Latest / The Death Of Journalism / Episode One Hundred Forty One: School's Out

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Episode One Hundred Forty One: School's Out · The Death Of Journalism

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Welcome to episode number one hundred and forty one of the Death of Journalism podcast.
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My name is John Zigler. I'm your host on today's show. Trust
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in the news media hits an all time low. Gee, I wonder why
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the New York Times admits we screwed up schools during COVID and Bill Maher goes
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off on the same subject. And it is sure looking as if I was
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correct when it came to the University of Utah racial hate crime in Idaho.
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We begin today's episode with a new survey from Gallop on trust or lack thereof
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in the news media. As Gallup has been tracking this statistic for about seventy
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years in the United States, and trust in the news media, which is
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a key to understanding the impact of why we even have this podcast, the
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death of journalism has never been lower. Only thirty two percent of the population
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in the United States of America reports having a quote great deal or even a
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fair amount of confidence that the media reports the news in a full, fair
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and accurate way thirty two percent. It has never been lower than that.
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The only other time in recent history that trust has fallen to thirty two percent
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was in twenty sixteen. Now in some cases the sentiment is actually worse today
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than it was then. A record high number of Americans thirty nine percent say
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they don't trust the media at all. So more Americans say they don't trust
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the media at all than say that they have a great deal or fair amount
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of trust by seven percentage points. And as you might expect, this confidence
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level in the news media is dictated largely by one's political ideology. Fifty eight
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percent of Democrats still say that they have a great deal or fair amount of
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trust and confidence in the media, although that is way down from what it
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was just a few years ago. It was at seventy six percent just about
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five or six years ago. Now it's at fifty eight percent. Independents are
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down to twenty nine percent who say they have a great deal or fair amount
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of confidence and trust in the news media, and among Republicans that number is
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only eleven percent, which is about as low it is as it has ever
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been in the history of the Gallop poll. That is remarkable the division between
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Democrats and Republicans. There, just to repeat, fifty eight percent of Democrats
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basically have trust. Only eleven percent of Republicans have trust in the news media.
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Much of the sentiment dip in recent years is driven by Democrats and independents,
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whose collective trust in media has plummeted eighteen and thirteen percentage points, respectively
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from their two thousand and eighteen peaks. That's an interesting year twenty and eighteen
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for these demographics to suddenly in twenty twenty four have far less trust in the
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news media. Younger demographic younger democrats. Younger demographics as well as younger democrats
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in particular, tend to be much less trusting of the media. According to
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this Gallup poll, Republicans trust in media is still near all time lows.
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All right, So what does this mean? And why do I leave the
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podcast with it? I leave the podcast with it because to me, the
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essence of why the entire issue of the death of journalism matters is the lack
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of trust that we now have in our news media, and that how that
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filters into all different aspects of our society, and how incredibly danger dangerous it
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is. I mean, give you two recent examples. So we take this
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on Monday morning, on Sunday night, sixty Minutes, the A TV news
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show that used to be the most trusted in America used to be an incredibly
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highly rated show. It's now just a shell of what it used to be.
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They had a rather dramatic and very disturbing story about Russian attacks on the
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brains, the literal brains of some of our top national security agents, and
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that their belief and experts believe that Russia is behind these very mysterious and incredibly
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disturbing attacks. Now online, this didn't make nearly the kind of impact that
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you would think that it would, largely because among conservatives there is no trust
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in sixty minutes, and especially no trust in any story where the word Russia
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is even tangentially used. It's at this point Pavlovian. If the mainstream news
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media is reporting something of about Russia, the vast majority of quote unquote Conservatives
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or Republicans or especially Trumpers are simply not going to believe it. They don't
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have any trust in it, and therefore it creates no interest in the story.
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It doesn't become well known, it doesn't become believed. This if true,
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This is an incredibly significant story, and vast portions of America is like,
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eh, yeah, we don't really believe that. It's sixty minutes it's
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CBS, it's Russia, Russia, Russia. Nothing to see here, that's
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just the way they've now been trained, and not irrationally because of what we
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have seen, especially over the last decade, and especially obviously regarding Russia Gate
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and the twenty sixteen election. That's dangerous. As much as I have disdain
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for the mainstream news media, we still ought to have at least some level
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of trust because sometimes they're telling the truth. Now they need to take responsibility,
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and they have not for the fact that there's a good reason for us
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not to trust them. So this has got to be a two way street.
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There needs to be some accountability. There needs to be some attempt to
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try to fix past mistakes and try to do better. Take some semblance of
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blame for why the trust by the public is so incredibly low. That has
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not happened, I acknowledge that. But from the consumers standpoint, especially as
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conservatives, we've become so distrustful, so conspiracy minded, that oftentimes true and
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important stories are totally ignored or disregarded simply because of this knee jerk reaction of
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lack of trust. And that is not healthy, and that's potentially very,
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very dangerous. And then there's the other direction where people don't trust anything at
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all simply because they don't want to. For instance, the Washington Post felt
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for about a week ago to do an entire story on these whack jobs online,
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believing that the Kate Middleton cancer announcement video was actually AI. It was
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faked. That Kate Middleton still has not you know, been made, she's
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not gone public. We don't know what's going on with her. This video
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was a fake. And now because we live in this world of artificial intelligence,
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we can't even trust video or audio. And I've predicted many times that
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in this twenty twenty four election that's gonna be a major issue. There's gonna
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be all sorts of situations where videos or audio is going to be either actual
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AI or it's gonna be dismissed as AI, because now you don't have to
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believe anything you don't want to believe, Oh, it's just AI. And
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again it's not completely irrational because it's be easy now for things to be faked.
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Now, there's no chance that the Cape Middleton video was faked. It
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was done in part by the BBC. There's no evidence for this, there's
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no logic for this. It's an absurd theory, but people believe it,
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and when they post on social media about it, their posts are very popular.
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And the Washington Post was probably not wrong to do a story about this
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phenomenon. But this is what happens because of the catastrophic loss in trust in
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the news media. If we had anywhere close to the level of trust that
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we should have, no one would argue about whether or not the Kate Middleton
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cancer announcement was real, and we would pay attention to what sixty Minutes is
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saying about Russian attacks on the brains of our top national security agents. Doesn't
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mean you have to believe it blindly, but you'd at least give it some
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semblance of credibility. But the level of trust, especially among Republicans in the
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news media, is so incredibly low, just eleven percent of people having a
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decent level of trust, that that's not possible anymore. And there's a lot
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of reasons for why this is. This is This did not happen overnight.
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This has been basically generations in the making, and it has been a very
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very systematic, almost a drip drip drip, especially among Republicans. If you
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look at the graph line on Republicans. The lack of trust has systematically been
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going down every five or ten years, and it has gone down more in
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the Trump era. And there's no question that he's a big part of that.
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Some of it's fake for his own purposes, and some of it's real,
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like I referenced with regard to Russia Gate. But it is interesting that
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they gallup notice that the real most recent demographic shifts occur among young Democrats and
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independence, where they are now lacking trust in the news media since twenty eighteen.
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And of course, the most obvious reason for why that might be is
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because of the reaction to the COVID panic. Now, is this consciously the
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reason why many people who normally trusted the news media no longer do. There's
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no way of knowing, because, of course they don't delve into this.
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You know, if the gallup was really ambitious and really credible, they would
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have tried to figure out. Okay, so why have we seen a big
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dip in media trust among demographics that normally trust the media since twenty eighteen?
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Gee, I wonder what happened since then that might have eroded trust in the
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news media. Well, of course it's got to be COVID. Now,
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there's a lot of different ways that can break. By the way, you
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could lose trust in the media over COVID, you know, in many different
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directions For me, and I was obviously a huge media skeptic before COVID,
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but I mean I lost any trust I had to begin with in so many
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different elements of the so called elite expert class. I lost trust in science,
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I lost trust in education, I lost trust in the news media.
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I lost trust in our politicians. I mean I had very little to begin
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with, because almost everything they told us was either totally wrong or at least
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partially wrong, and was clearly motivated by politics and self interest. And there
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was no almost no accountability, which is why there's been no political accountability.
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I am a big believer that the news media narrative on COVID is a big
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reason why we have this rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden that nobody wants.
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If the truth had been told about COVID in a widespread way and the
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public understood what really happened with regard to the COVID panic, I don't think
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there's any chance that we would have ended up with Trump versus Biden. Again,
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I really don't believe we would have had Donald Trump as the Republican presidential
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nominee. But the media was unwilling to tell that story. And that's a
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huge part of why Ron DeSantis had no chance of beating Trump in the Republican
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primary process. I predicted that many many times, well before it became obvious
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to the rest of the public. And in reality, and with regard to
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COVID and the media coverage, something rather dramatic has happened in the realm of
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a semblance, a shred, not really nowhere near what it should be,
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but at least some level of accountability when it came to the issue of school
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closings. The New York Times, the paper of record, over the last
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several days, as both in its print edition as well as online and evil
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in their email newsletter that they sent out, they have done a very extensive
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story on something that I have talked about constantly since the very beginning of COVID,
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which was that we were setting up an entire generation for massive problems when
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it came to schooling, because in many places, including here in California,
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we essentially went without public school for a year and a half without real public
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school. We were sending a direct and clear message that school does not matter,
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and that that was a message that was a lesson that was going to
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be learned by parents and by students, and that that was going to have
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devastating implications. Now to me and to others. There were people that were
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agreeing with me. They were also screaming bloody murder at the time, But
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we lost because we were up against presidented circumstances and insanity in the COVID panic,
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as well as a huge political agenda in the middle of a presidential election.
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We were saying, this was obviously going to have massive ramifications, not
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just in the short term lack of learning, but in the long term lesson
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that we were teaching all of society about the importance of schooling and education.
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And so it was in that context that I was particularly fascinated that the New
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York Times on it the front page, the front page of its March thirtieth
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edition, had the headline pandemic effect. Of course, that's not really what
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happened. It wasn't the pandemic. It was the panic surrounding the pandemic and
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the politics surrounding the pandemic. But this is the way the New York Times
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wants to frame it. Pandemic effect, absence from schools is soaring, and
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then headline habit of daily attendance broken, and the shift turns education quote unquote
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optional. Wow. Gee, who could have possibly ever imagined that that would
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be the result? You mean to tell me that if we tell people that
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it's okay to cancel school for over a year because of a virus that doesn't
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impact healthy kids and killed almost nobody who would be in the realm of healthy
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under the age of seventy, that that doesn't have ramifications. And oh,
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by the way, there's no evidence that being in or out of school had
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any impact on the spread of the virus itself. You mean to tell me
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that if we do that, that that was actually going to have long term
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implications on the value that people place on going to school get out of town.
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You gotta be kidding me, Really, who could have possibly thunked this?
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Oh? I don't know somebody who had a clear mind that wasn't deeply
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invested in the panic, that didn't want to keep schools closed because they thought
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it was good politics for them, because it would harm Donald Trump's re election
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campaign. And just to review, that's not an idle allegation on my part.
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That's as clear as day what happened. Because the National Pediatric Society or
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whatever they call themselves association came out in the summer of twenty twenty and said
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schools need to be open now. They were doing it mainly from the standpoint
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of the health of children, because one of the many drawbacks of not having
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school was you don't have people watching the kids who aren't their parents. So,
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in other words, you have a situation where if you're being abused at
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home, there's no way for anyone outside the home to tell whether or not
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the child's being abused. It's one of the many things that are one of
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the most important things that keeps abused children somewhat safe. It's because if you're
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being abused as a child, there's physical evidence of that, the teacher sees
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it, the teacher reports it, then there's there's an investigation into the home.
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Well, that was all gone, and that was one of the major
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reasons, not the only why doctors said we got to get back to school.
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Well, Trump used that to say, yep, we got to get
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back to school, and immediately the organization reversed itself because why did the science
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change? Did reality change? No, the politics have it change. They
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got pressure from all their liberal friends saying, what are you doing. You're
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helping Trump's reelection. If we go back to school in September or August,
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now, then that's gonna seem like we're recovering, that things are coming back
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to normal, and that might help Trump win. And so they reversed themselves.
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To me, you know a lot of people talk about George Floyd and
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the riots and how that exposed the hypocrisy of the so called science experts because
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they signed off on riots, but you couldn't go to funerals or graduations or
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sporting events outside which absolutely one hundred percent. That was a moment that for
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a lot of people was eye opening. But as far as the political impact
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of COVID, to me, that would happen with school closings or openings and
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Trump's statement and how the science community completely reversed itself, that was at least
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as obvious and dramatic, and that was the last straw for me when it
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came to trusting anybody in the medical or science community. Because you just revealed
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who you are. You're a bunch of fucking horse. Your political horse has
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nothing to do with what's right or what makes sense or what's good for kids.
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And so the New York Times, you know, they finally decide,
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Okay, they've dabbled in this previously, but this was by far their most
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extensive effort. Here was the email newsletter that they put out on this very
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subject a few days before. They put it in print on the front page
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of their newspaper, headline school absences have exploded, and they say, you
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know, this is called the Morning. This is the morning newsletter from the
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New York Times. Good morning. We're covering a crisis of school absenteeism.
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And the writer, Sarah Mirvush, this is her beat. She's an education
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reporter for the New York Times. She writes, a few years ago,
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a troubling phenomenon began to spread in US education. Students were not showing up
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to school. This was not particularly surprising. Schools had shut down in the
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spring of twenty twenty at the start of the pandemic, and some did not
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fully open until fall of twenty twenty one. Actually, we didn't get back
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to real one hundred percent. Education in California even passed the fall of twenty
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twenty one, but quarantines for COVID symptoms and exposures were still common. It
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would take time, many thought, to re establish daily routines. What is
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surprising to people who didn't really think this through, I guess, is how
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little the numbers have budged since then. And then they talk about an in
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depth article that they published on this particular day. Before the pandemic, or
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I would say the COVID panic, about fifteen percent of US students were chronically
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absent, which typically means missing eighteen days of school in a particular year for
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any reason. By the twenty twenty one twenty twenty two school that number had
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skyrocketed to twenty eight percent of students. So before the pandemic panic, fifteen
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percent of US students were chronically absent. It jumps to twenty eight percent,
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almost twice as many students chronically absent in the aftermath of the COVID panic.
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Last school year, the most reason for which national estimates are available, it
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held stubbornly at twenty six percent, so barely moved at all, even though
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we are now clearly in the post COVID era, The New York Times writer
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asks what is going on here? I spoke with school leaders, counselors,
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researchers and parents. They offered many reasons for the absences, illness, mental
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health, transportation problems. But underlying it all is a fundamental shift in the
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value that families place on school and in the culture of education. During the
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pana or once again, I'll refer to it as the COVID panic quote,
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our relationship with school became optional, said Katie Rosenbaum, a psychologist and associate
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research professor at Duke University, and then The New York Times goes on to
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detail a cultural shift when it comes to the importance of education and going to
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school. This was always obvious. This is not a mystery. This was
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a ramification of this unprecedented decision to close schools for at least a year,
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especially in the Blue States, that should have been understood by everybody. This
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is a myth. This is a complete joke that is now being put out
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there that, well, we just didn't know at the time. We absolutely
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knew at the time. We knew that children were by far the least vulnerable,
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and we also knew that this thing was not nearly as deadly as had
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been first feared, and was not nearly as transmissible as was first feared.
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All of the original estimates at the beginning were catastrophically off, and I saw
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this coming from a million miles away. You may recall I've told the story
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previously that before our school in southern California was even closed, it was just
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when the panic was beginning. I had a conversation with our principal, very
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nice guy, and I said, you know, you need to understand something.
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I know you're not in charge of this, but you need to understand
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something that when the schools close, and they will close when they close,
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if we do not have a very specific date or at the very least an
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extremely specific standard with regard to reopening, that we will not reopen in full
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for at least a year or two. And he thought I was completely crazy.
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I mean, he legitimately thought I was nuts. He thanked me,
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he was very nice, he thanked me for what I was saying. I
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don't even think he thought we were ever going to close down schools for more
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than if we did for maybe a couple of days, just to go through
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that, you know, remember fifteen days to slow the spread or flatten the
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curb, whatever bullshit they were coming up at the top with at the time.
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But you know, it was obvious to me he had no idea what
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the hell I was talking about. And the basis for my statement was that
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I knew. One there was the political element, being in the middle of
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a highly contested presidential election and the fact that liberals desperately wanted Donald Trump to
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lose. That was part of it. But also, once you close schools,
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you're changing the burden to proof. You're then having to prove. Instead
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of proving that it's unsafe to go to school, you have to prove that
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it is safe to go to school. And we live in this society now
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where if it only saves one life, it doesn't matter what kind of sacrifice
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we all have to make to facilitate that. There was no way, especially
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given the way the media was going to cover this, that we could possibly
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ever prove and reach over that burden of proof that somehow we have to now
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prove that it's safe to go back to school. So everything was going to
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be flipped on its head. And I also knew with Governor Newsom in charge,
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that he was going to be deeply invested in keeping schools closed. And
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that's exactly what happened. And you know, and to my principle's credit,
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Alo, he quit being a principal, I think partially because of what happened
25:48
with COVID. When the next school year was supposed to start, he and
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I had a conversation, and to his credit, he said, mister Ziggler,
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I think about our converse station every day and essentially acknowledged that I was
26:03
correct in my analysis of what was going to go down here. And it
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didn't end there. That we were still right in the middle of this insanity
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because we were one still in a presidential election, and two we were never
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going to be able to get over that burden, that burden approved that somehow
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we have to prove that it's okay to go back to school, which is
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uttered insanity. And you know, this has had all sorts of ramifications,
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all sorts of ramifications. By the way, you know, I talk all
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the time about cancelation nation. It is so much easier now post COVID panic
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to cancel all sorts of things, especially kids events, whether it's field trips
26:45
or sporting events, or you know, just every day things that used to
26:49
happen unless something really catastrophic occurred, now willy nilly get canceled. I have
26:56
people messaging me about this all the time because I have Referencedcilation Nation on Twitter
27:02
many many times, and so whenever something crazy happens, when they go this
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would never have happened before COVID people tend to send me that information. But
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it's most devastating when it comes to school because now the threshold, the burden
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approof, if you will, when it comes to deciding, well, do
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we go to school today or do we not, has been completely fundamentally and
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probably permanently altered in a way that The New York Times ought to be taking
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responsibility for. Here's the part, of course that is nowhere to be seen.
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How about some accountability here, how about Hey, you know what,
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we at the New York Times led the charge and closing down schools. We
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were wrong. We shouldn't have done that because we were stupid, and we
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let the panic get the best of us. We let our hatred of Donald
27:56
Trump get the best of us. None one in the media will have admit
28:00
that. But that's obviously a huge part of what happened here. The media
28:06
played an incredibly significant role. They were enabling all of this. There was
28:11
no contrarian voice in the mainstream news media, mainly because there was this narrative
28:18
that, my god, we have to do everything we possibly can, even
28:22
if we go overboard in trying to combat the virus, and anybody who doesn't
28:26
do that is somehow pro COVID virus, which was insanity. Insanity. We
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knew this was going to be the situation. We knew there were going to
28:37
be these types of ramifications, and it wasn't just conservatives, it wasn't just
28:42
libertarians. Now. Unfortunately, because Donald Trump was all over the map on
28:47
this issue, conservatives were not galvanized, and we're not speaking in a unified
28:52
voice. It's one of the many, many reasons why I hate Donald Trump
28:53
and why it's insane that he could be president again, because he completely shit
28:59
the bed when it came to the COVID panic. There were a couple of
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liberals also, the most prominent, which was probably Bill Maher. Bill Maher
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a guy who I've never had any love for. I've always thought he was
29:11
somewhat funny and a little bit interesting, and I liked it when he was
29:15
contrarian, but he's clearly very much a liberal, and you know, is
29:21
wrong about a lot of things. But he was one of the very very
29:26
few media voices on the left at the beginning of COVID that was willing to
29:30
go, guys, what are we doing here? And slowly but surely his
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voice got stronger and stronger, and in the last episode of his show on
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HBO Real Time with Bill Maher, he went off on this particular subject.
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I don't know whether or not it was because of what the New York Times
29:49
did making it a little bit safer, because he does lead off in a
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second here, you're gonna hear a clip from his epic monologue. He does
30:00
reference the closing of schools and absenteeism or truancy, and it does sound as
30:07
if he's at least read the New York Times articles, So that may have
30:10
played a role in the timing for why he decided to do this now.
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But Bill Maher laid out probably the best anti COVID insanity commentary ever heard to
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this day on what I would refer to as mainstream news media. Now,
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I'm not going to play the entire thing for you. I'm going to play
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it basically from about halfway through, because otherwise it's to be too long.
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But this is this is I guess, the second half of Bill Maher just
30:45
laying the wood to the news media and those that perpetrated the COVID panic and
30:52
all of the insane things that we did and the ramifications that they have had.
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Now there is one bit of warning at the very end here typical of
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Bill Maher, he decides to virtue signal inaccurately in my view about Donald Trump.
31:07
And I'll comment on that in a second. But here was Bill Maher
31:10
in the last episode of Real Time going off on the issue of the COVID
31:17
panic, and now this narrative that somehow, well, you know, we
31:19
just didn't know. There was nothing we could have done differently because we just
31:23
didn't have the knowledge, And to Mar's credit, he takes that head on.
31:29
I get it that we didn't know exactly what was happening at the beginning
31:32
of COVID, and some mistakes were inevitable. But four years on, I'm
31:37
tired of hearing, well, we didn't know, No, we didn't,
31:40
but some people guessed better than others, and the people who got it wrong
31:44
don't seem to want to acknowledge that. Now. Some people said closing schools
31:48
for so long was pointless and would cause much worse collateral damage to kids,
31:52
and they were right. Thank you, don't be a four years ago,
32:02
the Daily Beast ran a story with the headline Bill Maher pushes Steve bennan Wuhan
32:07
lab conspiracy theory, which was typical of the mainstream media at the time.
32:13
Of course, it wasn't a conspiracy theory, and it wasn't owned by Steve
32:16
Bannon. And now everyone, including the Biden administration, admits as at least
32:22
a fifty to fifty chance that the virus could have begun in the lab in
32:25
Wuhan that was doing gain of function research on that virus. Duh, But
32:37
I don't see a lot of retractions being printed. Yeah, when COVID hit,
32:42
we did a lot of stupid things because America never reacts, It only
32:45
overreacts. Ubers looked like those orthodox Jews who wrapped themselves and swan rop in
32:53
case their plane flies over a grave. We washed the mail, We played
33:07
baseball in front of cardboard cutouts and aid in parking lots or with inflatable dolls.
33:25
They closed the ocean. We banged pots and pans to show our love
33:32
for nurses and our hatred for people trying to get a baby to sleep.
33:43
For two years, we had to get nostril fucked every time we left the
33:45
house. Serious people talked about having sex through glory holes, and if you
33:58
don't know what a glory hole, I wouldn't look into it. We were
34:08
told to wash our hands every five minutes and don't ever touch your face,
34:13
and if you absolutely must go to the beach, for the sake of all
34:15
that's holy, wear a mask outside because the last thing you would want to
34:22
do when a disease is the foot is get fresh air and sunshine and vitamin
34:28
D. No much better to stay lockdops, stressed out and day drinking.
34:38
And if you do get COVID, remember natural immunity is always the worst kind.
34:45
So even if you've had the disease, you need a shot. Yes,
34:49
some very bad ideas were embraced as the conventional wisdom, ideas that haven't
34:53
aged well, and a lot of dissenting opinions that were suppressed and ridiculed at
34:59
the TI have proven to be correct. Maybe that's why the powers that be
35:04
never wanted a COVID commission. Why not? We love commissions, the Warren
35:07
Commission, the AIDS Commission, nine to eleven Commission, the NFL even had
35:13
to is ramming your head into another guy's head bad for heads Commission? Really,
35:24
so where's the COVID Commission? Because it seems to me we haven't learned
35:29
a thing. Maybe the number one lesson from the pandemic was the need for
35:32
proper air ventilation. Second was never going to zoom with Jeffrey Tuban. But
35:44
but if there's been a big national movement to retrofit buildings, I missed it.
35:51
Gain of function research is still going on in labs. We're still torturing
35:54
animals by raising our food and conditions. Ideal for virus is to make the
36:00
leap to humans. Bird flew was just found in a goat, which means
36:05
we're just one lonely farmer from the next pandemic. We handed out four trillion
36:20
dollars of free money. Two hundred and eighty billion of itch was just flat
36:23
out stolen and what the AP called the greatest grift in US history, and
36:29
which started an inflationary spiral that we now blame on Biden. So we're going
36:34
to bring back Trump, the guy who ignored COVID like it was the dinner
36:38
check, typical of Bill Maher. He had to ruin what he did at
36:43
the very very end there because he had this signal. He had the virtue
36:45
signal his opposition to Donald Trump, and it's so classic. I think what
36:51
mar does there at the end, it's so classic. Regarding Trump, I
36:54
wrote several articles at the time as a senior columnist for Mediaite about how Trump
37:00
was changing his position on COVID almost on a daily basis, and that this
37:07
was, in a weird way, helping him among his cult because if you
37:12
were somebody who was a conservative who was anti COVID panic, Trump gave you
37:17
enough to hang on to to think that that was really what his true position
37:22
was. But if you were part of those that were panicked about COVID and
37:25
thought we weren't maybe doing enough, or we need to do everything we possibly
37:29
could, he also gave those people enough to hang on to. And Mar
37:35
there because he needs to virtue signal that he's still anti Trump, and he's
37:38
already basically endorsed Joe Biden for president, he has to latch onto this.
37:45
I believe bogus narrative that somehow Trump was lays fair when it came to COVID.
37:52
Yeah, he was for about a week, and then he became doctor
37:54
Fauci's butt boy. I mean that, I mean, I mean, it's
37:59
ridiculous that Trump somehow, to this day is still being seen as soft on
38:06
COVID, or not taking COVID seriously, or somehow, you know, in
38:09
a weird way, maybe even being libertarian on COVID. That's just completely wrong.
38:15
So much of what happened occurred because of Donald Trump in so many different
38:21
ways. I don't want to go deeply into it because I've done so in
38:23
the past, but we can never forget that when Georgia Republican Governor Kemp of
38:29
Georgia was the first major state to try to start to reopen, he had
38:34
to do it in the face of a headwind that was created by Donald Frickin'
38:38
Trump on multiple occasions ripping him hard for reopening. And Kemp was right and
38:46
Trump was wrong. But you know, when you're the President of the United
38:50
States, that has a massive impact, especially when you have a cult.
38:53
So it made Kemp's job way way way more difficult. That would have been
39:00
normally, because all of a sudden, all the Trump could people are going,
39:05
wait a minute, if Trump says this is wrong, maybe this is
39:07
wrong. And those are the people that are supposed to be your biggest supporters
39:12
if you're a Republican governor in Georgia. And so Trump made it much more
39:16
difficult than it needed to be. And that's just one of many, many
39:21
examples. The biggest example, of course, is that he gave doctor Fauci
39:24
the most amazing platform than any medical person has ever had in the history of
39:30
the country, elevated him to super celebrity. That's what gave him the power,
39:35
and that effectively made everything that Fauci said an edict that was carried forward
39:39
from the news media to the local municipalities, and every local health director was
39:45
essentially taking orders from doctor Fauci. He was essentially the president of the United
39:49
States, and that was a power given to him by Donald Trump. Thanks
39:52
for listening to today's free drop of the abbreviated show. If you're interested in
39:57
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40:15
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