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Episode One Hundred Nineteen: Trump Wins Erection · The Death Of Journalism

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Welcome to episode number one hundred and nineteen of the Death of Journalism podcast.
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My name is John Zigler. I'm your host on today's show. The results
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of the Iowa Caucus are finally in and yes there will be some big I
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told you sos. Doctor Fauci makes some stunning statements and the world of football
0:18
is changing dramatically and with remarkable speed. I'm known as the Dutch Digital marketing
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And hey, thanks for sponsoring the show. We adjusted our taping schedule for
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this episode of the podcast to accommodate for the fact that the Iowa caucuses were
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being held on Monday night, and normally I tape Monday morning for a release
1:17
very early on Tuesday, but I thought, you know what, I gotta
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wait until after the Iowa Caucuses, since we've been talking about this for many
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months before I tape. Otherwise, anything I say is going to be dated
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and it's going to be a basically wasted episode. Well, as it turns
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out, I probably just could have taped on Monday morning and used the prediction
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that I made in episode number one eighteen as the guidelines for what was actually
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going to happen in Iowa, because frankly, that's basically exactly what happened.
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And I mean exactly now. If you don't remember you or with us.
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An episode number one hundred and eighteen, I made a very specific prediction about
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what the results of the Iowa Caucus would be. I adjusted that prediction ever
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very so slightly on Twitter because there were several things that happened from the time
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that I made that prediction to the time that the Iowa Caucus has actually happened.
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I will get to all of those, or almost all those, during
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the course of this episode of the podcast, But my final prediction for the
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Iowa Caucus was as follows Trump at forty nine percent, Desanta's at twenty two
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percent, Haley at twenty one percent, and for fay Obama Swamy at eight
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percent, So forty nine, twenty two, twenty one and eight. That's
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a very like one or two point difference from what I predicted in the episode
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number one hundred and eighteen of this podcast. And to be clear, I
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was acknowledging I was trying to be on the slightly optimistic side, which I
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hate doing because not because I hate being optimistic, but because I have correlated
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in my mind the idea that there's a much better chance I'm going to be
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wrong if I'm at all optimistic in comparison to when I'm pessimistic. When I'm
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pessimistic, my percentage for being right is far better. I hate that,
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but that's clearly the reality. So from my respective, my final prediction was
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Trump forty nine, Desantus twenty two, barely getting second place, Haley twenty
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one, and for fake Obama Swami eight. The final results were as follows,
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Trump fifty one, de Santas twenty one, Haley nineteen, for Fake
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Obama Swami eight. So I was off by two points on Trump and that
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was almost purely because I was trying to be optimistic that he wouldn't get over
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the fifty percent threshold. I was off by one point on DeSantis, but
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I was off by two points on Haley, and I was dead on if
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you round up on the fake Obama Swami, I got to say, it's
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almost as if I know what I'm talking about. Folks. It's very frustrating.
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It's very frustrating being me because one contrary to popular belief, I actually
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hate being right, especially in this circumstance, because this is not the result
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I wanted at all. But I'm extremely objective. It's probably, you know,
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either my best or worst quality, depending on your perspective, because I
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don't let emotion or I try very hard to not let emotion impact my analysis
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ever, which is why I can't stand it when people accuse me of having
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Trump derangement syndrome. If I had Trump derangement syndrome, I've said this many
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times before, but if I had Trump derangement syndrome, how could I possibly
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correctly predict a massive victory for him in Iowa? Off by only two points,
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which is almost the rounding error when it comes to the results in Iowa.
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That wouldn't be possible. It's only possible because I do not have Trump
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derangement syndrome. I also know what the hell I'm talking about, which is
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another element of this that dries me up a wall, because I constantly have
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people who should be on my side, especially in this election cycle, the
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Santra supporters who have been mocking me, ridiculing me, calling me a loser,
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calling me a quitter, saying I don't know what I'm talking about,
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I'm calling things too early. I'm going to regret this. They're going to
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come back to me on caucus night and mock me and get me to apologize
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to them. Of course, no one does. As of this moment,
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I can't recall of anybody who was in this category who has actually been in
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contact with me on social media and said, you know what, Zigi was
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wrong, You were right. That never happens. In fact, being right
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is incredibly overrated, even in my business or whatever you want to call what
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I do is. You would think that being right would be the coin of
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the realm. No, being right is actually, often times, especially in
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the modern era, very very bad for business. If your business is getting
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people to consume your content or your product. I mean. Mitt Romney famously
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said that his father taught him the worst thing you can do in politics is
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be right too soon. He was referring to the Vietnam War. But I've
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always remembered that because it's absolutely true, especially in the Trump era. I
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was right sooner than anybody else about what was going to happen, not just
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in Iowa, but in this entire Republican nominating process, and it's done me
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nothing but harm. And then even when you turn out to be right,
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it doesn't do you any good. Most people are actually angry that you turned
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out to be right. You're an asshole. Before I was a quitter.
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Now I'm an asshole because I was right. I mean, I would doubt
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it would even be theoretically possible for someone to have been more accurate in their
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prediction for Iowa than I was just not possible. So I probably should have
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just taped the podcast on Monday morning, like I normally do, and we
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could have gotten it out this episode a little bit earlier on Tuesday than we
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did, except I didn't. I guess I didn't have one hundred percent confidence
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that I would be right, and there were a few things that happened after
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the results came in that were worthy of discussion. In fact, I would
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say that all four candidates did something that was worthy of being talked about on
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the episodes. So let's talk about it. Trump of course wins. He
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wins big. But let's be clear. Okay, yes, I'm not gonna
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take anything away from Trump's victory thirty point win, but he is the most
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famous man in the world. He has a cult, he gets more media
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coverage than anybody else, he's a former president. Almost every single person who
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was at the Iowa caucus on a very very cold Monday night where the turnout
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was a little bit lower than expected, probably because of the freezing temperatures,
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just as I suggested that that would happen in the last episode of the podcast.
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But you know, every person there that showed up has voted for him
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for president at least once or twice previously, if not more than that when
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you count the Iowa caucuses themselves. And so here's a guy who you know,
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by all rights, ought to be getting sixty seventy eighty ninety percent of
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the vote, and the fact that he barely cracked over fifty I do think
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is significant now? Is it going to matter in the long run. No,
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but it just does show that Trump is not nearly as popular even among
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Republicans, as his cult would have you believe. I mean, yes,
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he won big, but this is an unprecedented situation. Nobody has ever run
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in an Iowa caucus before after having been president and lost a presidential election.
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This has never happened before. So yes, you know, I heard some
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people on television say this was a historic win for him, the largest win
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for a non incumbent in his modern history of Iowa. Yeah, but you
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can't say that about Trump because he's effectively in Republican circles and incumbent. Hell,
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he doesn't even may he lost last time. Many of his voters still
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think he's president. So the fifty one number is not that impressive at all.
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Is it going to be more than enough to win the nomination? Yes,
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for reasons I'll explain in a little bit. But that fifty one number
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is really not that great under the circumstances. But Trump's speech, his victory
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speech was shockingly conciliatory. He was respectful towards Rhonda Santis and Nikki Haley.
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He even said some nice things about for Fake Obama Swami, which was hilarious
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because just a few days earlier, he had attacked for Fake Obama Swamy on
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truth Social for the first time said he's not maga, which was amazing,
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especially said for Fake responded by saying only nice things about Trump. I mean,
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my god, talk about alpha and beta. I mean, you know,
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there's no question who the alpha dog is in that relationship between Trump and
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for Fake. And by the way, speaking of me calling it correctly,
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I think I nailed it on for fake Obama Swami from the very beginning of
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this whole fiasco, where I said he was a Trump surrogate. I said
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that on this podcast, I said that on News Nation television multiple times,
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went out of my way to say that. And now we have proof because
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when Trump finally scolded his little puppy dog, and the puppy dog, you
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know, was chased and was remorseful and then dropped out of the race like
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seconds after the votes were counted, and what did he do. He endorsed
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Donald Trump and announced he's gonna be campaigning with Trump the next day. So
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Gee kind of called that one too, didn't I, of course, no
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one ever fucking listens to me. But you know, I told you many
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many months ago that's what for fake Obama swamy was all about. That's why
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I call him for fake Obama swamy. But Trump was quite measured and almost
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human is in his victory speech, even talked about the passing of his wife's
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mother. I was kind of stunned as to who this person was that was
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pretending to be Donald Trump. Now I'm sure that it's temporary, and I
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think it was probably strategic because I think Trump smartly wants to unite the party
12:13
and end this as soon as possible so they can start focusing on the really
12:18
important matters, like the ninety one felony counts he's facing in four different indictments.
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He's got to get this thing over with so he could really focus on
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the important stuff. And I think there's a very good chance that he's going
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to be successful in doing that. So Trump went first and was, you
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know, fairly measured by his standards. Then DeSantis came out, and Desantus
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typically seemed a little bit nervous, a little bit you know, not at
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ease, which I understand. I mean, my god, He's put everything
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he had into Iowa. He barely got over twenty percent. He lost by
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thirty points, but he at least got second place. Now somewhat similarly to
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what I said about Trump and his fifty one percent not being all that impressive
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in the larger scheme of things. Remember, nobody was attacking him. Nobody
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even Chris Christy dropped out of the race, the only guy that was even
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somewhat attacking him, and Christy was never really a factor. So Trump got
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basically a free pass, had all these advantages, got fifty one percent.
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Meanwhile, DeSantis, as he said in his speech after the results came in,
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was attacked from every possible angle. He was attacked by Trump, he
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was really attacked by Haley. Haley spent millions and millions of dollars attacking Ron
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DeSantis. There were all sorts of media, both from the right and the
13:46
left that were attacking DeSantis. I said, very very early on in this
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process, one of the many problems the Sanders was going to have is that
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everyone had a perverse self interest to take the Santas out. And we saw
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that in eye and yet despite that, despite that, DeSantis still survived.
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He's battered, he's bruised, he's injured, but he survived. He finished
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second. He got over twenty percent, twenty one percent. Under the circumstances,
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he actually exceeded expectations slightly, at least in the short run. In
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other words, what the expectations were. Over the last couple of weeks,
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there were polls showing that Haley was going to win second place. Now I
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predicted that De Santis was gonna hold on to second, and he did exactly
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that by about two points. So he survived, and his message was I
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punched my ticket out of Iowa. Interestingly, he didn't say where that ticket
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was going to. He didn't have a destination on that. He didn't say
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a ticket to New Hampshire because he could have get his butt kicked in New
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Hampshire. Although he's doing his CNN town hall there as almost as we released
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this podcast on Tuesday, but I think he's more focused, probably on South
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Carolina. Of course, he's got a major problem there, and that is
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that Trump is very popular and Haley's the former governor South Carolina, so don't
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I don't even know what he thinks his path is at this point, but
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at least he saved face and then he gave a you know, I thought,
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a really good speech about liberty being at stake and our founding fathers in
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the history of our country and how important this is and he will not let
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us down, and so under the circumstances, I thought Desandas did about as
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well as he could. But I don't really understand what the path is.
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If I had been in the room advising Desanders, which unfortunately I have never
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been, although I wish I would have been because I think I could have
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helped, which there's further evidence for that, which I'm gonna get to in
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just a moment, which I think was almost designed to drive me crazy.
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But I digress. But you know, Desantas, if I was advising him,
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I would have said, you know what, we survived, Iowa.
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Why don't we just withdraw now? Unless there's something that I don't know,
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or there's a path that they see that I don't see, and it has
16:15
to do with somehow Trump being forced out of the race, which I don't
16:18
understand what that could possibly be, because he's not even going to have that
16:22
trial in March. Even if he did have that trial in March, the
16:25
trial was going to take forever. By the time there's any trials, Trump
16:30
will have accumulated so many delegates that it would be impossible to take the nomination
16:36
away from him. I mean, just think about it. Logically, it's
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not just numerically, but you know, Trump is going to continue to win
16:41
all these these primaries and caucuses, pile up all these delegates, and so
16:49
mathematically, by the time there was even theoretically a trial, he would have
16:55
already clinched. But it's even worse than that, because let's just pretend there
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is a trial and he gets convicted, right, and he's a convicted felon,
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and they're going to throw him in prison, like the worst possible scenario,
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none of which I even think is likely at all to actually happen,
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But let's just pretend. Because we're mapping out theoretical paths here for Desaantus,
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even under that scenario, the Republican base would be more invested in not allowing
17:26
anyone to take the nomination away from Trump, because that would be allowing the
17:30
bastards to win. That would be allowing the Biden judicial Department Justice Department to
17:40
interfere in the election and take away our candidate are already elected. Candidate is
17:45
the Republican nominee. That's never ever gonna happen. Republicans would rather lose with
17:52
their candidate in prison than take the nomination away from Trump at that point.
17:56
So I don't see what that Desantus path is. Unfortunately, it does appear
18:02
as if he's going to continue on and whatever face he saved in Iowa is
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very likely going to be lost, whether it's in New Hampshire, South Carolina,
18:11
or wherever. My god, if it gets to Florida, God help
18:15
us all, because that will be the ultimate humiliation if DeSantis is still in
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the race and Trump trounces DeSantis in his home state. But that was DeSantis.
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I was fine with his speech under the circumstances. And then Haley spoke,
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and this one really blew my mind one because Haley, who you know,
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boy, she can be cold blooded, and sometimes being cold blooded is
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good, but in this particular case, and as we saw in the debate
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last week between her and Ron de Santis, I think she comes off in
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a way that's so often bitchy. And I know that sounds sexist because she's
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a woman, but I don't mean it that way. I just mean I
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just don't I don't think she comes off as likable, and I don't think
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that she has much of a conscience. And you know, speaking of not
19:07
having a conscience, she just pretended that she finished. Second, she just
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pretended that Ron DeSantis didn't exist, which I don't think is based in reality
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or particularly fair, but from a strategic standpoint. Then she shifted into something
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that really caught my attention. She went almost word for word, and to
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be clear, I'm not suggesting any form of plagiarism at all, although stranger
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things have happened, but she went almost word for word into her framing of
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the battle between her and Trump in exactly the same way I proposed on this
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podcast and via email to the Dessanda's campaign manager at the time at the beginning
19:59
of this and run, or just actually just before the Sandis's run. If
20:03
you're a big fan of this podcast, you may recall I even had a
20:07
proposed speech for Desandas to give at his the opening of his campaign. I
20:17
knew that was never going to be used, but it was just a suggestion.
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It was just my framing of the race, and what I said was
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that this is between me and Trump Biden, the Trump Biden establishment. I'm
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the last stand between you and this race. Nobody wants Trump Biden two point
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zero, and that Trump and Biden are much more similar than Republicans want to
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acknowledge. And I went through a litany of all the reasons why that's the
20:48
case, especially COVID and everything related to COVID, which was where I thought
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the Sandis could make as greate as contrast with Trump. Well, imagine my
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sh surprise and despair when I'm sitting at home watching television and Nikki Haley starts
21:07
again. I'm not suggesting any plagiarism, essentially quoting word for word the strategy
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I had for desandis that never got used on her own behalf portraying herself as
21:22
the last stand, the last opportunity to prevent a race between Trump and Biden
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that nobody wants, saying that Trump and Biden are similar, that they're the
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establishment, and that I'm the person running against that, and she did so,
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I thought, quite well and very effectively. Of course, this is
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no I was very very good audience for this, because this was my idea
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like eight nine months ago, and of course it never got used. Now
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is it going to be effective? For her, I don't know. I
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think it's probably too late. And I also don't think that she's the correct
22:07
messenger for this, because she has perceived as being establishment, as being a
22:11
bit of a rhino, being a PC Republican and being you know, somebody
22:18
who Establishment money really likes. She's not MAGA. That's the key word here.
22:26
She's not MAGA. DeSantis could make a claim to being MAGA, and
22:30
so he could have theoretically bridged that gap. I've talked all the time about
22:37
this gap that may not have been bridgeable, but that DeSantis didn't even really
22:41
try properly to bridge, and he ended up appealing to very few people,
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and most of MAGA went back to Trump when they had released were contemplating going
22:55
with the Santis. But this, this, i'll call it the zig strategy
22:59
that Hal is now using, I find to be very interesting. I think
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it will resonate, at least in part in New Hampshire, except Hally has
23:10
another problems. Has a couple of problems. One is she finished third,
23:15
and I realized she basically claimed to finish second, but the results still matter
23:22
a little bit. And I think that that message in New Hampshire, where
23:25
people follow this very carefully. Is gonna is gonna be heard that the sand
23:30
has finished second? Right, people are gonna know, And so generally I've
23:36
talked a lot about the history of Iowa New Hampshire. Generally, if you
23:41
finish a strong or surprising second in Iowa and you're the type of candidate that
23:48
can appeal to independent minded voters in New Hampshire, you're somebody to keep an
23:53
eye out on. In New Hampshire, you will do very well because New
23:57
Hampshire tends to to do the opposite of whatever Iowa does. This, of
24:03
course, is a very unusual race because of the presence of Trump. But
24:07
Haley didn't get that surprise second place finish where she's gonna be all of a
24:12
sudden getting momentum. In fact, in a lot of perception, it's gonna
24:17
seem as if she lost momentum because she's third. So a third place,
24:22
not even hitting twenty percent performance by Haley in Iowa is not gonna suddenly jumpstart
24:30
her in New Hampshire. Now she's gonna be able to take advantage of the
24:34
fact that Christy got out of the race, which, ironically enough, in
24:40
the last episode, I was screaming at Christy to do so and to prove
24:45
that he's not a fraud, because I thought if he really believed what he
24:48
said about trying to beat Trump, he had to get the hell out and
24:52
give Nicky Haley a chance in New Hampshire, and I suggested strongly I didn't
24:56
think that was likely. I didn't rule it out, but I did did
25:00
not think that was likely. Well, literally, as we released the podcast
25:04
episode which I hated, Christy was dropping out of the race, and so
25:08
that was a positive for Haley in New Hampshire, at least in theory.
25:14
That doesn't mean that Christie's votes automatically go to Haley, but they're at least
25:18
prone to going to her, and you know, it opens up some territory
25:22
for her. However, the finishing third in Iowa, I think diminishes that
25:29
momentum. And then you have fac Obama Swamy dropping out of the race.
25:36
So for Fake Obama Swamy drops out, and look, I don't know for
25:40
sure what happened between Trump and for Fake, but something odd clearly happened behind
25:47
the scenes. We're out of the blue. Trump rips for Fake on troops
25:52
Social says he's not Maga for fake responds by kissing Trump's ass publicly, and
26:00
then immediately drops out of the race after a fairly decent performancy. I performed
26:06
most of the polls in Iowa. You know, he's not spending a lot
26:10
of money to begin with. He's doing this all off of social media.
26:12
There's really no reason why he couldn't have gone on to New Hampshire if you
26:18
are of a fake Obama Swamy. However, dropping out of New Hampshire does
26:25
help Trump a little bit because whether he was getting four or five or six
26:30
percent, whatever it was going to be in New Hampshire could have been a
26:33
little bit more than that. One hundred percent of that vote is now going
26:37
to go to Trump. And so, if you use basic logic and common
26:42
sense, which is dangerous whenever you're trying to interpret what's going on with Donald
26:48
Trump, what probably happen here is that at some point over the weekend,
26:52
Trump was looking at the polls and seeing that, you know, Obama Swamy's
26:59
getting seven or eight percent in Iowa and five or six percent in New Hampshire
27:03
and realizing that those are his voters, and you know, excuse me for
27:07
for you know, being using course language here, but he was probably thinking,
27:12
well, you know, Viveke's making my dick look smaller than it really
27:17
is, because those are you know, five or six, seven, eight
27:19
points that I should be having on my penis, and let's get Veveke the
27:23
hell out of here. And that's essentially what happened. You know, whether
27:27
it was a conspiracy, whether it was orchestrated behind the scenes, whether it
27:32
was a wink wink, nod nod, who knows, But that's essentially what
27:37
happened here, is that Trump was getting irritated because he wasn't getting his full
27:42
erection from an electoral standpoint, and with Viveke gone, now he will get
27:48
a full erection because now all of Maga, with the exception of a few
27:53
DeSantis voters, will in fact vote for Donald Trump, and they'll do so
27:59
in New Hampshire. And that could be the difference between, you know,
28:03
if everything went Nicky Haley's way in New Hampshire, that could be the difference
28:07
between you know, Haley either winning or almost winning, or this being another
28:12
very solid victory for Donald Trump. Because Trump is historically not done very well
28:18
in New Hampshire. He only got thirty five percent of the New Hampshire vote,
28:22
though he did win the New Hampshire primary in twenty sixteen and so,
28:27
and he's never done particularly well in the polls there. He's rarely ever over
28:30
fifty percent in the polls in New Hampshire. And so I think Trump probably
28:36
got a little bit agitated, irritated, maybe even a tiny bit nervous.
28:41
And so now the fake Obama swamy has has, you know, done what
28:45
his master wanted, and as the servant, he has dropped out and will
28:49
be endorsing and campaigning with Donald Trump. And I think that will probably ensure
28:56
that there's no chance that Trump loses New Hampshire because Haley's not going to have
29:00
you know, a bunch of momentum coming out of Iowa. And now it's
29:04
a three person race, and you know DeSantis, who knows, maybe he'll
29:10
get ten percent, and so you know that means that basically Trump, if
29:15
Trump gets over forty five percent, he's the winner. And I think Trump
29:18
will get over forty five percent, especially with the fake Obama Swami out of
29:22
the race. In fact, Trump may get well over fifty percent depending on
29:26
how things shake out. So that's what happened after the results from Iowa.
29:33
As I've mentioned, several things happened leading up to Iowa that I think are
29:37
worthy of mention. Christy got out as I hoped that he would, and
29:41
there was that DeSantis Haley debate, and I got to tell you, I
29:45
know I'm sounding like a broken record and patting myself on the back, but
29:48
somebody has to because no one else does. But I think my greatest prediction,
29:53
or unfortunately, because I didn't want it to turn out this way,
29:56
my most Prussian prediction of this entire Republican process was what was going to happen
30:02
with the debates. I told you that Donald Trump would never debate anybody.
30:07
That turned out to be true, and I said that each debate would get
30:11
a significantly smaller audience than the previous one did as people started to realize they
30:18
don't matter and that Trump's not going to be there, and Trump's going to
30:23
be the nominee, So why should I bother watching a debate over people fighting
30:27
each other for second place? They're not even going to go after Trump,
30:30
which might be the only thing of interest or entertaining to tune in for,
30:36
And that has being exactly what has happened. Every single Republican debate has had
30:41
a smaller audience than the one before, and Trump showed up for none of
30:47
them. And I also predicted that Trump would suffer zero consequences for not showing
30:52
up because the conservative media would be too afraid to attack him for that.
30:56
In fact, if anything, I've seen be praised more than I've seen him
31:02
criticized for avoiding the debates. Oh what a strategically masterful move by the genius
31:08
Donald Trump. To avoid debates that make him look small. He can let
31:15
his opponents look small. And I said that as well. I said they're
31:18
gonna look like the B team, the JV team. DeSantis is gonna diminish
31:23
himself. I said before the first debate that Desantas should skip all the debates.
31:29
He should say, if Trump's not going to debate, I'm not going
31:32
to debate now. You know. Would that have worked? Who knows.
31:34
But it couldn't have turned out any worse than this did, because Desandas did
31:37
fine in every single debate, never had one bad debate. You could argue
31:42
whether he won every debate, but there was not one debate where you could
31:45
say Desandis did a poor job. Not one even though he was the one
31:49
being attacked more than anybody else, and it never helped him in any of
31:56
the polls. Ever, in fact, more often than not, being in
32:00
those debates heard him in the polls because I think it diminished him and further
32:06
exposed that Trump was the alpha, and Trump was above it all, and
32:09
Trump was going to be the nominee. And I hated the Desanta's Haley debate.
32:15
It was pointless, it was mean, it was nasty. Haley couldn't
32:21
shut up about her DeSantis Lives website, which wasn't even a decent website.
32:27
I mean, she must have said that twenty five times. I thought that
32:30
it was incredibly annoying. But unfortunately, I think Desantas got caught up in
32:35
the mud slinging and the idea that them fighting it out for second place.
32:40
I just don't understand what the significance of that is. It's not as if,
32:45
again that they're a close second. If it was a close second,
32:50
and let's say Trump was for sure facing a legitimate criminal trial the end of
32:57
January and the date was set in don't then I could say, Okay,
33:02
this is significant, this has meaning. But those are not the facts that
33:08
is not the situation. And so you know, we had this mud slinging
33:15
exhibition that I don't think helped either candidate. This had just did fine,
33:21
but I don't think it helped him. I don't think it helped Haley.
33:23
I think it only helped Trump. And then simultaneously talk about how the conservative
33:30
media has been an incredible disappointment in this entire Republican nominating process. You know,
33:36
at the very beginning of this, there were dreams that people like me
33:39
still maintained that Fox News Channel was going to lead the way to bring down
33:45
Trump, and that Tucker Carlson might be the tip of the spear on that.
33:51
I'm almost embarrassed to have even contemplated that possibility now the way things have
33:58
turned out, where Tucker gets iirre from Fox News Channel, becomes the MVP
34:01
of the Trump campaign on numerous levels, and Fox essentially the night of the
34:07
CNN Haley Desandas debate, almost officially surrendered to Donald Trump. In fact,
34:15
there were some media articles that even referenced it as a surrender. That's what
34:21
it was. It was pathetic. It was basically the first of all,
34:27
just even having the event right in a rational world, Fox News Channel.
34:31
I get counterprogramming, but Fox News Channel, if they were not on the
34:36
Trump bandwagon, would say, well, mister President, we'll be happy to
34:39
have you for a town hall, but we're not going to do it up
34:45
against a Republican debate, so you know, you pick another night. That
34:50
would be the way they would do this. But instead they went and did
34:52
the exact opposite. They did what Trump wanted. Trump wanted to upstage and
34:58
bigfoot that Haley the Santus debate, and he did because, and I don't
35:02
think this is a coincidence, the Fox News Channel debate with Trump trounced the
35:08
CNN debate in the ratings, and it was almost by the same kind of
35:15
percentages that we end up seeing in the national polling. It's not exact,
35:20
but it's a pretty good indicator that won. The polls aren't wrong that they
35:25
are reflective of the Republican base. People were voting by where they were viewing.
35:31
If you were a Trump fan, you were watching Fox News Channel.
35:36
If you were a Hailey or de Santas fan, you were watching CNN.
35:39
And Trump won in the ratings by like almost exactly the same percentage that he
35:45
ends up winning most of the national polls over DeSantis and Haley. But it
35:51
wasn't just the tone of this surrender on behalf of Fox News Channel towards Donald
35:58
Trump. There was a specific episode that I think illustrates so much of this
36:05
just horrible reality that I have predicted from day one when it comes to the
36:10
way the conservative media would cover up for Donald Trump, be afraid to criticize
36:15
him, go along with whatever bull crap narrative he needs to create. And
36:22
there's no more dramatic example of that than the issue of COVID. You want
36:27
to look up the different definition of gaslighting in the dictionary. What you're about
36:31
to hear this clip from Fox News Channel is literally the definition of gaslighting.
36:37
This is Donald Trump responding to a question from by the way, rather attractive
36:42
female, which I'm sure definitely sparked Trump's interest, But that's, I guess,
36:46
somewhat beside the point. It's only somewhat relevant when you hear this clip
36:52
and the way he responds to this question where the topic of COVID is brought
36:58
up and he starts at attacking Ron DeSantis or the sanctimonious completely erroneously on the
37:06
handling of COVID. I mean, this is as upside down world as you
37:08
can possibly imagine, complete gaslighting from a substantive standpoint. I guess the number
37:15
one thing I will say other than that Trump is lying, is that to
37:20
the extent that he's even telling the truth about how the Sandas initially responded to
37:25
COVID for the first month or two and initially responded to doctor Fauci, it's
37:30
because he trusted Trump. Trump here in this clip is basically saying, I
37:36
can't believe the Santas was so stupid as to trust me and to trust the
37:39
guy that I was making the face of my administration, and the response to
37:44
COVID, which was doctor Fauci. I mean, it just can't get more
37:47
insane than this. And Martha McCallan from Fox News Channel to I guess somewhat
37:53
of her credit, she tepidly tries to push back, and you know,
37:59
even you hear her suggesting that you know, Rond de Santas, not doctor
38:02
Fraugi Rhanda Santas, would take an issue with your characterization. She doesn't call
38:07
him a liar, which she should have, but she says that the Sandas
38:12
would take issue with your characterization, and then in response to that, we
38:15
get more lies of gas lighting it upside down world insanity from Donald Trump.
38:21
And here's what that sounded like on Fox News Channel in their counterprogramming of the
38:25
CNN the Santas Haley debate. Yes, so my question is you're a business
38:30
owner. I'm a business owner. I own a small business, and time
38:35
is money. Would you ever allow a shutdown in the future, a shutdown
38:40
in terms of COVID or a shutdown in terms of budget because you know they're
38:45
talking about a budget shutdown right now, but you're talking about a COVID shutdown.
38:49
Correct. No, I wouldn't and I never did. I let the
38:52
governors make their decisions. And some of them, like from South Carolina,
38:55
you know, Henry Rickmaster and Frankly Dakota, a few of them Tennessee,
39:01
they didn't shut down at all. Florida did shut down, run to sanctus
39:05
shut down or as he's known, run to sanctimonious. He shut us,
39:10
stayed down very violently actually, and shut the highways down, the roads down.
39:15
But we had I'm a federalist in a sense because that's the federalist way.
39:20
No, I didn't actually have a shutdown despite the fact that some people
39:22
wanted to and some people didn't want to. But we had some great governors,
39:27
and the governors that did the best shot were Republican governors and they were
39:30
the ones that didn't shut down. Thank you very much, I love you,
39:36
appreciate it. But a lot of people say, you know that you
39:38
listened too much to doctor Fauci. You were president at the time, could
39:42
have perhaps influenced keeping things more open. And of course Rondo Santis would would
39:47
definitely argue with your characterization of how he handled it. But if you go
39:52
back and look at the records, you will see that the biggest fan of
39:54
doctor Fauci was Ronda Sanctimonious. He was a big fan. He said,
40:00
I go by exactly quote. I go by what doctor Fauchi said. He
40:05
said that two months in, all the way through, and then eventually changed
40:08
when it wasn't you know, that wasn't the dessert of the day. But
40:12
Ron de Sanctis was a big doctor Fauci fan, and nobody wants to cover
40:15
that. I say it every time. I don't care if he was or
40:19
not. But you know, when they hit me with this question, doctor
40:22
Fauci was not a huge factor in my administration. He became a much bigger
40:28
factor in Biden's administration. He was there, he was somebody that was in
40:32
government for forty years. He did it for forty years, so a long
40:37
time. And what do I say, You know, you've been doing this
40:38
for forty years. Get out. But he wasn't a big factor with me.
40:42
He was a really big factor after I left by that just absolutely drove
40:49
me bananas. And for a lot of good reasons. If you're listening to
40:54
this podcast before, you know most of them in my view on COVID.
41:00
In this episode, I'll have some thoughts on some statements that doctor Fauci has
41:04
made recently under oath that are absolutely astonishing and that in irrational world, Trump
41:08
would be asked about directly and held accountable for, since he gave an award
41:14
to Fauci in his last day in office, and he absolutely made him the
41:16
face of his administration, putting him on national television when there was nothing else
41:22
to do, where they were getting almost super Bowl like television ratings. When
41:27
you consider the fact that it was on every single network live at the same
41:30
time at the beginning of COVID, making Fauci into a god. I mean,
41:35
it was by far the biggest mistake Trump made during the entire COVID panic.
41:40
And the part of that mistake by Trump that is most mind blowing to
41:45
me is that that's Trump's area of expertise, Understanding the media, understanding the
41:52
power of celebrity, that's his wheelhouse, and even on that, Trump shit
41:59
the bed by giving all that power to doctor Fauci. But I'm going to
42:04
hold off on Fauci directly for just a minute because one of the metaphors that
42:08
I have used, and I think this is a good one to describe what's
42:12
happening in this race and the Republican voting populace and how they're viewing the contest
42:20
between specifically Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, is that I have said that the
42:25
average or median or typical Republican base voter is essentially looking at this like they
42:32
are a college aged girl in a dating situation, and they have a choice
42:39
in their mind between this fun billionaire bad boy who's a massive celebrity who looks
42:49
like he's a lot of fun, or they can go with the awkward,
42:53
really perfect marriage material guy who they know is going to be a tremendous and
43:00
is gonna treat them very well and get things done and probably give them a
43:06
much better life. Well, the average college girl, especially the attractive college
43:12
girl, based upon my experience, is one percent of the time gonna go
43:17
with the former option rather than the latter. They're gonna go with the billionaire
43:22
bad boy. And that's essentially, in my view, not totally, but
43:29
in large part, what has happened in the race between Trump and DeSantis.
43:34
And in that light, I found a tweet from Megan Kelly to be I
43:42
mean, almost too perfect, almost too perfect, almost like I wrote it
43:45
myself. Now, Megan Kelly atractive female person, I respect, I think
43:52
she's smart. She and I disagree on many things. I'm disappointed in the
43:55
way that she has handled this entire race, given her history with Trump.
44:01
But this is what makes this tweet so perfect. You know, we talk
44:05
about the bad boy and how somehow the bad boy still gets treated well by
44:09
the women he treats poorly. Well. Trump was the guy who, you
44:15
know, referred to Megan Kelly's menstrual cycle in the twenty sixteen election. Megan
44:20
Kelly has written in her book that she believes or at least implies that she
44:23
believes that the Trump team tried to poison her before a debate that she hosted
44:30
that Trump got the first question that she asked him, which resulted in the
44:36
famous Rosie O'Donnell answer. I mean, there's a lot of reasons not to
44:39
mention the entire issue of sexual abuse, which is, you know, a
44:45
huge part of Megan Kelly's brand. I mean, she was played by Charlie's
44:49
Theron in the Roger Ayles movie about sex abuse. At Fox News channels,
44:54
she talks about the issue all the time. Well, Trump, if you
44:59
believe his accusers, is a serial sexual abuser. Now I'm not convinced of
45:02
that, but Megan Kelly has believed a lot of allegations in this realm,
45:08
including about my friend Matt Lower, that are a lot less substantiated and never
45:13
have gone to court, unlike those that have gone to court involving Donald Trump.
45:19
And so it's just amazing to me that Kelly has been so soft on
45:24
Trump. But this tweet was really amazing. Again, I want you to
45:29
think about my college girl metaphor, and this was Megan Kelly talking about watching
45:37
both the Trump town hall as well as the DeSantis Haley debate. This is
45:43
word for word what Megan Kelly tweeted that night. I should put some music
45:49
behind this, but we're not going to do that. We've we got,
45:52
we got, our taping schedule is too tight. But imagine, imagine some
45:58
romantic music in the background of this. Megan Kelly tweet switching between CNN and
46:05
Fox, and there is just no comparison. Trump on TV is totally compelling.
46:14
He's funny, he's interesting, and he was very on tonight. You
46:22
see the two meaning Haley and DeSantis, and think, okay, policy principle
46:30
points, what if? Then you see Donald Trump and remember, oh my
46:45
god, that is word for word. Megan Kelly, one of the smartest
46:49
conservative commentators. There is a woman who, by all rights, ought to
46:54
be leading the charge against Donald Trump, swooning's wounding almost literally on Twitter,
47:02
saying policy doesn't matter, Entertainment is what really should rule the day. And
47:09
if that doesn't prove my theory about the college a's girl mentality, I don't
47:15
know what possibly could. And that I mean, I swear to you I
47:21
did not write that myself. That is an absolutely real tweet, Even though
47:27
if you had said zig can you write something like that, I probably could
47:30
not have done nearly as good a job. My imagination would not have allowed
47:35
me to go as far as Megan Kelly did in real life. And it
47:42
appears as if that Ron desandis himself now. It's always hard to tell.
47:46
It was DeSantis late in coming to this realization or was he just deciding to
47:52
not speak of it publicly because he didn't think it was politically smart to do
47:57
so. I don't know, But for whatever reason, in the days leading
48:01
up to Iowa, DeSantis finally unloaded on the core reality that I have been
48:08
talking about for over a year that was going to dictate this race. And
48:15
that is how invested, how deeply invested the conservative media is in Donald Trump's
48:22
success and their fear of criticizing him because they are worried about losing the cult
48:29
audience. And here was DeSantis in Iowa articulating exactly that he's got basically a
48:37
praetorian guard of the conservative media, Fox News, you know, the websites,
48:44
all the stuff that they just don't they don't pull them accountable because they're
48:47
worried about losing viewers and they don't want to have the ratings go down,
48:52
and that's just that's just the reality. That's just the truth, and I'm
48:54
not complaining about it. I'd rather that not be the case, but that's
48:58
just, I think, an objective reality. So when you're Ron, DeSantis
49:01
is exactly right. It's exactly as I've been saying for over a year.
49:06
But there's nothing that can be done about it. Now. It's too late.
49:10
The only way that that could have ever been fixed or overcome is if
49:16
there had been enough attacks on Trump back at the end of twenty twenty two,
49:23
after the midterm elections, or at least the beginning of twenty twenty three,
49:28
when Trump was vulnerable. Trump was at least on one knee at that
49:35
point. That's when you go after him. But DeSantis decided instead to worry
49:43
about the state legislature in Florida, thinking, hilariously in retrospect, if I
49:46
just get all these great things done, I'll be rewarded for it when I
49:50
run for president, and there'll be plenty of time to go after Trump down
49:53
the road, because that draw we're gonna have all these debates. Right,
50:00
Ah, how'd that turn out? Yeah? No, you had to go
50:04
after Trump when he was vulnerable because once that first indictment hit and everyone rallied
50:12
around him, then he got his superpowers back, and you can't go after
50:16
Superman. At that point, the kryptonite was gone. The kryptonite of the
50:22
twenty twenty two mid terms, you know, had a mild effect on Trump
50:25
and he was I think people forget he was vulnerable at the end of twenty
50:30
twenty two, early twenty twenty three. That's when you had to chop his
50:35
balls off. But instead the opposite happened, and the left did what they
50:39
did with the indictments, and the media did what they did, and by
50:44
the time Desandas realized it or was willing to act on it, it was
50:47
too late. You had to convince the right wing media that it was in
50:52
their interest or at least not in you know, not in their severe negatives
51:00
of interest to dump Trump. That had to be a debate that was won,
51:07
and we documented on this podcast. Very early on. I was able
51:12
to see the signs. I saw the people putting their fingers into the wind,
51:15
and I pinpointed them for you. I said, it's not happening.
51:21
The influencers, the commentators, the people that are important in the right wing
51:24
media are going in the opposite direction because they see where the cult is,
51:30
they see where the base is, They see where their customers are and what
51:35
their customers want, and their customers want Trump, or at least their base
51:40
customers, their most passionate customers, and the ones you cannot lose if you're
51:46
running a grift in the right wing media, and that has always been one
51:51
of the major, if not the most major, core problems for the Desantas
51:57
campaign or for anyone taking on Donald Trump. Now, I want to talk
52:05
about a couple of other things before we move on to other subjects. One
52:08
of the things that happens, and I've predicted this as well once Trump appears
52:14
to be inevitable, and this is going to continue now that he's won Iowa
52:17
handily, is that all of a sudden, people start to rally around him
52:22
because they don't want to be on his bad side. They want to be
52:25
with the winner, and especially when it comes to Trump, Trump has proven
52:29
that he can make your life miserable if you're not on his side, if
52:32
you don't kiss his ass sufficiently enough. And in just the last few days
52:38
before Iowa, there were three absolutely disgusting examples of this from the United States
52:45
Senate. That proved just how utterly cowardly and corrupt and broken even the allegedly
52:53
good guys in the US Senator. Let's be clear, a US senator because
53:01
you served six years is a position designed by our founding fathers to not give
53:08
a flying fuck about external pressures. They didn't actually write don't give a flying
53:15
fuck. I think Madison, James Madison might have thought about it when he
53:19
was writing the Federal's papers. That's what he meant. Senators should not give
53:23
a flying fuck, because first of all, they never anticipated people were going
53:28
to be in the Senate for three, four terms or five, six,
53:31
seven, eight terms. Now sometimes as insane as it's gotten, you were
53:37
supposed to be there for a couple of terms, maybe three. So you're
53:39
only running for reelection once twice. So the idea that a US senator would
53:46
be caring about what a non incumbent president would think of him if they didn't
53:53
kiss his ass sufficiently is bizarre to begin with. But then we have Mike
53:59
Lee sending her from Utah, who was leading the charge at the twenty sixteen
54:05
Republican Convention to still at that moment try to stop Trump. He endorsed Trump
54:12
just before Iowa Rand Paul, who was humiliated in the twenty sixteen campaign running
54:19
for president, sending her from Kentucky, good guy, libertarian, smart dude.
54:23
He promoted his endorsement cryptically on Twitter, and I thought, Okay,
54:29
this is gonna be bad because this the way he's promoting this doesn't seem right.
54:34
And my spidery senses were correct, because he decided he wasn't going to
54:38
endorse anybody. Instead he did a negative endorsement of Nikki Haley. He should
54:45
be endorsing Rod de Santis. My god, he's mister anti Fauci. There's
54:51
no question Rand Paul should be endorsing Rond de Santis, and certainly not Donald
54:57
Trump. He hates Donald Trump. He knows Donald Trump's a bufou, but
55:00
he's afraid of pissing off Donald Trump, so he wiggles out of an endorsement
55:05
by doing this incredibly weak, cowardly, lame anti endorsement of Nicky Haley.
55:12
And then there's Marco Rubio, Senator from Florida, a guy who I supported
55:17
in the twenty sixteen election. I cannot believe I was this wrong. Oh
55:22
my god, I thought he was the only person that could beat both Trump
55:25
and Hillary, and he was the future potentially of the Republican Party. Here
55:30
he is a senator from fucking Florida and who has ridiculed Donald Trump in twenty
55:38
sixteen in no uncertain terms, made it clear that Trump is not in all
55:45
qualified to be president in any way, shape or form. And here Mark
55:51
Rubio, with a guy from his own state, his own governor, a
55:54
very viable alternative. Rubio can't even decide to stay out of it. He
56:00
feels as if he must endorse Donald Trump because otherwise, I guess he'll have
56:07
too much trouble with Trump's base and Trump will say something nasty to him.
56:12
Little Marco, well, I guess that's I guess Trump was right. It's
56:15
just little Marco just pathetic, absolutely pathetic. And again, this is the
56:21
US Senate and three of the good guys, guys that shouldn't be worried about
56:27
this kind of stuff, and Trump is able to intimidate them into doing things
56:31
that they should not be doing when it comes to endorsements. Now, to
56:37
further prove that I do not have Trump derangement syndrome, Trump is facing ninety
56:44
one criminal fellowing accounts in four different indictments. I've said numerous times I don't
56:51
think he's going to be convicted of felony before the November election, if only
56:54
because of timing issues. I have not talked very much at all about his
57:00
fraud trial that's been ongoing, and I probably should talk more about it,
57:04
because to me, this has always been one of my core issues with Trump.
57:07
His entire biography is a fraud. He is not really a multi billionaire.
57:13
He's nowhere near as rich as he claims to be. He's not a
57:15
financial genius at all. I've talked before about my father's extensive history with Donald
57:22
Trump back in the late eighties, and how he was right there, gave
57:28
Trump the money for his his yacht, the Trump Princess, and helped him
57:31
get mar A Lago, and was there when Trump faced financial ruin and the
57:37
banks, including my father's financial institution, all got together and decided whether Trump
57:42
should live or die, and decide to let him live and give him allowing
57:45
so he could pretend to be rich, because they thought his brand had some
57:50
value, and he was more of more potential value to them alive than dead.
57:54
He could have been killed right there. Financially, I mean, so
57:58
his whole biography is a fraud. However, I'm now convinced, and part
58:04
of the reason I've not talked about his fraud trial is it felt fishy to
58:07
me. But I'm now convinced that the fraud trial is itself a fraud,
58:12
or at least mostly a fraud. Now I'm certain that Trump lied about the
58:15
value of his properties in order to manipulate loans. I'm sure that happened,
58:22
but it now appears to me is if this is a standard operating procedure in
58:27
this business. And there was a remarkable moment on CNN where Kevin O'Leary from
58:32
the TV show Shark Tank on ABC. And Kevin's an interesting guy. I
58:37
mean, I think he's smart, he's not really political, he seems to
58:42
have some balls, and oftentimes he can explain things in a really cojin fashion.
58:49
I think he did so here so here reas on CNN, and he
58:52
goes off, I mean, off on how ridiculous the entire concept of this
59:00
fraud trial against Donald Trump is given what he knows about the real estate business.
59:05
And here's what that sounded like. You've been doing real estate for decades.
59:15
Does this case strike you as odd, Well, let's leave out Trump
59:20
for a minute, and let's leave out politics and just talk about what happens
59:23
in real estate development anywhere. So, if you're a developer and you've got
59:29
a building on a block anywhere in America and it's worth let's say, five
59:32
hundred million dollars, and you want to build a building right beside it,
59:36
you go to the bank and say, this building is worth five hundred million
59:38
dollars, I'd like to borrow a construction finance loan against this asset, and
59:45
I want you to tell me it's worth five hundred million too, And the
59:47
bank negotiates with you. It says, well, no, we think it's
59:50
with four hundred million, and you fight it out. You're always trying to
59:53
show your assets in the brightest light, with the sunshine you could possibly determine
59:59
for them. You want them to be worth the very most, because you're
1:00:01
only going to get a forty or fifty percent loan to value, as it's
1:00:06
called. Then you borrow that money. In the case of a five hundred
1:00:08
million dollar asset, maybe you get two hundred and fifty million, and you
1:00:12
build a new building with a construction finance loan. And so that's what this
1:00:16
case is all about. And by the way, forget about Trump. Every
1:00:22
single real estate developer everywhere on Earth does this. They always talk about their
1:00:28
asset being worth a lot and the bank says no. And that's just the
1:00:30
way it is. So in this case, when I'm trying to figure out,
1:00:36
and I'm not pro or con or, I don't care about the politics.
1:00:38
Who lost money? Nobody, the bank got paid back to the construction
1:00:43
finance loan and a new building was built. And if you're going to sue
1:00:49
this case and win, you got to sue every real estate developer everywhere.
1:00:52
This is all they do. This is what they do all day long,
1:00:55
every day. So I don't think this thing will ever survive appeal, regardless
1:01:00
of what the fine is. This doesn't even make sense. Now. Look,
1:01:04
I know Trump's got a lot of problems in other indictments and everything else,
1:01:08
but this, if you're a real estate development you're watching this, You're
1:01:14
saying, what is this? This is ridiculous. That's why I agree with
1:01:19
Kevin O'Leary. I think that this is a classic example of where liberals are
1:01:23
in fact, just as Trump has suggested going after him for political reasons,
1:01:29
and I think it actually has helped Donald Trump in the Republican primary, especially
1:01:32
since people are so desensitized to all these cases. I mean, he's got
1:01:37
another one with Egene Carroll coming up, and I mean it's impossible even for
1:01:44
me to keep track of all of them. How can the average person just
1:01:47
become completely desensitized? And you think, well, the whole thing is bullshit.
1:01:52
They're just trying to go after Trump. And the reason why they're trying
1:01:54
to go out to Trump is because he's the most dangerous. He's the most
1:01:57
dangerous. So he's the one I'm going to vote for. I'm going to
1:02:00
rally around him, especially since he's the guy I know, and he pulled
1:02:04
off the miracle in twenty sixteen. Hasn't won shit since then, but well
1:02:09
I'll never forget that that night in twenty sixteen when he killed the wicked witch
1:02:14
of the West, Hillary Clinton. So here's where we're gonna go from here.
1:02:19
Right, Trump is gonna win New Hampshire by how much? I don't
1:02:22
know. I'll have a prediction before the New Hampshire primary is out, and
1:02:28
you know, if it's anything as close as my Iowa Caucus prediction. You
1:02:31
know, it's gonna be clear that Donald Trump is going to be the nominee.
1:02:36
I mean, he's ninety eight percent there already, which is unheard of
1:02:39
after the Iowa caucus. But the reason why I just want to explain this
1:02:44
because there are probably still some people who don't understand, Well, how is
1:02:47
it John, that Trump could be the nominee after only winning Iowa. There's
1:02:52
almost no delegates in Iowa. He's, you know, nowhere near what you
1:02:57
need to win the nomination, and even if he wins New Hampshire, he's
1:03:00
still gonna be nowhere near what you need to win the nomination. The reason
1:03:05
is, there's a lot of reasons. It's so obvious. I almost feel
1:03:07
stupid talking about this, but especially when you're Donald Trump. And this is
1:03:13
why I never even believed him losing Iowa was gonna matter that much. If
1:03:16
that ever happened in a miraculous scenario, once he wins Iowa New Hampshire,
1:03:24
then the invincibility factor is one hundred percent in play. He is the alpha
1:03:34
dog on steroids, and so therefore there's gonna be a further rallying around him,
1:03:43
especially given all the attacks he's endured. You know, he's Lazarus,
1:03:47
He's the phoenix rising from the ashes. He's unbeatable, and people like a
1:03:54
winner. And then when you add to that, people don't understand the sandis
1:04:00
fans never understood this. The reason why the national polls have Trump dominating even
1:04:08
more dramatically than in Iowa and New Hampshire. It's not because people aren't paying
1:04:13
any attention. Okay. I think there was this perception that, oh well,
1:04:16
and the Sanators campaign even said this, which was ridiculous, that somehow
1:04:20
they won Iowa, it would change the entire race and then people would rethink
1:04:25
their votes. Bullshit. Have you seen Trump's support in Appalachia or the Deep
1:04:32
South or the Upper Midwest it's off or the Southwest, Oklahoma, Texas,
1:04:42
Arkansas, all. I mean, there are so many states where Trump's support
1:04:49
is off the charts, way more dramatic than it was in Iowa or New
1:04:58
Hampshire. Not because those people are paying attention, is because that's where the
1:05:01
bulk of the cult for Trump is. The Trump cult resides in the rural
1:05:08
areas. Now Iowa has some of that, but it's a caucus, so
1:05:11
that's a little bit different. But Trump is winning many of these states by
1:05:16
fifty sixty points, and these people aren't gonna change their minds about Donald Trump
1:05:24
at this point. So Trump is the nominee. It's over. It is
1:05:30
over, even if there's a miracle in New Hampshire. I mean, I
1:05:34
can see a scenario where Nikki Hanley could be close in New Hampshire. I
1:05:39
can see that it's not gonna matter because she'll lose her home state in South
1:05:45
Carolina almost immediately. It's a little bit of time between New Hampshire and South
1:05:50
Carolina, but there's no there's no path there, and so Trump will be
1:05:58
the nominee. Now, what's gonna happen down the road, you know,
1:06:00
depending on his legal problems, is going to be interesting because there's no backup
1:06:03
plan. There may not need to be a backup plan, but there certainly
1:06:08
ought to be considering what the stakes are. But Trump is going to be
1:06:12
the nominee. Now I want to hold off on what that means and what
1:06:15
that says about the Republican Party and the country, because I have some very
1:06:19
very strong feelings about that. But I'm gonna hold that off until at least
1:06:24
the next episode of the podcast or maybe just beyond that, because it's too
1:06:29
important for me to just kind of blow off. And I've already done an
1:06:31
hour on the results and what led up to the Iowa Caucus and I want
1:06:36
to move on to other things. So I'm gonna hold off on what this
1:06:41
all says and what it means for the future of the country. But when
1:06:44
it means for the Republican nominating process, it means Trump's nominee. That's it.
1:06:50
Trump is going to be the nominee again, barring death, and I
1:06:55
don't think incarceration could happen in time to stop that from actually transpiring. Now
1:07:00
I mentioned doctor Fauci, and you know, there's so many remarkable things about
1:07:05
the fact that Trump is going to be the nominae. I mean, it's
1:07:08
amazing. It is amazing that a man who was only ahead by five or
1:07:15
ten points over DeSantis at the beginning of twenty twenty three does absolutely nothing in
1:07:19
this campaign except get indicted four times, lie about rond De Santis, dodge
1:07:26
debates and lie about his COVID record, and praise people like Andrew Cuomo and
1:07:32
Gavenusom Wall ripping Ronda Santis. I mean, that's the essence of what Trump
1:07:38
did this past year, and it won him the nomination. That's how completely
1:07:43
fucked up the situation is. But the fact that that Trump suffered no consequence
1:07:49
in Iowa. In the old world, where you know, facts mattered,
1:07:55
rationality mattered, events mattered. Fauci's testimony alone from last week would have been
1:08:02
major problems for Donald Trump because, after all, as I've already stated many
1:08:08
times, Trump made Fauci and then he awarded him literally an accommodation on his
1:08:15
last day in office. He made Fauci who he was, and he's lying
1:08:21
about the fact that, you know, somehow Fauci wasn't a big part of
1:08:25
his administration. That's just just a flat out lie. By the way,
1:08:30
you know, I should have mentioned this earlier with the clip from Trump on
1:08:32
Fox News Channel. One of the most underrated things that Trump never wants to
1:08:38
accept because it puts blame on him about Fauci's influence is here's how this worked.
1:08:45
Because Fauci became such a celebrity during COVID and so popular among liberals and
1:08:51
among the media, it gave him enormous influence, especially in the Blue States.
1:09:00
Even in the Red States back when it was seen as Trump and Fauci
1:09:06
being on the same team. That's why Desantas was trusting of Fauci at first,
1:09:12
until he was able to figure out, unlike Trump, that Fauci was
1:09:15
full of shit, and it took a couple of months with the data to
1:09:18
come in. Well, Fauci's real power was whatever he said was effectively effectively
1:09:29
in the real world and edict to these thousands of local health directors, all
1:09:33
of whom were at best Liberals and at worst Marxists, not just in the
1:09:40
Blue states but even in some of the red states, because conservatives never even
1:09:43
worried about these positions until suddenly these people were dictators in the middle of this
1:09:49
COVID panic. And so Fauci effectively in the real world, whatever he said
1:09:56
went because the media was ca his message, and the message had that much
1:10:01
weight because of Fauci's celebrity, and so the idea that Trump can say,
1:10:08
well, Fauci didn't really have any power in my administration, it's just beyond
1:10:13
bullshit. And just recently Fauci has been forced to admit some remarkable things.
1:10:21
Under oath, Fauci has acknowledged that the whole six feet of separation, social
1:10:30
distancing, that social distancing at six feet, That that guideline, which was
1:10:36
abided by all over the country, almost everywhere that mattered six feet. Remember
1:10:44
that six feet dictated your life for many months, if not longer than that,
1:10:51
depending on where in the country you lived. Fauci acknowledged, and I'm
1:10:57
only slightly paraphrasing here, Yeah that was bullshit. Yeah, that wasn't based
1:11:02
on any science. I'm not really sure where that came from. That was
1:11:06
just kind of made up. Except it wasn't just a coincidence that it was
1:11:13
six feet. We know that, for instance, the Teachers' Union, which
1:11:18
is as liberal an organization as you can possibly find, that they had an
1:11:26
enormous influence over a lot of these guidelines that were used during COVID, and
1:11:33
the six feet of separation social distancing killed schooling in much of the country.
1:11:43
Think about this, folks, The difference between six feet, which was somehow
1:11:47
magic, and four feet or three feet. Again, none of it made
1:11:51
a goddamn bit of difference. It was all made up bullshit. But if
1:11:57
the guideline had been stay three or four feet of away from each other,
1:12:00
guess what one of the major hindrances to having school would have been removed because
1:12:11
to keep a six foot area away from every single student, keep everyone within,
1:12:17
you know, away from that six feet circle from every student, is
1:12:23
impossible. There's not enough room. It's just a geometry equation. However,
1:12:30
if it had been three feet, that would have completely changed the game,
1:12:35
and that would have been doable. But six feet it was not doable.
1:12:42
And that was one of them. Not just an annoyance, a nuisance,
1:12:45
and an absurdity, especially when it came to sporting events, but the real
1:12:50
real world circumstances there, the real world ramifications where that that made having school
1:12:59
even more impossible than it already was given the political climate, especially in a
1:13:03
blue state like here in California. And then Fauci had the audacity to say
1:13:11
he's not convinced that the response to COVID caused any significant learning loss, which
1:13:18
is just insane. I mean, that's more gas lighting than what you heard
1:13:21
from Trump on Fox News channel. That's just a flat out lie. I
1:13:28
don't care what study you might have. That's a person that doesn't have kids,
1:13:32
that's a person who doesn't have common sense. That's a person who's a
1:13:36
brazen liar. I mean, I've talked many times before about my daughter Grace,
1:13:43
who's in the fifth grade. I mean, she lost at least a
1:13:46
year and a half, if not two years of schooling, and I cannot
1:13:50
believe that once we went back to normal schooling, there has been zero effort
1:13:56
to try to catch up. As I tape this, my kids had off
1:14:01
for the twentieth day out of twenty four days because of Christmas holidays and Martin
1:14:06
Luther King day twenty out of twenty four days off as if, uh,
1:14:12
you know what, you know, that whole COVID thing, Boy, that's
1:14:15
a distant memory. Of course, there's been no effort to try to catch
1:14:18
up, because why the teachers' union has no interest in that. They don't
1:14:21
give a flying fuck. They were thrilled with the time off during COVID.
1:14:27
Many of them were on vacations. Remember that they got told by their union
1:14:31
reps don't post vacation pictures on Facebook. It makes us look bad. They
1:14:36
loved it, not all of them, the ones that actually cared didn't,
1:14:41
but a lot of them loved it. And for doctor Fauci to get away
1:14:45
and for Trump not to be held accountable at all, with the idea that
1:14:48
there was no learning loss when, by the way, even if you somehow
1:14:54
bought that absurdity, the truancy rates to this day, even the liberal media
1:15:00
is tacitly somewhat reporting the overwhelming reality that truancy rates are still off the charts.
1:15:10
In twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four, post COVID, gee,
1:15:14
I wonder who could have ever anticipated that? I said, immediately, immediately,
1:15:18
I said, this is going to create truancy problems for at least the
1:15:23
generation, because we're telling an entire generation of kids school doesn't matter. Of
1:15:30
course, that is going to influence decisions in the future about whether you bother
1:15:34
going to school or not. So, if only from a truancy standpoint,
1:15:39
Fauci is completely full of shit. And then Fauci was forced to acknowledge to
1:15:45
guess what the whole lab league theory that he basically called a conspiracy theory and
1:15:53
had no basis in fact, and was essentially something that Donald Trump came up
1:15:58
with, that was the perception that he allowed to fester. Oh yeah,
1:16:02
it's possibly true that it's possible that COVID came from a lab instead of from
1:16:09
a wet market now you know, even John Stewart, the comedian, was
1:16:14
able to figure out pretty hilariously that the most logical explanation was that it came
1:16:18
from the Wuhan COVID lab rather than a bat in a wet market. I
1:16:24
think it's possible, not that I'm remotely an expert in this area. I
1:16:28
think it's possible that it leaked from the lab to the wet market. But
1:16:31
who the hell knows. But the reality is that the lab leak theory was
1:16:36
considered to be nuts and Donald Trump. This plays right into Trump's hands.
1:16:42
Where Trump should be getting attacked because of his association with an attachment to Fauci.
1:16:47
Instead he gets benefits from Fauci because Trump was the one saying that it
1:16:55
was potentially a lab leak. This goes into the category of c Trump was
1:17:00
right again, his fans loved that narrative, and I gotta admit Trump was
1:17:05
apparently right when it came to the Lab league theory. By the way,
1:17:10
speaking of Trump actually benefiting from Fauci when he should be destroyed by Fauci,
1:17:15
I have to say that one of the things I was wrong about when it
1:17:18
came to this campaign, and Steve Cortes, you know, used to work
1:17:24
for Never Back Down. They to say it his political action Committee. He
1:17:28
and I talked about this pretty extensively, and I'm sure if we did in
1:17:31
our interview that he did on his podcast, but I know we've talked about
1:17:34
it on the phone quite a bit. We were both shocked that the Fauci
1:17:41
issue not only didn't work against Trump because we're logical people. You know,
1:17:46
Trump gets held responsible for Fauci. Conservatives hate Fauci. Aren't you gonna hold
1:17:53
him accountable for what he did? In fact, if anything, attacking Fauci
1:18:00
bizarrely got Trump off the hook because I think a lot of conservatives and Trump
1:18:05
fans thought, oh, yeah, it wasn't Trump's fault, that was all
1:18:10
on Fauci. As if Trump had no control over that, they were able
1:18:15
to rationalize that their hero didn't actually shit the bed, and so, in
1:18:21
a weird way, you know, Fauci became the fall guy among conservatives,
1:18:27
and somehow Trump gets no blame. It's a lot like the idea that conservatives
1:18:32
or right wingers or Trump fans overwhelmingly believed that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in prison.
1:18:40
Okay, well, if that's true. That was Trump's fault at least
1:18:43
in the cover up. He was president, his Attorney general was in charge
1:18:46
of the Federal president prison system where this happened. How do you not blame
1:18:50
Trump? This is the cognitive cognitive dissonance of the cult members. It's an
1:18:57
amazing phenomenon. But they they're very practiced at this, and so Fauci weirdly
1:19:04
actually helps Trump. But in this case, with the lab leak theory,
1:19:09
I think it does help him. And so, I mean, this happens
1:19:13
so often where once the truth really comes out in any big story, no
1:19:16
one really cares anymore, especially the news media if it doesn't fit their agenda,
1:19:21
and it makes them revisit things about which they were wrong. So these
1:19:27
stories are always underplayed, especially by the mainstream media. But I wanted to
1:19:30
at least mention them here because it's clear now that Trump is going to be
1:19:33
the Republican nominee that there will never ever ever be any COVID accountability and we
1:19:40
will all pay dearly for that. We will all pay dearly for that in
1:19:44
all sorts of ways, which I'm sure I will articulate before the end of
1:19:48
this podcast, which is scheduled to be just after the Super Bowl in February.
1:19:54
Now, speaking of sports, there have been a lot of really odd
1:20:00
feuds going on in the world of sports. I reference the weird Trump the
1:20:05
fake Obama Swami feud that was very short lived, but I got the results
1:20:11
that Trump wanted. But we've had so far this year, you know,
1:20:15
only a few weeks into twenty twenty four. We've had Mark Cuban, owner
1:20:20
of the Dallas Mavericks, and a few with Elon Musk. We've got Stephen
1:20:27
A. Smith, who I despise from ESPN, in a few with Jason
1:20:30
Whitlock from The Blaze, who I sometimes like but I'm incredibly frustrated by because
1:20:35
Jason Whitlock believes in more batshit crazy things than even Tucker Carlson, and he
1:20:41
really seems to believe in them, unlike Tucker, who may just be trolling
1:20:45
people. I'm not one hundred percent sure when it comes to Tucker, but
1:20:49
Jason really does seem to believe some absolutely insane things. And I'm particularly frustrated
1:20:55
by Jason because I've tried many, many times to get in touch with him
1:20:58
to discuss the whole pen stag. Joe paternal Jerrysondunsky case, which I am
1:21:01
convinced I could make a lot of headway with him on that, but I've
1:21:06
just never been successful at all. It's one of the few times I've gotten
1:21:11
nowhere with somebody who is really, you know, kind of in my spear.
1:21:15
I know a lot of people who know him, and for whatever reason,
1:21:17
there's blockage there, and so I don't really have anyone to root for
1:21:20
in the Stephen A. Smith Jason Whitlock feud. But that's been boy that
1:21:25
has been as brutal as any feud there is. I mean, those guys
1:21:28
are really going after each other, and I guess as two black men,
1:21:31
you know, they can get away with more when it comes to attacking each
1:21:34
other. And I think that that fuels a lot of the few the fact
1:21:38
that there are two black men. Clearly, the race angle plays a major
1:21:41
role in this, because Jason is a conservative black man and Stephen A.
1:21:45
Smith is not as liberal as you might perceive. On ESPN, every once
1:21:49
in a while he comes up with a semi conservative viewpoint. Although I think
1:21:55
Steven A is a fraud, I think he's an actor. I didn't know
1:21:59
him personally, but I've been very familiar with him for a very long time
1:22:01
because he was a writer for the Philadelphia in Choir when I was still living
1:22:05
in Philadelphia. I always thought he was a bit of a fraud. Whitlock
1:22:10
is going after him for some things in his biography that he believes are not
1:22:13
true and or fraudulent, but by and large, I don't really have anybody
1:22:16
to root for in that particular fight. And then there's the Aaron Rodgers,
1:22:19
the quarterback for the New York Jets Jimmy kimmelfew, which we've talked a lot
1:22:24
about in the last couple episodes, and in the last episode of the podcast,
1:22:29
I left it in a very confused state. In fact, we did
1:22:32
a what we call a pickup, where after I had recorded the original episode
1:22:40
one point eighteen, I realized that there have been a major development. And
1:22:44
after talking about the fact that Rogers had gone on this you know, COVID
1:22:49
diatribe attacking doctor FOUCHI, attaching him to Jimmy Kimmel and what have you,
1:22:57
that all of a sudden, Pat McAfee of ESPN, who had had Rogers
1:23:01
on every single week, suddenly and very haphazardly, matter of factly came on
1:23:08
his show and announced that the Rogers segments were done for the year, and
1:23:13
I came in and did that edit, provided that context because I didn't want
1:23:18
people to think that I had done this analysis of this feud and not realized
1:23:24
that it had been announced that Rogers was no longer doing the Pat McAfee show,
1:23:30
and I didn't know what to make of it. It felt like McAfee
1:23:33
had thrown Rogers under the bus, and it didn't feel natural. It felt
1:23:40
very much like he was being forced by a corporate bigwig to do this.
1:23:45
And it's clear that there's some major things going on at ESPN behind the scenes
1:23:48
here, that there's a war within the war, because obviously Kimmel works for
1:23:56
ABC Disney and ESPN is owned by Disney, and Pat McAfee is the new
1:24:02
star at ESPN making a ton of money, and he's friends with Rogers,
1:24:08
and so all this was going on, and when I saw that clip for
1:24:14
McAfee, I thought, okay, all right, Well somebody at ESPN has
1:24:16
spoken and Rogers has been canceled. And then all of a sudden, the
1:24:21
very next day, Rogers pops back up on McAfee's show, which didn't make
1:24:28
any sense. None of it makes any sense from a broadcasting standpoint. If
1:24:32
it had been planned that Rogers' appearances were going to end with the end of
1:24:38
the regular season, they would have said that. And I had said on
1:24:42
this podcast, I thought, well, that would be natural to get rid
1:24:45
of Rogers that way, because the regular season for football is over, the
1:24:48
Jets season is over. You have all sorts of plausible deniability by getting rid
1:24:53
of Rogers at that point. And I thought, maybe, okay, that's
1:24:56
what the corporate bigwigs had decided for McAfee. But then all of a sudden,
1:24:59
I again, I'm guessing here. I think that the reaction to the
1:25:04
Rogers appearance being canceled had made McAfee feel badly and made it look like he
1:25:13
was being forced to do this by his corporate bosses. So it feels like
1:25:16
he then had Rogers back on just to prove that he wasn't col toowing to
1:25:23
his bosses. I don't know. The whole thing is very confusing to me.
1:25:27
I'm still pissed at Rogers for destroying his credibility on the COVID issue by
1:25:33
claiming that Jimmy Kimmel was a pedophile connected to Jeffrey Epstein, which he did
1:25:39
not technically say I understand that, but he implied it. He allowed that
1:25:44
to be the perception, and he gave Jimmy Kimmel the moral high ground.
1:25:47
And that's all they need to discredit somebody who's talking about, you know,
1:25:51
COVID contrarianism, which obviously is a subject near and dear to my heart,
1:25:57
because I've been a COVID contrarian from almost day one of the COVID panic.
1:26:01
But that's what happened with at least so far, with what happened with Aaron
1:26:06
Rodgers and Jimmy Kimmel and Pat McAfee. Now, when it comes to football,
1:26:12
there have been several things that have happened in the last week. I'm
1:26:15
a remarkable number of things that have happened in the world of football that I
1:26:18
think are really very significant. And I want to start with what happened in
1:26:25
the National Football League over wild Card weekend, and specifically the game between the
1:26:31
Buffalo Bills and the Pittsburgh Steelers being postponed because of the winter storm that's been
1:26:39
hitting most of America over the last week or so. Now, this game
1:26:44
was originally scheduled for Sunday afternoon, and on Saturday, Buffalo, which is
1:26:51
hardly unusual for January, Buffalo got hit with a very large snowstorm with a
1:27:00
lot of wind, and there had been rumors that maybe the NFL was going
1:27:05
to postpone the game, and I hate postponements, especially when it comes to
1:27:12
football. I think that they have far greater impact than most people understand.
1:27:18
You know, that just kind of goes back to my COVID mentality where this
1:27:23
all trickles down, and if the NFL can't play a football game when it's
1:27:27
scheduled, then it's a hell of a lot easier to cancel little league games
1:27:30
because it might thunderstorm. I mean, my god, we've become cancelation Nation,
1:27:34
And you know, I just think back to my days as a little
1:27:38
leaguer in suburban Philadelphia, and I can't even imagine how in cancelation Nation you're
1:27:45
gonna even have little league games anymore, because during certain times of the spring
1:27:49
and summer, there's a chance of thunderstorms every day in certain areas of the
1:27:56
country. And you know, we've now set the standard where you can ever
1:28:00
be too safe, especially post COVID. If it saves only one life,
1:28:04
it's worth canceling everything. And so I hate that, and I was girding
1:28:12
myself for what the NFL was gonna do, because remember, yeah, it's
1:28:17
weird how this keeps happening with Bills games. But you know, last year
1:28:20
the Bills had a game that got canceled in the middle because of the Demorrow
1:28:25
Hamlin cardiac arrest, which I did not think was the proper way of handling
1:28:29
things, especially since Hamlin was not dead. I thought that game should have
1:28:31
continued on. But we're a nation of woosies. Now. The previous year,
1:28:36
the Buffalo Bills lost a home game because of a massive snowstorm and they
1:28:41
moved the game to Detroit. Now that was a really massive snowstorm and it
1:28:46
was a regular season game. I didn't like it. But okay, if
1:28:50
logistically that was the only way to actually make it work, maybe, but
1:28:55
although you know, my recollection of that was it was way more difficult getting
1:29:00
the Bills to Detroit that it would have been to get them to their local
1:29:03
stadium. But okay, whatever, And I'm sure during COVID the Bills had
1:29:09
to have had at least one game changed from its original time and place,
1:29:14
because almost every team did. So I can't say this for certain, but
1:29:16
it's quite possible that we're now looking at four straight years where a Buffalo Bills
1:29:21
game has not been played at the time and place where it was scheduled to
1:29:26
be played, which is unheard of. I mean that used there used to
1:29:30
be very few things that you could count on in life, death taxes,
1:29:34
and where and when an NFL football game was going to be played. And
1:29:40
that's not an exaggeration, and like a slippery slope, that's no longer the
1:29:45
case. And so the rules have changed, the mentality has changed post COVID,
1:29:53
the you know, the whole safety over everything mentality has taken over,
1:29:58
and sure enough, the NFL decided they were going to postpone the game till
1:30:02
Monday late afternoon. Now, I stated on Twitter immediately that I was against
1:30:10
this, and I'm sure that my position, not that that many people care
1:30:15
about what I do on Twitter, but I'm sure my position was misinterpreted,
1:30:19
you know, and somehow being unrealistic or being anti safety, and that's not
1:30:26
it at all. My point on this was, first of all, we
1:30:30
have completely lost and there's a lot of this that goes on Governor Hokel from
1:30:35
New York, who's a liberal and who was terrible during COVID, and she
1:30:40
declared a state of emergency and was going to make it difficult for people to
1:30:45
move around. But look, where there's a will, there's a way.
1:30:47
I am completely convinced that the two teams and the officials and the you know,
1:30:56
the pertinent personnel, the TV people, whatever, could have gotten to
1:31:00
the stadium in enough time on that Sunday to play that game. Now,
1:31:05
when CBS actually aired the Monday game, they went out of their way.
1:31:12
And by the way, the coverage of this postponement was really telling and quite
1:31:16
depressing. I mean, we are now in a situation where football postponements because
1:31:20
of weather are basically treated like baseball game postponements, and they're not the same
1:31:26
thing. Baseball and football are not the same sports, and delay has a
1:31:30
completely different impact over football than it does baseball. Baseball teams play every day
1:31:38
during the regular season. Playing a baseball game in wet weather is far more
1:31:44
dangerous because you're throwing a baseball at people's heads, and if the ball slips
1:31:48
out of the pitcher's hands, you're gonna get people killed, among other things.
1:31:54
That's not the case in football. Football has to become safer in the
1:31:57
snow because people are going far slower and they're they're landing in a much softer
1:32:02
situation if there's no on the field, So the game itself is actually safer.
1:32:08
It's maybe more dangerous to get to the stadium. But there's also the
1:32:13
issue, and this is where my thinking was, and this is typical of
1:32:16
Zigler. I'm thinking three four steps ahead, and people are misinterpreting what I'm
1:32:21
trying to say, and that is my point on this was, Okay,
1:32:27
if you move this to Monday. If you move this to Monday, at
1:32:31
that point, the weather forecast this is two days ahead of time. You
1:32:35
did this on Saturday, you move this on Monday, there's still a chance
1:32:40
that the weather's going to be just as bad on Monday as it is on
1:32:44
Sunday. And there was rumors on Sunday that they were going to slide it
1:32:51
to Tuesday. Now, effectively, what happened was the NFL gave themselves no
1:32:59
backup plan because if you had moved that game to Tuesday, it would have
1:33:03
been a complete joke. Not just because you're gonna play a game on a
1:33:09
weekday. The Monday happened to be Martin Luther King Day. It's a holiday,
1:33:13
so it was a lot easier for people to go to the game,
1:33:15
watch the game. It's almost like it's a weekend day. I think that
1:33:19
played a role in why the NFL decided that they weren't going to lose much
1:33:23
in ratings by doing this late on a Monday. But if the weather had
1:33:28
not improved, which was certainly possible when the decision was made on Saturday,
1:33:33
Tuesday would have made the entire playoffs a joke, because why let's do the
1:33:42
logical progression, because the winner of that game would have had no chance in
1:33:47
the next round. The game would have been effectively meaningless because they would have
1:33:53
been playing on four days rest Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday before playing
1:33:59
another game on Sunday against the team that had been resting for thirteen days.
1:34:05
There's zero chance an NFL team playing on four days rest in preparation. It's
1:34:14
gonna be a team higher seeded that's had thirteen days of rest in preparation.
1:34:18
It's not possible. So and by the way, you're already putting the teams
1:34:25
at a disadvantage because now they're only gonna have five days of preparation because they're
1:34:29
playing on a Monday, and then they're gonna have to get ready to play
1:34:31
a Sunday playoff game. So for somebody you know who still considers the games
1:34:39
to be sacred, or at least they should be sacred, I thought this
1:34:43
is totally wrong from a sports perspective. But then there's the larger, maybe
1:34:47
more important issue of this whole cancelation nation and what a nation of woosies we
1:34:54
have become, and how, just as I predicted after COVID, we have
1:34:59
decided that human beings no longer have the right to make their own personal risk
1:35:05
reward decisions. That's what the Governor of New York was doing, That's what
1:35:10
the commissioner of the NFL was doing. Roger Goodell, the NFL Commissioner,
1:35:15
and the Governor of New York combined decided, you know what, this looks
1:35:18
like. It's going to be dangerous on Sunday. We're gonna make decisions for
1:35:23
people that they cannot come to the game because there's not gonna be a game
1:35:28
to come to. Now again, I'm not suggesting that the game on Monday
1:35:32
didn't turn out better than if it had been played on Sunday, and CBS
1:35:36
went out of their way. Tracy Wolfson was the reporter, went out of
1:35:41
their way to show pictures of the stadium on Sunday, and how impossible it
1:35:47
would have been to play a game on Sunday. Except that's based on a
1:35:53
fallacy, a complete utter fallacy. The reason why you could not have played
1:35:58
a game on Sunday for sure is they knew there wasn't gonna be a game,
1:36:03
and so they didn't do anything to prepare the field. They kept the
1:36:08
tarp on the field, and the snow fell on the tarp, and they
1:36:12
didn't do anything because they knew there wasn't gonna be a game on Sunday.
1:36:17
They were waiting till Monday to take the tarp off. So of course you
1:36:23
couldn't have played a game. Now, would it have been really difficult and
1:36:26
would the crowd have been small? Yes? Uh? And would the game
1:36:30
have been really impacted from the standpoint of the weather. Absolutely, Although championship
1:36:35
games in the history of the NFL have been very greatly influenced by snow,
1:36:42
now super Bowls aren't New York because they're generally in warm areas or dome stadiums.
1:36:45
But the reality is what CBS did was trickery. Of course, you
1:36:50
couldn't have played a game on Sunday because no one was trying to prepare for
1:36:56
a game on Sunday had they tried, and these are this is Buffalo we're
1:37:00
talking about. This isn't Charlotte North Carolina. If this had happened in Charlotte,
1:37:04
North Carolina or even Washington d C. Not that the Commanders will ever
1:37:10
make the playoffs again, because you know they're not the Redskins anymore, but
1:37:14
you know DC is famous for being terrible in the snow. Then I would
1:37:17
have been I would have said, sure, don't do it. These people
1:37:21
are not capable of it. But this is fucking Buffalo, New York.
1:37:26
This is in the bloodstream of these people. They know how to do this
1:37:30
kind of stuff. They're on daunted And when they had the game on Monday,
1:37:34
it was seemingly completely sold out. There wasn't an empty sea, despite
1:37:39
the fact that just before game time there was still snow filled the entire stadium.
1:37:45
Well how did that get removed? Oh? Because you had seventy thousand
1:37:49
people who knew what the fuck they were doing when it came to dealing with
1:37:53
snow, and they came prepared to get rid of the snow so they could
1:37:57
sit down. What I'm saying thing is, would it have been difficult?
1:38:00
Yes, I think it was possible. I think it should have happened,
1:38:06
and people should have been given the right to either show up or not show
1:38:11
up. Again. I fully acknowledge that from a football standpoint, the game
1:38:16
was of a higher quality, even though it wasn't that good of a game.
1:38:19
The Bills ended up beating the Steelers, you know, by a couple
1:38:24
of touchdowns because of the decision to move the game to Monday, but they
1:38:29
really put themselves in a precarious position had it not worked out on Monday.
1:38:33
And they've already put the Bills in a disadvantage position because now they had like
1:38:40
thirty hours less to rest and prepare for their next opponent on which is going
1:38:46
to be this coming Sunday. And so from a football standpoint, I think
1:38:50
it's a significant, But this is much larger. I wouldn't care about the
1:38:55
football part of this. I care about the rules we're now recreating for society,
1:39:00
and I believe that before COVID, I think this game would have been
1:39:04
played on Sunday, and at the very least, they should have waited until
1:39:12
Sunday morning before they made that decision. This whole idea that we had to
1:39:16
cancel things over twenty four hours in advance, I just think it's such a
1:39:23
terrible precedent because it does filter all the way down to all different elements of
1:39:29
society. I'm telling you, and I realize I live in super soft California,
1:39:32
but my god, the things that I see get canceled now would never
1:39:39
have happened in my youth, and whether it's school related or sports related.
1:39:45
And on social media, I see people telling similar stories about how the threshold
1:39:50
for cancelation has been reduced to mind blowing levels. And I do think that
1:39:57
COVID plays a role, and COVID plays another role. This one of the
1:40:00
more infuriating elements of this debate that enraged on social media about the Bills Steelers
1:40:08
game was all of a sudden, you had media people suddenly caring about the
1:40:14
fans getting to the game, and I'm like, where the fuck were you
1:40:17
in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one. You didn't give a shit at all
1:40:21
about having fans at the game. Oh, because that fit your political agenda
1:40:28
as a liberal, So that was pretty hilarious and telling wait a minute,
1:40:33
we're worried about fans getting to the game. I thought you didn't care at
1:40:38
all when we had these ridiculous COVID restrictions on outdoor sporting events. And there's
1:40:45
another element of this whole situation I think is going to be very significant going
1:40:49
forward in the National Football League. And you probably know if you've ever heard
1:40:55
me before, you know I am very pessimistic about the future of football and
1:40:59
where the NFL is heading because I think the NFL realizes they can crap all
1:41:03
over their traditional hardcore fans and suffer no consequences. They are essentially Donald Trump
1:41:12
within the Republican Party. They can do whatever they want. They can shit
1:41:16
all over you. And this has happened for decades, going all the way
1:41:20
back to getting away with taking the Super Bowl away from Arizona because they didn't
1:41:26
have a Martin Luther King holiday, to the whole Colin Kaepernick kneeling situation,
1:41:30
to the Washington Redskin debacle, to the way they handled COVID, to the
1:41:39
way they've changed the rules of the game to make it wiolsified. Heading towards
1:41:43
flag football. They have crapped on the hardcore fan time and time and time
1:41:48
again. They just crapped on them again with the whole peacock streaming situation,
1:41:55
which I'll get to momentarily. They can do this because they know they can
1:41:59
get away with it. They can crap all over the hardcore NFL fan because
1:42:05
the NFL fan isn't going anywhere, and the NFL knows it now. And
1:42:13
one of the things I think is gonna be the legacy of this bill's postponement
1:42:17
is I think, and I don't know how long this will take, but
1:42:20
I think you're gonna see in fairly short order playoff games, especially the championship
1:42:27
games. This has already been discussed. Championship games are no longer gonna be
1:42:31
in home stadiums. Championship games, the AFC and the NFC championship game are
1:42:38
gonna be treated like bowl games. They are gonna be at pre determined sites
1:42:43
Las Vegas or you know who knows where else Florida, somewhere indoors, whatever,
1:42:51
somewhere where weather can not influence the game. They already did that with
1:42:58
the Super Bowl, and people accept did that because it's the super Bowl,
1:43:01
and you know, you got to prepare doing a Super Bowl. It's a
1:43:04
big stinking deal. Well, the owners for a long time thought, you
1:43:10
know what, we could make a boatload of money if everyone knew more than
1:43:14
six days in advance where the NFC and AFC championship games were going to be
1:43:18
played. So it's going to be like a Bowl game. And I think
1:43:23
this Bill's situation is the final straw that broke the camel's back on this.
1:43:29
That's my prediction. They will no longer have home games for the championship games.
1:43:35
Now that would not have impacted this past week because it was wild card,
1:43:40
but I think the ownership sees this is such a problem. I mean,
1:43:45
think about this, folks. This past weekend, there were six wildcard
1:43:47
games. You had a Bill's game postponed. You had a Chiefs game that
1:43:53
was one of the coldest on record. Some people wanted that game canceled.
1:43:59
Even Tell Swift was able to endure the cold there, so I don't know
1:44:01
what the big problem was. But and the crowd was jam packed, so
1:44:05
the crowd didn't have any issue with it. But there were some whoosies out
1:44:09
there that wanted that game canceled because of the super cold, you know,
1:44:13
especially bizarrely, when we're dealing with global warming allegedly. I mean, just
1:44:16
a few weeks ago, we were told that a warm Christmas in the same
1:44:19
area of the country by the New York Times was proof of climate change.
1:44:23
And now here we have the third or fourth coldest game in the history of
1:44:27
the National Football League being played in Kansas City. And if Detroit didn't play
1:44:31
in a dome stadium, which they've been playing in for like fifty years.
1:44:35
But you know, if they were playing outdoors, as I think football should
1:44:41
be played, you would have had a similar situation in Detroit. So you
1:44:45
would have had an entire in theory, you could have had half wildcar weekend
1:44:49
dramatically impacted by weather. Football fans, hardcore football fans like me love that
1:44:57
ownership, and the league hates because that creates uncertainty, and uncertainty is bad
1:45:05
for the corporation that is the National Football League. So I think you're gonna
1:45:10
see an end to home games in the conference championships, and I think you're
1:45:15
gonna see a real push soldier field. I think is going to be a
1:45:18
dome stadium. They're already talking about this. I think this pushes further to
1:45:24
Chicago, eliminating Soldier Field, I mean Chicago home with the Bears. You
1:45:30
know, this bad weather a city is the NFL has ever had, is
1:45:34
going to go to a dome, I believe. And it wouldn't surprise me
1:45:38
if the Bills end up getting forced to go to a dome at some point
1:45:41
too. Because bad weather, well, it's great for the hardcore football fan,
1:45:46
is bad for business. And that's all that matters now, is what's
1:45:50
good for business. It's just a business. It's not a sport. And
1:45:56
boy To NBC proved that this past weekend with the broadcast to that Chiefs Dolphins
1:46:01
game. I predicted on this podcast that there was going to be great outrage
1:46:05
over the fact that people did not fully understand that they were going to have
1:46:10
to purchase Peacock streaming in order to watch a playoff game unless they lived in
1:46:15
Kansas City or Miami. And I was right about that. There was a
1:46:19
lot of outrage, a lot of people who were very, very upset about
1:46:24
this. I was upset about it because I saw the slippery slope. I
1:46:30
see where the future's going. I see, if they get away with this,
1:46:32
we're going eventually to pay per view. That's what they want to do,
1:46:36
which didn't work out real well for the sport of boxing, but you
1:46:41
know, the NFL thinks that they can do it better. And this is
1:46:44
a weird. This is weird to me what's happening with the NFL and the
1:46:47
push towards essentially pay per view. Pay per view is a niche, cult
1:46:55
type of business model, because right if you have a smaller number of people
1:47:00
who are very passionate and they're willing to pay money for your product, that's
1:47:04
how you can make a lot of money. But if you're a broadcaster,
1:47:09
if you're trying to appeal to the largest number of people, which the NFL
1:47:14
has been doing, you would think you'd be going in the opposite direction,
1:47:17
because you know streaming, obviously, if you get to pay, you're going
1:47:21
to reduce the number of people who are exposed to your product. You're literally
1:47:27
narrow casting or cult casting instead of broadcasting. And it's a weird dichotomy to
1:47:32
me because of all the things, all the entities that have been going towards
1:47:39
the cultification. Obviously the Republican Party is a great example of this. One
1:47:45
of the very few organizations that I could say has been trying to expand their
1:47:51
reach, has been trying to broad in their reach and to put into media
1:47:59
terms essentially go back to broad casting, is the National Football League. They
1:48:04
are trying to appeal way beyond their core football fan audience. They don't give
1:48:11
a shit about them. They crap on them on a routine basis. But
1:48:15
this is why the fake social justice push and breast cancer awareness, you know,
1:48:23
and the push towards getting more female fans and more kids. And by
1:48:28
the way, that's all fine, I mean, but that's been the philosophy
1:48:31
of the National Football League broadening their demographic reach. And so it's a bit
1:48:36
contradictory and confusing to me as to why from a broadcasting standpoint they seem to
1:48:43
be going the opposite direction, which is towards cult casting and towards pay per
1:48:47
view and streaming. But I was very, very curious to see what the
1:48:51
reaction was going to be to Peacock doing this or NBC doing this, putting
1:48:57
this game on on Peacock, and it's hard to tell what the real world
1:49:01
reaction was. There was a lot of outrage online. I saw a lot
1:49:05
of it myself. Was it overwhelming, No, but it was absolutely a
1:49:11
huge topic of conversation. We don't know what the ratings were for the Dolphins
1:49:17
and the Chiefs game. Apparently we're not going to know for several days because
1:49:21
of the complications in counting streaming, because we've never done it like this before
1:49:26
for a big event, and NBC is saying that this was the most streamed
1:49:32
live event in history. But we do have one key indicator of how NBC
1:49:39
would like you to believe it went. They would like you to believe it
1:49:43
went amazingly well. In fact, they believe, or they want you to
1:49:46
believe that it went historically well, so much so that there was this very
1:49:53
strange segment I guess you would call it the next night when my Turrico,
1:50:00
who's basically the face of NBC Sports now, he discussed the response to the
1:50:08
game being streamed on Peacock. This was the next night, in a different
1:50:12
playoff game. And I do not understand why Tarico did this or why NBC
1:50:16
did this. I do think it's telling that they told the story this way
1:50:20
normally. I mean, Tarico is a very good broadcaster. He would do
1:50:25
a live either ad lib or a read, you know, if his corporate
1:50:30
masters told him, Hey, Mike, we want to take credit for how
1:50:33
awesome the whole Peacock streaming thing went, because we've been getting a lot of
1:50:39
blowback for it, and we want to put forward a good face and create
1:50:43
our own narrative for this. Can you help us out? And you know,
1:50:45
Mike might go, Okay, sure, you know, give me some
1:50:49
talking points and I'll read something on the air. That's my educated guests as
1:50:55
to how this would normally go. But that's not what happened. This was
1:50:59
so Weirdturico goes on the air live and then throws to a taped, a
1:51:06
very short taped segment where Turrico basically does a commercial for NBC Peacock and how
1:51:16
awesome they're streaming was. By the way, you're not gonna be able to
1:51:19
see this because this is an audio podcast, but there's at least three or
1:51:24
four shots of Taylor Swift in her Kansas City Chiefs suite dancing with the rest
1:51:30
of the crowd there at Arrowhead Stadium. And so this is Mike Turrico throwing
1:51:36
to a voiceover of himself that was clearly written by his corporate bosses trying to
1:51:44
create a positive narrative for what happened when NBC forced America, or at least
1:51:50
most of America, to purchase an NFL Wildcard playoff game in Kansas City.
1:51:57
But want to see last night as the Chiefs began defense their Super Bowl title,
1:52:00
where a twenty six to seven win over Miami, a night memorable for
1:52:04
many reasons, so many unforgettable images from the fourth coldest playoff game in NFL
1:52:13
history, and the passion of NFL fans added to the record books and averaging
1:52:17
twenty three million people stream the game on Peacock, making the first ever NFL
1:52:21
playoff game to be exclusively streamed, the most streamed event of any kind in
1:52:28
the US ever. Super Wildcard Saturday was also an all time record day for
1:52:32
US Internet traffic, with most of those people interacting with NFL content on Locke.
1:52:38
Congratulations to our comcast at NBC Universal teammates, and thanks to Christie,
1:52:43
Roger Goodell and our partners at the NFL and all the fans on this record
1:52:46
setting collaboration. A milestone moments in media and sports history. The story continues
1:52:55
in Detroit. Now, I found that to be very strange, and I
1:52:59
think I have a pretty good and unique understanding of how these things work behind
1:53:02
the scenes, and I feel like Mike Tariko wasn't totally on board with that,
1:53:10
or at least felt a little uncomfortable, and that's why it was taped.
1:53:14
The fact that it was taped tells me for sure that this was an
1:53:17
order from on high, and it's probably a reaction to some of the blowback
1:53:25
that they received for this. But most importantly, they really want to jam
1:53:30
this down your throat because this is where the real money is in the future.
1:53:36
Broadcasting is dead because the business model is broken, so they need to
1:53:42
make up for it in some way, and this is the way that they're
1:53:45
going to do it. Now. Whether this is the smart move, I
1:53:47
don't know. This is not my area of expertise. I'm just talking from
1:53:51
the standpoint of a fan as somebody, or not nearly as fan, as
1:53:56
much of a fan as I used to be, becoming less of a fan
1:53:58
almost every day. But I'm looking at this from the standpoint of what's good
1:54:01
for the average person, what's good for the country, what's good for the
1:54:04
sport. None of This is good except for maybe the broadcast outlets who have
1:54:13
a new revenue stream. And if they can get away with this, as
1:54:15
I've already said, the NFL has learned they can get away with all sorts
1:54:19
of things they never thought they could get away with. They can get away
1:54:23
with all sorts of things. I mean, the way they have wissified the
1:54:27
game is unbelievable. By the way, I can't believe I forgot to mention
1:54:30
this, but in the Buffalo bill Steelers game, there was an amazing series
1:54:38
of situations that proved the death of football, the death of tackle football,
1:54:44
which I'm gonna get to in short order, but just to finish off this
1:54:47
Peacock thing, this really hit home for me in a very strange way,
1:54:51
because purely at a principle and because I didn't want to go through the logistics
1:54:58
of downloading this new app. Look. People have equated what happened with Peacock
1:55:01
to Amazon Thursday Night Football. That's a completely bogus analogy. One, this
1:55:06
is a playoff game, which is different. And two, Amazon is a
1:55:12
really good streaming service, so you're not just paying for Thursday Night Football.
1:55:16
Thursday Night Football is like a bonus Peacock sucks ass, and so you were
1:55:23
essentially getting Peacock just for this game, and you know, then you had
1:55:29
to you know, pay the price, and then you have to remember to
1:55:31
disconnect. And it's all you know, they're basically hoping people forget that they
1:55:36
have the streaming service so they'll keep paying the monthly fee. And and so
1:55:43
I did not watch the game. But when I said I wasn't gonna watch
1:55:46
the game online, several people, not strangers, people that I was at
1:55:50
least somewhat familiar with, sent me a link to this streaming service that somehow
1:55:56
basically you could watch the game without getting the Peacock app. And when I
1:56:03
went on the site, I was suspicious of it because I'm like that,
1:56:06
how can this be? And this was talked about all over Twitter. It's
1:56:10
not like this was something no one had ever heard of before. I can't
1:56:14
remember the name of the of the website, but you know, it seemed
1:56:17
somewhat legit but sketchy, and it seemed very much like it was a betting
1:56:21
website. Well, I started to try to watch the Chiefs Dolphins game,
1:56:29
mainly just out of curiosity to see does this thing really work? And is
1:56:32
Peacock allowing this loophole for people to not have to get peacock to watch the
1:56:39
game. Well, somehow, and I don't even know what transpired, because
1:56:44
I didn't do anything stupid. It gave me a virus on my computer,
1:56:48
which took me hours to get rid of, hours to get rid of,
1:56:54
and by the way, was even a major problem when it came to producing
1:56:59
this podcast episode because I had to do all sorts of things with my computer,
1:57:03
which then screwed up the settings, and then my printer wasn't working.
1:57:06
So my life was miserable for twenty four hours because of this fucking Peacock thing,
1:57:13
all because I was trying to avoid giving into the man and setting this
1:57:17
precedent, because I think that if once this president is set, there's no
1:57:21
going back. That if the NFL and NBC and you heard there and Mike
1:57:27
Turico's that was maybe the most remarkable part of the Mike Turrico commentary was essentially
1:57:33
NBC and NFL are they're not just business partners. I mean they're co conspirators.
1:57:40
I mean they are as in bed together as you can possibly get.
1:57:44
I mean, Tererico went out of his way to congratulate the NFL and Roger
1:57:46
Goodell. I mean, they're all on the same team trying to screw you,
1:57:51
and again, if they get away with it once, they'll do it
1:57:55
a time and time and time again. And in my situation, I screwed
1:57:59
myself, tried to stand on principle, So that was that was really stupid.
1:58:03
But there's a lot else going on in football. And I know this
1:58:08
is not a sports show, but you know, partially because I'm ending the
1:58:11
podcast in about a month, and you know, therefore, I'm more willing
1:58:15
to talk about things that I'm interested in and maybe have some insight on.
1:58:18
I do want to at least mention what's going on in the coaching ranks,
1:58:24
because there have been major changes at two of the most storied football enterprises of
1:58:31
the modern era in just the last week. And I'm referring to the retirement
1:58:35
of Nick Saban as the head coach of Alabama, which came as a shocking
1:58:41
development to me and most other people. And I have to say, I
1:58:45
think Saban is making a very smart decision. The most accomplished coach in the
1:58:50
modern history of the game. Of course, one of my first thoughts when
1:58:55
I heard he retired. Was oh okay, So Joe Paterno is for sure
1:58:59
going to be the all time winning as coach in the history of college football
1:59:01
for eternity, because Saban was the only person that even had a theoretical shot
1:59:06
at getting the four hundred and nine wins, not that ever thought he would,
1:59:10
but with the expanded schedule next year, if Alabama really went on a
1:59:15
tremendous run, it was at least theoretically possible. So now we know Joe
1:59:18
Paterno's record is safe for all time. That was one of the things I
1:59:23
thought about. And the second thing I thought about is, well, clearly
1:59:27
Saban realizes the college football is going to be a mess going forward and he
1:59:32
doesn't want to deal with the aggravation. That's the most obvious explanation. Now,
1:59:39
he denied this when he was asked about it in his interview with ESPN,
1:59:43
but based upon some of his previous statements, which I think had been
1:59:46
milk toast, I mean, to me, it's very obvious that Saban hates
1:59:50
the changes with nil and instant transfers and the ending of the bowl games and
1:59:58
this massive playoff system. I don't think he likes any of it. I
2:00:00
mean, he's a traditionalist. You know, he grew up in rural West
2:00:04
Virginia. He's from a completely different generation. He's a he's a you know,
2:00:10
an old timer, old school guy. And I also think that his
2:00:14
type of coaching is becoming more and more difficult. You have to be a
2:00:17
nick Saban to get away with his type of tough coaching. If you're not
2:00:23
a Nick Saban, if you don't have that kind of success under your belt,
2:00:26
the kids won't respect you, and the administration won't back you, and
2:00:30
the media, you know, won't treat you with kid gloves, and you
2:00:32
won't get away with anything, and you're gonna eventually make a mistake and they're
2:00:36
gonna they're gonna ring you by the neck for it. I mean, I
2:00:41
don't know how anybody coaches college football or any sport for that matter, but
2:00:45
especially college football going forward. The players have all the power and the rules
2:00:49
of political correctness and woke them, especially in academia, basically make it impossible
2:00:56
for you to do any of the things that you used to be able to
2:00:58
do as a coach. And you're not even allowed to curse a kid anymore.
2:01:02
Forget about touching them and in jeopardy of losing your job and your entire
2:01:09
livelihood. I mean, the days of Bobby Knight and people like him are
2:01:14
completely over. And I'm sure they're liberals that are thrilled about that. But
2:01:17
I will, as I've said many times before, I think this is a
2:01:21
great example. Please somebody show me the Hall of Fame acceptance speech, especially
2:01:29
in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Please show me the Hall of Fame
2:01:31
acceptance speech where any player ever says, you know, I really want to
2:01:38
thank my high school or college or pro coach because he went so easy on
2:01:44
me, and he was my buddy and my pal, and we had so
2:01:46
much fun together, and that's why I was the success that I was.
2:01:51
Show me one example of that, and I will change my mind about the
2:01:57
philosophy of coaching and how much damage has been done to the institution of coaching
2:02:02
by the wussification of America and the woke wocification of academia and even professional sports.
2:02:12
Sometimes you got to be politically incorrect to be a good coach. Sometimes
2:02:15
you got to be tough to be a good coach. And in my experience,
2:02:20
it's one hundred percent, one hundred percent that every single one of those
2:02:26
Hall of Fame acceptance speeches, when they reference a coach or a mentor or
2:02:31
a parent, it's because someone was tough on them and they were thanking them
2:02:36
for that, because that's what made them great, Not being their buddy,
2:02:43
their pal, a player's coach being easy on them. No one ever does
2:02:49
that because people that have that kind of coaching don't get to the Hall of
2:02:55
Fame buy and large. Now, it's not going to change in the future
2:02:58
because all we're going to have is players coaches. Maybe, but the era
2:03:03
of Nick Saban's is pretty much over. And Nick Saban can't even deal with
2:03:10
this bullshit. I don't know how anybody else possibly can. So I was
2:03:14
sad to see Saban go. Never been a huge Saban fan, but I
2:03:17
respect the hell out of what he's done. But I do think it's significant
2:03:23
from a societal standpoint because of what it says one about the state of coaching,
2:03:29
two about the state of college football, and three it's certainly signaling the
2:03:33
end of an era from a societal standpoint, not just Alabama football what have
2:03:39
you. I'm just talking about stylistically, the type of leaders that we have
2:03:43
in our society. You're not going to see many of any Nick Saban's moving
2:03:48
forward. And of course Saban is very good friends with Bill Belichick, and
2:03:53
Bill Belichick was essentially fired by the New England Patriots. It was one of
2:03:59
the strangest firings you've ever seen. I mean, there's never been a similar
2:04:03
situation that I can think of. Where's well, clearly there's never been a
2:04:06
similar situation because no one's ever won six Super Bowls before. But you have
2:04:11
a guy who won six super Bowls with the same team and is you know,
2:04:16
clearly still wanting to coach, and is being let go by the guy
2:04:20
who hired him, Robert Kraft. So they've been together for twenty four years
2:04:28
and the same National Football League team won unprecedented six Super Bowls, and they've
2:04:32
mutually agreed to part ways. That's essentially a firing. And I found this
2:04:40
to be I don't know, I'm a loyalty guy. And to me,
2:04:45
yes, Bill Belichick looked lost this year. The Patriots were terrible. But
2:04:50
to me, winning six super Bowls and you're still physically capable of doing this,
2:04:55
that ought to buy you more than one really bad year. I mean,
2:05:00
I compare this to what happened with Tom Landry. Now granted different era.
2:05:03
Tom Landry the heart of the Cowboys from the sixties and the seventies.
2:05:06
In the eighties, tom Landry went his last He won two Super Bowls,
2:05:12
not six two. He won his last eleven seasons without winning a Super Bowl.
2:05:17
His last three seasons were losing seasons, and he had an ownership change,
2:05:23
and when he got fired there was outrage in Dallas. So that was
2:05:28
a rather long leash that Tom Landry had, and some people thought it wasn't
2:05:31
long enough. That you win two super Bowls. You're the face of a
2:05:35
franchise, America's team. You get to decide when you want to leave.
2:05:41
Belichick got five years without winning a Super Bowl and only two losing seasons before
2:05:47
he got bounced. And this guy won six Super Bowls. So that tells
2:05:51
you about the and it's and the same owner. So that tells you about
2:05:57
the changing definition of loyalty, especially in the National Football League. And Belichick
2:06:03
a lot like Saban, a guy I respect the hell out of I am
2:06:08
mourning the loss of that kind of a coach, that the legendary, godlike
2:06:12
coach that is no longer going to exist for reasons I've already articulated into the
2:06:16
future, you know. So I've never really been in love with him,
2:06:20
always respected him, but I mourn his loss and I fear that especially given
2:06:30
the fact that you know, there's now this perception that without Tom Brady,
2:06:32
Belichick is nothing that because of that, He's going to keep pursuing a National
2:06:41
Football League opportunity, because you know, he's a competitor and he wants to
2:06:44
prove he can do this without Tom Brady, and so he's probably gonna end
2:06:49
up most people think as the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. Ironically enough,
2:06:53
given the Tom Landry example that I just gave until the Cowboys job potentially
2:07:00
opened up because they got spanked by the Packers in the playoffs, I had
2:07:04
this very romantic notion of what should happen with Bill Belichick, and I'm going
2:07:10
to share it now for whatever reason, I don't know. I mean,
2:07:12
there may be three people that'll appreciate where I'm going with this, But let's
2:07:15
pretend the Cowboys job, which is the only job where you could actually envision
2:07:19
maybe Belichick getting back to the top of the mountaintop in short order. Because
2:07:25
the Cowboys are good, they just can't win in the playoffs, and so
2:07:28
that could be a pretty good fit. Or it could also be a disaster
2:07:31
where Belichick really screws up his legacy because he makes the Cowboys even worse than
2:07:36
they have been. Who knows, but that's not a done deal as of
2:07:40
this taping, but it does seem to make a lot of sense to me.
2:07:45
If I was Bill Belichick, or if I was advising Bill Belichick,
2:07:48
I would tell him to go in a completely different direction. He clearly still
2:07:51
wants to coach. In about a month or so ago, the Army Navy
2:07:58
game was played in Foxborough, never been played in Foxborough before, where the
2:08:03
Patriots play their home games, and ESPN had on their pregame show for the
2:08:09
Army Navy game Bill Belichick, and the reason why they had him on was
2:08:13
not just because the game was being played at the Patriots stadium, but because
2:08:18
Bill Belichick's dad coached for Navy when Bill Belichick was a kid. I can't
2:08:24
believe I'm getting emotional about this. It's so crazy. And so Bill Belichick
2:08:31
is famously famously grumpy as hell, and he never smiles about anything, never,
2:08:39
hardly ever laughs about anything, and they had him. And you should
2:08:45
go check out this video if you can, because to me, it's I've
2:08:46
watched this thing one hundred times. It never gets old for me. And
2:08:50
so he's talking about, you know, who's gonna win the Army Navy game?
2:08:56
And you know ESPN has this Relee Corso puts on the head gear of
2:09:03
the team he's going to predict is going to win the game. And Belichick
2:09:07
and Corso are old friends from their Navy connection because Corso was a coach with
2:09:13
Belichick's dad, I believe, and I'm almost positive of that, way way
2:09:18
back in the day. So Belichick takes out a nineteen sixty two Naval Academy
2:09:30
football helmet and sticks it on his head with this huge smile on his face
2:09:37
and describes in detail why they were wearing that helmet in nineteen sixty two.
2:09:43
Coach, I'm going to take a page out of your book here. Oh
2:09:46
God, no way, nineteen sixty two. This is the Jolly Roger beat
2:09:58
Army and the Chinese Bandits. This was the happiest anybody has ever seen Bell
2:10:11
Belichick. Imagine if Ebenezer Scrooge was in real life and was waking up on
2:10:18
Christmas morning realizing that he really wasn't dead. That's what it was like watching
2:10:26
Bill Belichick put that Navy football helmet from nineteen sixty two on, because that
2:10:33
was a little boy who fell in love with football because his dad was coaching
2:10:41
the Naval Academy. To me, if I'm Bill Belichick and if I'm the
2:10:46
Naval Academy, I'm at least making a phone call. Hey Bill, we
2:10:50
got the perfect retirement job for you. You can come back to Annapolis where
2:10:56
it all began for you as a little boy and coach Navy. We haven't
2:11:01
done great things in recent years. You're not gonna have to worry about nil
2:11:05
or transfers very much. We're not going to make the playoffs, or if
2:11:09
you somehow make the playoffs, you're going to be beyond the God and you
2:11:13
know you can coach as long as you want. That to me, is
2:11:16
the way this whole thing ought to end. Now, because the Cowboys job
2:11:20
looks like it's opening up, that's not going to happen. By the way,
2:11:24
just to show you how objective I him about Donald Trump, I actually
2:11:28
thought this through, and I thought, shit, if Trump was still president
2:11:31
and he's friends with Belichick. Trump would actually try to make this happen.
2:11:37
Trump would find a way. I guarantee you Trump would have the same thought
2:11:41
I would, and try, you know, free up whatever military money was
2:11:46
necessary to get Belichick to take that Navy job. Unfortunately, you know,
2:11:50
Joe Biden, who wanted to play football at Navy, doesn't have his capabilities
2:11:54
or faculties to even think in that direction, and so that's never gonna happen.
2:11:58
But that was my off the wall story for the Bill Belichick situation,
2:12:05
which I went on far too long for. But like I said, maybe
2:12:07
two or three people appreciated the bizarre nature of me getting emotional about Bill Belichick
2:12:13
putting on a Navy helmet from nineteen sixty two for context. You know,
2:12:18
sixty two probably mattered because that was the era of Army Navy where my grandfather
2:12:22
used to go to the games in Philadelphia and took my mom to a few
2:12:26
of those games, and so I'm sure that was part of why I got
2:12:31
as emotional as I did over that. But I think mostly it has to
2:12:33
do with boy, wouldn't that be awesome if that ever happened? But unfortunately
2:12:37
we don't live in a world we can have awesome things like that happen anymore,
2:12:41
and in fact, we might not live in a world where we can
2:12:43
have tackle football for much longer. I've talked in the previous episode of the
2:12:48
podcast, I think it was the last episode of the podcast, about how
2:12:50
there are efforts to make tackle football literally illegal in California under the age of
2:12:56
twelve, and that has now its first legislative hurdle, and there are people
2:13:03
who believe that it's gonna pass. Now. I don't think it's going to
2:13:07
this go around. I don't have any inside knowledge except for the fact that
2:13:13
that the clock on this is rather short. They have till the end of
2:13:16
the month, and I have not yet heard what Gavin Newsom would do about
2:13:20
this, whether he would sign it. I do think eventually it will pass
2:13:26
because I have learned a couple of things, one of which is that this
2:13:31
bill is following what has really become the mo for these looney tune California objectives
2:13:37
become law. They all follow the exact same path, and one of the
2:13:43
ways that they do this is that they delay the implementation. I mean,
2:13:50
we got rid of the selling of new gasoline powered cars in California, but
2:13:58
we just delayed it till twenty thirty five, and everyone went, oh,
2:14:01
okay, sure, no problem, because you know, most people don't care
2:14:07
about what's gonna happen in twenty thirty five, So they just picked a date
2:14:09
far enough in the future where they thought they could get away with it,
2:14:15
and it worked because that's just human nature and that's the nature of our media.
2:14:18
I'm convinced that the California legislature could make it legal for them to take
2:14:26
your children and sell them into slavery, but we're not gonna institute that till
2:14:33
twenty forty and people would go, oh, okay, ooh, that's interesting,
2:14:37
Wow, that's kind of weird. All right, well, okay,
2:14:41
fine, what's next? I mean, I mean, that's not that much
2:14:43
of an exaggeration. So the California you know, looney Tunes legislature has figured
2:14:48
out this is a way to get crazy stuff passed. And my understanding is
2:14:54
that this would not go into full effect until twenty twenty nine, when if
2:15:00
you're under twelve years old, tackle football would be then illegal for everyone under
2:15:07
the age of twelve. It would start with six and under and then work
2:15:11
its way up to under twelve, I believe, and I said in episode
2:15:16
one, Pint eighteen that one of the reasons why I thought there was hope
2:15:20
for this bill not passing was that the black community in California, led by
2:15:28
Snoop Dogg in Los Angeles has a very strong history of tackle football for young
2:15:35
kids. Snoop Dogg, the rapper, the I guess commercial pitch man,
2:15:39
has been huge in the LA community for kids tackle football, and I thought,
2:15:46
well, if Snoop Dogg speaks up, that's going to be a problem
2:15:48
that's going to kill this bill. That was my hope. I had no
2:15:52
expectation of that happening. I didn't actually did inquire with Alex Michaelson, the
2:16:00
NAIN anchor at the Fox affiliate here in Los Angeles who's been on this program
2:16:03
before, as to when not he could try to get Snoop Dogg on his
2:16:07
broadcast to talk about this. He thought it was a great idea, but
2:16:09
he had no contact with Snoop Dogg. In fact, he even asked me
2:16:13
if I had contact with Snoop Dogg. I told him, let me check
2:16:16
my cell phone. No, he's not in there. So that didn't happen.
2:16:20
But then get this. All of a sudden, someone sends me because
2:16:26
they listened to episode one eighteen of the podcast I talked about Snoop Dogg.
2:16:30
They sent me an article that just happened to occur right after that episode went
2:16:35
live. I didn't even know about this, But guess who got co opted?
2:16:41
Guess who got bought off by the NFL Snoop Dogg. Snoop Dogg announced
2:16:48
that he is in a collaborative effort with the National Football League, the Los
2:16:52
Angeles Chargers, and himself to promote wait for it, flag football in Los
2:17:01
Angeles, not tackle, which has always been Snoop Dogg's league. By the
2:17:07
way, CJ. Stroud, who's a major star in the National Football League
2:17:11
now quarterback for the Houston Texans, he came from Snoop Dogg's Los Angeles Tackle
2:17:16
football league. But now they got the Snoop Dogg. Snoop Dogg has been
2:17:22
paid off or co opted to get on board with flag and they're gonna do
2:17:28
a flag football operation with the National Football League, the Los Angeles Chargers and
2:17:33
Snoop dog And by the way, this is telling, not just because it
2:17:39
apparently takes away a potentially major critic of this bill to ban tackle football in
2:17:48
California under the age of twelve. To me, this is really telling with
2:17:52
regard to what the NFL's position is on the issue of flag football and the
2:18:00
banning of tackle football in California. Folks, think about it this way.
2:18:05
The National Football League should be openly lobbying against this bill, and instead they
2:18:13
have been totally silent publicly, and they are effectively co opting the most prominent
2:18:22
natural critic of the bill by getting involved in their own flag football operation.
2:18:30
Folks, this isn't a conspiracy. This could not be more clear. This
2:18:33
is red alert, red alert, red alert. They are going to flag
2:18:39
football at some point and in some way because they're not fighting this killing of
2:18:45
tackle football in California. And they got the Snoop Dogg. And my guess
2:18:50
is Snoop Dogg won't say anything negative about this bill to kill tackle football in
2:18:56
California because now he's moving on to flag And I've said many many times that
2:19:01
between ten and fifteen years from now there will be some element of flag football
2:19:07
even in the National Football League. I don't know what it's going to look
2:19:11
like. Maybe just be with the quarterbacks. That's the most logical scenario here.
2:19:16
But we had a situation that I've already referenced briefly in the Buffalo Bills
2:19:22
and Pittsburgh Steelers' playoff game, which I think illustrated this perfectly. We had
2:19:28
two touchdowns by the Buffalo Bills. They only won the game by two touchdowns,
2:19:33
two touchdowns that were directly impacted, directly impacted by these absurd rules to
2:19:41
protect the quarterback. Josh Allen is the star quarterback for the Buffalo Bills.
2:19:46
He's a good running quarterback, and he had the ball around midfield, I
2:19:52
think it was his own forty eight yard line, and he ran for a
2:19:56
first down, which was only about an eight or nine nine yard run,
2:20:01
and after he got the first down, he clearly acted as if he was
2:20:07
going to slide feet first, which tells the defenders to give themselves up,
2:20:13
because if or give it, he gives himself up and they don't, they
2:20:16
don't touch him. Theyn't allowed to tackle him at that point, otherwise it's
2:20:20
a penalty. So he was he was giving the impression he was about to
2:20:24
give himself up, and then he reversed course, so it looked like a
2:20:30
stutter step like it just a stop and a go. Well, as a
2:20:33
running back a stop and a go, that would be fine because the defenders
2:20:39
know they can still tackle you no matter what. But when you're a quarterback
2:20:43
scrambling downfield, you are protected by these absurd rules where if you slide,
2:20:50
you can't be touched. This is a classic way that liberals think about rules.
2:20:56
They think, oh, well, okay, this would be great.
2:20:58
The quarterback will be protect did if he slides, you can't touch him,
2:21:01
and that way you know, no harm, no foul. The quarterback gets
2:21:05
protected, no one gets injured. No one thinks about the fact that in
2:21:09
order to slide, the player gives off signals that he's going to slide,
2:21:15
and the defender reacts to those signals. So when Josh Allen and I don't
2:21:20
know whether he did this consciously or subconsciously, but there's no question I've looked
2:21:24
at the video twenty five times, there's no question that he looks like he's
2:21:30
about the slide and then jukes and runs in for the touchdown for I think
2:21:35
it was a fifty two yard score and Jim Nansen Tony Romo say nothing about
2:21:41
this. I posted this on Twitter and it created all sorts of consternation.
2:21:46
People were on my side and against my side, and a lot of people
2:21:48
were very critical. Oh, come on, Zig, you're you know this
2:21:52
is some sort of woke conspiracy, you know, tinfoil stuff. You're talking
2:21:56
about him saying, no, look at what happened here and that later in
2:22:01
the game, I could not have scripted a more perfect situation to prove that
2:22:05
I was right. Because Josh Allen was scrambling one more time, this time
2:22:11
he went to slide, and guess what happened. The Steeler player, I'm
2:22:16
sure, influenced by what had happened with the semi fake slide, decided to
2:22:22
continue on with the play and actually tried not to hit Alan, but accidentally
2:22:28
hit Alan, did no real damage, but because he was sliding, got
2:22:31
hit with a penalty that moved the ball down the field. And then the
2:22:35
very next play the Bills scored a touchdown. So fourteen points directly impacted by
2:22:43
the extreme protection of the quarterback. These absurd rules that create insane situations which
2:22:50
make it impossible to play defense, and the Bills end up winning a playoff
2:22:52
game by fourteen points, and CBS never says a word, and Jim Nansen
2:22:58
Tony Romo are probably the most conservative politically duo in all of football broadcasting.
2:23:05
They're the most entrenched in all of football broadcasting. And even they didn't either
2:23:11
have the brains or the gonads, or either one or both to even mention
2:23:16
this. No one made a connection. And the most bizarre part was that
2:23:20
on the play that Allen scored the touchdown on, the player that was most
2:23:24
fooled by the fake slide was the same Steeler that we talked about several episodes
2:23:31
ago being suspended for the rest of the season for a hit he had no
2:23:35
choice but to make, and they let him play in the playoffs because it
2:23:39
was appeal and so holy irony bat Man, all wrapped up in one story
2:23:43
and again CBS never even mentioned it, never even mentioned it, And Jim
2:23:50
Nantz is a very smart guy, and Tony Romo is usually pretty observant.
2:23:56
I don't believe this was out of ignorance. I believe this was not wanting
2:24:01
to poke the bear and knowing which side of the bread is buttered on.
2:24:05
But that's the world we live in now, and that's the media is not
2:24:11
just broken in the realm of news, it's very broken. In the realm
2:24:13
of sports, and it's changing football right before our eyes in every possible way,
2:24:20
from coaching to where and when the games are played, whether they're playing
2:24:26
in domes, what the nature of the playing is, how wissified it is,
2:24:31
whether or not there's going to be tackle football. The handwriting is on
2:24:35
the wall. Ten to fifteen years, it's all over. And I say
2:24:39
ten to fifteen years, not to be like a climate change global warming prediction
2:24:43
person that makes a prediction, they're never going to be accountable for. I
2:24:46
say ten to fifteen years, because that's how long it'll take for the institutional
2:24:52
memory to be totally gone, because people like me and older will be retired,
2:24:56
will be dead. We won't care, we won't have any anymore,
2:25:01
you know, even the Nick Sabans of the world. I mean Nick Saban
2:25:03
will probably be a broadcaster now, but Nick Sabans and Build Belichick's, you
2:25:07
know, they're going to be totally gone in ten to fifteen years, and
2:25:11
the people in charge are going to be this younger generation of PC woke them,
2:25:18
you know, wissified kids that have no institutional memory of the way things
2:25:22
ought to be or the way the things used to be. Or should be.
2:25:26
And that's why there will be no opposition, especially in the media,
2:25:31
because it's all about making money, and this seems to be the way to
2:25:33
make money or at least avoid losing money because of the existential threat that injuries
2:25:41
are, especially head injuries are, at least in perception to the National Football
2:25:45
League. In the next episode of the podcast, we've got a great guest
2:25:48
scheduled. He is somebody who has get this been following my work and basically
2:25:58
following up my research on the tire Penn State Joe Paterno Jerryson Dusky scandal where
2:26:03
we did the epic with the benefit of Hindsight podcast and so he's gonna join
2:26:09
us in the next episode of the podcast to outline why he got involved in
2:26:13
the case, what he's learned, and where he's going to go from here
2:26:16
with it. And he's he's serious. He is very very serious. I
2:26:20
don't know how successful he'll be, but he's very very serious about it.
2:26:24
And you're gonna want to hear the interview that we did with him, and
2:26:26
you can do that in episode number one hundred and twenty, which will be
2:26:30
out in just a couple of days from now until then thanks so much for
2:26:33
listening. This has been episode number one hundred and nineteen of the Death of
2:26:35
Journalism podcasts. And my name is John Zigler.