Latest / The Death Of Journalism / Episode Ninety Eight: Slippery Slopes All Around Us

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Episode Ninety Eight: Slippery Slopes All Around Us · The Death Of Journalism

0:00
Welcome to episode number ninety eight of the Death of Journalism podcast. My name
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is John Zigler. I'm your host an on today's show, The Mainstream Media,
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revealingly rushes the judgment on a tragedy at a Gaza hospital. Donald Trump
0:14
is now under a federal gag order and escalating evidence that tackle football is being
0:21
slowly ended as a sport. I'm known as the Dutch Digital marketing Man.
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I'm a digital advertising SEO and email marketing specialist that also happens to be a
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is the Dutchdigital Marketingman dot com. If you want to grow your business,
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Peter can help. That's the Dutch Digital marketing Man dot com. And hey,
1:02
thanks for sponsoring the show. As I begin episode number ninety eight of
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the Death of Journalism podcast, I want to make a programming note. Obviously
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we're heading towards episode number one hundred, and it is my intention to do
1:17
as I did with episode number fifty, which is to devote most, if
1:21
not all, depending on the news surrounding that episode, devote most of episode
1:26
number one hundred to another edition of Ask John Anything. This went pretty well
1:32
the first time we did it. In fact, we probably had too many
1:34
questions, and it's my intent to streamline this, maybe cut down on the
1:38
questions, and maybe not give quite as extensive answers as I did in episode
1:45
fifty, because my recollection is that that ran into at least two different episodes
1:49
of the podcast. So I need your help if you would like to participate
1:53
and Ask John Anything for episode number one hundred. It's exactly what it sounds
2:00
like. Ask me any relevant question at all, hopefully surrounding the topics that
2:05
are discussed on this podcast, or about the podcast itself, or about me
2:09
in particular, and I'll promise you nothing but a very straightforward and honest answer.
2:15
However, I will make one caveat, and that is since I have
2:19
eluded somewhat subtly at times that the future of this podcast is in doubt,
2:27
I ask that you're not waste your time asking any questions about the future of
2:30
the podcast, because I plan on addressing that, at least in some detail
2:36
in episode number one hundred, So don't bother asking about the future of the
2:40
podcast. But any other question that you might deem interesting irrelevant, and if
2:46
I agree, we'll share it on the podcast. You can ask me via
2:51
a number of different platforms. The easiest way is probably just to email me.
2:55
You can email me at john z jhn z john z at mediaite dot
3:04
com. It's a terrible domain name, but it's not that difficult when you
3:08
spell it out media and then ite one word mediaight dot com. That's John
3:15
Z at mediait dot com. Or if you follow me on Twitter, you
3:21
can direct message me there. If you are a friend of mine on Facebook,
3:23
you can direct message me there. Or you can simply respond to the
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post of this particular episode of the podcast, or I'm sure episode number ninety
3:35
nine, I'll do the same thing where I posted on Twitter, I posted
3:38
on Facebook and in the responses the comments section. You want to ask your
3:43
question, you can do it that way as well, So feel free to
3:46
participate in episode number one hundred. Ask John anything, and again, don't
3:52
bother asking about the future of the podcast. As I plan on giving at
3:55
least a partial explanation of where we are and where I think we might be
4:00
going and not going in the future with regard to this podcast. Now,
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as far as the news of the day, there's lots to get to.
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In episode number ninety eight, we begin with the tragedy in Gaza that is
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likely going to result in hundreds and maybe a thousand or more innocent people dying
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in a hospital in Gaza as the war between Hamas and Israel continues to go
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on. And this was just a classic situation forgetting for a moment the horrendous,
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horrific tragedy of women and children and people who are ill being killed suddenly
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and instantly and horrifically in a hospital. But from a media perspective, this
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was really a classic example of how just unbelievably broken even the mainstream news media
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is. And also I think it revealed a lot of their biases that are
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certainly, if not against Israel this are certainly not as in favor of Israel
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as they should be given what the facts are, what the truth is,
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and what right and wrong are in this situation. In case you somehow missed
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it, there was a missile that struck a hospital. At least five hundred,
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probably more Palestinians were killed in this Gaza hospital, and the immediate the
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immediate response from the mainstream news media was to basically, in my mind,
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take two plus two and say it equals five, because the story that they
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bought immediately doesn't make a lot of sense, especially when it turns out there
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was apparently live video broadcast on Al Jazeera, a very pro Palestinian news outlet
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that seems to tell the real story of what actually happened. But here's how
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the mainstream news media in America diversly covered this tragedy. The Wall Street Journal,
6:03
obviously a New York City based publication, allegedly a conservative publication. Their
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headline is rarely airstrike on Gaza hospital kills more than five hundred Palestinian officials say
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that was their initial headline, And the Wall Street Journal is rarely airstrike on
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Gaza hospital kills more than five hundred Palestinian officials say. Now, this is
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a tactic that is used a lot by the news media, and sometimes it's
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very legitimate. You know, so and so is claiming this. But in
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this particular situation, when the two sides are at war. One has just
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attacked the other side in a horrific surprise terrorist attack the likes of which we've
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not seen in modern history. I'm sorry, you can't just go by somebody's
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word because there's an obvious, overwhelming conflict of interest here and that nobody is
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to be trusted. So that's number one. Number two, when you're leading
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with Israeli airstrike on Gaza hospital kills more than five hundred, it almost doesn't
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matter what comes next, because you're declaring that's what occurred, even when the
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evidence would later reveal that that's not what occurred in all likelihood, and that
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scenario never even made any sense. But it wasn't just a Wall Street journal.
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CNN's initial coverage of this is Israel accused of blasting hospital and school in
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Gaza as blockade cripples Palestinians. Now that's slightly better because it's not declaring that
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it was an Israeli airstrike. It's saying, as Israel is accused of blasting
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hospital in school. Okay, but that shouldn't be the headline. That should
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be somewhere in the story itself. The headline on a Gaza hospital hit hundreds
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of casualties. That should be the initial headline, because that's all that was
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known. And headlines, especially in this day and age, really matter because
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to a large portion of the audience, that's all they're gonna get. But
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it wasn't just a Wall Street Journal and CNN, the Associated Press, formerly
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the gold standard of journalism in this regard, they had a headline Israel Homas
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wore calumn. Israel bombs Gaza where civilians sought refuge. That's just ridiculous,
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I mean again, blaming Israel for this attack on a hospital, which doesn't
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even make any sense, and for which there was no evidence of the time,
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and very quickly the evidence showed was very very likely not the case.
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Then there's The New York Times, again based in New York City, a
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publication with a very large Jewish population that's generally been customers of the New York
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Times. But I mean New York City obviously a city with a lot of
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Jewish people, a lot of people who are pro Israel, and yet the
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New York Times, mainly because of their liberal bias, has been one of
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the worst organizations when it comes to covering the attack on Israel and the reaction
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of Israel to Humas in Gaza. This was a tweet from the New York
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Times breaking news, and Israeli airstrike hit a Gaza hospital, killing at least
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two hundred Palestinians. This was a very early report, and that that'th toll
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unfortunately has gone way up from there, according to the Palestinian hell Ministry,
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which said the number of casualties was expected to rise. Now that, in
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a way is actually more insidious than that Wall Street Journal headline, because they're
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not just saying Palestinians, they're saying Palestinian health ministry, which gives off the
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sense that this was not some sort of war propaganda. This is the health
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ministry. These people are not part of the war machine. They're just innocent
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bystanders. They have credibility, and so if they're claiming it was an Israeli
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airstrike, then that's why we're reporting it as such, and it should be
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believed to be as such. But then the headline writers in the actual New
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York Times. What I just read to you was a tweet in the actual
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New York Times website. This was really remarkable and incredibly revealing. On so
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many different levels. Here are three different headlines on the New York Times website
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in order in a fairly short period of time, several hours as this story
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of all. First headline on the New York Times website is rarely strike kills
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hundreds in hospital. Palestinians say so, similar to the Wall Street Journal is
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rarely strike kills hundreds in hospital Comma. Palestinians say, not accurate and based
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upon the nature of this conflict and who was to be believed and who was
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not to be believed, a ridiculous headline. A ridiculus if even if that
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scenario made some sense that Israel was going to specifically target and bomb a hospital,
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which it doesn't, even if it did, based upon the information at
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the time, that is an absurd headline, way beyond bias. And it
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was eventually changed from Israel strike kills hundreds in hospital to at least five hundred
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dead in strike on Gaza hospital. Palestinians say, so, they change it
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from Israeli strike to a strike on a Gaza hospital. Again, this according
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to the Palestinian so we've taken out. The New York Times did a few
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hours later. The word Israeli now it's just a strike. We don't know
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who did the strike. We're just saying that a strike killed at least five
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hundred people. This according again to Palestinians. Then the New York Times changed
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the headline again on their website, at least five hundred dead in blast at
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Gaza Hospital. Palestinians say they change strike to blast. Now, that doesn't
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sound like much of a difference, but it actually is because a strike implies
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the intended target was the hospital. A blast is certainly much more in conjunction
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with the idea that this was an accident of some sort, that this just
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was an explosion that happened for reasons we're not sure of yet. Now that
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last headline is at least somewhat accurate, but it appears based upon the Al
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Jazero live streaming. My god, we have video of this that matches the
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timeline almost exactly to the minute of what allegedly happened here. The video is
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dramatic, and what it shows is that this was a missile fired by Hamas
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on Israel and that it was a misfire, and that either accidentally or maybe
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I don't even know, not enough if a military expert to know how likely
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this would be. You could even argue theoretically it's more possible that this was
13:54
on purpose, certainly more possible for that scenario than the scenario so that Israel
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specifically targeted the hospital and that the strike came from Israel. I'm not saying
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that's what happened. I'm just saying that that's more likely based upon the video
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because we know we saw we literally saw the missile being fired, and we
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saw it landing, and we saw an explosion of epic proportions in the same
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area at the same time as this tragedy that occurred at the Gaza hospital.
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And yet despite that video coming from Al Jazeera, the mainstream news media has
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been incredibly slow to fix this reporting, and part of that's ego they never
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want to admit they were wrong. As long as there's anything muddying the water,
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they will always always hesitate to acknowledge that they were wrong, especially on
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something this important, especially when it also exposed is their bias, because they've
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already been accused rightfully of anti Israeli bias in their initial coverage of the terrorist
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attack and Israel's response to it, and now here they are rushing the judgment,
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and that's a huge part of this. There's two elements to this.
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There's the bias part of this, which is clearly, for whatever reason,
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pro Palestinian and anti Israel. But there's also the rush to judgment. And
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I'm not sure, I mean, I can sometimes be naive as much of
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a cynic as I am. I'm not sure that this reporting would have been
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nearly as bad in the pre social media age. But there is such pressure
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in the social media age to get the story out there immediately, within minutes
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of it happening, and that you are unfortunately forced to go with, well,
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this is what the Palestinians are saying. Well, they're the ones on
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the ground, they're the ones reporting this, they're the ones allegedly with the
15:54
most information, and so they make an allegation against Israel that this was Israel
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that did this attack. Israel denies it, but for whatever reason, that
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denial doesn't have the same power as the Palestinians claiming it was Israel. That's
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the bias part of this. But again, we don't wait, we don't
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wait to actually find out what the evidence is because we need to feed the
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monster. The media needs to feed the monster. And in the social media
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age, that means instantaneous reporting, and that means rushing to judgment, and
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that's what happened here. And this rush to judgment was particularly revealing because it
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goes exactly in line with what me and other people have said has been remarkable
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anti Israel bias by a lot of mainstream, mostly left wing Although the Wall
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Street Journal was in the category of media outlets that I pointed out, there
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mostly liberal outlets who have shown their ass here. They have shown a very
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extreme anti Israel bias, pro Palestinian bias, and this situation, as tragic
17:07
as it was exposed that in a very very dramatic fashion. And I don't
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even know that they're ever going to fully correct it because now they're gonna,
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you know, hide behind the the he said, he said situation one.
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You know, both sides are claiming something flog of war. The truth is
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murky will never really know what happened, belowning we've got video of it unless
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there is a better explanation, which I'm always open to. I mean,
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the fog of war is real, so you know, maybe that video isn't
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what it appears to be, but I need a really strong explanation to explain
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that Al Jazeera video, as well as when you just think about it logically,
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that scenario makes a hell of a lot more sense than Israel targeting a
17:53
hospital with innocent people. Now, there have been allegations that Hamas has been
17:57
using hospitals and maybe even in using this hospital effectively as a human shield,
18:03
and there's been speculation about the nature of the explosion and that maybe there were
18:08
armaments within the hospital. I have no knowledge of this at all. This
18:12
is just pure speculation based upon the video. These are all things that are
18:17
possible, but I have no faith that we're ever going to find out what
18:19
really happened. And because one there's the bias, and two there's the unwillingness
18:26
to admit that they were wrong, which might be the biggest bias that there
18:29
is in the mainstream news media, regardless of what the nature of the story
18:33
is. Now, President Joe Biden, as of this taping, is in
18:37
Israel to show support for Israel. I actually think from a substance standpoint,
18:45
Biden has been pretty decent on this, but he is just so physically weak,
18:49
and you know, perception is reality, and from what I saw in
18:56
his presentation in Israel. He was very old, very tired, uninspiring.
19:03
Again substantively. I have no problem with anything really that I saw him say.
19:08
But there was one moment in particular, in a joint appearance on live
19:12
television with Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin and Yahoo that was really quite telling,
19:22
almost pathetic. In fact, it was pathetic and has gone a bit viral
19:26
as of this taping on Twitter. And here is President Biden seemingly trying to
19:33
gather enough energy to be inspiring, trying to come up with a quotation that
19:41
appears as if he had in some sort of other prepared text, and then
19:47
he just gives up on it and basically says never mind. And this is
19:52
the alleged leader of the Free World, President Joe Biden in Israel. You
19:57
know, years ago I asked the Secretary State, when he and I are
20:02
work in a Senate to write something. Command said, you wrote a line
20:07
that I think is appropriate. He said, it's not. We need not
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just well, I won't quit a way too later, take it too much
20:18
time. I mean, that's just awful. And if it was an isolated
20:23
incident, you wouldn't think that much of it. But this is not isolated.
20:29
This is par for the course. This is Joe Biden simply not being
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able to rise to the occasion. This is as big an occasion as it
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gets. This is why you need somebody who is physically healthy to be president
20:48
of the United States, so that when they need to, they can fly
20:51
over to Israel and you know, at a weird time. I'm sure from
20:55
his body clock be able to give a functioning address and project some level of
21:02
strength. And Joe Biden is simply not capable of doing that. And folks,
21:07
he's running for reelection and he will in a stalemate. Currently in the
21:12
polling against Donald Trump, is still clearly the favorite to be the next president
21:18
of the United States. To be the next elected president of the United States
21:22
in twenty twenty four, which would mean he would still be president five years
21:29
plus from now, Over sixty months from now, he would still be president.
21:36
He's about to turn eighty one. My god, can you imagine if
21:41
it's this bad now, how bad it's gonna be three, four, even
21:47
five years from now. Now. I don't believe he's gonna be president five
21:49
years from now, because I believe if he's reelected, as I've said,
21:52
many times, Kamala Harris will take over at the exact right time, right
21:57
after the midterm elections of twenty six, so that she can serve out Biden's
22:03
term and run for reelection, not essentially run for reelection twice from a constitutional
22:10
perspective. But when you're making this decision, and this ought to be an
22:15
issue in the news media, we have to decide whether or not he is
22:18
capable of doing this job for another five years. And while that, you
22:23
know, one little clip there doesn't prove it, it's one of hundreds of
22:27
similar clips. He's not capable of doing the job. He's not. And
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while the media has skirted around this issue, they have not treated this in
22:38
any way, shape or form in the way that journalism would dictate, and
22:42
certainly not in any way, shape or form the way they would handle it.
22:45
If Joe Biden was a Republican, if Trump was in his first term
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and was doing these types of things and showing his age to this degree,
22:56
it would be all the news media would talk about. Instead, we get
23:00
exactly the opposite. We get the news media literally making excuses for why Joe
23:07
Biden looks soffeckless and meek and weak. Sixty minutes, a formerly journalistically respected
23:18
beacon of the news media this past Sunday, and I was kicking myself because
23:23
in episode number ninety seven, I played a clip of the interview that Biden
23:29
did with Scott Pelly where I mocked Biden for basically saying, you know,
23:32
my dream here is I get reelected and I can get us back internationally to
23:36
the way things were before I took over. I mean, that's essentially what
23:40
he said, although you know, Scott Pelly certainly didn't pick up on that
23:45
what I Well, the reason I was kicking myself is I didn't see the
23:48
intro. I only saw the clips of the interview, and the intro that
23:52
Scott Pelly gave for the interview with President Joe Biden was off the charts.
23:59
It was. It's almost a parody. You could not It's almost impossible to
24:04
mock this because here you have Scott Pelly effectively doing a disclaimer introing the interview
24:12
of the President the United States, doing a disclaimer for why Biden might not
24:18
seem very impressive during the interview because he's old, he's tired, but gosh
24:23
darn it, he broke into his busy schedule, which is not a busy
24:27
schedule at all, to give us some time, So lower your expectations.
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Here's the President United States doing an interview after a really tough week. And
24:37
if you think I'm exaggerating, I'm not. Here was Scott Pelly's intro to
24:42
an interview on sixty minutes with President Biden, Strophia and Israel, the war
24:48
in Ukraine, and no help from a paralyzed Congress. Late Thursday, we
24:52
met President Biden at the White House. It had been a rough week and
24:56
we could see it on him. Mister Biden will be eighty one next month,
25:00
and he has said that when he's tired, his lifelong stutter can creep
25:04
back in. But he wedged us into his schedule to express his commitment to
25:11
Israel after the massacre of more than a thousand civilians eight days ago. That's
25:15
almost literally comical. Ask yourself when a Republican president has evergotten that kind of
25:25
treatment. I mean, expectations are everything in life. So if you can
25:30
lower the expectations, look, people, what you're about to see is not
25:33
very impressive, but there's reasons for that. He's he's old, he's busy,
25:37
he's tired, he's got a rough week, but thank goodness he made
25:41
time for us. I mean, that's the definition of kid glove treatment.
25:45
That's the definition of inherent bias in the news media. And that's coming from
25:51
sixty minutes, which you used to be considered, you know, the bastion
25:56
of journalism and tough questioning. That right there shows where we are in twenty
26:03
twenty three with the death of journalism. One other note on what's going on
26:08
with regard to the entire Israel Hamas situation. At in episode number ninety seven,
26:14
I did discuss this battle that's going on on college campuses and seemingly a
26:22
pro Palestinian, even pro Hamas, anti Israel sentiment that's been getting a lot
26:26
of play, a lot of protests, a lot of rallies, a lot
26:30
of petitions being signed or statements being signed, and colleges being very hesitant to
26:37
condemn the initial attack on Israel, and that there was a backlash to that,
26:42
specifically in New York City among financial institutions and apparently law firms. Two
26:49
areas. New York law firms and New York financial institutions obviously have a very
26:56
high percentage of Jewish people working there. And you would think therefore they would
27:03
be a lot more sympathy towards Israel and specifically in reaction to the terrorist attack
27:10
against them. That's all very logical and understandable. And there was this movement
27:15
on the part of business executives to tell, specifically people from Harvard who signed
27:22
on to these Prohoma statements, Okay, that's fine, but we're not going
27:26
to hire you. We want the names so we know who not to hire.
27:30
And while that felt really good, I was a bit hesitant about it
27:34
because I felt like, Okay, well, is this cancel culture and these
27:37
are kids, and you know what did they really do that? Did they
27:41
just express their opinion or maybe not even express their opinion it as the member
27:45
of a group and they didn't know for sure what the hell they were even
27:48
signing. And I said, you know what my ideal scenario here, because
27:56
this is a very tough needle to thread, would be is if this is
28:00
a bluff, right, if this is a really strong bluff, okay,
28:03
guys, because that would be enough to scare the living daylights out of anybody
28:07
at Harvard or any other Ivy League school that wanted to work at a new
28:10
York financial institution or a law firm, even just the threat or the specter
28:17
that you might not get hired because of this situation. I would put,
28:22
you know, the fear of God into you and might change your behavior,
28:26
and it might teach you a lesson, and that I was kind of hoping
28:30
that that would be the case. That would be, in my mind,
28:33
the best scenario here. Although even that scenario is not perfect, because you
28:37
know, I'm now thinking about potential lawsuits that could come about if these people
28:42
don't get hired. You know, who the hell knows. We're living in
28:47
such an fed up world now that anything is possible. But it does appear
28:52
as if this was not a bluff because the New York Times is reporting that
28:56
a New York law firm has rescinded job offers, which is, you know,
29:02
even more dramatic than not hiring. I mean, you can come up
29:04
with a million reasons not to hire somebody, but to resind a job offer.
29:08
Instance, this is a New York law firm. I'm assuming what they're
29:11
doing is on strong legal ground. They are rescinding job offers to three students
29:18
who who they said led groups at Harvard and Columbia that blamed Israel for the
29:25
attack by Hamas. So this is just one law firm, and it's apparently
29:30
three students from Harvard and Columbia, two Ivy League schools, who have had
29:34
their job offers rescinded because they led groups. Now see, that's a key
29:41
part of this. If you led a group that blamed Israel for the attack
29:45
by Hamas, then you can't claim ignorance, right because if you led the
29:51
group, you're in charge of their statements. And so I do put that
29:53
into a different category. But there's the most important part of this whole thing
29:57
is, at least in some elements of this story, it's not a bluff.
30:03
This is real, and you know it. We're in dangerous territory.
30:07
I mean, I understand the fight fire with fire, and I realized that
30:11
this is the only thing people understand. But I just I'm also very concerned
30:18
about the slippery slope because where the hell is his end? And as a
30:21
free speech absolutist, I do have concerns about this. So I'm not really
30:27
it's unusual for me to not be on either side, because I'm really being
30:32
stretched in both directions here. As someone who would love to see these assholes
30:37
punished for being on the wrong side of this, but also someone who believes
30:41
in free speech and is very concerned about the slippery slope. I'm not sure
30:45
I really have a dog in this particular hunt. But that's an update on
30:48
that particular story. Speaking of being a free speech absolutist, Donald Trump is
30:55
now under a partial gag order federally because of the indictments against him, specifically
31:03
by Special Counsel Jack Smith. A judge has ruled that he cannot attack Jack
31:08
Smith, the prosecutor. He cannot attack the witnesses in that case, like,
31:15
for instance, Mike Pence, who's running against Donald Trump. Allegedly,
31:18
that's a rumor. I guess I've heard that Mike Pence. That seems to
31:22
be a rumor that Mike Pence is running against Donald Trump. I'm not sure
31:26
that's really the case, but okay, you know, in theory, Mike
31:30
Pence is running against Donald Trump for the Republican primary nomination. Trump is allowed,
31:37
for instance, to criticize Mike Pence, but not in the realm of
31:42
the criminal case against him, because he's a potential witness. I am much
31:49
more on Trump's side here, now Trump is way overplaying this. It's a
31:55
partial gag order, and if this was a normal case, I could certainly
32:01
see that the gag order would make some sense. Even though I'm a free
32:06
speech absolutist, I don't like gag orders. But in this particular case,
32:12
it's not a normal case. Donald Trump is running for president, obviously,
32:19
and so to me, that should completely change the equation here, and clearly
32:25
part of the case against him, although it's not working at all, In
32:30
fact, it's working in his favor. Part of the case against his candidacy
32:35
is these criminal cases, so that ought to be fair game. In my
32:40
opinion, this is an extraordinary circumstance, and there should not be a gag
32:45
order against a presidential candidate when he's running for president, and again when in
32:52
the rational world these criminal indictments would be a much larger part of the campaign
32:57
than they are. But at least theoretically they're part of the campaign, and
33:02
the results from those criminal charges are clearly going to impact his campaign, if
33:09
not for the Republican nomination, at least in the general election. That's clear
33:15
from the polling. So in my opinion, he ought to have wide latitude
33:21
for what he's allowed to say. So I am against this gag order because
33:25
of the unique circumstances of Donald Trump running for president and obviously these criminal cases
33:32
being a key to his campaign. Now they've actually been a positive in the
33:38
Republican nominating process, but they're not going to be a positive in all likelihood
33:44
in the general election. We don't know how long these cases are going to
33:47
go. And so I guess to me, it's not just a free speech
33:52
issue. There's a complete disconnect, whether it's in the media or whether it's
33:58
within the judicial system, when it comes to the nature of these cases against
34:04
Trump and how truly unique they are, Like, it's beyond me that I
34:08
have seen almost no There's been some, but very little analysis of these cases
34:15
through the prism of the only thing that's gonna matter when it's all said and
34:21
done, which is jury selection. Jury selection is all that's gonna matter in
34:27
these cases. I mean, jury selection is always paramount, but in this
34:31
particular situation, it's literally everything. You have the most divisive figure in America
34:42
period, and people love him and people hate him. Donald Trump. He's
34:49
got a cult of lovers and he's got a cult of haters, and so
34:53
whether or not you get multiple members of one cult or the other is going
35:00
to be everything. In this case. If you get two members or even
35:04
one member of the anti Trump cult, you're not getting an acquittal. You're
35:08
not you might get a partial acquittal, but you're not gonna get a full
35:12
acquittal. Period. If you get at least one or two members of the
35:15
Trump cult on the jury, you're not getting a conviction period. Period.
35:22
That's all that matters. And we're just pretending, I mean, the news
35:27
media just pretends like the facts actually matter or the law actually matters. This
35:32
is a case where Trump is really vulnerable on the law. You just think
35:37
the law is gonna make a goddamn bit of difference to whoever's on that jury.
35:42
No, because they're dealing with Donald Trump. I mean, it's comical,
35:49
it's laughable that we're not understanding this because this is a truly unique situation.
35:54
We've never had this happen before, and so just like with the gag
36:00
order, the jury selection is a very similar situation. And I'll be very
36:07
curious to see how jury selection is handled in all these different cases because it's
36:12
literally everything. It's the entire case, every single one of them. And
36:19
frankly, you know the one in d C, which is a federal case.
36:22
You know that the jury poll is obviously going to be very democratic,
36:28
probably very black, And there's just no way, there's no way if that
36:34
jury convicts Donald Trump that anybody in the Republican Party is going to consider that
36:38
to be legitimate. They're just not And nor would liberals consider it to be
36:45
legitimate. If the demographics were exactly reversed in every possible way, that would
36:52
be inherently an injustice. They won't see it that way because they hate Trump
36:59
so much. But that's the reality of this. And so we're not evaluating
37:06
the Trump situation through the prism through which it should be, which is completely
37:12
truly by the actual definition of the word unique. So he should not be
37:17
under a gag order, and jury selection is everything. And of course,
37:23
you know, I just spent you know, a couple of minutes defending Donald
37:27
Trump, which is kind of odd since I supposedly have Trump derangement syndrome.
37:31
But now I'm gonna mock Trump a bit on the same topic, because now
37:37
Trump is using not just the gag order, but the entire issue of the
37:44
indictments against him. To his advantage, which I get he's within his rights
37:49
to do that, but he did so in a way while speaking in Iowa
37:53
earlier this week that was truly laughable, ridiculous and exactly the opposite of reality.
38:02
And it's fitting in a narrative that I saw coming from a mile away
38:07
back in the early spring, when I saw Tucker Carlson and Glen Beck promoting
38:14
this idea that if we don't defend Donald Trump against these indictments and therefore nominate
38:21
him for president, and we have lost the republic, We've lost the country
38:24
where we can't let these bastards get away with this. We must rally to
38:29
his side. That was essentially the narrative, and now Trump is taking this
38:34
to a completely new level where he is claiming, he is claiming that he
38:38
is fighting these indictments for us, for you, and that he is willing
38:45
to sacrifice it all, sacrifice his freedom in order to save democracy. This
38:54
is Donald Trump, with a straight face in Iowa making this exact case.
39:00
I'm not even sure what to say about that, because it is just so
39:02
duplicitous, it is just so the opposite of reality. Donald Trump doesn't give
39:08
a damn about democracy. He doesn't give a damn about the country, he
39:14
doesn't give a damn about the Republican Party. He cares only about one thing,
39:20
Donald Trump. And the fact that his followers cannot see that is sad
39:28
and pathetic and an indication that they are a cult, because that's what they
39:32
are. Because let me tell you the real story. The real story here
39:37
is exactly the opposite. Donald Trump is not running to save democracy, and
39:44
in his mind and his narrative, the reason why he's being indicted is because
39:49
he's running. This is election interference, and they can't take about electorally,
39:53
although they rig the election in twenty twenty so I don't know why they just
39:57
couldn't rig the election in twenty twenty four. Why do they need to bother
40:00
with this? What's the need for the massive conspiracy for all these indictments.
40:04
They just took him out. As an incumbent president, it should be really
40:07
easy to rig an election against the challenger in favor of the incumbent. But
40:10
of course logic doesn't mean anything to these people or to Donald Trump, because
40:15
he knows logic means nothing to his cult. So, but his narrative is
40:20
I'm fighting a good fight. They're coming after me because I'm doing this for
40:23
you, and you know what, I don't even care. I'm willing to
40:25
go to jail. I'm willing to lose my freedom to defend democracy. No,
40:31
no, no, no, no. Here's why he's really running.
40:35
He's running because he knows that's the best and maybe only way for him to
40:42
beat all of these indictments. And that is a fact, that is an
40:46
absolute fact, because if he were to have withdrawn or never run in the
40:53
first place, and then he would have been indicted. And I think he
40:57
would have been indicted regardless of whether he was running. So but if he
41:00
was not running, if he was just a former president who was not a
41:05
threat to be the favorite, to be massive favorite to be the Republican nominee
41:09
and maybe the next president of the United States, if none of that existed
41:14
and he goes on trial, Let's go back to that jury selection I talked
41:19
about, all of a sudden, those jurors who might have been on his
41:27
side no matter what, because they believe the country is at stake, they're
41:32
members of his cult. Let's say they get on the jury and you know
41:37
they love him, and the country is on the line, he must be
41:42
acquitted or at least not convicted in order to save the country. And he's
41:46
the Republican nominee, the stakes for that jur are much much higher than they
41:53
would be if Donald Trump was just a former president who you know, were
41:58
determining whether or not he's going to be playing golfer now one of his resorts.
42:02
Their willingness to fight to the death in that jury room is going to
42:07
be greatly diminished if he's not a presidential candidate. If he's a presidential candidate
42:14
and maybe even the nominee of the Republican Party, now he's got magic powers.
42:21
Now they are deeply, deeply invested in making sure he doesn't get convicted.
42:27
And Trump knows this, He knows his cult very very well. He
42:30
must invest any cult members or cult like members or light members that get on
42:38
his jury in the idea that if he gets convicted, the country is over.
42:45
That it's not just about him, it's about the fate of the country.
42:49
And that's going to be very very powerful. So if his lawyers get
42:53
just one or two Trump Cult members or Trump Cult LTE members on those juries,
43:00
he's safe. As long as he's running for president. As long as
43:05
he's viable, as long as he's a threat to be the next president,
43:08
they ain't gonna convict him. And so that is why he's doing this.
43:14
He is running to stay out of prison because it's the best way for this
43:19
to happen. And if, by chance, he gets convicted on a federal
43:22
charge and he still gets elected president, then he can pardon himself and he's
43:28
free as a bird. As it is, so, this idea that somehow
43:32
Donald Trump is selflessly putting himself out there, risking his own freedom to save
43:38
democracy is bullshit to the highest level, to the highest level. Now,
43:45
I want to turn nowt to Jim Jordan and his quest to be the next
43:49
Speaker of the House. I have predicted numerous times on this podcast that it's
43:54
going to be very very difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to get
43:59
to two hundred and seventy votes to be the next speaker, and that Kevin
44:04
McCarthy should never have been ousted because he had the one quality that matters most
44:08
in this situation, the ability to get to two hundred and seventeen votes.
44:14
That was a miracle. There was a miracle that occurred back at the beginning
44:19
of the year in January where Kevin McCarthy, after fifteen ballots, finally got
44:23
two hundred and seventeen votes, and then that miracle was undone for reasons that
44:29
I still don't understand. When eight Republicans sided with every single Democrat to oust
44:34
the Speaker of the House in an unprecedented situation, Well, now they got
44:38
to find someone on their Republican side who can get two hundred and seventeen votes.
44:43
First they tried Steve's scalise, that didn't work. Then they went with
44:46
Jim Jordan, and there was a vote yesterday as of this taping, and
44:51
Jordan felt fell seventeen votes short, and that's a significant margin this day and
45:00
age. And as of this taping, there's another vote scheduled for the same
45:05
day that we tape, which is usually Wednesday mornings. So I don't know
45:07
what the result of that's going to be, but by all accounts, he's
45:10
not going to make the two seventeen and there's even some indications that he may
45:15
lose votes because there's some Republicans who may have voted for Jordan on the first
45:21
ballot so that they can protect themselves from the MAGA crowd saying I voted for
45:25
Jim Jordan the second time, I didn't vote for Jim Jordan because I felt
45:29
like, we have to move on. He's not going to get to two
45:31
seventeen. We need a speaker that's a narrative that can work. And so
45:36
there are apparently, at least rumored to be some Republicans who fit into that
45:40
category. And of course, once the margin increases from seventeen, then his
45:45
candidacy is probably over. You know, this is just the way this is
45:50
going to work, where if you get two hundred votes the first time and
45:52
UNTS say you get one hundred ninety five the second time, then it's done.
45:57
You're not getting the two seventeen. So we got to move And I
46:01
don't know who can get the two seventeen. I mean, and weirdly,
46:06
and I think Scalise and Jordan going first, although there was some logic to
46:12
them going first, almost makes it more difficult for anyone else to get the
46:16
two seventeen because Scalise was supposed to be the compromised person that didn't work,
46:22
and Jordan is the grassroots maga guy. He's the guy that people are supposed
46:28
to be energized about and online. There's a lot of energy on behalf of
46:34
Jim Jordan, but it's not resulting in enough votes. So then where do
46:38
you go next? This is what drives me crazy. When you don't have
46:40
a fucking plan, you get to game plan these things out. And so
46:46
when you compromised guy doesn't work out, and you know your your grassroots energy
46:52
guy doesn't work out, then how are you going to get anybody else across
46:59
the line? Because anybody else after Jim Jordan is gonna be unsatisfactory to the
47:06
maga crowd. And so at least the one thing that Jordan gave to this
47:13
equation was that it allowed some people to save face because they could claim,
47:19
well, Jordan is an improvement on McCarthy. I don't think he would have
47:22
been, but he's an improvement because he's more of a MAGA guy and he's
47:27
stronger, he's got balls, and he's gonna get things done. That's all
47:30
bullshit because he only has five votes and a Democratic Senate and a Democratic White
47:35
House. But that's that's the narrative, okay. But if he can't get
47:38
the two seventeen, then he actually makes it more difficult for anybody else to
47:44
get the two seventeen because the MAGA crowd is gonna be demoralized and think,
47:47
well, shit, we could have had Jim Jordan. Now we're gonna have
47:51
to to compromise on this piece of crap because everyone's gonna look like a piece
47:58
of crap it compares to Jim Jordan to these people. So I continue with
48:02
my original assessment of this, how does anybody get to two seventeen? If
48:07
in fact Jordan loses votes in today's balloting, then I don't know where you
48:14
go. And I have to say the only scenario and this sounds like a
48:20
long shot that makes any sense, and this would be hilarious, but you
48:24
may have to go back to Kevin McCarthy. I mean, because there are
48:30
two hundred and seventeen members of the House of Representatives who have previously voted for
48:35
Kevin McCarthy to be speaker. They're exactly the same people that exist today.
48:39
I think there might be one difference for a special election or something, but
48:43
regardless, it's essentially there. I think two hundred and seventeen people in the
48:49
House of Representatives, maybe more than that, because I think he actually ended
48:52
up more than that. But regardless, the point, it's the same.
48:55
There's enough people in the House of Representatives who have previous voted for Kevin McCarthy
49:00
to be Speaker who still are serving in the House Representatives for that to be
49:05
duplicated. They're the exact same people. And so that's the only scenario I
49:12
see that that seemingly makes any sense. But are not Are there going to
49:17
be enough people that would be willing to swallow their pride? Enough of those
49:21
eight morons who ousted him, you'd have to have at least I think four
49:27
of those people to come forward and say, you know what, I've decided
49:30
that, you know, Kevin McCarthy has has come around and now I think
49:35
he's good enough to be Speaker again. I mean, it would be embarrassing
49:38
as hell, and that might prevent it, you know, right off the
49:42
bat, it's almost effectively the same thing as the news media admitting they were
49:45
wrong about the Israeli strike on the Godza hospital. That's a hurdle, Well,
49:51
it's a hurdle to admit that you were wrong in getting rid of Kevin
49:53
McCarthy. But I don't see any other scenarios, and we'rement coming up against
50:00
you know, the debt ceiling limit debate coming back again, and this is
50:05
just a terrible situation, all sorts of chaos. The Democrats who are responsible
50:09
this or for this large in large part, are loving it, and the
50:13
media is not holding them accountable for this at all. I mean, they
50:16
could end this if they really care about ending the chaos. All it takes
50:22
is a handful of Democratic votes to go with whoever the Republicans choose, and
50:25
the chaos is over. But there's zero pressure on Democrats to do that because
50:30
the media has no interest in that. If this was reversed, If this
50:36
was reversed, there would absolutely be media pressure on a handful of Republicans to
50:40
stop the madness and pick a Democrat that they like and go ahead and vote
50:45
for them. But we don't get that because the media is inherently biased towards
50:52
Democrats and they get to have their cake and eat it too. Now,
50:55
one other thing about Jim Jordan. I predicted when his name first came up
51:01
that the Ohio State Wrestling bogus scandal would be regurgitated by NBC. That's exactly
51:08
what happened. And then when it came clear that Jordan was going to be
51:14
the guy whose name was put in nomination after the Scalise nomination failed. I
51:20
essentially predicted that there's going to be some liberal media outlets that are going to
51:24
make the connection between Jim Jordan and Dennis Hastard. Dennis Hastard the former Speaker
51:30
of the House Republican who served as Speaker for quite a long period of time
51:35
and did a pretty decent job. And I have to say I still don't
51:38
fully understand the Dennis Hastard sex scandal because he got blackmailed well after he left
51:46
office. I mean, if you're going to blackmail somebody, and I'm not
51:51
saying he's innocent at all, just to be clear, I think he's clearly
51:53
guilty because he tried to pay off people that he allegedly sexually abused many many
51:59
years. I just don't understand the timing of the blackmail. I understand why
52:05
those that tried to blackmail him waited as long as they did. They didn't
52:07
hear that he was Speaker of the House. And I also don't understand why
52:13
when you're retired, what's the incentive to pay people off. I just don't
52:20
get it. There's a part of that story that does not make any sense
52:23
to me. But the reality is, I do believe the Dennis Haster was
52:29
involved in a sex scandal that was legitimate because he tried to pay people off
52:34
who he allegedly sexually abused as a wrestling coach and as a teacher many many
52:39
years ago in Illinois. And I thought, how in the world is Jim
52:45
Jordan going to get away in the liberal media with being Speaker of the House.
52:51
Now, Republicans going to get away with Jim Jordan being Speaker of the
52:54
House when you've got not one but two speakers then who have been in boiled
53:00
in sex abuse scandals involving wrestling. I mean, I mean, that's just
53:05
that's in the same century. I mean, it's just unbelievable that that's even
53:09
possible. Well, sure enough, there was a liberal media outlet that went
53:15
down this path, although it was an allegedly comedic media outlet, The Daily
53:20
Show, which I used to really like, but then, like everything else,
53:22
they go unbelievably woke and they're not very funny anymore. But here is
53:25
a a alleged commercial, an alleged commercial that The Daily Show did on behalf
53:32
of Jim Jordan's candidacy connecting him to Dennis Hastard in what The Daily Show thought
53:40
was a humorous way, because Jordan's sex scandal is not as bad as Hastard's
53:46
sex scandal. Dennis Hastard was an admitted pedophile. He abused multiple young boys
53:53
and tried to hide his horrific actions with payoffs. Jim Jordan is only accused
54:00
of enabling sexual abuse, and the victims weren't children. He is the progress
54:06
we need. Jim Jordan not as bad as a pedophile. I have to
54:12
say that that did not surprise me when I saw it. It was mildly
54:15
humorous, although I also know it to be completely bogus from a factual standpoint,
54:21
because the Jim Jordan Ohio State Wrestling sex scandal is totally bogus. And
54:27
if you want to know why, go to episode number ninety six. About
54:31
an hour and ten minutes into that episode, I go into great detail,
54:36
ripping apart NBC's regurgitation of a story they created back in twenty eighteen that was
54:43
bogus. Then I fully investigated it. It's obviously nonsensical. Even if it
54:49
did happen, Jim Jordan was not responsible. But I'm also convinced that it
54:52
did not happen, because it essentially what occurred was that what was a joke,
54:58
a literal joke in the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties somehow turned into quote
55:02
unquote sex abuse in twenty eighteen, when a lot of former Ohio State wrestlers
55:08
decided that they could make money and that they could get publicity for their lawsuit
55:14
against Ohio State by bringing Jim Jordan's name into it. An NBC bid on
55:19
this hook line and sinker and has been invested in a false narrative ever since.
55:23
So check out episode number ninety six if you're curious about that particular subject.
55:30
I want to play another clip. This is actually maybe funnier than the
55:34
Daily Show clip, but for reasons that we're not intended to be comedic.
55:38
This is from the World Economic Forum, a panel recently at the World Economic
55:45
Form. The World Economic Form is a Marxist organization. I mean, to
55:50
call them liberal is really just a disgrace to the language, because that doesn't
55:57
cut it. They are absolutely Marxist and they're also insane. And they were
56:01
doing a panel and I don't even have the names of the people here,
56:07
but there are four people in this panel. There's not a white male to
56:10
be seen. I don't think there's probably not a straight person to be seen,
56:14
maybe not a certainly not a straight male to be seen in this panel.
56:17
But this is just a very short clip that says so very much.
56:22
A panel of the World Economic Forum, where the panelists are making the connection
56:28
between transgenderism and climate change, gender and climate change. We've seen a lot
56:37
of things connected to climate change, but now they're trying to connect gender to
56:45
climate change. I don't even understand how this works, but this clip was
56:51
just too golden not to play it. So here it is, and it's
56:53
really interesting. Climate affects gender, gender effect climate, and Karen, you
56:59
can speak to that a lot. You already sort of talked to us about
57:00
this huge movement that you've created around queer climate this week. Now, that's
57:06
a comedy sketch, that's a Saturday Night Live sketch back in the day.
57:12
But no, that's real life. That's the World Economic Forum, a panel
57:15
at the World Economic Forum. This is an insight into just how insane these
57:21
people truly are. I would actually be curious to know what the hell they
57:23
were even talking about, But I'm quite positive that there was no substance behind
57:30
the allegation that there's a connection between gender and climate change and vice versa.
57:35
However, I actually do think that there's a connection, and thinking about this,
57:39
I really do believe that there is a connection between gender and this issue
57:45
of gender confusion and climate change, and that is that both of these topics
57:50
clearly have mental illness in common. There's no question about that that mental illness
57:55
is an important component of both of these issues, climate change and gender confusion
58:05
transgenderism. And I mean that sincerely, and I don't think it's a coincidence.
58:10
You know, when I evaluate these types of things, I look at
58:15
it and I go, Okay, how odd is it? Did almost everybody?
58:22
In fact, I only say almost because I'm open to the theoretical possibility
58:25
that someone else exists, But to my knowledge, they don't. Why is
58:30
it that every single transgender person and everybody who's very very much in favor of,
58:37
for instance, transgender people, biological men playing sports against biological females,
58:44
Why are they all universally not just liberal, but very very very liberal.
58:52
Why is that that doesn't make any sense? If this was biological right,
58:59
if this was iological, if this was real and not an offshoot of some
59:04
form of mental illness or some sort of cultural phenomenon, craving attention, whatever
59:10
it is. But if this was real, this was internal in your body,
59:15
if it was biologically based, why would everybody have the same political basic
59:22
political perspective. Let me use an example. That's not the case with homosexual
59:29
men. Homosexuality in men, I am positive, is based in biology.
59:36
It's not a decision that people make. Now. I'm a little bit more
59:42
open to other possibilities when it comes to lesbianism, which I'm gonna get to
59:45
momentarily, But when it comes to homosexuality in men, it's absolutely biological.
59:52
The evidence of this is overwhelming, The logic behind this is overwhelming. And
59:58
guess what. While I would say the preponderance of gay men are generally liberal,
1:00:07
there are absolutely some very very conservative homosexual men. In fact, some
1:00:14
of the most conservative people I know happen to be homosexual men. So there's
1:00:20
not the same dynamic, They're not same phenomenon. Then among homosexual men that
1:00:27
there is an overwhelming correlation to political perspective. And what I would suggest is
1:00:37
that when it comes to transgender issues, it's not just a correlation. It's
1:00:43
a causation that there is a symbiotic relationship between the very liberal mindset, which
1:00:51
I also think is related to mental illness and having confusion over gender or being
1:00:59
in favor of crazy things like biological males playing sports against biological females. But
1:01:06
no one ever wants to think about that. Why is it that there's a
1:01:10
thousand percent correlation between the politics of somebody and the issue of transgenderism when that's
1:01:17
not the case when it comes to male homosexuality. Now you could make more
1:01:22
of an argument when it comes to lesbianism, because lesbianism, I do think,
1:01:27
is more correlated with being politically liberal, which means, at least to
1:01:31
me, in some not all. In some cases, lesbianism is a political
1:01:37
choice. It is a choice consistent with the political prism through which they see
1:01:43
the world. And that gets into the whole series of very complicated issues in
1:01:46
another story for another day. But I do think that there is absolutely a
1:01:52
connection. It's not coincidental. And speaking of mental illness and climate change,
1:01:57
Greta Funberg was fake arrest did again in London this week. I mean talk
1:02:02
about mental illness, I mean this is a now a young woman, formerly
1:02:07
a teenage girl, who became famous essentially for having a mental illness, where
1:02:13
she became the spokesperson for global warming climate change, and now all she does
1:02:19
is go around and get fake arrested, and that's going to end very poorly.
1:02:22
And when it does, the media is going to ignore it or rationalize
1:02:27
it. The whole Greta Thunberg thing. They created her. They and when
1:02:31
it all ends very very badly, they're going to pretend that they had nothing
1:02:36
to do with it. And so, in a weird way, I think
1:02:40
that Panel of the World Economic Form is actually right. There's a definite connection
1:02:45
between climate change and gender, and it's rooted in mental illness. Now,
1:02:50
speaking of the transgender issue, there's an update on the story I talked about
1:02:53
a few episodes ago involving Penn State University and Riley Gaines, the former University
1:03:00
of Kentucky swimmer who has become an activist in favor of women biological women only
1:03:07
having to compete against other biological women in sports. What a controversial topic this
1:03:14
is. It's just unbelievable that this is a matter of controversy, but as
1:03:19
part of her crusade, and it really is a crusade for her, and
1:03:22
she's become rather well known within the right wing media as a spokesperson for the
1:03:28
side of rationality on this issue. She was scheduled to speak at Penn State
1:03:32
University and then, without any real explanation that I saw, her speech got
1:03:38
canceled because apparently it was too dangerous. It was too much of a microaggression
1:03:43
or maybe a macroaggression for those at the university to be able to withstand Ronley
1:03:50
Gaines speak. I mean, this is how fragile college campuses are now.
1:03:53
You can't have a woman speaking about having women only compete against bio logical women
1:04:00
in sports because that is too hateful. That's that's outrageous. That that is
1:04:09
gonna make people, you know, fear for their safety and and their mental
1:04:13
health is gonna be harmed. And you think I'm exaggerating, I'm not.
1:04:16
Universities, which used to be bastions of free speech, now if anyone even
1:04:21
disagrees, and it's not even the majority, just has to be a vocal
1:04:26
minority of a protected group disagrees with someone's opinion, they get canceled. And
1:04:33
Gains, to her credit, said Okay, you're gonna cancel my official presentation.
1:04:38
Fine, I'm gonna do an unofficial presentation. I'm gonna bring a bullhorn,
1:04:43
and I'm gonna do it out on the on the front lawn. And
1:04:45
that created a counter protest with a bunch of masked assholes. It's amazing.
1:04:50
Not a coincidence. Not a coincidence, by the way, speaking of of
1:04:55
the correlation that the people that disrupted, multiple people who disrupted that event and
1:05:00
in fact even got arrested, happened to be masked. Again, that's the
1:05:03
mental illness connection. You're masking outside in October of twenty twenty three, you
1:05:10
got a mental illness, especially if you're a young person in college. And
1:05:14
so this is all connected to mental illness. And so she attempted to have
1:05:18
that event. And even though the university canceled her official event, there was
1:05:24
a professor at Penn State who emailed her students. Who emailed her students saying
1:05:33
that I want to read this exactly right. I recognize that some folks may
1:05:40
not feel comfortable being on campus while these events are taking place, meaning Gaines's
1:05:48
speech, which she references later in the email as being hateful, by the
1:05:53
way, for that reason, we will have a liberal leave policy for class
1:06:00
today. Let me repeat that. The teacher said, the professor, this
1:06:06
is gonna shock you. This is a female professor with blue hair. She
1:06:11
literally has blue hair. This professor at Penn State University. Your name is
1:06:15
Debbie Brooks. Professor Debbie Brooks. And this is the twitter, the tweet
1:06:20
that Riley Gains sent out with the screenshots of the email that I just read
1:06:26
part of it for you right there. Gaines's tweet was Professor Debbie Brooks at
1:06:30
Penn State sent this email to her students telling them they didn't have to come
1:06:34
to class merely because I was on campus. Don't worry. She was sure
1:06:40
to let class know the coming out day celebration was happening, though. But
1:06:45
she's giving essentially the class the day off, writing, I recognize that some
1:06:51
folks, by the way, not even a majority doesn't matter. Majority doesn't
1:06:56
matter anymore, doesn't matter if anybody is offended, some folks may not feel
1:07:00
comfortable comfortable. I don't remember feeling comfortable in any of my classes. I
1:07:08
was scared out of my mind in most of my classes because I didn't know
1:07:12
what the hell was happening, especially those that had any technical knowledge related to
1:07:16
them, but not feel comfortable being on campus while these events are taking place.
1:07:24
For that reason, we will have a liberal leave policy for class today.
1:07:28
So essentially, don't show up. Don't bother showing up if you don't
1:07:30
want to. Because we had a speaker who was canceled, who was talking
1:07:38
on campus about having biological women only have to compete against other biological women when
1:07:44
it comes to sports. You cannot make this insanity up. It is not
1:07:48
possible to make this insanity up. This would be parody just a few years
1:07:53
ago, not that long ago, four or five years ago, pure parody.
1:07:57
You would not believe it. And now this is normal, This is
1:08:00
the new normal. This is the great reset. It's extraordinary. And I
1:08:08
got I thought it was impossible for me to hate Penn State anymore than I
1:08:13
did after investigating the Paterno Sandusky case for ten years and then producing along with
1:08:18
Mi Gay Gavino and lizzabebe Are epic podcast with the benefit of hindsight, But
1:08:23
I actually do now. I mean, Penn State is an embarrassment to what
1:08:29
they used to be. I mean they were given a remarkable legacy, and
1:08:32
obviously Joe Paterno was a huge part of that. Penn State was special.
1:08:38
Penn State meant something, and they destroyed everybody who created that over nothing.
1:08:44
They threw their best people under the bus over nothing, in a panic,
1:08:48
in a rush to judgment, in an effort to virtue signal. And ever
1:08:53
since then, the university has become a woke joke, and this Riley Gain
1:08:59
situation further proves that. And I hope Ohio State kicks the shit out of
1:09:03
them this weekend. I don't know if that's going to happen, but I
1:09:06
certainly hope that it does. By the way, speaking of football and sports,
1:09:11
there's a few things I want to mention that are important in that realm.
1:09:15
Number One, I noticed something and nobody else mentioned this that I saw
1:09:20
on Twitter, and even when I mentioned it on Twitter, no one seemed
1:09:24
to fully understand the significance of it. But something I thought important occurred and
1:09:30
dangerous occurred this past Monday, when it came to the NFL as well as
1:09:38
the Major League Baseball playoffs at the same time. At the same time,
1:09:44
Monday Night football was being broadcast as it usually is on ESPN on ESPN two,
1:09:51
which normally has the Manning cast, where Peyton and Eli Manning try to
1:09:57
do comedy during the game. Sometimes it's basic. There's about five minutes of
1:10:00
funny stuff and two hours and fifty five minutes of garbage, but you got
1:10:04
to sift through the garbage to get to the funny stuff. Anyway, they
1:10:09
don't do it every week, the Manning cast, so they didn't do the
1:10:12
Manning cast this past week. Instead, ESPN aired the Spanish language version of
1:10:21
the game. Not on ESPN Deportes now, this was on ESPN two,
1:10:29
an English speaking outlet one percent English speaking outlet, ESPN two. They were
1:10:35
airing the Spanish language version of the Chargers Dallas Cowboys, allegedly America's team game.
1:10:45
At the same time, the Major League Baseball playoffs were going on Arizona
1:10:50
versus Philadelphia playing in Philadelphia, and True TV was airing And this was so
1:11:00
convoluted I didn't even understand it. They were airing, I guess, kind
1:11:05
of a version of the Manning cast, only it was designed specifically for an
1:11:13
Hispanic audience. That's how it was branded, That's how it was designed.
1:11:19
So effectively, they were doing a Spanish language version of the baseball game on
1:11:26
True TV, again, an English speaking outlet. It's not Telemundo, this
1:11:31
is true TV. And to me, I thought, holy crap, because
1:11:39
I'm somebody who believes very strongly in the slippery slope. And I also can't
1:11:43
stand division. I mean, television used to be the greatest uniting force in
1:11:47
the history of this country. And I predicted in two thousand and five,
1:11:50
when I wrote a book called The Death of Free Speech, that television would
1:11:54
end up dividing us more than anything else in the history of this country.
1:11:59
And I think I've been vindicate than that. And this is a really really
1:12:02
strong example. Here we have sports, I mean, and there's nothing.
1:12:09
This isn't even soccer, this is football and baseball where you have major English
1:12:15
speaking television outlets providing a very divisive Spanish speaking or Hispanic friendly version as if
1:12:27
the mainstream version is somehow not friendly to Spanish speakers or to Hispanics. That
1:12:32
is one divisive, but also it enables this is the part that's really damaging,
1:12:39
and living in southern California, I see this all the time. It
1:12:43
enables people who are Spanish speaking or are you come to this country, whether
1:12:48
it's legally or illegally from a different culture, to not assimilate. Sports is
1:12:56
one of the very few forces that causes assimilation of our culture. I'm telling
1:13:03
you, the only thing in Southern California that unites all of the races and
1:13:11
all the cultures are the Dodgers. The Dodgers, are it now? The
1:13:15
Dodgers crapped out in the playoffs again this year, But from a cultural standpoint,
1:13:21
that's it. I mean. And frankly, Vince Scully probably held Southern
1:13:27
California together way more than anybody imagined during his career because he was the iconic
1:13:34
Dodger broadcaster, obviously in English, and if you were a Dodger fan,
1:13:40
you listened to Vin Scully. Now there is a Spanish version of the Dodger
1:13:44
game, but you know, everyone listened to Scully. And this idea that
1:13:49
somehow, nationally now not just locally on English speaking outlets, we're going to
1:13:55
just enable Spanish speakers to not have to ensimilate and not learn English, and
1:14:03
feel as if inherent inherent in this whole idea is the idea that I guess
1:14:11
the mainstream broadcast is not friendly to Spanish speakers or to Hispanic people. What
1:14:17
kind of message does that send? And again maybe this is too deep,
1:14:21
too complex of a concept for people to understand. But I am a huge
1:14:27
believer in the slippery slope. The slippery slope has been vindicated in so many
1:14:32
ways in just in the last few years, in all walks of life.
1:14:36
I mean, just the other day, I was watching this TikTok video that's
1:14:42
made the rounds of Trudeau, the Prime minister in Canada, from many years
1:14:49
ago. It wasn't even that many years ago, but it was I don't
1:14:51
know, ten to fifteen years ago, maybe a little more than that,
1:14:56
where he's talking about gun control and he's saying the guns are never gonna be
1:15:01
banned in Canada because we have a culture that understands the importance of guns and
1:15:09
respects gun rights and the proper use of guns. He said this Trudeau did
1:15:15
well six months ago, he effectively banned guns in Canada. Well, what
1:15:21
happened in the meantime the slippery slope, because when you demean and to fame
1:15:29
and disparage guns and gun users, over time, then that culture changes.
1:15:38
And then once you get the opportunity, this is the you know, the
1:15:41
old camel's nose under the tent theory. Once you're Trudeau, and this was
1:15:45
always the plan. Once that culture changes and you get the opportunity, then
1:15:50
you can go ahead and do what you really wanted to do all along,
1:15:56
which is to change the law. What Trudeau was really saying was, you
1:15:59
know, we're not politically there yet. I can't get away or we can't
1:16:02
get away with banning guns yet. We got to wait for the culture to
1:16:08
change, and then they go ahead and they change the culture enough to where
1:16:12
they can get away with it. The culture issue is exactly what I'm talking
1:16:15
about with regard to what happened to ESPN and true TV. But there's so
1:16:19
many different examples. I mean, a lot of this transgender bullshit we're talking
1:16:25
about now happened because why it started really because of gay marriage. I have
1:16:31
nothing against gay people. They want to be married, fine, whatever,
1:16:34
But there were people at the time they who rightfully said, you know what,
1:16:39
this is a slippery slope. We could end up in some really weird
1:16:43
spots if we expand marriage be beyond one man and one woman. And people
1:16:49
say, no, no, no, no, no, no, you're
1:16:51
being conspiratorial. That's a conspiracy theory. You're a nut job, you're a
1:16:56
right wing crazy that's never gonna happen. It's just gonna stop here. Well,
1:16:59
bullshit didn't stop there. Now we don't even know what the hell a
1:17:01
man and a woman is. That was the slippery slope. I mean,
1:17:08
we see this all over society in our culture. How the hell did we
1:17:14
get so many children being born out of marriage at a wedlock that didn't happen
1:17:19
overnight. That happened because of a cultural slippery slope. How the hell did
1:17:25
we get spoiled brat kids that didn't happen overnight because we ended corporal punishment in
1:17:30
schools at home and be Oh, that's just that's archaic and barbaric and wrong.
1:17:38
So we need to stop that. Okay, fine, I get it.
1:17:42
But then you opened up the floodgates, you opened up the slippery slope,
1:17:45
and then we're giving participation trophies to everybody and we end up with a
1:17:50
generation of spoiled brat losers. This happens all over the place, and no
1:17:57
one seems to understand it, no one seems to care. And so you
1:18:00
know, when I looked at what happened there, I'm going, uh,
1:18:01
oh, here we go, because this ain't going to stop there. This
1:18:06
is going to stop with ESPN two and True TV, and it's happening in
1:18:14
sports, which is supposed to be a uniting factor in our culture. We're
1:18:17
completely host and going back to sports, I want to talk talk about the
1:18:23
slippery slope. I mean, there may me not be a better example or
1:18:26
a worse example of the slippery slope than what's happening in football. And I
1:18:30
have been outspoken, and I'm sure people have mocked me for being so alarmist
1:18:36
when it comes to the issue of what's going to happen with tackle football in
1:18:40
this country in very short order. And I have predicted that effectively the National
1:18:45
Football League will be flag football in ten years. That's been my prediction.
1:18:50
I may be optimistic in that because there have been some things that have happened
1:18:55
in just the last couple of days that are eye opening to anybody who has
1:18:59
a brain. And I'm not alone anymore in this. Tom Brady is now
1:19:03
on my side. Tom frickin' Brady is on my side on this. And
1:19:10
one of the most eye opening things that have occurred in the certainly the last
1:19:14
couple of days, is that the Olympics in twenty twenty eight, which is
1:19:19
going to be here in Los Angeles, which is going to be a freaking
1:19:21
shit show given the way we're heading in Los Angeles. But I digress.
1:19:27
The Olympics in twenty twenty eight is going to have on both the male and
1:19:30
female side as an Olympic sport, flag football. Flag football is now going
1:19:40
to be an Olympic sport. And when I saw that, I'm like,
1:19:47
it's over. We're done. There's not going to be tackle football anymore.
1:19:54
Because once you give that level of credibility to flag football, you're giving Olympic
1:20:01
medals at an Olympic Games held allegedly in the United States, if you still
1:20:08
count Los Angeles, California as being part of the United States, you're giving
1:20:12
Olympic medals to flag football participants. Then flag football has gotten enough legitimacy to
1:20:21
where it's gonna it'll be perceived as a success. It'll be made as a
1:20:27
success, the media will declare it to success, and that will further erode
1:20:33
the psychological barriers between the idea of tackle football being what it once was and
1:20:42
what it's going to become, which is effectively some form of flag football.
1:20:46
And if if you don't believe me, look what's already happened with the Pro
1:20:50
Bowl. I screened Bloody Murder when the Pro Bowl the all star game for
1:20:55
the NFL, which I'm talking about the slippery slope. I mean the the
1:21:00
Pro Bowl is the ultimate example of the slippery slope, and by the way,
1:21:03
also the failure of socialism in my opinion, But that's another story for
1:21:06
another day. But the Pro Bowl is everything you need to understand about the
1:21:12
slippery slope. The Pro Bowl used to be a legitimate football game, and
1:21:15
then slowly but shortly, when the players got more and more powerful, got
1:21:18
richer and richer, it didn't matter to them, you know, who won
1:21:21
the game or the little bonus they got for winning the game, and probably
1:21:26
didn't matter anymore. It slowly became a joke, and then eventually the NFL
1:21:30
has decided to make it into a flag football game, a flag football game,
1:21:36
further eroding that line. See, these things can't happen overnight. It's
1:21:43
a lot like Trudeau with the guns. He understood you couldn't get rid of
1:21:46
the guns without changing the culture. This is about changing the culture. So
1:21:51
it's got to happen slowly, but surely you can't do it and one fell
1:21:56
swoop because there there'll be too much of a backlash, There'll be too much
1:22:00
outrage. You gotta wait for enough, you know, old school football fans
1:22:04
to die. You gotta wait for enough, you know, woke members of
1:22:09
the younger generation to get implemented into the news media to buy this garbage you
1:22:14
got. You gotta let people get acclimated to this being normalized, this idea
1:22:20
that, oh, well, the Pro Bowl is flag football, and flag
1:22:25
football is an Olympic sport. Now, that was pretty cool to just see
1:22:28
that we won an Olympic gold medal and flag football. And interestingly, I'm
1:22:33
not the only one that's seeing this anymore. Tom Brady latched onto the flag
1:22:40
football issue and said exactly what I have said, which is, this is
1:22:45
the future, folks, this is what's gonna happen. This is I don't
1:22:50
know exactly how it'll be implemented. I don't know exactly when it will be
1:22:55
implemented, but it will be implemented soon. There's no question that, I
1:23:00
mean, Tom Brady. Here's the article. Tom Brady says the NFL is
1:23:03
starting to become more like flag football and understands why fans get pissed off watching
1:23:10
games this according to CBS Sports quote, there's so many people that want it
1:23:15
less and less physical. It's more like flag football, which is going to
1:23:19
be in the Olympics in twenty twenty eight. Maybe football goes to flag football
1:23:25
over a period of time. Brady said, football is a physical sport.
1:23:30
There's a physical element to all this. You throw a fifteen yard flag for
1:23:33
something that you know twenty years ago wouldn't have been a flag, and that
1:23:38
makes a big difference. This is not just the most famous football player maybe
1:23:45
ever, most successful football player ever, but a quarterback, a guy who
1:23:50
was famously protected by these same rules. He was protected by these same rules,
1:23:57
and he's the one saying we've gone too far when Tom Brady says we've
1:24:02
gone too far, We've gone too fucking far. But this is the slippery
1:24:06
slope and it's not gonna stop. It's not going to stop. And I
1:24:12
find it there's so many elements of this story that I find both infuriating and
1:24:17
fascinating, because I do think it goes a lot to the liberal mindset.
1:24:23
There's so this is so much bigger than just football. This is emblematic of
1:24:28
our entire society not just becomes because we're becoming a woosified society, but this
1:24:33
is the way things change. There was a weird example that I should have
1:24:38
mentioned on the podcast, and I forgot to do so. That happened a
1:24:41
couple of weeks ago Chicago Bears legend Dick Buckis passed away. Weirdly, Dick
1:24:47
Buckis was a member of the same golf club that I'm a member at.
1:24:50
He has a home near where I live. I never met him, although
1:24:55
I did see him at the club, but so I don't know. I
1:24:57
didn't know Dick Buckis. But Dick, if you're a football fan, is
1:25:02
a legendary Hall of Fame linebacker, partially because of his great name, Dick
1:25:08
Buckus, but also because of the nature of his play was sonominous, synonymous
1:25:15
with physical play on defense. And I found it rather hilarious and very telling
1:25:23
that many members of the news media, including the NFL itself, were glorifying
1:25:28
the life of Dick Buckets in the career of Dick Buckus by showing these highlights
1:25:32
from his career where literally almost every other play that they showed would have been
1:25:39
a penalty today. That's not hyperbole. That's not exaggeration. He would not
1:25:45
have been allowed to play the game in any way, shape or form in
1:25:47
the way that made him a legend. And it was particularly funny when one
1:25:53
of the most prominent people who immediately rushed to Twitter to lament his passing and
1:26:00
to praise his career was Barack Obama. Barack Obama from Chicago Bears fan.
1:26:08
I get it, but he obviously, you know, the leader of the
1:26:12
of the woke left, who is praising a guy who the woke left has
1:26:16
made it impossible for him to ever exist again. And he could not have
1:26:21
existed in today's day and age. And by the way, Obama was far
1:26:25
faster to praise Dick Buckas and death than he was to condemn Ams when it
1:26:30
came to the attack on Israel. That's not an exaggeration. And so Dick
1:26:35
Buckas's death, I thought, we're living in this bizarro world where we're praising
1:26:41
this guy that we've made it impossible for him to or someone like him,
1:26:45
to ever exist in the future. And I think this is one of the
1:26:48
things about football that people are not fully grasping. I don't know what it
1:26:53
is the way my brain works, but I you know, I always talk
1:26:56
about how you know Haley Joel Osmond saw dead and I used to play golf
1:27:00
with Haley, and I see bad outcomes. I see where things are going.
1:27:04
And one of the things that's happening with nil money in college football and
1:27:11
the rule changes and the wiscification of the game, why in the world would
1:27:15
any great athlete ever be a defensive football player. If you're a high schooler
1:27:21
and you're deciding what position you're gonna play, and you're a great athlete,
1:27:26
why the fuck would you play defense. There is absolutely no reason you get
1:27:30
no nil money in college It's all going to the quarterbacks, the wide receivers,
1:27:34
the running backs. You get penalized for doing anything. You haven't know
1:27:39
what the hell the rules are. There's no glory in it anymore. There
1:27:43
used to be some glory in playing defense. You used to at least be
1:27:45
able to knock the crap out of somebody under the right circumstances. You can't
1:27:49
do that anymore. So what's gonna happen is all this has been going on
1:27:54
for a long time, but your great athletes are all going to play offense,
1:28:00
all of them, which is only gonna further whissify the game because there's
1:28:04
not gonna be any way to stop the offenses with the rules of the way
1:28:08
they the way they are, and and the NFL is is I mean,
1:28:13
it's amazing. Not only it's just so obvious what's happening here that even Tom
1:28:16
Brady is getting it, but the NFL is also announcing that they're considering another
1:28:23
major rule change, and this one may break the back of the entire sport.
1:28:28
This might this might be too much even for the average fan to take
1:28:32
and for the media to take. But this is an associated press headline.
1:28:38
NFL considers eliminating hip drop tackles, will review the push push again after the
1:28:45
season. I've never even heard that this was a concern, this hip drop
1:28:51
tackles, but this is this is part of the report on what the NFL
1:28:58
is now considering. The NFL, not high school football, which, by
1:29:01
the way, everything's going to filter down from the NFL, but you know,
1:29:04
this is the NFL. The NFL is considering eliminating quote unquote hip drop
1:29:11
tackles because they increase the risk of injury by twenty five times the rate of
1:29:15
a standard tackle. This, according to the NFL executive Jeff Miller quote.
1:29:20
When they use that tactic, you can see why they do because it can
1:29:25
be a smaller man against the bigger man and they're trying to get that person
1:29:30
down because that's the object of the game. But when they do it,
1:29:33
the runner becomes defenseless. They can't kick their way out from under, and
1:29:40
that's the problem. That's where the injury occurs. You see the angle get
1:29:44
trapped underneath the weight of the defender. This according to Rich McKay, the
1:29:49
NFL Competition Committee chairman. Now, I've coached high school football, not particularly
1:29:57
well, but teams that were success not because of me, in two different
1:30:01
states. I've spent a year with a high school football team writing a book
1:30:05
about it in Steubenville, Ohio. I've covered college and pro football. I'm
1:30:12
not one hundred percent sure what the hell they're even meaning by this. I
1:30:15
mean, this sounds like they're going to ban tackling. That's what this sounds
1:30:18
effectively, that's what it means again using the slippery slope. If you're going
1:30:23
to try to ban if they've already banned any kind of head contact, which
1:30:27
again was well intentioned but has gone way way way too far. This is
1:30:31
always the pendulum with football. I fully acknowledged was probably too dangerous at some
1:30:36
point, but now it's becoming absurdly safe to the point where you can't play
1:30:41
the game. But now they're going once you go beyond head contact and the
1:30:46
use of the helmet, where you're going to somehow have officials instantaneously determine whether
1:30:53
or not something was a hip drop tackle when that's literally the only way you
1:30:59
can bring a ball carrier down under certain circumstances. It's over stick a fork
1:31:05
at it. You might as well put flags on them, not just because
1:31:11
of the wussification of the game, but simply so that there's some clarity because
1:31:16
this, if this goes through, you're just not gonna be tenable. It's
1:31:21
gonna be a complete chaos. There's gonna be absolutely no way to legislate this
1:31:30
instantaneously, and you can't stop the game. Every freaking play with him there's
1:31:33
a tackle to determine whether or not that tackle was appropriate or not. I
1:31:39
mean, even I think you know what they might be biting off more than
1:31:43
they can chew here. You know, if they're gonna let the slippery slope
1:31:45
work, then either there's only two scenarios here. Either they are dead set
1:31:53
and going to flag football even sooner than I realized, or they have miscalculated,
1:31:59
because if this goes through, I really do believe, and I've been
1:32:02
wrong before. You know, I'm gonna get to COVID in a second,
1:32:05
because like a lot of things, there's some COVID elements to this. But
1:32:10
you know, I gotta believe. I mean, my god, we went
1:32:14
with force masking of kids in schools for for a couple of years in California,
1:32:18
so anything's possible. But I gotta believe that there will be significant backlash
1:32:23
among NFL fans if in fact that's the case, if they really ban hip
1:32:29
drop tackles. And again, it's not just that tackle, it's the how
1:32:32
the hell do you implement that without banning tackles in general, It's not possible.
1:32:40
These are instantaneous decisions being made by tacklers or would be tacklers and by
1:32:45
officials. There's no way to do this without. What you're gonna do is
1:32:49
you're gonna frighten the hell out of every defender, so they're not gonna make
1:32:53
any tackle. And I gotta tell you part of why I think I'm the
1:33:00
head of the game on this issue is because a couple of things. Number
1:33:05
one is the California effect. All right, I'm telling you having coached high
1:33:13
school football in California, and the Granted was a very well to do prep
1:33:18
school, although you know it produced Josh Rosen. I even coached Josh Rosen.
1:33:24
I was his head coach and offensive coordinator. Bizarrely in eighth grade,
1:33:29
where Josh Rosen ends up being a first round draft pick in the NFL Draft
1:33:33
after starring at UCLA. I would never told anyone to draft him. He
1:33:38
was a massive bust and it's just amazing to me that he was drafted in
1:33:44
the first round. I think it was the tenth pick. Overall, He's
1:33:45
not even in football anymore. But the point is, this was a you
1:33:49
know, a hoity twity prep school that did have some legitimate football and did
1:33:54
have Josh Rosen. At the time period, I was there, and I
1:33:58
was horrified. And I'm a big believer that California is basically the precursor,
1:34:02
the foreshadowing of everything that's going to happen in our culture. I mean,
1:34:06
that's just the way it is. Everything flows from California, and politically it's
1:34:11
a cancer. And this is why I'm so afraid of Gavin Newsom. And
1:34:15
but you know it's I keep telling people all over the country, there's nothing
1:34:19
unique about California. It's going to come to your area if you don't stop
1:34:24
it. And high school football in California is a flat out joke. It's
1:34:29
one of the reasons why I'm so convinced that, you know, teams like
1:34:32
USC and UCLA are nowhere near as good as the national perception because well,
1:34:39
they don't have as many high school players from California as they used to.
1:34:42
It's still a lot of California culture. And in California high school football,
1:34:46
I'm not exaggerating, unless you're at the very very highest levels. And even
1:34:53
then sometimes this happens. There's almost no tackling. Most of the players do
1:34:57
not end in actual tackles. They end with a whistle blowing to stop a
1:35:03
scrum. No one actually goes to the ground. That's how woosified it is.
1:35:10
It's unbelievable, and it's only going to get worse and worse as the
1:35:14
institutional memory gets lost. See, this is the great danger to football when
1:35:19
it comes to the players. The institutional memory is only a few years old.
1:35:25
We're already getting to the point where college football players have very little,
1:35:30
if any memory of the way the game was supposed to be played. And
1:35:36
once that's totally gone, then there's not even any pushback except other you know,
1:35:43
by old school coaches, but that's about it. Once that institutional memory
1:35:48
is gone, it is gone forever. And when you got Tom Brady out
1:35:51
there, you know, crying foul, trying to raise the alarm bells,
1:35:59
Hey, we're we have to lose football. It's going to become flag football.
1:36:02
I would hope that that would resonate with some people, but there's some
1:36:06
inherent cultural problems, and one of them is the COVID effect. You got
1:36:12
the California effect and the COVID effect and the COVID effect. One. COVID
1:36:17
showed that football isn't that important. Right when you have a virus that doesn't
1:36:23
affect young people, doesn't affect athletes, and somehow Ohio State, Michigan and
1:36:28
USC notre name get canceled and the IVY League doesn't even play an entire season
1:36:33
and there's zero blowback for that, then football really doesn't matter. So COVID
1:36:40
showed football its place that's number one. But more importantly to the future of
1:36:45
football, here's what COVID did. We lost the right to make our own
1:36:50
medical decisions. That was always a sacred principle that we as a society do
1:36:59
not have the right to be making medical decisions for other people. We can
1:37:03
make suggestions, but we're not in charge of their health. They have the
1:37:08
right to put their health at risk if they so choose. That ended during
1:37:14
COVID. It's one of the worst things that happened during COVID. We gave
1:37:17
away that right to make our own medical decisions. We had society with no
1:37:24
vote. Now forget about a popular vote, not even a fucking vote in
1:37:29
the legislatures, by edicts, sometimes not even by elected officials, by Marxist
1:37:35
health directors, unelected appointed morons, not even qualified determining what we had to
1:37:45
do with our own health decisions, what we had to do with our own
1:37:48
kids health decisions. So once that goes away, you can't play football anymore
1:37:59
because society has determined that it is not just our obligation, it is our
1:38:05
right to prevent people from putting themselves in harms. Way, and the way
1:38:12
I read this new proposal in the NFL. It's essentially we're going for zero
1:38:18
injuries. This is like the zero COVID crowd, zero injury. You can't
1:38:24
fucking have zero injuries in football. It's absurd. It is absurd at every
1:38:30
level. I mean, while injuries have always been a problematic element of football,
1:38:38
it's also been part of the game. Dealing with injuries is a big
1:38:42
part of the game. That was one of the things that horrified me as
1:38:45
a high school coach. The last time around in California, I realized,
1:38:47
holy shit, the definition of injury is no longer I can't play, I
1:38:54
physically can't walk, or I'm not able to function. That was the definition
1:38:59
of injury. And I was a kid and I didn't even play football.
1:39:01
I'm talking about any sport. The new definition is I feel uncomfortable or I'm
1:39:09
afraid to go in, so I'm gonna claim I have a concussion. Liberals
1:39:14
are so fucking stupid. They don't understand the way that humans work. And
1:39:17
if you give people an out, they'll take it. If you give them
1:39:21
an excuse, they'll take it. And football is done. It's over.
1:39:28
When you cannot have control of your own medical decisions anymore. Then inherently,
1:39:35
it's on societies. It's society's burden. It's society's right to make sure that
1:39:43
football players don't put themselves in harm's way. Getting people to make that,
1:39:48
I mean, it was never it was never an issue getting football players to
1:39:56
agree to understand that there's risk involved in playing football. That was never a
1:40:01
concern, even when they weren't getting paid shit in comparison to what they're getting
1:40:04
paid today. I'll never forget when I was a sportscaster in Stubenville, Ohio,
1:40:11
Wheeling, West Virginia, back in the early nineties. I don't even
1:40:14
know if they still do this, but there was an NFL Alumni Association gathering
1:40:18
in Wheeling, West Virginia, which was part of our market, and Al
1:40:24
Davis was the keynote speaker. And for us, this was a pretty big
1:40:28
story because you're going to have all these former NFL players in our market,
1:40:31
and so they gathered for this event. And I will say that I was
1:40:36
a bit horrified because it really reminded me a lot of the famous bar scene
1:40:43
from Star Wars. I mean, these guys came in, I mean they
1:40:47
a lot of them were really bad shape. I mean they were physically deformed
1:40:53
in a lot of different ways. And to be clear, that makes sense
1:40:58
because if you're somebody who's fighting for health care, or you know it becomes
1:41:02
a much bigger issue in your life, you're more likely to raise your voice
1:41:08
at an alumni meeting. But there was no sense that these guys, while
1:41:14
they were upset about their healthcare understandably so, especially when you know that time
1:41:18
NFL players were starting to make real money and a lot of these alumni had
1:41:23
not, there was no sense that I can't believe I played football and these
1:41:28
guys didn't get paid anything close to what they get paid today. They were
1:41:31
at far greater risk. The healthcare was much worse, the game was much
1:41:34
more dangerous. And I didn't see anybody who regretted. I'm sure there was
1:41:41
somebody, but I didn't. I was not aware of anybody who really regretted
1:41:45
the decision to play football. It was understood that there was risk involved,
1:41:50
and you know, they they went for the rewards, and they got the
1:41:55
rewards, and if they had to live the rest of their life living around,
1:41:59
that's sucks. But that's part of the equation, that's part of the
1:42:02
game, that's part of why I got the reward when I was young.
1:42:06
That was a deal I made and we as a society respected that. Again,
1:42:13
I'm not saying you can't make the game safer. It was probably too
1:42:16
unsafe at one point, but now we have completely taken the decision. And
1:42:20
this goes way beyond football, way beyond sports, and COVID proved this beyond
1:42:26
any possible description. That we have lost our ability to make our own medical
1:42:34
decisions when it comes to risk and reward, and we can never get that
1:42:39
back. And so now we're a society of Karen's deciding no, you can't
1:42:45
play football. What do you mean, I can't play football? When even
1:42:47
Tom Brady, who benefited more than anybody else from these rules, is saying
1:42:54
that this is a problem, then people ought to be listening. By the
1:42:58
way, I had to play a clip that showed that this is not a
1:43:01
new issue. I do think it's funny that you know this, this issue
1:43:05
of the wissification of the NFL has been going on for even longer than I
1:43:11
remembered, because I happened to stumble across an old clip from Monday Night Football
1:43:15
and Howard Cosell, how Weed cow Sll from Monday Night Football. He was
1:43:21
interviewing Jack Lambert, the legendary linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers, well known for
1:43:28
having no front teeth but being a brutal tackler even though he was not a
1:43:32
very big guy at all. And this clip I found on TikTok recently,
1:43:39
where this must have been in the late seventies early eighties, Howard Cosell previewing
1:43:45
a Monday Night football game involving the legendary Pittsburgh Steelers, and Cosell asking Jack
1:43:51
Lambert about whether or not the rules were becoming too soft when it comes to
1:43:57
protecting quarterbacks. And here's what that sounded like on ABC's Monday Night Football.
1:44:02
I think there should be any rules changes for the safety of the quarterback.
1:44:09
Well, it might be a good idea to put dresses on all of them.
1:44:13
That might help a little bit. I got called last week for a
1:44:15
late hit on Brian Sipe, and you know, in my opinion, it
1:44:18
wasn't a late hit. That's Jack Lamber. Now, to be fair,
1:44:28
Brian Sipe the quarterback that Jack Lambert got penalized for a late hit. There
1:44:33
he did die. I mean, so there was that. No I'm kidding.
1:44:41
Brian Sipe did not die because of Jack Lambert's tackle, though I would
1:44:45
love to see a bit, I would love to have sat found a video
1:44:48
of what that penalty really was. Like, my sense is that today we'd
1:44:53
be horrified by whatever Jack Lambert did to Brian Sipe, who, for the
1:44:58
record, did not die because of that tackle from Jack Lambert. But the
1:45:02
most important part of this is this is not a new issue, but this
1:45:05
goes back to my theme of the slippery slope. This is a long time
1:45:11
in coming, but we've reached the tipping point. Now we've reached the tipping
1:45:15
point. And I may be optimistic in my prediction about ten years and the
1:45:19
NFL being at some level flag football. I don't know how it's actually going
1:45:24
to look. Whether it's just a quarterback. That's my guess is that they'll
1:45:28
try to just protect the quarterback because that's all anyone cares about in this era
1:45:31
of stars and the quarterback is it's really just a quarterback game now. I
1:45:35
mean, football used to be a game where all twenty two guys were almost
1:45:40
equal. That's long gone. Now it's the quarterback is like sixty seventy percent
1:45:46
of the game. And if you don't have a great quarterback, you can't
1:45:49
play. If you do have a great quarterback, it almost doesn't matter.
1:45:54
You know, you got to have some other players, but you're always capable
1:45:57
of winning if you have a great quarterback. And that's mainly because the rule
1:46:01
changes. And so again, I hope you understand it. While I have
1:46:05
passion for the game of football because I think it's a great game, I
1:46:09
think it's in an era where we don't have a military draft. High school
1:46:14
football is the closest thing that many young men get to a military experience,
1:46:17
or at least it used to be that is no longer the case. Liberals
1:46:21
have done a hell of a job of cutting the balls off of football,
1:46:25
and they've done it here in California in a very dramatic fashion. They haven't
1:46:30
quite done it yet in portions of the South East and the Midwest, but
1:46:33
they've done it more so than I think even football fans realize. And we've
1:46:39
lost something as a country, not just the sport. But this is really
1:46:43
emblematic of what's going on in the country as a whole, and nobody is
1:46:47
talking about it because largely the sports media is in bed with the NFL.
1:46:54
There's no Howard Cosell out there anymore. I mean, Howard Cosell would be
1:46:59
going bananas, and he would have had the power back then. He had
1:47:03
the power because he had the audience and he had the freedom to tell the
1:47:09
truth about this, and he didn't seem to care, I mean, because
1:47:12
he was universally hated anyway. But there is no Howard go Sell anymore.
1:47:16
Now you have a bunch of people that is thrilled to have the gig,
1:47:19
and they don't want to upset the apple cart, and they're you know,
1:47:23
almost literally going along with their they're almost employed by the NFL. I mean,
1:47:29
that's there's that's how close the the interconnections are between members of the sports
1:47:35
media and those that cover the National Football League. I mean, I'm not
1:47:41
exaggerating. I mean there's all sorts of examples of this. This seems like
1:47:45
a really small example, but I'll show you what I'm talking about. Aaron
1:47:47
Andrews, sideline reporter in many of the most prominent NFL games. She has
1:47:54
a clothing line, a clothing line that has a licensing agreement with the National
1:48:00
Football League. By the way, she was all excited because apparently Taylor Swift
1:48:04
has been wearing her clothing line at the Chiefs games watching Travis Kelcey. But
1:48:12
how the hell is Aaron Andrews ever gonna do anything that's against the NFL.
1:48:15
She's basically business partners with the NFL. All these networks are business partners with
1:48:20
the NFL, so they're not gonna say anything about this. And I am
1:48:26
convinced more than ever that my theory that the announcers have been told by the
1:48:30
NFL to knock it off when it comes to criticizing these roughing the passer penalties
1:48:35
is one hundred percent dead on, because there is an absolute difference this year
1:48:41
in the way that the commentators have handled these questionable calls than they have previously.
1:48:46
And this is all part of the slippery slope, and it's probably gonna
1:48:51
end in in the end of football a lot sooner than anybody realizes, maybe
1:48:58
even Tom Brady. But I found it very interesting that Tom Brady is now
1:49:00
echoing exactly what I have said about the future of football when it comes to
1:49:06
flag football. Now I mentioned Taylors Swift and Travis Kelcey. I did find
1:49:11
it interesting that mister Pfiser as Travis Kelcey has now been named by Aaron Rodgers.
1:49:17
You know, he's an endorser of Pfizer and a promoter of the vaccine
1:49:24
for COVID. But apparently it has not been working very well, at least
1:49:29
according to the CDC. This is an article from the Blaze Blaze headline conservative
1:49:35
outlet. The Blaze. CDC says just two percent of Americans received new COVID
1:49:42
vaccine. Pfiser undergoes three point five billion dollars in cost cutting measures as sales
1:49:47
for COVID nineteen products plummet. Only two percent of Americans have gotten the updated
1:49:55
COVID nineteen vaccine, according to the CDC, the update COVID vaccine, created
1:50:00
to provide more protection against current coronavirus variants circulating, was approved by the US
1:50:06
Food and Drug Administration on September eleventh, twenty twenty three. The next day
1:50:11
of the CDC recommended that every US citizen over the age of six months,
1:50:15
which is absurd, get the updated COVID vaccine manufactured by Maderna and Pfizer.
1:50:21
President Joe Biden added the same day, I encourage all Americans to stay up
1:50:27
to date on their vaccines. The CDC urged if you have not received a
1:50:30
COVID nineteen vaccine in the past two months two months, get an updated COVID
1:50:36
nineteen vaccine to protect yourself this fall and winter. Despite the push by the
1:50:42
government to get the new shots in the arms of Americans, just about two
1:50:45
percent of US citizens have opted to get the new booster vaccine. The US
1:50:50
Department of Health and Human Services revealed that seven million Americans received the latest updated
1:50:57
COVID vaccine, roughly two percent of the US population, CNN reported. In
1:51:01
comparison, when last year's COVID nineteen booster was available, more than eighteen million
1:51:08
people had received a dose by October twelve of twenty twelve, about six weeks
1:51:13
after the CDC signed off on it. According to CDC data, by May,
1:51:16
about fifty six point five million people had received that booster, representing about
1:51:23
seventeen percent of the US population. Now, it's still fairly early, winter
1:51:27
hasn't hit yet. I'm sure those numbers will increase, but we are now
1:51:30
in the middle of October and only two percent of gotten the booster. That's
1:51:35
pretty extraordinary and saying nothing about Travis Kelsey's power as an endorse that shows that
1:51:43
America has moved on and that they realize that COVID as exists today is not
1:51:49
a major threat to their life. I mean, that is an astonishingly low
1:51:54
number and more than worthy of being mentioned one other healthcare related issue. It
1:52:00
certainly goes to the issue of the death of journalism. You know, there's
1:52:04
been a report now that family health insurance at work has jumped to about twenty
1:52:15
four thousand dollars a year. Twenty four thousand dollars a year. This is
1:52:20
reported widely. CNN reported it that family health insurance at work is now costing
1:52:28
on average, nearly twenty four thousand dollars a year. Now, my first
1:52:32
thought about this is, Okay, where are all the stories about two things?
1:52:39
One the failure of Obamacare? Because this is clearly as a result of
1:52:45
Obamacare finally creating so much chaos and dysfunction in the system that things are getting
1:52:51
out of control. That's number one. So where are the media stories on
1:52:56
the failure of Obamacare? Number two? Where are the stories about how inflation
1:53:01
is impacting americans lives in a very direct fashion, Even though the Biden administration
1:53:10
is claiming that inflation is becoming under control. And has even tried to fool
1:53:14
people into thinking that inflation is reversing itself. Well, even I was shocked
1:53:20
when I was looking for other stories on this subject and I saw a headline
1:53:25
on USA Today. This is comical. This is USA Today, an actual
1:53:31
headline in USA Today from the same story about the same story. Headline,
1:53:38
why are families paying twenty four thousand dollars a year for health insurance when inflation
1:53:45
is going down? That's a USA Today News article. God named Ken Altucker.
1:53:51
I do not know this person. I don't know who wrote the headline.
1:53:56
In fact, I suspect that the headline was not. Mostly this is
1:54:00
usually the case. The writer does not write the headline, but the article
1:54:04
itself doesn't really emphasize this bizarre point about inflation going down. So some young
1:54:13
wokester you know, who believes the propaganda from the Biden administration, somehow wrote
1:54:17
this headline, Why are families paying twenty four thousand dollars a year for health
1:54:21
insurance when inflation is going down? Inflation is not going down. The rate
1:54:29
of the increase of inflation has diminished partially, but only if you discount gas
1:54:39
and groceries, which are in all likelihood the most important things to the average
1:54:44
American on a day to day basis. So inflation is not going down.
1:54:49
The rate of inflation is hopefully diminishing, and I believe that in some ways
1:54:56
that it is. But that's natural because when you have a high, highly
1:55:00
inflationary period, unless things are completely out of control, that rate of inflation
1:55:05
has to diminish just simply by economic forces, because then you know, when
1:55:12
prices rise, you have somebody else who can come in at a lower price
1:55:16
to get market share. And there's all sorts of things. When we're still
1:55:20
somewhat of a capitalist to country that keep inflation in check naturally hasn't worked when
1:55:29
it comes to the price of gasoline, especially here in California, or the
1:55:30
price of groceries anywhere, which you are completely out of control. And now
1:55:35
it's in healthcare. But the idea that USA Today could write an article and
1:55:40
they think that's the main issue, not the failure of Obamacare or not that
1:55:45
this is further evidence of massive inflation that's way worse than the bide administration is
1:55:50
claiming. But they're actually buying into, or at least this headline writer and
1:55:55
the editor are buying into this bogus propaganda like narrative that somehow inflation is going
1:56:02
down. Inflation is not going down. It is being vastly underrated, not
1:56:09
just by the Biden administration but by their enablers in the news media, and
1:56:13
it is another another classic example of the death of journalism. That'll do it
1:56:17
for this episode of the Death of Journalism podcast. Once again, let me
1:56:21
remind you that in episode number one hundred, will be doing ask John anything,
1:56:27
so make sure you send me your questions at John Z at mediaiit dot
1:56:31
com. That's John Z at mediaiit dot com. Or send me a message
1:56:34
on Twitter or Facebook, or reply to the posts that I put up on
1:56:40
Twitter or Facebook that include the link to this particular podcast. That'll be an
1:56:45
episode number one hundred. This is episode number ninety eight. Thanks so much
1:56:48
for listening. Please remember to subscribe, rate, and review and share this
1:56:51
with other the people. If you share it on social media, please remember
1:56:54
to tag me and I'll share it with my followers on Twitter and my friends
1:56:58
on Facebook. Until next time, thanks so much for listening. This has
1:57:00
been the Death of Journalism Podcast, Episode number ninety eight. My name is
1:57:04
John Zigler.