels comfortable in getting away with us again
1:40:08
and again, distracting from a loss, while also promoting this idea that somehow
1:40:15
black basketball players are being discriminated against by the woke sports media, which is
1:40:20
just insane. Again, not just not true, it's the one hundred eighty
1:40:26
degrees opposite from the truth. And it's obvious to anybody knows anything about this.
1:40:32
So Staley lies about these rumors, threatens the media. Don't you dare
1:40:38
criticize us or all charge you specifically with racism, which is the worst thing
1:40:42
you can possibly be charged with if you're a member of the sports media,
1:40:45
especially the mainstream sports media, especially at ESPN, which is broadcasting the Women's
1:40:50
Final Four, And that got a lot of negative reaction on social media.
1:40:56
I will I was somewhat pleasantly surprised by the fact that at there was a
1:41:01
lot of negative reaction to Staley, at least from what I saw in playing
1:41:05
the race card. It wasn't universal, and it certainly didn't come from the
1:41:09
mainstream news media, but there was some negative reaction. But it obviously also
1:41:13
set up the circumstances for the finals where Iowa took on LSU, and we
1:41:19
had almost an exact repeat, not one hundred percent, but close repeat of
1:41:25
the same cultural and racial implications where Iowa almost all white team led by this
1:41:32
star Caitlin Clark playing LSU, a team that's basically built by transfers in this
1:41:40
new nil name image and likeness environment where they can just attract anybody to come
1:41:45
to their school from anywhere. And that's what LSU did, and they did
1:41:48
it very effectively. And they're almost all black, and although they have a
1:41:54
white coach who dresses weirdly, and you know, they beat the crap out
1:41:59
of Iowa for most of the game, not all of the game. I
1:42:00
Alwa did a heck of a job of hanging in there. Caitlyn Clark had
1:42:04
another great game, and there was some horrendous officiating, and the officiating crew
1:42:11
happened to be all black or apparently all black. Two of the three officials
1:42:15
were definitely African Americans, was unclear who what race the third person was from.
1:42:18
They were clearly not white. So you have all female, all non
1:42:26
white officials officiating this game between an all black team and basically an all white
1:42:31
team, and Caitlyn Clark has now become this symbol. And look, I
1:42:38
mean, it works both ways. I'm sure that the white white people gravitated
1:42:42
towards Caitlyn Clark because, oh my gosh, look at this this unicorn where
1:42:45
this average looking white girl is the best player in women's college basketball and is
1:42:50
amazing to watch and has their team all the way into the finals. I
1:42:55
get that. By the way, I don't know, I don't think there's
1:42:57
anything inherently wrong with that. I mean, I don't think that having something
1:43:00
to relate to with somebody, if it's partially racial in a positive direction,
1:43:06
I don't see that as wrong. It's certainly not wrong when it happens with
1:43:11
minority racist I mean, that's celebrated all the time when it comes to,
1:43:15
you know, having somebody that young black people can look up to or young
1:43:19
Hispanics or young Asians or whatever it is. I mean, race is oftentimes
1:43:25
used as a positive and in basketball, where white people are obviously a minority,
1:43:31
I don't see anything wrong with that. Now, is it also positive
1:43:35
possible that some of that is motivated by white racism? Sure, I'm not
1:43:39
naive, but I'm also looking at the other side, going, oh my
1:43:43
god, there are a lot of black people who are really very anxious to
1:43:48
see Caitlin Clark lose that somehow they like feel threatened that this is there and
1:43:55
this is their realm that somehow white people aren't supposed to be very successful in
1:44:00
basketball. And there was a video that went viral of a semi celebrity at
1:44:04
the game celebrating the fact that Iowa was going down calling for Larry Bird,
1:44:12
you know, the white Boston Celtic legend, to pick up his daughter,
1:44:15
and that Iowa have been shot in the head, And I'm like, what
1:44:18
the hell is I mean, clearly the racism thing is playing a major role
1:44:25
in this, and not all of it's good, and it's really a sad
1:44:29
indication of where we are with regard to race relations in this country. But
1:44:32
so you got this another white versus black battle. You got basically all black
1:44:40
officiating crew, and one ends up happening. Well. Effectively, Iowa ends
1:44:45
up having their last chance to win the game taken away in eight seconds when
1:44:51
the officials call the fourth foul on the second best player for Iowa and then
1:44:59
immediately on Caitlin Clark in a technical foul for doing something that should never even
1:45:04
been thought of as a potential technical foul, just basically tossing the ball away
1:45:10
from her no anger, no words, no nothing, tossing it away as
1:45:15
she was frustrated over the fact that the second best player on the team had
1:45:18
just gotten their fourth foul, which effectively means you can't play defense. I
1:45:21
mean, when you're two best players now have four fouls, you can't play
1:45:25
defense because you know, if you do anything, especially with this officiating crew,
1:45:30
then you're going to get your fifth foul, you're out of the game.
1:45:32
So that was the death nail right there. That was the final nail
1:45:35
in the coffin for Iowa. That call got criticized roundly on social media.
1:45:42
I mean, I saw some TikTok posts with hundreds of thousands of views from
1:45:45
people commentating on what a terrible call that was, and again I'm not saying
1:45:51
it was racist, but unfortunately we live in this world where we see everything
1:45:56
through the prism of race. We're taught to see everything through the prism of
1:45:59
race. And you got an all black team and seemingly all black female officiating
1:46:03
crew, and they take out the two best players from IOWA in one fell
1:46:09
swoop to end the game. Whether that was conscious or subconscious, I'm sorry.
1:46:13
If it was reversed, that would be seen as a racial issue by
1:46:15
by the news media, especially by ESPN. And so when LSU has clinched
1:46:21
the game, um Angel Reese, who's one of the star players for LSU,
1:46:27
starts to taunt Caitlin Clark with some some uh, you know, hand
1:46:32
taunting, putting her hand over her face. I can't you know, you
1:46:35
can't see me, which is something apparently Clark had done a couple of games
1:46:40
previously, and then also pointing to her ring finger. Hey we're getting a
1:46:45
ring and you're not, you know, right in her face. And this
1:46:49
this caused a bit of controversy, especially online, where people thought that Reese
1:46:55
was out of control, that this was going too far, this was rubbing
1:46:58
it in Clark's face. Now, to be very fair, Clark is a
1:47:02
is a apparently a very good trash talker and even got some praise for trash
1:47:09
talking during the tournament, and supposedly when she was in high school and in
1:47:14
grade school when she played against the boys, she would taunt the boys for
1:47:18
not being good enough to play against the girl. And by the way,
1:47:21
some of that is great someone, that's fun. If it was done by
1:47:25
men, no one would give a shit, which is interesting because I do
1:47:29
think there's a double standard for women here. Were not really comfortable with women
1:47:32
taunting other women. With men, you know, we view it very differently.
1:47:39
So I think that's an interesting element of this whole thing. But what's
1:47:42
really fascinating and an indication of just how broken and hypocritical the news media is.
1:47:47
So Lsu wins the game and Angel Reese comes on to the ESPN set
1:47:53
with the four female sports woke commentators, and of course they talked to her
1:47:59
about the haunting of Caitlyn Clark, and they are giddy talking about it,
1:48:04
the ESPN commentators are. They are praising her, laughing with her how awesome
1:48:10
it was. They were clearly overjoyed that she had stuck it to Caitlyn Clark,
1:48:15
not just in winning the game, but in overtly and I believe over
1:48:19
the top unnecessarily. I mean, look, a little taunting is fine,
1:48:21
there's got to be a line. I thought reasons went a bit over the
1:48:25
line. But it was her explanation that really bothered me because her explanation for
1:48:32
why she taunted Clark sounded and I didn't fully even understand it because the facts
1:48:38
don't make a lot of sense to me. So I'm a little bit hesitant
1:48:41
in this area. But she referenced basically backing up one of her quote unquote
1:48:45
girls from the South Carolina game, it felt that she had been taunted by
1:48:53
Clark, and the way she described it as well, well, these are
1:48:57
one of my sec that's their conference, Southeastern Conference. South Carolina and LSU
1:49:00
were in the same conference that you know, this is one of my girls,
1:49:03
and I was protecting her, having her back. These are my words,
1:49:06
not hers. And I'm like, well, really, this is this
1:49:10
is about conference affiliation or is it about race? Because all the girls at
1:49:15
South Carolina were black. Don Stanley had made racial issue after the game,
1:49:20
and here we have an all black team going up against the all white team.
1:49:24
It felt very much like race was kind of the fuel behind this,
1:49:29
and race may have also played a role in why ESPN was so giddy about
1:49:33
this, seeing the black girl defeat the white girl and rub it in her
1:49:36
face. Let's be clear if the situation had been completely reversed, and it's
1:49:42
tough to be one hundred percent analogous here, but if if Clark had been
1:49:45
rubbing in Reese's face and when asked about it as referenced, well, you
1:49:50
know Reese went after one of my white girls in a previous game, Oh
1:49:55
my god, there would be hell to pay Clark's position. Media darling would
1:50:00
immediately be taken away and she'd be beforced to apologize otherwise she'd be destroyed.
1:50:05
Now, is this the biggest issue in the world. No, But I
1:50:09
think it's an incredibly depressing and probably accurate indication of just how combustible the situation
1:50:16
is with race in this country and how the media has exacerbated it by not
1:50:21
treating everyone fairly and equally and favoring one side over the other. And look,
1:50:30
could a lot of this be either subconscious or imagined. Yes, but
1:50:35
it's the media that has taught us to look at everything through this prism of
1:50:40
race. And if all these circumstances were reversed, I can guarante, damn
1:50:45
tee you that the media and ESPN would be seeing racism everywhere, and I
1:50:51
hate it, especially in sports. Sports was supposed to be the one area
1:50:56
where that this didn't happen, where it's all about what happens on the court
1:51:00
or on the field, and that's what's part of what made sports great.
1:51:04
It's part of what how sports helped us out of the dark ages of our
1:51:11
racial sins in this country. I mean, there's all sorts of stories of
1:51:15
how sports helped, especially in the Deep South, when it came to overcoming
1:51:21
the racial inequalities and helped us get to this what was supposed to be a
1:51:28
colorblind society, which we've now reversed ourselves from where we've gone completely in the
1:51:31
opposite directions, as if the Barack Obama presidency never even happened or actually hurt
1:51:36
things. I mean, it feels very much like we are in a worse
1:51:40
position when it comes to race now than we were even before we twice elected
1:51:45
our first black president, which was supposed to heal what was left of those
1:51:50
scars, and in fact, the opposite has happened. And I found the
1:51:54
whole thing to be interesting but also very depressing. And then Reese actually has
1:51:59
the gallus say this win was for girls who look like me. Although she
1:52:04
didn't say win, she said this was for girls who look like me.
1:52:09
I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt and say the win and
1:52:12
not the taunting. But she said this was for girls who looked like me.
1:52:15
How are we still living in a world in twenty twenty three where a
1:52:19
black basketball player can say, you know, boy, just you know,
1:52:25
black kids growing up just have no role models in the area of basketball.
1:52:30
What and this doesn't make any sense now Caitlin Clark. And conversely, and
1:52:35
I think you know, very tellingly, her postgame press conference was all about
1:52:41
girls looking up to her and her legacy and the people of Iowa and how
1:52:45
she hopes that they got joy from this incredible run to the finals. And
1:52:48
it was all about her teammates. And so look, I'm I'm clearly a
1:52:53
Caitlin Clark fan. I think she's awesome both on and off the court.
1:52:57
Is that because she's white? I don't know, I mean it certainly makes
1:52:59
her unique. It certainly is partially why her story is interesting. If she
1:53:04
was black, she wouldn't be so unusual. She wouldn't be a unicorn,
1:53:10
she wouldn't be Larry Bird. And so I fully acknowledge that that's part of
1:53:14
what draws someone to her and her story. But she still is awesome regardless
1:53:20
of what her race is, because she shoots like nobody've ever seen, and
1:53:25
she does seem to have her head on straight, and she has a great
1:53:28
personality. And yeah, I like the spunk, I like a little bit
1:53:30
of the taunting and the talk back. I guess it's a matter of where
1:53:33
you draw the line, and the media likes to draw the line very differently
1:53:38
for black people than they do for white people. All Right, a couple
1:53:43
other quick things before I run out of time on this episode of the podcast.
1:53:45
I want to at least mention the Twitter verification badge situation, because I
1:53:51
find this to be significant and indicative of where we are with regard to the
1:53:56
news media. If you're not on Twitter, Twitter, until Elon Musk took
1:54:00
over, used to basically have a two tier cast system. You're either verified
1:54:04
or you're not verified. If you're verified. You have a blue check mark
1:54:08
next to your name. Somehow I'm in the verified category or was in the
1:54:12
verified category, which meant you know that my account was somehow notable. It
1:54:17
usually was members of the news media, or sports figures or political figures.
1:54:25
For some reason, you were notable in your position or your stature in society.
1:54:31
I don't know, it was a fluke. I'm sure that I got
1:54:33
one, but that verification bage had some significance in power when it came to
1:54:42
how your account would be viewed by others and gave you some level of credibility.
1:54:47
And for those the vast majority of accounts that were not verified, there
1:54:51
was a lot of jealousy, understandably so because it was very subjective as to
1:54:58
who got a verification badge and who didn't, and especially before Elon Musk took
1:55:02
over, you know, you were much more likely to get one if you
1:55:04
were liberal than if you were a conservative, which was understandably a point of
1:55:10
consternation. But then when Musk took over, he basically allowed anyone to buy
1:55:15
a verification mark, and so you can't tell the difference between someone who's verified
1:55:18
because they're supposedly notable or because they'd paid the eight bucks a month or whatever
1:55:24
it is for the Blue verification mark plus a few other you know, benefits
1:55:30
to being a Twitter Blue member. You know, they're not all that significant
1:55:34
to me, but you know, I guess somebody might feel as if they're
1:55:38
they're worth the eight bucks a month. Anyway, Musk recently announced that starting
1:55:44
on April first, April Fool's Day, that all the old verification marks would
1:55:48
be taken away, and then it would It was very vague about when it
1:55:55
would happen, how long it would take to happen, but then unless you
1:55:59
paid for verification mark, you were no longer going to be verified. And
1:56:02
I have no interest in paying, and not just because you know, I
1:56:06
don't like giving up eight bucks a month for anything, but I just philosophically,
1:56:12
I think Twitter ought to be free, and I also don't like being
1:56:15
blackmailed into paying somebody money. And frankly, the verification badge isn't that significant
1:56:20
to me. In fact, weirdly not having a verification badge maybe the new
1:56:25
verification badge, depending on how this all goes down. But this process apparently
1:56:30
it is going to take a very long time because it's done manually, well
1:56:33
not coincidentally, The New York Times appears to have been the first major authenticated
1:56:41
account that got de verified, that lost their precious verification blue check mark.
1:56:48
And I'm sure that wasn't a coincidence, because Elon Moss clearly has disdain and
1:56:53
understandably so for the New York Times. In fact, when this became a
1:56:57
big story on Twitter that the New York Times no longer had a verification badge,
1:57:00
Elon Musk tweeted out, the real tragedy of the New York Times is
1:57:04
that their propaganda isn't even interesting. Also, their feed is the Twitter equivalent
1:57:10
of diarrhea. It's unreadable. What do you really think, Elon Musk?
1:57:17
And look, I'm no fan of the New York Times, but they are
1:57:20
the paper record, and it is kind of ridiculous that, you know,
1:57:24
they're not verified, and yet all sorts of crazy organizations that have, you
1:57:30
know, are very much of questionable reliableness are now verified. And that was
1:57:36
really the purpose of the entire verification system is is this who they say they
1:57:41
are? Can this account be relied on to provide credible information? All that
1:57:46
all that's now going to be gone because Twitter needs cash. Now, how's
1:57:51
the media going to react to this? A lot of media outlets have said
1:57:55
they're not going to pay for the verification mark. Like I said, I'm
1:57:59
I don't tend to pay for the verification mark. But it is possible that
1:58:02
they're gonna make this almost untenable for people who don't pay for it. That
1:58:06
basically, your Twitter accounts not gonna have any reach. You're not gonna have
1:58:11
the same benefits and features as other people on Twitter. You're not gonna be
1:58:16
able to participate in polls. You know, there's all sorts of things they
1:58:19
can do to basically force you to pay for the badge or to finally cry
1:58:25
uncle. I don't think I'm gonna finally cry uncle, at least that's my
1:58:28
intent right now. It depends on where this. You know, where I
1:58:31
end up going with this podcast. If I keep going with the podcast.
1:58:34
If I don't, I'm just gonna quit Twitter altogether because I don't need it,
1:58:38
because Twitter is basically how I promote the podcast to my sixty sixty thousand
1:58:43
followers or whatever there is on Twitter. But there are a lot of media
1:58:46
outlets and personalities that are claiming they're not gonna pay for the blue check mark.
1:58:50
I will be very curious to see whether that really happens, because I
1:58:56
think it was the blue check mark in the pre Musk era that made Twitter
1:59:00
what it was, because it made members of media feel special, and that's
1:59:04
why they loved Twitter. They already feel as if they're above the average person,
1:59:11
the unwashed masses, and the blue check mark proved that to them.
1:59:15
Well, now the blue check mark is going to be gone and all these
1:59:17
unwashed masses people are going to have blue check marks. Is that going to
1:59:20
fundamentally change the media's relationship with Twitter. I don't know, but I think
1:59:26
it's an interesting question that needs to be answered, because it absolutely positively could.
1:59:30
I really don't believe Twitter would be what it is today without this two
1:59:34
tiered cast system of the elites getting their their blue check marks and everyone else
1:59:41
not doing so. Now we're in a completely different era with Elon Musk and
1:59:45
he needs money and he realizes he way, way, way, way overpaid
1:59:48
for Twitter, just as I said he did. I mean, imagine knowing
1:59:51
that you overpaid for something by twenty to twenty four billion dollars, which Musk
1:59:57
is now admitted, and not seemingly to be that upset about it's such amazing,
2:00:00
But this is going to be an interesting situation and I'll certainly update you
2:00:04
on how that goes. As of right now, as of this taping,
2:00:08
my account still has its blue check mark, but I'm anticipating that will not
2:00:12
be the case for much longer. Regardless of whether or not I have my
2:00:15
blue check mark, I am looking forward to the next episode of the podcast
2:00:18
because we'll have hopefully a lot more on the actual details of Donald Trump's arrests
2:00:24
slashed in slash indictment. Hopefully we'll actually get to the bottom of what he's
2:00:30
being indicted for. I'm also scheduled to have a really cool guest from the
2:00:33
world of network sportscasting talk about the Final Four and the Masters and some issues
2:00:40
some of which we just talked about with regard to the women's college basketball tournament.
2:00:45
So I'm really looking forward to that. So please make sure you not
2:00:47
only listen to this and share this episode as every episode of the podcast,
2:00:51
but also episode number forty seven, which will be coming out in a couple
2:00:55
of days. As there's always the case, please remember to subscribe, rate,
2:00:59
review, and share this podcast on social media. If you tag me,
2:01:02
I'll be happy to share it as well. And until next time,
2:01:05
thanks so much for listening. This is episode number forty six of the Depth
2:01:09
of Journalism podcast, and my name is John Zigler.