Latest / The Death Of Journalism / Episode One Hundred Sixty Nine: Live by DEI, Die by DEI
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome to episode number one hundred and sixty nine of the Death of Journalism podcast.
- 0:04My name is John Zigler. I'm your host on today's show. We're
- 0:07getting some legitimate post debate polling and it has extended the complete freak out by
- 0:12Democrats and the media. Biden comes up with a debate excuse that is an
- 0:18obvious lie, the Supreme Court does Trump a potentially big favor. Normal summer
- 0:25weather suddenly becomes proof of climate change, and has twenty twenty four seen a
- 0:31series of viral stories that are a backlash to the change in traditional female gender
- 0:37roles. I hope you're having a great to fourth of July holiday. I'll
- 0:43have some thoughts on that at the end of today's podcast, but we begin
- 0:47with the aftermath of President Biden's disastrous debate performance and the fact that we now
- 0:53have a significant amount of polling data that was accumulated after the debate, at
- 0:59least enough I think to start to come to some conclusions about the impact of
- 1:04that debate and the perception largely amplified even by the liberal media and by Democrats,
- 1:11that President Biden was not up to the job, and certainly not up
- 1:15to the job for another four or five years should he be re elected president
- 1:21of the United States, and things are going pretty much as I expected.
- 1:27I think the bottom line of the polling so far is that Joe Biden has
- 1:34lost a solid two points nationally and maybe in the state polls, although there's
- 1:42not as much information about that yet, but there's some internal Democrat polling that
- 1:49got leaked that certainly is consistent with this conclusion. But the Biden post debate
- 1:53has lost about two points in the margin to Donald Trumps. He's losing by
- 2:00a solid two points, maybe a little bit more than that, more to
- 2:05Trump nationally and perhaps in the state polls than he was before the debate,
- 2:12and much of that two points, as I suggested in the last episode of
- 2:15the podcast, has not gone directly to Donald Trump, but in fact has
- 2:22gone to RFK Junior. Now that becomes a much more complicated situation, especially
- 2:30with photographs of RFK Junior seemingly eating a dog that got a lot of publicity
- 2:36over the last couple of days. I mean, the guy is a complete
- 2:38nutjob. He's a scumbag. There's a sexual assault the story that's out now
- 2:44about him. He's a serial philanderer, a drug addict, a conspiracy nut.
- 2:50I mean, so I have no affinity at all for RFK Junior,
- 2:53but he could play a significant role in how this election turns out. I
- 3:00do think that there is some logic that if you're a weak Biden voter and
- 3:06you can't pull the trigger on Trump, but you and you want to still
- 3:09vote, and you can't vote for a guy you don't think is physically capable
- 3:14of doing the job, especially for another four years, that gives you an
- 3:19off ramp. RFK Junior gives you an off ramp. And there's some indication
- 3:23in the polls of that. So what I'm seeing is that in the head
- 3:28to head between Trump and Biden, Trump is ahead by about two points,
- 3:34but that when you add in RFK Junior and the other third fourth party candidates,
- 3:40that seems that margin seems to go up to three and a half to
- 3:44four points. And that is a very significant difference, especially when the margin
- 3:50of error in most of these polls is about two three points. So once
- 3:54you get into the four point range, now you're talking about a legitimate lead
- 3:59that is out outside the margin of error. And so the bottom line here
- 4:04is there has been movement now It is an indication of just how unbelievably difficult
- 4:10it is to get any movement politically in the modern era of America, because
- 4:15we are so divided and because we are all in our own media silos.
- 4:19And this is something that I predicted before the debate that no matter how large
- 4:24the earthquake, the ground isn't going to move that much. And the fact
- 4:29that two points now is considered to be significant movement is a new phenomenon.
- 4:34I mean, it used to be that it was normal normal for Republican or
- 4:43a democratic convention either or to swing public opinion five to ten points in the
- 4:51favor of the party that was holding the convention. If it was a good
- 4:55convention, you picked up usually ten points. A bad convention would even pick
- 4:59up three, four or five points. Those days are god because there are
- 5:03very few people that are not affiliated in at least psychologically, with one party
- 5:08or the other. We don't change our minds about anything. Anything we want
- 5:12to believe, we can get reinforced with the media we choose to consume.
- 5:16And we're just a very, very divided nation. So it is kind of
- 5:20bizarre that we're looking at two three points after that dramatic situation where the president
- 5:30of United States was universally described as not up to the job in a way
- 5:35that was unprecedented. And it appears as if that's only moving the needle two
- 5:41or three, maybe four points. Now. To be clear, it's still
- 5:45early. We could see some more polling movement as this story becomes deeper and
- 5:51deeper embedded, and it doesn't go away, and people talk to each other,
- 5:57and we had the Fourth of July holiday where people talk to each other.
- 6:00There are reasons to believe that this could just be the start of the
- 6:04polling movement and not the end. I want to emphasize that you may be
- 6:10saying, but zig aren't there a couple of polls that indicate larger movements than
- 6:15two or three points. There are, but there's problems with both of them.
- 6:17There's really two poles as of this taping that show a very significant lead
- 6:24for Donald Trump nationally. Of course, there's a big difference between nationally and
- 6:28the state poles. Naturally doesn't really mean anything. We've said that a million
- 6:30times president is elected by the electoral College. Generally, if Trump is winning
- 6:38at all nationally, it is presumed that he will win the election because he
- 6:44does have certain advantages in the electoral college. I am not convinced that that's
- 6:48one hundred percent given the circumstances of today, but I do believe that in
- 6:54general that's true. And the two polls that have been shown to be the
- 6:59most dramatic when it comes to Trump's post debate lead are Harvard Harris or Harris
- 7:06Harvard, which I have continually said, almost only half jokingly, really find
- 7:14someone who loves you as much as the Harris Harvard pole loves Donald Trump.
- 7:18I mean, it's a bizarre phenomenon. The Harris Harvard pole always has Trump
- 7:25leading by more than anybody else, and that's the case after the debate.
- 7:30So while I find Harris Harvard to be interesting, I don't put a lot
- 7:34of weight in it because it's continually very much pro Donald Trump. Why that
- 7:41is, I have absolutely no idea, but it's one hundred percent true that
- 7:45that pole has been extremely pro Trump throughout the entire cycle. So I don't
- 7:50put a lot of stock in that on its own. But then there's a
- 7:56CNN poll. The CNN poll, which I tweeted out, is probably the
- 8:00worst data point yet post debate for the Biden campaign shows that Joe Biden is
- 8:09clearly losing by at least six points, depending on how you do the candidates,
- 8:15and you know whether or not you put in RFK Junior and the other
- 8:18third fourth party candidates. But it's a solid six point lead for Donald Trump.
- 8:26Now, it's a CNN pole that's a reputable poll, clearly not conservably
- 8:31biased, and it hasn't traditionally shown a Trump bias in the margins. So
- 8:37it is such to see Donald Trump leading CNN by a healthy margin, way
- 8:43outside the margin of error that is potentially significant. However, there's a problem
- 8:52in my view with the CNN poll, and that is that the CNN poll
- 8:56has a sample where Joe Biden's approval within that sample is minus twenty eight.
- 9:07It was thirty six percent approval, sixty four percent disapproval. By the way,
- 9:13interesting that that's one hundred percent. Normally you don't get one hundred percent
- 9:16on that number. But okay, fine, he's the president United States.
- 9:20One hundred percent of respondents had a view on whether or not they approve or
- 9:22disapprove of his job's job performance. But minus twenty eight is not just historically
- 9:31low for Joe Biden. I mean, it's catastrophically low for Joe Biden.
- 9:35It's the lowest he's ever been in that poll or any major poll that I'm
- 9:39aware of, minus twenty eight. But that's also way outside the rest of
- 9:46the post debate polling when it comes to his approval by about ten points.
- 9:50Now, you know, is it possible that CNN just picked up on a
- 9:56dive in Joe Biden's approval rate post debate. Yeah, that's possible. But
- 10:03when you consider the fact that every other poll that's out post debate has his
- 10:09approval deficit at about ten points better or less bad than CNN has, the
- 10:16more logical conclusion is CNN got a bad sample. CNN got a sample of
- 10:24people that are very down on Joe Biden more so than the general population.
- 10:28Is so unless than until I see at least another pole or two that's reputable
- 10:37that duplicates both CNN's results as well as their internal numbers on Joe Biden's approval.
- 10:46I'm not buying that Donald Trump is winning by six or eight points nationally.
- 10:54I'm not buying that. Now. Is it possible. It's certainly possible,
- 10:58But again, we would need more data to back that up, because
- 11:01there are other polls that are showing this race is still either tied or a
- 11:07one point margin, and there's at least one or two poles that have Biden
- 11:11up. I mean, they are bad polls for Biden because both candidates are
- 11:16in the low forties, and when you're the incumbent, you don't want to
- 11:18be in the low forties, especially against Donald Trump. And when you have
- 11:22third and four fourth party candidates, that's not good news. So I'm not
- 11:26suggesting that it is, but it's not catastrophic news when nationally you're still either
- 11:31tied down by one or up by one, which is basically what it was
- 11:35before the debate. But when you average all these out, it's clear that
- 11:41there is a movement towards more against Joe Biden than towards Donald Trump. But
- 11:48Donald Trump is benefiting from it because his lead is being extended, and it's
- 11:52being extended into a very dangerous location if you're Democrats. This is dangerous territory
- 12:01because once Trump gets ahead nationally by say four or five points, and that
- 12:07becomes consistent, and that becomes set in stone, and it's outside the margin
- 12:11of error, the race is really close to over because you, as a
- 12:18Democrat, you cannot win the electoral college if Trump is winning you by even
- 12:24three or four points. And it also creates a perception, a perception that
- 12:28Trump is the favorite. It gives him all the leverage. It makes Biden
- 12:33look weak, which is especially devastating given the perception of him after the debate,
- 12:39and it just becomes a death spiral. So if you're the Biden team,
- 12:43this is very very dangerous territory. You are in a situation where the
- 12:50ice is very very thin. And it's not because of global warming. It's
- 12:54because you're very very close to a situation where this race is over. And
- 13:01that's really saying something for me, because one I have thought that Biden was
- 13:07very likely to end up winning by a very very small margin because the cavalry
- 13:11would come home in the last months of the campaign. I'm no longer convinced
- 13:16to that. So I'm not saying the race is over. I want to
- 13:20make that clear as well. I don't think that the race is over,
- 13:22but we are in a situation now where anything is possible, and we are
- 13:28certainly in a place where Democrats and the media are freaking out to the extent
- 13:35where it is theoretically possible that Joe Biden made a side on his own to
- 13:39get out of this race, and the betting markets are indicating that they believe
- 13:45that that's a very strong likelihood. The last I checked, Joe Biden is
- 13:52now down to about fifty percent, a fifty percent chance of being the Democratic
- 13:56presidential nominee. That's extraordinary. I mean, that's unprecedented fifty percent, and
- 14:03you know who knows by the time you're hearing this, it could be below
- 14:05fifty percent. Now, that doesn't mean he's not going to be the nominee.
- 14:11And I have always said that there are two options. The most likely
- 14:15option is that Biden will be the nominee. The second option is that he
- 14:18withdraws voluntarily and Kamala Harris is made the nominee. Those are the only two
- 14:26scenarios that are remotely viable for Democrats. I stand by that, but I
- 14:31am more and more open to the idea that Biden may, underline, may
- 14:37decide to voluntarily withdraw. And there's been a lot of pressure being put on
- 14:41Biden internally externally. There's been a lot of leaks from the White House.
- 14:46There's been a lot of leaks in the media. There's been some Democratic politicians
- 14:52that have come out and said some very potentially damaging things about Joe Biden.
- 14:58There was a Democratic congressman who actually came out and said that Biden ought to
- 15:03withdraw, echoing the New York Times and the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and you
- 15:11know, the New Yorker editor and some other liberal media members who have all
- 15:16said that Joe Biden ought to leave the race. Now that hasn't been followed
- 15:22with the floodgates opening. In order for this to happen, the floodgates have
- 15:26to open. Of course, it doesn't really matter that much other than maybe
- 15:31putting pressure on Joe Biden to make the decision himself, because it has to
- 15:35come from Joe Biden. Whether you believe that's Joe Biden or Hunter Biden,
- 15:41or all three of them, or Barack Obama, it doesn't matter. Joe
- 15:45Biden, who I as much as I am convinced that he is very diminished,
- 15:50still has the ability to make a decision as to whether or not he
- 15:54stays in the race or not, and that decision will have to come from
- 15:58him. There is no other scenario. That is a cold, stone hard
- 16:02fact. It has to come from Joe Biden. Now. Could that be
- 16:06facilitated by pressure? Absolutely, and the pressure is increasing even allies like Democratic
- 16:12Congressman James Clyburn, who frankly is the reason why Joe Biden is president.
- 16:17He's the one who gave Biden his endorsement in twenty twenty during the Democratic primaries
- 16:22when Biden was in big trouble and Clyburn basically handed over the black vote in
- 16:27South Carolina. Biden won the South Carolina primary. Then COVID hit and the
- 16:33rest of his history well, James Clyburn has said that he would support Kamala
- 16:38Harris as the nominee if Joe Biden got out, Just by virtue of the
- 16:45fact that Clyburn is publicly theorizing about what he would do or what should be
- 16:51done if Biden gets out, shows that this is a possibility. Again,
- 16:57not a probability at this point, but this is a possibility. This is
- 17:02a scenario that can actually happen. And you know, I tweeted in response
- 17:07to the James Clyburnt news something that I'm a little bit surprised has not yet
- 17:12become a significant media narrative, at least not to my knowledge, but I'm
- 17:18really curious. So at what point does Joe Biden refusing to withdraw and blocking
- 17:26Kamala Harris from being the nominee? At what point in left wing circles does
- 17:33that become an act of racism? At what point does that become an act
- 17:37of sexism? Because, frankly, based upon the liberal playbook, it is.
- 17:45It's it's you know, the way they view the world, it's racist
- 17:48and sexist. That's the only possible explanation that an old white man is clinging
- 17:55desperately to power when here we have a woman of color right there, willing
- 18:02and able to take over either as president or as the nominee or as both,
- 18:07and he won't do it. Is that not racism and sexism? Using
- 18:14the definitions, the ridiculous definitions as they have been created by the liberal elites,
- 18:19I think it is. And frankly, I think this is something that,
- 18:22if this story continues as it is, the Trump team ought to use.
- 18:29I think they auto accuse Biden of racism and sexism. Again. I
- 18:33talked about this in episode number one hundred and sixty eight. The triangulation theory,
- 18:38the putting internal pressure on Biden and Harris, also discrediting Harris, showing
- 18:45the public that this is how bad she is, that they're so afraid of
- 18:51her that even a clearly infirmed president won't step aside to allow her to become
- 18:57the nominee. And let's go a step further, let's call it racism and
- 19:02sexism. I mean, use their own rules against them. These are the
- 19:07rules liberals have created. She's a dei hire Harris is as vice president,
- 19:14So why isn't she getting the position? Why are they so afraid? This
- 19:18is the whole purpose of the vice presidency for these situations, So why are
- 19:25they so afraid to make her the presidential nominee? Certainly sounds racist and sexist
- 19:30to me, and I'm kind of surprised that. Frankly, I'm surprised this
- 19:34hasn't become a legitimate narrative on the far left for people who want to get
- 19:38rid of Biden. I still think it might become one. And I really
- 19:45think that, half mockingly, half seriously, this ought to become a narrative
- 19:48on the right. Hey, liberals, why don't you put your money where
- 19:52your mouth is? Why is this not racist and sexist? Why is preventing
- 19:59this woman of color from getting the position she obviously is in line for.
- 20:06And when you're holding onto power as an old white male, old straight white
- 20:10male, clearly this is the patriarchy. This is the patriarchy at work here,
- 20:15folks, at least that's what I was told. So keep an eye
- 20:18out for that narrative. That's when you know this is gonna get really serious.
- 20:22If they really want to try to take Biden out, that's probably where
- 20:26they're gonna go. Maybe the most interesting reaction from a Democratic politician, and
- 20:33I found this to be fascinating, came from Democratic Congressman Jared Golden of Maine,
- 20:41and he wrote an op ed that concluded that Donald Trump is going to
- 20:47win. And I'm okay with that. And this is a Democratic congressman.
- 20:52Now, he's from the congressional district that we've talked about in Maine previously,
- 20:57where Trump is basically assured of winning that congressional district, the second congressional district
- 21:03in Maine. Maine does their electoral college votes like Nebraska does, the only
- 21:07two states that allocate them in this way. They give two electoral college votes
- 21:15for the winner of the state as a whole, and then they give one
- 21:18electoral College vote for each congressional district. And Golden is a Democrat. Obviously,
- 21:22he's not a super liberal Democrat, at least not a partisan liberal Democrat,
- 21:27because he knows that his district is good to vote for Donald Trump,
- 21:33and he has said Donald Trump is gonna win. That's interesting, But maybe
- 21:37even more significant is and I'm okay with that. And by the way,
- 21:41within the I'm okay with that is him saying democracy is going to be fine.
- 21:48He's making the argument, Look, I'm looking at reality here, folks,
- 21:53Trump is gonna win. I'm okay with that from the standpoint of who
- 21:59the pro going to be. But also, we shouldn't buy into this narrative
- 22:03that, oh my god, democracy is going to collapse if Donald Trump is
- 22:08president of the United States. And even as ardent and anti Trump critic as
- 22:14i am, I tend to agree with that part. Not that we shouldn't
- 22:17be concerned about democracy in a second Trump term and all the narrow dwells and
- 22:25d and f team that will be surrounding Donald Trump on a second term.
- 22:30But let's be clear, we already have a track record here. This is
- 22:33the part of the end of democracy and Trump's going to be a dictator that
- 22:37I don't understand. He's already been president, He's already lost an election that
- 22:42he claims he didn't lose, and he already left. Now. It was
- 22:48not seamless, when way worse than it should have. He didn't concede defeat,
- 22:52he didn't attend his successor's inauguration, which he should have. So I
- 23:00don't agree with any of that. It was all terrible. I don't blame
- 23:03him directly for January sixth, and I think January sixth has been exaggerated in
- 23:08some ways, especially when it comes to people being killed that didn't happen other
- 23:12than one Trump advocate and activist that day by a police officer. But that's
- 23:18another story for another day. The point is Trump left, and that was
- 23:22his first term, and that was after an election he thought that he had
- 23:26won and he was the incumbent, and so he had all the ability to
- 23:32do all the things that liberals are afraid of, and it didn't happen.
- 23:37And in the second term situation, it would be more clear cut because everybody
- 23:41knows he's not eligible for another term, and because everyone would be much more
- 23:48on alert because of what happened the last time. So I'm not defending Trump
- 23:52on any of this. I'm just saying I don't get the liberal narrative here.
- 23:56We've already gone through this and we survived again. It was terrible,
- 24:03it was beyond but rocky and not the way it should have gone. But
- 24:11the system held and Trump didn't try to hold on to power. It's not
- 24:15like they had to remove him physically from the White House. That didn't happen.
- 24:21And I think that's kind of Jared Golden of mains point here. And
- 24:26you know, that got some publicity yesterday when it came out, but probably
- 24:30not as much as it deserves, because that's a Democratic congressman again from it
- 24:37from a district that's going to vote for Trump, but saying some things that
- 24:40I thought were certainly contrarian and interesting and potentially significant. Now, as far
- 24:45as the media reaction over the last couple of days, this has been fascinating
- 24:52and very very telling. My god, this whole situation has basically exposed the
- 24:57foundation of this past, the death of journalism. And it's weird because now
- 25:04even in many ways that the media is starting to tell the truth about Joe
- 25:11Biden, it actually exposes the death of journalism because it's only under these extreme
- 25:15circumstances that they're willing and able to tell the truth, where suddenly they have
- 25:22no choice and they're really acknowledging their past sins here, the past malfeasans,
- 25:32and sometimes they're even being forced to admit this, not as much as they
- 25:36should, but effectively they are now. Two of the major media members that
- 25:42I find to be most interesting over the last couple of days are Jake Tapper
- 25:48of c and Anamika Brazinski of MSNBC, obviously the two major liberal cable news
- 25:53networks. Tapper, of course, was the comoderator of the debate, which
- 25:59gives him a lot more street cred in his reaction to it, not that
- 26:03it really should, but I understand why it does, because people, first
- 26:07of all, he has more credibility having been in the room, and obviously
- 26:12his name recognition is up and he's kind of got the post debate glow,
- 26:18so people are looking at him more carefully. And he has been really very
- 26:22tough on the Biden White House and on guests that he has had on his
- 26:26CNN show, where he has basically said, hey, look, why the
- 26:30heck has the president not done a press conference? Why does he not do
- 26:36a two hour I'm basically quoting him here. Why does he not do it
- 26:40live two hour press conference and allow questions of any subject and see what happens
- 26:47If he really wants to prove that he's okay, this is the way to
- 26:51do it. And Tapper, I think, has been exactly right in this,
- 26:56and he's been pretty tough. I think he's doing so largely because it's
- 26:59in his own self interest and maybe there's some guilt, you know. I
- 27:03used to I've always said, they used to be able to guilt these people
- 27:06into at least trying to be fair or per seeming to be fair. But
- 27:10now I think they may have a bit of guilt after what has happened over
- 27:15the last several months, where they've basically covered up Joe Biden's decline mentally,
- 27:19and now it got exposed for all the world to see, and they have
- 27:23to make up, I think, at least in some level, for all
- 27:27the things that they have ignored and covered up over the last several months or
- 27:32years. And so I found that interesting that Jake Tapper has really been at
- 27:37the forefront of this idea of Okay, you got to show us, and
- 27:41why aren't you showing us? Because there are plenty of ways to do this.
- 27:45This is not rocket science. This is very easily done unless you can't
- 27:48do it. And then I get to what the Biden team decided to do
- 27:53instead of a two hour live press conference in just a minute, but I
- 27:59reverence Meek Brazinski, and this was a very telling moment, and frankly,
- 28:04I'm a bit surprised this hasn't gotten more publicity, maybe because it's uncertain as
- 28:11to what actually transpired. But I referenced in the last episode of the podcast
- 28:15that Morning Joe the show hosted by Joe Scarborough and Mika Brazinski, who are
- 28:19married. And by the way, this isn't aside I've ever gone through the
- 28:23whole history of Mourning Joe, and I'm not going to do that now.
- 28:26But the entire history of Mourning Joe is really the personification of the death of
- 28:33cable news television. And it's unbelievable all the machinations the Morning Joe has done
- 28:41in order to keep themselves relevant and to appeal to a certain audience. I
- 28:44mean, Scarborough is a former conservative Republican congressman and now he's a full on
- 28:48liberal, and of course he strongly supported Joe Biden and his mental acuity a
- 28:55couple of months ago, and then after the debate he basically said he thinks
- 28:59the auto withdraw and then he and his wife kind of got into a tiff
- 29:03on the air, and then Scarborough disappeared in the first episode of This Week,
- 29:11and Meeker Brazinski completely shifted the narrative and did like a four or five
- 29:17minute monologue defending Joe Biden and saying that this is part of his whole personal
- 29:22narrative and went through all the personal struggles and the tragedy in his life and
- 29:27that he's the comeback kid basically now at eighty one years old, strongly supporting
- 29:33him. And it was very weird that Joe Scarborough was not there. I
- 29:37don't know the story behind that, if it exists, I somehow missed it,
- 29:41but there seems to be some internal potential drama going on there. But
- 29:47the point of this is that Meeker Brasinski decided, Okay, at least on
- 29:52Morning Joe, we're backing Biden all the way, and so people are starting
- 29:59to pick their corners and on the left, and that's a problem because unless
- 30:04you have unanimity, it's impossible to force or convince Biden that he needs to
- 30:11get out. And so I don't see unanimity on the left. I see
- 30:15people taking different tax and different courses, and some people are being totally supportive
- 30:22of Biden, Others are in the middle, others more and the more on
- 30:26the fringes are being very critical of Biden and saying he has to get the
- 30:30hell out. But unless you get total unanimity on the left with regard to
- 30:36their media, I don't see you certainly not gonna be able to force Biden
- 30:38out. And I'm not sure you're going to convince Biden to get out because
- 30:45Biden is very, very stubborn, and there are still a lot of data
- 30:48points that are there for him to stay in one. The polling drop hasn't
- 30:52been catastrophic yet and the fundraising has been very very good post debate. As
- 31:00far as this whole idea of all right, well, what the hell happened
- 31:04here? You know what went wrong with regard to the news media's coverage of
- 31:12you know, Joe Biden and his mental acuity, I think the New York
- 31:17Post in today's front page. Really did it best. They have the headline
- 31:23now they tell us exclamation point, and then above the headline, media suddenly
- 31:30realizes Biden is aduled. And then they reference three different sources on the left,
- 31:37all considered to be very credible, that are now saying, oh,
- 31:41yeah, by the way, we can now report that this is not a
- 31:45new situation. That Joe Biden has been in trouble mentally for quite a while.
- 31:52They reference Carl Bernstein, you know of Woodward and Bernstein, Watergate,
- 31:56Nixon. I mean, he's been de crepit for a very long time,
- 32:00but in the in left wing circles, he's still somewhat of a journalistic deity.
- 32:06Well, he went on CNN and dramatically reported quote that this has been
- 32:10a horror show that has happened fifteen or twenty times regarding Biden meltdowns. This
- 32:17again on the front page of the New York Post, the New York Times.
- 32:22They say, quote laps is more frequent, more worrisome, unquote,
- 32:27Politico shielded from outside world by aids unquote. So that really does tell you
- 32:34what the true story is here that now we can tell you because now we're
- 32:39forced to do so and now it's kind of in our self interest to do
- 32:44so. One because we have to protect what little credibility we have left.
- 32:46But also, this is a really good story, right, This is a
- 32:50great political story. And I've always said that. You know, while there
- 32:53are many many biases, most of which are are liberal in the media,
- 32:59there's still the really good story biased. They're still gonna dive into a dramatic
- 33:07story that is good for them from a rating standpoint, good from them from
- 33:12a narrative perspective. They love history, they love something that's unprecedented, they
- 33:16love something that's dramatic, they love a meltdown, they love uncertainty. So
- 33:22all of this plays into that. And but part of that, part of
- 33:25the problem here for them to promote this narrative that Biden's going down and he
- 33:32can't do the job anymore, is they have to at least acknowledge We'll wait
- 33:37a minute, this can't have just happened now, So why haven't you told
- 33:44us this previously? As The New York Post implies on their cover story,
- 33:46Well, there've been a couple of rather hilarious attempts to deal with this issue.
- 33:53Most prominently this comes from CNN. Their media reporter had Us Gold tweeted
- 34:00out, could White House reporters have covered Biden's acuity more aggressively before the debate?
- 34:07Question Mark, I spoke to several White House reporters, and it's complicated.
- 34:15That's one of the liberal media's favorite lines when they've been caught in a
- 34:20lie and they don't admit to it. It's complicated, it's nuanced. That
- 34:28is liberal news media speak for, yeah, we screwed up, but we
- 34:31really really don't like admitting that we were wrong. The headline of her actual
- 34:37article about this is Biden's mental fitness could have been better covered leading up to
- 34:44the debate. Some White House reporters acknowledge. Really really, it's kind of
- 34:52like, yeah, you know, Oj Simpson's domestic violence could have probably been
- 34:58covered a lot better before he murdered two people. I mean, it's not
- 35:02a perfect analogy, but it's pretty close because when you look back, when
- 35:07you look back in hindsight, it's obvious where this was all headed. One
- 35:13of the tweets that caught my attention came from Brandon Buck who's an MSNBC political
- 35:20analyst, and he wrote, quote, a pretty big tell was turning down
- 35:25the Super Bowl interview. Really, really, this is new information to you.
- 35:32This is something we talked about in this podcast. At the time,
- 35:36I said it almost directly, I said, how in the world can you
- 35:39rationalize turning down this tradition of a Super Bowl interview when the outlet was CBS.
- 35:49It wasn't even Fox News that you'd have to do the interview with,
- 35:52so you know, it's a friendly media outlet, and you turned down in
- 35:58the Taylor's Swift Super Bowl a massive audience to do a taped interview with CBS.
- 36:07Now that just never made any sense. And the only way it makes
- 36:12any sense is you're afraid. You're afraid you might do something that looks bad,
- 36:19that you're just literally afraid of exposing yourself, even to a very friendly
- 36:23interview in the least political environment possible, which is the Super Bowl. But
- 36:30now even an MSNBC political analyst is going, gee, you know, in
- 36:35retrospect, that was a pretty big tell. Okay, fine, but what
- 36:40about the Robert Hurr interview the special counsel not just the fact that her wrote
- 36:47that he couldn't recommend charges against the president because his memory and mental acuity wasn't
- 36:53good enough for a jury to potentially convict him. What about the fact that
- 36:59the Biden administration and the DOJ effectively censored the tape of that interview from ever
- 37:07being made public. I mean, that's as big as tell as you could
- 37:09possibly ever imagine. To this day, I can't believe this hasn't become a
- 37:15bigger issue, especially post debate. How is this not a massive issue?
- 37:22They are covering up a tape of an interview that the President the United States
- 37:28did with a special counsel, by the way, an interview we all paid
- 37:31for that was apparently so bad that the special council decided he could not recommend
- 37:38criminal charges because the president's mental acuity I'm paraphrasing, was not strong enough for
- 37:46a jury to ever be able to convict him. And this is really even
- 37:52post debate, this has not become a major issue. Maybe it will be
- 37:55again in the future. Maybe Republicans will make it a bigger issue if Biden
- 38:00survives this storm. I can certainly see that scenario playing out. But as
- 38:07of right now, the Robert Hurr interview, which should be a big deal,
- 38:12is currently not a huge part of the media narratives surrounding what's going on.
- 38:16With Joe Biden. There's been other elements of the news media and their
- 38:22reaction to what's happened post debate that has been rather telling and hilarious. I
- 38:28want to share this tweet from Brian Stelter. Brian Stelter is the former media
- 38:31reporter for CNN. He got dropped by them. He's now, of course
- 38:37picked up by elite academia, because that's what happens when you fail as a
- 38:42liberal media reporter. But he's still trying to keep his foot in the door.
- 38:46He still goes on CNN from time to time, feels like he's trying
- 38:50to get back in their good graces. But bizarrely, hilariously and tellingly on
- 38:55Twitter, he's being attacked by the left now because he, like a lot
- 39:01of other liberal media reporters, has suddenly become obsessed rightly and understandably with this
- 39:09entire is Biden up to the job narrative? And he noticed that both he
- 39:15and CNN as former colleagues, have been attacked by the left hilariously because of
- 39:22what he calls a conspiracy theory. That's what these people call anything that they
- 39:29disagree with, It's a conspiracy theory. Sometimes it is many times it turns
- 39:32out to be true, but a conspiracy theory that somehow CNN get this was
- 39:37out to get Biden because they want to elect Trump, so Steltzer tweets,
- 39:43the sheer amount of conspiracy thinking on the left at this moment is deeply unhealthy.
- 39:50Example, all the people who seem convinced that CNN and other media organizations
- 39:54are trying to ruin Biden and re elect Trump, in reality, news outlet
- 40:00are merely trying to report the news. The irony in that is so deep
- 40:06I could probably talk about it for half an hour. I won't. Of
- 40:08course, this is a defensive CNN that bought into all sorts of conspiracy theories
- 40:15about Donald Trump, which is a large part of the reason why no one
- 40:20trusts them and other media outlets when it comes to their legitimate warnings about Donald
- 40:25Trump, because they used up all of their credibility. And here he is
- 40:30using the exact same language now to talk about the left. Not to mention
- 40:36this whole idea that the left now thinks that CNN is a right wing organization
- 40:43because they're being blamed for the downfall of Joe Biden, and the fact that
- 40:46CNN and others are latching on to this narrative and they aren't giving this up.
- 40:52And this thing has not just legs, but you know, this thing
- 40:55has Usain Bolt legs at this point where there may not be any way to
- 41:00stop it. Now, we've got a holiday coming up, and Biden's gonna
- 41:05try to do some things to slow it down. I'm not convinced that that's
- 41:07gonna work as of yet, but it could. But you know, the
- 41:13irony is so deep here and it's so telling because everything is now exactly the
- 41:17opposite of what happened during the Trump administration, where CNN clearly was trying to
- 41:23take out Donald Trump. Now, is it possible that there is something to
- 41:30this theory that you know what, the liberal media part of what's motivating them
- 41:35is not just gee, we have to admit we were wrong and we can't
- 41:38ignore what's so obvious, and we love a good story. Is it possible
- 41:44that part of this perfect storm is that they're looking around going, you know
- 41:47what we are. We are in a big world to hurt. Our business
- 41:52model is broken and we're losing money and we're losing jobs, and we're losing
- 41:59relevance an audience, and you know, when Trump was elected the last time,
- 42:05that was a pretty good period for us. That was basically the dead
- 42:07cat bounce of the entire media, a business and industrial media industrial complex.
- 42:16Maybe we could put the band back together. Yeah, I think that's possible.
- 42:21I think that is possibly part of why the media is so enthusiastic about
- 42:28this one. They love the short term drama of it. I think they
- 42:32also think that a Harris Trump campaign might be more interesting, more fun when
- 42:38entertaining. But I also think that it's possible that some of them, kind
- 42:45of like, in a weird way, the congressman from Maine, they're starting
- 42:49to realize, you know what, Trump's probably gonna win, and we're okay
- 42:52with that because that might be good for us. That's gonna give us a
- 42:55lot better content moving forward than a second Biden administration. A second Biden administration
- 43:04is going to be for the liberal media, very boring, not ratings friendly
- 43:08at all. And Trump has always said this. Trump has always blatantly and
- 43:14overtly said that the media needs him to be re elected, and I think
- 43:19he's right about that. Now how much that's motivating their actions, I'm not
- 43:22sure, but I think it's certainly possible that there is something to that,
- 43:27and I'm not sure that Brian Stelter is willing to acknowledge that because of who
- 43:31he actually is now. I also want a reference to Tucker Carlson is still
- 43:37beating this drum that he knows that Joe Biden is done, that it's over,
- 43:44that Joe Biden will not be the nominee. I mock both him and
- 43:46Bill O'Reilly in the last episode of the podcast, not because I want to
- 43:51make this clear, not because they said that Biden's not going to be the
- 43:55nominee. I mocked them because they they have sources telling them it's a done
- 44:01deal that did not happen. They are lying about that. They are making
- 44:08a prediction. It's what I call predictive reporting or predictive journalism. It's not
- 44:16based in fact, it's not based in sourcing. It's based on what they
- 44:22think or maybe hope, or maybe a little bit of both, what they
- 44:25want to have happen, what they think is going to happen. And so
- 44:29then they use their celebrity for you, some bit of credibility, and they
- 44:36fool their fans into thinking that they have knowledge that's not in the public sphere,
- 44:42and so that gives a little bit more weight rather than just a prediction.
- 44:46No, no, I know this because I have sourcing. They have
- 44:49no sourcing. That's all bullshit. And so they're making a prediction that is
- 44:53being masked as a report to give it more credibility and get more attention.
- 45:00So they could end up being somewhat right, although they're not right when it
- 45:04comes to the idea of Biden being forced out, or they're being an open
- 45:07convention, or that they're being a scenario where anyone else other than Kamala Harris
- 45:13can be the nominee. That's all ridiculous. But just for the record,
- 45:17Tucker Carlson doubled or tripled down on his prediction slash Report, tweeting Biden is
- 45:24done. Oh, that's pretty definitive. Biden is done. Bet on it.
- 45:29Oh wow. He's telling people to put their money on the idea that
- 45:35Joe Biden is I guess not going to be the nominee. It's little ambiguous.
- 45:38Does that mean he's not the nominee or he's not going to win.
- 45:44I would not put my money yet on Joe Biden not being the nominee.
- 45:47But that's what Tucker Carlson wrote, too many prominent Democrats have suggested he's brain
- 45:53damaged. They can't walk that back. They have to remove him, and
- 45:59they will oh wow, okay, so this is this is him not getting
- 46:04the nomination. They will remove him. Now remember that, folks, remember
- 46:09that. Now again, there's a little bit of ambiguity here, remove him
- 46:13meaning from the presidency or from the nomination. Now, to me, logically
- 46:20those two things should go together, right, I'm not sure how you stay
- 46:22president but you're not well enough to run. I guess you could argue,
- 46:28well, I'm okay now, but I just don't think I'm up for it
- 46:30for another four years. There is some logic to that, but there's all
- 46:36sorts of political implications of that, including, by the way, which I
- 46:40have not seen nearly as much attention on this as I thought there might be,
- 46:45especially since Hunter Biden has become a big part of the narrative with him
- 46:49now advising the president, which is really bad optics. I mean, your
- 46:53whole argument is you're running against a convicted felon, and now you're having a
- 46:58convicted felon become a major White House advisor in the middle of this crisis.
- 47:02But because he's a convicted fellow and hunter, Biden has a massive conflict of
- 47:06interest because presumably he wants a situation where his dad would be free to pardon
- 47:15him, and one of those situations would be where Biden is president but not
- 47:22running, and then after the election he could pardon his son. I do
- 47:27think that's got to be part of the equation here. But anyway, Tucker
- 47:31Carlson is making it clear he believes that Biden will be removed, not one
- 47:37hundred percent sure if that's from the presidency or the nomination, and they the
- 47:40only question is when Carlson says, if they're smart, they'll do it immediately.
- 47:46If Kamala is going to be the nominee, she might as well be
- 47:50president first. And then he goes on to talk about the issue of Trump
- 47:53and his sentencing. Of course, the sentencing has now been moved from July
- 47:59to September, which I'm going to get to in just a bit. But
- 48:04I don't believe that Tucker Carlson has any inside information. I believe Tucker Carlson
- 48:07is simply making predictions. He's getting a lot of attention for this. That
- 48:13particular tweet I think had over ten or eleven million views the last time I
- 48:16checked. And it's all bullshit because popularity is the coin of the realm,
- 48:22not truth, and he's not telling the truth. Now again, could he
- 48:28be partially right? Could Joe Biden end up not being the nominee. That
- 48:35is a possibility, That is absolutely a possibility. We're not there yet.
- 48:42There's a few things that have to happen before Joe Biden would theoretically decide to
- 48:47get out, and the biggest one on the horizon is his first post debate
- 48:53interview. And this, to me is extremely telling. This is an obvious
- 49:01situation where Joe Biden is essentially admitting he's not up to the job because instead
- 49:08of taking Jake Tapper's advice, which is to do a two hour live press
- 49:15conference and answer any and all questions without a script, without a teleprompter,
- 49:22that's not what Joe Biden's going to do. Joe Biden is going to do
- 49:25a taped interview with George Stephanoppolis of ABC, A taped interview with a guy
- 49:37who became famous as a Democratic political operative for Bill Clinton, George Stephanoppolis.
- 49:44So it's not like he's going into the lions Den. It's not like it's
- 49:47going to be an all likelihood a particularly long interview. My guess is half
- 49:52hour, forty minutes something like that. You need to go over a half
- 49:55hour so that they can't claim that it's a short interview. But you know,
- 50:00my guess is it's going to be in that realm. I'm pretty sure
- 50:04it won't be an hour. That's for sure. Again, because it's taped,
- 50:07and so you know they're going to air it on World News tonight on
- 50:12Friday and then on the Sunday morning show that Stephanopolis hosts on ABC. And
- 50:19so you know, if you give them, if you're Biden, and you
- 50:22give them forty forty five minutes of content, that's more than they're going to
- 50:24be able to use in an hour long show on Sunday, so they can't
- 50:30complain. So it's taped, which means it's going to be edited, which
- 50:35means that gives Stephanopolis and ABC complete and total control over how this thing is
- 50:44going to be perceived. Thanks for listening to today's free drop of the abbreviated
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