Latest / The Death Of Journalism / Episode One Hundred Thirty Seven: Culture of Cowardice

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Episode One Hundred Thirty Seven: Culture of Cowardice · The Death Of Journalism

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Welcome to episode number one hundred and thirty seven of the Death of Journalism podcasts.
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My name is John Zigler. I'm your host on today's show. The
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Georgia Judge chickens out in the Fanny Willis case, the news media commits blatant
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malpractice on Donald Trump and Aaron Rodgers. Some media celebrities make telling presidential endorsements.
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I'm having some significant free speech issues with the administrators of my kids' school,
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and the Supreme Court takes up a huge free speech case related to COVID.
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We begin another jam packed episode of the Death of Journalism podcast with the
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latest in the Fanny Willis and Nathan Wade saga in Georgia. This of course,
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related to one of the four criminal cases pending against Donald Trump, this
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one having to do with election interference, and for the last several weeks there
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has been a lot of drama as to whether or not the DA and the
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special prosecutor in the case Fanny Willis and her boyfriend Nathan Wade, respectively,
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would be able to stay on the case. And there was a very high
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profile and drama filled hearing, a series of hearings that was hosted I guess
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you would say by the judge in the case, Scott McAfee. And there
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was a lot of anticipation last week as to what McAfee would decide with regard
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to whether or not Fanny Willis and Nathan Wade would be allowed to stay on
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the case because of allegations of conflicts of interest, lying to the court,
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perjury, misuse of public funds, all sorts of very serious situations and allegations
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related to their involvement in this case. That's incredibly huge case against many defendants,
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including Donald Trump, and really one of the two most dangerous cases for
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Trump going forward, both of the election interference January sixth related cases, one
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in Georgia, a local case, and then obviously one put forward by Special
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Prosecutor Jack Smith in Washington, d C. It is very logical that those
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are the two cases that are most threatening to Trump, both from a political
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as well as a criminal perspective. Well, Scott McAfee essentially whimped out and
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decided that Fanny Willis can stay on the case as long as she gets rid
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of her boyfriend. Now how this makes any logical sense, Nobody knows.
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Nobody has been able to explain this. It doesn't because he clearly determined that
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there was a lot of wrongdoing, but he was afraid to go all the
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way, and so he essentially effectively split the baby and said, look,
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Fanny Willis, you can stay, but because of this appearance of a conflict
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of interest and poor judgment, you got to get rid of Nathan Wade.
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And of course that's what happened. Wade is now off the case. Fanny
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Willis is still on the case. And this is a classic example of the
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culture of cowardice that has overtaken the entire country. There was never any chance,
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especially in retrospect, that Judge McAfee was going to eliminate both Willis and
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Wade from the case, if only just from the basic appearances of it.
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Here, he is a straight white male up for re election in Georgia,
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dealing with two African American prosecutors, Fanny Willis and Nathan Wade, going up
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against a highly unpopular ex president, highly unpopular among Democrats obviously in Donald Trump,
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in an extremely high profile case. He simply just did not have the
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balls to do the right thing. And unfortunately, no one ever has the
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balls to do the right thing anymore. No one ever does anything that might
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be against their own self interest. And so it's clear Judge McAfee has decided,
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Okay, this is the least I can do. This way I can.
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I can eliminate any claims that I decided to totally take a dive.
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You know, I ruled that there has to be a change here. I
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eliminated the conflict of interest, but I also didn't destroy the case, because
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if Fanny Willis and Nathan Wade had both been forced to go, there was
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zero chance, zero chance that Donald Trump ever faces this trial before the election.
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Zero. Now that may not be the case anymore. You know,
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losing Nathan Wade is I'm sure going to cause problems that I'm sure this hearing
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has caused problems with regard to the timing and preparation for a very complex case.
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But there's still a very good chance that this could happen now before the
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November election. Now, Trump can theoretically appeal, or at least try to
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appeal, but my understanding is that that appeal has to go through the same
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judge. Now, there are those who have said that they think that the
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judge will grant Trump's team that ability to appeal, but they're not certain about
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it, and if I've seen other opinions that indicate that that's not going to
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be the case. So there's a narrative out there that somehow the Georgia case
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has been effectively neutered, and I'm not sure I'm buying that. I think
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a lot of it's going to depend on whether or not this appeal is granted
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the ability to appeal is given to the Trump team. If it is,
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then I can see, well, there's enough of a delay to where this
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may not happen before November, although I also understand it's possible that such an
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appeal could be handled very very quickly, unlike in situations involving the US Supreme
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Court, which tend to take an awful lot of time. So I think,
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well, there's a perception, especially in the writing media, that this
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whole thing was a good thing for Trump. I'm so sure that it was.
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I mean, it could have been a grand Slam home run if the
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judge had done the right thing, because then the case would have been effectively
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over, at least with regard to the election. Now, this whole thing
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may only be a single or a double because really, all you've really done
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is slightly delayed depending on what happens with this appeal, and you've clearly hurt
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the credibility of Fanny Willis going forward, but it's not going to matter in
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the jury pool that Trump would be likely to get in that case. That
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to me is the key question will always be the key question. I've constantly
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harped on because the rest of the news media seemingly is pretending as if jury
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selection is not going to be everything in all of these cases, but particularly
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in the Georgia case, it's all about jury selection, and Fanny Willis has
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made herself a very partisan figure and with certain demographics, she's going to be
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exceedingly popular. If there are no represented in that jury from the people who
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now see her in a very different light, see her as corrupt and in
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over her head and not to be trusted, then Trump's in big trouble.
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Now. It's very difficult to know the nature of that jury pool, especially
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given Fulton County in Georgia. Trump will only need two three jurors tops that
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don't trust Fanny Willis and he's in the clear, but that's far from being
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known at this point. So I would be a little bit more concerned.
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If I'm the Trump people, then a lot of the right wing media is
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portraying this situation to be they're claiming victory, and I don't necessarily see this
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as a victory. This is a lost opportunity because the judge went out to
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end this case. If you're someone rooting for Donald Trump, the fact that
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it's still alive, I think is very dangerous for Donald Trump, depending on
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how things go forward. By the way, as far as the media reaction
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to this, and of course this whole situation has been very muted in the
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mainstream media and the left wing media, There's been a couple exceptions where even
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some people in MSNBC and CNN have said, look, this is really bad.
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Fanny Willis has got to go. Of course, there's been very little
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outrage over the judges actual ruling, but here's the part where their hypocrisy is
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really overt. I would like you, and we do this a lot on
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this podcast, but this may be one of the best examples ever. I
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would like you to consider this situation. If we reversed the genders and the
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races of the people involved, If you reversed all the genders and all the
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races but particularly in this case the genders. Race is a part of this,
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but gender in particular, given what we've seen over the last five to
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ten years with regard to the news media when it comes to issues regarding me
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too and what have you. Can you imagine can you imagine if Willis was
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a white male, right, especially if he was going after a Democrat who
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was running for president, the Democratic presidential candidate. So this white male DA,
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it is going after a Democratic president or the Democratic presidential candidate. In
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the process of going after that Democratic presidential candidate, the nominee, they hire
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a hot female to be their special prosecutor. And then there's allegations that not
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only has this white male DA had an affair with his hot female special prosecutor,
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but that he's lied about it, that it was ongoing when the decision
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was made to hire this hot female and they both perjure themselves potentially, and
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there's allegations of misuse of funds, and there's this is all out in public
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and live televised testimony, and it's super silatious. And if all that happened
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and then a judge decided, you know what, white male DA, you
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can stay on the case. But the hot female you hired, they have
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to go. They have to have their career hindered. The human cry from
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the liberal media, main street news media would be deafening. There would be
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beyond outrage. Why is no one coming to Nathan Wade's defense here the media?
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If he was a female, My god, this is all we would
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be hearing about. This would be huge. But because he's male, I
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mean, give the brother a break man. He's being used. He got
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used. But because Faddy Willis is a female, somehow she gets away with
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it. But obviously she has the coding of armor of being a black fee
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and going after Donald Trump, so in liberal media circles she's got enormous force
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field protection. But I would just like somebody to consider how this situation would
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be perceived by the news media if Fanny Willis was a white male and Nathan
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Wade was a hot female. I mean, my god, the media coverage
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of this would be completely and totally different. And it's not even close.
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It's not even close now with regard to Donald Trump. And this has happened
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quite a bit, especially recently in the Death of Journalism podcast I Am Well
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on record for the last eight years plus of being ardently anti Donald Trump,
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probably the most consistent conservative when it comes to my opposition to Donald Trump.
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I've never voted for him. I never will vote for him. However,
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I believe I've been exceedingly fair about him and to him in almost everything I've
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ever done. Have I made a couple of mistakes, Yeah, I probably
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have probably went a little bit too far in it first, believing some,
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not all, of the Russia Gate allegations. But by and large, I
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don't know of anybody who has been in the anti Trump camp who has been
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more fair or fairer to Donald Trump than me. And I think we're about
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to see another example of that, because the big story over the past weekend
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was related to comments that Trump made at a rally in Ohio. Now,
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by the way, it's important to point out that why Trump was in Ohio
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is key to frankly, some of my problems with him, because he was
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there because there's a primary election this week in Ohio to determine who's going to
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go up against the Democrat incumbent in the US Senate, and Trump is there
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was there to endure a guy. But I nam a moreno who is in
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a neck and neck three person race to be the Republican nominee. Now Moreno
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is the wrong choice. I understand from people who have more knowledge than me
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that he's an asshole. But he's also, more importantly to me, the
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guy who has the least the chance, the worst chance to actually win a
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general election against Senator Brown from Ohio, a Democrat. And this is a
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very very very key race when it comes to who is going to control the
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US Senate after this election, which to me is at least as important as
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who's going to be president, and maybe theoretically more important, especially if Clarence
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Thomas ends up getting into bad health. And so this is the type of
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thing that drives me crazy about Trump. You know, there's a guy named
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Dolan who has been endorsed by Governor Dwine in Ohio, who I hate.
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I hate Governor Dwine in Ohio just because he was terrible in COVID, but
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because I personally know that he absolutely positively lied off his ass about the Steubenville
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so called rape case involving the high school football team there that I wrote a
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book about back when he was the Attorney General of Ohio. So I hate
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the Wine, but it certainly seems to me from the data that Dolan has
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a better chance of winning against Brown and the general election. And so Trump
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is there to support Moreno, which is the wrong choice. And we saw
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in twenty twenty two how Trump's wrong choices cost the Republican Party the US Senate,
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and it seems like we're going to have a repeat in history there,
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at least in Ohio. Now. Ironically, Moreno is a former car dealer,
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and that became at issue because Donald Trump made some comments about the auto
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industry and what the Biden administration and is allowing to happen to the auto industry
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and even provoking happening to the auto industry, and he then said that if
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he's not elected that it's it's going to be a blood bath for the country,
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meaning clearly an economic blood bath. And you know, this is not
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even close, This is not even close with regard to trying to interpret what
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Trump meant. But that's not how it got reported. It's not how it
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got reported at all. And the way that it got reported and why it
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got reported in a completely different way is really in a remarkable insight into how
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just totally and utterly broken the news media is at every level. This all
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began because of a liberal Twitter account. This is a liberal Twitter account that
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does a really frankly good job of posting clips usually related to everything that Donald
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Trump says. And they took a clip from this speech in Ohio and they
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labeled it with the following quote, Now, if I don't get elected,
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it's gonna be a blood bath. It's gonna be a blood bath for the
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country. Unquote. That tweet. That post on what's now known as X
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has as of this taping, over twenty million impressions, and about a million
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of them were from media outlets that were simply reposting and quote tweeting without further
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investigation as to what is the larger context of what Donald Trump actually said.
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Because there was a whole lead up to now, if I don't get elected,
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it's gonna be a blood bath. That's going to be a blood bath
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for the country. This was a blatant example of laziness, stupidity, way
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beyond bias. This was cut and paced journalism. And I use that term
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journalism very loosely, and I've seen this happen a few times before. I
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remember it happening a couple of times in the Penn State Joe Paternal jerrys and
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Dusky case that where it was just unbelievable how every single media outlet cut and
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paste a story that made no damn sense for which there was no evidence,
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but it fit a narrative. Everyone liked it. No need to look at
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it, no lead to check it, too good to check. Let's just
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pass this one along, make it go viral. And that's not at all
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in keeping with what Donald Trump actually meant, because he was obviously and clearly
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talking about a bloodbath economically for the country, especially with regard to the auto
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industry. Now Here is the larger content eggs of what Trump actually said at
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a rally in Ohio over the weekend. Mexico has taken, over a period
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of thirty years, thirty four percent of the automobile manufacturing business in our country.
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Think of it went to Mexico. China now is building a couple of
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massive plants where they're going to build the cars in Mexico. And think they
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think that they're going to sell those cars into the United States with no tax
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at the border. Let me tell you something to China. If you're listening,
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Presidency, and you and I are friends. But he understands the way
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ideal those big monster car manufacturing plants that you're building in Mexico right now,
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and you think you're going to get that, you're going to not hire Americans
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and you're going to sell the cars US. Now, we're going to put
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a one hundred percent tariff on every single car that comes across the line,
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and you're not going to be able to sell those cars if I get elected.
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Now, if I don't get elected, it's going to be a bloodbath
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for the whole Well, that's going to be the least of it. It's
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going to be a bloodbath for the country. That'll be the least of it.
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But they're not going to sell those cars. They're building massive factories a
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friend of mine. All. Now, as I've already said, that's not
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real confusing. Now you have to understand the way Trump speaks that he's not
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going off with the tueeleprompter, and it's stream of consciousness, and so it's
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very easy to take out of context. But here's what I would say to
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those who try to claim, and they're still to this moment, bizarrely,
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major media members who are not willing to admit they were wrong and are trying
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to desperately claim that this is really what he did mean. You can't be
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distracted by the auto industry context of this, that you have to look at
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what he really meant given his history. I guess related to the January sixth
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is what they're referring to. But even there, I don't think that works
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because they've completely overplayed their hand on Jay Anyuary six But they try to claim
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it if you just take that little snippets, that was a message he was
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sending by using the word blood bath twice. And here's what I would say
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in response. Okay, even if I grant you everything, I'm gonna grant
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you everything of what you're trying to claim just for the sake of argument,
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here's why you're still wrong. What he says is it's going to be a
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blood bath for the country for the country. That's not how you would say
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it. If you were saying this as a situation where the country will be
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punished if I'm not reelected and there's going to be a blood bath as a
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result, you wouldn't say for the country. For the country. Implies that
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this is something happening to the country that's bad. That you want to stop.
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For our country, this would be bad, This would be a terrible
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thing, This economic blood bath. If you were gonna say it's a blood
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bath because I didn't get elected and I'm gonna provoke it, you would say
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there's gonna be a bloodbath in this country. I'll tell you what in the
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country, or something to that effect. You wouldn't say for the country.
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That sounds like a subtle difference, But to me it's significant because if we're
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gonna actually parse his words and you're gonna interpret them for your own benefit and
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your own self interest, can we least look at what he said again.
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I'm someone who lows Donald Trump. I hate the fact that he's even there
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in Ohio endorsing the wrong candidate. I hate even further by the way that
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if he really really believes that it's gonna be a bloodbath economically for the country
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and we're gonna lose the Republic if he's not elected, then why the flying
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fuck is he taking huge portions of his speech in Ohio to rip on Ron
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DeSantis and to you know, basically spite the football and how he destroyed Ron
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de Sanders's campaign. There are still millions of Ron de Sandi's supporters out there,
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some of them in key states like, for instance, Georgia. Who
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he's gonna need if he's really gonna win this election, If if winning this
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election is so incredibly important to the country economically, into the future of the
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Republic, why the fuck are you still doing things that are gonna make it
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more difficult for you to win. That's what conservatives ought to be asking about
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what Donald Trump did over the weekend. But with regard to this, this
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blood bath situation, I mean, this was this was not just isolated when
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it came to the media reaction. This was universal. This was everywhere,
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even the Drudge Report, which has completely turned on Donald Trump. We have
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an interview that I've I've taped recently with the host of a podcast about Matt
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Drum which we're going to play in a coming episode. I don't know when
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we're going to get to it about the history of Matt Drudge, But my
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god, Matt Drudge has turned on Donald Trump in a massive and dramatic fashion.
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And as of this taping, he still has as the headline the blood
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bath misstatement or the bloodbath narrative, which is completely false, and he's linking
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to one of the worst articles I've seen on the whole thing, one that
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doesn't even reference the context of the audio industry with regard to Trump's bloodbath comment.
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But Drudge is just one of many. I mean almost is absurd for
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me to go through all the media outlets that blew it on this story.
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I'll just just for the sake of the record, I'll share a few headlines
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with you. Politico reaction to Trump's speech, When is a bloodbath? Not
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a bloodbath? Guardian Trump makes verbal gaps that will Higo rally and predicts blood
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bath if defeated. NBC Trump says there will be a blood bath if he
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loses the election. NBR. Trump says some migrants are not people and warns
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of blood bath if he loses. ABC. Trump says there will be blood
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bath if he loses twenty twenty four election, rants up anti Margaret migrant rhetoric.
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CNN Trump warns a blood bath for auto industry and country if he loses
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the election. That one. I love that one, actually, because CNN
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at least is trying to be somewhat accurate while still creating a misperception of what
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Trump actually meant. MSNBC absurd and violent. David Korn slams Trump's claims of
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a blood bath if he loses presidential election. Rolling Stone, Trump says there
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will be a blood bath and elections will end if he isn't re elected.
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I don't remember hearing about that, and I so I'm going to just presume
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rolling Stone took that out of context too. I think what he probably meant.
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Trump has said similar things that we're going to lose the country, We're
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going to lose the republic. He may have said something about elections. I
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think you never know it's Donald Trump, but this with regard to this blood
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bath thing, it's completely absurd. And just for the record, the Drudge
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headline has been Trump WARN's blood bath if he's not elected again, an economic
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blood bath for the auto industry. And then in while he was doing a
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riff, he said that that won't be the end of it, that there'll
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be other areas economically that will be a blood bath if he is not elected,
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which makes perfect sense if you're Donald Trump and you're trying to make the
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economic argument for why you should be elected president again. And as far as
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the word blood bath, the news media is pretending as if somehow well you
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know this word blood bath. We never used this word. This is a
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This is a very very dramatic word and one that should only be used under
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certain circumstances. The word blood bat is used in media headlines all the time
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when it comes to job losses. It's it's it's almost part of the media
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playbook. Ironically enough, they use the word bloodbath. All these same outlets
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just about use the term blood bath when it came to recent reports of job
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losses at the Republican National Committee after the Trump family took over the family business
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basically is now the Republican Party, and there are a lot of job losses,
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ironically enough, and that was called a blood bath at the RNC by
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numerous media outlets, many of the same media outlets that went apoplectic over Trump
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using the term blood bath. In economic terms, it's the same thing,
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job loss, blood bath, job losses in the auto industry and elsewhere,
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job losses at the Republican Party a blood bath. This is not new,
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this is standard operating procedure. It's a dramatic word that is almost now synonymous
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with job losses. We've seen with all the job losses in the media.
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The media themselves use the term blood bath to describe all the job losses that
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have occurred most recently in the last six months or so in the media industry.
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So, I mean, this is so much to do about nothing,
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and I'm still seeing this morning, a couple of days later, news reports
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matter of factly just say, you know, hey, this is what Donald
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Trump said, that the bloodbath controversy is still ongoing and really doing a very
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poor job almost on purpose of not providing any context. And one of my
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one of my favorite media narratives for the news meeting to get out of their
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original mistake on bloodbath. This tries me crazy. And even my own former
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media outlet, Media Aite, I used to be a senior commist for them
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for several years, they promoted this narrative of quote Trump spokesperson tries to clean
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up his doomsday prediction of blood bat for the country if he doesn't get elected.
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That's a headline in Mediaite, and it wasn't isolated. I saw this
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all the time. If I saw it on a local news channel in Los
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Angeles this morning, where this is the new narrative, Well, they're trying
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to clarify. The Trump team is trying to clarify or clean up or provide
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context to the statement he made about a bloodbath. No, the only reason
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why a Trump spokesperson is pushing back on the bloodbath narrative is because the media
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fucked it up to begin with. There's no need to clarify this. It's
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obvious what he was saying. Yet, this is a tactic that the media
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uses to not have to admit. Oops, we were wrong. Remember that
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blood bath story we told you. Yeah that was totally false. Yeah,
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Oops, are bad. Sorry, they never do that. They can't admit
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they were wrong. And you know, it wasn't just the media. Political
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types jumped all over The Democratic Party jumped all over this. Nancy Pelosi went
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on CNN with Dana Bash. Dana Bash just sat there. And sometimes Dana
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Bash is fair on CNN, but she in this case was not. Nancy
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Pelosi just goes on CNN and matter of factly claims that Trump is promising a
29:53
blood bath for the country if he's not elected. And then she piles on
29:56
with another series of dubious statements mythologies that have been created largely by the news
30:04
media. And now I'll fully acknowledge that Trump has allowed this to happen with
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his inartful use of language and often his own stupidity, So he's not blameless
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here. But this creates a narrative of all these dictator like statements that Trump
30:22
has supposedly made. And Pelosi goes on a hit list here with no pushback
30:27
from CNN. And here's what that sounded like. He's even predicting a bloodbath.
30:32
What does that mean He's going to exact a bloodbath? There's something wrong
30:37
here. How respectful I am of the American people and their goodness, but
30:44
how much more do they have to see from him to understand that this isn't
30:48
what our country is about. Praising Hitler, praising the Russians, honestly condemning
30:56
our soldiers for losing or dying in war, are being captured in war?
31:02
It said, what's wrong with Russia? They defeated Hitler? What about the
31:06
millions of Americans who risked or gave their lives. What about him saying that
31:11
soldiers buried in Europe he didn't want to visit them because they were losers.
31:15
Now, as bad as that is, and it's bad from a democratic leader
31:19
on CNN with no pushback from the host, Dan a Bash. To me,
31:25
by far, the worst, the worst example of medium malpractice on this
31:30
entire blood bat issue so far has to be from Joe Scarborough. Joe Scarborough
31:37
this morning, Monday morning on MSNBC. Well after you know the dust is
31:44
settled, everyone has had enough time to look at the full clip, to
31:49
see the Trump response, to think about this for half a second. There's
31:55
no more excuses for just jumping on a false narrative that everybody is cutting and
32:00
pasting because they think that it fits their Donald Trump narrative and their self interest.
32:07
So there's no excuses here. And Joe Scarborough is a guy who was
32:12
once a respected Republican congressman. It's hard to believe in retrospect a Republican congressman,
32:19
a guy I knew pretty well. I was on his show a lot.
32:22
We've interviewed each other numerous times. I thought we had at least some
32:27
respect for each other. But I have no respect for Joe Scarborough having for
32:30
many, many years, and much much of that is because of the way
32:35
he's handled Donald Trump. He and Mika Brazinski as co host and wife,
32:39
kissed Donald Trump's ass worse than anybody, almost anybody, even in the conservative
32:46
media. In twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen, they played a significant role in
32:54
allowing Donald Trump to take over the Republican Party, not that they had huge
32:59
influence, but it helped create a narrative that Trump was just so popular and
33:05
such a big celebrity that he could even charm the liberal media in a way
33:09
that the normal Republican presidential nominee never possibly could. It played a significant role
33:16
in how Trump pulled this off. And then, of course, after Trump
33:21
got elected and being on MSNBC, Scarborough has had to completely change his tune
33:27
and now he's one of the worst offenders when it comes to jumping all over
33:32
any kind of negative Trump narrative. And this morning he simply not just doubled,
33:40
but probably tripled or quadrupled down on this entire bloodbath narrative. Just simply
33:46
refused to acknowledge that he was wrong, totally wrong to jump all over this,
33:53
just like everybody else in the liberal media, did no acknowledgement, no
33:58
self awareness at all, and instead just gives his MSNBC audience what they want
34:04
to hear, claiming we're not stupid we're not stupid. But the smart ones
34:08
are the ones willing to take this out of context because we know better.
34:14
We aren't properly interpreting what he really meant. Even that's if that's not really
34:20
what he actually said, or even close to what he actually said. And
34:23
here was Joe Scarborough on MSNBC on Monday morning. He's talking about a bloodbath
34:30
for America. It's laid out in the terms of it. And these idiots
34:36
on Twitter, these idiots on Cable News, these idiots on Sunday Chezman Presidence.
34:45
He was talking all way about the auto industry. And this is one
34:47
more it's just bullshit. Let me say that at six point fifteen ams just
34:52
bullshit. He knew what he was doing. We're not stupid, Americans aren't
34:58
stupid. He was taught talking about a bloodbath. Sometimes a bloodbath means a
35:04
bloodbath. And when you finish this by saying and that's just going to be
35:07
the least of it. Seriously, these people may be stupid, we're not.
35:14
A few years ago that clip might have shocked me that a guy as
35:19
smart as Scarborough, former Republican Congressman, a guy who at times in the
35:23
past has tried to be fair to both sides, could possibly could possibly still
35:30
be lying. That's what he's doing, lying to make his audience feel better
35:34
about themselves about what happened with regard to this bloodbath comment. But when I
35:39
saw that, I said, you know what, this is just like COVID.
35:43
This is just like COVID. We're in a post truth world now,
35:46
and therefore there's never any need if you're in the elite media to admit when
35:52
you're wrong. You never have to do it. In fact, there's no
35:55
benefit to doing it. Doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on a lot is
36:00
actually better for you than to admit that you were wrong. It makes your
36:04
audience feel better. We're the smart ones. We're never gonna admit we were
36:09
wrong about masks, or wrong about the efficacy of vaccines, or whether or
36:15
not they should have been mandated, or that you know, whether schools should
36:21
have been closed. We're never gonna admit we were wrong about any of that
36:23
ever, because we live in a world now where there's no benefit of doing
36:28
that. There's no downside to not admitting when you're wrong. There's none that
36:36
the entire self infrastructure is broken. It's perverse, and this is a classic
36:42
example of it where even with overwhelming evidence, Scarborough could have just ignored it.
36:49
They could have just ignored it. They could have just said, you
36:52
know, this made a lot of news over the weekend, here's the full
36:54
context. You decide you know what Trump meant on your own and let's move
37:00
on. You know that that would have that would have been That would have
37:02
been great. Wouldn't have been great, but at least it would have acknowledged
37:07
the issue, and it wouldn't have exacerbated it. It wouldn't have been a
37:09
lie. But no, no, no, no, no. We don't
37:12
even live in that world anymore. We live in a world where Joe Scarborough
37:15
just blatantly lies and pretends to be part of the smart group. That's that's
37:22
the most infuriating part of this. I'm part of the smart group. You're
37:25
you too are part of the smart group. We are smarter than they are
37:29
because we know what Trump really meant. And again I go back to,
37:34
then, why did he say it's going to be a blood bath for the
37:37
country as opposed to to the country or in the country. I know that
37:43
sounds like a semantical difference, but I think that matters. You would never
37:47
say a blood bath for the country if that's really what you meant. And
37:52
I don't think that's what Trump meant at all. And it's certainly not what
37:55
he said. It's certainly not even close to what he said. And then
38:00
as far as the lack of self awareness, the part of this that is
38:05
maybe the most significant and most troubling, and this is a topic we talk
38:07
about on the Death of Journalism podcast all the time, is the complete and
38:14
total lack of trust now that the news media has in general, but specifically
38:20
with regard to Donald Trump. And this is why they keep making the same
38:23
mistake over and over and over again, and it almost always goes to Trump's
38:30
benefit. They have completely lost all credibility in general, but specifically with regard
38:38
to Trump. Thanks for listening to today's free drop of the abbreviated show.
38:43
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