Latest / The Death Of Journalism / Episode Fifty Six: Shocking New Biden Poll Numbers

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Episode Fifty Six: Shocking New Biden Poll Numbers · The Death Of Journalism

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Welcome to episode number fifty six of the Death of Journalism podcast. My name
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is John Ziggler. I am your host, and on today's show, is
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Joe Biden so weak that even Donald Trump can beat him? There's a new
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Tucker Carlson league about Trump, plus Trump's bizarre deposition in the Gene Carrol civil
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case gets revealed, and the mainstream media get this whiffs yet again when it
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comes to the motive behind a mass shooting. I'm known as the Dutch Digital
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marketing Man. I'm a digital advertising SEO and EMO marketing specialist that also happens
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you want to grow your business, Peter can help. That's the Dutch Digital
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Marketingman dot com. And hey, thanks for sponsoring the show. We have
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yet another jampacked program for you today. We begin with yet another mass shooting,
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this one in Dallas, Texas, where at least eight people are dead,
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and from a media perspective, mass shootings have become maybe the most predictable
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phenomenon in all of news media. It's almost become cliche now that when one
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of these tragedies occurs, the news media jumps on it with some hesitation,
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waiting for a narrative that they like, and as soon as they get a
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narrative they like, it's a huge story. If they don't get a narrative
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they like, or if it's one they really don't like, then it just
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disappears. The first thing they always look at is, okay, how many
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people have died and what's the nature of those people? Generally, to make
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sure that a mass shooting is a major news story, it's ideal for the
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news media, that occurs during the week days, and it's in double digits
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with regard to deaths. Well, this one didn't qualify on either of those
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fronts because apparently, as at this moment, only eight people have died,
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although that's obviously still tragic, and the real key, of course, is
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all right, who did it and what's the potential motive that we could plaster
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on this story to fit our agenda, and some major media had pretty high
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hopes for this one, despite the fact that it occurred basically on a weekend
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and did not qualify with double digit deaths, because it's Dallas, Texas and
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it happened in a mall, so that sounds like something that could be juicy
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for them. And there were two early reports in major media, in the
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Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post where they thought they already had the motive.
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They already knew according to headlines in the Wall Street Journal in the Washington
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Post, that this was a situation where the gunman was suspected of being a
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white supremacist and or a Nazi sympathizers. Now that's a narrative, of course
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the media loves if true. In fact, it might not matter if it's
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true. That's something they can run with white supremacy. I mean, there
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is a large demand in the mainstream news media for anything related to white supremacy
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causing chaos and death and destruction. In fact, there's such a demand for
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white supremacy causing death and destruction that it far outstrips supply. And that's what
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happened in this particular case because we found out after quite a while who the
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murderer was, and his name is Mauricio Martinez Garcia. Garcia is someone who
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was kicked out of the military with emotional problems, his family apparently speaks exclusively
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Spanish, and he may have been a gang member. Of course, all
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these details are unlikely to ever get fully verified because now the news media no
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longer likes the narrative this doesn't fit. I know. I'm sure there'll be
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somehow that some of them will try to pretend that Garcia did this out of
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why, motivated by white supremacy or neo Nazism, but that's of course ridiculous
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to the average person. Of Course, the obvious hypocrisy here is not just
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that the level of interest to the news media has in a mass shooting is
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based purely on how much they can benefit the media can from the narrative of
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any particular story. But when it comes to motive, we're obviously just coming
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out of the situation in Nashville, Tennessee, where to this day, the
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manifesto of the person that was transitioning their gender just before they went on a
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rampage against a Christian school and killed children among others, has still not been
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revealed, and that story has been completely dropped in the mainstream news media because
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they know that's not a good story for them. They know they're not completely
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stupid, they know that that manifesto has got to have very bad things for
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the transgender movement. And it's not the only situation where the transgender movement could
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be tied to either attempted or actual mass killings, and so that one gets
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put into the memory hole, as this story in Dallas, Texas will.
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And it's just it's infuriating, But I also think it's instructive these types of
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stories now, and I think people are starting to get it, are understanding
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now. Obviously not the majority of the population, but a good portion of
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the population has now become so correctly cynical about the news media that this really
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is a telescope into the making of the sausage. This is something many average
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people can understand that this whole system is corrupt, This entire media system is
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corrupt. It's not about the truth, it's about agendas. It's about narratives,
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and it's very very selective in what stories it can highlight and which stories
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it can ignore. And it's all about what is best for them, mostly
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from a political indoor ratings agenda perspective, and this Dallas, Texas story seemingly
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fits perfectly into that. Now, one of the premises of my coverage of
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the presidential race is that Donald Trump is unlikely to beat Joe Biden in a
6:39
rematch, and the basis for that is quite obvious. He lost to Joe
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Biden fairly significantly, although you could argue that it was forty four thousand votes
6:50
away from two sixty nine to sixty nine tie, which I always say would
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have resulted in absolute, literal civil war given the circumstances of twenty twenty and
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January six would have seen like a picnic in comparison if that scenario had occurred.
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But from a popular vote standpoint and an electoral college perspective, it was
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not that close. Biden did win. I realized that there will always be
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people in the right who will not accept that reality. I don't understand that.
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I mean, yes, Biden got eighty one million votes because that's how
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much people hated Donald Trump, not because people liked Joe Biden. And the
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reason why the votes came in the way that they did. This is so
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obvious to me, but yet it seems to be something that most people can't
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grasp, especially Trump voters. The way that the votes came in late at
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night and the next morning is not because there was some massive conspiracy to rig
7:45
the election. It was because we were in the middle of a pandemic and
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Republicans voted in person on election day and Democrats voted overwhelmingly by mail. And
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it was the way that those votes tended to be counted wasn't rocket science.
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It was very obvious. The news media did a terrible job of educating people
8:05
that this was what the way things were going to go down, and it
8:07
took a lot of people by surprise, and it allowed a lot of conspiracy
8:11
theories to be born. So that's the main reason. I mean, he's
8:15
lost once to Biden. Trump has and that was as an incumbent, So
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how's he going to beat Biden four years later as the challenger? And you
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know, from a demographic standpoint, a lot of more of his voters have
8:28
died just by age, and a lot more of Biden Democrat voters have been
8:33
born as they've turned eighteen, and Generation Z is basically a bunch of communists.
8:39
So from a logic standpoint, Okay, yeah, the economy's terrible,
8:43
inflation, illegal immigration, you know, scandals have been rocking, although the
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news media hasn't accepted this. The Biden family, I mean, there are
8:52
reasons why Biden would do worse, but there's no Trumps at his own problems.
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I mean, January sixth happened after the twenty twenty election, obviously,
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and while the right wing media doesn't accept this, to a large portion of
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independence, that was a big turn off. And it's not like Trump has
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changed his behavior or somehow, you know. I mean, the twenty twenty
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two mid terms certainly didn't indicate there was a massive seat change in public opinion
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with regard to Democrats and Republicans or Trump, because, as I've talked about
9:26
many times on this program, Trump was a huge weight in several key senatorial
9:33
elections in the twenty twenty two midterms. So there's no evidence that things would
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be radically different in twenty twenty four than in twenty twenty. So that's been
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kind of the bedrock premise. But I want to clarify something because you know,
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my opinions are often pretty nuanced, and they're based on sound reasoning and
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data and logic most of the time, and for the purposes of the record,
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I want this to be known because I don't think I've ever mentioned it.
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My last column for Mediaite, when I was a senior columns there.
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This would have been at the end of twenty twenty one, so we're a
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year after the twenty twenty election, and on the one year anniversary of the
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twenty twenty election, and my last political column for Mediaite, I wrote that
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nobody has a better chance of being elected president in twenty twenty four than Donald
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Trump. I didn't predict he was gonna win. There were basically a handful
10:33
of people that had a chance, but the most likely scenario would be a
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Biden Trump rematch, and that Trump had at least a fifty fifty shot at
10:43
that point against Joe Biden. And so I've always been very open to the
10:50
idea that Donald Trump was going to be elected in twenty twenty four, largely
10:54
because of the weakness that I perceived coming from the Biden hair campaign. There
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was also the chance that Biden wouldn't run for reelection, or that something might
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happen dramatically to his health, and I thought there was a much better chance
11:07
of that occurring than it would happen with regard to Donald Trump. So anyway,
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with that as the backdrop, I have never ever said Trump absolutely positively
11:16
cannot win in twenty twenty four. My two premises here have always been the
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chances are less with Biden, I mean against Biden by Trump than for instance,
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they would be with Rhonda Santis or maybe even another credible Republican candidate,
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because the thing about Trump is he provokes so many anti votes. He provokes
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so many Democrats or independence into turning into Democrats who might not in ordinarily bother
11:45
to vote, even in a mail in era. He is a voting turnout
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machine for Democrats, not just at the presidential level, but also down ballot,
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and the evidence of that is overwhelming, not to mention the fact that
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he can only run for one term, can only serve one term, because
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he's already served the term as president, and his first term was not nearly
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as effective business fans claim, especially once COVID came around. So that's always
12:13
been the premise for why it is that I am both dubious of and against
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the chances of success for Donald Trump's nomination in twenty twenty four as the Republican
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nominee. The reason why I'm mentioning all this now is that there's a new
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poll by from ABC Washington Post that has gotten a lot of play in the
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last couple of days, and understandably so, because their results of this national
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poll are pretty shocking and the bottom line. There's a lot to talk about
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here, but the bottom line of this poll is that Joe Biden is now
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losing to both Donald Trump and Ronda Samtis nationally in a popular vote, which
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is, of course not how we elect presence in this country, but it's
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still interesting. It's not as important as it used to be because it used
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to be almost mathematically impossible to win the popular vote and not win the electoral
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college, but we've seen in recent years that's no longer the case. But
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Biden now loses to both Trump and the Santis by a fairly significant margin.
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Now it depends on how you do their math, but basically the headline here
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is that Biden's losing by seven points to Trump and about six points to the
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Santis or thereabouts, and that's a very significant margin if true. And you
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have to remember this is just after Joe Biden has announced he's running for reelection,
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where in theory there should be some semblance of a bounce, right,
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Well, I actually think that there's a chance here that Biden is going to
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get a negative polling bounce from having announced he's running for reelection, because until
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he announced, there was always the hope I think among some Democrats who are
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worried about his age and his electability, that he wouldn't decide to run.
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So you were always supportive of him, but you're kind of hoping that he
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would take a pass and someone else would emerge. But now that it's reality,
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now that the reality is sinking in that Biden is running for reelection and
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that nobody is really running against him other than RFK Junior, who's not going
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to be given any credibility by the media for a lot of reasons, including
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the fact that he's perceived as an anti vaxx or that effect effectively, this
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is a done deal. Joe Biden's not even gonna have to face a primary
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challenge, and that he will be the Democratic nominee. And I think that
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for some it's not a huge number, but for some people that's going to
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be a negative factor in the polling, because now it's real. It's no
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longer theoretical. Now this is Oh my gosh, this is the best we've
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got, and I gotta either vote for Joe Biden or Donald Trump. And
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I think there are a lot of people who are going to be in the
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undecided category right now on that at best, even if they're Democrats. And
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this poll suggests that that's exactly the case, because there are a lot of
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undecided. And it should be pointed out that while Biden is losing by six
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or seven points to both Trump and the Santists, neither Trump nor de Santists
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or over fifty percent. See to me, that's a big key here,
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especially with regard to Trump, because even this poll, which has a lot
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of advantages for Trump that I don't think are based in reality, he's still
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not hitting fifty percent. That means there's a lot of undecided. Are they
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really going to break for Trump? I mean at this point, who's breaking
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for Trump at this point? At now? There are a lot of very
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positive things in the internals of this poll which are frankly understandable, but the
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two major factors driving Trump beating Biden in this pole other than maybe a bad
15:52
sample, which I'll get to momentarily, is that Trump dominates when it comes
15:56
to handling of the economy, which is kind of understandable because the economy was
16:00
obviously much better for the first three plus years of Trump than it is during
16:06
the Biden presidency. And then there's the age issue. Even though there are
16:11
only four years apart, the American public understandably and logically views Biden's health and
16:17
age is a much bigger issue than they view Trump's health and age. And
16:22
so the economy and age, those are two big things. I mean,
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one matters to people greatly. The other is something that the media can't really
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spend. It's pretty clear when someone isn't physically capable of doing the job,
16:34
no matter how much how much the media tries to hide it. And this
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is obviously, age is an issue that every single human being has an experience
16:42
with. We all have parents or grandparents, are great grandparents that we've seen
16:47
in their eighties, and we know that they shouldn't be anywhere near the levels
16:52
levers of power when it comes to the presidency. So this is a major
16:57
problem for Biden. And however, I do have questions about this poll The
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first thing I always look at in a poll like this is, okay,
17:07
what is Biden's approval rating in the sample, because it's quite quite possible to
17:14
get a bad sample in a poll like this, especially nationally, and Biden's
17:18
approval rating is minus nineteen for the sample of this ABC Washington Post poll.
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Minus nineteen is just dreadful for a president, even by Trump standards. I
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mean, Trump would occasionally get into that realm, but his average was nowhere
17:37
near that bad, and Biden's average is nowhere near that bad. Biden's average
17:41
has been pretty steady, right around ten or eleven minus ten or eleven.
17:47
Now that might be a little bit deceiving because for some reason Rasmussen, which
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used to be a very pro Trump pulling out like it, has been bizarrely
17:59
positive when it comes to Biden's approval ratings. So his numbers might be a
18:03
little bit askew because of that. But you know, these things tend to
18:06
work out with statistical noise, and minus nineteen is outside I think the realm
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of normalcy or the realm of reality. So you're dealing with a sample here
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that is very much more anti Biden than is probably warranted by the general population.
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So that's warning number one. That's question red flag number one. The
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second part of this, which might be part of the reason why the approval
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rating is off, is that this was a poll of all adults. This
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was not likely voters or even registered voters. This is adults. Now that
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number isn't as significant as it used to be because we have mail in voting
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and almost everybody votes in a presidential election. But I still I'm still not
18:49
comfortable with that that's an irrelevant sample to be pulling all adults. It's people
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that are likely to vote that mattered the most. I've already referenced there's a
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lot of undecided in this poll, which is I don't think good for Trump
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because I just don't see what the scenario is where where people who are undecided
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at this point finally decide, you know what, let's do, Let's do
19:12
Trump again. I just don't see that. Now, the most interesting part
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of this poll on the internals is that fifty six percent of all the respondents
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fifty six percent believed that Donald Trump should be charged for trying to overturn the
19:30
election in twenty twenty fifty six percent. Now, you would think that a
19:34
sample that has fifty six percent believing that one of the two guys being asked
19:41
about should be charged criminally for overturning election. Would mean there's no possible way
19:47
that he's winning yet. And this drove George Stephanopolis on ABC kind of batty
19:53
when when he was talking about this poll on his on his Sunday show and
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he said he couldn't app is mined around this reality, and I can understand
20:03
why. The reason why Trump is still winning is that eighteen percent of those
20:08
who say that Trump should be charged for trying to overturn an election, which
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is basically almost one in five, So almost one in five of those people
20:18
who believe Trump should be charged would still vote for him over Joe Biden.
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Eighteen. Now that's astonishing. I think there's a lot of reasons for why
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that would be. First of all, I gotta remember this is a when
20:33
you get you start narrowing ports of the population down to get into a very
20:37
small sample size. But it's still significant and I'm not going to discount it
20:41
completely. But the reason why this is one that's how week Biden is Biden
20:48
is that week that you could believe that Trump should be charged for trying to
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overturn an election and still won him Overbiden number two. And this is the
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part that the news media just simply refuses to accept. They never even want
21:03
to think about. I don't even know if they ever consider this, But
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it started to become very clear to me in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, with
21:14
the popularity of Donald Trump in general, is that there is a certain percentage
21:18
of the population that just once entertainment, they just want to burn it all
21:25
down. They really don't take this seriously at all. Now, some of
21:30
these people are, you know, not serious people themselves, or crackpots.
21:34
They might even be bad people. Some people in this category I could kind
21:38
of understand if you've just given up on the process so much that the only
21:42
thing it's worth to you is entertainment, and the crazier the better, the
21:48
more chaos the better. And you know, President Trump under indictment for having
21:56
tried to overturn the previous election, would you have to acknowledge that would be
22:00
pretty chaotic and pretty entertaining potentially, And I really do believe that that is
22:06
a significant segment of the American populace, and maybe even a significant segment of
22:11
the American voting populace that really just once chaos and entertainment burn it all down,
22:21
and Trump does very well with those people. Those people who are not
22:26
considered to be quote unquote Republicans or even part of the Trump coult. They
22:30
might even hate Donald Trump, but they find him to be entertaining and momentarily
22:37
I'm going to get to another example of that when it came to the leak
22:41
of his or I guess not the League, but the revealing of his deposition
22:44
in the Gene Carol civil case against him, which is currently ongoing. The
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other thing about this poll, by the way, which made me very suspicious,
22:52
is that Biden, while he's still winning the black vote by a significant
22:57
margin, it's nowhere near as significant as it was in twenty twenty, and
23:03
that to me shows that that's probably an anomaly. There's something wrong here.
23:07
So my bottom line on this poll is interesting, but I'm not buying.
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I'm not buying at all. I do not believe this is a valid snapshot
23:22
of the population's opinions on a potential Trump Biden race. I also think it's
23:30
important to point out which has been lost in the media coverage of this poll,
23:33
that the Santist does basically just as well against Biden as Trump does.
23:37
But the Trump supporters have been touting this very heavily, as Saha see proof
23:42
our guys are going to win, and there's no need to worry about the
23:48
electability and certainly no need to go with the Santists. We're gonna go with
23:52
Trump. It's it's his turn, and we're going to be able to get
23:56
our retribution and vindication and all's going to be right with the world because he's
24:00
going to be Joe Biden pretty easily. I don't believe that that's the case.
24:04
I don't believe that this poll proves that. Now, look, if
24:08
there were two or three other credible polls that said basically the same thing,
24:15
then I would take this much more seriously. And I'm sure that there has
24:19
got to be a lot of angst on the Democratic side that reality is setting
24:26
in that, you know what, Biden is so weak, and obviously Biden
24:30
Harris as a team is so weak that even Donald Trump might be able to
24:36
beat him. I mean, they have been looking at Trump as their lifeboat.
24:41
Basically, I've referenced the Santists as a lifeboat for Republicans going down on
24:48
the Titanic, and I've told people getting at the goddamn boat, because this
24:52
is your last chance to save yourself. But they look at Trump the same
24:56
way that Democrats can be saved from Joe Biden's weakness, because Trump is just
25:04
that toxic. But it's now possible, underlying possible, that Biden himself is
25:11
so weak and on those two issues that are so deadly because they are so
25:17
easily understood by the average person in the news media can't spend them as well
25:22
as they can on other issues the economy, which obviously people feel in their
25:26
own everyday lives, and the age issue, which every adult inherently understands from
25:33
their own life experience. That's what's so dangerous for Joe Biden. And of
25:40
course Democrats have no other real options here. They can't have Joe Biden suddenly
25:47
withdraw, especially now, unless there's a massive medical issue. Of course,
25:51
you could argue there's a massive medical issue going on with his dementia. The
25:55
media ignored it. But just this past week, Joe Biden hold the media
26:00
at one point that he was going to have a major press conference in the
26:03
afternoon, and then the White House had to announce that the president miss spoke
26:07
and that there was no press conference scheduled. I mean that's pretty bad.
26:15
I mean, you know, in a rational world, that would be a
26:18
that would be raising all sorts of questions about the mental competency of the president
26:22
of the United States. But the media doesn't want to go there for obvious
26:27
reasons. But they can't ditch him, especially now that he's announced, and
26:32
especially when the alternative is Kamala Harris, who is deeply, deeply unpopular.
26:38
And I have said many times that until and unless she becomes a historic president
26:45
for an extended period of time, when Biden gets reelected and then resigns,
26:49
she is going to be a different person. She won't get her superpowers yet
26:53
as vice president, she doesn't really have superpowers, and she's kind of seen
26:59
as incompetent and annoying and unqualified and there because of her gender and her race
27:07
all that. I think, not all that, but a lot of that
27:08
would change if she ever did become president, but she's not in that position
27:12
yet. Now. Could Biden withdraw for the presidency completely and make Harris the
27:18
incumbent, now, I guess, but there would have to be a really
27:23
good medical reason for that to happen, because obviously Biden doesn't want to leave,
27:27
as most human beings that would get into that position to begin with,
27:30
they want to hold onto power, and he's already announced, So now the
27:36
thresholds completely different. There has to be something new and dramatic that would cause
27:41
Biden to do something like that. But I gotta say, I'm sure that
27:45
there has to be a lot of angst on the Democratic side, and there
27:49
will be even more angst if, in fact, this poll is duplicated by
27:55
other results that are similar. Now, of course, on the right,
27:59
the cult is hailing this one pole from ABC Washington Post as somehow a proof
28:07
that they're right, which is hilarious and so typical of cult behavior, because
28:11
the reality is, if it went the other direction, there's not a chance
28:15
any Trump cult member would give any credibility to an ABC Washington Post poll.
28:18
Oh, it's fake news. It's the liberal media. This is rigged.
28:22
They're trying to make our guy look bad. But when it fits their agenda,
28:26
much like the media itself, then all of a sudden, it's absolutely
28:30
true and it's evidence that their guy is in the right and he's gonna win.
28:37
And this is going throughout the entire Trump apparatus, from Donald Trump on
28:42
down. I mean, here's the guy who doesn't believe in polls, even
28:45
on election day, and that's all he does is tout poles that show him
28:49
winning both on the Republican side and winning against Joe Biden. Yet if they
28:55
showed something different, and when they show something different, they're not to be
28:59
taken serious. Their fake news, and so which is it. I mean,
29:03
he does the same thing with news articles about Rhonda Santis, liberal news
29:07
media articles that he would normally never give any credibility to. All of a
29:10
sudden they're the be all, end all and proof that DeSantis isn't ready or
29:15
de Santis has this problem or that problem. And as I said, with
29:18
polling that I'm going to win, I'm winning big, it's just hilarious if
29:22
it wasn't so serious, because it's so obviously hypocritical. So that will be
29:27
the response to that particular poll. Now, speaking of the twenty twenty election,
29:34
we've talked a lot lately about Tucker Carlson for understandable reasons, and his
29:40
quote unquote firing from Fox News Channel, and there's been a lot of leaks
29:45
and revelations about a Tucker in the last couple of weeks since that occurred,
29:48
I wanted to share one with you that didn't get that much attention, but
29:52
I found it to be interesting. This is an article from The Hill.
29:56
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson text did anchor Bret Baar in November twenty twenty,
30:03
voicing concerns that former President Trump would quote blame the network when he lost
30:10
the election. According to text message is obtained by The Daily Beast, Carlson
30:15
texted, quote, see if there's any way I could help calm viewers down,
30:22
That says Carlson to bear, see if there's any way I could help
30:26
calm viewers down. When Trump loses, He's going to blame us. That's
30:32
going to be very bad. So this is in the aftermath of the election
30:37
in twenty twenty. Trump obviously never conceded, So he hasn't conceded yet,
30:41
and there's still some question as to what the final result is going to because
30:45
it took so long for all the votes to be counted, and Tucker is
30:48
already concerned that Trump's gonna lose, He's gonna blame us, and we got
30:52
to do something about the Trump friendly audience, which is our bread and butter.
30:57
Back to the Hill article, The messages, which are reportedly part of
31:00
redacted court filings in Dominion Voting Systems former defamation case against Fox News show the
31:07
two Fox News personalities discussing the backlash the network faced after calling Arizona for President
31:15
Biden. You may recall that Fox News Channel did that very quickly and probably
31:19
prematurely. Yes, Arizona ended up going for Biden, but by a very
31:25
very small margin in comparison to one what was expected the night or the next
31:33
morning of the election. And true, certainly it was far closer than what
31:37
would warrant a call from Fox News Channel in a major league, significant state
31:45
like Arizona in favor of Joe Biden. I mean, look, it shouldn't
31:49
be this way. It's sad that it's this way. That the conservative network
31:53
needs to have a different threshold when it comes to calling states for the other
31:56
guy and vice versa. But this is the way it worked. I mean,
32:00
I remember in the twenty twenty four election, which really wasn't that close,
32:07
where George Bush beat John Kerry. It was, and no one ever
32:10
pointed this out, although I did on the radio at the time on a
32:15
constant basis because I found it to be bizarre and telling and very troubling.
32:21
But there were different states being called based upon the political ideology of the news
32:27
organization that was calling. This was the next day, because no one wanted
32:32
to put Bush over the top, but there were different states that were being
32:37
called in different directions, and it was obviously based upon the political ideology of
32:44
the news organization. And that's sad and incredibly unhealthy. But I understand that
32:51
if you're Fox News Channel, you better be damn well certain that if you're
32:55
going to make the call in a key state in a close election for the
33:00
guy that your audience hates and against the guy your audience loves, that is
33:07
that's got it. You gotta be really sure about that. And while they
33:09
turned out to be right, they were barely right, and it was I
33:14
think it was a mistake to call Arizona as prematurely as they did. And
33:19
I'm obviously not a Trump guy. I'm just looking at this as objectively as
33:23
possible. And the reason why the Trump people were so upset about this is
33:28
it took away their leverage. If Fox News is calling Arizona for Biden,
33:34
and that effectively means there's no path to winning the election getting two hundred and
33:39
seventy Electoral College votes. Then all of a sudden, their legs get cut
33:43
out from underneath them, and that's why they were so upset by this.
33:46
The Trump people were back to this article and to the text messages between Carlson
33:52
and Bear. Quote, I continue to think the company isn't taking this seriously
33:58
enough, Carlson texted on November fifth, twenty twenty. This is the day
34:01
after the election, according to the Daily Beast, we need to do something
34:07
to reassure our core audience there, our whole business model. Now that's I
34:15
think maybe the most important sentence in this text exchange between Tucker Carlson and bred
34:21
Bear, because it's something I talk about all the time about how it is
34:24
and why it is that the Trump cold is so incredibly powerful in making sure
34:30
that the conservative media cannot quit Trump, and they certainly can't kill Trump,
34:35
because that's the core audience there, our whole business model. That's Tucker Carlson
34:44
speaking more texts. Bear responds, quote, we have been pushing for answers.
34:51
I have pressed them to slow, and I think they will slow walk
34:54
Nevada. The voters don't. The votes don't come in until tomorrow. Bear
35:01
sent an email on November fifth urging the network to withdraw its call for Arizona.
35:07
The New York Times Peter Baker and New Yorkers Susan Glasser reported in their
35:12
book last year. They also previously reported the Fox decision desk was not allowed
35:17
to call Nevada for Biden. So Fox basically here's what happened. They made
35:24
the call for Arizona, and they got crushed by the Trump people and backlash
35:31
within their own audience. They didn't reverse that call because that would be too
35:37
transparently reacting to negative pressure. But what it did do was it caused them
35:44
to not call a neighboring state which was also close in Nevada, although they
35:51
could have easily done the same thing statistically. So this is the way things
35:54
work, folks. So they decided to stand on principle. We're not going
35:59
to reverse our call in Arizona, but we're gonna change our rules for calling
36:04
other states like Nevada, because we're just going to take too much heat if
36:07
we call both Arizona and Nevada. Too close states that are very key for
36:14
Joe Biden. Back to these texts, This is Carlson now quote I've got
36:19
four more years here, which he's referring to his contract, which is still
36:24
an issue apparently at Fox Newstandel Carlson's where he is there until the end of
36:31
the next election, and there's a lot of controversy going on right now as
36:36
to whether or not Tucker will be allowed out of that contract so we can
36:38
do something else. Fox is understandably negotiating an exit deal with him, and
36:45
the leverage being that they can keep him off of some other television network at
36:52
least until the end of the twenty twenty four election. And he doesn't want
36:57
to do that, obviously, he wants to get out there, especially consider
37:00
all the attention that he is currently the focus of. But he writes,
37:04
I've got four more years here. I'm stuck with Fox. Got to do
37:08
whatever I can to keep our numbers up and our viewers happy. Now,
37:15
I get this is the way it works in cable news television. But there
37:21
it is from the horse's mouth. This is Tucker Carlson to Brett Bear,
37:24
sounding the alarm that hey, we are screwing with our core audience. We
37:30
need to keep our numbers up and our viewers happy. Now, Tucker is
37:36
a smart guy, and he understood what was going to happen here. And
37:39
Fox suffered greatly in the aftermath of the twenty twenty election because a lot of
37:45
the Trump voters went to Newsmax and won American News because they weren't being made
37:49
happy. They were being told unfortunate truths on Fox News Channel, which is
37:52
that basically Biden had won the election, and those people ended up coming back
37:58
to Fox because fox Ism is a lot better and a lot more important,
38:01
at least it was before Tucker got fired a couple of weeks ago. But
38:07
the idea that that was Tucker's philosophy and it's so much as philosophy that he's
38:13
willing to text Brett Bear in the aftermath of the twenty twenty election, to
38:17
me, is really profound and at real insight into how this all, this
38:24
whole thing really goes down, not just with regard to the coverage of election
38:30
results, but I think this is what's going on or what's going on with
38:34
Tucker Carlson in the last couple of months before he got fired, which I
38:38
documented probably in a more detailed and passionate fashion than anybody else on the planet,
38:45
because I saw it coming from a mile away. Tucker was, I
38:49
think, very concerned about the revelations in the Dominion Voting System's lawsuit coming out
38:54
with regard to his true opinions on Trump, and he went overboard, overcompensate
39:00
and to signal his virtue to what he knew was the core audience. And
39:07
so I think Tucker is the number one reason why this race for the Republican
39:13
nomination took such a dramatic turn in the last couple of months. Now,
39:16
he obviously he's not as big a reason as the indictment of Trump in New
39:21
York himself, but it was Tucker who led the charge and the narrative for
39:25
the reaction to the indictment. It was also Tucker that changed the narrative.
39:30
On January sixth, it was Tucker who did that softball interview with Trump and
39:35
Marlago, basically welcoming Trump back into the fold at Fox News Channel. This
39:39
is all I believe, in an effort to do exactly what he says in
39:44
this text message, keep our viewers happy. The Trump bases, the core
39:50
of our audience, and that is an incredibly powerful advantage for Trump and a
39:54
Republican nominating process incredibly power and it might be impossible to overcome. And by
40:04
the way, it should be pointed out, and I said this the night
40:07
of Tucker Carlson's firing on Dan Abrahams News Nation Show, But I really think
40:12
that Tucker's firing is a huge advantage for Trump, and it's a huge advantage
40:17
for Trump somewhat counterintuitively, but the main reason is, as I've said many
40:23
times, and this was part of why I chided Tucker in our personal text
40:27
message, is trying to guilt him into to coming off the ledge when it
40:30
came to supporting Trump, is that he was the only guy with the street
40:36
cred and the brains and maybe the conscience to ever fully turn on Trump because
40:40
we knew what he really believed about Trump, because of those redacted messages in
40:46
the Dominion Voting System's lawsuit and even those that became public with where he hates
40:52
Trump passionately can't wait to be able to ignore him after the twenty twenty election.
40:55
Blah blah blah. Well, with Tucker gone, there's no one to
41:00
fill that role now, there's no one to fill the potential role of going
41:05
after Trump, even if they had the courage and the inclination to do so,
41:07
in the approval from the higher ups at Fox News Channel, because there's
41:13
nobody else that has the street cred and the job security in theory and the
41:17
power to be able to do it. So now the Tucker has gone,
41:21
no one's going to do that. That's number one, but number two,
41:24
Fox News Channel is now so vulnerable, so vulnerable from every perspective. They
41:30
have lost so much audience, at least as of this taping, and I
41:35
am confident that will continue into the near future. At least they've lost so
41:38
much of their audience in reaction to Tucker's firing that they no longer have the
41:44
clout or the position of strength to be able to take a very controversial position
41:51
like, for instance, Trump shouldn't be the Republican nominee. So you can't
41:55
take a huge risk position when you're nowdly vulnerable. And that's what Fox News
42:01
Channel is. And it's not just that they're vulnerable on ratings, they're vulnerable
42:07
on narrative. Now in the conservative sphere, the right wing sphere that certainly
42:14
in Trump world. Fox News Channel is viewed by a lot of their former
42:19
core audience as highly suspicious. They're a bunch of you know, one world
42:25
government rhinos. You know, these are people that are not to be trusted
42:29
the Fox News higher ups because they just got rid of of Tucker Carlson.
42:32
So than anything that is seen as a philosophical change in the way that Fox
42:39
does their programming is going to have very little, if any credibility, certainly
42:45
with the core Trump voter and maybe even the second or third level Trump voter,
42:53
those that are maybe on the fence or would be willing to go to
42:55
somebody else like the Santis. So Fox is now vulnerable. Can't make a
43:01
dramatic decision like taking out Donald Trump. Tucker's not there to do it anymore
43:07
in a way that would be actually effective. And Fox News Channel has lost
43:12
so much credibility with the core audience if they were even trying to do that
43:17
to begin with, that it wouldn't even work. And I have gotten and
43:22
this is not something that I'm willing yet to say is definitive, but I've
43:29
seen a couple of things happen that I'm privy to that the public would not
43:35
be that I would consider possible canary in the coal mine moments that indicate to
43:40
me that Fox News Channel has already made the decision that we're at best going
43:46
to be agnostic on this Trump to Santas race, that they are not going
43:52
to make at the very least, they are not going to go all in
43:58
for de Santis or all against Donald Trump. That is not going to happen.
44:00
Based upon some things that I'm reading the tea leaves on, It's possible
44:07
I could be wrong about that. I'm not willing to make a defenditive statement
44:09
about it yet, but that's the sense that I'm getting, you know,
44:14
reading these tea leaves from situations that I'm privy to, and and it's possible.
44:20
I actually think there's a better chance that the Fox decides, you know,
44:22
screw it, we got to go all in on Trump to you know,
44:28
because he's going to be the nominee anyway, So what point is it
44:30
to destroy what's left of our core audience. The only way we're going to
44:35
get these people back is if we are leading the charge on the Trump train.
44:38
I think that is actually a better possible scenario, from from a percentage
44:44
standpoint than what had been perceived to be the likely reality, which was that
44:51
Trump was going to be at the very least disfavored by Fox News Channel,
44:55
that he was going to be iced out that you remember, it was only
44:59
a couple of months when people thought that there was a soft boycott of Trump
45:02
and the Trump family at Fox News Channel. I see this now going in
45:07
a very different direction, and Fox is basically going to be forced to do
45:10
that, largely because of the reaction to the Tucker Carlson firing. So it's
45:15
classic Trump, you know, things that had nothing to do with him.
45:20
And by the way, it should be pointed out, it's so obvious.
45:22
But I don't think I've even mentioned this before. How classic Trump, and
45:27
how frustrating is it, and how ironic is it? And infuriating is it
45:30
that this whole thing happens. Why Because Trump lied about losing the twenty twenty
45:37
election, and he lied about dominion voting systems, and Fox News Channel at
45:42
some level felt like they needed to support Trump and that lie it came back
45:46
to bite them for eight hundred million dollars in the ass in a settlement,
45:51
and it indirectly or maybe directly, resulted in the firing of Tucker Carlson.
45:57
So all of this is happening because of Donald Trump's lie about the twenty twenty
46:00
election. In a remotely rational world, Fox News Channel should be like,
46:07
screw you, Trump, you just cost us eight hundred million dollars. We're
46:10
bringing your ass down and we're not going to go through this again. And
46:14
in fact, it's the exact opposite. So all of this talk about whatever
46:17
Trump touches dies, all of this is originating with a Donald Trump lie.
46:24
All this damage, all this destruction, and there's a direct line between that
46:30
and Tucker Carlson's firing. And who's going to be the biggest beneficiary from all
46:35
this maybe the only beneficiary from all this? Donald Trump. You just can't
46:40
make this up. It's Trump's world. We're all just living in the folks.
46:45
Now, that doesn't mean that I've somehow decided that this thing is all
46:51
over and that Trump is one hundred percent the nominee. I've not decided that
46:55
yet. Although I'm very very very very very realistic about what the possibilities are.
47:02
I'm also not going to yet give up the ship on telling the story
47:07
of what's really going on here, because I'm one of the very few,
47:10
of not the only conservative willing and able to do that. And it's just
47:15
remarkable some of the things that are being ignored in the conservative media because they
47:22
are so afraid of upsetting the Trump audience and the customer base. And another
47:28
classic example of that happened just a couple of days ago. Here's a clip
47:32
that, in a remotely rational world ought to be a big stinking deal.
47:38
This is Bill Barr at some sort of public event. I think it got
47:44
carried It might have been c Span or something, but it wasn't on major
47:49
television. And he's at a public event doing a speaking engagement, and Haraldo
47:53
Rivera is in the audience. And by the way, Horaldo has apparently been
47:58
taken off the air for tweets that he made disparaging of Fox News Channel,
48:02
and it's possible he may not come back. I'm hearing rumblings that this might
48:07
be a major deal with regard to Haraldo Rivero, though he's publicly claiming that
48:12
this is a short vacation that he doesn't quite understand. But Rivera was in
48:16
the audience, and they have a Q and A for Bill Barr. Now,
48:20
remember Bill Barr is Donald Trump's attorney general. He's not just his attorney
48:24
general. He's the second attorney general that Trump brought in after he fired Jeff
48:30
Sessions out of the twenty eighteen midterm elections. The day after he fires Jeff
48:35
Sessions, by the way, I mean completely craps on Jeff Sessions. Poor
48:37
Jeff Sessions, first major politician elected official to endorse Trump in the twenty sixteen
48:44
primary. And this is the thanks that Jeff Sessions gets. He gets blamed
48:47
for the twenty eighteen midterms, he gets crushed over him being unwilling to kill
48:52
the Russian investigation. And Bill Barr gets taken off the couch. I mean
48:57
Bill Barr was basically in the on his couch and his underwear watching TV,
49:02
completely out of the game, and Trump brings him in and to be the
49:07
attorney general with the obvious mission of torpedoing the Russian investigation, which Bar does.
49:16
And I was way ahead of the curve, and I think I was
49:20
one hundred percent vindicated when the Muller report starts to come out and Barr puts
49:25
out that I think it was a two page summary, and even the left
49:30
wing media accepted that Barr must have been right when he says that Mueller concluded
49:34
that there were no crimes and nothing impeachable. I don't remember the exact verbiage,
49:37
but that was the takeaway that you know that there's no crimes, no
49:43
obstruction of justice, no collusion, no nothing here, and you know,
49:46
eventually I'll release the full report, but I'm putting out this summary now.
49:51
And that smelled like bullcrap right off the bat, and I believe that it
49:54
was bullcrap, that it was very deceitful. And I've even confronted Bill Barr
49:59
about this and an event very similar to the one that Haraldo attended at the
50:05
Reagan Library here in southern California, and Bar and I had a really interesting
50:09
interaction about that. Because I think that Barr is a smart guy. He
50:14
has risen in my I don't call it a steam, because I was so
50:19
upset with him for what he did with regard to the Mulla report that I
50:22
don't think I have him in his steam, but I have more respect for
50:25
him now, especially after having interacted with him at the Reagan Library. Guys,
50:30
I think he's a generally smart guy, and he's a generally honest guy.
50:37
And rivera apparently loves him. I mean, Rivera, in the question
50:42
that we're about to play for you, calls Bill Barr his favorite man in
50:45
Washington. And this is important to point out. Rivera is a friend of
50:51
Donald Trump. Okay, So, so I've set this up, probably taken
50:54
more time to set this up than I should have, but this is important
50:58
for the reasons I'm about state. Rivera is a friend of Trump. He
51:02
was on The Apprentice when Donald Trump was the host. He has defended Trump
51:07
many many times and considers him to be a friend. Bill Barr was Donald
51:14
Trump's hand picked attorney general to kill the Mother Report, which he did effectively.
51:20
So these are two huge Trump supporters in a rational world, people whose
51:27
credibility on Trump should be unquestioned. They know him exceedingly well, and they
51:34
have a self interest to support him because they have done so previously on major
51:39
topics. So this is Haraldo Rivera asking Bill Barr whether or not his friend
51:49
Donald Trump is emotionally fit to be president of the United States. Again and
51:57
listen to Bill Barr's response to Haraldo Rivera, is Donald Trump? A lot
52:06
of my friends say, Okay, He's made mistakes and okay. January sixth,
52:08
okay, this, and that it is his policies that we'd be voting
52:12
for given that pragmatic side. Also, do you think he is emotionally fit
52:17
to be president of the United States? I disagree. I think that Trump
52:21
and Biden will be the candidates that whatever that says about the United States.
52:27
Is he fit to be president of the United States? Is Donald Trump fit
52:30
to be president? This is the whay I'll answer that, Horaldo, which
52:35
is, if you believe in his policies, he's the last what he's advertising
52:39
is his policies, He's the last person who could actually execute them and achieve
52:45
them. He does not have the discipline, He does not have the ability
52:50
for strategic thinking and linear thinking, or setting priorities or how to get things
52:57
done in the system. It is a horror show when he's when you know,
53:01
when he's left to his own devices, and and so you may want
53:06
his policies, but Trump will not deliver Trump policies. He will deliver chaos
53:12
and if anything lead to a backlash, that will set his policies much further
53:16
back than they otherwise would be. As a very direct answer to general,
53:22
thank you very much. Now, I have seen no media attention on the
53:29
left or the right for that clip of Bill Barr, and um, I
53:35
find that to be astonishing as well as very telling about what's going on here,
53:43
because you know, in the old world before Trump three twenty fifteen world,
53:51
that's game set match. If somebody's former attorney general, who you know
53:58
has reason to be respected that his bar does, says that about you,
54:02
you're done. It's over. And yet that will have no impact because we
54:07
don't live in that world anymore, because everyone is automatically presumed to not be
54:13
credible as soon as they say something that contradicts what the audience that is in
54:20
question wants to believe. And so the Trump voter now thinks that Bill Barr
54:28
is somehow evil. And this, by the way, isn't an isolated situation.
54:31
I mean, how many former Trump employees in his administration are in the
54:37
same category. Yet he somehow still claims that he one of his strengths is
54:43
hiring all the best people. Ken, you can't make this up. His
54:47
strength as a leaders I choose all the right people. I know who the
54:53
good people are and the bad people are. And yet he is destroyed almost
54:58
everybody he ever hired in his administration, And I keep asking this question and
55:01
nobody has an answer. Who the hell is going to serve in the next
55:07
Trump administration? If there is one, who's gonna be the next attorney general,
55:14
who's gonna be the next Secretary of State, who's gonna be the next
55:17
Secretary of Defense, who's gonna be in the cabinet? Who will serve?
55:22
But we're gonna be talking about dlist people who are gonna be willing should Trump
55:27
win, to serve for this guy, given his history of what happened in
55:31
the first term. And this kind of stuff matters because those are the people
55:37
that oftentimes are really making the decisions. And I hope this will be an
55:40
issue for the desantist campaign once there actually is a desantist campaign. I want
55:47
to turn now to the lawsuit that Trump is currently fighting in a trial that
55:54
it's a bit of a complex lawsuit. It revolves around an allegation from a
56:00
woman by the name of Eejeene Carol from many many years ago. Infactually doesn't
56:05
even know what you were allegedly occurred where Trump supposedly assaulted her in the dressing
56:10
room of a very famous New York clothing store. And but it's not actually
56:22
for assault, it's for defamation surrounding the allegation. Now, I don't want
56:29
to get bogged down into the actual civil lawsuit. I'm just gonna say,
56:34
as someone who I think has credibility because I'm obviously an ardent, ardent Trump
56:37
critic, this lawsuit is bullshit. It is bullshit on every possible level.
56:45
Now, is it possible that that Trump physically did something to Eejeene Carol.
56:51
I guess that's possible, but there's no evidence of it at all that should
56:57
ever have warranted a legitimate trial. The whole case stinks to high heaven.
57:06
I mean, there's so many parts of this that are extremely problematic that the
57:09
news media is pretending aren't that big of a deal. And so you're just
57:15
gonna have to trust me that I am one hundred percent in the category that
57:21
this is a bullcrap lawsuit. And if Donald Trump was not running for president
57:28
of the United States, and he was just, you know, a celebrity,
57:31
fake billionaire who was being questioned about this bullcrap lawsuit, I would actually
57:37
have very little problem with him responding to the questions in a very flippant and
57:45
maybe even disrespectful fashion, because that's the level of garbage that is this lawsuit,
57:52
and is this allegation against him, but he is running for president,
57:58
and the fact that he did not alter his behavior at all in the deposition
58:02
that he did for this lawsuit, I think is incredibly telling. And it's
58:07
telling about Trump, and it's also telling about his supporters and how often they
58:14
are just dreadful, dreadful people, and how they love him for things that
58:20
are not only not lovable but actually make him toxic to the voters who end
58:25
up deciding presidential elections. So I want to play two clips from Trump's deposition.
58:32
The first one I want to play because I always talk about the rational
58:37
world. Right now we no longer live in the rational world. I mean,
58:42
with the standard that trumpers have said for mistakes by Rod de Santis,
58:50
I want you to imagine if Roda Santis was ever somehow involved in a lawsuit
58:57
involving an assault that he allegedly perpetrated on a woman many years ago, and
59:05
that the santists has said that one of the reasons why he knows that he
59:10
did not assault this woman is that this woman is not his type. Eejean
59:15
Carrol is not his type. Okay, So he has said that one of
59:20
the reasons why he knows he didn't assault Egen Carol is that she's not my
59:22
type. All right, So imagine again putting the Santists in this in this
59:27
situation, which of course would never occur. There's so many levels of insanity
59:31
here. But then so then under oath in as deposition, he gets handed
59:40
a photograph and in the photograph is Eejeane Carrol, Ejean Carol's husband and Trump's
59:53
first wife, Ivana. So so that's the photo that is being handed to
1:00:02
Trump, and it's so the context here is important. So Ejing Carol's in
1:00:09
the photograph. By the way, Trump had once said he never met Ejing
1:00:14
Carol. But I'm willing to give that a pass because obviously Trump meets a
1:00:19
bazillion people even back then, and this was decades ago, and it would
1:00:23
be unreasonable for him to remember all this. But that's not the important part.
1:00:28
The important part is that during the deposition he gets handed the photograph,
1:00:32
and the photograph is perfectly clear, although Biden there's a prednes slip. Trump
1:00:37
will try to claim that desperately that the photo is not clear, because he
1:00:44
ends up making a blunder so massive, so massive that if ron De Sanders
1:00:50
ever came close to doing the same thing, his campaign would literally be over.
1:00:55
It would literally be over. So this is Trump being handed during his
1:01:00
deposition a photograph that includes his accuser and his first wife, and Trump makes
1:01:09
a massive blunder as to who the identity of the woman is. Who's actually
1:01:15
his accuser in this photograph? And here's what that sounded like. I don't
1:01:20
even know who the woman. Let's say, I don't know who it's Marla.
1:01:27
You're saying, Marla's in this photo. That's Marla. Yeah, that's
1:01:30
that's my wife. Which one woman are you pointing to? Now? Hereinted
1:01:40
and the person of the woman on the right is your wife. I don't
1:01:44
know this was the picture. I assumed that's John Johnson. Is that because
1:01:47
it's very blurry? Now, I hope that it was understandable as to why
1:01:55
that was such a massive blunder on Trump's part, because he must stook Ejean
1:02:04
Carol for Marla Maples, his second wife. Now, there's several reasons why
1:02:12
this is a huge problem, including, by the way, for his defense
1:02:15
in the civil case potentially, but number one is he said, Ejean Carol
1:02:22
is not his type, and yet he and that was a big reason why
1:02:27
he knew he didn't assault her, and yet he muststook her in this photograph
1:02:31
for his second wife, Marla Maples. Now, the absurdity of this is
1:02:37
his first wife is clearly in the photograph. It's not. There's no ambiguity.
1:02:42
So, just from a mental acuity standpoint, how is it that not
1:02:45
once but twice, Trump is thinking that there's a he's being handed a photograph
1:02:52
where he's with his first wife and his second wife, Marla Maples, is
1:02:58
right in his face. I mean, that would immediately be incomprehensible if he
1:03:02
was thinking straight. And then so he makes the mistake, not once but
1:03:07
twice, and then he tries to lie about it by claiming that the photo
1:03:12
is blurry, which is it is not. It is not blurry at all.
1:03:17
But to the Trump supporter, they just think this is funny. They
1:03:22
don't think that there's anything significant about this. Well, I found that to
1:03:27
be very significant. Now, is it disqualifying as president? Probably not,
1:03:31
although again, if to say this opportunately close to this, it absolutely would
1:03:37
be perceived as disqualifying, especially among the Trump supporters, but for some reason,
1:03:44
again because I guess he's immune to all any at all viruses. Nothing
1:03:49
has a negative impact on Trump, even something as huge as mistaking your accuser
1:03:57
in an assault case indirectly at assault case for your second wife while your first
1:04:01
wife is in the photograph that was number one. Then there is a second
1:04:08
clip I want to play because this is one of my pet peeves about Trump
1:04:13
and some of his scandals and the Access Hollywood tape. And I still believe
1:04:18
that there is an untold story about the Access Hollywood tape. I can't prove
1:04:25
any of it, but I am still to this day very very suspicious of
1:04:30
the timing of the release of that tape. How it got released by the
1:04:35
Washington Post and not by NBC. But NBC was ready to immediately follow up
1:04:43
Washington Post report on that tape. By the way, most interestingly from immediate
1:04:47
perspective, that one has ever been able to understand and make me understand how
1:04:53
this is possible. But the guy who got the Access Hollywood tape on that
1:04:58
date did not even know about the story when he came into work that day,
1:05:03
which tells me that this was a very late timed emergency leak that somebody
1:05:12
was doing for a particular purpose, And then I have great questions about how
1:05:16
it was that the Trump campaign was able to get all of of Bill Clinton's
1:05:24
most of them, many were the most prominent ones his accusers of sexual assault
1:05:29
to Saint Louis for a pre debate press conference they were having. Remember Hillary
1:05:35
and Trump were having that debate on that Sunday night, and so basically less
1:05:43
than two days later, you get these these women, I think there were
1:05:46
four of them to Saint Louis, which you know everyone in the world was
1:05:50
going to Saint Louis. Not easy to get travel accombinations, so tell accombinations,
1:05:56
get people's schedules. I mean, this is a difficult thing to do.
1:06:00
Hats off to the Trump campaign if they were able to pull this off
1:06:01
without any pre planning. But I would love, I would love to know
1:06:05
more of the details of how that whole thing went down, because a lot
1:06:09
of it doesn't make a lot of sense. And you could even argue,
1:06:14
and some people have, that the timing of it had something to do with
1:06:16
the Russian investigation because of what else happened on that Friday. But I don't
1:06:21
want to get too bogged down in anything that I'm just saying that I have
1:06:24
questions about the Access Hollywood tabe. And I've spoken to Billy Bush, who
1:06:29
was obviously intricately involved in that because he was the Access Hollywood host and up
1:06:32
getting camp as everything Trump touches dies except for him, you know, because
1:06:40
of the incredibly negative reaction to the Access Hollywood tape, and and I think
1:06:45
Billy Bush has questions about what really transpired in all that whole situation. But
1:06:51
here's the most important part. So the key phrasing in the Access Hollywood tape
1:06:57
is Trump saying to Billy Bush, you know that he wants to kiss.
1:07:01
He has this thing he has to kiss beautiful women and um and that when
1:07:05
you're a star, they let you do it, and they'll even let you
1:07:11
grab them by the pussy. That's what he said. It's almost a direct
1:07:16
quote. Now, Trump has tried to claim over the years, and he
1:07:21
does so in this deposition that the phrase let you do it is different from
1:07:29
reality. I perceive when he is saying in the Access Hollywood tape as they
1:07:34
let you get away with it when you're a star, he has turned that
1:07:40
into they want you to do it. But that's not what he's saying.
1:07:45
And I'm sure that there are many many women who want you to do something
1:07:49
to them sexually if you're a star, But that's not what he's saying.
1:07:54
The word let is not consent. That's that's I think the key part of
1:08:00
this. Somehow in his brain, let you get away with it is consent,
1:08:04
and that is not consent. I've never believed that that would be considered
1:08:10
consent, especially now that I have two young daughters. That is not consent.
1:08:15
Just because you don't get punished or hit in the face or the police
1:08:19
called on you immediately, that does not imply consent. But Trump goes a
1:08:24
step further in this deposition where he makes a biological, evolutionary, historical argument
1:08:33
that stars are basically allowed to assault. And this is my interpretation. Stars
1:08:41
are allowed to assault women. And that's always been the case throughout human history,
1:08:45
for better, for worse. And here he is in the deposition talking
1:08:50
about this in the AE Gene Carol civil case. And you say it again.
1:08:55
This has become very famous in this video. I just start seeing them.
1:09:00
It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And
1:09:03
when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,
1:09:08
grab them by the pussy, you could do anything. That's what you
1:09:11
said. Correct, Well, historically that's true with stars. It's true with
1:09:14
stars that they can grab women by the pussy. Well, that's what it's
1:09:17
If you look over the last million years, I guess that's been largely true,
1:09:21
not always, but largely true. Unfortunately or fortunately now. To me,
1:09:29
that's Trump either being delusional or being a liar, or both, and
1:09:34
that ought to be a controversy, that ought to be a major problem,
1:09:39
especially as a presidential candidate who's going to try to appeal to suburban moms in
1:09:44
several significant states where the future of the country might be at stake. And
1:09:48
here he is trying to claim that, well, you know, when you're
1:09:51
a star, you're allowed to assault women. They'll let you get away with
1:09:55
it. Those are my words. But I think that's a fair interpretation of
1:09:59
what he trying to say here. And yet his fan base thinks this is
1:10:02
hilarious, His media thinks this is hilarious. There was even a Trump based
1:10:11
they called Patriot Alerts. There's all sorts of these websites and email lists that
1:10:15
are very pro Trump that pretend to be news organizations. They had a headline
1:10:20
about the deposition video clips being revealed that read as follows. Twitter explodes all
1:10:29
capital letters as hilarious clips from Trump's deposition go viral. That's the takeaway in
1:10:36
trump World. Twitter explodes as hilarious clips from Trump's deposition go viral. And
1:10:43
I found that to be just disgusting and I'm not even gonna play for you.
1:10:46
Maybe the most disturbing of all the clips, which is where Trump tells
1:10:54
a female lawyer who was questioning him effectively, that he would never assault her
1:11:01
because she's too ugly for him. Those are my words, but that's I
1:11:05
think a pretty reasonable paraphrase, and that's how his fan base interpreted it,
1:11:11
which is why they thought it was hilarious. They think that's hilarious that the
1:11:15
Republican presidential frontrunner is telling a female lawyer in a position under oath, in
1:11:23
a case that involves an allegation of sexual assault against him, that she's too
1:11:28
ugly for him to consider assaulting. And that's hilarious. Now, this infuriated
1:11:36
me so much that I've basically gotten a fight with one of my good friends.
1:11:45
I've actually referenced this person on the podcast previously, though not my name.
1:11:48
I got in a text fight with the guy who has been a very
1:11:55
big Trump supporter and who appears to be in the process of basically transferring,
1:12:03
transitioning, if you will, from being a Trump supporter to a DeSantis supporter,
1:12:08
and we may hear more about that very very shortly publicly. In fact,
1:12:15
thankfully we were able to get through our our fight, and he has
1:12:17
scheduled to be the guest on our next episode of the podcast, episode number
1:12:21
fifty seven. But he and I started texting about the deposition clips and he
1:12:29
made a flipping comment that yeah, this is why Trump is so loved,
1:12:32
and it was awesome. I mean again, I can't remember the I don't
1:12:36
have it in front of me, the exact phrasing, but he really pissed
1:12:41
me off that it basically sounded to me like he still had the Trump virus,
1:12:45
and that from a DNA standpoint, this is the way Trump people react
1:12:50
to this, this absurdity. And you know, I even said to him
1:12:57
at one point in the text message exchange, if you really think that,
1:13:00
you know, this is awesome, then we probably should stop communicating. And
1:13:04
then we went silent. For a little bit, and then we talked the
1:13:06
next day and we hashed it out, and he actually apologized to his credit,
1:13:12
you know, said that he had been texting a lot of different people
1:13:15
at the same time and he looked back in this text message exchange and he
1:13:16
realizes that it was that it was inappropriate or tone death or whatever, and
1:13:20
so I forgave him for that. But we were we were pretty clad.
1:13:25
In my mind, we were pretty close to me going go fund yourself,
1:13:29
buddy, because I just can't. I can't stomach this. I've had it.
1:13:33
I mean, especially with the stakes as high as they are in the
1:13:36
twenty twenty four election. And I really do believe that that's the part of
1:13:41
this that's most important to the Trump fan. They don't seem to make the
1:13:45
distinction between Trump acting like Trump in his private life and the fact that this
1:13:49
has ramifications when it comes to who's going to win the twenty twenty four election.
1:13:56
I mean, this could be the theoretical difference between you know, winning
1:13:59
and lose in Pennsylvania, pissing off suburban house moms in outside of Philadelphia and
1:14:04
Pittsburgh. I mean, that's just one of many, many examples and the
1:14:10
idea that, oh this is great, Oh awesome. It's trub telling the
1:14:14
female lawyers she's too ugly to assault. That's just awesome. This is why
1:14:17
I love the guy. I mean, no, I'm sorry, no,
1:14:23
no, I mean, I guess I'm an old man boomer with antiquated principles.
1:14:30
But and I'm not even being a stick in the mud here, I'm
1:14:34
acknowledging that in a different set of circumstances, I guess I could see that
1:14:38
as funny, even though it was inappropriate. But he's a presidential candidate,
1:14:42
he's the presidential front runner, and he did this anyway because his ego is
1:14:47
so large, and maybe because he even knew his fans would love it,
1:14:51
because he knew this would eventually become public, that he says these absurd things
1:14:57
that are going to be obviously offensive to be who could theorectly decide the election.
1:15:02
Now there's another thing from Trump that I want a reference that probably has
1:15:08
more to do with what's actually going to happen in the twenty twenty four race,
1:15:11
which is a clear vindication of something that I told you, probably before
1:15:15
anybody else made any statement about this. From a commentary perspective. I said
1:15:21
very very early on in this process that Vague Ramiswamy, who is an Indian
1:15:28
businessman who is running for president, was going to be big trouble for the
1:15:33
De Santa's campaign and that he was effectively a Trump surrogate. And I've been
1:15:39
very adamant about this, and as the evidence continues to pour in, I
1:15:43
have been more and more outspoken about what a fraud Vague Ramiswamy is, and
1:15:48
I've learned more about Vivek's actual history. I mean, Vek is in fact
1:15:54
a bit of a fraud. I'm here's a guy who has reportedly paid Wikipedia
1:16:01
to scrub his history of having been a George Soros scholar and having been very
1:16:11
pro COVID insanity very late into the pandemic, including running a column for the
1:16:17
Wall Street Journal where almost two years into this thing, he's still promoting masks,
1:16:24
for instance. And so this guy is very sketchy, and it's very
1:16:31
obvious to me that he's not running for president, he has no chance of
1:16:34
winning, but he's running effectively as Donald Trump's bodyguard, as a surrogate,
1:16:41
as someone who is trying to get favored with Donald Trump, trying to become
1:16:44
famous. He knows that as an Indian who's a really good talker, that
1:16:47
the media will love him. And then if he gets enough media appearances,
1:16:51
he'll get on the debate stage. And then once he's on the debate stage,
1:16:55
he can go after Ronda Santis and he can become a hero to Trump
1:17:00
world and maybe the Donald Trump himself, and if there is a Trump administration,
1:17:02
maybe be part of the Trump administration. That's all been very clear to
1:17:05
me. Well, I never expected, at least not this early, for
1:17:10
Donald Trump to essentially admit that what I'm saying is one hundred percent true.
1:17:15
But Trump put out an official Donald Trump presidential statement to his email list,
1:17:23
you know, under the title Statement by Donald J. Trump, forty fifth
1:17:26
President of the United States of America. Trump wrote just a couple of days
1:17:30
ago. I am pleased to see that Vavek Ramaswami is doing so well in
1:17:36
the most recent Republican primary poll CBSU gov. He is tied with Mike Pence
1:17:44
and seems to be on his way to catching Ron to sanctimonious. The thing
1:17:48
I like about Vavek is that he only has good things to say about President
1:17:55
Trump and all that the Trump administration has so successfully done. This is the
1:18:02
reason he is doing so well. In any event, good luck to all
1:18:08
of them, they will need it. Exclamation point. So Trump makes a
1:18:15
public statement praising Ramaswamy for doing well. By way, he's never he's the
1:18:23
only guy in the race, the only person in the race to my knowledge,
1:18:26
Trump has ever come close to complimenting, compliments him. Why because he
1:18:30
says only nice things about Donald Trump. And the real reason, of course,
1:18:35
is he compliments him because any support that Ramiswamy gets comes right out of
1:18:41
the support that the Santists could get, right, It's not coming out of
1:18:45
Trump's support. Trump knows the more candidates, the better for him, and
1:18:49
so there's no downside to Ramaswamy because Ramaswamy is his bodyguard. And by pumping
1:18:56
Ramaswamy up, he furthers the chances that Mswammy will be in those debates,
1:19:01
the very same debates that Trump is likely to avoid if he can, if
1:19:08
his polling numbers are as strong as they currently are, and which I've talked
1:19:14
about in an episode fifty five of this podcast in an extensive manner. So
1:19:17
this is unbelievably transparent. This is basically saying the quiet part out loud.
1:19:24
Here, Trump is admitting that Ramaswamy is exactly what I and some others have
1:19:30
been claiming that he is, that he is a Trump surrogate bodyguard meant to
1:19:38
further take away the non Trump vote from Rond Santis, as well as being
1:19:43
someone who is credible enough who has at least some street cred and some media
1:19:46
availability to attack Ronda Santis on Trump's behalf and maybe even disrupt any de Santis
1:19:55
attack on Trump, should there ever be a debate where Rhonda Santis and Donald
1:20:00
Trump are on the same stage at the same time, which I'm starting to
1:20:03
believe is a bit of a long shot. But I had to mention Trump
1:20:09
pumping up Ramaswami because it's just so transparent of what is really really going on
1:20:14
here. Also, something that's very fascinating about what's really really going on here
1:20:20
is a leak from ABC News about Ronda Santis, and this has to do
1:20:28
with videotapes of Ronda Santis doing debate prep in twenty eighteen when he was running
1:20:35
for governor of Florida the first time. Now, the substance of these debate
1:20:43
clips, the debate prep clips that ABC News League is so innocuous that it's
1:20:51
really not even worth me playing them for you. I didn't find anything remotely
1:20:57
even close to scandalous. I wouldn't even say there's anything that's concerning in any
1:21:00
of these tapes. In fact, there are many elements of the tapes that
1:21:04
got leaked by ABC that make de Sandists look good. Now. I guess
1:21:10
the theory was that the Santists, you know, was unwilling to throw I
1:21:17
don't even know what the theory was. I guess part of the theory was
1:21:20
he wasn't willing to throw Trump totally under the bus, but he also wasn't
1:21:25
willing to stand up to him completely, which is ridiculous. I mean,
1:21:29
in twenty eighteen, in a at that time a very very close gubernatorial race
1:21:33
in Florida, which was not a red state until De Santists made it a
1:21:38
red state at that time, you had to be politically careful about Donald Trump.
1:21:45
That's just obvious. That's just the way politics works. But there was
1:21:49
nothing that I saw in any of the tapes that were released by ABC that
1:21:56
were concerning about the Sandis or damaging about the Santist or that even would have
1:22:00
been newsworthy. Really, I mean, the tapes are mildly interesting, but
1:22:05
as a news leak dump, they clearly didn't meet the threshold. And they
1:22:14
clearly, at least in my opinion and the opinion event every other commentator I
1:22:17
saw that referenced this, at least on Twitter. Then it's not gonna have
1:22:23
any negative impact on Rhnda Santis. However, there is still a significant part
1:22:28
of this, and that is, okay, how did this leak come about?
1:22:33
And the first most obvious part of this is, all right, it's
1:22:39
from ABC. Well, who owns ABC, the Disney Corporation, and who's
1:22:45
one of the Santist's biggest targets, and if not as biggest from a pr
1:22:50
standpoint, at least the left wants you to believe that he's obsessed with Mickey
1:22:54
Mouse. Of course, it's Walt Disney Company. So I predicted this at
1:23:00
the beginning. This wasn't difficult to predict, but I said, De Santis
1:23:03
better understand then, he is poking the Disney ABC bear here. I mean,
1:23:11
they are going to go after him hard now, you know. It's
1:23:15
it's interesting that ABC is going to feel free to go after De Santis and
1:23:19
his attack on Disney in Florida, Yet they never did anything with regard to
1:23:25
Gavin Newsom. When Gavin Newsom shut down Disneyland during the COVID panic for well
1:23:31
over a year and effectively destroyed I mean Disney's entire ability to do business,
1:23:38
not just to Disneyland, but for a short period of time, you know,
1:23:41
the ability to make movies, I mean everything. I mean, ABC
1:23:44
should have been going after Gavin Newsom far far harder than they're going after apparently
1:23:49
Ron de Santis. But I guess they felt safe and going after the Santist
1:23:55
because you know, they're a woke company now and they can't go after one
1:23:58
of their own with regard to Gavin Newsom, especially when COVID became such an
1:24:02
obviously toxic third rail issue and everyone was terrified of being seen as anti COVID
1:24:09
restrictions and somehow provirus. But the more important part of this whole thing is,
1:24:15
so you have ABC getting a leak of twenty eighteen debate prep clips of
1:24:21
Rhonda Santis. Now, I don't have any inside information on how this happened,
1:24:28
but Acam's razor makes it pretty clear. All right, So here we
1:24:33
have a bunch of people who are allied now against Rhonda Santis. We have
1:24:40
Pat Sumroll's daughter, you know, the football and golf and tennis broadcasting legend
1:24:46
Pat Srroll, His daughter who I've referenced before, Susie Wiles, who was
1:24:51
working on the de Santis campaign in twenty eighteen, is now working for Donald
1:24:57
Trump. So my guest, her fingerprints are all over this league and they
1:25:02
go to ABC. Why well, because Trump and ABC and Disney are now
1:25:09
somehow a lie. The enemy of my enemy is my friend type of situation,
1:25:13
and so I can't prove it, but it would be hard for me
1:25:18
too. It would not be difficult for me to be one hundred percent convinced
1:25:23
that what happened here was Susie Wiles says, hey, Trump, we got
1:25:28
these things. You know, where do we think we ought to go with
1:25:30
this? And they realize that ABC Disney is by far the most fertile ground
1:25:35
because they have as much of an incentive to go after the Santis as Trump
1:25:41
does. And that's how this happened. But I don't think there's any actual
1:25:43
political impact of it. However, I do thing that the reality here is
1:25:48
emblematic of what side Trump thinks he's on and Trump has continually been on the
1:25:55
side of Disney as well as Trump supporters have been on the side of Disney,
1:26:00
not because they agree with Disney, but because they needed to make the
1:26:03
Santists look bad. So truth and principle and what's good for conservatism doesn't matter.
1:26:10
In fact, often what's good for Conservatism is bad for Trump because if
1:26:15
Desantist is being successful, then that helps him. So Trump is seeing this
1:26:18
through purely through the prism of what's good for him, what's what, and
1:26:24
what is bad for De Santis is inherently good for him. The cause of
1:26:27
conservatism or what's right doesn't make a goddamn bit of difference. And so now
1:26:31
Trump is alied, I believe, with Disney, just like Donald Trump Junior
1:26:36
was alive with bud Light in the in the battle to have the boycott of
1:26:42
bud Light in light of the Dylan mulvaney controversy. And so this is a
1:26:45
consistent situation where and this is why I believe, as I referenced in episodes
1:26:51
fifty four and fifty five, that the only possible strategy for De Santists is
1:26:58
to link Trump up as part of the establishment link him with Biden, link
1:27:04
him as part of the establishment, the Biden Trump establishment cabal, and there
1:27:09
are all sorts of data points that point in this direction, including the fact
1:27:13
that Trump is on the side of Disney, the Trump's on the side of
1:27:15
bud Light. I mean, the list goes on and on and on.
1:27:18
I mean, you know, they both both Biden and Trump love Gavin Newsom.
1:27:24
You know, they both love eighty year old presidents. They both think
1:27:27
that one disastrous term is not a disqualifier for for having it be your turn
1:27:31
to be president again. I mean again, I don't even want to start
1:27:34
going through the whole list because I'm gonna leave things off of that list.
1:27:38
But that really is I think the last best hope to try to change the
1:27:44
narrative about this campaign wants De Santis finally gets into it, And if you
1:27:48
haven't heard me talk about that, I urge you to check out episodes at
1:27:51
the end of fifty four and fifty five of the Death of Journalism podcast.
1:27:57
Now, as far as desantism helf is concerned, he continues to crush it,
1:28:03
especially when it comes to media narratives. And I'm starting to come to
1:28:09
the conclusion that you know what, maybe we just don't deserve Rhonda Santis because
1:28:14
he is so good, so much better than Trump is when it actually comes
1:28:17
to fighting these battles in an effective way, especially when it comes to calling
1:28:21
out the media and understanding that you have to go right to the heart of
1:28:26
the matter. You have to cut him off at the knees, you have
1:28:28
to nip it in the bud. And that's really what a lot of the
1:28:31
governing philosophy of Florida is about. It's about holding the line and not allowing
1:28:38
this liberal socialism Marxism to get a foothold within the culture and within the law,
1:28:43
because you know now, we know now post COVID that they will never
1:28:46
stop and that if you don't make sure that it's impossible for them to get
1:28:51
traction, eventually they will take you over. Like what happened in California.
1:28:56
I say all the time, California is not unique. California is the future
1:28:59
for the to the country if you all don't hold the goddamn line. Well,
1:29:03
de Santist gets this, and he is making really, really sure that
1:29:08
Florida does hold the line. And one of the things he's doing this on
1:29:12
is with regard to this issue of transgenderism and the issue of so called healthcare
1:29:17
for children. And of course he's taking a lot of heat on this because
1:29:23
in the media's minds, they've now somehow adopted this absurdity that you know,
1:29:28
it's a it's a healthcare right for children to get effectively sex change operations.
1:29:35
And Desantists was asked about this at a press conference a couple of days ago,
1:29:42
and he just eviscerated both the issue and the reporter who asked the question.
1:29:46
And here's what that sounded like, cultural chi do you think American voters
1:29:53
water were paid to come? I mean, like, honestly, it's like,
1:29:59
seriously, some of this stuff is just totally manufactured. And when you
1:30:02
talk to people, and I know, like people in your industry will dress
1:30:06
it up with a euphemism and they'll say it's healthcare. To cut off the
1:30:12
private parts of a fourteen or fifteen year old, that is not healthcare.
1:30:15
That is mutilation. And so when we're standing up against that, and so
1:30:27
when we're standing up against that, we're protecting these kids. We had Chloe
1:30:32
Coal, We've had other people who went through this when they were miners.
1:30:35
Now they're older and it's like the biggest regret of their life. They feel
1:30:41
like that they were manipulated. I understand there's some physicians that are very ideological
1:30:45
about it, but the fact is people go through a lot when they're teenagers.
1:30:49
You grow out of it most of the time. In these situations,
1:30:53
eighty ninety percent resolves by the time you get there. Sweden, these European
1:30:59
countries that went down, it would have done a big U turn. They
1:31:00
said this is not good uh medical practice, and so they don't do it
1:31:04
anymore. So all we're doing is doing what's right. Um. The idea
1:31:10
that this would have been something that people would have been it would have even
1:31:14
been controversial, even like ten years ago, would not have been something that
1:31:17
anybody would have said anything about. And I just think, you know,
1:31:20
when you're when you're talking about this stuff, uh talk about what did the
1:31:25
legislature do. The legislature prohibited doing things like double missectomies. They prohibited doing
1:31:30
things, you know, with male private parts that are very graphic. It's
1:31:34
almost kind of depressing to think that, you know, unless there's some sort
1:31:39
of a miracle turnaround here, that that Trump is going to be the nominee
1:31:43
instead of the Santis, because the Santis is just so much better, so
1:31:45
much better than Trump is in these kinds of situations, and yet his cult
1:31:51
fan base thinks that's his strength. That's what's so ridiculous about this whole situation
1:31:57
and so incredibly frustrating. Now moving on to other topics that are not directly
1:32:01
political, but clearly have a political angle to them, I continue to talk
1:32:08
at every opportunity about this issue of equity replacing equality in American culture and in
1:32:16
the media's language. And it's happening in every aspect of life, and one
1:32:20
of the areas where it's most prominent is in the entertainment media and specifically movies.
1:32:28
And actor Richard Dreyfus, legendary actor, was asked oddly enough on PBS
1:32:35
about the new rules with regard to diversity when it comes to eligibility for the
1:32:44
Oscars. Basically, in the next couple of years, you're not going to
1:32:48
be eligible for an OSCAR unless you have enough people of color and or a
1:32:57
particular gender who worked on a move. And Dreyfuss has asked about his reaction
1:33:04
to these new rules, and he says they make him want to vomit.
1:33:10
Now that's not in this clip you're about to hear for technical reasons. But
1:33:14
trust me, he says, they make me want to vomit. And Nanny
1:33:17
goes into a pretty long and detailed and I believe, pretty brave considering the
1:33:23
circumstances evaluation of what this means, this issue of equity and forced quote unquote
1:33:31
morality means to the arts and to the movie business. And here's Richard Dreyfuss
1:33:38
talking about that this is an art form. It's also a form of commerce,
1:33:45
and it makes money, but it's an art and no one should be
1:33:51
telling me as an artist that I have to give in to the latest most
1:34:00
current idea of what morality is and what are we risking? Are we really
1:34:08
risking hurting people's feelings? You can't legislate that, and you have to let
1:34:19
life be life. And I'm sorry, I don't think that there's a minority
1:34:25
or a majority in the country that has to be catered to like that.
1:34:30
You know, Laurence Olivier was the last white actor to play Othello, and
1:34:38
he did it in nineteen sixty five, and he did it in blackface,
1:34:44
and he played a black man brilliantly. Am I being told that I will
1:34:53
never have a chance to play a black man. Someone else being told that
1:35:00
if they're not Jewish they shouldn't play the Merchant of Venice. Are we crazy?
1:35:08
Do we not know that art is art? This is so patronizing,
1:35:15
it's it's so thoughtless and treating people like children. Do you think there's a
1:35:23
difference between the question of representation and who is allowed to represent other groups?
1:35:34
For example, as you said, somebody representing the Merchant of Venice and the
1:35:41
case of blackface explicitly in this country, given the history of slavery and the
1:35:48
sensitivity is around black racism, do you think there's a difference between those there
1:35:57
shouldn't be. Kudos Richard Dreyfuss, who I didn't ever perceive as being a
1:36:02
quote unquote conservative. I guess he must be at least to some degree to
1:36:06
be willing to articulate that, especially on PBS. But more people have to
1:36:12
be willing and able to speak out about this kind of thing, this kind
1:36:15
of absurdity, because that's that's really what keeps it all together, the fear
1:36:20
of speaking out against it, because if you speak out against it, no
1:36:24
matter how crazy it is, you are labeled as a racist, which in
1:36:28
general is the worst thing about about you know, almost the worst thing you
1:36:30
can be I guess maybe an anti vaxxer could be worse at this point,
1:36:34
I don't know. It's it's close, but I digress. The reality is
1:36:38
it's about the worst thing you can be called in general, and specifically in
1:36:42
Hollywood. It probably is the worst thing you can be called because then you'll
1:36:46
never work again, especially when you're an old white guy like Richard Dreyfuss,
1:36:50
and so he deserves a lot of credit for this. I wish it would
1:36:54
open up the floodgates for more people to speak out about it, but I
1:36:58
doubt that it will because Curry is not in great supply. There's a much
1:37:05
bigger drought involving courage in Hollywood than there is with regard to how much rain
1:37:11
we've gotten in California, especially in the past year. And speaking of California,
1:37:16
something has happened in the realm of equity versus equality there that could be
1:37:25
literally the death knell for America. And I don't think this is being taken
1:37:29
nearly seriously enough. I think part of the reason why it's not being taken
1:37:33
totally seriously because because it sounds so insane that, at least in the rest
1:37:40
of the country, people think, oh my god, these wacky Californians,
1:37:43
look at what they're proposing. Now, this will never happen, and if
1:37:46
it does, it'll be deemed illegal. And this is why do we even
1:37:51
have to talk about this? And my reaction is, are you kidding?
1:37:56
Have you been paying attention for the last several years actually during COVID do you
1:38:00
understand how easily it is going to be for what is being proposed here to
1:38:08
actually happen in some way, shape or form. And what I'm referring to
1:38:11
is that the Gavin Newsom Reparations Committee slash panel or task force, whatever you
1:38:20
want to call it, has now officially made its recommendations for how the state
1:38:26
of California can pay for the past ills of our society that have caused people
1:38:33
of color I guess, specifically black people to suffer and conversely, I guess
1:38:41
white people to prosper unfairly. Now, before I get to the results of
1:38:47
this Reparation's Panel task force is this is always absurd. I mean, basically,
1:38:56
what happened here was that in the middle of the pandemic, Gavin Newsom
1:39:01
decided to commission this panel. And you know what, who's going to be
1:39:06
on this panel, right, It's a panel on reparations in a in a
1:39:10
Marxist state, California. So there's gonna be no conservatives. There's certainly gonna
1:39:16
be no white conservatives. I don't even know if there are any white people
1:39:19
on the panel. They're all gonna be extreme liberals who have a a overt
1:39:26
obvious self interest to come forward with recommendations that are as whacka doodle as possible,
1:39:32
that are very much in the realm of promoting reparations. And it didn't
1:39:38
help. I'm sure that during the process, this couple year process of this
1:39:43
task force coming up with the recommendations that the city of San Francisco beyond ludicrously
1:39:49
proposed that every black person in San Francisco want to get five million dollars for
1:39:58
past ills I traded on them because of the color of their skin. Now
1:40:01
that hasn't actually happened and would bankrupt the city instantaneously, but that was out
1:40:06
there in the media ether and so I'm sure you know that puts some pressure
1:40:12
on those on the statewide task force to come up with something. You know,
1:40:15
really batshit crazy, because otherwise they weren't doing their job, so the
1:40:19
results of this were always going to be insane. That was a fatal complete
1:40:25
and a little it's a little bit though, like a grand jury, right
1:40:30
where the prosecution knows they don't have a great case, so they go to
1:40:33
a grand jury, hoping that a grand jury, which they can easily manipulate,
1:40:38
is going to come forward with effectively their recommendations, and that those recommendations
1:40:42
will then carry some semblance of credibility and maybe the force of law, and
1:40:46
they get media coverage that will convince people that this is legitimate, and then
1:40:51
then it makes it a lot easier to actually get it done. That's what
1:40:55
it feels like was Gavin Newsom's whole plan here. If this went through the
1:41:00
normal legislative process, I think it would be much more difficult. So he
1:41:05
didn't give this this task force, this responsibility to make the issue die.
1:41:14
In a past life, that might have been the way you do this.
1:41:15
Oh God, I don't want to deal with reparations. I'll create a committee
1:41:19
and they'll make some recommendations and then we'll just ignore it. That's not the
1:41:23
world we live in anymore. No, no, no. This is an
1:41:26
end round to get past the legislative process, or to make the legislative process
1:41:31
more easily manipulated. Because then once you have these task force recommendations and it's
1:41:39
considered credible by the news media and it gets all this news coverage, then
1:41:44
it almost becomes expected that the legislature has to implement some of these recommendations or
1:41:49
else they're racists. These racists, and of course nobody in the California legislature
1:41:56
it's going to, at least on the Democratic side, is going to do
1:41:59
anything. It's going to be it would force them to be caused to be
1:42:03
called a racist of any shape or form. So that's not going to happen.
1:42:09
Now. I don't know what the final result of this is all going
1:42:11
to be. I have great fears that it's going to be way worse than
1:42:15
many people are giving it. Credit for having lived here for quite a long
1:42:18
time and seeing the reality of our broken media and our broken political system and
1:42:23
our king here in California. But here is the essence of what the Task
1:42:29
Force on Reparations came up with. This. According to the Blaze, conservative
1:42:33
media outlet, eligible residence in California would receive a minimum a minimum of three
1:42:41
hundred and sixty thousand dollars each under a plan improved by the Golden States Task
1:42:47
Force on Reparations. Gary Hoover, an economics professor at Tulane University who has
1:42:54
studied reparations, told The New York Times quote, wealth is and is able
1:43:01
to be transferred from generations. Reparations can close that stickiness. Okay, what's
1:43:10
really happening here is they want to make sure that white people aren't be able
1:43:15
to transfer their hard earned, already taxed money to their future generations, and
1:43:24
that we need to make up for this inequity that younger, whider people have
1:43:30
this advantage of the wealth that is in their pipeline, again should be pointed
1:43:36
out, which has been taxed many, many, many times, tax money
1:43:42
that goes mostly to causes that they don't support or benefit from, and that
1:43:47
other races do benefit from farm more dramatically. So we're just going to forget
1:43:54
about that part of this. But this is the ultimate equity over equality standard
1:44:00
that's being used by academia. This economics professor at Tulane and obviously drove the
1:44:06
recommendations of this task force Hoover also said, this is about closing the income
1:44:13
and racial wealth gap in this country. And this is a step. This
1:44:18
isn't even the full This isn't even even the full deal, folks. This
1:44:24
is just a step in the process of achieving total equity of outcome, not
1:44:30
a quality about opportunity, which is what this country was supposed to be all
1:44:33
about. The plan approved by California's Reparation Task Force at its meeting over the
1:44:40
weekend includes both a formal apology from the state and hundreds of billions of dollars
1:44:45
worth of cash payments. Hundreds of billions of dollars of cash payments to quote
1:44:50
enact remedies and compensation for descendants of African Americans who were enslaved in the United
1:45:00
States. The La Times reported the task Force was created, of course,
1:45:04
by Governor Newsom in twenty twenty. Its final recommendations will be submitted to California's
1:45:10
legislature. The legislators, in turn, will decide whether and how the recommendations
1:45:15
will be implemented. The recommendations then would ultimately become law as signed by Governor
1:45:20
Newsom. The preliminary total cost estimate from five economists consulted by the board is
1:45:27
about eight hundred bub bub bub billion dollars. And this does not include compensation
1:45:35
for quote, property that the group says was taken unjustly or for the devaluation
1:45:43
of black owned businesses. I don't even know what the hell that means.
1:45:47
So on top of the eight hundred billion dollars, there's also the issue of
1:45:53
property taken unjustly. So I guess there's gonna be property that it's going to
1:45:57
be taken back from from somehow people who got it unjustly in the minds of
1:46:02
this task force, as well as the devaluation of black owned businesses. So
1:46:06
it sounds like what they're recommending is that if you are a black owned business
1:46:13
that you should somehow get even more money because clearly the system has been rigged
1:46:18
against you. Now it should be obvious. There's so many elements of absurdity
1:46:24
here, but one of the which is, of course that California was not
1:46:29
a slave state. Slavery was never legal in California. Not to mention,
1:46:33
of course, that there's no one living who was forget about being a slave
1:46:38
themselves, no one living who was ever the child or the grandchild of someone
1:46:43
who was enslaved, And again it was never in California, and that's where
1:46:46
the money's coming from. From California. Although there's this is clearly and obviously
1:46:53
a setup for the same thing happening nationally. Back to this article, the
1:46:58
eight hundred billion dollars estimated seeds the Golden States total annual budget of three hundred
1:47:03
billion dollars by about two hundred and sixty six percent. The entire annual budget
1:47:09
would be exceeded by two hundred and sixty six percent if these implement If this
1:47:14
recommendation or these recommendations were implemented, even at a minimum. And by the
1:47:19
way, there are those who on the upside who could get up to one
1:47:24
point two million dollars from the state of California. Roy Brooks, a professor
1:47:30
and reparations scholar imagine being a reparation scholar at the University of San Diego School
1:47:36
of Law, said quote, there's no way in the world that many of
1:47:42
these recommendations are going to get through because of the inflationary impact. Wow,
1:47:46
So this is the guy who is bringing some small sense of rationality to this
1:47:54
folks. You know, even what we'll recommend and recommending we have to acknowledge
1:47:59
is never going to actually happened because of the inflationary impact. Yeah, all
1:48:03
of this would have massive economic side effects. But it's not even about the
1:48:10
economic side effects and the inflationary element of it. It's the injustice of it's
1:48:15
it's completely absurd at every possible level. Back to the article, the categories
1:48:20
of community harm the reparation payments are meant to address include health disparities, mass
1:48:29
incarceration, and over policing, as well as housing discrimination. I mean,
1:48:40
there are just no words. So inherently then, because percentage wise more black
1:48:47
people got incarcerated, which had much more to do with economic issues than inherent
1:48:54
racism issues and over policing and health disparity. I mean, so anything at
1:49:01
all negative that happened to people of color in California, it was obviously because
1:49:05
of systematic racism, for which the state needs to pay lots and lots of
1:49:11
money to people who did not even suffer directly from these things if they actually
1:49:16
existed, when there's no evidence in my mind that they did, especially in
1:49:20
a state where slavery was never legal. Back to the article, reparations would
1:49:28
be limited. It would be limited. Yeah, this is how much they
1:49:31
would be limited, folks, They would be limited to quote descendants of enslaved
1:49:36
or free black people who were in the country by the end of the nineteenth
1:49:44
century. Now, so basically, what you're gonna have to do if here
1:49:49
to get money is that you're gonna have to prove I don't even know what
1:49:54
proved means. I'm doubt it's going to be a very high threshold. You're
1:49:58
going to prove that your fan Emily was in the country, not in California,
1:50:02
but in the country in the late eighteen hundreds. By the way,
1:50:09
again, slavery wasn't legal then in the late eighteen hundreds, and it was
1:50:13
never legal in California. But it wouldn't even matter whether or not the people
1:50:17
you're related to were slaved or free. That's irrelevant. Barbara Lee, who
1:50:27
is a Democratic congresswoman from California who is proposing a similar situation at the federal
1:50:34
level, said, quote, reparations are not only morally justifiable, but they
1:50:40
have the potential to address longstanding racial disparities and inequalities. She says, of
1:50:48
course she means inequities, inequities in their mind. It's theoretical inequities they're not
1:50:57
inequalities. We've been living in a society where everyone had legal equal opportunity for
1:51:06
several generations. And I'm not even talking about the end of slavery. I'm
1:51:11
talking you know, in the civil rights movement in nineteen sixties. Now,
1:51:15
did that make everything perfect? Obviously not. But you're never going to be
1:51:19
in a perfect world. That's never going to exist. And so by trying
1:51:24
to retroactively, you know, jury rig the game so that we have some
1:51:31
bizarre semblance of equity does nothing positive. It's going to create all sorts of
1:51:40
problems, all sorts of unintended consequences, or maybe even intended consequences, both
1:51:45
economically as well as well as what about all the people that don't qualify.
1:51:49
What about the anger that that's going to cause. And I mean, this
1:51:55
would be an economic catastrophe from an inflation standpoint, which even some of the
1:52:01
whack jobs, as I've already referenced, already understand. But the justice element
1:52:09
of this is where it's really insidious. And again I can't emphasize enough.
1:52:14
This is just the test case. They're using California as the testing ground for
1:52:20
this, not because California ever had slavery, which it didn't. But because
1:52:28
from a political standpoint, they can get away with it here, and if
1:52:32
they can prove they can get away with it here, they're gonna do it
1:52:36
nationally. And yes, there will be legal challenges to this, and I
1:52:43
have no idea, I don't have no faith anymore that that will be stopped
1:52:48
in the court system. I think there are conservatives that are far too confident
1:52:51
that it will be. My God, we just went through in California an
1:52:56
election cycle in twenty twenty two where our governor just hand it out thousand dollars
1:53:03
two thousand dollars checks to voters during election season under the guise of reducing inflation,
1:53:11
which was insane to begin with, but for no other apparent reason,
1:53:15
and we went from having a very significant budget surplus to now a very significant
1:53:21
budget deficit, all because he just gave his money away during an election season
1:53:26
to the voters. He can get away with almost anything he wants, and
1:53:31
and so I am not convinced at all that this isn't gonna happen now.
1:53:35
Is it gonna happen to this extent? I don't know. They may have
1:53:39
created expectations that are dangerous for them because they're the expectations are now too high
1:53:44
among black people that they're all going to strike it rich because why because of
1:53:48
the color of their skin. I mean, how do you even define black
1:53:51
person? How do you how do you prove who's the descendant of whom?
1:53:56
I mean, there's just so many levels of insanity here. But this is
1:53:59
the world we're living in, folks, and this is not an academic situation.
1:54:03
This is real life. This is a huge issue. This is huge,
1:54:11
and I don't think it's getting nearly enough attention, mainly because it seems
1:54:15
so insane to most of the rest of the country that they don't think it's
1:54:17
possible. But just to put a finer point on this issue, that this
1:54:21
is a testing ground for doing it nationally, Barbara Lee and Senator Corey Booker,
1:54:27
Democrat from New Jersey, are co sponsors of a bill at the federal
1:54:30
level calling for the establishment of quote a United States Commission on Truth, Racial
1:54:38
Healing, and Transformation. The commission would quote ensure reparations are central to this
1:54:45
country's transformation and confront and reject the big lie of white supremacy. I'm telling
1:54:54
you, folks, if they can get away with it in California. They're
1:54:58
gonna do it nationally and at every possible level. This is the end of
1:55:03
the country, not just economically, but from the essence of who we are.
1:55:10
There's no recovery from this at any possible level. And I am very
1:55:16
pessimistic that this thing will ever get fully killed in the California legislature, or
1:55:23
that there will ever be any sort of backlash. I mean, I think
1:55:26
that part of what was always preventing this from happening. It's not as if
1:55:30
somehow now this is needed more than it's ever been needed before. It's no
1:55:34
politically, they think they can get away with it now, partially because of
1:55:41
the results across the country and in California from a voting perspective. Also because
1:55:45
the media is now so broken. The media used to laugh at this type
1:55:51
of thing. They would have fought back against it hard. I got into
1:55:56
a little bit of a tiff with a local news anchor here in Los Angeles
1:56:00
when I sent them the story, and I chided them, oh, you
1:56:03
know, I'm sure you guys are gonna be going along with this because you're
1:56:06
afraid of being called racist, And they responded, well, no, no,
1:56:10
we've done all sorts of stories telling the other side of this, and
1:56:13
I said, bull blah blah blah blah blah, that's not what this requires.
1:56:18
This is not Hey, you know, there's some elements of this that
1:56:21
don't make a lot of sense. But let me tell you both sides of
1:56:24
the story. Blah blah blah. No, this needs to be mocked.
1:56:28
This needs to be exposed as the incredibly dangerous prospect and proposal that it is
1:56:34
for. And by the way, it should be exposed as the meaning to
1:56:39
people of color. It's incredibly demeaning the people of color, and it's insulting
1:56:45
obviously to every other race that's gonna have their property stolen, either directly or
1:56:49
indirectly in order to fund this thing. So everyone, everyone on this side
1:56:56
of it, on the side of reparations, knows that California is the play
1:57:00
to do this politically, and from a media standpoint, you can get away
1:57:03
with it. That was not always the case. So it's not as if
1:57:06
this is a there's a new need for this. In fact, there's never
1:57:10
been less of a need for this. There's never been a world where black
1:57:15
people have more advantages in comparison to what has been the case previously than today
1:57:20
in every aspect of society. So the need is not there at all,
1:57:27
but it's just the political opportunity is there, and a large part of it
1:57:30
is because of the broken media, and the broken media being creating a situation
1:57:39
where so many people in the media are terrified of being called racist, and
1:57:43
so once they created the situation where if you're against reparations, you're at least
1:57:49
fearful of being called racist, they've won because they've shut down debate and they've
1:57:56
shut down the ability of anyone to say, hey, wait a minute,
1:57:59
this is insane. And I think that this is far more formidable and far
1:58:05
more likely to happen in some significant way than is being perceived at least nationally
1:58:12
in the media that I have seen. And it's not just California. I
1:58:15
mean, we're seeing this in other areas of the country. There's a Denver,
1:58:19
Colorado City councilwoman running for reelection whose entire platform is based on the idea
1:58:27
that white businesses should be taxed more in order to subsidize black businesses. I
1:58:32
mean, that's a paraphrase, but that's basically her campaign platform, and she
1:58:38
doesn't even apologize for this, And I mean she got elected in the first
1:58:42
place. I mean, there's I assume there's a pretty good chance she's going
1:58:45
to get re elected. But she's not even afraid to talk about this publicly.
1:58:47
Now in Denver, Colorado, I mean, in the insanity seems to
1:58:54
have no bounds anymore. And again, the media is at the heart of
1:58:59
all. Because the media is broken, we get situations that where ideas that
1:59:04
should be shut down are not only not shut down, but they are given
1:59:09
credibility and they are allowed to fester and over time, Reparations being a classic
1:59:15
example of this, they get a foothold, and then people get expectations,
1:59:19
and then what was seemingly insane is normalized. And once it's normalized, there's
1:59:26
almost no way to resist it, especially when those who would be resisting it
1:59:30
are going to be called racists, and especially when you know this is going
1:59:35
to seem like a weird comparison. Maybe not, but you know, we're
1:59:39
seeing this in other areas of life too, where things that are seemingly insane
1:59:43
are happening, even as the media is telling us. Those that are claiming
1:59:47
that these things are going to happen are actually whackadoodal conspiracy theorists. And a
1:59:53
great example of this is this if this effort to ban gas stoves, I'm
2:00:00
sure you've heard about this, and you know this, over the last couple
2:00:03
of months became an issue because some conservatives were convinced that Democrats want to ban
2:00:10
gas stoves as part of the religion of global warming, climate change. And
2:00:16
it turns out that guess what, New York is going to try to do
2:00:21
exactly that, and they're doing this in the same insidious way that California has
2:00:26
done it with regard to, for instance, gasoline powered cars. You don't
2:00:30
do it in one fell swoop. You don't do it overnight. You do
2:00:34
it in stages over a long period of time, so that you never reach
2:00:40
a pressure point, like for instance, in California. They're gonna ban the
2:00:44
sale of new gas cars starting in twenty thirty five. That seems like it's
2:00:48
a long time in the future, it's really not. And even then you're
2:00:51
still gonna be able to have your car, your gas car. Course,
2:00:56
you know, they're gonna make it almost impossible for you to operate it.
2:00:58
They're going to force you to buy a new car that's not gasoline power.
2:01:01
But they get away with it, and the media goes along with it.
2:01:06
Even you know, in theory that media with advertising for gasoline cars, you
2:01:11
would think that there would be some someone but us to tell the other side
2:01:15
of the story. But that doesn't happen. Well, when it comes to
2:01:17
gas stoves, they're doing the same thing. They're going to do it incrementally.
2:01:21
You can't have new gas stoves at a certain date, at a couple
2:01:27
of years in the future, and then slowly but surely gas stoves become effectively
2:01:31
impossible to have or to use. And that's what New York is doing.
2:01:38
But this was a conspiracy theory. Just a couple of weeks ago in the
2:01:41
news media and on TikTok, somebody created this very effective video where you're gonna
2:01:47
hear mostly on MSNBC and CNN a bunch of newspeople and commentators, a couple
2:01:54
of whom aren't even liberals, who are creating this narrative that can serve it
2:02:00
are insane. They're a bunch of tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists for claiming that Democrats
2:02:05
want to ban your gas stove. And then it ends with the news stories
2:02:10
from New York City and New York State where they're doing exactly that. And
2:02:14
I wanted to play that video for you because I think it really illustrates where
2:02:17
we are with regard to a very broken news media and a total lack of
2:02:21
accountability. You might think that the US government is coming for your gas stove.
2:02:28
That is a new an absolutely ridiculous one. It turns out Fox News
2:02:30
and Republicans are up in arms because they say the government is coming to take
2:02:34
your stoves. What Republicans are saying is, damn it, they're gonna take
2:02:40
your gas stove. GFP have been stoking a ridiculous new freak out about gas
2:02:44
stoves. No one is taking your gas stove. The right wing freak out
2:02:46
over the use of gas stoves is maybe the latest in a long series of
2:02:50
made up culture war bottles designed to enrage and rile up the right wing and
2:02:56
paranoid base. Republicans are prone to conspiracy theories, whether it's you know,
2:03:00
the kookie like JFK. Junior's coming back from the dead to run with Trump,
2:03:05
or the sort of duplicitus like these administration's coming to take away your gas.
2:03:12
Republicans have turned to a government warning about your health into a lie about
2:03:15
Democrats trying to take your stoves. You get some bureaucrats saying something that has
2:03:21
no power, and then suddenly you have Ronda Sadis, So I'm going to
2:03:27
protect your guests. Everybody were talking about gas stoves. Gas. It's so
2:03:30
stupid. People were tweeting at me this weekend that Ronda Sadis is going to
2:03:35
protect my gas stoves. But I don't seem to be. But they share
2:03:43
stupidity of it. And if it were just bloggers, that would be one
2:03:45
thing. But when you have Kevin McCarthy going out and other people talking about
2:03:50
gas stoves, because they keep getting dumber and dumber. The Republican Party has
2:03:57
become addicted to this culture of wise and conspiracy theories that they have famented right,
2:04:04
and so they know that there is a substantial number of people in the
2:04:10
country in their party who they can convince that this is true and that it
2:04:15
will enrage those people. This is like the economy of the culture of conspiracy
2:04:21
theories right there are I'm certain you and I will be able to drive through
2:04:27
parts of the country ten years from now and people will be saying, do
2:04:30
you remember back when Joe Biden was an office and they tried to take away
2:04:32
our gas stoves. Move means NAT down. New York City is moving to
2:04:36
snuff out gas stoves. New York becoming the first state to ban natural gas
2:04:42
and other fossil fuels in most new buildings, including gas stoves. The new
2:04:45
law requires all electric heating and cooking in new buildings shorter than seven stories by
2:04:50
twenty twenty seven. Or Kathy Hogel and the Democratic Control state legislature proved a
2:04:56
bill on Tuesday prohibiting the use of fossil fuels for heating cooking. The law
2:05:00
is the first statewide band in the nation and goes into effect in twenty twenty
2:05:04
six for buildings under seven stories. I mean, that really says it all
2:05:14
right there, And none of those outlets ever revisit this. No one ever
2:05:18
says I'm sorry, there's no accountability. Most of the audience probably doesn't even
2:05:24
know that it happened. And you know, the right wing continues to get
2:05:29
called conspiracy theorist. Unfortunately, many right wingers are in fact conspiracy theorist.
2:05:34
But this was not a conspiracy theory. If you were paying attention during COVID
2:05:38
you understood that this is the way they operate now that there are no guardrails
2:05:43
anymore, that whatever is in the left wing fantasy can actually come true if
2:05:48
the state or the municipality is blue enough and the media is dead enough.
2:05:55
And you know, if it happens in New York, it's going to happen
2:05:57
in California. It happens in California's going to happen in other places. And
2:06:00
slowly, but surely, things that were completely unfathomable and unthinkable and insane are
2:06:06
going to be normalized. And this is why I really have said previously that
2:06:11
I think that energy is going to be the issue over which this country finally
2:06:15
splits. When and where and how I don't know, but that's what the
2:06:18
next I don't call it a civil war, but the national breakup or divorced,
2:06:24
that's what it's going to be over because there's so many elements related to
2:06:29
energy, whether it's gassed, over in the broader picture of global warming.
2:06:33
And Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana, who is a national treasure, I mean,
2:06:38
he's just he's just awesome when it comes to questioning people at the senatorial
2:06:43
hearings. He had another of his greatest hits come out in the last few
2:06:47
days where he was questioning the Secretary of Energy, David Turk, And it
2:06:53
was a very simple question that John Kennedy wanted answered, which is basically two
2:07:00
questions. How much is this boondoggle gonna cost us as American taxpayers to fight
2:07:05
global warming climate change? And if we give you the money you want,
2:07:10
how much is the global world temperature going to be reduced because of our efforts?
2:07:16
If that's what we're trying to do here, we're going to spend all
2:07:18
this money to become carbon neutral. Okay, So what's it going to cost?
2:07:23
And what's going to be the net impact of this? What's the benefit
2:07:27
we're going to see from the trillions of dollars you want us to spend on
2:07:30
this, But you're not willing to tell us exactly how much, and you're
2:07:32
certainly not willing to tell us what kind of benefit we're going to get for
2:07:35
this money. And here's what Some of that exchange between Senator Kennedy and Secretary
2:07:42
Energy David Turk sounded like its Secretary, thanks for being here, I want
2:07:46
to tap your expertise for a moment. Give me give me your best estimate,
2:07:54
just an estimate I know of how soon you think the United States of
2:08:01
America will be carbon neutral. So I think, according to the climate scientists
2:08:09
around the world, and certainly the cutting edge scientists that we need to rely
2:08:13
on here in the US, we've got to get carbon neutral by twenty fifty.
2:08:16
And I'm very comfortable with that target, and I think that's the appropriate
2:08:20
fifty which is only twenty seven years. That is not a long time away.
2:08:24
And how much will that cost? So the cost that I focus on
2:08:28
even more is all the costs and all the if we don't much cost to
2:08:31
give us carbon, it's going to cost trillions of dollars, and it will
2:08:33
cost tens of trillions of dollars if we don't get our active how many trillions?
2:08:37
I don't have the estimate or the numbers in front of me. I've
2:08:41
seen a variety of different estimates, but it's a large amount fundamentally transforming our
2:08:45
energy economy. The estimate deal tell me thet you've seen. I don't have
2:08:48
those numbers right on hand. So you're advocating that we become carbon neutral,
2:08:52
but you don't know how much it's going to cost. So there's an awful
2:08:56
lot of estimates out there, pology, the smith, other second things,
2:09:00
or you're the expert. I know, I know with how much is going
2:09:03
to cost. I know with a certainty of all the experts I've spoken about,
2:09:07
it's cheaper to get our act together than it is to not get our
2:09:09
act together on climate chase. Then tell me the costs that if we don't
2:09:16
do it. I think it's orders of magnitude different. If you don't get
2:09:20
act together, it's don't you don't have a cost. You want us to
2:09:24
get there, but you can't tell the American taxpayer how much it's going to
2:09:26
cost. Is that your testimony? It's gonna save us money and there's a
2:09:31
lot of jobs. Well, how do we know you don't know how much
2:09:33
it's going to cost. I'd be happy to pull up the latest numbers that
2:09:39
I've seen. How about fifty trillion dollars? Is that right? It's gonna
2:09:41
cost trillions of dollars, There's no doubt about it. Okay, if we
2:09:45
spend trillions of dollars and we achieve some of your colleagues estimate fifty tree,
2:09:52
and it disappoints me that you're not willing to give the estimates. I don't.
2:09:58
I hope you're not telling me you have no idea how much it's going
2:10:01
to cost. That creates a whole new host of problems. But if it
2:10:07
costs fifty trillion dollars or some of your colleagues have testified to become carbon neutral
2:10:13
by two thousand and fifty, and I'm all for carbon neutrality, by the
2:10:18
way, how much is that going to lower world temperatures or how much is
2:10:22
that going to reduce the increase in world temperatures? So every country around the
2:10:26
world needs to get its act together. Our emissions are about thirteen percent of
2:10:28
global in Yeah, but if you could answer my question, if we spend
2:10:31
fifty trillion dollars to become carbon neutral in the United States of America by two
2:10:37
thousand and fifty, you're the Deputy Secretary of Energy, give me your estimate
2:10:43
of how much that is going to reduce world temperatures. So, first of
2:10:46
all, it's in that cost, it's what benefits we're having from getting our
2:10:52
act together and reducing all of those climate benefits we're seeing. Let me ask
2:10:54
a game. Maybe I'm being maybe I'm not being clear. If we spent
2:10:58
fifty trillion dollars to become carbon neutral by two thousand and fifty in the United
2:11:03
States of America. How much is that going to reduce world temperatures? This
2:11:09
is a global problem. So we need to reduce our emissions, and we
2:11:11
need to do everything we can. How much if we do our part,
2:11:15
is he going to reduce thirteen percent of global emis? You don't know,
2:11:18
do you? You don't know, do you? You can do the math
2:11:22
we need to. You don't know, do you, mister secretary? So
2:11:26
we're thirteen percent of If you know, why won't you tell me if we
2:11:28
went to zero, that would be thirteen percent? You don't know, do
2:11:31
you? You just want us to spend fifty threllion dollars and you don't have
2:11:35
the slightest idea whether it's going to reduce world temperatures. Now, I'm all
2:11:41
for a carbon neutrality, but you're the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Energy
2:11:46
and you're advocating we spend trillions of dollars to seek carbon neutrality and you can't.
2:11:52
And this isn't your money and my money, it's taxpare money. And
2:11:54
you can't tell me how much it's going to lower world temperatures or you won't
2:11:58
tell me. You know, but you won't. In my heart of hearts,
2:12:03
there is no way the world gets its act together and climate change unless
2:12:05
the US leads tell me how much it's going. You can't tell me either
2:12:11
that or you won't. So kudos to Senator Kennedy there. I mean,
2:12:15
that sounded almost like a Monty Python sketch. And it's a religious experience here
2:12:22
where we're being told to just believe, just believe, and trust us,
2:12:26
and we're spending all this money for a good cause, and we can't tell
2:12:31
you how much exactly, and we certainly can't tell you. In fact,
2:12:35
worse than we can't tell you, we're basically not going to even try to
2:12:37
claim that the global temperature will be impacted at all. We're not even claim
2:12:43
that because all what we're doing here, according to Turk and you heard him
2:12:46
say that at the end of the clip, is that well, we have
2:12:50
to take the first step, because no one else is going to take the
2:12:54
first step. So if if we don't do it, the rest of the
2:12:58
world i e. China, India and Russia, if they don't do it,
2:13:03
then we can never impact global temperature. By the way, we can't
2:13:07
impact global temperature anyway, and no one ever mentions if we can impact global
2:13:11
temperature, how do we know we're not going to do it too much?
2:13:16
If you use their logic, how do they know that if we have this
2:13:20
kind of impact on global temperatures, which we don't, that we're not going
2:13:22
to overdo it and cause ourselves to get even colder than we are. No
2:13:28
one ever thinks about that. You know, why don't think about that because
2:13:31
they know they have no impact on global temperature. They know it's all a
2:13:33
fraud and a farce, even those that really believe in this religion, because
2:13:39
if they were, if they really believe that we had this ability, they
2:13:41
would at least be somewhat concerned that we not overdo it because they know we
2:13:46
have no impact on this This is a religion, and this is a way
2:13:50
of instilling socialism. This is a way. I'm incredibly outrageously enough. You
2:13:56
know, the Secretary of Energy is basically either purposely or stupidly making the argument
2:14:03
that we go down this path to put the United States and an inherent substantial
2:14:09
disadvantage. Because if you use your brain here, even if you go by
2:14:13
his argument, Well, we can't impact global temperature by ourself, which is
2:14:18
true, but we need to do it first because if we don't lead,
2:14:22
the rest of the world won't follow. Well if we lead, and certainly
2:14:26
looks like we will if Biden is reelected, especially if we lead in chopping
2:14:33
off our own head and wasting all this money on a problem that may not
2:14:37
exist and we can't fix even if it does. If we do that,
2:14:41
what exactly would be the incentive of our competing countries to follow us. There's
2:14:46
none, because we've just put ourselves at a massive disadvantage from an economic standpoint,
2:14:52
which they're going to take advantage of, so they have no incentive to
2:14:56
follow. In fact, we've created a incentive to follow because the benefits will
2:15:03
now be greater for them to fill the void that we've just created because we've
2:15:07
decapitated ourselves. This is the insanity. This is the lack of basic logical
2:15:13
thinking on the part of people who are in positions of power to make these
2:15:16
decisions of why we are so goddamn screwed. A couple other quick stories before
2:15:22
we end this episode of the podcast. I am a big believer that there
2:15:28
have been many stories over the last couple of decades that have proven how broken
2:15:33
the news media really is, and one of the top examples on the list
2:15:41
is the entire Elizabeth Holmes Tharnos debacle. This was the story of the woman
2:15:48
who was a media darling. She made herself into the new Steve Jobs,
2:15:54
even tried to dress like him and sound like him. And she had this
2:16:01
totally fraudulent idea for being able to test people for diseases in your local drug
2:16:07
store. Would just to drop a blood that was going to change the world.
2:16:11
And the media completely bought into this because they loved the narrative. They
2:16:16
loved her, you know, young, fairly attractive female who was taking on
2:16:24
the man's world, and she had this great idea, and they gave her
2:16:28
all sorts of not just media positive media coverage p R. They made her
2:16:33
who she was, and they allowed her to dupe a lot of people into
2:16:39
supporting her. And the whole thing was a fraud and it collapsed, and
2:16:43
she's now been tried and convicted and facing several years in prison. Right now,
2:16:50
you would think that the news media would feel at least some remorse and
2:16:54
willingness to try to be accountable for their mistakes when it comes to Elizabeth Holmes.
2:17:01
No no, no, no, no, no, no, no
2:17:03
no, that's not the way this works. The New York Times over the
2:17:07
weekend just did one of the worst puff pieces you've ever seen about someone who
2:17:13
wasn't even going to prison. I mean, it would be bad enough if
2:17:16
Holmes had somehow been acquitted, but she wasn't. She was convicted, and
2:17:22
The New York Times ran this puff piece on her with the headline, Liz
2:17:28
Holmes wants you to forget about Elizabeth. That's right, you know that this
2:17:35
Elizabeth character, she she wants to forget about her because you know, the
2:17:39
real person, the Liz Holmes. You know, there's there's a lot more
2:17:43
to her than what you heard about with Elizabeth Holmes. The sub headline the
2:17:48
black turnernecs are gone. So is the voice. As the Paronis founder awaits
2:17:56
prison, she has adopted a new persona voted mother. So let's be clear.
2:18:05
It's not just that she was a criminal. She was a fraud,
2:18:09
so fraudulent that even her voice was a fraud. I mean, she famously
2:18:13
had this very deep voice that people questioned, and now she's acknowledging to the
2:18:18
New York Times that that was a fake. So it wasn't a matter of
2:18:26
she just got caught up in something. Her entire persona was a fraud.
2:18:31
The way she dressed, the way she spoke, the way she manipulated the
2:18:35
news media. She knew the idea was fake. She defrauded people, She
2:18:41
was tried and convicted, and here this female New York Times reporter in an
2:18:46
extraordinary exchange. In extraordinary exchange, the female reporter on this story wrote,
2:18:54
I was immediately swept up in Liz as an authentic, sympathetic person. She's
2:19:03
gentle and charismatic in a quiet way. Now listen to this, folks.
2:19:07
My editor laughed at me when I shared these impressions, telling me, and
2:19:15
I quote Amy Chauswick, you got rolled exclamation point. So this writer Amy
2:19:24
is acknowledging publicly that her editor laughed at her and said she got rolled by
2:19:30
Elizabeth Holmes. Yet somehow this story still got published in the New York Times.
2:19:35
The writer then says, I vigorously disagreed exclamation point. You don't know
2:19:41
her like I do, exclamation point. But then something very strange happened.
2:19:45
I worked my way through a list of miss holmes is friends and family and
2:19:50
longtime supporters whom she and mister Evans suggested I speak to. One of these
2:19:56
friends said Miss Holmes had genuine intentions at Thearanos and didn't deserve a lengthy prison
2:20:03
sentence. Then this person requested anonymity to caution me not to believe everything Miss
2:20:09
Holmes says. So even the person that she's relying on most, that's the
2:20:13
biggest home supporter to her, is saying, hey, look, you might
2:20:18
not want to believe everything she says because she's a lying sackocrap. And this
2:20:22
is a reporter who's, for some reason willing to admit I almost have this
2:20:26
weird admiration for this to admit publicly that she was enamored and got rolled even
2:20:33
after a prison sentence, even after she was warned about what a fraud and
2:20:39
a phony Elizabeth Holmes is. And it still doesn't matter because it's narrative over
2:20:43
everything, and they just still can't let go of this Elizabeth Holmes a narrative.
2:20:48
This is how broken the news media really is. It's so fundamentally busted
2:20:56
that they can't even get a story about Elizabeth Holmes correct or close to correct.
2:21:01
Act or she's been convicted and sentenced to prison for I think eleven years
2:21:07
in the New York freaking Times. It's just unbelievable. And at the Tharonis
2:21:13
story, to me, if you haven't ever delved into it, you really
2:21:16
should, because it tells you so much about so many elements of our society
2:21:24
and specifically our media, and how broken it is and how it is that
2:21:28
you should never trust anything in a situation where the media falls in love with
2:21:33
a personality or with a narrative that fits their agenda, and Tharonis is obviously
2:21:39
a very good example of that. I want to end this episode with a
2:21:45
couple of thoughts on the coronation of King Charles the Third, And I always
2:21:50
say this when I'm going to talk about the royal family in Great Britain,
2:21:54
that it may surprise people to know that I am actually quite well edified when
2:22:01
it comes to things involving the Royal family, especially for a fifty six year
2:22:05
old straight male, mainly because my wife is very big into the Royal family,
2:22:09
and my older daughter, Grace is almost eleven years old, is also
2:22:15
very much into the royal family, and I had sisters that were into the
2:22:18
Royal Family. So I back in the Diana days, I was very much
2:22:24
keeping up with what was going on there, and I do find the Royal
2:22:26
family to be fascinating in the sense. And I think there's a very much
2:22:31
a media element to this, where the media holds the entire monarchy together in
2:22:39
Great Britain. Basically, the BBC holds the entire media together. The tabloids
2:22:46
benefit from it, often by trying to destroy it, but the BBC really
2:22:50
is the glue that holds this whole fraud together. I mean, it is
2:22:56
a remarkable thing that in twenty twenty three there is a major country that is
2:23:01
pretending to have a monarchy that has no actual real power or very very little
2:23:07
real power. They have some wealth but very no political power, but they
2:23:13
pretend that they do and everyone, almost everyone goes along with it, and
2:23:18
the media holds this mythology together because the country is decided that it's in their
2:23:26
interest to do so. Now there's some logic behind this. It's tremendous for
2:23:30
tourism, and I've even said that in a bizarre way, the Royal family
2:23:33
acts like a team mascot for the entire country, or at least most of
2:23:39
the country, and then in many ways it unifies the country in manners that
2:23:43
I'm now jealous of, considering how divided we are in the United States of
2:23:48
America. So I think there is weirdly, bizarrely, illogically some positive benefits
2:23:56
to the royal family, both from an economic standpoint as well as from a
2:24:00
national psychology and unity perspective. But it's all fake, and there's some incredibly
2:24:05
weird things that happened during the coronation of a king that would you know,
2:24:11
you would see it's my second Monty Python reference in one episode, but you
2:24:15
know you would see in a Monty Python film, and they almost literally have
2:24:22
referenced some of the things that we saw this past weekend with regard to the
2:24:26
carnation that they are just incredibly strange and and ought to be ridiculed in twenty
2:24:33
twenty three and often are ridiculed. But somehow the monarchy continues on and everyone
2:24:37
continues on with this charade, this pretend game that we're playing, that the
2:24:43
monarchy is still relevant. And so there's that perspective that I'm always fascinated by
2:24:50
any big thing that happens with regard to the British royal family. And then
2:24:54
there's the more specific stuff, and we've talked about Prince Harry and Megan Markle
2:24:58
previously took joy as most people did with regard to the fact that Harry was
2:25:03
seated right behind Charles's sister Anne, who, because of her ceremonial position,
2:25:09
was wearing this very strange hat with a big red feather, and she was
2:25:13
positioned to sit directly in front of Harry, and you could neither see Harry
2:25:18
nor could Harry see very much of anything in front of him because he was
2:25:22
blocked by the giant red feather. So that was I think that was something
2:25:26
that everyone could be unified in sharing their enjoyment over Harry, and I do
2:25:31
have to say, from a bigger perspective, Harry and Meghan were big losers
2:25:37
this weekend. Big losers. I think it's starting to set in to them
2:25:41
that they chose very poorly in this whole controversy, and from a public standpoint,
2:25:48
I really think that they have lost in a huge way. And Kate
2:25:52
Middleton, who says nothing. I mean, Kate Middleton's like the greatest broil
2:25:56
of all time. She looks great, she reproduced and an extremely tremendous fashion.
2:26:03
I mean, she is the greatest royal of all time. Look great,
2:26:05
shut up, smile, reproduce in an incredibly efficient fashion. Support your
2:26:13
husband, get you know, dress well. And Kate Middleton. I thinks
2:26:18
as one that battle with Meggie markle by saying nothing, and I think Harry
2:26:24
and Megan have lost dramatically. Now, there were a couple of other two
2:26:30
other things I want to mention because no one else will. I did find
2:26:33
it funny and maybe, I don't know, symbolic of something that at the
2:26:39
celebration concert for the coronation, American pop star Katie Perry performed, and I
2:26:46
tweeted out this video and I asked people whether or not this was just my
2:26:50
imagination or whether or not this was there was something to this. So if
2:26:54
you can check it out for yourself if you're curious. So it's the celebration
2:27:00
the Coronation. It's the day after. Katy Perry is singing in front of
2:27:03
this massive crowd and she is singing the song Firework, when one of her
2:27:09
hit songs about fireworks, and in the middle of the song, she gets
2:27:16
to the part of the song where she's referencing which happens. I think twice
2:27:20
during the lyrics, she's referencing the fourth of July. Now, as soon
2:27:24
as I heard that she was doing firework, I for some reason it clicked
2:27:28
to me. I'm like, wait a minute, She's going to really reference
2:27:33
the fourth of July at a celebration of the coronation of the King of England
2:27:39
when obviously the fourth of July is our our holiday holidays celebrating our independence from
2:27:45
the very same monarchy. And I didn't know is this meant to be ironic?
2:27:48
And does she realizes what she's doing? Is anyone else going to notice
2:27:52
the strangeness of this? And when she got to the lyric the fourth of
2:27:56
July, she almost instantly stopped and she kind of went to the crowd to
2:28:03
allow them to take over the song. And I don't even think she even
2:28:07
said the words fourth of July. And I couldn't tell was this done on
2:28:11
purpose? It was this an instantaneously oh shit moment, like what am I
2:28:15
doing here? Am I about to insult the King of England as I'm celebrating
2:28:20
his coronation? Is it just an amazing coincidence? I don't know what I
2:28:22
thought? That was pretty funny, and it always I do think it's symbolic
2:28:28
of this weirdness that Americans have with the ore obsession with the royal family,
2:28:33
especially American women, when obviously we are a country who fought our independence against
2:28:39
the very same monarchy that we are celebrating now that it's completely irrelevant and basically
2:28:43
playing pretend, even in twenty twenty three. So that was the Katy Perry
2:28:48
story. And then the best moment that occurred for me with regard to the
2:28:52
coronation came from my daughter Grace, whom you know, I did not prep
2:29:00
on this at all, not even a little bit. And so she's watching
2:29:03
a replay of the coronation and she says to me and my wife, quite
2:29:07
spontaneously and without being provoked or prepped in any way, she says, hey,
2:29:13
Dad, I thought that all the other kings were supposed to come to
2:29:18
the coronation to help Charles celebrate. I said, well, I think most
2:29:22
of them were there. What's the problem. And Grace says to me,
2:29:26
without missing in the a beat, she says, well, where's Gavin Newsom?
2:29:33
Well that made my day, I thought, you know, being a
2:29:35
dad of two daughters is often very thankless, but occasionally there are moments that
2:29:41
make it all worthwhile. And my daughter volunteering, volunteering that King Gavin Newsom,
2:29:46
who I referred to as a king all the time, at least on
2:29:50
this podcast, although honestly not that much in our private life, that Grace
2:29:54
Ziegler was willing to make that connection and say, hey, wait a minute,
2:29:58
where's our King Gavin Newsom. Shouldn't he be representing California at the coronation
2:30:03
of King Edward the Third. She's never going to forget COVID, that's for
2:30:09
damn sure, because her life was very dramatically impacted by King Gavin Newsom,
2:30:13
or as she and her sister Diana referred to him, King Poosom. I
2:30:18
was like, I was mildly surprised that she even referred to him as Gavin
2:30:20
Newsom instead of King Poossom, who is how she normally It was just how
2:30:24
she normally refers to Gavin Newsom, and rightfully so that'll do it for this
2:30:28
episode number fifty six of the Death of Journalism podcast. This is always the
2:30:33
case. Please remember to subscribe, rate and review and share it with others.
2:30:37
Have he shared on social media? Please tag me and I'll be happy
2:30:39
to share it with my followers on Twitter and Facebook as well until next time,
2:30:43
which we anticipate having a really interesting interview with the guy who is switching
2:30:50
from Donald Trump to the rhnd DE Santa's campaign, with whom I got in
2:30:54
that tip via text messages. He is scheduled to be our guest in episode
2:30:58
number fifty seven, so make sure you are ready for that one when it
2:31:03
comes out in just a couple of days. Until then, my name is
2:31:05
John Ziegler. This is the Death of Journalism Podcast