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Episode Eighty One: Are You Not Entertained? · The Death Of Journalism

• 0:00
  Welcome the episode eighty one of the Death of Journalism podcast. My name is
• 0:04
  John Ziggler. On today's show, Donald Trump officially hits for the cycle when
• 0:08
  it comes to being indicted. Is the Oscar winning Blindside Football movie of Fraud
• 0:15
  and an interview with the author of a great new book about Richard Nixon.
• 0:20
  I'm known as the Dutch Digital marketing Man. I'm a digital advertising SEO and
• 0:26
  email marketing specialist that also happens to be a big fan of John Ziegler and
• 0:30
  the Death of Journalism. Do you need help preaching your target audience? Let
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  me help you develop the right messaging and confaded message in the best channels for
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  and let me help you tell your story. The website is the Dutch Digital
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  Marketingman dot com. If you want to grow your business, Peter can help.
• 0:54
  That's the Dutch Digital marketing Man dot com. And hey, thanks for
• 1:00
  sponsoring the show. Well, it finally happened. Donald Trump was in fact
• 1:04
  indicted for a fourth time, this time in the state of Georgia, Fulton
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  County to be exact, where the da there Fanny Willis, who happens to
• 1:15
  be a Democratic black female, which matters from a perception standpoint in a very
• 1:22
  significant way. In a very politically charged indictment has indicted Donald Trump and eighteen
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  other defendants in the ledged scheme to overturn the twenty twenty election there and specifically
• 1:38
  in Georgia with regard to the electors there, and obviously much of this having
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  to do at least centering around this infamous audio tape of Donald Trump urging seemingly
• 1:53
  urging the Secretary of State of Georgia to find him eleven thousand votes. Now,
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  there's a lot to talk about here. I have to say, as
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  an aside, to start off with that, as someone who has been deeply
• 2:07
  embedded in the whole Penn State Joe Paterno Jerry Sandusky case for much of the
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  last twelve years, and obviously we have the benefit of Hindsight podcast that we
• 2:16
  put out a couple of years ago, I did have some flashbacks because,
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  very similarly to the Sandusky case, the presentment from the grand jury in this
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  case was mysteriously leaked online and then taken down, but found by the news
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  media. While it was leaked online, prematurely, which is exactly what happened
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  in the Sandusky case. I was wondering if Sarah Gannum was involved in some
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  way, shape or form. If she was, I was going to decide
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  that's it for me. I'm done. If Sarah Gannum is somehow involved in
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  this leaked presentment, then I've seen enough. That's enough for me. Everybody,
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  So long, everybody. But there's no evidence that Sarah Gantum was involved.
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  Although I have to say that the charges in this case have a similar
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  strategy to the Sandusky case, I'm pretty sure I'm the only commentator that'd be
• 3:15
  willing and able to mention this reality. But it seems to me as that
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  the overall strategy here is to throw everything against the wall that is possible and
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  then charge everybody you possibly can, hoping for people to flip on one another
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  so you can actually get some real evidence. And it really does seem as
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  if the narrative that is tying this particular indictment together is an all or nothing
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  situation. I mean, either you are going to buy into as a juror,
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  assuming this ever gets to a jury, that this entire narrative, this
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  entire conspiracy, this Rico case, which is normally reserved for mob situations,
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  that every little thing all these nineteen people did is part of this scheme or
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  this conspiracy to overturn the election, or you're not going to buy it.
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  You're gonna buy that this is more of a political operation. This is a
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  free speech issue. That some of these things are being distorted and some of
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  these things are being taken out of context, and you might be left wondering,
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  Okay, well, where's the ultimate crime, where's the there there?
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  And that's why I and most other commentators have been focusing on the audio tape,
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  because the audio tape and how you interpret what Trump said there to me
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  is the essence of the case. And I do think that there's a chance
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  that this whole case basically turns on Trump using the word I instead of the
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  word you when he's talking to the Georgia Secretary of State saying that that there
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  needs to be eleven thousand plus votes found. Because he does say I,
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  Now there's this is classic Trump, because he acts like a mob boss,
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  which is why it's rather ironic. It may be appropriate that this is all
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  a reco case, because I really do think that this is the way that
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  Trump operates. You know, he's careful enough to use the word I,
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  but he really means you. I mean, if you look at what he's
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  saying in the larger context, I mean, he's not going to find the
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  votes. So he basically is saying you need to find the votes for me.
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  So but whether he's saying I because he's thinking from a legal standpoint,
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  or whether or not he's just so narcissistic and selfish that he thinks of everything
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  as I or me, I don't know. But I think the case would
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  be a lot stronger if he had said you rather than I. Now,
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  I am perfectly willing to buy the idea that he was trying to pressure the
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  Georgia's Secretary of State into finding votes, and finding votes basically, in this
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  interpretation, means to create them now, But I think that's going to be
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  difficult to prove, at least with a normal legal standard of beyond a reasonable
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  doubt. If this is going to be a remotely fair trial in Fulton County,
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  where you're gonna have a lot of Democrats and probably a largely black jury
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  against a guy who is perceived in some circles is being a white not just
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  a white guy, but a white candidate, and in some extreme circles,
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  even a racist. I think it's going to be maybe difficult to get a
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  fair jury. But when a fair jury and a normal standard of proof,
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  that's going to be a tough sell. And it might be why they decided
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  to go big. He could to me in this case, you either go
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  very small and you just focus on Trump and you just focus on what he
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  tried to do with the Georgia secretary of State. And I could buy that.
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  I mean, as someone who loads Trump, but who has tried exceedingly
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  hard to be as objective and as fair as possible throughout each of the last
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  seven years, and all the insanity that is ensued, I would be willing
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  to go there and go all right, that seems like a legitimate allegation.
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  That's a serious crime. Have proven if the President of the United States is
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  pressuring the Georgia's secretary of State, a member of his own party, a
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  guy he has leveraged over because he can destroy his life via social media and
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  in other ways, not to mention that he's the president, and he's pressuring
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  him to commit fraud, to commit voter fraud, to overturn an election,
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  and then that's serious. That's a crime that ought to be adjudicated, that
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  ought to be charged. We ought to find out what the truth is,
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  and if he's found guilty in a fair trial, there ought to be serious
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  punishment for that. But again I'm interpreting here that maybe they thought, well,
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  you know, if we hang everything on the phone call, and partially
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  because Trump uses the word I instead of you, that might not be good
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  enough. So instead of going very narrow, we're gonna go super big here
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  and we're gonna throw the book at everybody. I mean, we're going to
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  indict Rudy Giuliani, which is just I have to say. You know,
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  we're living in such a desensitized time and we're living in it's a bizarro world.
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  But by far the most underreported element of this entire Georgia indictment. I
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  mean, it's been mentioned, but can just the idea that Rudy Giuliani,
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  who just over twenty years ago was an American hero. Following nine to eleven
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  he was America's mayor Man of the Year, the whole bit, I mean,
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  And now here he is being indicted on rico charges, which is of
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  course ironic because he became known as somebody who went after the mob in a
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  big way and in a very similar strategy when it came to prosecutions. And
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  and this is barely even a significant part of the story. I mean,
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  the downfall of Rudy Giuliani and the idea that he is now being indicted on
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  state charges to I guess in this case, county charges to overturn an election.
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  It's just an amazing development. But we're so desensitized it's it's barely even
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  part of the narrative. But it was, you know, Rudy Giuliani and
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  a bunch of Trump lawyers, even Kanye West's former publicist got got indicted here.
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  And it's vous, as I've already referenced that at least, it seems
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  to me that what they're trying to do here is throw everything against the wall
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  and hope people flip. And I don't know whether not they're going to be
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  successful in that or not. I do think that the number of defendants does
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  a couple of things here from a perception standpoint. Even to me, it
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  I think weakens the validity of the case. I realize that they're trying to
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  create and prove this massive conspiracy, But it just seems like literal overkill just
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  from a pure perception standpoint that this is a it's consistent with the political vendetta,
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  and perception is all that you need in this situation, because everybody has
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  very strong political beliefs to begin with. Unless you're going to convince Republicans and
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  Trump voters that this is very serious, then I'm not sure this really is
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  going to matter that much in the long run. And so if there's any
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  kind of any scent of political bias or agenda here, it's going to kill
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  the credibility of the allegations, the indictments, And if there's a trial,
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  then the same thing is going to happen there. And it's obvious that the
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  Trump's strategy is going to be to exploit these perceptions, and unfortunately there are
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  there's a lot to exploit. I mean, we got the crazy Grand Jury
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  four woman who stupidly did an interview I guess it was late last year where
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  you know, she made it very clear she was excited to be part of
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  this process and made it very obvious that she was out to get Donald Trump,
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  maybe more importantly than that that she was crazy and she's the four woman
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  of this grand jury, or at least was We've got the leak presentment that
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  I just referenced, which from a standpoint of reality probably doesn't mean very much
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  at all, but it creates a perception and the explanation that the DA Fanny
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  Willis gave at first was non existent and then it was nonsensical. They've never
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  explained how it is that what got leaked is essentially the same thing that ended
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  up getting officially released a few hours later, and they it seems as if
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  they at least distorted, if not lied, in that way. You've got
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  a Democratic DA in a who happens to be a black female in a very
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  black democratic county. You have all these indictments, nineteen people, too many
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  people, too many charges, it seems like overkill. And then you've got
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  Trump, i'm sure, claiming that it's Rhino Republicans who helped this indictment in
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  order to prevent him from being the twenty twenty four nominee. So all of
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  this creates a narrative. If you're on the Trump team and they know this
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  and they're already doing many of the things are exacerbating and taking advantage of many
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  of the things I just referenced to offuscate the actual allegations here, and it
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  will work. It will work with the vast majority of Republicans, and I
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  can understand it because some of this stuff even works with me, not that
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  I think Trump didn't try to overturn the election or more importantly, and this
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  might be the essence of the allegation from a political standpoint, and the part
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  of this that the right wing media is not going to tell their audience is
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  that we now know, more definitively than ever that Trump knew he lost,
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  and he knew he lost even before the election, and that there was there
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  was not just a scheme to try to overturn the election, there was a
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  scheme to try to pretend that they didn't really lose. This was if there
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  was. I mean, there's multiple conspiracies here, but but it's obvious unless
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  you know people are lying through their ass But Trump aids have made it very
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  clear under oath that that Trump knew he was going to lose. He was
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  told he was going to lose, and he responded in a way consistent with
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  a guy who knew he was going to lose and was embarrassed about it,
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  and that the essence of all this was trying to protect Trump's ego. That's
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  what the whole thing was about. It wasn't about trying to defend the country
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  against the left wing takeover. It was about trying to defend Donald Trump's ego
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  from having to accept that he lost to a guy who you know, is
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  a terrible candidate who was old and decrepit and seemed to have signs of dementia,
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  and he would lose bad, at least from a popular vote standpoint.
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  That's, to me, the biggest revelation and the essence of this indictment is
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  that Trump knew the whole thing was a big lie. It didn't really happen,
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  and he knows it, or at the very least he at one point
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  knew it. It is it possible, and I'm sure this will become part
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  of the legal case to go to trial that at a later point he convinced
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  himself of it. Who knows. I mean, trying to get into Donald
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  Trump's mind has always been a very difficult and dangerous thing. But from a
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  substantive standpoint, he knew he lost, and this whole thing has been a
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  scam and now he's trying to portray himself as not just a martyr, but
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  as a hero. He's sending out fundraising emails declaring that he is selflessly fighting
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  for you and for the country, and that's why he's not giving up no
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  matter what they throw at me. I'm still gonna come back fighting against them
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  for you and for the country. What a load of crap that is.
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  It's the exact opposite of reality. He's bilking these these middle class and lower
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  middle class people out of five ten, twenty five dollars to send to an
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  alleged billionaire so that he could help defend himself against legitimate a though overwrought in
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  this case, I believe charges that go against the essence of our constitution.
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  And he's portraying himself as a martyr and a hero, fighting for the little
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  guy and fighting for the country. I mean, it just doesn't get more
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  bizarre and more frustrating and more outrageous than that, because it's not just not
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  the truth, it's one hundred and eighty degrees from the truth. And so
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  look, I think that the general allegation of trying to overturn the twenty twenty
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  election is in its essence. True, that's clearly what Trumped tried to do,
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  and he did so even while knowing that he had lost. But I
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  have to say that if I'm ranking these indictments, this is certainly not the
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  most serious one, or the or the most credible one. I mean,
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  to me, the January sixth indictment is the most credible. They're now conservative
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  commentators, I believe, for political reasons, have not told you that,
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  for some reason, it was more politically tenable to support the classified documents case
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  as being credible. And I just to me, I don't see what the
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  harm was unless you can prove to me actual harm in the classified documents case.
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  And because the tape in that case is so benign and everyone's laughing and
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  it doesn't really feel like a crime is being committed, and in a Florida
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  jury, I just don't see how in the world Trump gets convicted of anything
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  in that case. And in fact, if it ever, if it does
• 18:19
  go to trial during the campaign, I think it'll actually help Trump because at
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  worst there'll be a hung jury and he'll be able to say, see,
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  they can't catch me. You know, He'll be the roadrunner to Wiley Coyote
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  I mean so, and that his fans love that. You know, you
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  can't kill him. He's Rasputin. And we don't know when any of these
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  trials are going to actually happen. There's potential for delays and all of them.
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  And by the way, I think the potential for delay, not being
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  an expert, just using my common sense, the potential for delay is greatest
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  with this Georgia case because inherently with nineteen defendants, that where the DA is
• 19:02
  saying that she wants to try them all at the same time. I mean,
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  just from a purely logistical standpoint, that's insanity. I don't even know
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  how you could possibly do that. And you know, with nineteen different defendants
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  and nineteen different lawyers, I mean, there's gonna be all sorts of reasons
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  for delays, and under normal circumstances, you don't get, you know,
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  a trial in six months, which is what she's trying to do, from
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  indictment from a grand jury to trial, unless you're Jerry Sandusky, then you
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  do get that because there's no continuances, no nothing. But in this case,
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  I just don't see any chance at all that the Georgia case is going
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  to be tried before a jury before the twenty twenty four election. I just
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  cannot possibly see that. In fact, this whole thing feels it feels a
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  little bit like Netflix announcing that they're gonna be putting together a much hyped series
• 20:07
  on a subject that they know their audience would love, and they're they're targeting
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  late twenty twenty four, but it's probably going to be in twenty twenty five.
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  You say, you have something to look forward to, that we're going
• 20:18
  to have this great TV series, And that's really what this is, this
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  Georgia and Dymon, Because in a state court, it's much more likely to
• 20:26
  be televised. It's obvious that this thing will be televised. It's obvious that
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  Fanny Willis, for instance, loves the publicity. This is great for her.
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  She's a national celebrity in the liberal world now. And the TV media
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  obviously would love there to be a state trial on election interference involving Donald Trump
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  that's on television. This would be a mini OJ trial, and it would
• 20:55
  be a maybe more than a mini OJ trial if Trump was actually president when
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  this trial occurred. I mean, that's the olds, Frankly, that would
• 21:04
  be about the only this is kind of like a backup plan, like an
• 21:08
  insurance policy for the news media against Trump winning, because if Trump does win,
• 21:15
  of course, you know he's going to help their ratings to begin with.
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  But philosophically, I would I would agree that the vast majority of the
• 21:22
  news media doesn't want or expect Trump to be president again, But if he
• 21:26
  were to beat a decrepit Joe Biden, this would be in the media's back
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  pocket. Sometime in twenty twenty five twenty twenty six, we'd get to have
• 21:37
  a televised trial in Georgia in a democratic county where they're going after the current
• 21:45
  president of the United States on election interference charges in a Rico conspiracy involving eighteen
• 21:52
  Democrats. I mean, that might be as big or bigger than Oh Jay
• 21:56
  potentially if Trump is resident. Now Trump isn't president, it'll still be a
• 22:03
  story, but not nearly as big a one. So it feels to me
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  as if Fanny Willis is basically putting a TV series in the pipeline for the
• 22:12
  news media. And you know, the news media loves this from all sorts
• 22:18
  of different perspectives. But if I were to rank, if I were to
• 22:21
  rank the indictments in the order of their significance. I would say that the
• 22:26
  federal January sixth indictment is the most serious, and if proven, the one
• 22:33
  where Trump should be punished the most and most obviously. Then I would probably
• 22:37
  say classified documents would be number two, but it would be in my mind
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  in a situation where there's very little chance of an actual conviction. And then
• 22:48
  number three, I'd probably put the Georgia case, simply because the subject matter
• 22:55
  is important, and because I do think that that audio tape is damning.
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  Whether it reaches the threshold of beyond a reasonable doubt would I would need to
• 23:04
  hear some more evidence, and then I would say that clearly the fourth and
• 23:08
  most garbage indictment is the one out of New York involving the hush money to
• 23:14
  the porn stars Stormy Daniels. Now, there's been a lot of talk on
• 23:18
  this podcast and elsewhere about what impact having four indictments would have. You know,
• 23:26
  is this going to create a situation where Republican voters get tired and there's
• 23:33
  a cumuli effect, and that there's a negative impact on Trump's candidacy because of
• 23:41
  it, that there's some erosion, there's some recognition of are we really going
• 23:45
  to do this? Is this really going to happen? I mean we are
• 23:51
  are we really going to put our general election candidate up against an incumbent president
• 23:56
  with four indictments hanging over their head? I mean, for just from a
• 24:00
  logistical standboid and a money standpoint that this seems problematic. So is that going
• 24:06
  to be the way Republican voters see this? Or is there going to be
• 24:11
  immunity that every indictment creates more and more immunity and hardens the Republican base in
• 24:19
  Trump's favor in a more dramatic fashion. I have always been in the latter
• 24:25
  category. I've been hopeful for the former category, but I've always been in
• 24:29
  the latter category that this was the much more likely scenario. And I'm still
• 24:34
  in that category now that we've actually seen the fourth indictment, because there has
• 24:40
  been no outrage, for instance, in the conservative media about this particular indictment.
• 24:48
  The people that I tend to look to as barometers on these indictments,
• 24:52
  people like Jonathan Turley, the liberal George Washington University law professor who's darling a
• 25:00
  Fox News channel because he's been very supportive of Trump. He pissed all over
• 25:03
  this indictment, much like he did, I believe, erroneously the January sixth
• 25:10
  indictment. He's still under this delusion that this is largely a First Amendment issue.
• 25:14
  And I share there are the fact that there are in fact First Amendment
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  concerns and issues, and I'm a First Amendment absolutist, but I do think
• 25:23
  that there are elements of both the indictments that have nothing to do with free
• 25:29
  speech or the First Amendment. And I do think Jonathan Turley loves being loved
• 25:33
  by Fox News Channel. Ben Shapiro, another guy, looked too, because
• 25:37
  he's got his finger up into the breeze, trying to figure out how to
• 25:42
  maneuver his way out of any situation that might force him to condemn Donald Trump.
• 25:48
  And of course he has not done so, which is typical of the
• 25:49
  way Ben Shapiro does things. It's always what a baudism and pretending both sides
• 25:56
  are awful and what a terrible situation we've got ourselves into, and nothing condemning
• 26:02
  Trump for the actual core behavior. Even Ron De Santis at times, and
• 26:08
  some of his reaction to this latest indictment sounds like a Trump spokesperson, I
• 26:12
  don't know how the hell you're supposed to make up a forty point deficit with
• 26:18
  that being your strategy, it seems to me. And look, I understand,
• 26:22
  I get it that the Santis campaign as well as most of the other
• 26:27
  campaigns other than Chris Christy, which I think is an important, notable exception.
• 26:33
  I'll get to that in a bid. But I do think that the
• 26:36
  Santis campaign is realized. Look, we're in a tough spot, but there's
• 26:40
  no choice here. We have to largely support Trump. Find whatever way we
• 26:44
  can claim that the system is corrupt, you know, two tiered justice,
• 26:49
  you know this is overkill. Whatever excuse they can come up with, the
• 26:55
  condemn the dynamics of the situation, can demn the indictment without really overtly supporting
• 27:03
  Trump's behavior. That seems to be the tack that they're taking, and the
• 27:07
  strategy seems to be okay. Look, we disqualify ourselves from the nomination if
• 27:17
  we attack Trump too directly on these indictments, If we are seen as supporting
• 27:23
  these indictments, you can't win the nomination. Because it's obvious that over fifty
• 27:30
  percent of the Republican voting base does not support these indictments that they think they
• 27:37
  are at least if not totally politically motivated. And there's it's not completely irrational.
• 27:44
  Obviously, the Manhattan indictment is totally politically motivated. And I've already gone
• 27:48
  through Fanny Willis and her motivations. And because the DOJ has been so discredited
• 27:56
  by the whole Hunter Biden narrative and and a whole bunch of other issues,
• 28:00
  Russia Gate, whatever, the Jack Smith indictments, it can be seen as
• 28:06
  political if you're of that mindset as a Republican voter. So the strategy seems
• 28:12
  to be, look, we disqualify ourselves if we are seeing as in favor
• 28:18
  of these indictments at all, and so the only way we can possibly remain
• 28:25
  viable for the nomination is that we hope that this storm passes and that maybe
• 28:30
  subliminally, maybe people will figure this out for themselves, that this is a
• 28:36
  bad idea to nominate Donald Trump with for indictments hanging over their head over his
• 28:41
  head. Now, I am exceedingly pessimistic that people will come to that conclusion
• 28:47
  in large numbers on their own, because too much of the Republican Party as
• 28:52
  a cult. You've got Trump selling them one narrative which the conservative media is
• 28:56
  largely enabling, if not carrying, And so I don't know how it is
• 29:00
  you're going to get well over fifty percent of the Republican voting base to come
• 29:06
  to this conclusion on their own that they've been sold a bill of goods.
• 29:11
  I just don't see how that works. But I also understand that the reality,
• 29:17
  which is that if you support these indictments in any significant way, you
• 29:22
  essentially disqualify yourself from being the Republican nominee. It's a disqualifier. And that
• 29:30
  gets me to Chris Christie's situation here because and this is we have such a
• 29:36
  perfect storm that is enabling and benefiting Donald Trump here because these indictments not just
• 29:45
  help him with regard to his own personal popularity. I mean, frankly,
• 29:49
  his popularity is kind of stabilized in most of these polls. I mean,
• 29:56
  it's way higher than I ever would have hoped to have seen or thought was,
• 30:00
  and it happened. But it's not like he's in the sixties of the
• 30:03
  seventies. He claims to be, but he's not in national polls or in
• 30:07
  the key state polls, he's much lower than that, so it's not as
• 30:11
  if his personal popularity has exploded because of the indictments. But here's where the
• 30:15
  indictments help him dramatically, and Chris Christie is the classic example of this.
• 30:22
  So let's play this out. We've already seen, as I predicted, unfortunately
• 30:29
  that Chris Christie has traction in New Hampshire because Rhnda Santis gave up the never
• 30:33
  Trump lane that was very prominent in New Hampshire because the Republican governor of New
• 30:38
  Hampshire is a never Trump Republican. Well, Chris Christie has taken that lane,
• 30:44
  and in some polls he's now edging out rohnd de Sandis in New Hampshire.
• 30:48
  And it's clear that the Santis is no longer in double digits in New
• 30:52
  Hampshire. And surprise, surprise, Stop me if you've heard this before.
• 30:55
  I was right about New Hampshire and getting the hell out of there because there
• 30:59
  was no hands of the Santas beating Trump in New Hampshire for a whole myriad
• 31:03
  of reasons, and one of them was that I saw that Chris Christie had
• 31:07
  traction. Well, are these indictments this fourth one. Now, is this
• 31:11
  gonna help Chris Christie's cause or hurt Chris Christie's cause. It's gonna help Chris
• 31:17
  Christie's cause in a huge way, because guess what happens next week. Next
• 31:22
  week there's a debate. It's not gonna have Donald Trump and the only issue
• 31:30
  that is going to be okay to talk about with regard to Donald Trump,
• 31:33
  and I guarantee Brett bar and Martha McCallen, the host from Fox News Channel,
• 31:40
  I'm probably gonna lead off with this topic because obviously the big story is
• 31:44
  going to be that Trump's not going to be there. Trump's the ratings magnet.
• 31:47
  The big story is that Trump just got indicted again. So every single
• 31:51
  person on that stage is going to have to address the Trump indictments. Well,
• 31:56
  those that think they actually have a chance to win the night domination,
• 32:00
  de Santis, Haley Scott, those for sure, obviously Vague Ramaswami is a
• 32:08
  Trump surrogate. They're all going to be forced to support Trump. Now,
• 32:15
  it is possible that somebody else, you know, like Mike Pence. Mike
• 32:19
  Pence is obviously in the best position since he was part of the story as
• 32:23
  Vice president. He may come out strongly against Trump, but that's not going
• 32:29
  to help Pence. In large part. It might help him a little bit
• 32:34
  get some of the never trumpers, but because he was Trump's vice president,
• 32:37
  he's not the natural person after sucking up to Trump for four plus years to
• 32:44
  be the standard bearer for the never Trump contingent of the Republican Party. The
• 32:50
  person that's going to go, you know, full bore on this issue is
• 32:53
  former Prosecutor Chris Christie, and so this is perfect for Christie. So Christie
• 33:00
  is going to galvanize in that debate the anti never Trump contingent of the Republican
• 33:07
  Party, which is not that large. It's not large enough to win the
• 33:12
  nomination. But this is going to be perfect for Christie. So he's going
• 33:15
  to gain further traction in New Hampshire and maybe elsewhere in the early States that
• 33:22
  matter. Meanwhile, Desantist is going to have to sit there and basically eat
• 33:27
  this shit sandwich served up to him by Donald Trump. Because Desantist actually still
• 33:31
  thinks he has a chance to be the nominee. Christie is not burdened by
• 33:37
  that. Christie knows he's not going to be the nominee. Christie is running.
• 33:40
  He allegedly is running to try to stop Donald Trump. That's bullshit.
• 33:45
  Chris Christie is running so that when he pulls out after South Carolina that he
• 33:50
  can be hired back by ABC News in a prominent media position to the comment
• 33:57
  as a never Trump Republican and not a Conservative on Trump's nomination and the general
• 34:04
  election, and if God forbid, Trump wins the presidency, Chris Christie is
• 34:08
  in a plum spot to be the voice of the Republican opposition, the same
• 34:14
  Republican in the news media. Chris Christie's doing this for him and and not
• 34:19
  and knowing you can't win gives you enormous freedom. We've seen that with vavague
• 34:23
  Ramaswamy. Vig Ramaswamy knows he's not gonna win, so he's rapping at the
• 34:30
  Iowa State Fair and kissing Trump's ass everywhere and saying all sorts of things that
• 34:36
  sound great the Conservatives but are completely unrealistic. And he has no record that
• 34:39
  he asked to defend. He has never held elected office. Meanwhile, you
• 34:45
  know de Santis, who's done amazing things in the real world, getting things
• 34:50
  done in Florida, gets nitpicked an attacked from every corner because the news media
• 34:55
  sees him as a threat because they know he could win. So Rama Swammy
• 35:00
  and Christy are getting free rides and both are in one's directly helping Trump Ramaswamy,
• 35:07
  and one is indirectly helping Trump while claiming to be attacking Trump, and
• 35:12
  that's Chris Christie. So in the end, everything helps Donald Trump. Stop
• 35:17
  me if you've heard this before, and it's just it's so pathetic and it's
• 35:22
  so sad, and there are there now there is some pushback from rational Republicans.
• 35:30
  I have to I have to mention that the former Lieutenant governor Republican of
• 35:37
  Georgia, Joff Duncan, who Trump went after before even testifying to the grand
• 35:44
  jury. We talked about that in the last episode of the podcast. I
• 35:45
  mean, that's just unbelievable witness tampering on Trump's part. But by the way,
• 35:52
  Trump misspelled his name in the truth social post going after him. But
• 35:58
  you know, he testified, natory testified, He came out guns ablazing and
• 36:04
  making it very clear that this is a seminal moment for the Republican Party when
• 36:08
  it comes to choosing whether or not we stick with Donald Trump. Or we
• 36:14
  get rid of Donald Trump. And he made a very clear and dramatic statement
• 36:19
  to the press after his grand jury testimony, and here's what that sounded like.
• 36:23
  He said, this was a pivot point for the country. As you,
• 36:27
  as you came out of the end, what do you hope your testimony
• 36:29
  accomplished. Well, I hope my testimony gets the facts you know, as
• 36:32
  they are, and helps to continue to paint a real and honest picture.
• 36:36
  But politically speaking, this is a pivot point for this country to do something
• 36:39
  more than just stew on the twenty twenty election cycle. Right, We're either
• 36:44
  going to as Republicans, take our medicine and realize the election wasn't rigged.
• 36:46
  Donald Trump was the worst candidate ever in the history of the party, even
• 36:50
  worse than herschel Walker. And now we're gonna have to pivot from there.
• 36:52
  Right, we want to win an election in twenty twenty four, it's gonna
• 36:55
  have to be somebody other than Donald Trump if we do it. So politically
• 36:58
  speaking, this is an important pivot point for our party, right to go
• 37:00
  focus on the things that matter, to take this conversation to America, not
• 37:04
  to Twitter to ten seconds sound bites not to YouTube clips. This is taking
• 37:07
  this to the kitchen table. I think most Americans care about the economy.
• 37:10
  I think most Americans care about a porst border. I think most Americans care
• 37:14
  about national security and public safety. These are issues that we win as Republicans.
• 37:17
  As long as we make this about the three ring circus called Donald Trump,
• 37:21
  we're gonna lose every time. And you don't have to go any further
• 37:23
  than Georgia to see that playout. I love what Duncan said there. However,
• 37:29
  what he said will have no impact. You know, one, he's
• 37:31
  the former lieutenant governor of Georgia. This is under the category of you know,
• 37:37
  Trump's claim that Rhino Republicans who want to prevent him from being the nominee
• 37:40
  or trying to use this indictment to stop him, and its election interference,
• 37:46
  and so that's how they'll see Duncan. They'll also see Duncan now as a
• 37:51
  CNN commentator. And as soon as you're a CNN commentator in the right wing
• 37:54
  Trump world, you are inherently discredited. And it doesn't matter what your position
• 38:00
  was, what the substance of what you're saying is, it doesn't matter.
• 38:05
  And Duncan went on CNN that night after the indictments were officially filed and basically
• 38:12
  said the same thing in an interview with Caitlyn Collins. And he's right,
• 38:17
  this is a seminal moment. This would be a pivot point, and I
• 38:21
  truly believe that if Trump was not dominating in the polls, that this could
• 38:30
  very well be the end of Donald Trump. I've talked about this most of
• 38:36
  the last several episodes, but it bears repeating because it's an incredibly important point.
• 38:40
  I have constantly said that the polls matter not because they're accurate, not
• 38:46
  because they're predictive, but because they provide leverage. And Trump is a master
• 38:53
  at using and manipulating leverage. His entire life has been about that. And
• 39:00
  because he's ahead by forty points nationally in the Republican polls, the conservative right
• 39:07
  wing media will not carry any water on these indictments at all. In fact,
• 39:15
  they will do the opposite because it is perceived and it's probably reality that
• 39:20
  the vast majority of their most ardent and faithful customers want and demand that they
• 39:29
  not be given content that is anti Trump on these indictments. So that's why
• 39:36
  people like Ben Shapiro or wetting their pants and cowards and unwilling to tell the
• 39:42
  truth about what's really going on here. Now, they'll skirt around the edges,
• 39:45
  but they'll never really get to the bottom of it. They'll never be
• 39:51
  clear cut about it. It's always trying to protect themselves because once you have
• 39:55
  something to lose in this business, you don't want to lose it. It's
• 40:00
  a very lucrative and cushy situation. So you know, Ben Shapiro has done
• 40:05
  a better job than anybody else about being able to manipulate and definitely defy all
• 40:10
  the landmines. When it comes to Trump, he hasn't told the truth.
• 40:15
  And as I've said before, I'll never ever forgive him for being incredibly duplicitous
• 40:19
  when it came to his position on Trump in twenty sixteen, and he's repeating
• 40:22
  it largely in twenty twenty four with this soft pedaling of what's actually happened and
• 40:29
  just how incredibly dangerous this whole situation is on multiple levels. But the reality
• 40:37
  is that you know, the Jeff Duncans of the world aren't going to be
• 40:42
  listened to because the conservative media is not incentivized to spread that message. The
• 40:49
  conservative media is not going to tell their consumers that Trump knew that the election
• 40:57
  was lost. I mean, that's the message that ought to come out of
• 41:00
  all of this, both the January sixth and the George indictments. I mean,
• 41:04
  you were scammed. That's the message that should be should be lethal to
• 41:09
  Donald Trump. But because the conservative media will not carry that message because they're
• 41:14
  afraid to and they're not incentivized to do so, that message will not resonate
• 41:19
  because the audience is driving the content rather than the content driving the audience.
• 41:24
  Because the business model was broken, everything is upside down, and the vast
• 41:30
  majority of those in the right wing media are a bunch of fucking cowards.
• 41:34
  That's the bottom line of all this. Now, one guy who was not
• 41:38
  a coward, in addition to Duncan is the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp,
• 41:44
  who deserves a lot of credit because Trump put out a post on truth
• 41:47
  social declaring that he's going to prove that the election was stolen, that he's
• 41:52
  going to put out a report next week and it's going to prove that he
• 41:58
  was right. He's going to be exon rated, that the charges should be
• 42:00
  dropped. The election was stolen. Blah blah blah. And Brian Kemp,
• 42:06
  the Republican governor of Georgia, to his great credit, because he was under
• 42:09
  pressure already from these nut jobs in the Trump cult to try to somehow pardon
• 42:15
  Trump, which legally it does not appear as if he's able to do that,
• 42:20
  he stepped forward on Twitter or x and he quote tweeted Trump's deranged statement
• 42:27
  and basically said, flat out, the twenty twenty election was not stolen in
• 42:31
  Georgia, and we need to stop this nonsense. And the people of Georgia
• 42:36
  did a fine job in administrating this election, and what the president and former
• 42:40
  president is saying is wrong and good good for Brian Kemp, and in a
• 42:46
  rational world that would have impact, that would have real impact in the old
• 42:52
  world, in the pre Trump world, having the Republican governor who just got
• 42:55
  re elected by a significant majority while Trump's candidate herschell Walker got beaten not once
• 43:04
  but twice. So Kemp, the guy who Trump attacked, out ran Trump's
• 43:09
  candidate herschel Walker by about seven points, maybe a little bit more than that.
• 43:15
  So and he just got reelected. Having that person condemned very publicly Trump's
• 43:22
  stance on this would have power, but it doesn't have any power in this
• 43:27
  world because once again, while it will be mentioned, I'm sure in the
• 43:32
  right wing media, it won't be amplified, it won't be repeated, it
• 43:36
  won't be put in proper context. And instead, in most cases, Kemp
• 43:40
  will be seen as the rhino kuck, even though he's the guy who actually
• 43:45
  won. While Trump cost us two Georgia Senate seats. I mean he's lost
• 43:53
  four times basically since he got impeached, the second time two runoffs in twenty
• 44:00
  and then he lost the general election in twenty twenty two and then the runoff
• 44:04
  election in twenty twenty two as costing two critical seats. If Trump hadn't blown
• 44:10
  Georgia. On the Senate side, Republicans would control the Senate now, which
• 44:17
  you know as huge implications. They would control the Senate and the House right
• 44:22
  now, not by much by the skin of their teeth, but they would
• 44:25
  Democrats would not be able to get anything done, anything significant done. And
• 44:30
  oh, by the way, you know, if Clarence Thomas happens to finally
• 44:37
  die, I'm not my gosh. Every day we should pray that Clarence Thomas
• 44:40
  doesn't die. But if something horrible happens to Clarence Thomas, that would at
• 44:45
  least prevent Democrats from from putting in a you know, some Marxist to replace
• 44:51
  him on the Supreme Court. So, and this is all Trump's fault.
• 44:55
  And Georgia, it should be pointed out, is they most important state in
• 45:00
  the next presidential election, which just only adds to the insanity of all of
• 45:07
  this, the utter insent. I mean, it would be difficult to put
• 45:12
  together a scenario where it would be more insane to nominate somebody as the Republican
• 45:19
  nominee. I mean, here's a guy, Donald Trump, who can only
• 45:23
  serve one term, who has been impeached twice, who has horrible approval ratings,
• 45:30
  who absolutely positively needs to win Georgia, a state that a Republican still
• 45:35
  to this day, despite demographic shifts, should win as a Republican governor,
• 45:42
  and much of the state is still Republican, although on the you know,
• 45:46
  in the Senate side, two Democrats snuck in largely because of Trump. This
• 45:52
  is the most important state to win. You cannot win the presidency in twenty
• 45:55
  twenty four as a Republican unless you win Georgia and Republicans are going to nominate
• 46:00
  the guy who just got indicted for election interference in that state. Really,
• 46:09
  seriously, this is this is the path you want to go down when there's
• 46:15
  an alternative option named Ronda Santis, who's as clean as a whistle, conservative
• 46:21
  as hell against things done, is forty four years old, and oh,
• 46:24
  by the way, is the governor of the state that borders Florida and gets
• 46:30
  along great with the governor of Florida. They are basically, you know,
• 46:36
  arm in arm when it came to fighting back against COVID insanity. Gee,
• 46:40
  I wonder what the better option is to winning Georgia in a general election.
• 46:45
  But none of this seems to matter. I mean, I really do think
• 46:51
  that even the liberal media has been lax in fully illustrating the monumental insanity of
• 47:00
  this moment we are experiencing in American history. I mean, they love the
• 47:05
  fact that this is all, in short, territory unprecedented, and all the
• 47:08
  content that they're getting. I mean, this has created so much content for
• 47:14
  the news media during a slow summer period. I mean I do have to
• 47:17
  say, well, I'm not a conspiracy person, and it has been remarkable
• 47:21
  how media friendly these indictments coming out, you know, basically every month and
• 47:28
  during the summer period and setting the stage for a blockbuster twenty twenty four twenty
• 47:34
  twenty five season for the television news media has been so incredibly media friendly.
• 47:43
  I mean, it's the media could not possibly have asked for much more than
• 47:46
  this. That they are getting exactly what they want, news and content and
• 47:52
  things to fill airtime, and a narrative that's dramatic and potentially oj L trials
• 48:00
  in the future. And by the way, Trump gets content too. I
• 48:06
  mean, here's a guy who's been indicted four times and found libel in a
• 48:10
  civil verdict all this year, and every single time he's been able to use
• 48:15
  it as evidence that he's the dangerous one. They're attacking him because he's so
• 48:23
  dangerous, which is not what's really happening. In fact, they likely want
• 48:28
  him to be the Republican nominee because they know he's very beatable, but that's
• 48:34
  not what's selling to the Republican base. So he's can you imagine without any
• 48:38
  of these indictments, And again I've mentioned before, if he's not winning in
• 48:45
  the polls, I think the conservative media may turn on him at this point,
• 48:49
  but they're not going to turn on him because they're afraid. Well,
• 48:52
  can you imagine if we go back to January February, where he's in an
• 48:59
  anemic thirty five percent forty percent in the national polls for a guy with one
• 49:04
  hundred percent name recognition who was president of the United States, he's beating Ron
• 49:09
  to Sanders by five or ten points, who's coming off this massive re election
• 49:15
  win in the twenty twenty two mid terms. Can you imagine if there had
• 49:17
  never been any indictments or the civil verdict or whatever, what content would Trump
• 49:24
  have had? What would Trump have been talking about? All he would have
• 49:30
  had is rohnd to sanctimonious. That would be it, and we would be
• 49:35
  talking probably about COVID response. Instead, it's rally around Trump, and it's
• 49:43
  the whole Tucker Carlson Glenn Beck narrative that we must defend Trump, we must
• 49:49
  support Trump because otherwise we've lost the country, we've lost the Republic, which
• 49:53
  is just such utter bullshit. But that's the narrative that's driving all of this.
• 50:00
  But the monumental insanity of all of this that a former president is still
• 50:06
  running for president and still leading by massive margins, despite being indicted four times
• 50:12
  and having a civil verdict in a case that was regarding defamation and sexual assault
• 50:19
  all in the same year. Is just so mind blowing that this could ever
• 50:23
  happen in America that I don't even think the news media is fully acknowledging just
• 50:30
  how nutty this is and how dangerous this is. And one of the narratives
• 50:37
  that I wish that the conservative media had the balls to at least examine is
• 50:44
  why that hell is Trump still running? Where's the narrative of Okay, mister
• 50:50
  president, thank you for your service, but you've got more important things to
• 50:54
  worry about. We have other options. You can only run for one term.
• 51:00
  Why don't you sit this one out and and let's let's try to do
• 51:04
  what's best for the country. And we wish you the best and will support
• 51:07
  you and all that that is nowhere in the major quote unquote right wing conservative
• 51:13
  media nowhere. And that's that is the number one question is why the fuck
• 51:19
  are you running? There? You know, we're going to do an interview
• 51:23
  with Paul Carter, a friend of mine who's just written a book about Richard
• 51:27
  Nixon, and just a little bit on this podcast, and we're going to
• 51:30
  get into this issue of comparing Trump and Nixon, because Nixon was a choir
• 51:37
  boy and really cared about the country in comparison to what we're seeing to Trump,
• 51:43
  and Trump is getting away with the exact opposite narrative that somehow he's fighting
• 51:47
  for the little guy and fighting for the country and fighting for the constitution,
• 51:51
  when he's just fighting for himself. He's just fighting for survival. And he
• 51:54
  knows that his chances of beating these charges are a lot better if he's the
• 51:59
  Republican Many or if he's President of the United States. He knows that,
• 52:04
  and so that's what's driving him. And he doesn't care that it's bad for
• 52:07
  the country. He doesn't care that it's bad for the Republican Party. He
• 52:10
  doesn't care that it's making it more likely for Democrats to win all up and
• 52:15
  down the ballot in twenty twenty four and that that would be bad for the
• 52:19
  country. He does not care. And it's just so frustrating. And I
• 52:25
  have to say that, you know, it's hard to get fully outraged by
• 52:32
  how insane the situation where facing is. But there was a moment the night
• 52:38
  of Trump's Georgia indictment. That really crystallized it for me. Because I'm flipping
• 52:45
  through channels as I always do. I'm mostly going between CNN and Fox News
• 52:50
  because I know that MSNBC is just completely hopeless. CNN at least is at
• 52:55
  least pretending to try at this point, and I do think it's important to
• 53:00
  get the left wing perspective on things, so I try to get the left
• 53:04
  wing perspective in the right wing perspective. So I consider CNN to be mostly
• 53:07
  the rational left at this point, with some semblance of at least allowing conservative
• 53:14
  or pro Trump voices to be heard, unlike on MSNBC. But I'm watching,
• 53:20
  I'm turning back to Fox News channel, and I want you to imagine
• 53:24
  the year is, say, twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen. All right,
• 53:29
  do this thought experiment for me. So, twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen,
• 53:34
  Donald Trump has never been a legitimate candidate for president. No one ever thought
• 53:37
  he had a chance of even being a legitimate candidate. Forget about winning a
• 53:43
  nomination, forget about winning a general election. Right, I want you to
• 53:45
  imagine in twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, that I'm going to tell you that
• 53:51
  in twenty twenty three, there's gonna be a person on Fox News Channel in
• 53:59
  student whose name is Caitlyn Jenner, and that you will have known who this
• 54:07
  person Caitlyn Jenner was because they used to be Bruce Jenner, the nineteen seventy
• 54:14
  six US Olympic, the Catholic, the Catholice gold medal winner on the cover
• 54:19
  of the box of Wheaties. So in twenty twenty three, this is this
• 54:23
  is still a time period when Bruce Jenner was Bruce Jenner. So you know
• 54:28
  that guy, Bruce Jenner. Yeah, he's gonna be Caitlyn Jenner. He's
• 54:32
  going to be a woman. By the way, He'll be embraced by the
• 54:37
  left as the woman of the Year, and you get all sorts of massive
• 54:40
  publicity, and he'll be a hero for becoming a woman. And Caitlyn Jenner
• 54:47
  is going to go on Fox News Channel live in studio to vehemently defend Donald
• 54:57
  Trump. Okay, why is he defending Why she defending Donald Trump? Well,
• 55:04
  she is defending Donald Trump in twenty twenty three because Trump is a former
• 55:09
  president. He's a former president. What, Yeah, he's a former president.
• 55:15
  So so Bruce Jenner is now Caitlyn Jenner, and she is on Fox
• 55:21
  News General Live in studio defending Donald Trump, who is a former president.
• 55:25
  He's a former president. So why is she defending Donald Trump? Well,
• 55:30
  she's defending Donald Trump because he just got indicted for the fourth time in less
• 55:37
  than a year on election interference charges in this particular case. Wow, okay,
• 55:44
  Well, so clearly Trump's no longer a political force, right, I
• 55:50
  mean, this is just he's She's just defending him because she's friends with him,
• 55:53
  and it's just a personal preference and she's defending a friend. Right.
• 55:58
  Well, no, no, no, no, Trump is running again to
• 56:04
  be the Republican nomineque. What now, Yeah, he's running to be the
• 56:09
  Republican nominee. Well he's not winning, right, Oh no, No,
• 56:13
  he's winning. In fact, he's winning by forty points and it looks as
• 56:17
  if the circumstances are such that there's no way he can lose. What what
• 56:25
  you have to be kidding? Right? So if just to review, if
• 56:30
  you bet in twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, then in twenty twenty three,
• 56:36
  a person formally known as Bruce Jenner, now named Caitlyn Jenner as a female
• 56:42
  would be on Fox News Channel vehemently defending former President Donald Trump in his fourth
• 56:50
  indictment while he's leading the twenty twenty four Republican race for president by at least
• 56:55
  forty points. If you bet that, if you put a dollar on that
• 56:59
  scenario in twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, congratulations, you can now collect your
• 57:06
  billion dollars, because that's approximately what the odds would have been if I had
• 57:12
  given you that scenario in twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen. But that's the world
• 57:17
  we're now living in, beyond Gonzo, beyond bizarro world and its reality.
• 57:25
  And much of the media seems to be nonplust about this. I realize there's
• 57:30
  something to be said. We're not completely freaking out. But part of the
• 57:34
  problem is they like this. They love this kind of chaos, they love
• 57:38
  uncharted territory, they love history, and you know, it just gets more
• 57:44
  and more insane. And I mentioned OJ several times. We did a whole
• 57:50
  story and episode eighty of My Interaction with the OJ Simpsons story, which I
• 57:53
  urge you to listen to if you have not already. And that's always been
• 57:58
  the dream of the modern media is to get us a new OJ story.
• 58:01
  I mean that's the holy grail. And this now provides numerous, multiple opportunities
• 58:09
  for another O. J. Simpson situation, and the Georgia indictment, as
• 58:15
  I've already implied, really provides the best opportunity for a new OJ Simpson case
• 58:24
  because it'll be televised, It'll be delayed enough to where if Trump is president,
• 58:29
  he will be a sitting US president will be put on trial along with
• 58:35
  eighteen of his cohorts or co conspirators or whatever you want to call them,
• 58:39
  for election interference. Of course, I don't know how that happens, because
• 58:45
  you've got to win Georgia, and I don't know how the hell you're gonna
• 58:46
  win Georgia with this hanging over your head. Now, it is possible,
• 58:52
  and part of the reason, and this is something the news media just refuses
• 58:55
  to accept. Part of the reason it is possible that Donald Trump could win
• 59:00
  is that I am more and more convinced that there is a percentage, a
• 59:05
  sliver of the American population, the voting population. I don't know how large
• 59:08
  it is. It could be as large as five to ten percent. There
• 59:13
  is a sliver of the American voting population that, more than anything else,
• 59:19
  just wants to be entertained. They don't give a damn about the person,
• 59:22
  they don't give a damn about policy. There maybe they're anarchists, but they
• 59:28
  mostly want to be entertained. And we're living in a culture where entertainment is
• 59:34
  everything. We can't go five minutes without being stimulated. Well, whether it's
• 59:38
  on television, or it's on TikTok, or it's online or whatever it is.
• 59:45
  You know, show me something I've never seen before. That's our constant
• 59:50
  desire and and it's now even seeped into our decisions as to who is going
• 59:57
  to be not just our leader, but the leader of the free world.
• 1:00:01
  And those people are definitely going to be in Trump's camp. I think that's
• 1:00:07
  part of the reason why Trump is doing better than DeSantis against Biden in most
• 1:00:14
  of these general election polls. Now, there are other reasons that I've talked
• 1:00:16
  about previously, but I really think that this entertainment sliver is the un spoken
• 1:00:24
  reality of the twenty twenty four election. I don't know how big the sliver
• 1:00:30
  is. It may only be two percent, but it could be as as
• 1:00:34
  large as five to ten percent of people who are just gonna go with whoever
• 1:00:38
  they think is going to be the most entertaining. By the way, I
• 1:00:42
  think that's part of why Trump won in twenty sixteen. It was a small
• 1:00:45
  part, but I think it contributed. And so that's that's basically Trump's secret
• 1:00:51
  weapon. You might want to call this the idiocracy theory of American politics,
• 1:00:57
  that there's now a significant number of people who want to see it burn to
• 1:01:00
  the ground, and they just they don't care, and they just want to
• 1:01:05
  be entertained, and those people are going to gravitate to Donald Trump. So
• 1:01:08
  I am not one hundred percent. In fact, I would I think there's
• 1:01:13
  a better chance of Trump winning the general election than there is of him losing
• 1:01:16
  the nomination. At this point, I don't know what the exact numbers I
• 1:01:20
  would put on those percentages, but I would feel comfortable maintaining that stance that
• 1:01:25
  there's a better chance that Trump wins the general election, even with all these
• 1:01:30
  indictments over his head, than there is of him losing the nomination. Now,
• 1:01:34
  you know, we're not talking about one hundred percent anything close really on
• 1:01:37
  either on either front or zero percent, depending on your perspective, But I
• 1:01:43
  do think that that is a reality. So this whole thing is insane.
• 1:01:47
  The next level of insanity will be reached in the first Republican debate, where
• 1:01:52
  Trump benefits dramatically from his own shit show. And I stand by my prediction
• 1:01:59
  that Chris Chris will shine among the never Trump conservative track, that he will
• 1:02:06
  be helped, and that the best case scenario for Ronda Santists is that he
• 1:02:09
  somehow maintains his position in second place. And I think he's going to have
• 1:02:14
  to do fantastically well just to do that, and because the circumstances are basically
• 1:02:20
  set up for the Santists to fail and for Trump to not be harmed,
• 1:02:24
  and for the dynamics to continue to be in Trump's favor. But obviously we'll
• 1:02:30
  continue to cover that in episodes coming forward, in episode eighty two and eighty
• 1:02:36
  three and therefore after that on the podcast The Death of Journalism, I want
• 1:02:42
  to shift now to a story that has nothing to do with presidential politics,
• 1:02:46
  but has gotten a lot of play in the news and the sports media over
• 1:02:51
  the last couple of days. I don't want to spend a lot of time
• 1:02:53
  on it, but I think it's an interesting story, and it's the story
• 1:02:58
  involving the movie blind Side, which was a very popular movie. It was
• 1:03:04
  starring Sandra Bullock. She won an Oscar for her role in that movie.
• 1:03:07
  And it's the supposedly real life story of Michael Orr, who was a very
• 1:03:15
  large offensive lineman, happened to be a black guy who Sandra Bullock's character and
• 1:03:24
  her family was perceived as having adopted and basically saved his life and put him
• 1:03:31
  on the right track. And you know, just he just happened to go
• 1:03:36
  to the University of Mississippi to college, which was the family's favorite school.
• 1:03:43
  And then he goes on to the pros and has a successful professional career in
• 1:03:46
  the NFL. And they make this movie that was based upon a book and
• 1:03:52
  it was called The blind Side. Well, there has been a lot of
• 1:03:57
  conversation about The blind Side suddenly this week because Michael Or in a new book,
• 1:04:02
  which I think is important to point out. You know, he has
• 1:04:05
  a book out of his own that he is now claiming that he was never
• 1:04:11
  really adopted. That instead the family, the white family that was led again
• 1:04:16
  by the person that Sandra Bullock plays in the movie, had never really adopted
• 1:04:23
  him, but instead that they had created a conservativeship for his affairs, and
• 1:04:30
  that he feels as if he's been ripped off, and that he's had money
• 1:04:33
  from the movie stolen from him, and that his story was misportrayed. And
• 1:04:40
  this has created an awful lot of media coverage surrounding this whole thing. And
• 1:04:45
  so the whole narrative is, oh, my god, is the Blindside movie
• 1:04:49
  of fraud? Now, I am somebody who is incredibly, incredibly willing to
• 1:04:56
  believe that Hollywood and the sports media and the entire media industrial complex could totally
• 1:05:04
  blow it on a story like this, And I'm not saying that they didn't.
• 1:05:11
  I when I saw the movie The blind Side, the part of it
• 1:05:14
  that really kind of confused me the most. We were a couple of things.
• 1:05:18
  One even at the time, I remember feeling like, boy, you
• 1:05:24
  know, and then we weren't nearly as woke back then when the movie came
• 1:05:26
  out many years ago, But I remember thinking, the narrative here is kind
• 1:05:30
  of racist, isn't it, Where you know, this white family is saving
• 1:05:36
  this black guy who's portrayed as being dumb as rocks, and you know,
• 1:05:43
  they just happened, by the way to push him towards their college. And
• 1:05:46
  he's a really good player and and that that was probably the part of the
• 1:05:51
  movie that bothered me the most, where the NC double A is portrayed as
• 1:05:59
  being a bad guy because they had the audacity to actually investigate how it is
• 1:06:05
  that over ended up going to the University of Mississippi. And I'm like,
• 1:06:12
  huh, this whole situation stinks to high heaven I mean or hell, depending
• 1:06:16
  on your perspective, and why. I mean, if you if this was
• 1:06:19
  allowed to go on without any investigation, this would open up a massive can
• 1:06:28
  of worms here because you'd be having this happen all all the time, where
• 1:06:33
  you know, rich families would effectively buy I mean, I'm not saying that's
• 1:06:39
  what happened in this case, but if this was the president and this was
• 1:06:43
  cool and kosher and you're not allowed to at least ask some questions about it,
• 1:06:47
  it would create a vehicle through which you have it all sorts of corruption
• 1:06:53
  where these rich families would basically take in poor athletes in exchange for them going
• 1:06:59
  to the knowledge that they want them to go to as a recruiting mechanism.
• 1:07:04
  And so I was offended a bit by that part of the movie and a
• 1:07:09
  little bit suspicious, And so again I am I'm always willing to believe that
• 1:07:15
  the sports media, especially is more than capable of blowing this, that Hollywood
• 1:07:20
  is more than capable of blowing this. And I will acknowledge that the timeline
• 1:07:26
  of this, you know, a book being written by an author who was
• 1:07:30
  very close to the family involved in this situation, and then a movie being
• 1:07:34
  made very soon after that, there really wasn't a lot of time for vetting
• 1:07:41
  and for the story to fully play itself out. And again, I've already
• 1:07:45
  expressed my concerns about the narrative, and it's not the firstess wouldn't be the
• 1:07:51
  first time that something like this happened. You know, the movie Rudy,
• 1:07:57
  the college football movie probably you know, The blind Side and Rudy are probably
• 1:08:01
  two of the most prominent college football movies in modern American history, and you
• 1:08:08
  know, they both have very serious allegations now that the essence of the story
• 1:08:13
  is a fraud. And as a huge Notre Dame fan, I am one
• 1:08:18
  who does believe that the Rudy story is largely false and that Rudy himself is
• 1:08:25
  basically an attention whore and a self promoter. And you know, Joe Montana,
• 1:08:30
  who's on that team has made some comments indicating that the stories of fraud
• 1:08:34
  and he got so much backlash because of that because people love the mythology of
• 1:08:40
  it, that he's kind of quieted down about it. But I don't know
• 1:08:44
  that there's I don't think there's not much nefarious about the mythology surrounding Rudy.
• 1:08:48
  But it's just not a true story. At its essence, it's greatly exaggerated
• 1:08:54
  things that never really happened or portrayed in the movie. And frankly, the
• 1:08:59
  essence of what really happened was that this guy was seen as a joke,
• 1:09:01
  and that when he got in the game at the very end, it was
• 1:09:05
  seen as as funny. And then when he was carried off the field that
• 1:09:10
  the players thought of it as a joke, that they were almost mocking him
• 1:09:15
  for what had happened. And then, you know, because Rudy is such
• 1:09:18
  a self promoter, he gets Hollywood many years later to buy in to this
• 1:09:23
  whole story, and so, you know, I think it's very possible that
• 1:09:27
  something similar happened with the Blindside. I think it's ironic that it's, you
• 1:09:30
  know, given the liberal nature of of Hollywood, that they got duped potentially
• 1:09:36
  into buying this idea that this conservative white family in a and went in a
• 1:09:41
  way that would be seen as kind of racist by today's guidelines, were able
• 1:09:45
  to get there this great football player into their favorite college, University of Mississippi,
• 1:09:50
  and have them have him be a star player for for their school.
• 1:09:55
  But okay, whatever, But I also think, you know their situations.
• 1:10:00
  College football seems to be ripe with these fraudulent circumstances. I think partially because
• 1:10:05
  college football is seen in religious terms, and whenever you have religion, I
• 1:10:11
  think it makes it easier for fraud and manipulation to happen. But I also
• 1:10:15
  think about the man Titeo circumstance. I mean, the news media blew it
• 1:10:19
  on man Titeo, not once, but twice. They bought into his original
• 1:10:25
  ridiculous story that he had this girlfriend who died without a trace, without a
• 1:10:30
  trace of ever living girlfriend at Stanford University suddenly just dies and there's no evidence
• 1:10:36
  she ever existed, and she dies the same day as his grandmother, and
• 1:10:41
  it fuels this Heisman trophy bid that almost becomes successful. Turns out there was
• 1:10:46
  no girlfriend, and then there's the revisionist history of that with this documentary involving
• 1:10:53
  man Titeo that now seemingly vindicates him. And I don't even think that's perfectly
• 1:10:59
  accurate either, because I think that he had to have known. In fact,
• 1:11:01
  we know he knew at a very critical juncture that the story was a
• 1:11:05
  fraud, and he continued with it anyway, and somehow he's now the hero.
• 1:11:10
  Anyway. The point is, especially given my experience with Penn State Paterno
• 1:11:15
  Sandusky, which is a big fraud. You know, I am very willing
• 1:11:18
  to believe that Michael Orr is telling a truth, or at least a version
• 1:11:27
  of the truth. However, having investigated this a little bit and looking at
• 1:11:30
  the broad picture here, I'm not buying Michael Orr's perspective on this. I've
• 1:11:40
  seen some interviews and seen the statements put out by the family. I've seen
• 1:11:45
  interviews with him, and the most important part of this narrative to me is
• 1:11:49
  not just that he is writing a book which is inherently suspicious, and now
• 1:11:54
  he's got to I guess you called a lawsuit. So obviously there's a financial
• 1:11:59
  incentive here. But because over is retired now and the money train is over
• 1:12:06
  right, I mean his NFL career is over, he has no discernible,
• 1:12:12
  you know, big money making prospects moving forward, and he gets used to
• 1:12:17
  a certain standard of living. This inherently makes whatever he does suspicious. That
• 1:12:25
  there's an incentive to revise history in order to try to make a buck,
• 1:12:30
  And I don't know for sure that that's what's happening here, but the incentive
• 1:12:35
  structure is such to where I can see where this is a revisionist history situation
• 1:12:43
  that is financially motivated. So I'm not willing to condemn the family yet I've
• 1:12:50
  always felt as if this was a bit of a recruiting ploy that somehow,
• 1:12:57
  you know, no one wanted to put the dots together on that. But
• 1:13:00
  I also am willing to. I'm willing to hear out both sides, and
• 1:13:05
  I do think it's interesting that the news media immediately jumped to the conclusion that
• 1:13:11
  Ower is telling the truth and that, you know, all of a sudden,
• 1:13:15
  we now have to completely revise our vision of the movie The blind Side,
• 1:13:18
  which it's a little bit like man' tai tail where they're blowing it twice.
• 1:13:25
  But I'd like to see more evidence, and I'm suspicious of this revisionist
• 1:13:30
  this very quick revisionist history by the sports media. Now, I referenced that
• 1:13:35
  we have an interview for the rest of this podcast that I'm urging you to
• 1:13:41
  take a listen to because it's a really interesting and important subject, and that
• 1:13:45
  subject is Richard Nixon. And I do think that the subject of Richard Nixon
• 1:13:49
  is far more fascinating now in light of what's happening with Donald Trump on multiple
• 1:13:55
  levels than it might have been a few years ago. And the reason why
• 1:14:00
  I want to talk about Richard Nixon is that a friend of mine by the
• 1:14:01
  name of Paul Carter has written a brand new, mainstream published book called Richard
• 1:14:09
  Nixon, California's Native Son. And I did an interview just this morning,
• 1:14:15
  earlier before we recorded this portion of the podcast with Paul Carter. And here's
• 1:14:19
  what that sounded like. Paul Carter, author of the book Richard Nixon,
• 1:14:24
  California's Native Son, Welcome to the Death of Journalism podcast. Thank you for
• 1:14:29
  having me John. Now, Paul, you and I have known each other
• 1:14:33
  for quite a while. We met as delegates at the two thousand and eight
• 1:14:36
  Republican Convention, which seems like it was a million years ago, and certainly
• 1:14:42
  politically. It was a very very long time ago for reasons that we'll probably
• 1:14:45
  get into during this this interview. But several years ago you came to me
• 1:14:50
  with this idea that you were going to write a book about Richard Nixon,
• 1:14:56
  and you kind of asked for my advice, and my recollect action is that
• 1:15:00
  I was not particularly optimistic about the prospects for this, although that's not unusual
• 1:15:06
  for me. I'm always trying to be the realist. And I thought,
• 1:15:11
  well, I mean, Paul, you know, you're not a celebrity,
• 1:15:15
  you're not a best selling author, and I'm not sure what the appetite for
• 1:15:19
  Richard Nixon book would be. And you the good for you? You basically,
• 1:15:26
  you know, I think, decided to all right, Zigler, whatever,
• 1:15:29
  I'm gonna do what I want to do. And you've somehow gotten this
• 1:15:31
  thing published by a real publisher, and it's a hard back book and it's
• 1:15:38
  in bookstores that actually still exist, and it's quite a work. It's a
• 1:15:42
  remarkable piece of documentation and journalism. And so I guess I'm most interested to
• 1:15:47
  start off here with your personal journey. I mean, you're a lawyer in
• 1:15:53
  Long Beach, California. You have a family, you have a life,
• 1:15:57
  and you have devoted just an inane amount of time and effort into writing this
• 1:16:03
  book and now successfully getting it published. So I guess I'm most interested in
• 1:16:08
  how and why that happened. It's been an incredible journey, and it really
• 1:16:14
  goes back quite always in history where I was in the Navy in the nineteen
• 1:16:18
  eighties and my commanding officer was Rodney Allen Knutson. He was one of the
• 1:16:21
  longest held POWs in Vietnam and most extensively tortured. He could have been medically
• 1:16:27
  retired in nineteen seventy three when he was released, and he stayed in and
• 1:16:30
  twelve years later I came around along in the Navy, and he was amazing
• 1:16:35
  and inspirational, and Richard Nixon arranged. You know, Richard Nixon is the
• 1:16:42
  one that ended the Vietnam War, and he wouldn't end it until he brought
• 1:16:45
  the POW's home with honor, and he was Captain Knutson was amazing, and
• 1:16:53
  I was inspired by him to go to college, go to law school,
• 1:16:59
  and then I had my family. I was doing my own thing. The
• 1:17:01
  Navy ceased to be in Long Beach, but in two thousand and nine,
• 1:17:04
  they commissioned the USS Green Bay in a long beach, so I saw.
• 1:17:09
  I brought my daughter to the commissioning to show her what it was like to
• 1:17:12
  have Navy service. And at the commissioning I ran into a ship mate from
• 1:17:15
  back on during my years in the Navy, and that led to me being
• 1:17:21
  flown out to a guided missile cruiser with the Navy. And while I was
• 1:17:27
  on it, I was talking to the Mayor of Woodier. And by the
• 1:17:30
  way, when I was in college, I volunteered as a dose and at
• 1:17:31
  the Richard Nixon Library, and I never thought that. I didn't even really
• 1:17:36
  think that Richard Nixon was alive when I volunteered. This is back in one
• 1:17:41
  ninety two, and I ended up meeting him. I'm the product of public
• 1:17:45
  school education. I thought that he would be an honorary old man, and
• 1:17:50
  he was so pleasant, and that the dichotomy of his public image and his
• 1:17:56
  actual persona really stuck with me throughout all those years. Anyways, I'm on
• 1:18:00
  the Navy ship in two thousand and nine and the mayor of Whittier is there,
• 1:18:03
  and I asked him, you know about landmarks from Nixon's life and Whittier,
• 1:18:08
  and he said they lost track of them, and that really caused me
• 1:18:11
  to start looking into Nixon's life. And as I started doing the research,
• 1:18:15
  I saw that the information available about his actual life in California was the exact
• 1:18:21
  opposite about what everyone believes and perceives to be the truth about his life.
• 1:18:27
  And that was my motivation, and it really ties to the Navy Service and
• 1:18:31
  Captain Knutson and Nixon's freeing the POWs. We'll talk about, though, how
• 1:18:35
  much time and effort and the resources that you've put in to writing this book,
• 1:18:42
  Richard Nixon, California's Native Son. I started right after two thousand and
• 1:18:47
  nine. I spent seven weeks in the National Archives, and when I would
• 1:18:54
  go to the National Archives, I would photograph documents instead of studying them there,
• 1:18:57
  so I could photograph eight hundred pages a day. Altogether, I have
• 1:19:01
  gone through one hundred and twenty five thousand pages of documents from the National Archives,
• 1:19:05
  almost all of it exclusively original material that hasn't previously been reviewed. I
• 1:19:11
  then got hold of over two hundred oral histories at cal State Fullard and from
• 1:19:15
  Nixon's intimates from when Nixon was a youngster, in southern California, and that
• 1:19:20
  led to me obtaining four hundred oral histories from what year college of Nixon's intimates.
• 1:19:26
  So those over six hundred oral histories led to others, and then I
• 1:19:31
  started interviewing Nixon intimates and Nixon family members, and it was interesting because they
• 1:19:38
  kind of couldcooned around Richard Nixon and getting into their inner circle opened up all
• 1:19:45
  sorts of avenues that led to all sorts of interviews. And so at the
• 1:19:48
  end of the day, I've reviewed seven hundred oral histories, one hundred and
• 1:19:53
  twenty five thousand pages of original documents. I've interviewed over sixty Nixon intimates,
• 1:19:58
  I've reviewed tens of thousands of photographs, and it's all condensed into this book,
• 1:20:03
  California's Native Son, and it's it's really a fascinating all American tale of
• 1:20:09
  Richard Nixon. Okay, but what motivated you? I mean, I know
• 1:20:14
  you told the story of you're being inspired, But there's being inspired and then
• 1:20:16
  there's being obsessed. I mean, this is this is an insane amount of
• 1:20:21
  time and effort you've put into this. So so why you know, I'm
• 1:20:27
  an attorney and I like investigation, and I like building the evidence develops the
• 1:20:33
  story. And just as though you were pulled into the paternal story and or
• 1:20:41
  or or all of the research you've done on the jfk assassination, it pulls
• 1:20:46
  you in when you can see that the popular narrative is not accurate and the
• 1:20:51
  public perception is not accurate. And and I know that at times you might
• 1:20:57
  feel like you're screaming at the base of a mountain. But the truth has
• 1:21:00
  a very interesting pull on people, and and it sucks you in when you
• 1:21:09
  are when you're able to find out the information and reveal it. It's it's
• 1:21:14
  really a fascinating journey. And so it just sucked me in and and and
• 1:21:18
  it was it was really remarkable. I mean, it's I'm very happy I
• 1:21:24
  did it, And it's it's very interesting to go through President Nixon's daughter,
• 1:21:30
  Tricia Nixon Cox. She's never really written about her father, and she was
• 1:21:33
  so impressed with my work that she read to write the foreward to the book,
• 1:21:38
  and it's it's just been a fascinating journey. So tell us, in
• 1:21:44
  your view, Paul, what is the truth about Richard Nixon as opposed to
• 1:21:48
  the public narrative that has been created by the media and accepted by much of
• 1:21:56
  the public. Most people believe that he's you know, grew up paranoid,
• 1:22:00
  had a mean father, had a chip on his shoulder, was unpopular,
• 1:22:05
  was always you know, wanting to be one of the cool guys, but
• 1:22:09
  was never in that group, and always you know, somewhat bitter, and
• 1:22:15
  all of that is just nonsense. He was, you know, the most
• 1:22:19
  popular kid in his elementary school. He learned debate early on. He was
• 1:22:25
  amazingly popular in high school. He was a constitutional oratorical champion at both Ford
• 1:22:30
  and High school and his freshman and sophomore year, and at Whoior High school
• 1:22:32
  and his junior and senior year. He was a debate champion at Woodier College.
• 1:22:38
  When he graduated from what your college, his classmates wrote him a letter,
• 1:22:43
  the jocks on campus, and they told him, out of every graduating
• 1:22:45
  class, there's one person that is destined to be a great person, and
• 1:22:50
  they believed he was that person. He was voted best man on campus.
• 1:22:57
  You know, just the entire fundamental premise of his youth is misunderstood. And
• 1:23:04
  continuing on with that, there's a popular or widely accepted view that you know,
• 1:23:09
  he always wanted to be part of that New York establishment. He always
• 1:23:12
  had a chip on his shoulder because he couldn't be part of that Northeast establishment.
• 1:23:15
  And you know, if you look at Richard Nixon, he served in
• 1:23:18
  World War Two, and at the end of World War Two, he was
• 1:23:23
  settling war contracts in New York City and he was so good at it.
• 1:23:27
  After just a few months he received a letter of commendation, which, by
• 1:23:30
  the way, was the second letter of commendation he received. The first was
• 1:23:33
  for his combat service in the South Pacific. But he was settling war contracts
• 1:23:38
  and he was in charge of settling them within a five hundred mile radius in
• 1:23:41
  New York City. He could have written his own ticket, and instead he
• 1:23:45
  chose to come back to Whittier. He took on five term incumbent Democrat Jerry
• 1:23:48
  Vorhees, who was voted the best congressman in the west of the Mississippi and
• 1:23:54
  rated as having the third safest seat in the House of Representatives. And Richard
• 1:23:58
  Nixon took him on, and richardness and beat him, and he beat him
• 1:24:01
  in Jerry Borgerhi's his hometown of Diamondbar, and he was elected in nineteen forty
• 1:24:06
  eight by winning the Democrat primary. Two years later, he was elected in
• 1:24:12
  the United States Senate in the largest landslide of any s Senate race that year.
• 1:24:16
  Two years after that, he's Vice President of the United States. Meteoric
• 1:24:20
  rise. Just an incredible all American story. Now, the narrative that Nixon
• 1:24:27
  was unlikable and you know that he was paranoid and and unpopular is always kind
• 1:24:34
  of ridiculous on its face, because when you look at the stats, and
• 1:24:39
  I know this can be deceiving and circumstances can be more of a cause than
• 1:24:43
  anything. But if you look at this as the basic stats, Mixon was
• 1:24:45
  on the national ticket for president five times, and to this day, correct
• 1:24:51
  may if I'm wrong, even with a much smaller population, I believe more
• 1:24:57
  people have in the history of the United States have voted for Richard Nixon for
• 1:25:00
  either president or vice president that anybody else in the history of the country.
• 1:25:05
  Is that accurate? Absolutely? Absolutely? The only other person on the national
• 1:25:11
  ticket five times was Franklin Roosevelt. Richard Nixon is the only American politician that
• 1:25:16
  was elected twice as a vice president and twice as president, right, And
• 1:25:20
  that's that's a record that unless Donald Trump lives to be a hundred, is
• 1:25:24
  never going to be broken. I say that only slightly facetiously. And and
• 1:25:30
  so you know, obviously somebody liked the guy. And there's also there's also
• 1:25:36
  a hole in the Nixon narrative that I want you to fill because I don't
• 1:25:41
  even you know, as someone who considers myself a student of history, especially
• 1:25:45
  of politics, and as bestly Republican politics to me because I was not born
• 1:25:49
  yet. The part of the Nixon storyline that always has me a little bit
• 1:25:56
  perplexed is, so Nixon loses the nineteen sixty presidential election. It was a
• 1:26:02
  heavily contested and highly controversial election. There are still people to this day that
• 1:26:08
  believe that, you know, it was dead people in Illinois that got the
• 1:26:12
  win for John F. Kennedy of Richard Nixon. But I mean Nixon basically
• 1:26:15
  at that time wrote his own obituary. He went away, and he was
• 1:26:21
  not the nominee in nineteen sixty four, very Goldwater was, and he got
• 1:26:26
  crushed. And then all of a sudden, in nineteen sixty eight, Mixon
• 1:26:30
  gets elected president. So what happens from nineteen sixty where he's Gonzo it's over
• 1:26:38
  to nineteen sixty eight. You know, when he becomes president, how does
• 1:26:42
  that happen? Well, first of all, I mean what's really interesting about
• 1:26:47
  that is, and it portrays to today's political scene, is if you look
• 1:26:54
  in nineteen sixty he loses the election, and there's tremendous belief that there's election
• 1:27:00
  fraud, and Eisenhower's members of his cabinet want to fund Richard Nixon's legal challenge
• 1:27:06
  to the election. There's a writer named Earl Mozo with the New York Herald
• 1:27:11
  Tribune and he started doing an investigation about the level of the fraud that took
• 1:27:15
  place, and he was doing a twelve part series on the election fraud.
• 1:27:19
  And after four of the articles were published, Nixon called him up and said,
• 1:27:24
  I want to have lunch with you. And they went up to lunch
• 1:27:27
  and Maso laid out all of the fraud in Illinois and all the fraud and
• 1:27:30
  Texas, and he spent about forty five minutes convincing Nixon of this fraud.
• 1:27:34
  And afterwards, when he was finished, Nixon looked at him and he said,
• 1:27:39
  you know, that's really interesting story that you're telling, But look at
• 1:27:42
  all of these countries around the world that look at the United States as a
• 1:27:45
  beacon of democracy. These countries can't afford to have the United States not have
• 1:27:49
  a political leader and a president and a belief in democracy. And you can't
• 1:27:56
  continue to write about these stories. And Earl Mozo said, I looked at
• 1:28:00
  him and I thought he was a goddamn fool. And he refused to stop
• 1:28:03
  writing the stories. So Nixon went to those publishers and had the stories killed,
• 1:28:08
  which did happen. And Nixon came back to California. He started practicing
• 1:28:14
  law. He made an ill fated decision to run for governor in nineteen sixty
• 1:28:16
  two and lost. And he did that because he was actually trying to heal
• 1:28:20
  the political party riff that existed in California, because politics are crazy. In
• 1:28:29
  nineteen fifty eight, good One Knight was the governor of California. Bill Nolan
• 1:28:32
  was the United States Senator from California. Earl Warren was the former governor that
• 1:28:36
  was now the Supreme Court Chief Justice. And then there was Richard Nixon.
• 1:28:41
  There are the four probably the most prominent Republicans ever to exist at the same
• 1:28:45
  time out of California. Well, Bill Nolan decided to run against good One
• 1:28:49
  Night for the governorship, which caused Goodwin Night to run for Bill Nolan Senate
• 1:28:55
  seat, and the public was so irked with the the in fighting between the
• 1:29:00
  Republicans that Pat Brown won the governor's race and the Republicans lost all of the
• 1:29:05
  state wide seats. And so in sixty two, Nixon came in and tried
• 1:29:11
  to unify the party and run for governor against Pat Brown and lost, and
• 1:29:15
  everyone thought he was dead. But he continued to work within the party,
• 1:29:20
  and he continued to campaign across the country, and he sat back and he
• 1:29:26
  looked at the scenery and knew that sixty four was not the right time to
• 1:29:30
  make a comeback. But he knew that if he campaigned for Goldwater in sixty
• 1:29:33
  four and for all of the congressional and Senate candidates in sixty six, that
• 1:29:39
  those would all be political chips that he'd then cash in in sixty eight,
• 1:29:43
  which he did do and won the nomination and ultimately the presidency. So let's
• 1:29:48
  go back to nineteen sixty for a second, because I'm it's obviously very much
• 1:29:54
  relatable to what's happening in the world today, where you have a Republican president
• 1:29:59
  who loses contested election, there's allegations of voter fraud and an unfair election.
• 1:30:06
  And just like Donald Trump, Richard Nixon says, no, thanks, I
• 1:30:12
  don't want to go there. I'm sorry, that's not actually what happened,
• 1:30:14
  completely opposite of Donald Trump. You know what would what would Nixon have done
• 1:30:20
  if he was the candidate in twenty twenty under the same circumstances, Paul Well,
• 1:30:27
  and you have to understand Nixon's background to understand what he would do.
• 1:30:31
  When he was in elementary school, he started debate, and that debate from
• 1:30:38
  his years in elementary school led to constitutional oratorical contests put on by the Los
• 1:30:43
  Angeles Times while he was a high school student. And he was a champion
• 1:30:46
  in those those constitutional oratorical contests, and he came to revere the Constitution.
• 1:30:53
  He believed it was the greatest instrument ever struck by the hand Deman. And
• 1:30:58
  he believed in demorcy, he believed in government. He wrote in his eighth
• 1:31:02
  grade graduation that he hoped to graduate from one year college and Willy and then
• 1:31:10
  attend law school so that he could be of some good of the people.
• 1:31:13
  He was very much a public service minded person, and he lived his dream
• 1:31:19
  out, which was public service. And he also believed that was separated the
• 1:31:26
  men from the boys was that men sought office to do something and boys sought
• 1:31:30
  office to be something. And so he never sought office to be a congressman.
• 1:31:35
  He sought to be in Congress to effect change. Same thing with the
• 1:31:39
  Senate, same thing with the vice presidency, same thing when he ran for
• 1:31:42
  president. And so it was more of a selfless act that he wasn't He
• 1:31:47
  wasn't doing it for his own ego the way it seems almost all politicians do
• 1:31:53
  things now. Where he was, he was a politician because he had to
• 1:31:58
  be to get to do the administration, and he believed in the operation of
• 1:32:04
  the country was the best in the best interests of the country and continuous operation.
• 1:32:12
  Quite frankly, that's why he resigned because he knew he couldn't continue to
• 1:32:15
  secede as president. He could have fought and fought the resignation and been a
• 1:32:19
  lame duck and not be able to get anything accomplished and hold the office.
• 1:32:24
  But he couldn't accomplish what he sought to accomplish, which was a successful administration,
• 1:32:29
  and so he walked away from the nineteen sixty race, and I believed
• 1:32:33
  that if he was alive in twenty twenty, he would have walked away from
• 1:32:35
  the twenty twenty race, and he would have counseled Donald Trump to walk away
• 1:32:40
  from it too, despite believing that whatever took place took place, if the
• 1:32:46
  Shenanigans or not. But he believed in the continuity of the country. It
• 1:32:51
  does seem to me that Donald Trump has been the best thing that has happened
• 1:32:58
  to Richard Nixon's legacy that you could possibly imagine, because you know, you
• 1:33:03
  mentioned nineteen sixty and now what Nixon did not do, or actually what you
• 1:33:08
  describe it that he did do to proactively kill off this effort to question the
• 1:33:14
  results of the election looks certainly a lot better in retrospect based upon what Trump
• 1:33:19
  has done. And then you mentioned the resignation. And obviously Watergate is the
• 1:33:25
  first thing that modern Americans think of when they think of Richard Nixon, and
• 1:33:30
  I gotta say on two fronts. One, the nature of the scandal of
• 1:33:35
  Watergate seems greatly diminished to me now in retrospect given the Trump example, and
• 1:33:44
  then the idea that Nixon resigned before he was even impeached. I mean,
• 1:33:50
  here you have Donald Trump was impeached twice during this for one term in office.
• 1:33:58
  Now one happened, you know, after he had already lost the election.
• 1:34:02
  But he you know, there was no thought of resignation on the part
• 1:34:06
  of Donald Trump. Yet Richard Nixon had at least enough care about the country
• 1:34:14
  to resign. Now, he probably would have been impeached and removed. Barry
• 1:34:19
  Goldwater, I guess, famously came to him and said, you know,
• 1:34:23
  it's over, mister president. And instead of Donald Trump, in my view,
• 1:34:28
  would have told Gary Barry Goldwater to go pound sand get the hell out
• 1:34:31
  of my office. And instead Richard Nixon did what was best for the country.
• 1:34:36
  So are you in agreement with me that, when compared to what we
• 1:34:42
  now are experienced with Donald Trump, experiencing with Donald Trump, Richard Nixon seems
• 1:34:46
  a heck of a lot better, even in the minds of people who were
• 1:34:48
  not fans of Richard Nixon. Oh, absolutely absolutely. And you have to
• 1:34:54
  remember, looking at everything Richard Nixon accomplished. You know, he created the
• 1:34:59
  EPA, he a Vietnam, He ended the draft, He created the all
• 1:35:03
  volunteer military, which stands to this day. You know he was in favor.
• 1:35:10
  He was. He was the first feminist president. He supported the era
• 1:35:13
  A. He brought women into government. He called drupled the women in government.
• 1:35:16
  He instituted all sorts of these different programs. He rewrote the Office of
• 1:35:24
  Management and Budget and recreated that entire entity with roy ashe from Los Angeles,
• 1:35:29
  and all of the things that he accomplished, which were quite an impressive list,
• 1:35:36
  he did with a Democrat House of Representatives and a Democratic Senate. Throughout
• 1:35:43
  his entire presidency, he never had a Republican majority. He had to work
• 1:35:47
  with the opposition, the loyal opposition, and he did, and he had
• 1:35:51
  tremendous success from that. It wasn't the same as today where everyone's poking a
• 1:35:56
  stick in the other party's eye. He worked, and so he lost that
• 1:36:00
  support from Verry Goldwater. He knew he didn't have any support from the Democrats.
• 1:36:05
  And look at Richard Nixon, you know what we talked about earlier,
• 1:36:09
  five time national candidate. More people voted for him than any other politician.
• 1:36:14
  He was really the Republican response to Franklin Roosevelt. He was reelected with ninety
• 1:36:18
  six point six percent of the Electoral College seventy votes or something like that.
• 1:36:25
  And it was an incredible run, and he put the country first, and
• 1:36:33
  that's why he succeeded like that. He didn't put himself first. And when
• 1:36:38
  he knew that he couldn't continue on because he didn't have the support of his
• 1:36:42
  own party, and he definitely didn't have the support of the Democrats, who
• 1:36:46
  you know, for many reasons, had no interest in supporting him. He
• 1:36:51
  chose to go, which is something that I you know, we haven't seen
• 1:36:57
  from anybody before or since. And I'm sure you just forgot to mention it,
• 1:37:01
  but it's certainly relevant today. Richard Nixon signed Title nine into law,
• 1:37:08
  which is a huge I mean, liberals should be loving Richard Nixon because of
• 1:37:12
  that, right absolutely, the I mean, he fundamentally changed women's sports and
• 1:37:19
  women in government through his signing of Title nine and the reaches of Title nine.
• 1:37:27
  You're right, I did forget because I was going through a list of
• 1:37:29
  things so rapidly, but it fundamentally changed the landscape of sports for women and
• 1:37:38
  and and promoted them in a way that never existed before. And for him
• 1:37:45
  to not be given the credit is it's just preposterous. It's a shame though,
• 1:37:49
  that he didn't have the foresight or someone in Congress didn't have the foresight
• 1:37:56
  to put some language in there about male genitalia, disqualifying people and playing women's
• 1:38:00
  sports. Unfortunately, they didn't anticipate the insanity that was that was coming.
• 1:38:05
  Now when it comes to Richard Nixon, obviously this podcast is the death of
• 1:38:11
  journalism for me. You know, maybe the second thing that comes to mind
• 1:38:15
  after Watergate is his war against the news media, because you know, at
• 1:38:24
  the time, the news media of course battled Richard Nixon because they thought that
• 1:38:28
  they were, you know, fighting for what they thought was right, and
• 1:38:30
  they saw Nixon is very paranoid and he had the enemy's list, and this
• 1:38:36
  was portrayed as as a guy who was bitter and paranoid. And now as
• 1:38:43
  history has gone on and we've seen where the media has has gone and how
• 1:38:46
  journalism has died, and we are able to see in a clearer light what
• 1:38:53
  maybe the media always was but was hiding and you know, pretending to be
• 1:38:59
  objective when fact it was always very liberally biased. To me, Richard Nixon
• 1:39:04
  once again comes out looking a lot better in retrospect because he was ahead of
• 1:39:11
  his time in warning especially Republicans, that the news media is not fair and
• 1:39:17
  objective, that it is very liberally biased, and that it has an agenda
• 1:39:25
  that is dangerous to the country. What is your view on Nixon's war on
• 1:39:30
  the press and how we now see it in twenty twenty three as opposed to
• 1:39:34
  how it was portrayed in the late nineteen sixties in the early nineteen seventies.
• 1:39:41
  Well, Richard Nixon was a Western individualist. He was the first Southwestern conservative
• 1:39:49
  politician, and he was tremendously successful in debate, and as I mentioned,
• 1:39:56
  you know, the constitutional ratorical speaking, and he was not afraid to discuss
• 1:40:00
  ideas with another person, whether it be a person or a group of people.
• 1:40:05
  And so if you look at him, he was like something that the
• 1:40:09
  media almost didn't know how to handle, because he would go into a press
• 1:40:13
  conference and he wouldn't stand behind a big podium. He wouldn't, you know,
• 1:40:17
  just you know, have prescripted questions handed to him and reporters to call
• 1:40:23
  on the room. If you look at the photographs, he would stand in
• 1:40:26
  a room, there'd be a solitary microphone stand in front of him, and
• 1:40:31
  the media would be in a half circle in front of him, filling up
• 1:40:35
  the room, and he would just take all questions and he would challenge the
• 1:40:43
  press, and when they would try to demonstrate their or try and you know
• 1:40:46
  in their question they would show their advice, he would confront them with that
• 1:40:50
  because he wasn't afraid to talk about his beliefs and why he believed in what
• 1:40:57
  he believed in, and when it came to questioning. This is a quote
• 1:41:00
  that he once gave that you love sports, and I know there's two things
• 1:41:06
  about sports that I'll tell you that with Richard Nixon that are always fascinating to
• 1:41:11
  me. He loved baseball. So here's a quote that he gave regarding people
• 1:41:14
  asking him questions. He said, let the questions be rough and tough,
• 1:41:18
  fire and hard ones, sinkers, sliders or low curbs, knucklers or even
• 1:41:23
  spitterers. I'll answer them all. And he did. That's the way he
• 1:41:27
  was at a press conference. And so the media at the time would view
• 1:41:30
  that I was confrontational and they would say he's paranoid, but he really wasn't.
• 1:41:35
  And then the other point that I was going to tell you was in
• 1:41:39
  Labor Day in nineteen sixty one on PGA National Hall in one day. He
• 1:41:44
  actually had a hole in one at Bellar Country Club. Well, I actually
• 1:41:49
  hear that he was one of the worst golfers in presidential history. So every
• 1:41:54
  you know, every blind squirrel finds an acorn from time to time. But
• 1:41:58
  but no, there's no question that Nixon probably loves sports more than any other
• 1:42:03
  presidents, certainly in our modern history. I mean, famously, he was
• 1:42:06
  a huge football fan, drawling up plays for the Washington Redskins, and and
• 1:42:14
  you know, it's it's funny, you know, since I'm associated with the
• 1:42:16
  Penn State story, but people at Penn State do not like Richard Nixon at
• 1:42:21
  all because he is credited for taking away a national championship from Joe Paterno and
• 1:42:28
  Penn State because he declared the champion to be the winner of the Texas Arkansas
• 1:42:33
  game, which, by the way, in today's political world, can you
• 1:42:36
  imagine, you know, a president going out of their way for a sports
• 1:42:42
  story to offend an entire key state like Pennsylvania. I mean, it's that's
• 1:42:48
  how much he loves sports. I mean, it's it's and he was also,
• 1:42:53
  by the way, my impression and you would know way better than than
• 1:42:57
  than me. But again going to your entire theme of the narrative about him
• 1:43:02
  not being right, he was a lot funnier than people gave him credit for.
• 1:43:06
  Would you would you agree with that? Oh? Very much, so
• 1:43:11
  very much so he did. He he knew the politics were serious, but
• 1:43:17
  he had a great sense of humor and he would reveal it. I know
• 1:43:23
  one time when he was and you know, he was great friends with Bob
• 1:43:25
  Hope, very very very close friends with Bob Hope. And one time when
• 1:43:29
  he was campaigning, he was in Los Angeles and he was in Beverly Hill,
• 1:43:32
  standing at the Beverly Hilton, and he went out for early morning walk
• 1:43:35
  and the media went with him and he went into a little diner to have
• 1:43:40
  breakfast, and the media were all gathered around him, and they looked at
• 1:43:45
  the waitress and they said, do you know who this man is? And
• 1:43:47
  she said no, and he stuck his hand out and he said, I'm
• 1:43:50
  Bob Hope. Well, if I don't want to leave the Donald Trump subject
• 1:43:59
  quite yet, because I don't want to get to the California element of your
• 1:44:02
  book, Richard Nixon California's native son momentarily, but back to this the vendetta
• 1:44:11
  or this crusade against the news media. Don't you think that, in a
• 1:44:16
  small but significant way, Richard Nixon kind of paved the way for Donald Trump
• 1:44:24
  because it was it was Nixon from the standpoint of creating distrust among Republicans in
• 1:44:30
  the news media, which I think was legitimate and based in fact. But
• 1:44:35
  it was it was those seeds that Nixon planted that end up becoming this forest
• 1:44:43
  of distrust that it was Trump that eventually took advantage of that. And now
• 1:44:50
  Republicans don't trust anything that sometimes even Fox News tells them if if it doesn't
• 1:44:58
  fit what they want to believe. So do you see where I'm going with
• 1:45:03
  that, that it was Nixon that actually gave us Trump eventually, even regardless
• 1:45:10
  of whether or not what Nixon was doing was based in truth and reality.
• 1:45:15
  No, I've heard that. I've heard people say that, you know,
• 1:45:17
  isn't Trump Nixon on steroids? And he's really not, because what Trump's done
• 1:45:24
  is he's he's he's perverted the process. Because we can never be afraid to
• 1:45:29
  debate ideas. That's our that's that's what democracy is all about. Nixon never
• 1:45:34
  made it about personality. He didn't attack people for where they were coming from
• 1:45:42
  or whatever their background was. He challenged you on what you believed in and
• 1:45:46
  what you stood for, which is fair game and politics. It's it's been
• 1:45:51
  taken out of control, where like in the debates in twenty sixteen, you
• 1:45:55
  know, everything was about the size of Marco Rubio's hands, or you know,
• 1:46:00
  Jeb Bush being you know, whatever was said about him, and and
• 1:46:04
  and just because someone perverts that whole process and makes it all about personality doesn't
• 1:46:12
  mean that it's accurate or that it's an extension of what Nixon did. Because
• 1:46:15
  Nixon stood for the proposition that a debate and a full debate over the ideas
• 1:46:23
  is good. And you can't you know that. That's where I see the
• 1:46:28
  distinction between the two. No, No, I agree that there's a distinction.
• 1:46:31
  What I'm saying is that Nixon sewed the field that a generation or so
• 1:46:38
  later, maybe two generations, depending on how you define it, Trump was
• 1:46:43
  able to harvest for his own selfish benefit. Do you see that narrative as
• 1:46:48
  having something behind it? Yeah? No, No, I see what you're
• 1:46:54
  saying. And and and he certainly took it to the Trump's taken to the
• 1:47:00
  degree, there's no doubt about that. And but we'll go ahead just to
• 1:47:09
  kind of take this out of theoretical into the practical. I think that if
• 1:47:13
  we had our modern and you may disagree with this, I'm curious it's your
• 1:47:16
  answer on this. If we had the modern media environment of massive fragmentation and
• 1:47:24
  Fox News Channel and Newsmax and One American News and all these conservative websites and
• 1:47:30
  the Drudge Report everything else, if all that existed in nineteen seventy four,
• 1:47:36
  I don't think Richard Nixon is ever forced to resign from office because he had
• 1:47:43
  he would have You would agree with that, right, Tell me why tell
• 1:47:47
  me why you agree with behind him? He would have had a media behind
• 1:47:50
  him, which he didn't have in nineteen seventy four. You know, like
• 1:47:55
  the Los Angeles Times. Although it's it's it's, it's, it's it's the
• 1:48:00
  most important paper on the West Coast, it endorsed Richard Nixon and every one
• 1:48:03
  of his campaigns, and it was one of the few national newspapers that did
• 1:48:09
  not call for his resignation. You know, that probably wouldn't exist today,
• 1:48:15
  But that's for damn sure. The LA Times would have called for Nixon's resignation
• 1:48:21
  on the first day of office today. But he didn't have the support of
• 1:48:28
  a of a media that was was tilted in one direction, right, No,
• 1:48:32
  I mean, I think it would have been much different because a different
• 1:48:35
  narrative would have come out from him, because the reality is he really wasn't
• 1:48:41
  paranoid. I mean, the fact that he would challenge people in what they
• 1:48:47
  said doesn't mean he's paranoid and and and and everyone you know, and well
• 1:48:56
  he's but but Paul, I mean, I mean, look, look,
• 1:48:58
  I mean, I understand his paranoia, but he did have an enemies list,
• 1:49:01
  and you know, he was pretty vindictive. And we have audio tapes
• 1:49:06
  where, you know, they were recorded of him in the White House that
• 1:49:10
  are kind of eyebrow raising, like, oh my god, I can't believe
• 1:49:14
  this is the President United States talking about somebody in rather Machiavelli in terms.
• 1:49:19
  I mean. So, I mean, I want to completely rewrite history.
• 1:49:23
  The narrative isn't a thousand percent wrong about him. There is some something to
• 1:49:29
  back up the perceptions there that you don't you don't acknowledge that, No,
• 1:49:33
  no, no, I do, I do. And you know, like
• 1:49:36
  if you were to take a look at you know, if you look at
• 1:49:41
  the tapes and everyone everyone says about Richard Nixon he had to be a racist
• 1:49:45
  because of the tapes. If you look at the words he said, that's
• 1:49:48
  one thing. If you look at this conduct, it's entirely another. Because
• 1:49:53
  you know, he pushed the Eisenhower administration to do the Civil Rights Act in
• 1:49:56
  nineteen sixty seven. He he undertook all sorts of initiatives to promote civil rights.
• 1:50:01
  He never there's no thing that anyone can point to where he undertook an
• 1:50:08
  act that was in any way other than promoting civil rights. And so I
• 1:50:13
  look at it like actions speak louder than words. You know, having everything
• 1:50:17
  you say be tape recorded is never a good idea. I've never seen a
• 1:50:21
  politician that has benefited from that. And Nixon had everything he said tape recorded.
• 1:50:27
  And so did he say unfavorable things, absolutely, But did he turn
• 1:50:31
  those words into conduct that were negative or harmful? Not a chance. And
• 1:50:36
  if you look at like the enemy's list, I would take the position that
• 1:50:42
  every president knows who their enemies are. I mean, look at the Biden
• 1:50:45
  administration. They're rejecting White House credentials to people because they don't like the questions
• 1:50:48
  they get asked. That's an enemies list. And so Nixon was smart enough
• 1:50:54
  to know who his adversaries were, and I question whether or not he really
• 1:50:59
  needed a list of his adversaries. I'm pretty certain most president knows who his
• 1:51:03
  adversaries are or her adversaries. Now, I want to talk about the California
• 1:51:09
  aspect of this one because we both live in California, but also because I
• 1:51:14
  try to tell conservatives in the rest of the country that the California is not
• 1:51:21
  an anomaly. There's nothing that unique about it, that this is what's happened
• 1:51:28
  in California is going to happen in the rest of the country unless you're vigilant,
• 1:51:32
  and I think we ought to be. Everyone ought to be looking,
• 1:51:35
  especially post covid as, California as the oh my god, this is what's
• 1:51:41
  coming down the pike unless we really do something about this, which is why
• 1:51:46
  you know, to me, the only person on the national stage that gets
• 1:51:48
  this is Ronda Santis and why I support Ronda Santis to be the Republican nominee.
• 1:51:56
  And I think your book in a in an unusual way. I don't
• 1:52:00
  think this was the intention but maybe it was. You can tell me if
• 1:52:03
  it was or not. But your book and your TikTok videos, especially because
• 1:52:09
  you've done like dozens of TikTok videos where you've gone all over the state of
• 1:52:13
  California and found the actual places that you talk about in the book. And
• 1:52:17
  by the way, I'm stunned that so many of them still exist, because
• 1:52:21
  because you know, in California, it seems like we've just wiped away our
• 1:52:26
  entire history, you know, especially if it has anything remotely to do with
• 1:52:30
  being conservative. But people forget and Richard Nixon is kind of the personification of
• 1:52:35
  this. The California was largely a conservative state, especially in presidential elections,
• 1:52:43
  for a very long time, up right until nineteen ninety two when it finally
• 1:52:48
  shifted permanently towards the Democratic side. And Richard Nixon, obviously, having been
• 1:52:56
  in your words, California's native son. Really he does illustrate and it wasn't
• 1:53:01
  that long ago. I mean, you know, obviously Richard Nix has been
• 1:53:04
  dead for a while, but there are a lot of people still alive who
• 1:53:09
  remember Nixon vividly. He's coming from an era where California was essentially Texas politically,
• 1:53:17
  and now you know, it couldn't be more democratic in every possible way.
• 1:53:24
  And that didn't happen just by magic. And it didn't happen because there's
• 1:53:29
  anything all that unusual about California. Yes, there's some demographic elements because of
• 1:53:34
  illegal immigration that are somewhat unique. But where do you stand on my premise
• 1:53:41
  here that looking at Nixon as California's native son really does illustrate just how dramatic
• 1:53:48
  California has changed in a fairly short period of time. Oh, absolutely,
• 1:53:55
  absolutely. Nixon he carried California in all five of those now from elections he
• 1:54:00
  was in, even against John Kennedy in nineteen sixty. And if you look
• 1:54:05
  at California, like in the nineteen fifties, you had Senator Nixon, you
• 1:54:10
  had Senator Bill Nolan, and you had Governor Earl Warren. And so Eisenhower
• 1:54:16
  runs for president and he picks Nixon is as vice president, and he appoints
• 1:54:20
  Earl Warren to be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Bill Nolan becomes
• 1:54:26
  the Senate leader, and and and so this incredible crop of Republicans that are
• 1:54:32
  that are helping lead the country throughout that entire period of the nineteen fifties,
• 1:54:38
  and it was just tremendous the influence that California had, and and California has
• 1:54:46
  a tremendous influence on the nation in many ways where you know, they used
• 1:54:51
  to say if it was if it flies, it was built in California.
• 1:54:55
  And I know as an attorney, many of the laws that take over and
• 1:54:59
  gained track throughout the United States they start in California coincidentally also in Wisconsin.
• 1:55:04
  But you know, it's it's you know, it's like as goes California,
• 1:55:09
  so does the nation. On kind of the Tale of California. And you're
• 1:55:13
  you're exactly right that it has that kind of influence and and and leadership capability
• 1:55:19
  to it. And it really did have a golden era with the Republican Party.
• 1:55:27
  I'm during Nixon's lifetime. And do you agree with me that the shift
• 1:55:32
  that happened in California over a fairly short period of time, as dramatic as
• 1:55:36
  has been, is something that the rest of the country ought to be very
• 1:55:41
  concerned about because it could easily happen there as well. Absolutely, absolutely,
• 1:55:47
  when you when you start to break away from these Republican principles of individual responsibility.
• 1:55:57
  And you know, like if you look at Nixon, here's a Jeff
• 1:56:00
  Personian Republican. You know, limited government, fiscal restraint, individual responsibility,
• 1:56:04
  and California is getting away from that, and you know, we don't want
• 1:56:09
  to hold anyone responsible for anything or accountable for anything. And look at San
• 1:56:13
  Francisco. I mean, it's just it's a nightmare. Look at you know,
• 1:56:16
  smashing grab robberies in southern California with the District Attorney Gascon and the lack
• 1:56:23
  of punishment and responsibility for wrongful conduct. And if that takes hold throughout the
• 1:56:30
  country, that's gonna be a nightmare. That's the worst case scenario for our
• 1:56:35
  country. For those types of beliefs to spread, we need to have,
• 1:56:43
  you know, the stalwarts around the country, and there's and that's not There
• 1:56:46
  are a ton of independence and you know, like minded Democrats that agree with
• 1:56:54
  that, and and that's where you see you know, like Desantists succeeding so
• 1:56:59
  much in floor and winning you know, like Broward County for the first time
• 1:57:03
  as a Republican because they people see what's happening and they don't like it,
• 1:57:08
  and they do believe in the responsibility and the accountability. I don't know whether
• 1:57:15
  or not that's a majority of the country, though it is in some places
• 1:57:18
  in the country. But you know, you made a really good point about
• 1:57:21
  the influence that California has that people don't even understand. I mean, I
• 1:57:27
  will go to my death believing that if Gavin Newsom doesn't shut down California in
• 1:57:32
  March of twenty twenty, that the country never shuts down. But it was
• 1:57:36
  that that was the domino, the first domino that created an impossible situation that
• 1:57:44
  effectively ended the Trump presidency. And the reason why Newsom was able to get
• 1:57:48
  away with that is because we are a sixty percent democratic state with one hundred
• 1:57:54
  percent democratic or completely superfluous news media that doesn't hold any Democratic accountable. He
• 1:58:00
  was in a unique position to be able to do that, and that was
• 1:58:03
  the most dramatic example. But you know, since we're both sports fans,
• 1:58:09
  most people don't even understand that Gavin Newsom destroyed college athletics. I mean,
• 1:58:14
  it was California that completely changed the entire dynamic. The reason why everything,
• 1:58:20
  almost everything that's wrong with college athletics right now began in California because Gavin Newsom
• 1:58:27
  and the Democratic Socialist legislature, changed the rules, changed the dynamic, and
• 1:58:31
  scared the crap out of the rest of the country that if we don't follow
• 1:58:34
  California and then we can't compete. And the NC double A just raised a
• 1:58:41
  white flag and gave up. Well, that's all because of California, and
• 1:58:45
  no one even knows about this, and so it's maybe my number one mantra
• 1:58:53
  when it comes to the issue of California is to the rest of the country,
• 1:58:57
  you gotta hold the damn line. Is If you don't hold the damn
• 1:59:00
  line, as soon as these people get traction, it's over. There's no
• 1:59:06
  going back, because unfortunately it is in the human condition I believe to favor
• 1:59:14
  socialism and whatever you want to call this wokeism, and when the news media
• 1:59:20
  is enabling it and promoting it, it's almost impossible to combat. And that's
• 1:59:27
  why it's very depressing to me that it looks like the Republican Party is going
• 1:59:30
  to pass on this incredible opportunity to make Ryan de Santis the nominee and instead
• 1:59:35
  we're gonna go with Donald Trump again, which gives you know, every Democrat
• 1:59:42
  in the country basically exactly what they wanted. So I don't know if you
• 1:59:44
  have any thought on that, but it doesn't really directly relate to your book,
• 1:59:46
  But I'm curious to your response. Well, isn't it ironic? You
• 1:59:53
  know, it's like the law of unintended consequences? Gavin Newsom does that with
• 1:59:57
  college sports, and we want the PAC ten or PAC twelve, is it's
• 2:00:02
  been known lately disintegrate. I mean there's great conference that used to have,
• 2:00:10
  you know, the winner of the Pac ten would play the winner of the
• 2:00:15
  Big ten in the Rose Bowl every year, the granddaddy of them all.
• 2:00:18
  And now the PAC ten is left with I think it's down to Callen uh
• 2:00:25
  Stanford and it's just just nothing. And and then he wanted to put his
• 2:00:30
  foot down and try and stop UCLA from leaving, and he couldn't even do
• 2:00:32
  that because he got the ball rolling. I mean, he created the scenario
• 2:00:36
  that allowed all of us to happen. And yeah, you and I might
• 2:00:40
  be the only two people in California that fully realized that this is his fault.
• 2:00:44
  I mean, because there's been zero media coverage of this, I mean
• 2:00:47
  zero, And you would think that this would be an issue that would piss
• 2:00:51
  off even some independence and Democrats. Uh, and it's it is absolutely Gavin
• 2:00:58
  Newson's fault. But you know, we live in a world where because journalism
• 2:01:00
  is dead, nobody even knows about it. All right, So, Paul,
• 2:01:04
  your book is once again in titled Richard Nixon, California's Native Son.
• 2:01:11
  I guess, in in a you know, in as concise way as possible,
• 2:01:15
  tell us why people should get and read the book and how they can
• 2:01:18
  can find your book. The book is available everywhere, and so it's on
• 2:01:24
  Amazon, it's Powell Books, it's Barnes and Noble, it's everywhere. It's
• 2:01:28
  on all formats. It's hardcover, it's electronic, it's audible, and so
• 2:01:32
  it's every every format is available. And the reason to read it is because,
• 2:01:38
  you know, Jessumine West was Richard Nixon's cousin, and she said that
• 2:01:42
  we want the facts to fit our perceptions, and when the facts don't fit
• 2:01:45
  our perceptions, it's easier to change the facts than to change our perceptions.
• 2:01:49
  And everyone has a perception that they believe is accurate about Richard Nixon, and
• 2:01:56
  I'm here to tell you that he was fundamentally different then what you you you
• 2:02:02
  would the common perception of him is. And he had an amazing relationship with
• 2:02:08
  Pat They had an amazing love affair. And he had an incredible network of
• 2:02:14
  friends and supporters that I call the California Committee that were with him his entire
• 2:02:17
  life and his relationship with people is really fascinating. And his conduct throughout his
• 2:02:26
  life, both leading up to the White House and then the period afterwards where
• 2:02:30
  he served his self imposed exile and and and then rebuilt himself, and by
• 2:02:34
  the way he relied on golf through that self imposed exile to rehabilitate himself,
• 2:02:40
  but throughout that whole process, it's just it's an all American tale of an
• 2:02:46
  all American tragedy, and it's really fascinating. By the way, I just
• 2:02:51
  realized I made a massive error when you referenced Richard Nixon's hole in one at
• 2:02:58
  Belair Country Club, because I didn't mentioned that you also have a hole in
• 2:03:02
  one, and it occurred in my presence, which I'm sure you were probably
• 2:03:08
  leading me towards, and I just dropped the ball on that. So I
• 2:03:12
  at least have to acknowledge that you not a great golfer, but you you
• 2:03:16
  add a hole in one on a scramble tournament, and and and gave me
• 2:03:21
  the prize, although the prize didn't turn out to be all that great,
• 2:03:25
  but it was still an amazing hole in one. So I apologize for not
• 2:03:29
  referencing your hole and one. Paul, Well, no, I appreciate that,
• 2:03:33
  and and and I'll reference the fact that I had the greatest shot in
• 2:03:36
  my life with that hole in one. And on the very next t the
• 2:03:40
  eleventh hole at Virginia, I hit a three hundred yards right to at a
• 2:03:44
  bound and had the worst shot of my life. So back to back,
• 2:03:48
  that's so, that's so true, and it's so funny. Yes, So
• 2:03:50
  you made a hole in one on a part of three, and then literally
• 2:03:55
  the next shot you miss a fifty yard wide fairway and so far out of
• 2:04:00
  bounds we didn't even bother to look for it. So that was golf in
• 2:04:04
  a nutshell. But Paul Carter, author of the book Richard Nixon, California's
• 2:04:10
  Native Son, good luck with the book, and thanks so much for your
• 2:04:13
  time. Thank you, John, this is great. I appreciate it.
• 2:04:18
  So if you get a chance, please check out Richard Nixon, California's Native
• 2:04:23
  Son. That'll do it for episode number eighty one of the Death of Journalists
• 2:04:27
  and podcasts is always the case. Please remember to subscribe, rate, and
• 2:04:30
  review this podcast, share it with others. Share it on social media.
• 2:04:32
  Please tag me and I'll share it with My followers are on Twitter and my
• 2:04:36
  friends on Facebook. Until next time, thanks so much for listening. This
• 2:04:40
  is the Death of Journalism podcast. My name is John Ziegler.