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Episode Fifty Two: Tucker Carlson Departs Fox News · The Death Of Journalism

• 0:00
  Welcome to episode fifty two of the Death of Journalism podcast. My name is
• 0:04
  John Ziggler. I am your host and on today's podcast, Fox News and
• 0:09
  Tucker Carlson shock the cable news world by breaking up, and it seems as
• 0:16
  if war has officially broken out between Donald Trump and Rhonda Santis. I'm known
• 0:22
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• 0:32
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  marketing Man dot com. If you want to grow your business, Peter can
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  help. That's the Dutch Digital marketing Man dot com. And hey, thanks
• 1:00
  for sponsoring the show. We begin this show with the absolutely stunning and shocking
• 1:07
  news that Tucker Carlson is out at Fox News Channel as their number one host,
• 1:14
  the number one host in all of cable news. This coming after the
• 1:19
  Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit was settled last week by Fox News Channel for an insane
• 1:26
  amount of money, almost eight hundred million dollars. As of this taping,
• 1:30
  we know virtually nothing other than both parties have mutually agreed to part ways,
• 1:38
  that Tucker Carlson will no longer be on Fox News Channel in their primetime evening
• 1:44
  slot. And we don't know whether or not the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit had
• 1:49
  anything directly to do with it. It had to have had some impact,
• 1:53
  at least indirectly, because I mean, I'm sorry, you just can't ask
• 1:57
  something that huge occur that Tucker Carlson was that intricately involved with, having been
• 2:05
  quoted in the discovery as saying that he hates Donald Trump passionately and that he
• 2:09
  was very much looking forward to ignoring him, and not have that at least
• 2:14
  be somewhat part of the equation. I mean, it's just too much of
• 2:19
  a coincidence. Now, what really happened here? I do not know.
• 2:23
  Anything that I'm going to tell you at this moment is based almost purely in
• 2:27
  speculation, although it is somewhat informed speculation. If you're a fan of this
• 2:30
  podcast, you already know that. A couple of weeks ago, I went
• 2:35
  after Tucker pretty hard, both in personal text as well as in appearance on
• 2:39
  Dan Abrams News Nation TV show, where I was extremely upset at him for
• 2:46
  his basically flipping on Donald Trump. I believe as a way to virtue signal
• 2:52
  his way out of those discovery items from the Dominion Voting System's lawsuit. So
• 2:58
  because he was nowble as being seen by Trump fans as not loyal to the
• 3:04
  cult or loyal to the cause, he had to signal his virtue by going
• 3:08
  way out of his way to promote Trump and to help Trump, and to
• 3:13
  show the Trump coult just how down with the struggle he was, which is
• 3:19
  why he did what he did on January sixth, why he did what he
• 3:22
  did with regard to the indictment, why he did what he did with regard
• 3:25
  to his very softball interview down to moral ago with Donald Trump, which wasn't
• 3:31
  just a softball interview, it included effectively in endorsement. And I don't want
• 3:37
  to be lost. And I think the most nefarious thing, the most devastating
• 3:39
  thing that Tucker has done during the last few months with regard to Trump is
• 3:44
  that he has basically created and promoted this entire narrative and concept that the indictment
• 3:51
  of Trump is so outrageous that we essentially must nominate him to make sure that
• 3:57
  the left doesn't get away with this, which is just crazy. But unfortunately,
• 4:01
  I think it drove a lot of Trump's post indictment bounce. Not that
• 4:06
  Tucker did this alone, but he created and promoted that narrative. Glenn Beck
• 4:14
  jumped on that narrative, and I think that was a very enticing concept to
• 4:18
  a lot of people. It gave a lot of people who were on the
• 4:20
  fence about Trump a really good excuse for why they were back on the Trump
• 4:26
  train, And because this was the way to defeat the left to make sure
• 4:30
  that this doesn't happen again. It felt like somehow a principle stand And so
• 4:35
  all these things were why I went after Tuck Tucker first, and that that
• 4:41
  text exchange that I talked about in a previous episode I think it was episode
• 4:46
  forty eight of this podcast. And then, as I said, went on
• 4:49
  and did a rather explosive appearance on the News Nation television network with Dan Abrams.
• 4:57
  So you know, that's that's the background. From my perspective on this,
• 5:03
  what really happened, I do not know, but if I had a
• 5:06
  guess, if you had a gun to my head at this moment, and
• 5:10
  I feel like kind of there is because I feel like I have to have
• 5:13
  some semblance of analysis on a story this big in a podcast called the Death
• 5:16
  of Journalists, because this is a huge story based upon my own experiences which
• 5:23
  have never been to the level of Tucker Carlson. But one of the problems
• 5:27
  when you become that big is that you're going to have an inherent problem with
• 5:34
  management. And you know, if you're Tucker, you believe that and maybe
• 5:41
  out a principle, maybe out of your own analysis of your own importance,
• 5:45
  that there's no curtailing you, that you you know, what do I need
• 5:49
  you for? You know, I'm the number one guy on your network.
• 5:53
  The audience loves me. You know, he probably thinks of himself as standing
• 5:57
  on principle and free speech, so I can't be restricted. And in the
• 6:02
  world of management, they look at this as we're in charge, We're the
• 6:10
  ones that run the show. Here, you're just the hired help. And
• 6:14
  yeah, your ratings are great, but there's all sorts of problems that you're
• 6:17
  creating for us, and we just experienced this massive black eye and financial loss
• 6:24
  and theory on the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit. We are getting rid of other
• 6:30
  people. It's clear that I mean this, even before today, that Fox
• 6:35
  News Channel was going to either use this as an excuse to get rid of
• 6:41
  some of the more Trump friendly personalities on Fox News Channel or you know how
• 6:46
  much that is directly related, how much of an excuse. I don't know,
• 6:50
  but it's it's got to be more than coincidence. And so in my
• 6:55
  view here, what's happened is that you have a situation where the two can
• 7:00
  no longer work together. I fearized previously that Tucker's January sixth re visionist history
• 7:08
  was at least partially curtailed by the brass at Fox News Channel that was rather
• 7:14
  concerned about Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Senate somehow cracking down on Fox News Channel
• 7:21
  because you had Chuck Schumer basically pleading on the floor of the Senate to the
• 7:27
  head of News Corps Rupert Murdoch to take Tucker Carlson off the air. By
• 7:31
  the way, you also had AOC a few days ago saying that Tucker Carlson
• 7:38
  incites violence and that the government ought to take him off the air. Fox
• 7:42
  News Channel off the air, and the rest of the media just side yonned
• 7:46
  moved on, never said anything about how incredibly dangerous that is. I don't
• 7:50
  think AOC is why Tucker Carlson left. But I think you have a situation
• 7:56
  where the two parties are so big and so powerful that they can't actually work
• 8:03
  together anymore. And so my guess is, here's my guess that Fox News
• 8:09
  Channel tried to further could tail Tucker Carlson, and he just wouldn't have anything
• 8:16
  to do with it. And then he and so at that point, you're
• 8:18
  you know, you're in a place where you have irreconcirable differences. It can
• 8:24
  no longer function. Now, you would think that that would take a while.
• 8:28
  And there's no sign that this was ongoing. I mean, there was
• 8:33
  no sign from his last show that this was going to be his last show.
• 8:37
  From last week, there's no sign at least on the air. So
• 8:41
  and there's no rumors about this. See I've always believed that when it comes
• 8:46
  to massive stories, there's a weird phenomenon that massive stories tend to have no
• 8:54
  warning attached to them, because if there were rumors right something this big and
• 9:01
  there and it's not definitive, people tend to then work it out. I've
• 9:07
  noticed this a lot in different areas of the media. I always remember this
• 9:11
  in sports as a kid. There was a blockbuster trade, a blockbuster trade
• 9:16
  that's rumored about, and it doesn't happen within the first twenty four hours of
• 9:20
  the rumor. It's probably not gonna happen because somebody's gonna get cold feet,
• 9:26
  somebody's gonna think better, someone's gonna come to some sort of resolution, and
• 9:31
  so it never happens. Well, this was never rumored that I certainly not
• 9:35
  in a serious way, and yet it just happened boom on a Monday,
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  in the middle of the day and on the East Coast, and you know,
• 9:46
  shazam, the whole cable news world has changed. And so we'll probably
• 9:52
  know at some point. My guess is Tucker Will will eventually talk about what
• 9:56
  happened. Where Tucker goes from here, I don't know. I don't know
• 10:00
  where Fox News Channel goes from here. They just lost their most talented and
• 10:03
  most popular personality right in the middle of a major news cycle regarding the Republican
• 10:11
  presidential nomination. Now, from a selfish standpoint, given where Tucker was going
• 10:18
  and why I castigated him, and let's be clear, I mean, obviously
• 10:20
  my castigation of Tucker, both personally as well as on News Nation television,
• 10:26
  played a major role here. I think that goes without saying, right.
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  I mean, obviously this would not have occurred without what I did to Tucker,
• 10:35
  both privately and publicly, and I mean that clearly as a joke.
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  It's just a weird coincidence that this occurs in this time frame. And so
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  I don't know what's going to happen with either Tucker or Fox News Channel,
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  but I'm selfishly, given where Tucker was going, I'm kind of happy that
• 10:56
  Tucker's gone. If he was gonna shill for Trump, then good riddens,
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  because he's really very it was at least a very significant figure within the conservative
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  media and in creating very powerful narratives within the conservative audience and Republican leaning primary
• 11:16
  voters. And so, of course it depends on who they replace him with.
• 11:22
  I don't know who they're going to replace him with. I mean,
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  do you go back to Megan Kelly? You know, that would be one
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  person I would think about. They could use a female and you know,
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  she's obviously very well known to the audience, and you know she's got a
• 11:39
  lot to say to me. That's where I would look. But Fox News
• 11:45
  Channel may have much larger plans and maybe going in a completely different direction than
• 11:48
  I realized. As far as Tucker is concerned, that'll be really interesting.
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  I mean, if you're CNN, you know it would create an absolute earthquake
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  at your net work. But I would hire Tucker Carlson in a heartbeat at
• 12:03
  CNN now, depending on how much money he's going to ask for. But
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  if you ever got Tucker Carlson to go over to CNN, yes, you'd
• 12:09
  have a revolt within your staff, but you would take a huge chunk out
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  of Fox News Channel's audience immediately in a very prime slot. And if you're
• 12:22
  really going to go in a different direction, that would be a hell of
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  a way to start it. I have no information that that's going to happen,
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  but stranger things have occurred, that's for sure. So I don't know
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  what caused this. I don't know exactly where it's going. I'm speculating,
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  like everybody else. But it's absolutely a huge and shocking story, even to
• 12:45
  me as someone who both privately and publicly castigated Tucker Carlson for his actions over
• 12:50
  the last a couple of months. And obviously, as this story of alls,
• 12:54
  will continue to talk about it here on the Death of Journalism podcast.
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  Now, if Tucker Carlson leaving Fox News Channel wasn't enough, just after that
• 13:05
  was announced, it was made news that Don Lemon and CNN are parting ways.
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  So I guess the morning show is not open for Tucker Carlson. Boy,
• 13:18
  that would be something at CNN. But Don Lemon, who has been
• 13:24
  a subject of great controversy at CNN for quite some time, and most recently
• 13:31
  it was given a few days off because he told his female co host that
• 13:37
  Nicky Haley, the Republican presidential candidate, was pastor prime because women are in
• 13:43
  their prime in their twenties and thirties, and that didn't go over very well.
• 13:50
  But he's had a lot of problems for a long, long period of
• 13:52
  time, and CNN announced that he is no longer with CNN. So Tucker
• 14:00
  is out at Fox News Channel and Don Lemon is out at CNN and the
• 14:07
  whole cable news world is in disarray. If you remember, we did an
• 14:13
  interview with an old colleague of mine, John Nikosia, who has kind of
• 14:20
  been given credit as the horse whisperer, the seer if you will, on
• 14:24
  things at CNN, and he had long predicted that Don Lemon was a goner
• 14:31
  based upon his inside sources at CNN, and that has now come to fruition
• 14:37
  and turned out to be correct. So take that for what it's worth.
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  John also has made some other predictions about what's going on at CNN, and
• 14:46
  we'll see whether or not they also come true. But you can go back
• 14:50
  into the archives and listen to that interview that we did at the end of
• 14:54
  last year. So quite a big day in the history of CA News Channel.
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  Two of the biggest names are out at two of the biggest outlets,
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  Tucker Carlson at Fox News Channel and Don Lemon at CNN. Now let's move
• 15:11
  on to the quickly evolving war that is emerging and escalating between Donald Trump and
• 15:20
  Ronda Santis over the last few days. In the last few days, Donald
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  Trump has effectively declared full scale war against not just Ronda Santis, but against
• 15:31
  the entire state of Florida. But the timeline here is bizarre even by Trumps
• 15:39
  standards. So we go back to last week. Donald Trump got a lot
• 15:45
  of mainstream news media credit and love for this, which I think is very
• 15:48
  very telling on a lot of fronts. But he orchestrated a big dinner at
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  Marlago for all of the Florida congress people who have endorsed him him instead of
• 16:02
  Rhonda Santis. This would have been last Thursday. Now. The first part
• 16:06
  of this, which I think is interesting and significant, is, you know,
• 16:10
  Trump, who has always been the anti establishment candidate, now seems to
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  be going way out of his way to get all sorts of congressional endorsements,
• 16:21
  which in Trump's world used to be a bad thing, right especially from the
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  Rhinos or the deep staters, because they're all Rhinos and deep staters if he
• 16:30
  needs them to be so all of a sudden, especially if you're from Florida,
• 16:34
  Trump really really wants your endorsement, and so he holds this big dinner.
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  I don't know how he bought these people off. It got lots of
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  very positive for him media coverage, not just even in the right wing,
• 16:48
  but a lot of mainstream news media took great joy into Santis being shown up
• 16:55
  by congressional leaders from his own state endorsing his Rolling Stone even had an article
• 17:03
  that was almost joyous over Trump. Mind fucking that's the phrase. They used
• 17:10
  Ronda Santis a bit by taking the leadership from Florida and having them endorsed Donald
• 17:17
  Trump at such a critical juncture in this process. And this is, by
• 17:21
  the way, is not an isolated situation. We've seen this constantly with the
• 17:25
  mainstream news media, just as I predicted, has been incredibly hypocritical in not
• 17:30
  just normalizing Donald Trump, who they have said for years is a mortal threat
• 17:36
  to democracy, an existential threat to the country. Yet we're going to treat
• 17:40
  him like a normal candidate, and we're even going to praise him whenever possible,
• 17:45
  and we're really going to do everything we can to bring down the only
• 17:48
  guy who can beat him. That's the part that really gets me, is
• 17:51
  it it's very obvious that as of right now, and there's no other logical
• 17:55
  path, the only person that can beat Donald Trump, even in theory,
• 17:59
  is rond De Santis. So the media is really serious about who Trump is,
• 18:03
  who they think Trump is, who they've claimed Trump has been for the
• 18:07
  last basically since twenty sixteen at least, Then what are they doing. Well,
• 18:14
  they're being massive, blatant hypocrites because either they don't really think Trump is
• 18:18
  that dangerous or they really just endure it. Guess two possibilities could be the
• 18:23
  truth. At the same time, they want them to be the candidate because
• 18:26
  they know he'll be easy to beat. He's good for content, he's good
• 18:30
  for ratings, and for them their standpoint, there's no bad scenario even if,
• 18:34
  by the way, he wins the presidency, because for a lot of
• 18:37
  these liberal mainstream outlets, the world was a lot better then. Their ratings
• 18:41
  were better, the content was easier, they didn't have to defend dementia Joe
• 18:47
  Biden every day. So that's what's going on in the bigger picture. But
• 18:52
  back to what was going on with regard to Florida. So Trump gets these
• 18:57
  endorsements, and frankly, to me, I thought it was a situation where
• 19:03
  he could maybe win a battle but lose the war. Not that this was
• 19:07
  going to be the deciding factor, but I thought it was a short term
• 19:11
  gain for potentially long term loss because Trump's brand is anti establishment and if you're
• 19:19
  gonna make yourself the establishment candidate, and you're gonna make yourself you know,
• 19:25
  this is gonna You're gonna prop yourself up by getting congressional endorsements. And let's
• 19:30
  be cleared, you know, while individual congress people can be popular in their
• 19:33
  own district, congress his approval ratings in general are pathetic or even worse than
• 19:38
  Trump's. So the real benefit to Trump here is in a psychological warfare that
• 19:47
  the mind fuck thing I guess with Ron de sandis that these should be de
• 19:52
  Santis people, and Trump is showing the world how powerful he is, how
• 19:56
  he's the alpha male, and they are siding with him. Him. Now,
• 20:00
  what he did to get that to happen, who knows. I mean,
• 20:03
  it could just be as simple as these people are reading the handwriting on
• 20:07
  the wall and realizing that Trump is very likely going to be the winner,
• 20:11
  and they want to be on the winning side, right because you don't want
• 20:15
  to You certainly don't want to piss off the nominee, but you really don't
• 20:18
  want to piss off a guy who could be president who's famous for holding grudges
• 20:22
  and being vindictive as hell. There could also be specific promises being made who
• 20:27
  knows. But the reality is that I don't think it impacts voters. I
• 20:33
  don't think voters really care about these types of endorsements anymore. It's about narrative
• 20:38
  and it's about ego, and it didn't. But here's where it got really
• 20:42
  bizarre, even by Trump standards. So that was Thursday. Then on Friday,
• 20:48
  the entire Trump campaign was basically about crapping on the state of Florida.
• 20:53
  The day after these endorsements were announced, and this dinner happened, and it
• 20:59
  happened in multiple platforms. It happened in a statement where the Trump campaign called
• 21:10
  the state of Florida bleak and dark, bleak and dark, a wake of
• 21:18
  They claimed that it was the real DeSantis record. This is from the Trump's
• 21:22
  statement. The real Desanta's record is one of misery and despair. The Santus
• 21:30
  has left a wake of destruction all across Florida, and people are hurting because
• 21:34
  he has spent more time playing public relations games instead of actually doing the hard
• 21:41
  work needed to improve the lives of the people he represents. I mean,
• 21:48
  I don't even know how I don't even know how you wrap your brain around
• 21:52
  that. That is gaslighting to the ultimate degree. I mean, this is
• 21:56
  a state where people are moving into it at record numbers. This is the
• 22:03
  state that just reelected the Santists with a twenty point victory. His approval ratings
• 22:07
  are at the highest they have ever been. The Hilariously, Trump tries to
• 22:14
  use the fact that housing prices have gone skyrocketing up in Florida in recent years
• 22:22
  as evidence that Florida is too expensive to live in. He even tried to
• 22:26
  claim that the tax exposure in Florida has increased dramatically under the sandis Florida famously
• 22:34
  has no income tax. These are just lies. This is Blayton lying about,
• 22:42
  by the way, not just the state of his theoretical opponent who's not
• 22:45
  even in the race yet. This is his own state. He lives there,
• 22:52
  He has lived there for a very long time. Mara Lago is his
• 22:56
  pride and joy. I mean, I don't even really know how to describe
• 23:03
  what's happening here this is other than to say it is flat out gas lighting.
• 23:10
  It is flat out lying. And you know, a lot of the
• 23:12
  Santa's people are taking it as a sign that Trump is not nearly as secure
• 23:18
  as he appears to be. That even though the polls indicate he's clearly had
• 23:23
  and that the nomination is certainly going in his direction, if not almost already
• 23:27
  there, that he wouldn't be acting like this if that was really the case,
• 23:33
  or if he thought that that was really the case. And I have
• 23:37
  a slightly different theory, which I'm going to get to shortly, because I'm
• 23:41
  as baffled by why you would do this in a way that I don't think
• 23:45
  it's going to impact politically anybody. I mean, I just, I just
• 23:48
  I guess that it goes after DeSantis's narrative, and DeSantis's narrative is potentially very
• 23:56
  concerning to Trump. He's very vulnerable on a lot, but especially COVID,
• 24:00
  which I'll get to momentarily because Trump did go after the Santis on that as
• 24:06
  well. But from a political standpoint, I don't know that people outside of
• 24:11
  Florida are going to care, and I don't think that people inside of Florida
• 24:15
  Republicans are going to be convinced by this if anything, kind of going back
• 24:18
  to the you know, when the battle lose the war, I have to
• 24:22
  believe that what Trump has done over the last few days has probably increased the
• 24:26
  chances that the Santists ends up winning the Florida primary should they be head to
• 24:32
  head Manoamano. By the time the Florida primary comes around, not that people
• 24:37
  are still going to be remembering this, but this is still part of a
• 24:40
  narrative that, you know, people in Florida, at least Republicans are going
• 24:42
  to go, what the hell is he doing? Some people are going to
• 24:45
  be like, Okay, this is unhinged. This is ridiculous, especially for
• 24:49
  a guy who lives here. And then there's the issue of COVID, because
• 24:53
  that's really the you know, the elephant in the corner of the room here.
• 24:59
  That's the part where Trump is most terrified. That is the part where
• 25:03
  Trump really is subconsciously very insecure, maybe even consciously. He knows he shipped
• 25:10
  the bed during COVID, and he's tried for years to rationalize it in every
• 25:15
  way he possibly can, and he's contradicting himself constantly. Carol Markowitz, who
• 25:22
  is a columnist for The New York Post, wrote a great column basically ripping
• 25:29
  Trump to shreds on what he has done over the last few days on Florida,
• 25:33
  but with regard to COVID, and she was one of those like myself
• 25:37
  who very much at the beginning of the COVID panic was calling out the insanity.
• 25:42
  And she's not a Trump hater at all. In fact, in this
• 25:45
  column she praises Donald Trump quite a bit, but she is very interested in
• 25:52
  the fact that Trump is a complete hypocrite when it comes to even his criticism
• 25:57
  onto Santis. He can pick a lane. She writes, quote, this
• 26:03
  is from a quote from Trump. Florida was closed for a long period of
• 26:07
  time. Trump told his favorite audience, the media in January, just a
• 26:11
  few months ago. But then a few days ago, she writes, he
• 26:15
  said, quote, he didn't do well on COVID. He had more deaths
• 26:18
  than almost every country in Florida. I'm not sure what that means, but
• 26:23
  that's Trump speak. The thing he did well on was public relations because the
• 26:27
  numbers weren't what they pretended to be. And the point there is, okay,
• 26:33
  which is it? So you know, she says, somehow Florida both
• 26:37
  locked down too hard but was also opened too soon and killed a lot of
• 26:41
  people. This is classic Trump in general, but specifically when it comes to
• 26:47
  COVID, because he always wants to have it both ways. And my biggest
• 26:51
  concern of many with regard to Trump and COVID is that he still latches onto
• 26:56
  this narrative that his travel shut down saved millions of lives, and the vaccines
• 27:00
  saved millions of lives, and the fifteen days to to you know, to
• 27:07
  flatten the curve save lives. I mean, he's justified the entire basis and
• 27:14
  foundation for the COVID panic because he needs there to be at least some truth
• 27:19
  to that. Otherwise he crapped the bed and and he knows. I mean,
• 27:25
  if he listened to some of his own statements in retrospect, it's clear
• 27:29
  he's having a battle with himself where he's he's fighting between his own instincts.
• 27:34
  And I've always said Trump has good instincts, and I think his instincts were
• 27:40
  that that we are not doing this right, that we should not be shutting
• 27:45
  down, that this we're overreacting, that we're creating more problems than we're gonna
• 27:49
  solve. And and you know, the Trump fans always cherry pick everything he
• 27:55
  said during COVID because he put everything there was against the wall. And you
• 28:00
  know, if you like Trump, there was something you're gonna find there that
• 28:03
  you go, I'll see he was right here. Well, he kept going
• 28:06
  back and forth. I wrote about this extensively at the time for Mediaite,
• 28:10
  where he kept flip flopping because he was having this battle between his instincts and
• 28:15
  having been manipulated by, among others, doctor Fauci and the media, and
• 28:21
  he decided to at want some point to just become a wartime president and turn
• 28:25
  into the curve and wave the white flag and hoped that that was going to
• 28:30
  salvage his reelection. That was naive and dumb, and it didn't work out
• 28:33
  that way, which is why he had to go to the rigged election narrative.
• 28:37
  But the reality here is that Trump always tries to have it both ways,
• 28:44
  and he's doing that with the Santis. Now here's the clip that was
• 28:48
  on a podcast that I've never even heard of with some kids that Trump somehow
• 28:52
  ended up on. I don't even know the story behind how he ended up
• 28:56
  doing an interview here, but here he is with some of the quote that
• 29:02
  I just gave you from the Carol Markowitz column in the New York Post.
• 29:07
  The actual audio of Trump going after DeSantis, this time on the issue of
• 29:14
  the Santis not doing particularly well. When it comes to COVID, not the
• 29:18
  issue of he shut down a lot and early. This was basically he didn't,
• 29:26
  you know, had the results in Florida weren't very good, with the
• 29:29
  implication being that it's because Florida was too free. If you're as confused as
• 29:33
  I am, it's because Trump continues to be a hypocrite on this. But
• 29:37
  this is the second part of those two quotes that I read for you just
• 29:41
  a moment ago. Or do you agree? Why do you think you're a
• 29:44
  better choice than the Santis? Well, actually, if you look at the
• 29:47
  numbers, he didn't do a great job. If you take a look at
• 29:48
  the numbers, he's very high on crime, very high, right at the
• 29:52
  top, almost at the top. I think he gets good publicity, although
• 29:59
  now people are already because I'm putting out the COVID numbers. He didn't do
• 30:02
  well in COVID. He had more deaths and almost every country in Florida.
• 30:07
  I hate to say it because Florida's my state, but he had he did
• 30:11
  not have. He did not do well. It's it's really it's very interesting.
• 30:17
  I don't want to knock anybody, but to think he did well on
• 30:19
  his public relations because the numbers weren't what they pretended to be. Now,
• 30:27
  to be clear, Trump is wrong factually on all of this. Now,
• 30:33
  let's be let's be very very specific about what De Santists did and did not
• 30:40
  do and how Florida did did and did not do during COVID. Yes,
• 30:44
  De Santists followed the conventional wisdom that was being put out there by President Trump,
• 30:49
  by doctor Fauci, by the media for the first couple of months.
• 30:55
  But then he figured it out. Unlike Trump, and unlike Trump, he
• 30:59
  shifted, and he shifted course dramatically. He saw what was happening in South
• 31:03
  Dakota and in Georgia and in the data, and he had conversations with the
• 31:10
  medical establishment in Washington that he has said didn't make any sense to him.
• 31:15
  And so when he figured it out, he had the guts to take Florida,
• 31:19
  obviously the third largest population in the country and taking in a very different
• 31:26
  direction against a massive a massive amount of negative media, both nationally as well
• 31:33
  within his state. And he was getting no help from Donald Trump at all
• 31:37
  at all. Now, Brian Kemp and Georgia deserves probably even more credit,
• 31:42
  at least at the beginning than the Santists because Kemp opened up first. But
• 31:47
  it was the Santists who took the biggest blows. And there are those that
• 31:49
  say, well, you know, Governor nom in South Dakota deserves all the
• 31:53
  credit because they never shut down at all. And look, I think she
• 31:56
  was great and it was important. But comparing what Nome did in South Dakota
• 32:02
  to what the Sandists did in Florida is basically like giving a high school football
• 32:08
  coach the same kind of credit that you give an NFL coach for, you
• 32:13
  know, making some sort of risky maneuver and a change of strategy. I
• 32:16
  mean, the risk reward ratio is vastly different. South Dakota has no liberals
• 32:22
  in the state, no real media scrutiny. She got a little bit of
• 32:25
  national media scrutiny, but no one in South Dakota was going to care.
• 32:30
  It's basically a one party state and there's not that many people there and there's
• 32:35
  no density of population. It's a completely different ball game. That's a high
• 32:37
  school sport in comparison to the NFL, which is Florida. And the Santist
• 32:45
  really was the one who allowed the rest of the country to eventually get back
• 32:47
  to normal, and Trump knows this, and he's lying about the data.
• 32:53
  First of all, the idea that Florida didn't do well in the data is
• 32:58
  an absolute law. I right now. If you don't control for age,
• 33:05
  Florida did slightly worse than average in America, slightly worse than average. If
• 33:12
  you control for age, which you have to give in the nature of COVID,
• 33:16
  Florida did better than average in the United States of America when it came
• 33:22
  to deaths, you know, with regard to how many deaths per million or
• 33:27
  death per hundred thousand, whatever whatever matric you want to use. So the
• 33:30
  percentage of deaths in Florida overall for three years was better than average if you
• 33:37
  control for age. But most importantly, here's the thing. When it comes
• 33:42
  to these stats and the data of it, I always think gets lost.
• 33:46
  If Florida was wrong, as the media proclaimed that they were, if the
• 33:52
  Santis was wrong, if he was really death d you know, death Santis
• 33:57
  death Santas was one of his nicknames at the beginning of the opening of Florida.
• 34:01
  If that had really been the case, it wouldn't be close. That
• 34:07
  data wouldn't be close. It would be blatantly obvious what had happened here.
• 34:13
  You wouldn't even be able to make the argument. You wouldn't have to even
• 34:16
  make the argument that Florida was a disaster because it would be so obvious.
• 34:22
  And you know what also wouldn't happen. You wouldn't have de Santa's winning re
• 34:25
  election by twenty points over a former governor from Florida. If this was really
• 34:31
  anything close to reality that it had been a disaster, what DeSantis did it
• 34:37
  was a rousing success because there was no difference in Florida when in comparison to
• 34:45
  other states, you know, for instance, like here in California, if
• 34:50
  you take what happened in Florida after they opened up and compared to what happened
• 34:53
  in California during that same time period, it's basically the same. In fact,
• 34:58
  during certain periods of time, Florida did better than California, which was
• 35:01
  still in almost complete lockdown with no schools and all sorts of other insane restrictions.
• 35:07
  So it's a lie. It's a total lie, and Trump knows it's
• 35:14
  a lie and doesn't care. But that's the way Trump is. He's a
• 35:16
  pathological liar. But just for the record, just to show that it's a
• 35:21
  lie. Here is a video compilation that has been making its way around the
• 35:28
  Internet and on Twitter of some of the more prominent statements that President Trump made
• 35:34
  about Rhonda Santis and Florida, the state he's now shitting on in all sorts
• 35:38
  of ways during mostly during the COVID panic, but also in general, all
• 35:45
  of these during his presidency. So this is edited together. I didn't do
• 35:50
  this, but it's been, like I said, making the rounds on the
• 35:52
  internet. This is President Trump talking about Rhonda Santis as governor of Florida,
• 35:59
  mostly during the COVID panic. The governor, like Rondas Santis of Florida,
• 36:02
  is doing a great job. We're at a play school of Florida, and
• 36:05
  we have a great governor. Great governor knows exactly what he's doing, terrific
• 36:08
  job. He's just announced that the schools will be open in the fall.
• 36:13
  Governor of Florida, Ron Des Santis, who has done a spectacular job in
• 36:17
  Florida. Governor Ron des Santis doing a fantastic job, enjoys very high popularity,
• 36:22
  and that's for a reason. The reason is he's doing a good job.
• 36:25
  Governor has done a great job. Florida is down, low down China
• 36:30
  virus has done a lot of things right, and you're open and you didn't
• 36:35
  close, and you're just amazing. Right, this guy, a lot of
• 36:37
  people agree with what he's done. A Rondas Santis, Florida. The governor
• 36:42
  doing a fantastic job in Florida. Your governor Ron des Santis, who has
• 36:45
  turned out to be just incredible. And the coronavirus you see is going down
• 36:50
  rapidly, proportionately relatively. When you look at your nursing home situation, it's
• 36:54
  a tribute to your governor and government the job they've done, done a really
• 37:00
  great job, and you have a very big nursing home population. You've done
• 37:02
  a fantastic well. I have a lot of confidence in Run Desantists, a
• 37:06
  lot of faith in Ron DeSantis to make the right decision. He's been doing
• 37:08
  a great job and working very hard. He's a great governor. He's done
• 37:13
  an incredible job, and he's doing a great job as governor. We have
• 37:15
  a great Ron DeSantis, great governor of Florida. He's been a fantastic governor
• 37:20
  for Florida. They're very happy with him. Ron's doing a great job.
• 37:22
  One of the greatest governors in our country. And I know a lot of
• 37:25
  good ones, and I can tell you there's some really bad ones too,
• 37:30
  but this is a great one, Governor Ron Dessentist. Now, unfortunately,
• 37:34
  we no longer live in a world where past statements, especially past statements from
• 37:37
  Donald Trump, really make any difference. I mean, in the old world,
• 37:43
  in the rational world, which at some point used to exist, that
• 37:46
  would be pretty much game, set match. All you'd have to do is
• 37:51
  juxtapose the first clip from Trump that I played for you about how des Sanders
• 37:55
  didn't do very well and compare it to Trump said at the time, and
• 38:01
  you know that would be devastating. That would be you know, a mic
• 38:06
  drop. But that doesn't happen anymore in general or specifically with regard to Trump.
• 38:10
  That's the benefit of having a massive cult on your side. When you
• 38:14
  have a massive cult, then you don't have to play by those rules because
• 38:17
  your cult just dismisses it or they never get exposed to it. And you
• 38:22
  know, you don't have the right media outlets emphasizing it, because there's only
• 38:27
  a couple of media outlets that Trump fans will even remotely respect or trust that
• 38:34
  they're not being lied to, especially in this day and age. So what
• 38:37
  I just played for you should be powerful, I realized, to the vast,
• 38:42
  vast, vast majority of the Republican voting population, it will not be.
• 38:45
  But for the record, since the story of this show is about the
• 38:49
  truth I wanted out there. As far as DeSantis's response to this, of
• 38:54
  course, he's still not officially a candidate and won't be for at least a
• 38:59
  few more weeks. He did effectively respond, where he talked in general terms,
• 39:05
  once again not using Donald Trump's name and taking mostly the high road.
• 39:12
  But in a speech that he gave over the weekend, here was effectively his
• 39:17
  response to this idea that his record on COVID was not particularly good and he
• 39:23
  of course uses the F word fauci, And here's what that sounded like.
• 39:28
  And to me, leadership is having the courage to make difficult decisions in the
• 39:32
  teeth of opposition and criticism. A leader must have the confidence to stand all
• 39:38
  alone if need be, And so for us, as I got into office,
• 39:43
  COVID presented that situation for us, because we were in a situation the
• 39:47
  third largest state in the country, one of the highest percentage of elderly economy
• 39:52
  based on tourism, which we needed travel to continue. So this situation was
• 39:57
  an existential threat to our state. But I made the judgment leaders take the
• 40:02
  bull by the horns and make the decisions for themselves. They don't subcontract out
• 40:07
  their leadership to health bureaucrats like doctor Fauci. Now, again, in the
• 40:16
  rational world, the f word Fauci ought to be a mic drop, game
• 40:22
  set match moment, right, I mean, if we were still living in
• 40:28
  a world where logic and rationality and facts mattered. And Trump lost in twenty
• 40:35
  eighteen, he lost in twenty twenty, he lost in twenty twenty two,
• 40:38
  and he's old, and it's clear that he crapped the bed during COVID and
• 40:44
  he sucked up to doctor Fauci. Was manipulated by this fraud, and he
• 40:49
  was wrong about everything, and much of the country's foundation was corrupted and eroded
• 40:53
  because of it. And he was running against the guy who figured Fauci out
• 40:59
  very quickly and went in the other direction and turned out to be right.
• 41:02
  That would be it, game set match. The scantists would win. But
• 41:07
  again, for reasons I've already are outlined, we don't live in that world,
• 41:12
  and I'm not even sure we live in the world where the Fauci world,
• 41:15
  the first Fauci word is really powerful enough for the Santists to even get
• 41:23
  even with Donald Trump. What I mean by that is, yes, the
• 41:29
  Faucci issue is significant, it's real. It gets the Santists into the game,
• 41:36
  but I don't think it wins the game. It's unfortunately, it's I
• 41:39
  don't think it's going to be powerful enough, partially because a lot of the
• 41:45
  Fauci haters are already Trump cult members, and so they just discard the Fauci
• 41:50
  issue. And you know, most of the country is not educated as to
• 41:53
  what a fraud doctor Fauci is, So you're dealing with a fairly limited number
• 41:58
  of people who aren't Trump cult members, who also feel as if the Fauci
• 42:02
  issue is the be all end all, that it's super potent, that it's
• 42:07
  a disqualifier. Anybody that ever supported Fauci should never be a president or the
• 42:13
  Republican nominee ever. Again, I also think that COVID is fairly quickly fading,
• 42:19
  unbelievably from a lot of people's memories. The anger is gone because we're
• 42:24
  not facing the same kind of life on a day to day basis, and
• 42:30
  people's memories are short, and Faucci is no longer in power in theory,
• 42:36
  although the media still thinks that he is. And and so I don't think
• 42:40
  that this is an issue that's gonna win the day for De Santis as much
• 42:44
  as it should and I wish and as much as I wish that it would,
• 42:47
  I think it's actually gonna fade. And that might be why do Santis
• 42:52
  decided he had to, you know, and has already done so with Piers
• 42:55
  Morgan, But now he's gonna seemingly mentioned Fauci more and more, saying that
• 43:00
  he would have fired Fauci and that that's a big difference between him and Donald
• 43:05
  Trump, because this is an issue that is not going to get more potent
• 43:07
  in all likelihood as we move on. Now. It is possible that,
• 43:12
  you know, maybe something happens on gain of Function and Fauci gets I don't
• 43:16
  know, charge for perjury or who the heck knows. Something could bring Fauci
• 43:22
  back into the news in a big way, which would be bad for Trump,
• 43:25
  But by and large that's probably not likely to happen. So I'm okay.
• 43:30
  With de Santis, even though I don't think that the Santis should be
• 43:35
  full on attacking Trump directly right now when he's so far behind on the polls,
• 43:39
  because it is not as effective when you're in a weekend position, you
• 43:44
  have to attack Trump from a position of leverage. I'm okay with mentioning Fauci
• 43:49
  now as much as you possibly can, especially when Trump's going after your COVID
• 43:52
  record, which is basically the core of your entire candidacy. So I like
• 43:59
  it, but I mean, I don't think it's nearly as powerful as it
• 44:02
  could be, or even I thought that it might be when this whole thing
• 44:07
  started off. It is powerful, but it's going to have to be more.
• 44:13
  It's not a knockout blow. Fauci is not a knockout blow to Trump
• 44:17
  unfortunately. Now, as far as what's really going on here, what's the
• 44:22
  real motivation? I mentioned earlier that you know a lot of the Santis people
• 44:27
  who I'm in contact with actually think that Trump's behavior over the last several days
• 44:32
  is the best indication yet that the Santis is in a good position that if
• 44:37
  he was really so confident, he would not be lashing out about Florida in
• 44:40
  such a bizarre way, having to Florida delegation to his home and Mara Lago
• 44:45
  and and you know, celebrating their endorsements and then crapping all over the state
• 44:51
  and crapping all over the Santis in every possible way. And I realized that
• 44:58
  I am generally a pessimist, and I have even theorized previously that this is
• 45:04
  not consistent with someone's thought process Trumps that indicate that he is very, very
• 45:09
  confident. I would like to believe that there's some truth to that. I
• 45:15
  would like to believe that part of what is happening here is that Trump is
• 45:20
  not feeling nearly as confident as the polling would suggest that he should be feeling
• 45:25
  that In theory, that he's a little concerned because de Santis hasn't even announced
• 45:32
  yet, and that while his big post indictment bounce, and by the way,
• 45:37
  I just I'm just never get over the idea that there's a massive post
• 45:40
  indictment bounce in a Republican presidential primary. But that's the world we're living,
• 45:45
  and that that bounce seemingly has dissipated. It hasn't gone away totally, but
• 45:52
  it has ebbed. The fire, just as I kind of predicted because having
• 45:59
  dealt with my mother and law and seeing the emotion that she expressed post indictment
• 46:04
  and how it took a while before we were able to bring her back down
• 46:07
  to earth and talk her off the ledge. It has not surprised me that
• 46:09
  the emotion of the indictment and the rally around the flag effects seems to be
• 46:15
  dissipating someone. It's not dissipating as much as some pro de Santis people would
• 46:20
  like to believe, but what it has to some degree. And so you
• 46:25
  can make an argument that Trump's looking around and going, well, I'm still
• 46:29
  not really over fifty percent in most of these polls. The Santis isn't even
• 46:32
  in the race yet. I still may have more legal troubles coming down the
• 46:37
  road. And you know, I could I need to destroy the Santis now
• 46:44
  while I still have the opportunity to do so. That is a very plausible
• 46:49
  scenario that makes some sense. Trump is a master at this kind of thing.
• 46:53
  He is a master of leverage. He knows that when you have the
• 46:57
  advantage, you must use it before you lose it. And and he,
• 47:01
  you know, realizes that the Santis is handicapped here because he actually has a
• 47:05
  job, and he's running a state and he's, um, you know,
• 47:09
  I got a book out and he hasn't officially announced, and so it's basically,
• 47:15
  you know, a free shot. These are free shots that Trump gets
• 47:17
  at the Santist right now because the Santist is not fully equipped to respond in
• 47:22
  kind. And that that strategically could be exactly what is happening here, and
• 47:29
  that would all make sense. But there seems to be another element of this
• 47:32
  equation that I wanted to add during this particular subject today, and that is
• 47:39
  that part of what Trump seems to be doing is consistent, at least in
• 47:45
  my mind, with what a mob boss does to a deputy that he views
• 47:52
  is having gotten out of line. And it's pretty obvious that Trump has the
• 47:58
  mind mentality of a mob boss. He's had this throughout his entire career.
• 48:02
  He's even had some connections with mob bosses in the past, and certainly his
• 48:09
  lawyer famously had a lot of mob connections but Roy Cohne. But I think
• 48:17
  that that could be motivating a lot of what's happening here, that that Trump
• 48:22
  could be actually very confident, but that he's making an example out of Ronda
• 48:28
  Santis that he thinks he can destroy Ronda Santis, roving the gall to even
• 48:32
  suggest that he can run against Donald Trump, that it is his throne.
• 48:38
  You go after the king, you must kill him. If you don't kill
• 48:42
  him, you will be killed. That's the mob mentality. And you must
• 48:45
  kill anyone who goes after you because you must send a message to everybody else
• 48:51
  that there is a heavy price to pay should you go after me and fail.
• 48:55
  And so I think that is the more likely motivation. And then insecurity,
• 49:00
  as much as I would love for it to be primarily insecurity, there
• 49:04
  might be some insecurity there, but I think this is mostly about teaching De
• 49:07
  Santis a lesson. So there's three things. A little bit insecurity, a
• 49:12
  little bit of strategy with regard to using the leverage while you have it during
• 49:17
  a time period where De Santis can't fully fight back. And then there's the
• 49:22
  mob boss teaching the lesson to a deputy. And there's an element of the
• 49:27
  mob boss theory that puts a little bit more meat on the bone than me
• 49:30
  just speculating that that's what's going on in Trump's mind. I did not realize
• 49:37
  until about a week ago that there's a woman in Trump's sphere who is basically
• 49:44
  running his operation, who is from Florida and used to work for Ron de
• 49:50
  Santis and had a massive falling out with Ron de Santis, and her name
• 49:54
  is Susie Wiles. Susie Wiles is a fascinating character because she's a sixty five
• 50:01
  year old woman who happens to be the daughter of Pat Summarrol. That's right,
• 50:08
  So if you had Pat Summarroll's daughter playing a major role in the Republican
• 50:14
  presidential Primaria twenty twenty four, you can pick up your winnings. Pat summer
• 50:19
  All for those of you don't know, it was a CBS sportscasting legend,
• 50:23
  actually New York Giant football player before that put a football and golf broadcasting legend.
• 50:30
  He and John Madden were famous working together on NFL football games. And
• 50:37
  it's obvious to me that that's a big part of the allure that she has
• 50:40
  in Trump's world. I mean, she has two things going for her that
• 50:45
  are huge. One, she used to work for DeSantis and had a falling
• 50:49
  out with him, and apparently you know, they hate each other now.
• 50:52
  And two she comes from good breeding as Trump would say. In fact,
• 50:59
  Trump has been quoted is saying that she comes from good genes. Trump loves
• 51:04
  that kind of thing. I mean, Trump is basically into eugenics. He
• 51:07
  loves celebrity, and the fact that she is the daughter of a guy I'm
• 51:12
  sure he admired and his youth as a media star goes a long way in
• 51:19
  her having a lot of capital with Donald Trump. Well, it appears as
• 51:22
  if, and there's been some very positive profiles in mainstream media about Susie Wiles
• 51:29
  recently, which it goes again to this whole narrative that is so disgusting to
• 51:32
  me that the mainstream news media is normalizing Trump and praising his campaign whenever it
• 51:38
  is possible in a way that is obviously intended to help try to destroy De
• 51:45
  Santis, whom they fear far far more apparently than Trump, the guy they
• 51:50
  claim is a mortal threat to democracy. But it seems to me as if
• 51:53
  Susie Wiles is driving a lot of this and that we've got a lot of
• 51:59
  vendet going on here, a lot of vengeance, and so you have,
• 52:02
  you know, Trump, the angry mob boss, and Susie Wiles, who
• 52:07
  is incentivized to go after her former boss in Rhonda Santis, and so this
• 52:12
  is this is already ugly, and it's gonna get worse. It's gonna get
• 52:16
  much worse. And this is not good for beating Joe Biden, regardless of
• 52:22
  the scenario of how it ends up. And it's part of why I'm convinced
• 52:28
  that even though most of the country does not want Joe Biden even run,
• 52:30
  that he is right now the heavy favorite to be the next president of the
• 52:35
  United States. I'll get into some of the most recent polling in a moment,
• 52:38
  but I want to play one other clip that the deals with Trump and
• 52:44
  his impact on the Republican Party. And the reason I want to play it
• 52:47
  is because it comes from Bob Costas of all people, now, Bob Costa
• 52:52
  is speaking of Pat Summer all and sportscasting legends. Bob Costa is obviously a
• 52:57
  sportscasting legend in one of himself. I've gotten no Bob pretty well because of
• 53:00
  the Penn State, Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky situation over the last ten or
• 53:06
  eleven years, and I've talked many times, We've done an interview together.
• 53:10
  We text fairly frequently, and he went on CNN. Now CNN, you
• 53:15
  know, for all their troubles, I do like the fact that they're giving
• 53:21
  a platform to rational liberals like Bill Maher, like Bob Costs, like Charles
• 53:28
  Barkley. Apparently you know that that I'm all in favor of that. If
• 53:34
  they're not going to go conservative, then at least give some voice to the
• 53:38
  rational liberal wing what's left of it within the Democratic Party, and Bob Costas,
• 53:45
  in my view, clearly fits that description and I have had very open
• 53:51
  conversations about this. He refers to himself, by the way, as a
• 53:53
  Bill Maher Democrat. Interesting because you know, Costas used to have a show
• 54:00
  on HBO before they had cutbacks, and that show was dropped. But Bill
• 54:05
  Maher's show on HBO has been exceedingly popular, and Bill Maher has not backed
• 54:08
  down at all. In fact, Bill Maher seems to be putting his foot
• 54:12
  on the accelerator, which was not surprising to me actually after having a conversation
• 54:15
  with Bob about this and how HBO was viewing Bill Maher. But Bill Maher
• 54:20
  is definitely putting his foot down on the accelerator on this rational liberal lane when
• 54:27
  it comes to the media, because very few people are filling it well.
• 54:30
  Costas did an interview with CNN the other day, and for context, it's
• 54:36
  important to point out he's going to refer here to a quote unquote conservative commentator
• 54:40
  by the name of Jonah Goldberg, a guy I know a little bit and
• 54:45
  don't really like. But Jonah Goldberg is someone who left Fox News in what
• 54:52
  he stated was an active principle. I was far more cynical about why Jonah
• 54:58
  Goldberg and Stephen Hayes partner left Fox News Channel as commentators a couple of years
• 55:04
  ago. But the reason why Costas, while talking about Trump and his corrosive
• 55:07
  impact on the Republican Party, mentions Joanah Goldberg is that Jonah Goldberg was in
• 55:12
  the studio at the time, which you're not going to be able to tell
• 55:15
  from this audio. But it's important to understand why Costas mentions Jonah Goldberg.
• 55:21
  But here is Bob Costas's view on Trump and what has happened to the Republican
• 55:25
  Party because of him, propaganda stuff, the cult of Trump. Look what's
• 55:30
  happened to the Republican Party, And you ask what would be different? Look
• 55:36
  what's happened the mitt romneys of the world that John McCain, even when he
• 55:39
  was with us, they've been marginalized. SEPAC used to be a place where
• 55:45
  thoughtful conservatives like Jonah Goldberg would show up to Commisser aid and to make their
• 55:50
  points. Now they might as well arrive in a clown car rather than a
• 55:53
  limousine. Johnah Goldberg by my left box, that's right left Fox. As
• 55:58
  a matter of principal, yes, and good for him. This is not
• 56:00
  a question of being conservative or or being Republican. This is lunacy. They've
• 56:07
  descended into madness where where people whose only objective is their next appearance on Fox
• 56:13
  News hold congressional seats and have sway within the party, and they all live
• 56:17
  in fear of Trump. It's a cult. It's not a principle. It's
• 56:22
  not a philosophy. It's no longer a party so much as it is a
• 56:25
  cult. Some of them are just that leaped crazy, you know, the
• 56:29
  Marjorie Taylor Greens of the world. But others are just so spineless and cowardly,
• 56:35
  and so in fear of what turning on Trump and even acknowledging this madness
• 56:39
  would would cause that they bite their tongues or they say things that they should
• 56:44
  know better. They don't really believe it, but you know, that's the
• 56:46
  Kevin McCarthy's of the world. And Fox News could have been could have been
• 56:51
  a corrective to that, if Fox News and said, look, hey,
• 56:54
  we lean right, but this isn't true. Now. When I saw that
• 56:58
  clip, I thought, wow, Okay, the Bob cost as I know,
• 57:00
  and I thought that was really good. And I actually reached out and
• 57:05
  texted him and congratulated on the appearance and said that my experience with Sepak was
• 57:12
  exactly as he described, and I thought he was dead on with regard to
• 57:16
  the Trump cult. But I did need to take some issue with regard to
• 57:22
  how we described Jonah Goldberg, because I don't believe Jonah Goldberg made an act
• 57:25
  of principle. I believe Jonah Goldberg made a strategic exit knowing that he was
• 57:30
  on the verge of getting fired, and decided very craftily and very effectively because
• 57:36
  the mainstream news media loves this narrative that he was leaving and Stephen Hayes was
• 57:40
  leaving Fox News Channel. The reason why they were leaving was because they saw
• 57:45
  the handwriting on the wall and they used it to create their own mainstream street
• 57:52
  cred and they did so very effectively. I even mocked Jonah Goldberg for this
• 57:58
  on Twitter and he responded and we had some sort of spat about it,
• 58:01
  but he, frankly, his response was pretty weak because I know I'm right
• 58:06
  and to Bob causes his credit. And this is why, you know,
• 58:08
  I really do have a lot of respect for Bob, not just as a
• 58:12
  talent, because I do think he was probably the most talented sportscaster of his
• 58:15
  generation, not that he had that much competition, but Bob was really good.
• 58:21
  A lot of people don't like him, especially conservatives, but he's a
• 58:23
  very smart and a very thoughtful and a very honest guy, and I have
• 58:28
  found that well. He and I rarely agree. He will always acknowledge when
• 58:35
  you know he's made a mistake or a flaw, and he I explained to
• 58:38
  him what was really going on with Jonah Goldberg, and he basically copped to
• 58:42
  it and said he was he was basically impacted by the fact that Jonah was
• 58:46
  in the studio at the time, which he said it, but that he
• 58:50
  stands by the rest of it. And I thought, wow, that's that's
• 58:52
  a pretty impressive response for a guy a celebrity of Costas's level, and so
• 58:59
  you know, I further aspect him for being honest and open and transparent about
• 59:02
  all that. But I think that what Costa says is right and important,
• 59:07
  and coming from a guy like that. It's odd given the fact that he's
• 59:09
  known as a sportscaster. But you know, the rational liberal element of society
• 59:16
  has got to have a voice. I really think it's an important part out
• 59:20
  of this the Bill Mahers of the world. You know, you might even
• 59:23
  put Joe Rogan in this category. I only certainly not as liberal as Bill
• 59:28
  Maher, but people like that. There've been a few that have spoken out,
• 59:32
  especially because of the COVID insanity. Bob was not one of those.
• 59:37
  Bob and I had a lot of texts about the COVID insanity. I haven't
• 59:40
  nudged Bob across the off the across the end zone yet on that one.
• 59:45
  I doubt I will. But the point is that the rational liberal wing has
• 59:50
  got to have a voice. It has to in order to That's the easiest
• 59:53
  way to keep the woke nut jobs in check is if the the rational liberal
• 1:00:00
  voice still exists and still has some semblance of a power and if Bob Costas
• 1:00:06
  can help in that, then I applaud it. Now back more directly to
• 1:00:09
  the Republican primary process and the polling, there's been one new entry into the
• 1:00:15
  race and the Republican side, and it's Larry Elder, who is I guess
• 1:00:20
  now former Los Angeles radio talk show host who ran against Gavin Newsom and the
• 1:00:25
  recall election during COVID, and I believe single handedly ensured that Gavin Newsom would
• 1:00:31
  win the recall election. Now, Newsom would have won the recall regardless of
• 1:00:37
  Larry Elder, but Larry Elder became the face of the recall and that was
• 1:00:42
  devastating. It was probably always going to be devastating the matter who the alternative
• 1:00:46
  to, you know, basically, the way they do the recalls, you
• 1:00:49
  vote yes or no on the recall and then if if the recall passes okay,
• 1:00:52
  which candidate gets the most votes. And so the idea of recalling Newsom
• 1:00:58
  was appealing to almost fifty percent of Californians during the height of the COVID insanity.
• 1:01:04
  But then when you actually had to pick somebody to replace him, that's
• 1:01:07
  where the problem came in, and no one wanted to go for Larry Elder,
• 1:01:13
  he's a classic radio talk show host grifter. I knew Larry a bit
• 1:01:16
  when I was a radio talk show host in Los Angeles and I had lunch
• 1:01:21
  together at Morton Steakhouse right underneath our studio, which I think he chose on
• 1:01:25
  purpose because he wanted the brass at my radio station KFI to see that we
• 1:01:31
  were having lunch together. I was very naive at this time. I thought
• 1:01:36
  that Larry wanted to be friends or allies or something, and it was very
• 1:01:39
  obvious in retrospect that he was trying to get a job, probably my job
• 1:01:44
  at KFI, and wanted to find out whether or not I was close to
• 1:01:47
  leaving there. That's how I now perceive it. So I think that Larry
• 1:01:51
  is a snake. I also don't think he's very smart. I also know
• 1:01:55
  I think that he's a grifter who's doing this purely to get on five news
• 1:02:00
  channel and do whatever he can for the last the vestiges of his media career.
• 1:02:05
  It's not helpful. I mean, I guess that, you know,
• 1:02:07
  having another person of color potentially, I don't think he's gonna make the debate
• 1:02:13
  stage, but I guess in theory having a person of color could have could
• 1:02:16
  be a value since he's a black man. But you know, I don't
• 1:02:22
  think that there's much value of anything. Anything that further clutters the field is
• 1:02:27
  bad for the ultimate goal of trying to prevent Donald Trump from being the nominee.
• 1:02:30
  And someone like Larry Elder, if he really cared about that, would
• 1:02:35
  understand it. But he doesn't because like all talk radio show hosts, he's
• 1:02:38
  all about himself, and like all conservative media grifters, he's all about himself
• 1:02:44
  and doesn't really care what's good for the country. And we'll probably end up
• 1:02:47
  supporting Trump in the end as well, because that's how you maintain a conservative
• 1:02:52
  media career in this day and age. So that's Larry Elder entering the race.
• 1:02:57
  As far as the Poland is concerned, I've already mentioned that there is
• 1:03:00
  some indication that the Trump post indictment surge is waning a bit. However,
• 1:03:07
  it's not gone. In New Hampshire specifically, Trump has clearly taken the lead
• 1:03:13
  in New Hampshire by about twenty twenty one points in the latest poll. And
• 1:03:17
  you know, this is a big change from what had been the reality previously,
• 1:03:22
  and that's not good But the only good part of that particular New Hampshire
• 1:03:27
  poll is Trump is still well below fifty percent. The poll includes Governor Sanunu
• 1:03:31
  of New Hampshire who's not really going to run, and none of his support
• 1:03:35
  is going to go to Trump, and so you know, in theory,
• 1:03:38
  but the problem is timing wise, this is not going to happen. But
• 1:03:43
  I believe that it's going to be very easy to keep Trump below fifty percent
• 1:03:46
  in New Hampshire. The problem is no one else is going to get close
• 1:03:51
  to fifty percent because there's going to be too many candidates in the race by
• 1:03:54
  the time New Hampshire comes around, which is the second in the calendar behind
• 1:03:59
  the Iowa caucuses. So not good at all if you're a De Santist fan
• 1:04:02
  like I am, but also not catastrophic given the current circumstances. Similarly,
• 1:04:09
  there was a new national pull out from NBC, and Trump has been crushing
• 1:04:14
  the Santist and everybody else, and the national polls post indictment. This poll
• 1:04:18
  once again has Trump below fifty percent and only winning by thirteen percent over run
• 1:04:24
  De Santis. So that to me was maybe the best indication yet that the
• 1:04:30
  post indictment bounce or surge is waning fairly significantly. But those polls, while
• 1:04:38
  they're interesting to me, are not nearly as important or as impactful in theory
• 1:04:45
  as the polls that compare how the Santist does against Biden versus how Trump does
• 1:04:50
  against Biden in specific states. That's the most important pulling out right now.
• 1:04:57
  And unfortunately a number of Republicans who are actually even exposed to this information,
• 1:05:02
  I'm sure is minuscule at this time. But every single one of these,
• 1:05:09
  every single one of them comes out exactly as I've told you that they would.
• 1:05:13
  In the key states. Desantist does better against Biden than Trump does every
• 1:05:18
  single time. Just out today, there's a new one out of Wisconsin where
• 1:05:25
  Desantist does better than Trump against Biden. In fact, de Santis beats Biden
• 1:05:29
  in Wisconsin. Trump loses to Biden in Wisconsin, and Wisconsin is key,
• 1:05:36
  especially for the Trump map. See that's what's so important about this. I
• 1:05:41
  keep saying Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, that's the only path for Trump because
• 1:05:46
  those are the three states that he barely lost, which if he had won
• 1:05:51
  in twenty twenty, if he had gotten forty four thousand more votes in total
• 1:05:56
  in those three states, it would have been a two sixty nine two sixty
• 1:05:59
  nine, which would of course been a civil war in twenty twenty especially given
• 1:06:02
  the circumstances at the time, but in twenty twenty four would result in the
• 1:06:09
  Trump victory because the Electoral College votes have shifted slightly in his favor. So
• 1:06:13
  it's all about if a Trump fan, the only path is Georgia, Arizona,
• 1:06:18
  and Wisconsin and hang on in North Carolina, which is a big if
• 1:06:21
  because the Santist does better against Biden than Trump does in North Carolina. In
• 1:06:27
  fact, most of the polls I've seen in North Carolina, Trump actually loses
• 1:06:31
  to Biden currently there, and that's game set match. But in Wisconsin.
• 1:06:35
  Now, Wisconsin, a state where even you know, any critic of Desantist
• 1:06:41
  has been saying, well, what's his path? I And you know,
• 1:06:44
  there's no obvious connection between DeSantis and Wisconsin other than his name is not Donald
• 1:06:49
  Trump. And and there's a like I said, a new pole out indicating
• 1:06:55
  that Desantist does better against Biden, beats him currently in Wisconsin, than Trump,
• 1:07:00
  who loses to Biden in Wisconsin. And that's the path Georgia, Arizona,
• 1:07:08
  and Wisconsin. It can be done if you're Ron de Santis because you
• 1:07:13
  don't have nearly the negative disapproval ratings. You don't have a fifty five six
• 1:07:17
  fifty seven percent disapproval rating as Donald Trump does. And that is so incredibly
• 1:07:25
  important now as far as Biden and the general election is concerned. Now,
• 1:07:31
  maybe the most interesting polling data over the last few days isn't directly with regard
• 1:07:38
  to the Republican nominating process, but instead has to do with a general election
• 1:07:45
  and specifically with regard to how unpopular a Joe Biden candidacy is. As of
• 1:07:50
  this moment. There is one pull out that indicates, and this is really
• 1:07:56
  just pathetic when it comes to the state of America, it does look as
• 1:08:00
  if we're heading for Joe Biden versus Donald Trump in a general election. And
• 1:08:05
  yet a new poll out indicates that seventy percent of the public does not want
• 1:08:12
  Biden to run for reelection. That is a stunning number, That is a
• 1:08:17
  massive number. I cannot believe that anybody, maybe even I don't even think
• 1:08:23
  Trump in twenty twenty would have come in anywhere close, especially in twenty nineteen.
• 1:08:30
  I wouldn't have come anywhere close to that kind of a number. Now,
• 1:08:33
  my guess is that most of that seventy percent that doesn't want Biden to
• 1:08:38
  run are either Republicans or there are people that don't feel that strongly about it.
• 1:08:44
  It's like, boy, I wish, I wish Biden wouldn't run.
• 1:08:46
  He's eighty years old, and he doesn't seem like he's totally with it.
• 1:08:48
  I sure wished there was somebody else that could run. That doesn't mean they're
• 1:08:53
  not going to vote for him, especially if the opponent is Trump. But
• 1:08:57
  seventy percent don't want Biden to run, in sixty percent don't want Trump to
• 1:09:00
  run, and that looks like it's going to be the matchup. I mean,
• 1:09:03
  how crazy is that. By the way, there was another poll out
• 1:09:08
  at the same time period that indicated seventy percent don't want Trump to run.
• 1:09:13
  I mean, it's it's just unbelievable. How the hell did we get to
• 1:09:15
  this place where two incredibly unpopular old geezers are likely going to be the two
• 1:09:21
  major party Democrat and Republican nominees for president in twenty twenty four, during obviously
• 1:09:28
  a very critical juncture in the history of our country and it's such just so
• 1:09:31
  sad. Now on the Democratic side, it appears as if, as I've
• 1:09:35
  been saying all along that it's going to be Biden, that he's going to
• 1:09:40
  announce In main fact, I've announced already by the time you hear this podcast,
• 1:09:45
  but it's been widely rumored and reported that at some point this week he's
• 1:09:49
  going to put out a video announcement declaring that he is officially a candidate.
• 1:09:55
  There has been some reports that the Democratic Party has already decided that there will
• 1:10:00
  be no debates on their side of the ledger when it comes to primary debates,
• 1:10:05
  which means that RFK Junior, who's in the race, is going to
• 1:10:10
  be pushed aside that he'll have no way of getting any traction against Biden.
• 1:10:14
  I mean, I can understand why they wouldn't want Biden to have any debates
• 1:10:17
  with anybody, but especially RFK Junior, because r K Junior would hit him
• 1:10:23
  in ways that would be very damaging in a general election. He would hit
• 1:10:28
  him on the vaccine, and he would hit him on COVID insanity in general,
• 1:10:31
  you know, on some issues that might seem like he's hitting them from
• 1:10:35
  from the right, even though RFK Junior is about as liberal as they get,
• 1:10:41
  and of course the media has no interest in someone getting a voice who
• 1:10:45
  is his anti vaccination as RFK Junior. It's just astonishing that a guy who
• 1:10:51
  you know, Robert Kennedy Junior, is obviously the son of a slain presidential
• 1:10:58
  candidate, Robert Kennedy, and the nephew of a slain president, John F.
• 1:11:01
  Kennedy, and the Kennedy name has been gold for generations now in the
• 1:11:06
  media, and they're just going to completely ignore him as much as they possibly
• 1:11:11
  can because they know it's dangerous to Joe Biden. But at this point it's
• 1:11:15
  really hard to imagine how Joe Biden is not the Democratic nominee. I mean,
• 1:11:21
  if he announces and no one else you know of a major candidate variety
• 1:11:27
  like Gavin Newsom has the balls to do it, and there's no debates,
• 1:11:32
  then Biden's the guy. Just as I've been saying now, it's fascinating to
• 1:11:39
  me and more than a little disturbing that it is obvious that Gavin Newsom,
• 1:11:44
  our king here in California, whom I loathe more than any other political figure
• 1:11:47
  in America, maybe any other human being, in America that's not in jail.
• 1:11:54
  Is clearly acting like an insurance policy for the Democratic Party in case Biden
• 1:12:00
  just can't do it, which is from a physical standpoint, obviously still very
• 1:12:03
  much in play. It would be for anybody who's eighty years old, but
• 1:12:08
  especially someone like Joe Biden. Now when it comes to Newsom, this has
• 1:12:15
  always been a very scary proposition to me, as someone who lows him that
• 1:12:20
  he could be the Democratic nominee, and I've been very, very skeptical that
• 1:12:25
  he could be the Democratic nominee. And it certainly appears as if that door
• 1:12:29
  is shutting, with Biden announcing and the Democratic Party effectively saying we're not going
• 1:12:33
  to do any debates. However, the polling is so clear, and I've
• 1:12:39
  already referenced some of it, with seventy percent of the public not even wanting
• 1:12:42
  Biden to run for reelection, and with Democratic polls showing Biden well below fifty
• 1:12:47
  percent, when a bunch of theoretical Democratic candidates are put up against him,
• 1:12:54
  that it's really remarkable in telling that nobody is going to have the guts to
• 1:12:59
  take that five against him. Now, Newsom is obviously the person most well
• 1:13:04
  positioned to do so because Kamala Harris is Biden's vice president and she can't run
• 1:13:10
  against the president because her entire brand is based in her being Joe Biden's VP,
• 1:13:15
  and that would just destroy her forever if she ran against her own president,
• 1:13:20
  unless the physical incapacitation was so obvious, and if that was the case,
• 1:13:26
  Biden would resign and make Harris president, which I've predicted many times will
• 1:13:30
  happen eventually if Biden wins reelection. So I've been dismissive of the fact that
• 1:13:36
  Newsome is going to be the nominee, certainly not in twenty twenty four,
• 1:13:39
  but boy are they doing everything they possibly can to facilitate that in a case
• 1:13:44
  of an emergency, And the most recent effort to do that on top of
• 1:13:48
  Gavin Newsom's Red State lecture tour, which by the way, even the Atlantic,
• 1:13:54
  the Liberal Atlantic, basically poured cold water all over in the last couple
• 1:14:00
  of days, saying that Newsom want to go back to California and fix the
• 1:14:03
  problems there and not worry about the rest of the country, which I couldn't
• 1:14:08
  believe and was clearly a shot across the bow at his thoughts of potentially running
• 1:14:14
  for president, but his wife, Newsom's wife Jennifer Newsom gave an interview to
• 1:14:20
  Jen Vasaki, who is for you know, she's Biden's former press secretary.
• 1:14:26
  She now works for MSNBC where she does all these softball interviews with liberal figures,
• 1:14:31
  which is an incredible conflict of interest, but we don't worry about that
• 1:14:34
  in the media anymore. But Vasaki did a very soft interview with Newsome himself,
• 1:14:40
  and then she also did an interview with Newsom's wife, Jennifer. Now,
• 1:14:45
  this clip I'm about to play for you is astonishing on a couple levels.
• 1:14:50
  It is gaslighting in the extreme. I mean it is Donald Trump level,
• 1:14:55
  maybe more than it's more than Donald Trump level gas lighting, like for
• 1:14:58
  instance, on Ron to Sam in Florida's handling a COVID. This is a
• 1:15:01
  fantasy world. This is Newsome talking about her husband, Gavin Newsom in a
• 1:15:09
  way. I get that she's the wife and she's supposed to say nice things,
• 1:15:13
  but it's what she's saying and how she's saying, and how obviously she
• 1:15:17
  is trying to create the narrative for him to be potentially, if not the
• 1:15:24
  Democratic nominee in twenty twenty four, certainly down the road in twenty twenty eight.
• 1:15:29
  But the most shocking and stunning and thing that should have created a lot
• 1:15:32
  of pushback, which of course did not, is when she refers to her
• 1:15:36
  husband as a very loyal family man, a very loyal family man. It's
• 1:15:45
  like almost like calling O. J. Simpson a great husband. I mean,
• 1:15:50
  this is a guy who forget about the fact that he's been married previously,
• 1:15:56
  you know, to a Trump supporter. Now Donald Trump Junior's fiance.
• 1:16:00
  Say no, no, I'm talking about a completely different relationship. It has
• 1:16:03
  been memory hold where Newsom had an affair with a woman who was working for
• 1:16:09
  him, who was married to his best friend and top campaign aide. I'm
• 1:16:15
  not making it up. This has been acknowledged it as a fact. There's
• 1:16:19
  no there's no controversy about this. I mean, so, how do you
• 1:16:24
  become a very loyal family man after you have done that when you've mean it
• 1:16:28
  should have been a you know, by today's definition, a massive me to
• 1:16:31
  violation on every possible level. A woman who worked for him, married to
• 1:16:35
  his best friend and top campaign aide. That's a very loyal family man.
• 1:16:42
  With no pushback. According to his wife. And here's what that entire clip
• 1:16:45
  sounded like, what do you think people misunderstand or get wrong about your husband?
• 1:16:50
  A good question too. I would say that, well, I I
• 1:16:57
  a couple of things. One is that he's a familyman, and he's a
• 1:17:00
  husband and a partner, and that he's just a very loyal, loving,
• 1:17:08
  but also private person. You know, increasingly he's felt comfortable talking about his
• 1:17:15
  own struggles growing up with dyslexian, having a single mom and being a bit
• 1:17:19
  of a latchkey kid and being bullied. And I think as he's been more
• 1:17:24
  communicative about that and shared some of our own kids struggles, I think people
• 1:17:30
  are starting to see his wholeness as a human and word ambition as associated with
• 1:17:34
  him a lot. And again I think it's just a misunderstanding that he's actually
• 1:17:42
  quite shy and reserved and likes to read a room. But as you can
• 1:17:45
  see, he's passionate and he's a natural leader. And so it doesn't mean
• 1:17:49
  though, as he said, that he has to be the next political office,
• 1:17:55
  but that he thinks, as his book Citizen Built kind of exposed that
• 1:17:59
  anyone can be a leader and that we all have to be leaders because we
• 1:18:01
  all have agency. So I think that's a bit of what is misunderstood that
• 1:18:09
  it's not he doesn't like bullies, and I'll tell I mean, I think
• 1:18:14
  that's the big thing. He doesn't like bullies. He was bullied as a
• 1:18:16
  kid. There's no place for bullies. And he's just such a loyal American
• 1:18:23
  and a Democrat who believes in equality and equal opportunity for everybody, and his
• 1:18:28
  heart's huge, and so I feel like he feels this tremendous responsibility and it's
• 1:18:32
  not just for the forty million Californians, but it's for our country. That's
• 1:18:36
  just really scary stuff to me because it is so obvious that, with the
• 1:18:42
  help of MSNBC, they are trying to pave the way for a potential Gavin
• 1:18:47
  Newsom presidential candidacy. I don't think the path is going to be there in
• 1:18:51
  twenty twenty four, but it will be in twenty twenty eight. Newsom will
• 1:18:57
  hopefully be unemployed by that point, assuming that he adheres to the Constitution of
• 1:19:00
  California and is termed out. But see, on the Democratic side, being
• 1:19:05
  unemployed can actually help you. It gives you a chance to raise money and
• 1:19:11
  rest and build national support. If you're Ronda Santis and you're unemployed, it
• 1:19:16
  makes you seem out of touch, out of power, impotent, desperate,
• 1:19:23
  you know the time has passed you by. The narrative is completely different for
• 1:19:26
  de Santis in twenty twenty eight than it would be for Gavin Newsom. As
• 1:19:30
  far as California is concerned, I do want to mention at least one thing
• 1:19:33
  because it relates so clearly to one of the main themes of this podcast,
• 1:19:39
  which is the death of America through equity. California is currently on the verge
• 1:19:45
  of determining electricity rates based upon, wait for it, how much money you
• 1:19:53
  make, not how much electricity you use, or you know, how much
• 1:19:57
  you even use in a particular month. I get the idea. I don't
• 1:20:00
  agree with it, but I at least get the idea of, you know,
• 1:20:03
  you pay more exponentially as you go along. If you've spent you've used
• 1:20:08
  a lot of electricity, then if you use a little bit of electricity,
• 1:20:11
  However, it's a completely different world to then not only do that, but
• 1:20:16
  on top of that, charge people based upon their income, not their energy
• 1:20:21
  use, not their electricity use, but their income their income. This is
• 1:20:28
  seemingly it's not a law yet, but it seemingly has a very good chance
• 1:20:30
  of becoming law in California, where you will pay more for electricity, not
• 1:20:38
  based upon your usage, but based upon your income. The more income you
• 1:20:42
  make, obviously, the more you will pay for electricity. And I've said
• 1:20:45
  in the last episode within Ask John Anything that eventually we're going to split apart
• 1:20:49
  as a country over the issue of energy. And I truly believe it,
• 1:20:54
  because this is this is going to divide us in so many different ways.
• 1:20:59
  But when when you are charged more for electricity based upon how much money you
• 1:21:03
  make, that's that's the essence of equity of outcome. That's the essence of
• 1:21:08
  communism. And it is incredibly similar to something happening on the national level which
• 1:21:14
  the Biden administration has made a rule, not even a law. They don't
• 1:21:16
  even bother with laws anymore. They just do executive orders and that bullcrap.
• 1:21:23
  But somehow the President United States and his administration has the authority to now make
• 1:21:29
  sure that people who have good credit on their mortgages and have less down I'm
• 1:21:35
  sorry, more down, but less to pay. In other words, greater
• 1:21:38
  down payment, better credit score, those people will pay a higher rate on
• 1:21:45
  their mortgage, they'll pay a fee. They'll pay a fee. So if
• 1:21:48
  you if you're doing things correctly, with a good credit score and more money
• 1:21:55
  down on your house, you will pay more on your mortgage. And if
• 1:22:00
  you have a bad credit score and you have less down, you will get
• 1:22:08
  a break on your mortgage rate fees. And it's fairly significant. Now some
• 1:22:14
  people are claiming that this is done and overwrought and there's too much being made
• 1:22:18
  of it. I don't believe in that, because forget about the fact that
• 1:22:23
  the actual amount of money might not be huge, although I think it's pretty
• 1:22:27
  significant philosophically. This is a death knell of America, and it's clearly intended
• 1:22:34
  to punish Republicans and benefit Democrats. Because I have no idea what the percentages
• 1:22:43
  are, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the people who
• 1:22:46
  pay more down for their house, who have better credit scores are much more
• 1:22:50
  likely to be Republicans, and the people in the reverse, not entirely,
• 1:22:56
  but in general, the people who have worst credit scores and who are more
• 1:23:00
  vulnerable to effectively not being able to pay off their house, they're going to
• 1:23:05
  be Democrats, and that's what the Democratic Biden administration is doing here. So
• 1:23:12
  in both California with regard to electricity and with regard to these mortgage rates with
• 1:23:18
  the United States, you have equity of outcome driving the train. And that's
• 1:23:25
  the end of America. That's the end of America. And I really do
• 1:23:30
  believe that this electricity issue is going to be so huge in so many ways
• 1:23:35
  going forward. I mean, we're seeing in every possible way with Obviously,
• 1:23:41
  electrical cars are a massive part of the future here, especially here in California.
• 1:23:48
  But this is all under the guise of fighting global warming, right,
• 1:23:51
  I mean, that's really the essence of it. If we have to reduce
• 1:23:55
  our carbon emissions. And somehow, somehow we've gotten this mythology that electrical cars
• 1:24:00
  or electricity in general doesn't have any any carbon issues, doesn't have any like
• 1:24:08
  it's magic, like you just get power for nothing. And that's that's just
• 1:24:12
  false. It's just wrong, especially when it comes to the batteries for electrical
• 1:24:15
  cars. But in every possible way, you cannot do this, first of
• 1:24:20
  all without gasoline, and you can't do this without carbon emissions. And then
• 1:24:25
  there's the whole issue of whether or not carbon emissions even of anything to do
• 1:24:28
  with climate change, global warming. I mean, the levels of insanity here
• 1:24:32
  are just so deep and go so far and so long. I mean,
• 1:24:38
  it's a religion. And this past weekend was Earth Day, and so President
• 1:24:42
  Biden was tweeting about all sorts of insanity, and maybe the most remarkable thing
• 1:24:46
  that he tweeted was about the so called Inflation Reduction Act. The President of
• 1:24:53
  States tweeted over this past weekend the following repealing the Inflation Reduction Act would mean,
• 1:25:00
  And then he lists three things doing nothing about the increasing ferocity of natural
• 1:25:05
  disasters, to taking away clean energy jobs, three, turning your back on
• 1:25:13
  families living in towns poisoned by pollution. Wait a minute, So the President
• 1:25:18
  is admitting that the Inflation Reduction Act was not about reducing inflation. It was
• 1:25:26
  a trojan horse on climate change crap that they just couldn't get through on its
• 1:25:30
  own. I mean, he's admitting this. I mean, how insane are
• 1:25:35
  those the first two sentences, Repealing the Inflation Reduction Act would mean doing nothing
• 1:25:41
  about the increasing ferocity of natural disasters. First of all, there's no evidence
• 1:25:45
  at all that there's an increasing ferocity of natural disasters. It's just that the
• 1:25:51
  global warming climate change religion told us that's what was going to happen, and
• 1:25:57
  so therefore anything that might back up that narrative gets an enormous amount of news
• 1:26:02
  media coverage and attention in a world where because we have video everywhere, we're
• 1:26:09
  always going to be able to find evidence of something strange happening in the climate.
• 1:26:15
  And so if you are told, oh, we're going to have an
• 1:26:16
  increasing ferocity of natural disasters, then somehow when something seems to fit that narrative,
• 1:26:24
  it gets amplified. The reality is we actually had a very light hurricane
• 1:26:29
  season last year. I already I've said many times not that this should even
• 1:26:32
  be in part of the equation. We had no wildfires in California, any
• 1:26:36
  major wildfires for the past sixteen months effectively, and the drought has ended here.
• 1:26:45
  I mean, so I don't know. This is just fantasy. It's
• 1:26:50
  just a fantasy. It has nothing to do with the Inflation Reduction Act,
• 1:26:54
  at least in name, but that's what they've done here, and the President
• 1:26:59
  admitting this. You would think this would be a scandal, but it's not.
• 1:27:01
  It's not. It's part of a religion, and because the media is
• 1:27:06
  invested in that religion, they do not push back on it at all.
• 1:27:10
  And the President didn't stop there. Biden tweeted, I'm not waiting to tackle
• 1:27:14
  the climate crisis. The signs are unmistakable. The science is undeniable, and
• 1:27:19
  the cost of inaction keeps mounting. Ken there are no unmistakable signs. The
• 1:27:29
  science is in fact very deniable, and the cost of action is actually far
• 1:27:34
  greater than the cost of in of what's going to happen, you know,
• 1:27:40
  if we do nothing. In other words, the real costs here are in
• 1:27:45
  doing what he wants to do, and the cost of doing nothing would be
• 1:27:48
  minuscule. And by the way, the benefits of doing something. That's maybe
• 1:27:53
  the most insane part of this entire craziness is what's the evidence we could do
• 1:27:58
  anything about this if we wanted too, or if we could do it not
• 1:28:01
  to. I mean, first of all, we're only one country. What
• 1:28:04
  are we gonna do about China? What are good about India? What are
• 1:28:08
  we gonna do about Russia? I mean, it's just it's so absurd,
• 1:28:14
  and yet we have to play pretend, we have to pretend that this is
• 1:28:16
  all real so at every single level, this falls apart, every single level.
• 1:28:23
  And I gotta tell you even I have been derelict in one of those
• 1:28:28
  ways in which this whole thing doesn't make any damn sense and doesn't jibe with
• 1:28:30
  the facts and with the logic and the science. And that is you can't
• 1:28:34
  even get out of the batter's box on global warming, climate change and the
• 1:28:40
  left narrative on this because of what they claim about CO two. This is
• 1:28:45
  all about CO two. To them, CO two is everything. We must
• 1:28:50
  reduce carbon emissions because that's what's causing global warming, climate change, and man
• 1:28:56
  is responsible for that. Well, that breaks down at every possible level on
• 1:28:59
  itself. First of all, CO two is intricral to human existence and plan
• 1:29:05
  existence, and it's generally a very positive thing for the environment. Without it,
• 1:29:11
  we would all be gone, all right. That's number one. Number
• 1:29:14
  two that the amount of CO two in the atmosphere has not significantly changed since
• 1:29:19
  the Industrial Revolution as far as I can tell. But most importantly than that,
• 1:29:27
  and this is the smoking gun that this is all bullshit. And it
• 1:29:30
  actually comes most blatantly from Al Gore's very infamous Oscar winning movie An Inconvenient Truth.
• 1:29:40
  If you've ever watched An Inconvenient Truth, there's a very famous scene where
• 1:29:45
  Gore kind of chuckles to his audience that when he puts a chart up of
• 1:29:49
  the alleged CO two levels in the atmosphere over the course of history and the
• 1:29:58
  temperature for the globe during the course of history. Now, I've been very
• 1:30:01
  skeptical of how they can possibly know with any certitude, you know, what
• 1:30:05
  was happening tens and thousands of years ago. But okay, I'll accept is
• 1:30:10
  for this argument, because the argument implodes on itself because the charts do seem
• 1:30:16
  to match up if you look at them very quickly and you don't see the
• 1:30:24
  timeline. But when you actually look at it, and Gore purposely does not
• 1:30:30
  allow the audience to look at it carefully, he just kind of laughs,
• 1:30:32
  you see any correlation here? Well, yeah, there is a correlation acceptance
• 1:30:38
  in the exact opposite direction of what he claims, and this is easily verifiable.
• 1:30:44
  You can look it up for yourself. The reality is that that chart
• 1:30:48
  that Gore uses, and they did a nice job of being able to deceive
• 1:30:54
  the audience, but that chart actually shows that temperature increase has preceded CO two
• 1:31:02
  increase preceded it virtually every single time, by an average of about eight hundred
• 1:31:10
  years. So if so there is a correlation, Now, if there's a
• 1:31:15
  causation, it's in the opposite direction of what the left is saying here,
• 1:31:20
  and no one ever calls them on this, and I guarantee you there's nobody
• 1:31:25
  in the mainstream news media that's even aware of this. But if they had
• 1:31:29
  not embraced this all goes back to al Gore losing the two thousand election and
• 1:31:33
  he had to be given a consolation prize by the left. His consolation prize
• 1:31:39
  was global warming. Congratulations, Al, you were vice president for eight years.
• 1:31:43
  You never said a goddamn thing about this, But now you get,
• 1:31:45
  you know, you get to be an Oscar winning documentary documentarian because we've fallen
• 1:31:49
  in love with this new religion you've created. And this is your consolation prize
• 1:31:54
  for just barely losing the two thousand presidential election. But if they had done
• 1:32:00
  even a remotely reasonable job in evaluating what a fraud an inconvenient truth is,
• 1:32:04
  this thing never would have gotten out of the batter's box because at the very
• 1:32:09
  basis the foundation, it's flawed it's a flawed premise. So even if we
• 1:32:15
  are increasing CO two carbon emissions, there's no evidence that that over time would
• 1:32:23
  increase temperature because the correlation is exactly the opposite of what they claim it is.
• 1:32:27
  And even Gore in the movie doesn't claim the correlation that somehow CO two
• 1:32:33
  drives temperature. He implies it, but when he looks, when he shows
• 1:32:38
  the chart, he just chuckles and says, see, I wonder if there's
• 1:32:41
  any correlation, because he doesn't want there to be. I guess he must
• 1:32:45
  have feared at the time. He probably didn't need to fear this. He
• 1:32:47
  must have feared at the time that if he was more specific, someone might
• 1:32:51
  might correct him on it. Well, no one has ever corrected him in
• 1:32:56
  the mainstream news media, and that has had devastating impact because is now we
• 1:33:00
  live in this fantasy world and there's all sorts of impacts of it. And
• 1:33:03
  now Joe Biden, who's supposedly was a modern Democrat at one point, is
• 1:33:09
  off the complete deep end on this complete deepend and even now admitting that the
• 1:33:15
  Inflation Reduction Act had nothing to do with reducing inflation. There's one other story.
• 1:33:19
  At least a couple other stories I want to talk about before I run
• 1:33:24
  out of time in this very diverse episode, because we were uncertain that when
• 1:33:29
  I started that we were gonna have the Tucker Carlson news and the Don Lemon
• 1:33:31
  news and what have you. But there's a story involving sixty Minutes and a
• 1:33:40
  guy the name of Ray Epps that I feel compelled to at least mentioned,
• 1:33:45
  even though I know from my interactions on Twitter that this is not going to
• 1:33:50
  please anybody. This is one of those situations I hate because my view of
• 1:33:55
  the truth has no audience. What I'm referring to here is that Ray Epps
• 1:34:02
  has been targeted by a lot of people on the right, including Tucker Carlson,
• 1:34:09
  and it's interesting coincidence that Tucker ends up leaving Fox News Channel the day
• 1:34:15
  after. I don't think this is related. This is just a coincidence.
• 1:34:17
  He ends up leaving Fox News Channel the day after Sixty Minutes does an in
• 1:34:21
  depth report on this guy, Ray Epps, who Tucker Carlson and others including
• 1:34:28
  Donald Trump, have targeted as the smoking gun that January six was really provoked
• 1:34:35
  by the government, specifically the FBI, that this was an inside job,
• 1:34:40
  This was not Trump supporters that really did this, That the Trump supporters that
• 1:34:45
  were there they were manipulated. They're people that think that Antifa was behind it,
• 1:34:48
  that this was all a big conspiracy to make MAGA world look bad to
• 1:34:56
  you discredit claims of the election being rigged, and that the smoking gun here
• 1:35:03
  is a guy by the name of Ray Apps. And Ray Apps is a
• 1:35:06
  guy who there's a lot of a lot of video of him from January sixth,
• 1:35:12
  and he's a tall guy, and he's wearing a magacp and he's very
• 1:35:15
  demonstrative, and he's telling people to go to the Capitol, and you know,
• 1:35:20
  he seems to be one of the leaders of the charge, and he's
• 1:35:25
  whispering in people's ears, and he's acting suspiciously, and he's in places that
• 1:35:30
  he shouldn't be, or that testimony indicated that he wasn't there, according to
• 1:35:35
  Tucker Carlson, I don't know what the truth behind that was, but that
• 1:35:39
  was an out one of the allegations that Tucker made during his revisionist history of
• 1:35:44
  January sixth, and so I knew very little about the Ray App story.
• 1:35:49
  I was going purely by my gut instinct, my bs detector, and I
• 1:35:56
  never bought into the ray app story. Now I'm an anti conspiracy person.
• 1:36:00
  Uh. You know, people can't figure this out because they think, well,
• 1:36:02
  Ziggler, you you believe in so many contrarian things, and you believe
• 1:36:08
  Jerry Zandoski is innocent. How could you not buy that, you know,
• 1:36:12
  Jeffrey Emstein didn't really kill himself, and that Paul Pelosi, you know,
• 1:36:17
  wasn't really you know, in a situation where there was a random attacker at
• 1:36:23
  his home in the middle of the night. I mean, and by the
• 1:36:25
  way, those two stories are very very similar. The audience for the ray
• 1:36:29
  Apps conspiracy theory that he's an FBI guy is basically the same audience as those
• 1:36:34
  that fervently believe with no evidence that Jeffrey Emstein didn't really kill himself and that
• 1:36:40
  Paul Pelosi, uh, you know, had a gay spat with the guy
• 1:36:45
  who the pape who ended up almost killing him at his home. That's these
• 1:36:48
  are the same people. It's the same exact mindset and that and you know,
• 1:36:53
  the distrust of authority is and the media is so incredibly deep and so
• 1:36:59
  incredibly rosov that it doesn't matter. You cannot reason with these people. And
• 1:37:02
  that's part of the reason why I even hesitate to go into this, and
• 1:37:06
  I even hesitated the tweet about it because I'm like, oh jeez. So
• 1:37:12
  when the Tucker Carlson expose on January six came out, my gut was this
• 1:37:16
  Ray Epps thing makes no sense. He's way too out there. This is
• 1:37:21
  he'd be the worst FBI informant you could possibly or whenever you want to call
• 1:37:26
  him, uh in mole you ever want to, you could possibly be.
• 1:37:30
  He's way too public about this, and it certainly seems to me is he's
• 1:37:33
  just someone who got caught up in the situation and was bragging to his nephew
• 1:37:38
  when he texted that he had orchestrated the the I guess you would call it
• 1:37:43
  the attack on the senator. That's not in the text. And by the
• 1:37:45
  way, on the text thing the text is like to those who believe that
• 1:37:50
  Epps was FBI, that that's somehow a smoking gun that you know he was
• 1:37:56
  the one behind the whole thing. Well, if he's FBI, why the
• 1:38:00
  what he text his nephew that he orchestrated the thing? I mean, that's
• 1:38:03
  insane. That would be just absolutely nuts. Now, nutting things happened,
• 1:38:09
  but you need some evidence for it. And sixty minutes did a very extensive
• 1:38:16
  interview and investigation into the whole Ray Epps issue, and I'm sure it changed
• 1:38:24
  no minds whatsoever, because CBS and sixty minutes are not trusted at all by
• 1:38:30
  anybody who likes Donald Trump even a little bit. But I found, and
• 1:38:33
  here I am obviously an ardent media critic, I found what sixty minutes did
• 1:38:40
  to be pretty darn good. They were open and honest about how bad this
• 1:38:45
  looks, how suspicious some of the things that Ray Epps did appear to be.
• 1:38:48
  They questioned him hard on a lot of aspects of the story. They
• 1:38:51
  did not shy away from the conspiracy theories, although they did refer to them
• 1:38:57
  as far right conspiracy theories, which is inherently obviously biased, but that's what
• 1:39:01
  they are. It's a massive conspiracy theory. And unfortunately it's not even a
• 1:39:05
  far right conspiracy theory when it comes to Epps, it's just a right wing
• 1:39:11
  conspiracy. You don't have to be far right. I mean, I've even
• 1:39:14
  had people vehemently attack me on Twitter before taping this, who I considered previously
• 1:39:21
  to be very irrational. I had one guy who I considered to be very
• 1:39:24
  rational block me on Twitter because I had the audacity to say, this makes
• 1:39:29
  no sense that Epps was somehow an FBI guy. When you watch the entire
• 1:39:33
  sixty minutes story, which I did, I mean, the guy seems like
• 1:39:40
  he's very credible. It seems like a nice guy. The weirdness of this
• 1:39:44
  whole story is that Trumpers are attacking him even though he was obviously a big
• 1:39:47
  Trump supporter, and they want but the biggest thing they want, which is
• 1:39:53
  so weird, is they want him prosecuted like everybody else. I'm like,
• 1:39:57
  wait a minute, So you're evidence that there's something amiss he is that in
• 1:40:00
  there in his particular situation, the authorities made the right decision not to prosecute
• 1:40:05
  him because he didn't he didn't break any laws, he didn't harm anybody,
• 1:40:11
  he didn't go inside the capitol, and so he shouldn't be charged. He
• 1:40:15
  made some statements that you could maybe argue were inciting violence, but where they
• 1:40:19
  intended to do that, I think the evidence is dubious of that. So
• 1:40:24
  I think that based upon what we know, there was a correct decision not
• 1:40:28
  to prosecute Epps, but trumpers, I think that that's evidence of something nefarious
• 1:40:33
  going on here. Why is he getting special treatment? Well, there were
• 1:40:36
  thousands of people there that day. There were lots of people that didn't get
• 1:40:41
  charged. I agree with those that say there were many that got charged it
• 1:40:45
  should not have gotten charged, but it was a lot of it was random,
• 1:40:49
  and Epp scot lucky. Now I actually think part of the reason he
• 1:40:54
  got lucky. And this is why this story is so upside down. And
• 1:40:58
  you know, even Thomas Massey, the libertarian congressman Republican from Kentucky, who
• 1:41:02
  I really like, he kind of promoted this conspiracy theory on Twitter, which
• 1:41:08
  I confronted him about, you know, by saying, well, why is
• 1:41:11
  it that Democrats in the media are rushing to Epps's defense? Shouldn't he be
• 1:41:15
  you know, an enemy because he was part of those leading a charge on
• 1:41:19
  the Capitol in January sixth, and we've been told this is the worst thing
• 1:41:23
  ever. These are my words, not his, But I think that's a
• 1:41:25
  pretty good and synopsis of what Massey is saying. And I understand that,
• 1:41:30
  but it doesn't take much to figure out why that's happening. The media and
• 1:41:34
  Democrats are looking at the big picture and if Epps somehow was FBI right,
• 1:41:41
  and this narrative, which Trumper's love because it gets them off the hook and
• 1:41:46
  removes responsibility for what happened on January sixth, If that narrative really takes hold,
• 1:41:51
  then it destroys their whole narrative, and it destroys the power of January
• 1:41:58
  sixth. If somehow it was ever proven or thought of in wide circles that
• 1:42:03
  January sixth was an inside job by the FBI, that would be terrible for
• 1:42:08
  them. So what are they doing. They're examining the app story and trying
• 1:42:14
  to prove that he was not FBI, that this was not an inside job,
• 1:42:17
  that he was just somebody that was caught up in the moment did some
• 1:42:20
  weird things. And in order to do that, inherently, you have to
• 1:42:26
  defend him to some degree. You have to exonerate him to some degree.
• 1:42:30
  You have to believe him to be a credible witness to some degree. So
• 1:42:34
  it's it's just the nature of them pursuing their much larger self interest. Sure,
• 1:42:41
  these assholes have a self interest in condemning everybody that was involved in January
• 1:42:45
  sixth. But because Epps is the poster child for the FBI was behind it
• 1:42:51
  theory, he effectively gets a pass. So the weirdness of this is so
• 1:42:58
  the FBI, the FBI is part of this, but you know they were
• 1:43:01
  part of the sixty Minutes investigation as well. But but you know, the
• 1:43:05
  Democratic Party and the media and sixty Minutes are all seen as APPS defenders.
• 1:43:13
  Meanwhile Trumpers are condemning Apps, a guy who broke no laws and was a
• 1:43:20
  Trump supporter. There on behalf of Donald Trump with a Maga hat. He's
• 1:43:25
  the bad guy. This is how upside down everything is. And so I
• 1:43:30
  feel more strongly after the sixty Minutes piece that Epps was not FBI and that
• 1:43:36
  there's no evidence that this was some sort of massive conspiracy to make Trump world
• 1:43:42
  look bad or Maga world look bad, or to create a false flag event
• 1:43:46
  or something crazy like that. However, I'm also very much aware and why
• 1:43:51
  I preface my remarks on this before I even got into it, that no
• 1:43:55
  one's mind is going to be changed. That's how corroded our public dis courses.
• 1:44:00
  That's how screwed up everything is. That's how much distrust there is this
• 1:44:05
  is so dangerous. I mean, we can't even agree on anything. And
• 1:44:11
  from what I've seen online, I realized Twitter's not real life. But I
• 1:44:15
  mean, just by virtue of the fact that it was CBS in sixty minutes,
• 1:44:17
  inherently discredited everything they said when what they said was rational made sense.
• 1:44:25
  The interview to me, became across very credible. He admitted he was bragging
• 1:44:30
  to his nephew, which was a mistake. If he had been FBI,
• 1:44:34
  none of this would have gone down the way that it did, including a
• 1:44:38
  incredibly transparent interview with sixty minutes. And so it's just very frustrating to me.
• 1:44:44
  I cannot stand these crazy conspiracy theories. And by the way, every
• 1:44:48
  time one gets accepted, it makes it easier for the next one to be
• 1:44:51
  accepted. So you know, Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself, but gets Paul
• 1:44:57
  Pelosi it was attacked by his gay lover, which begets that Ray Epps was
• 1:45:03
  obviously FBI. And you're a cuck moron shill for this deep state if you
• 1:45:10
  don't buy into that. And it's just so ridiculous number one, and it's
• 1:45:15
  so damaging to our public discourse and Frankly, I think it's damaging to the
• 1:45:19
  Republican Party because I think it makes us dysfunctional, and it makes me think,
• 1:45:24
  you know, that there's a very good chance that no matter who the
• 1:45:27
  nominee is, that Joe Biden is probably going to be re elected president because
• 1:45:31
  people in the middle are just going to go. I don't agree with a
• 1:45:34
  lot of what Democrats are doing, but at least they don't seem quite as
• 1:45:38
  crazy because the media hasn't told me about all their craziness as the Republicans are.
• 1:45:43
  That could be what ends up happening here. Although I have to say
• 1:45:45
  one other thing about Biden and the weakness of his poll numbers. This is
• 1:45:50
  actually helping Trump because because Biden is so fricking weak, it actually makes it
• 1:45:58
  more difficult for the Trump up curious voter on the Republican side to realize the
• 1:46:03
  dangers of nominating Trump. If Biden was in a stronger position and his poll
• 1:46:11
  numbers looked better against Trump, they already looked better than they do against the
• 1:46:14
  Santists, but if it was more dramatic, I think that that would maybe
• 1:46:17
  have more impact. But it's it's not largely because of Biden's own weakness.
• 1:46:24
  I do want to mention the battle against wokeness in the media and what impact
• 1:46:29
  it may be having. There's there's some, at least anecdotal evidence that there
• 1:46:35
  is some impact when it comes to a backlash against wokeness in the media.
• 1:46:41
  Not one but two bud Light marketing executives have had to take leave, or
• 1:46:45
  maybe they requested it, I don't know, under the pressure of all the
• 1:46:48
  negative publicity after the the hiring of Dylan mulvaney, the the dude pretending to
• 1:46:56
  be a woman who was used as as a spokesperson for Light, that's created
• 1:47:00
  so much controversy over the last couple of weeks. I am not as convinced
• 1:47:04
  as other conservatives are that that boycott is working as well as we would like
• 1:47:11
  it too. I'd like to see it succeed because I think there needs to
• 1:47:13
  be a line drawn somewhere. But at least there's some sign that it's working
• 1:47:17
  because there is evidence that these two executives bud Light, or at least being
• 1:47:23
  forced to take leave. BuzzFeed News is shuddering down, so that's that's good
• 1:47:30
  news. ESPN, whom I loathe, is enduring a new round of massive
• 1:47:36
  layoffs. Disney is enduring new layoffs of thousands of people, so part of
• 1:47:44
  that could all be the economy and are we headed for a recession? But
• 1:47:47
  right there you got a whole bunch of very woke liberal situations where there is
• 1:47:54
  at least some level of punishment accountability, So that is good news. The
• 1:48:00
  last story for today is the Twitter blue check mark controversy, which seems like
• 1:48:06
  we almost end every episode of the Death of journalism. Was something having to
• 1:48:11
  do with Elon Musk, and I had to give him credit because even though
• 1:48:14
  I don't agree with his new blue check mark policy, he's a hell of
• 1:48:18
  a troller and I think that's what he's doing here for those that don't know,
• 1:48:24
  for years on Twitter, it was basically a cast system between those who
• 1:48:28
  have a blue check mark and those that don't. You were considered to be,
• 1:48:31
  I guess, notable if you had a blue check mark, and we're
• 1:48:34
  therefore verified. Somehow I got a blue check mark. It was verified.
• 1:48:39
  It was supposed to be for making sure that no one impersonated you, but
• 1:48:43
  it was really a status symbol that you're important enough to have that blue check
• 1:48:47
  mark, and it gave you some advantages with regard to visibility, because if
• 1:48:53
  you're are a blue check mark, you know there's a place within your Twitter
• 1:48:59
  account where it's much more easy to see if that person has responded to you
• 1:49:03
  or liked a tweet or retweeted a tweet. So there's some minor advantages to
• 1:49:09
  it, but by and large, it was just basically an ego thing,
• 1:49:11
  and I do think it played a major role in why the media love Twitter
• 1:49:14
  to begin with, because it made them feel important, It made them feel
• 1:49:17
  different, and that's inherently, you know, what they're all about. They
• 1:49:20
  love that aspect of it. Well, a few months ago, Musk announced
• 1:49:26
  that he was getting rid of the old Twitter blue check mark verification system and
• 1:49:30
  that you were then going to have to pay for it eight dollars a month,
• 1:49:34
  And it took a long time to implement, but finally a few days
• 1:49:40
  ago it was implemented. In all the old legacy blue check marks, the
• 1:49:45
  quote unquote notable people, the quote unquote celebrities lost their blue check marks unless
• 1:49:50
  they were willing to pay the eight dollars a month. Now I am currently
• 1:49:55
  not paying the eight dollars a month, not just because eight dollars a months
• 1:49:59
  of paying the ass I don't actually agree with the policy because I think that
• 1:50:01
  there is some value to verification from an identity standpoint. But more importantly than
• 1:50:06
  that, I think it's very bad precedent to start paying for features on Twitter,
• 1:50:11
  because if this works, We're gonna have to pay for everything. I'm
• 1:50:14
  a big believer in the slippery slope, and so my vote is that,
• 1:50:17
  you know, we don't promote the slippery slope here. I also, my
• 1:50:21
  ego doesn't care whether or not I have a blue check mark. I'm emasculated
• 1:50:26
  every day because I'm married. It doesn't matter that I'm emasculated on Twitter because
• 1:50:30
  I don't have a blue check mark anymore. The reality is it doesn't impact
• 1:50:34
  my life. It doesn't really even impact my Twitter account. Based upon the
• 1:50:38
  first couple of days since I lost the blue check mark, it hasn't impacted,
• 1:50:42
  you know, the interaction that I've had, or the know how many
• 1:50:45
  people see my tweets or anything like that at all. And in fact,
• 1:50:49
  there's kind of a backlash going on. This is where it gets funny,
• 1:50:54
  where not having a blue check mark now to some people, is the new
• 1:50:59
  blue check mark, so much so that on the left. There has been
• 1:51:02
  an effort to block users who have blue check marks because those are people who
• 1:51:10
  paid Elon Musk. And because Elon Musk is now seen as a conservative,
• 1:51:13
  you've seen as toxic. So if you have a blue check mark, that
• 1:51:15
  means that you are not down with the left wing struggle, you're not woke
• 1:51:19
  enough. If you have a blue check mark because you're supporting the man,
• 1:51:24
  you're supporting Elon Musk. Now, I don't know whether he did this on
• 1:51:28
  purpose, by accident, somewhere in between, but it turned out to be
• 1:51:32
  brilliant because what happened next after this effort to get people to block users who
• 1:51:41
  are blue check marks because they paid Elon Musk, Elon Musk muddied the water
• 1:51:46
  by starting to give some some celebrities and notable accounts back their check marks.
• 1:51:54
  Now, there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for how or why
• 1:51:57
  he did this, and it's hard to tell how widespread this is, but
• 1:52:00
  at least some notable people, mostly liberals, it seems like, got their
• 1:52:04
  blue check marks back. Well, then they felt compelled to announce publicly that
• 1:52:10
  they got their check mark back, but they didn't pay for it, So
• 1:52:13
  please don't block me, don't punish me, don't take away my woke street
• 1:52:17
  credit, because you're gonna think I paid Elon Musk. I swear I didn't.
• 1:52:23
  This is the part where that's a fantastic troll if it was done on
• 1:52:26
  purpose, which I think it might have been given Elon Musk's mentality. But
• 1:52:31
  that's that's amazing. So we now have this bizarre situation where liberals are thinking
• 1:52:38
  about promoting the idea of blocking people with verification badges, which a few months
• 1:52:44
  ago was a status symbol, especially among the left, and now they're confused
• 1:52:48
  as to what to do because some people on the left got their verification badges
• 1:52:53
  back but aren't actually paying Elon Musk any money. So that's where we are.
• 1:52:58
  That's the insane world of Twitter, and to some people this is very
• 1:53:01
  very important. I just find it to be hilarious. And even though I
• 1:53:04
  disagree with Elon Musk's policy on this, he definitely gets a victory when it
• 1:53:10
  comes to trolling on the blue check mark issue. That'll do it for this
• 1:53:14
  episode of the podcast. In our next episode, hopefully we'll have some more
• 1:53:16
  information about what really happened with Tucker Carlson and maybe Don Lemon, but we
• 1:53:23
  will also be joined by Brittany Hopper. I've been promoting this interview for a
• 1:53:27
  few episodes, and we will finally get to it in the next episode.
• 1:53:29
  She's a former television news reporter and anchor here in Los Angeles, and she
• 1:53:34
  has a lot to say about the state of the news industry, especially when
• 1:53:38
  it comes to punishing people for non liberal thoughts, so make sure you pay
• 1:53:43
  attention to that coming forward. As always is the case, please subscribe,
• 1:53:45
  rate review, and to share this podcast with others. If you shared on
• 1:53:49
  social media, tack me and I'll be happy to share it as well.
• 1:53:51
  Until next time. That's episode number fifty two of the Death of Journalism.
• 1:53:56
  My name is John Zigler.