Latest / The Death Of Journalism / Episode Fifty Three: Media Moneyball and Brittney Hopper

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Episode Fifty Three: Media Moneyball and Brittney Hopper · The Death Of Journalism

• 0:00
  Welcome to episode number fifty three of the Death of Journalism Pomecamps. My name
• 0:04
  is John Ziggler. I am your host on this edition of the program.
• 0:08
  There is some real information coming in on the shocking firing of Tucker Carlson,
• 0:13
  Joe Biden has officially entered the race for re election, and a great interview
• 0:19
  with a former Los Angeles CBS News reporter, Brittany Hopper. I'm known as
• 0:24
  the Dutch Digital Marketing Man. I'm a digital advertising SEO and EMO marketing specialist
• 0:31
  that also happens to be a big fan of John Ziggler and the Death of
• 0:34
  Journalism. Do you need help preaching your target audience? Let me help you
• 0:39
  develop the right messaging and confaded message in the best channels for your business.
• 0:44
  Please visit my website, the Dutch Digital marketing Man dot com and let me
• 0:48
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• 0:55
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• 0:58
  the Dutch Digital marketing Man dot com. And hey, thanks for sponsoring the
• 1:03
  show. We begin today's podcast with the aftermath of the firing of Tucker Carlson
• 1:07
  at Fox News, which sent shockwaves throughout the world of cable news. Now.
• 1:12
  That story broke literally as I was taping episode fifty two, so my
• 1:19
  initial response to it was very visceral and lacking in any semblance of details.
• 1:26
  I was just flying blind and giving my gut reaction to what appeared to have
• 1:30
  happened. And I went back and I listened to episode fifty two with a
• 1:34
  lot more information, because at that time I had not only been able to
• 1:38
  read what had been publicly reported, but also got to talk to some people
• 1:44
  who were much closer to the situation than I am and got some real sourced
• 1:48
  information. And my analysis wasn't that bad. I would think I was in
• 1:53
  the right at church generally, probably in the wrong pew with my speculation and
• 2:00
  at that time, but since then, I've learned a lot. Although the
• 2:04
  news media in general has had all sorts of different theories about what was really
• 2:08
  going on, here is this story because it's shrouded in mystery, because Tucker
• 2:13
  hasn't spoken, and Fox News Channel really hasn't spoken other than a very short,
• 2:17
  terse statement, it's wide open for speculation, and something like this is
• 2:23
  easily speculated about. There's all sorts of conspiracy theories going around. Of course,
• 2:29
  the right loves that Tucker became much of a conspiracy theorist, much to
• 2:34
  my chagrin, in the last a couple of years of his tenure at Fox
• 2:38
  News Channel, and I will get to some of those, But here's what
• 2:42
  I think now is the most likely scenario for why Tucker Carlson was fired.
• 2:49
  I'm a little bit confused still about the timing, but this is what I
• 2:53
  was told. And what's interesting about this information I got is that almost immediately
• 2:59
  app I received this information, bits and pieces of it were verified in various
• 3:07
  different mainstream news media outlets. So when you hear something first and then you
• 3:14
  see it reported by major outlets and it all seems to fit like a puzzle
• 3:21
  and you're confident in your original sourcing, I think that you know, you
• 3:24
  can be pretty feel pretty good going forward with that information, which is what
• 3:30
  I did both on Twitter as well as an appearance I made that night on
• 3:35
  Dan Abram's News Nation television program, which I'll get to momentarily. But what
• 3:40
  I have been told by a very good source, and what's funny about the
• 3:45
  sourcing and the spice sourcing is odd to begin with, because who I am.
• 3:47
  I I'm basically an unemployed guy living in the suburbs of Los Angeles who's
• 3:53
  a non celebrity. And yet I do seem to know a lot of people
• 3:57
  who are close to these types of stories, and I do seem to get
• 4:00
  told things that turned out to be true a lot, and I think this
• 4:02
  was a pretty good example. What was funny about this is that I got
• 4:06
  sourcing on both the Tucker Carlson and the Don Lemon stories. Now, Don
• 4:14
  Lemon is obviously a left wing story on CNN and Tucker Carlson is obviously a
• 4:17
  right wing story on Fox News Channel. Yet my sourcing on Don Lemon was
• 4:25
  from the right and it turned out to be correct because we told you on
• 4:28
  this program months ago in our interview with John Nicotia that he would be fired
• 4:33
  eventually as CNN was dramatically changing who they are going forward, so that you
• 4:40
  and John is a conservative and his sourcing is conservative. So the right wing
• 4:46
  was the sourcing on the left wing Don Lemon and CNN, and my sourcing
• 4:51
  on the Fox News Channel Tucker Carls story, it was very much left wing.
• 4:56
  So I take that for what it's worth. But I didn't find that
• 5:00
  be interesting and funny. But what I was told was that this was all,
• 5:04
  at least primarily. I'm sure it wasn't all, but it was primarily
• 5:09
  about the Dominion voting system's lawsuit. But not but not in a way that
• 5:15
  some might have thought, because when I tweeted about this, there was a
• 5:19
  lot of confusion. Tucker fans were all outraged at me because I was suggesting
• 5:25
  somehow I guess that Tucker had been one of those who had promoted the lies
• 5:30
  about the twenty twenty election on Fox News channel. I've actually been somewhat defending
• 5:36
  a Fox News channel. I don't even think they should have settled the lawsuit.
• 5:41
  I think that the implications for that for cable news going forward have been
• 5:45
  greatly underestimated and could be very very corrosive and very very chilling, especially when
• 5:50
  it comes to having guests on your heir who are going to expouse a controversial
• 5:56
  opinion. But Tucker, I agree, was one of the few that actually
• 6:00
  pushed back against the crazy dominion voting systems conspiracy theory that the voting machines were
• 6:05
  rigged against Donald Trump or whatever crap that theory was. He didn't proactively debunk
• 6:13
  it, but he pushed back on it. That wasn't the point, though.
• 6:16
  The point of what happened with Tucker and the Dominion Voting System's lawsuit was
• 6:21
  in the discovery, and he had already been subject to a lot of controversy
• 6:27
  because of some anti Trump remarks that he made in the discovery. Didn't make
• 6:31
  it for the discovery, but they came about and they became public because of
• 6:35
  the discovery in the lawsuit, including the fact that he hates Donald Trump passionately
• 6:40
  and was looking forward to being able to ignore him. This in the midst
• 6:44
  of what was going on in the lead up to in the aftermath of the
• 6:48
  January six whatever you want to call it, riot insurrection, whatever you want,
• 6:54
  I don't care what you call it. Everyone knows what happened that day,
• 6:57
  although everyone seems to have a different view of what it actually meant,
• 7:00
  including Tucker Carlson eventually, when he played a big role in reshaping the narrative
• 7:04
  of that story, I believe somewhat incorrectly, at least among right wing conservatives
• 7:10
  and MAGA World America. So it wasn't that Tucker Carlson was promoting the lies
• 7:17
  that caused Fox News Channel to have to set up with Dominion. It was
• 7:21
  one that he created this political problem which eroted Fox News Channel's negotiating power because
• 7:30
  they desperately wanted to avoid a trial, and Dominion knew that and that Tucker
• 7:33
  revelations were part of that. But what I was also told by a very
• 7:39
  very good, although odd source, is that it was material that has not
• 7:45
  yet been made public from that discovery that is currently redacted. That was I
• 7:50
  guess you would call it the final nail and the coffin for Tucker Carlson because
• 7:55
  apparently apparently this again when I'm told, would very definitively and this ended up
• 8:01
  getting verified at least in large part in multiple mainstream news outlets, was that
• 8:09
  he had made very disparaging remarks about two very key Fox News executives in the
• 8:18
  discovery. Now, the part of this that doesn't make a lot of sense
• 8:22
  to me, and there are explanations for it, because that scenario at least
• 8:26
  made a semblance of sense to me, even though it's crazy that you would
• 8:31
  fire your most talented, most well known, most highly rated talent at Fox
• 8:35
  News Channel basically over an ego situation. And I don't know how bad these
• 8:39
  statements. These disparaging statements allegedly were my guesses they were really really bad.
• 8:45
  I mean Tuck Tucker, especially privately, It would not surprise me if he
• 8:48
  made some really shocking statements about executives that he didn't like, especially what he
• 8:54
  was feeling pretty pretty big for his bridges, and so that wouldn't shock me.
• 9:00
  But it might not just be an ego thing either. I mean,
• 9:03
  if you think about this from the standpoint of not only you're disparaging your bosses
• 9:07
  privately, but if this becomes public, it basically makes it impossible for Fox
• 9:11
  News Channel to be able to continue to discipline anybody, right. I mean,
• 9:16
  if their number one star is out there on record having said really horrible
• 9:20
  things about top executives and doesn't receive any major punishment, then you know,
• 9:26
  how do you function going forward? Of course, you could suspend him my
• 9:30
  guests, but he would probably quit if you did that, So maybe they
• 9:33
  just decided to fire him. I also think that this was not the only
• 9:37
  reason. I think there were a confluence of reasons. Whenever something this huge
• 9:41
  happens, there's usually some semblance of a perfect storm happening, and I do
• 9:46
  think that, you know, the situation with January sixth probably did not help.
• 9:50
  I think the fact that Tucker was now back on the Trump train probably
• 9:54
  didn't help, given what we think we know of where Rupert Murdock, the
• 9:58
  ninety two year old head of News Corp, wants to take Fox News Channel,
• 10:03
  especially in this critical time period. I don't buy into the theory that
• 10:07
  this was because he had RFK Junior on and started to be anti vaccine a
• 10:13
  little bit more than he was and talked about commercials and how what influenced they
• 10:16
  have over news content, because a lot of people have jumped on that because
• 10:20
  of the timing of it having having happened last week, and maybe that was
• 10:24
  the cause. But the part that I'm confused by with the scenario I was
• 10:28
  given is the timing. So I was also told that the New York Times
• 10:35
  got this story on Friday night, which was verified. Fox News Channel has
• 10:41
  basically told multiple outlets that they decided to fire Tucker Carlson on Friday night,
• 10:48
  and then they waited until Monday morning to tell him, and then all hell
• 10:52
  broke loose. Now I guess I understand the waiting over the weekend I'm not
• 10:58
  sure why they would do. I mean, why you wouldn't tell him on
• 11:01
  a Saturday or Sunday. Who knows. I mean, there's all sorts of
• 11:03
  possible reasons for the timing of when they told him. I'm more concerned about
• 11:07
  the timing of when they decided it because if this was really from discovery in
• 11:13
  the lawsuit which just got settled, presumably they would have had this knowledge before
• 11:20
  last Friday night. Now, but I don't know that for sure. Maybe
• 11:24
  maybe this was discovered because of the settlement itself. Who knows. I mean,
• 11:31
  there's all sorts of possibilities when you get into the regal the legal realm.
• 11:35
  But I am a little bit confused by the timing. So I just
• 11:39
  simply went by what I was told that made sense and then got verified by
• 11:43
  other sources. And as I said, I went on Dan Abrams show that
• 11:48
  night on News Nation. It was an interesting group of people that Dan had
• 11:54
  gotten together to talk about this subject. Megan Kelly, of course, used
• 11:58
  to be on Fox News Channel who in the last episode, I actually suggested
• 12:01
  somewhat facetiously because I know politically it's a long shot, but from a talent
• 12:05
  perspective, I think it would make a lot of sense. I had suggested
• 12:09
  that Megan Kelly should replace Tucker Carlson at Fox News Channel. I didn't get
• 12:13
  a chance to say that on the air because Dan ended her portion of the
• 12:18
  segment and then brought me and David Schuster, ironically enough on the show,
• 12:22
  because David is not only a friend of mine, but he has been a
• 12:26
  guest on this podcast before, so so it was you know, it's almost
• 12:31
  like a family reunion having everybody back to talk about this, and you know,
• 12:35
  the connections were everywhere because David Schuster had a connection to Tucker and I
• 12:41
  have somewhat of a connection to Tucker. Dan Abrams had a connection, very
• 12:43
  strong connection to Don Lemon, and we talked about both of those stories.
• 12:48
  You can find the clips on my Twitter page. And it was a pretty
• 12:52
  interesting show. But one of the things I did was I said, look,
• 12:56
  I don't understand why you guys are dismissing the Minion voting system's lawsuit,
• 13:01
  because Megan, Dan and David Schuster were all basically doing that. In fact,
• 13:07
  I think at one point, I think one of them said, it
• 13:09
  wasn't the lawsuit, It wasn't the lawsuit, and I said, well,
• 13:11
  hold on second. When you have an earthquake, which is what the almost
• 13:16
  eight hundred million dollar settlement in the Dominion voting system's lawsuit was, that was
• 13:22
  an earthquake, and then a couple of days later a major building suddenly crumbles
• 13:28
  to the ground without other explanation, I'm sorry, there's a correlation there.
• 13:33
  I mean, if the building in the area there was an earthquake, they'll
• 13:39
  tucker being the building and the earthquake being the settlement, then I'm sorry,
• 13:43
  at least indirectly, there has to be a correlation. It's way too much
• 13:48
  of a coincidence, especially without a viable alternative explanation, which I haven't seen
• 13:54
  one yet that makes total sense. So you know, that's what I said
• 14:00
  on the air, And then I proceeded to explain my sourcing and what my
• 14:03
  sourcing was telling me, and you saw the clip and was applauding what I
• 14:09
  had done, because I had basically nailed exactly what they very strongly knew to
• 14:13
  be the truth based upon what they had been told and what they knew and
• 14:18
  so and interestingly, they did the same thing on the Don Lemon story.
• 14:22
  I had to explain Hey, guys, I don't say why everyone's surprised by
• 14:24
  Don Lemon. If you've been listening to the death of journalists and four months
• 14:26
  ago, you would have known this was going to happen. This was not
• 14:30
  caused by any one particular event. This was just waiting for the right time.
• 14:33
  And there's even a theory. Now. I haven't been able to work
• 14:37
  out whether or not the timeline works as well as it actually sounds like it
• 14:41
  does, because again, I was doing the podcast at the time. But
• 14:45
  you know, Don Lemon did his show on Monday, which is really odd.
• 14:52
  I mean, I mean, I consider myself to be not just a
• 14:56
  media expert, but I'm an expert in media firings, having gone through any
• 15:00
  of them myself and knowing a lot of people who have gone through them.
• 15:03
  And you know, Don Lemon has been at CNN for seventeen years. He
• 15:07
  does his show Monday morning and then immediately gets fired without a meeting with management.
• 15:13
  It's just like boom gone. And he complained about that on Twitter,
• 15:16
  and then CNN put out a statement correcting him, which was pretty odd because
• 15:22
  I don't think they've ever corrected anything he mistated on the air. As quickly,
• 15:26
  as they did with regard to his misstatement on Twitter that he was not
• 15:30
  given the opportunity to meet with management when they fired him. But you could
• 15:33
  at least argue that, based upon those set of facts that CNN saw what
• 15:39
  was happening with Tucker Carlson decided to finally pull the trigger on Don Lemon,
• 15:43
  which they've been waiting to do for quite a long time, that this was,
• 15:46
  in theory, a really good series of events for them to do it
• 15:50
  again. I'm almost giving them too much credit that that's how it worked out,
• 15:54
  but if you look at the timeline, it is plausible. Tucker came
• 15:58
  first, and I don't know how long exactly it was, but it wasn't
• 16:02
  too long. But it was after that that Don Lemon, who had done
• 16:06
  his show on that Monday morning, also got fired. So I do think
• 16:11
  that there's got to be something within the dominion lawsuit discovery that is still currently
• 16:18
  redacted, which we may never know who knows that was really a primary trigger.
• 16:22
  I'm still confused about, Okay, well, why Friday, but there
• 16:26
  are possible explanations for that. I do think that there are a couple of
• 16:30
  things that participated in this perfect storm. Meg and Kelly made a really good
• 16:36
  point on Dan Abrams Show where she explained it, well, Tucker's show is
• 16:41
  very popular, it's not as profitable as, for instance, her show was
• 16:45
  because it was in a different era of cable news as well as a different
• 16:51
  era of Fox News Channel. The left has done a really really good job
• 16:56
  of putting pressure on the business model of right wing news outlets, specifically Fox
• 17:03
  News Channel. And this is critical. I talk all the time about the
• 17:07
  broken business model. Well, even Tucker's business model was precarious. The level
• 17:14
  of advertiser was really pretty pathetic. There were no you know, there's no
• 17:18
  Mercedes Bends or IBM or Microsoft or you know whatever, the big names that
• 17:26
  used to be associated with mainstream news advertising, and you know, through and
• 17:34
  back in the day. And and that means that you're generating less revenue for
• 17:41
  the audience share that you have. And so when Fox News Channel is making
• 17:45
  this decision, and a lot of it obviously is a financial decision, they
• 17:51
  go, well, we're making an X amount of money with Tucker. It's
• 17:53
  you know, it's a good amount of money, but it's not something we
• 17:56
  can't overcome. Hell, we just paid it over almost eight hundred million dollars
• 18:00
  settlement. We might have more settlements. They're gonna have to come down the
• 18:03
  pike because of all this mess, and you know, our brand is taking
• 18:07
  a hit. And I think there's another element to this, and this I
• 18:11
  did reference in episode fifty two. I think a lot of this is about
• 18:18
  ego on the part of management. And when you have a guy who is
• 18:22
  getting really big, maybe too big for his own bridges, management inherently gets
• 18:27
  very uncomfortable and very suspicious of that. There becomes a rivalry and because they
• 18:33
  believe they're in control, and in ninety nine percent of the situations, management
• 18:38
  is in complete and total control of you because the gig is too good,
• 18:42
  it's too lucrative, and there's so few of them that you're going to do
• 18:45
  what they want, unless you become a Tucker Carlson, in which case you
• 18:51
  then either feel like you have and you may actually have the freedom to do
• 18:56
  pretty much what you want. And that's a dangerous situation a much more,
• 19:00
  much lower level. I kind of felt like I was that in that situation
• 19:03
  in Louisville, Kentucky, and it ended up blowing up in my face because
• 19:07
  I completely overplayed my hand and did something stupid and ended up getting fired because
• 19:11
  I had I was. It was a complex situation like I'm sure Tuckers was,
• 19:15
  and again nowhere near to his level. But I think I've felt a
• 19:19
  similar situation here. And you know, back in that era, there wasn't
• 19:26
  the same kind of fear of stars. They still wanted stars, they just
• 19:30
  wanted controllable stars. I now actually think in the modern television era, and
• 19:34
  it sounds so counterintuitive, I believe they actually don't want stars. You know,
• 19:41
  I've talked about this before, the ESPN model. ESPN has openly said
• 19:47
  they don't want stars. You know, they'll they'll endorse Stephen A. Smith
• 19:51
  because he's black and it gives them all sorts of the ability to virtue signal
• 19:55
  and show they're not racist, and and he's entertaining I guess and people,
• 19:59
  I guess him. But other than that, they would much rather have,
• 20:03
  you know, a bunch of guys who are nameless, faceless and making a
• 20:07
  couple hundred grand a year, rather than a star who's making ten million or
• 20:11
  fifteen million or whatever it might be, who's very high maintenance. And they
• 20:15
  also just think from a financial standpoint, they it's better for them. I
• 20:21
  don't think about how many decent guys you can get for ten million as opposed
• 20:26
  to one really good guy you can get a woman that you can get for
• 20:30
  ten million. So they've done the math, and so this really fits in
• 20:33
  management's worldview. One they liked being in control and two they like paying lower
• 20:41
  salaries. And so I think that that ESPN model has seeped into cable news,
• 20:48
  and not entirely, but I mean, I've talked about this before at
• 20:51
  NBC. NBC has systematically, over the last decade gotten rid of every single
• 20:56
  white male big contract that they had in every single platform, whether it was
• 21:03
  news, sports, entertainment, even you know, even Johnny Miller and golf.
• 21:07
  I mean, I believe that's what happened to Matt Lower. I believe
• 21:10
  that's what happened to Bob Costas, al Michael's had at Brian Williams, Chris
• 21:15
  Matthews. I mean, the list goes of Jay Leno. I mean,
• 21:21
  the the the era of the Star. Counterintuitively, I believe it is very
• 21:26
  much in danger because the business model doesn't work and the management doesn't like it
• 21:33
  because they want to have you under their thumb. They want to control you,
• 21:37
  and so I think that was in the big picture. In the big
• 21:41
  picture, that's what allowed this issue of the of the discovery in the dominion
• 21:48
  voting System's lawsuit to effectively kill off Tucker Carlson. And as far as these
• 21:53
  conspiracy theories, I mean, everybody has one, and it's so typical because
• 21:57
  as I've said, Tucker himself became almost a conspiracy nut job the last few
• 22:03
  years, much to my aggravation, on almost everything, and he facilitated a
• 22:07
  lot of false conspiracy theories. And you know, the anti farm of people
• 22:14
  think that this was about the RFK Junior interview. The Trump people think this
• 22:18
  is because he was becoming very pro Trump. There might be some semblance of
• 22:22
  truth to that part of it. The anti war people think this is because
• 22:26
  he was very skeptical our involvement with Ukraine against Russia. I don't I don't
• 22:33
  buy any of that. I don't I don't really buy any of that being
• 22:37
  the primary reason, that's not the way these things really work. I know
• 22:41
  this is the way the right wing would like to believe it, and it'll
• 22:45
  probably help Tucker wherever he decides to go next, because most of the right
• 22:48
  wing now are in love with conspiracy theories, and now he's a walking conspiracy
• 22:55
  theory for no matter who you are, almost no matter what your conspiracy theory
• 22:59
  is, you can find it in Tucker Carlson's downfall at Fox News Channel.
• 23:04
  As far as how this is gonna play for Fox, even though I just
• 23:08
  outlined the theory that Fox has that stars don't matter, I think they miscalculated
• 23:15
  on this one because I do think that Tucker was a unique talent, and
• 23:18
  I do think that Tucker brought a unique audience. Now how much of it,
• 23:22
  I don't know. I mean, you know, it might be half
• 23:26
  a million a night, might be up to a million a night. Maybe
• 23:30
  they're drawn in simply because of Tucker Carlson. That's a pretty big chunk of
• 23:34
  change, especially in this very fragmented era of cable news, where you know,
• 23:38
  cable news is in trouble across the board, and fragmentation and cord cutting
• 23:45
  and all sorts of things are diminishing the audiences. So I think everybody loses
• 23:51
  here except Tucker's bank account. I think Tucker will probably end up making more
• 23:55
  money doing whatever he does next, whether it's a podcast or you know,
• 24:00
  a combination of a podcast and a YouTube show, kind of like like the
• 24:03
  Meghan Kelly or the I don't know, maybe closer to the Bench Shapiro model.
• 24:07
  I'm not sure, but I'm sure Tucker will do very very well for
• 24:11
  himself. And you know, in speaking of Tucker's talent, there may not
• 24:15
  have been a better exhibition of how talented he really is than the first show
• 24:22
  without him, because the first show without him was hosted by Brian Kilmead,
• 24:26
  who's a nice enough guy mostly associated with the Fox and Friends and a friend
• 24:33
  of Tucker Carlson. By the way, as a side note, I've never
• 24:36
  understood this concept of friends taking over for friends shows when they get fired.
• 24:41
  I mean, I just can't see myself ever doing that unless the circumstances were
• 24:47
  absolutely extraordinary. Just on principle, I don't think if I was really as
• 24:51
  good a friends with somebody who got fired as Brian Kilmead said that he is
• 24:55
  and always will be with Tucker Carlson, that I could ever do. That's
• 24:59
  fine, not to be disloyal and a sellout move, but kill Ned clearly
• 25:04
  didn't have a problem with it. Maybe Tucker didn't, but I would if
• 25:08
  I was Tucker, except for the fact that in a weird way, he
• 25:11
  did Tucker a massive favor because within thirty five seconds of taking over the show,
• 25:18
  it was obvious just how good Tucker Carlson really is because Brian Kilmeade could
• 25:22
  not bring it. Brian Kilmeade was no good. And I mean it's nothing
• 25:26
  against him, it's just really showed in a very stark fashion just how talented
• 25:32
  Tucker Carlson is and when you compare him to Brian Kilmead, there's really there's
• 25:37
  really no comparison whatsoever. And so in a weird way, I think it
• 25:42
  probably did cut Tucker Carlson some favors. As far as the left wing reaction
• 25:48
  to this, it was predictable and yet disgusting. The view. The women
• 25:53
  of the View literally almost literally had an orgasm their their audience wildly and childishly
• 26:03
  over the firing of Tucker Carlson, as if this had been the killing of
• 26:07
  osamavan Laden or something. That was really kind of the nature of the response.
• 26:11
  There. Aoc the female congresswoman from the New York area who is a
• 26:18
  liberal darling who had just a couple of days before this happened, effectively called
• 26:25
  for the firing of Tucker Carlson, claiming that he was inciting violence, which
• 26:29
  is not true. And this inciting violence standard is incredibly dangerous, incredibly dangerous.
• 26:37
  That's what liberals. Liberals are trying to do to the free speech in
• 26:40
  the First Amendment. If they can create that's what hate speech was always all
• 26:44
  about, which which is why I was so adamantly a m so adamly opposed
• 26:48
  to any sort of hate speech laws or restrictions or punishments or what have you,
• 26:55
  because what they want to do is they want to create and in citing
• 27:00
  violence exception to the First Amendment or the free speech because you can put almost
• 27:07
  anything under that umbrella. I mean, that is that is an evil camel's
• 27:11
  nose under the tent right there, inciting violence, I mean just by angering
• 27:18
  people, right you could argue that you're inciting violence. And you know,
• 27:22
  if so, if the left is successful in doing that, I mean,
• 27:26
  stick a fork in all of us. And that's what AOC was doing in
• 27:29
  that original statement, which the media just not I mean, this was you
• 27:33
  know, a pretty major interview, and the media just nodded and never made
• 27:37
  a big issue out of it, because, after all, you know,
• 27:40
  she's a liberal darling. She's cute and female, and you know, probably
• 27:45
  doesn't know any better, I guess in their minds. And uh, and
• 27:48
  you know the target was proper it's Tucker Carlson. So let we'll just let
• 27:53
  it go. We'll allow this one, even though it's it's an incredibly dangerous
• 27:57
  concept. Well after the firing, she very joyfully put out her own video
• 28:03
  where she basically took a victory lap and then declared that deep platforming is good.
• 28:08
  So effectively, you know, this was a victory no matter how it
• 28:12
  was done. We got the Tucker Carlson deep platforms, so it's a win,
• 28:18
  and that this is going to be the way they do things. They
• 28:21
  are systematically going to go after whoever they think is that they think is a
• 28:23
  threat, and they're going to deep platform them in any way they possibly can.
• 28:29
  It doesn't matter what the facts are, it doesn't matter what the rules
• 28:32
  really are, and so whether real or just perceived or imaginary, the effect
• 28:38
  here is that Tucker Carlson's demise is seen as a victory on the left for
• 28:44
  the left and for the left wing tactics, which is not a good thing
• 28:48
  at all. Now, as far as the right wing and how it's going
• 28:52
  to impact politically, especially the Republican nominating process. I've gone back and forth
• 28:57
  on this, you know. My first reaction in the last episode of the
• 29:02
  podcast was, well, gee, you know, despite my meager efforts to
• 29:07
  try to appeal to Tucker's conscience and bring him back to earth, because I
• 29:11
  had had some semblance of hope that he would be the guy to try to
• 29:15
  bring Trump down because I know how he really feels about him. Everybody does
• 29:19
  now, and I know that he's a really smart guy and he seems to
• 29:22
  have a conscience. Despite my meager efforts to do that via text and a
• 29:26
  previous appearanced on News Nation, didn't appear to do any good when it came
• 29:32
  to how much he was helping Donald Trump's cause. And so I thought,
• 29:37
  okay, well, if he's not replaced by a Trumper, which you probably
• 29:40
  won't be, then in theory, that's a net positive, right, And
• 29:45
  I guess it. I still think that. I mean, it's it's still
• 29:48
  good if you're in my camp and you don't want Trump to be the nominee
• 29:52
  that you know, Tucker leaving probably means that on the whole, at least
• 29:56
  in prime time Fox News general may become a little less pro Trump. I
• 30:02
  think that's a fair assessment. You never know, but that seems to be
• 30:06
  the most logical scenario. By the way, the signal that Tucker getting fired
• 30:11
  sends through the rest of the staff at Fox News Channel is incredibly powerful and
• 30:18
  maybe may have been a big reason why the management did this, because that's
• 30:22
  where they really reap the rewards. You want to talk about discipline. They
• 30:26
  will have discipline now going forward for an extended period of time because everyone's going
• 30:30
  to be scared out of their minds because if Tucker Carlson isn't safe, then
• 30:33
  they know they're not safe either. Well, one of the messages in theory
• 30:37
  is don't be too trumpy. Now you'll be able to tell from Sean Hannity,
• 30:42
  who's the trumpiest of all of them, whether or not that message really
• 30:47
  has any residence because he's now the biggest star, at least name wise,
• 30:51
  on the network. So I still think that there's the possibility that on the
• 30:55
  margins, it's a positive for people like me who would like to see this
• 31:00
  st Rohn de Sandras be the nominee and not Donald Trump. However, and
• 31:03
  I said this on Dan Abrams News Nation show. As my thinking evolved over
• 31:07
  the day, I'm still I am still thinking about, Okay, what's the
• 31:12
  scenario where Trump actually gets beaten. Not that we move the ball, you
• 31:18
  know, two or three yards down the field, because Tucker is replaced by
• 31:21
  a less trumpy and less popular host. You know, that's okay. That
• 31:26
  might get you at best a first down, but that doesn't get you into
• 31:30
  the end zone. The only way you get into the end zone here is
• 31:33
  if Trump gets taken out. And let's face it, that is going to
• 31:37
  be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. And one of the few scenarios that
• 31:45
  I could envision prior to Tucker getting fired, which is again why I tried
• 31:48
  to guilt him and try to appeal to his conscience over the long haul here,
• 31:52
  one of the few scenarios that I can envision was Tucker turns on him,
• 31:59
  because Tucker had the popularity and the street cred within MAGA world and the
• 32:05
  credibility in general to be able to do that, and I think he's the
• 32:09
  only one that would have the theoretical conscience to do it. And now that's
• 32:15
  gone, that scenario is not gonna happen now, so it almost doesn't matter
• 32:19
  how much Fox News Channel goes against Trump unless it's Hannity, which is never
• 32:24
  gonna happen. That was never even a thought in my mind that it could
• 32:30
  be Handity or even Laura Ingram that leads the charge against Trump. That's not
• 32:35
  gonna happen. I could at least envision it with Tucker Carlson, but now
• 32:39
  that's gone, that's ain't gonna happen, And so I don't I don't know.
• 32:45
  It's really one of those situations where as I think about these very unlikely
• 32:52
  scenarios, these lightning strikes, Okay, where could lightning strike? Tucker turning
• 32:57
  on Trump could have been a lightning strike. It was at least somewhat reasonable
• 33:00
  to think that was a plausible scenario. Now that's gone, and you know,
• 33:07
  so, you know, does it maybe help Trump not blow the doors
• 33:12
  off the primary like he could if Fox News Channel is no longer as in
• 33:15
  his corner. Yeah, But the reality is the hardcore Trumpers are now so
• 33:22
  suspicious of Fox News in general other than Hannity and maybe Laura Ingram, that
• 33:28
  whatever Fox does is going to have very limited impact on anything close to the
• 33:34
  Trump cult, and so you know, in order to make a real inroad
• 33:37
  in the Trump coult, you'd have to have somebody like a Tucker Carlson make
• 33:43
  a big, substantive and sustained turn or flip on Trump. And now that
• 33:50
  can happen, at least not on Fox News Channel, and I doubt it
• 33:53
  will ever happen outside of Fox News Channel because frankly, Tucker's incentive structure is
• 34:00
  is more is to go more trumpy now than he even was on Fox News
• 34:04
  Channel. So by overall, I think this is a net loss. It's
• 34:09
  one of those Okay, maybe you win a battle, but you're going to
• 34:13
  probably end up losing the war, or you're more likely to lose the war
• 34:16
  because Douger Carlson is gone. If you're in my camp when it comes to
• 34:20
  what you're hoping for with regard to the Republican nominating process in twenty twenty four.
• 34:24
  Now, as far as that battle between Trump and De Santis, there
• 34:29
  has been a couple of developments that are theoretically pretty major, and the biggest
• 34:35
  one is that Donald Trump is threatening get this, the alpha male, the
• 34:40
  maga superhero, Donald Trump, who's afraid of no one takes on the deep
• 34:46
  state. He scares the hell out of liberals. Right, He's got balls
• 34:52
  down to his knees. Donald Trump that Donald Trump is now threatening to not
• 34:59
  participate in the presidential debates. The presidential debates, mind you, that have
• 35:05
  been organized by the person he put in charge of the Republican Party, that's
• 35:12
  right, and who survived a challenge to her position largely because of Donald Trump.
• 35:20
  And here's what Donald Trump posted on truth Social that got everybody talking about
• 35:24
  this issue of whether or not he's going to bail on the debates. And
• 35:30
  I don't think I'm exaggerating this, folks, but you can interpret this whatever
• 35:32
  way you want. Trump wrote, I see that everyone is talking about the
• 35:37
  Republican debates, but nobody got my approval or the approval of the Trump campaign
• 35:44
  before announcing them. When you're leading by seemingly insurmountable numbers, and you have
• 35:51
  hostile networks with angry Trump and MAGA hating anchors asking the quote unquote questions,
• 36:00
  why subject yourself to being libeled and abused? Also, the second debate is
• 36:07
  being held at the Reagan Library, the Ronald Reagan Library, very close to
• 36:14
  where I lived, by the way, been there many many times. The
• 36:16
  second debate is being held at the Reagan Library, the chairman of which is
• 36:21
  amazingly Fred Ryan, publisher of the Washington Post. N Oh, capital letters,
• 36:28
  exclamation point No. Now that certainly sounds like he's saying he ain't coming,
• 36:35
  at least to that second debate at the Reagan Library. Let me address
• 36:39
  this first. I have to say I was surprised, if not shocked,
• 36:45
  when I looked it up, that Trump is telling the truth about the chairman
• 36:50
  of the board at the Reagan Library being Fred Ryan, who also happens to
• 36:53
  be the publisher and CEO of the Washington Post. That's unfathomable to me,
• 37:00
  humper of levels, but it's actually true. However, Fred Ryan is no
• 37:06
  Liberal. He worked for Reagan over an extended period of time in numerous positions.
• 37:12
  It's not as if this is some sort of the Reagan Library it's gonna
• 37:16
  be waiting out trying to sabotage your ambush Donald Trump at this debate, or
• 37:22
  more importantly, that Fred Ryan, the chairman of the board at the Reagan
• 37:27
  Library, is gonna have any influence whatsoever over the questions. The questions will
• 37:31
  be asked by whatever media members are hosting the debates. So's it's a fantasy,
• 37:38
  and it's absurd, and it's obviously contrived on Trump's part, because he's
• 37:42
  trying to look for a way, a plausible way to dodge this debate for
• 37:46
  some reason, probably fear of Rond De Santis, and and he's using Fred
• 37:52
  Ryan to do it. Now, I'm amazed that the publisher of the Washington
• 37:55
  Post is a guy who was so close to Reagan. But okay, but
• 38:00
  that has nothing to do with the debates. Nothing. And to me,
• 38:04
  it's it's very clearly an effort by Trump to contrive an excuse. But there's
• 38:10
  other elements of this statement that are really worth pointing out. One of them
• 38:15
  is, Okay, first of all, the media outlets who are doing Republican
• 38:21
  debates are generally not liberal outlets. They're generally conservative outlets. And so this
• 38:28
  idea that there'd be Trump or Maga hating anchors asking the questions is a bit
• 38:34
  far fetched. But more importantly than that, okay, let's even just accept
• 38:37
  this bizarre premise that he might get asked some difficult questions at a debate.
• 38:42
  Imagine that, because that's what a debate is supposed to be right. You're
• 38:45
  supposed to You're supposed to be able to handle all sorts of questions that you're
• 38:50
  gonna get in the general election debate against Joe Biden. So what does Trump
• 38:54
  think the level of questionings going to be once he goes up against Joe Biden.
• 39:00
  Shouldn't we at least be able to see if he can handle that?
• 39:01
  Shouldn't he at least be practicing? I mean, if if he's so convinced
• 39:06
  he's going to be the nominee with his insurmountable lead, as he describes it,
• 39:10
  so wouldn't he want to be able to have a spring training at least
• 39:15
  before the real season begins against Joe Biden if he really cares about winning and
• 39:22
  he cares about making America great again. No, he doesn't care about any
• 39:27
  of that. He doesn't. He doesn't want to practice, He doesn't want
• 39:30
  to subject himself to any sort of potentially embarrassing situation. And he really apparently
• 39:36
  doesn't want to debate Ron de Santis because who's who is he afraid of?
• 39:39
  Here? He's not really He's not really afraid of Fred Ryan. He's not
• 39:45
  really afraid of the Reagan Library. He's not even really afraid of of these
• 39:50
  anchors who are not going to be extreme liberals who will be asking the questions
• 39:53
  at these debates. He's not afraid of Mike Pence. Oh maybe he should
• 39:58
  be. I can see maybe Pence being able to, you know, strike
• 40:02
  a blow against Trump if if everything went perfectly well, But he's so Christian
• 40:07
  I doubt that he would ever ever even think to do that. He's been
• 40:10
  so afraid of Trump for the last five or six seven years that I doubt
• 40:15
  it's even in his blood. We've already said v vague. Ramaswami is basically
• 40:20
  his bodyguard. Nicky Haley worked for him as the UN ambassador. I mean
• 40:25
  who else, I mean, Larry Elder, if he gets on the stage,
• 40:29
  is he going to go after Trump? No? I mean the only
• 40:32
  person that of any stature at all that might even theoretically go after him is
• 40:37
  Rhonda Santis. So let's be clear. This is keeping with everything else Trump
• 40:43
  has been doing. Everything he's been doing is about exposing his own fear of
• 40:47
  Rhonda Santis. I mean it is fear clearly. I mean, you know,
• 40:52
  I posited the theory in episode fifty two that he's a mob boss he's
• 40:59
  going after Rhonda Santis is a mob boss trying to teach a deputy who crossed
• 41:04
  him a lesson. I still think there's part of that going on here,
• 41:07
  But this is going too far. This is really into the realm of He's
• 41:12
  obviously afraid, and I don't know that he's going to do the debates now.
• 41:17
  He's given himself a lot of leeway here to step back from this,
• 41:22
  and I have to say, even though I am somebody who has a very
• 41:25
  dim, cynical, pessimistic view of the Republican voting populace and the Republican media
• 41:31
  and how things are all gonna likely turn out, even I have to say
• 41:37
  this is dangerous territory for Trump. This really is now. If his lead
• 41:44
  is as it currently is, and it seems to be shifting back to about
• 41:49
  twenty twenty five percent nationally over RHND to Sandis, there's some polls that are
• 41:53
  less than that, there's some that are more than that. It seems to
• 41:57
  be fading from where it was just actor the indictment, where it was up
• 42:01
  to thirty thirty five almost forty points. If it's still there when we get
• 42:07
  to debate time, he might have the leverage to say, you know what
• 42:12
  I'm you know, Joe Biden is not doing any debates. I'm not going
• 42:15
  to do any debates either. Why should I give the other side any ammo?
• 42:19
  And you know, good luck to you guys. He might be able
• 42:21
  to get away with that, now, I do think it would hurt him
• 42:23
  because his brand is all about being the tough guy, the alpha male,
• 42:31
  and you know, I while it would diminish the audience greatly, if they
• 42:37
  went on with the debate, there would still be a lot of people that
• 42:39
  would watch, and he would get tortured for not showing up at a debate
• 42:46
  with a with a real significant field of major candidates. He would get tortured.
• 42:52
  And by the way, Fox News is going to be airing at least
• 42:57
  a couple of these debates. They're not going to be happy about this,
• 43:00
  and they would lead the torturing of him because it's going to hurt them and
• 43:04
  take away what they're expecting to be major events on their calendar. So,
• 43:09
  while I think he could get away with it, it would look really weak,
• 43:15
  very much against his brand. It would be dangerous because if in fact,
• 43:22
  after that, let's say he decided to bail on the debates, right,
• 43:27
  and then the reaction was negative and DeSantis started to make up ground,
• 43:35
  Then what does he do this? Trump is terrible at playing chess, right,
• 43:38
  because if that becomes the narrative, if he stays out of the future
• 43:45
  debates, further debates, then that slide's probably going to continue. If he
• 43:51
  comes back to the debates, then he looks really weak because then because then
• 43:55
  he'll basically be admitting that he shouldn't have avoided the debates again with so again,
• 44:00
  Look, Trump has been able to navigate things that no one ever thought
• 44:04
  he would navigate before, you know, the Access Hollywood tape being the most
• 44:07
  prominent example. But I just think this would be difficult. I don't think
• 44:10
  his lead is insurmountable enough where he can pull the Joe Biden where he's just
• 44:15
  not gonna be, you know, not going to debate at all, and
• 44:21
  we'll see. I mean, it's I just find it fascinating that he's basically
• 44:24
  willing to admit that he's afraid to debate Ronda Santis. But of course,
• 44:29
  ninety nine percent at least of his cult has already rationalized it. Can you
• 44:32
  imagine how the Trump cult would react if Ronda Santis even gave any indication whatsoever
• 44:43
  that he might not want to debate Donald Trump, Oh my god, it
• 44:47
  would be a complete meltdown. There would be dunking on de Santis all day
• 44:53
  long on social media. His candidacy would be declared dead. He's a cuck,
• 44:58
  he's a whimp, he's a he can't hang with Trump. Meanwhile,
• 45:02
  Trump just gets a pass because oh Trump's right, Oh yeah, right,
• 45:06
  what do you mean He's right right about what being afraid of debating rohnd de
• 45:10
  saandas he might be right about it, I guess that's about it now as
• 45:14
  far as as Joe Biden is concerned. Oh oh, women, I forgot
• 45:19
  if I can't forget this part because and it's not totally substantiated yet, but
• 45:22
  it's I think above a rumor keeping in line with this fear of Rhn de
• 45:29
  Santas and Trump really acting almost desperate. There is a report. Again,
• 45:34
  it's I would say, it's between a rumor and a report that Trump is
• 45:37
  going to actively try to sabotage the effort to change Florida law so that Rohn
• 45:45
  de Santas can clearly run for president as it currently stands, the lawn.
• 45:51
  Florida is a bit ambiguous as to whether or not a sitting governor, for
• 45:54
  instance, could run for president without resigning as governor of the state. There
• 46:01
  is a plan at the end of the legislative session to fix that, to
• 46:07
  get rid of the ambiguity and to make it clear that DeSantis or anybody else
• 46:12
  in a similar position could run for the office of president. Well, there
• 46:17
  is a story out there that Trump is going to go to Tallahassee and lobby
• 46:23
  Can you imagine this talk about fear. I mean, it's just amazing that
• 46:27
  Trump's going to get away with this as given his persona and his brand as
• 46:31
  the alpha male, that He's going to go lobby Florida legislators to try to
• 46:37
  get them to not pass this law so that at the very least he'll be
• 46:44
  able to claim that rohnd de Santis. Well, first of all, it
• 46:47
  would make Sanders look weak because he couldn't even get the approval of his own
• 46:52
  legislature to pass this law. But also he would at least then be able
• 46:57
  to argue that that DeSantis was somehow breaking the law. Should the Santists eventually
• 47:02
  decide to finally officially get into the race. I mean, this is just
• 47:06
  pathetic, This is sad, this is desperate kind of stuff. And if
• 47:13
  Trump was not so far ahead in the polls, I gotta believe this is
• 47:16
  the kind of stuff that would even erode some of Trump's core support, but
• 47:22
  because it would be seen as a sign of abject weakness, but because he's
• 47:27
  so far ahead in the polls, it's not seen that way by the Trump
• 47:31
  supporter. They see this again as him exerting his great power and his alpha
• 47:37
  male status somehow by preventing the only guy with a chance to beat him from
• 47:43
  theoretically being able to run. And again, the way I have read that
• 47:47
  law, it's very ambiguous and would not be definitive at all preventing the Santists
• 47:54
  from running. But this was an attempt, or is an attempt to just
• 47:58
  to alleviate that CanCERN whatsoever. And Trump is apparently again I'm not confident that
• 48:04
  this is one hundred percent true, but this is way above the rumor level.
• 48:07
  Trump is apparently trying to sabotage that effort, which is just astonishing,
• 48:13
  and yet it's so so Trump in every way possible. Now, as far
• 48:16
  as Biden, Joe Biden officially announced his candidacy as was expected. Imagine this,
• 48:22
  folks, Imagine being eighty years old, being president United States and being
• 48:27
  allowed to by the media announce your plan for reelection, your campaign for reelection.
• 48:34
  Not live, not a press conference, not even by doing a tape
• 48:39
  of you on camera speaking to the American people. No, in a very
• 48:47
  edited, you know, a couple of minute video that you post online where
• 48:54
  basically what you say and this is not that much of an exaggeration, heavily
• 49:00
  produced, you know, very much distorted in my view, you know,
• 49:06
  perception of reality that got created on behalf of Biden's reelection campaign was basically freedom
• 49:15
  lies, democracy lies, freedom lies, democracy lies, some more lies,
• 49:22
  lies, lies, lies, lies, lies. It was like Simon and
• 49:25
  Garfuncle, you know, li la la la la la lie. I mean,
• 49:29
  that was basically what Joe Biden and his campaign team did here. And
• 49:32
  the idea that, first of all, and Cavin Newson does the same thing,
• 49:37
  The idea that they somehow think that they can be the Freedom Party after
• 49:42
  what happened during COVID is just mind blowing to the nth degree, and the
• 49:46
  media lets them get away with it. How I have no idea. But
• 49:51
  I don't even know if this actually works with an average American, but my
• 49:54
  guess is it probably does because we're that dumb, that uneducated in the media
• 50:00
  is just allowing this to go on. I mean, imagine being able to
• 50:04
  do that, to just lie with impunity and fear no consequences because the news
• 50:10
  media is completely and totally on your side and unwilling to provide any scrutiny at
• 50:15
  all for what you do, even with pathetic approval ratings on both and with
• 50:22
  almost at least, depending on your poll, seventy percent of the American people
• 50:27
  not wanting you to run for reelection. You would think that gives the news
• 50:31
  media plenty of space, plenty of room to go. Hey, wait a
• 50:35
  minute, well this announcement, it's got some problems. I mean it shouldn't
• 50:39
  he be answering some questions? Shouldn't he do this lie? Shouldn't we at
• 50:43
  least see him on tape for more than a couple of seconds at a time.
• 50:46
  And what about all this stuff he was talking about freedom and all these
• 50:50
  lies he told about what was going on on the Republican side and what's happening
• 50:53
  in America. I mean, none of that none of that. And this
• 50:57
  is a guy with an eleven approval His approval ratings are almost identical to Donald
• 51:05
  Trump's at this point heading into his reelection campaign. Of course, COVID then
• 51:12
  blew everything apart there. But you know, the only thing keeping Trump's candidacy,
• 51:16
  not the only thing. The two things that are keeping Trump's candidacy afloat
• 51:20
  or won the cult, and two that Joe Biden appears to be so weak
• 51:23
  that the Trump people have convinced themselves that he'll be able to beat them,
• 51:28
  even though the polls continually show that the santist does better in all the key
• 51:31
  states against Biden than Trump does against Biden. And you know, I've said
• 51:37
  many times, but I want to repeat it in this particular episode because someone
• 51:42
  else said exactly the same thing, that what's going to occur here is if
• 51:45
  Biden gets re elected in twenty twenty seven, He's going to resign. The
• 51:51
  news media will cheer him. They will say this is a great act of
• 51:54
  courage and sacrifice for the nation that this eighty two eighty three year old man
• 52:00
  and has decided that for the best of the nation he is going to resign,
• 52:04
  and that we are going to have our first female president, a woman
• 52:06
  of color, Kamala Harris, and that if he does it properly in early
• 52:10
  twenty twenty seven, this will allow Kamala Harris to run for two terms after
• 52:15
  this and run in twenty twenty eight as an incumbent and historic president, which
• 52:22
  is a massive advantage, especially with the shifting demographics and the nature of our
• 52:27
  news media. And I have gotten so much scorn from people on the right
• 52:30
  who think that I am crazy, crazy for positing this theory, which to
• 52:35
  me is the most obvious thing in the world that this is going to happen.
• 52:38
  Well. Tulsi Gabberd, the former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who now sounds
• 52:46
  more conservative than Donald Trump a lot of times and way smarter than Donald Trump.
• 52:52
  She was on Sean Hannity's show and she said, word for word basically
• 52:58
  what I just told you. My ears perked up. I'm like, oh
• 53:00
  wow, somebody's finally getting this, and I'm telling you Sean Hannity acted as
• 53:06
  if he had never thought this through before. Now, normally I would say,
• 53:10
  well, he's just acting, you know, normal cable news host.
• 53:14
  He's he's just acting surprised for the show Hannity, is this stupid? And
• 53:19
  I know this from my own personal experience with Hannity, that he probably never
• 53:22
  thought about this, which is just extraordinary, because again it's not just obvious,
• 53:28
  it's incredibly important. And I doubt very seriously that the news meet he
• 53:32
  has ever gonna get a solid answer on what the hell is likely to happen
• 53:38
  with regard to Harris taking over if Biden wins, Although there was an effort
• 53:45
  made with regard to asking that question of the White House Press Secretary Karine Jean
• 53:51
  Pierre. She's the idiot who has her job because she happens to be a
• 53:54
  black female who is a lesbian, and she was asked whether or not basically
• 54:01
  that Biden was going to serve his full second term if he wins, and
• 54:07
  her response was extraordinary. She basically admits, she basically lets the cat out
• 54:15
  of the bag, which again couldn't be more obvious. It's in everyone's self
• 54:20
  interest on the left to do this, that he's probably not going to serve
• 54:24
  his full second term. And here's what that exchange sounded like in the White
• 54:30
  House press room plan to serve all eight years. I'm I'm just not going
• 54:37
  to get ahead of the president. That's something for him to decide. I'm
• 54:40
  just not going to get ahead of it. And we're there's a twenty twenty
• 54:43
  four campaign. Anything related to that, I would refer you to that.
• 54:47
  Now, that's extraordinary, that's extraordinary. I think it was incompetence on her
• 54:52
  part, but oftentimes on competence is what causes the truth to come out by
• 54:54
  accid you say the silent part out loud and then hware piously. Not during
• 55:00
  the press briefing, but later she went on Twitter and she, I guess,
• 55:06
  in her mind clarified things, and she made it clear that Joe Biden
• 55:09
  will, in fact, if he wins, serve his full second term.
• 55:15
  Of course, that's just laughable. It's laughable because you already said what the
• 55:19
  truth was when it mattered. But more importantly than that, we no longer
• 55:23
  live in a world where what anybody says matters at all. Certainly a tweet
• 55:30
  from the White House Press Secretary in April twenty twenty three is not going to
• 55:36
  have any impact at all on what happens in twenty twenty seven. In other
• 55:40
  words, they're in no way, shape or form gonna fear Joe Biden resigning
• 55:45
  so that Kamala Harris becomes president in twenty twenty seven because Karen Jean Pierre tweeted
• 55:52
  that he would serve out his term you know, four years earlier. That's
• 55:55
  just not gonna matter. It wouldn't even matter for a Republican in might a
• 56:00
  little bit to the mainstream news media, but it's certainly not going to matter
• 56:04
  with regard to a Democrat, and especially not when the results of his resignation
• 56:07
  would mean the first female president and a woman of color. The media is
• 56:14
  going to orgasm over that level of history. That's what they live for.
• 56:20
  And so all Biden's going to have to do is say, you know,
• 56:23
  I don't think I'm as with it as I used to be, and you
• 56:27
  know, I could finish, but I think Kamala is in better shape to
• 56:30
  do this than I am, and I think it's time that I go and
• 56:32
  everyone will applaud him. That's what the people in the right are not understanding.
• 56:38
  This is it's so obvious. I can't even believe I have to explain
• 56:42
  it. And I was glad that Tulsey Gabbard explained it to Sharle Hannity because
• 56:46
  if the right doesn't understand how what's going to go down here, then I
• 56:52
  don't know how independent voters are going to be able to figure it out for
• 56:55
  themselves, because this is not going to be a major part of the twenty
• 56:59
  twenty four campaign. In my opinion, the mainstream news media is not going
• 57:02
  to be asking in a significant way, is Kamala? Are we really voting
• 57:07
  for Kamala Harris? Here? They should be, but I'll be shocked if
• 57:10
  they actually do so. Doctor Fauci reared his ugly head again. He just
• 57:15
  can't keep away from the attention. He was the subject of a feature in
• 57:20
  the New York Times called doctor Faucci looks back and says, quote, something
• 57:27
  clearly went wrong? You think so? That was the title of the piece.
• 57:35
  You know, something clearly went wrong, as doctor Fauci looks back.
• 57:38
  Now. There were a couple of money quotes from this piece, which of
• 57:42
  course was very glowing towards doctor Fauci, is always the case when everything anything
• 57:46
  from the left is done on doctor Fauci. But I want to share two
• 57:52
  of them with you. There were two that got the most attention. One
• 57:57
  was where Fauci sounds a lot like up going after the Santis frankly with regard
• 58:01
  to his hypocrisy and not being able to pick a lane on whether or not
• 58:06
  we shut down, we shut down too hard or not hard enough, or
• 58:08
  whether he had anything to actually do with the shutdowns, and Fauci was quoted
• 58:15
  as saying, show me a school that I shut down, and show me
• 58:20
  a factory that I shut down. Never, I never did. I gave
• 58:25
  a public health recommendation that echoed the CDC's recommendation, and people made a decision
• 58:32
  based on that. Holy cop out batman. That is total bullcrap. That
• 58:42
  is evil bullcrap right there. Because you have to understand the context of the
• 58:46
  time. One, We're in a panic, an unprecedented situation, people looking
• 58:52
  for leadership, and Donald Trump is giving him the podium in front of the
• 58:57
  President of the United States, in front of massive live audiences on every single
• 59:02
  network, local and national on a daily basis. He is effectively the president
• 59:08
  of the goddamn United States. Faucis thanks to Trump crapping the bed and essentially
• 59:15
  giving up his position, he abdicated his position to doctor Fauci, and Fauci
• 59:22
  when he made a declaration, it had essentially the impact of law in fact,
• 59:28
  it had far more impact than anything Trump said because the media acted like
• 59:32
  it was from the voice of God. This is a guy who called himself
• 59:37
  I am science, I am the science. That's a direct quote from doctor
• 59:43
  Fauci. So this is just total revisionist history. This is evil, this
• 59:47
  is gaslighting in the extreme. It was absolutely because of doctor Fauci. And
• 59:53
  the proof of that is had he given other recommendations opposite recommendation, especially on
• 1:00:00
  school openings or closings, that is what would have happened, because that's the
• 1:00:05
  way the game works, especially when it comes to political cover. Because if
• 1:00:09
  doctor Fauci had said the schools need to be opened, or sports need to
• 1:00:13
  be played, or you know, outside events are fine, then anyone that
• 1:00:16
  had the inclination locally or on a state level to do that would have had
• 1:00:21
  the political cover to do so. But instead they had no political cover because
• 1:00:24
  the first thing that was going to happen to them was that the local media
• 1:00:29
  or the regional media, the statewide media, whatever, was going to pull
• 1:00:31
  out clips of doctor Fauci saying that what this governor or this local county person
• 1:00:38
  was doing was wrong. They were going against doctor Fauci, which makes it
• 1:00:44
  politically untenable in all except for the most read of areas, which is why
• 1:00:49
  South Dakota could get away with it. Why Brian Kemp and Georgia deserves so
• 1:00:52
  much credit, why Ronda Sanders deserves so much credit for doing what they did
• 1:00:58
  to fight against Fauci when Trump made it much more difficult than it needed to
• 1:01:01
  be, because Trump is not just backing Fauci, he's trashing Georgia, he's
• 1:01:06
  trashing Sweden, and politically that made it far more difficult. So this was
• 1:01:12
  all about what Fauci was doing, and it's an absolute abomination that he's now
• 1:01:17
  claiming, Oh, I didn't really I didn't really do it. At the
• 1:01:21
  same time, the implication in the New York Times pieces, you know what
• 1:01:24
  really went wrong was we didn't shut down hard enough. So I didn't cause
• 1:01:30
  the shutdowns because I don't want to take any credit or getting glamed for those,
• 1:01:34
  But we really should have shut down harder. That's what went wrong.
• 1:01:37
  That's why we really didn't. We did so terribly with regard to our data
• 1:01:40
  in comparison to the rest of the world. No, we did so terribly
• 1:01:45
  with regard to our data, because one we are a fat nation. We
• 1:01:50
  have a lot of smokers, we have a lot of old people, and
• 1:01:52
  we have a lot of obesity. Plus our definition of death in most of
• 1:01:57
  the country was anybody who died of anything remotely related to COVID was COVID was
• 1:02:00
  counted as a COVID death. So I think there was an accounting element of
• 1:02:04
  this as well. And plus we were testing in an insane amount, so
• 1:02:10
  we caught almost everybody who died of COVID and called it a COVID death.
• 1:02:15
  It was not because we didn't shut down hard enough. And the data of
• 1:02:20
  proving that is extraordinary. I mean, just look at the excess death or
• 1:02:24
  deaths or lack thereof in Sweden over the three year period. Look how Florida
• 1:02:29
  did, Look how Georgia did, Look how South Dakota did. There is
• 1:02:30
  no indication whatsoever that the places that shut down harder over a three year period
• 1:02:36
  of time did any better than they would have in any other circumstance. These
• 1:02:40
  lockdowns did very, very little, and they caused massive, massive collateral damage,
• 1:02:45
  especially to our kids, which is obviously part of why I feel so
• 1:02:50
  passionately about this, because I saw two kids, my kids, my daughters,
• 1:02:52
  lose two years of the prime childhood, and maybe especially for my older
• 1:02:59
  daughter, had her development probably impacted forever academically because of the timing of this
• 1:03:06
  and the fact that she has a special need, and Faucci was a big
• 1:03:09
  part of that. And then there's the issue of masks, which I've talked
• 1:03:13
  about many, many times, and specifically with regard to Fauci, and the
• 1:03:16
  fact that he has claimed that the only thing he ever got wrong was the
• 1:03:20
  only thing he really got right, which was at the beginning of the pandemic
• 1:03:22
  mocking masks, saying they don't really work, they're not really needed. And
• 1:03:25
  then he's flipped when he realized that his his the liberal fan base wanted masks,
• 1:03:30
  which he never thought was possible, and then he decided the masks where
• 1:03:34
  the be all end all Well. Interestingly, in this New York Times profile,
• 1:03:37
  he says, quote from a broad public health standpoint, at the population
• 1:03:44
  level, whatever the hell that means, masks work at the margins maybe ten
• 1:03:50
  percent. Une What I think he's trying to say there is, you know,
• 1:03:55
  maybe individually, you know, they don't work very much. But if
• 1:04:00
  a population is a is using masks, then that population will maybe have ten
• 1:04:09
  percent less transmission. But even that ten percent number, I'm not sure what
• 1:04:13
  that means. Does that mean that they're overall numbers for that population will be
• 1:04:17
  ten percent less than they would be without the masks. Does it mean you
• 1:04:20
  have a ten percent as each individual of a ten percent less chance of getting
• 1:04:26
  COVID if you're wearing it. I don't even know what the hell that means.
• 1:04:28
  I also don't agree with it. I've never seen any data that indicates,
• 1:04:31
  either at the population level or the individual level, or any level,
• 1:04:34
  that masks help at ten percent. But let's just pretend he's right. Let's
• 1:04:39
  just pretend he's right. Ten percent is crap. Ten percent is total crap.
• 1:04:45
  And again, how he's defining that is important, And I'm sure he's
• 1:04:48
  leaving an ambiguous on purpose, And I'm sure that number is totally made up
• 1:04:54
  by the way. I mean, there's no science behind that number. But
• 1:04:56
  even that number would not justify may in dating masks in a country that has
• 1:05:03
  its branding based in freedom and liberty, especially the masking of kids, especially
• 1:05:09
  the masking of kids in schools, It wouldn't be worth it, especially for
• 1:05:12
  kids where a ten percent increase in cases is meaningless because none of them were
• 1:05:17
  getting real sick from COVID to begin with. And so even Fauci now,
• 1:05:23
  even as he keeps going back and forth on as he said in the PBS
• 1:05:27
  documentary that he was wrong to say that masks don't work, and now he's
• 1:05:30
  telling the New York Times effectively that they don't really work. But that's Faucci
• 1:05:34
  being Faucci, and I actually now hope he stays in the news as much
• 1:05:39
  as possible, because at least it gives the Santis a chance to continue to
• 1:05:44
  have those attacks on Trump be relevant. My concern is that if Fauci fades
• 1:05:47
  away, then those attacks on Trump will very much lose their potency. I
• 1:05:53
  want to end before we get to our interview with Brittany Hopper, which is
• 1:05:56
  really good and I hope you'll you'll listen to it. I want to mention
• 1:06:00
  one other thing that doesn't really have a media aspect to it, although it
• 1:06:02
  kind of does. Everything has some semblance of a media aspect to it.
• 1:06:06
  But there's something that's happened in the sports world in the last few days that
• 1:06:12
  I think is getting an incredible lack of attention. And I have a theory
• 1:06:15
  as to why that's the case. It is getting some attention. But I
• 1:06:19
  have mentioned previously in an idle comment on this podcast that I really like what
• 1:06:26
  former NFL star Dion Sanders is doing as the head coach of the University of
• 1:06:31
  Colorado football team, which he just took over a few months ago. Dean
• 1:06:36
  Sanders, if you don't know, was an absolute superstar in the NFL.
• 1:06:41
  Primetime was his nickname. He was electric. He's a Hall of Famer,
• 1:06:45
  and he's in a very rare camp. Usually, especially among black players who
• 1:06:50
  have made a lot of money and who are in the Hall of Fame,
• 1:06:54
  most of them don't become head football coaches for whatever reason. By the way,
• 1:06:58
  probably I haven't thought of it that much, Probably the white players don't
• 1:07:00
  either, and gen generally, if you're a star, you don't become a
• 1:07:03
  coach. You don't need the money, you don't need the fame, you
• 1:07:05
  don't need the aggravation. But certainly Dion is unique in a lot of ways.
• 1:07:12
  And what also makes him unique is his philosophy because he makes no bones
• 1:07:16
  about it. He is old school. He's old school as far as values
• 1:07:23
  and principles and the way he treats kids, and it's tough love, and
• 1:07:27
  it's discipline, and I love it as a guy who's coached football and coached
• 1:07:30
  other sports, and who thinks that sports in general and college football in particular
• 1:07:35
  are falling off the deep end, especially in this era of nil money and
• 1:07:42
  being able to transfer and go into this portal on demand at almost any moment.
• 1:07:46
  I mean, it's insanity. The whole system is completely screwed up,
• 1:07:49
  and it's destroying what used to be my favorite team sport, which is college
• 1:07:53
  football. Well, this past weekend, Colorado had their spring football game.
• 1:07:59
  Now from a global warming perspective, that was interesting because even though it's Colorado,
• 1:08:02
  it's Boulder, Colorado, it's kind of amazing that it was snowing in
• 1:08:08
  mid to late April for their spring football game. But that's not the reason
• 1:08:11
  I mentioned it. Their spring football game, which last year drew flies.
• 1:08:15
  You know, maybe a couple of thousand people, had almost a packed stadium
• 1:08:19
  on a cold, windy and snowy day of forty three thousand people. So
• 1:08:25
  clearly the the bought Colorado. You know, fan bases is as energized and
• 1:08:30
  excited about this, or maybe more so than than I am, and I
• 1:08:34
  thought, oh, that's really great, so you know, Dion's really gotten
• 1:08:36
  it together at Colorado. And then after that game there's some news that breaks,
• 1:08:45
  and as of this taping, eighteen of his scholarship players since that game
• 1:08:50
  and since that spring exhibition game have left the program or trying to lead the
• 1:08:55
  program by going into the transfer portal. And that sense, heats are over
• 1:09:00
  sixty three of the eighty three scholarship players. Sixty three out of eighty three
• 1:09:06
  of the scholarship players who were on Colorado's football team last year have now either
• 1:09:13
  entered into the transfer portal or are already gone from Colorado. Now, I
• 1:09:17
  realize they sucked last year and that I'm sure Dione is thrilled that some of
• 1:09:21
  those guys are gone, But I'm sorry, sixty eighty three you can't even
• 1:09:26
  feel a football team. There's no way he's going to be able to replace
• 1:09:30
  anywhere near that number of players between now and when the season actually begins in
• 1:09:35
  really just a few months from now. And so while it's I'm not calling
• 1:09:40
  it, I'm not saying that I was wrong that he's going to be a
• 1:09:42
  successor that this is going to be a disaster. It might. It looks
• 1:09:45
  like it's going to be a disaster this year. The reason I mentioned it,
• 1:09:47
  and why I think it's significant and why I think it deserves more coverage
• 1:09:51
  is Wow. This certainly seems to be a damning indictment of Generation Z,
• 1:09:59
  a generation I've already expressed to create the stain for in a lot of ways.
• 1:10:03
  I mean, because I thought that they would respond to this kind of
• 1:10:06
  coaching from a celebrity with street cred, and it's clear that that has not
• 1:10:13
  happened. And while it's an oversimplification of what I'm sure as a complex situation,
• 1:10:17
  it certainly seems consistent with the idea that these kids are all just a
• 1:10:20
  bunch of pampered wussies who, instead of embracing the Dion Sanders tough love,
• 1:10:27
  have now rejected it so much and have taken the escape hatch that this garbage
• 1:10:31
  transfer portal has created for them. And if even Dion this is the bottom
• 1:10:36
  line, folks, if even Dion Sanders can exist as an old school coach
• 1:10:43
  in this environment, then my god, that we really have a major problem
• 1:10:48
  on our hands with regard to this younger generation. I mean, if even
• 1:10:53
  the Warriors college football players Scholarship Division one football players are not able to take
• 1:11:00
  the Dion Sanders philosophy and notice it's something he's going Bobby Night on them,
• 1:11:05
  like beating the crap out of him or something like that. And by the
• 1:11:08
  way, I'm was a fan of Bobby Knight. I'm just using him as
• 1:11:10
  an example that, you know, this is just really a real damning indictment
• 1:11:15
  of the wussification of our nation's youth. I'll keep an eye on it and
• 1:11:19
  see if there's any updates, but I'm fascinated to see how that is going
• 1:11:23
  to turn out with Dion Sanders in Colorado. Now, I've been promoting for
• 1:11:27
  weeks now an interview that I recently did with a woman by the name of
• 1:11:30
  Brittany Hopper. Things kept happening in the news and I kept pushing back the
• 1:11:34
  airing of this interview, but it's well worth the weight. Brittany is a
• 1:11:39
  former news reporter for CBS, longtime reporter here in Los Angeles. She's also
• 1:11:44
  has a background in entertainment reporting, and she has recently left the industry largely
• 1:11:49
  because she believes, and I agree with her that her conservative political beliefs and
• 1:11:56
  maybe even her beliefs about Israel, may it basically impossible for her to be
• 1:12:01
  able to do her job, and that she was phased out at CBS Los
• 1:12:06
  Angeles because she just did not fit in, not because she wasn't doing a
• 1:12:11
  good job, but because there was just no room for somebody that didn't buy
• 1:12:14
  into the entire woke view of the world and how to do news, especially
• 1:12:19
  during COVID. So this is that interview that I recently did with Brittany Hopper.
• 1:12:26
  Brittany Hopper, Welcome to the Death of Journalism podcast. Thank you,
• 1:12:30
  John, Brittany. You and I have talked a little bit off the air.
• 1:12:32
  This is the first time we've done an interview together. I'm really looking
• 1:12:35
  forward to this because you've had a very unique career both in the news media
• 1:12:39
  and the entertainment media, and I am kind of curious as to whether there's
• 1:12:44
  much difference between the two. We'll get into that among many other issues,
• 1:12:47
  but to give us kind of a sense of how you got into the business
• 1:12:51
  and what your evolution within the business has been. Yeah, well listen,
• 1:12:56
  John, I you know, at the age of twelve years old, my
• 1:13:00
  dream was to be a TV journalist, and so naturally after college in a
• 1:13:05
  round about two thousand and four, I applied for my first on air job,
• 1:13:12
  because, as you know, you have to start any small markets in
• 1:13:15
  the country and work your way up, and that's exactly what I did.
• 1:13:17
  I started in a smaller populated area called Bend, organ for an NBC affiliate
• 1:13:25
  station, and I did it all. I was what they used to call
• 1:13:28
  a one man band, but they have canceled that saying, but that's exactly
• 1:13:32
  what I was. I anchored, I reported, I did the weather,
• 1:13:35
  I did sports, and from there on I moved up market to market to
• 1:13:41
  market. In two thousand and twelve, I got my dream job of working
• 1:13:48
  for CBS Los Angeles. And when I say dream job, I really mean
• 1:13:55
  that I had always had my sight set for working on the news in Los
• 1:14:00
  Angeles. I'm a Southern California native born and raised in Palm Desert, and
• 1:14:05
  so Los Angeles was basically the Emerald City. It's definitely not now, but
• 1:14:12
  it was then, and I really kind of just wanted to be on the
• 1:14:17
  news here. And that's exactly what I did for ten years, in a
• 1:14:21
  total of eighteen years as a TV journalist in this business. But from time
• 1:14:28
  of time, you were also within what I would call the entertainment media as
• 1:14:31
  well, correct, right, I did a lot of work with Inside Edition,
• 1:14:38
  Entertainment, Tonight, CBS Network, you know, I of course dabbled
• 1:14:44
  in all of that throughout the years. I was allowed to do you know,
• 1:14:49
  other work as well, like commercials and different gigs that way too.
• 1:14:56
  I used to always do a lot of public speaking and host different or MC
• 1:15:00
  I should say, different charity events, so you know. But primarily I
• 1:15:04
  was always a general assignment reporter. Even though I've done it all and I've
• 1:15:10
  covered everything from wildfires to the oscars and everything in between. I really was
• 1:15:18
  a general assignment reporter. Would you agree? I think you can tell from
• 1:15:24
  my implication that there is becoming very very difficult at times to discern between the
• 1:15:30
  so called entertainment media and the news media, that the entertainment has basically become
• 1:15:35
  news and vice versa. Do you agree with that assessment? You know,
• 1:15:42
  Look, I don't know if I necessarily agree with that assessment. I think
• 1:15:45
  that news has become a clown world. So if you think entertainment is a
• 1:15:50
  clown world, then sure, let's compare the two. I just think that
• 1:15:57
  journalism not necessarily journalism is dead. I think that the journalists are the real
• 1:16:03
  problem here. The majority of the journalists that we are seeing now, whether
• 1:16:08
  that's entertainment or hard news. If that makes sense, well, you know,
• 1:16:14
  I'm sure it does. I guess my point is that for a long
• 1:16:16
  period of time now, and you've been in the business for eighteen years,
• 1:16:19
  that's a pretty long period of time. But for a long period of time
• 1:16:21
  now, news has been more and more concerned with ratings, and also our
• 1:16:28
  ability to discern what the ratings are through technology as greatly increased. You know,
• 1:16:34
  back in the day, I think when you started, I know when
• 1:16:36
  I started, we only got ratings during certain periods of the year. There
• 1:16:43
  was no way to concern in the next day, you know, minute to
• 1:16:45
  minute which story popped and which didn't. And now that we have this information,
• 1:16:49
  it seems like the news is far more concerned with things that are entertainment
• 1:16:56
  oriented or making everything entertaining, for fear of losing that audience, and because
• 1:17:00
  we have the ability to discern minute by minute the next day which stories people
• 1:17:06
  were interested in, which they weren't interested in, the news has tended to
• 1:17:10
  gravitate, especially for local news, especially here in Los Angeles where I also
• 1:17:15
  live. You know, this is how we get car chases dominating the local
• 1:17:19
  newscast because car chases do exceedingly well because they're entertaining, right. I mean,
• 1:17:26
  you see where I'm going with that. Yeah, no, no,
• 1:17:28
  no, I agree. Listen to two reasons why people watch the local news
• 1:17:31
  is the weather, and because of these car chases, they get the highest
• 1:17:35
  ratings during that time. I don't know if it's if it's entertainments per se.
• 1:17:43
  I think that news has become more opinionated, and it's it's opinionated news
• 1:17:49
  at this point in our society versus telling the facts, are telling both sides
• 1:17:55
  or giving both sides, it's their opinion. And I think what we're seeing
• 1:18:01
  is more and more journalists who are on air and those who are off air,
• 1:18:06
  behind the scenes running the show. They are one thousand percent being absolutely
• 1:18:14
  biased on what is being shown and how it's being shown and who will be
• 1:18:19
  shown. So I think that that issue where we have right now and how
• 1:18:25
  much and when did you see that change in your eighteen years in this business.
• 1:18:30
  Has it been gradual? Was there something dramatic that occurred? And what
• 1:18:33
  has been the biggest change in your opinion, There's no doubt that market to
• 1:18:39
  market. You know, when I worked in the Colorado Springs market for a
• 1:18:42
  Fox affiliate station, it was completely different than working in the Palm Springs market
• 1:18:48
  for an NBC affiliate station. Okay, Los Angeles is home to many Democrats
• 1:18:58
  liberals, so I think that the local news feels that they definitely need to
• 1:19:02
  kind of cater to their target audience. But let's be clear, we have
• 1:19:08
  seen over the years the ratings for local news. They're at an old time
• 1:19:14
  low. At this point when I started seeing serious change, And mind you,
• 1:19:20
  for a decade, I worked in the Los Angeles market for a decade,
• 1:19:25
  ten years I was on CBS Los Angeles and it wasn't until around twenty
• 1:19:30
  twenty before then, a right around the BLM protests and riots is when I
• 1:19:34
  started seeing this shift. And by shift, I mean them correcting me in
• 1:19:43
  my ear saying, don't call it a riot, it's an uprising, don't
• 1:19:49
  say you know. I remember, specifically out on a live report in Long
• 1:19:54
  Beach and John if you remember, it was like it looked like a war
• 1:19:58
  zone out there, and I'm in the middle of this. So to speak
• 1:20:02
  war zone like protesting that's happening, and there's windows shattered and boards up and
• 1:20:11
  and and the you know, I mean, it was it was unbelievable what
• 1:20:15
  I was seeing. In my job as a journalist is to be live on
• 1:20:17
  seen and kind of walk through and and and and basically describe everything that I'm
• 1:20:24
  seeing and hearing down to even what I'm smelling. And I said, it
• 1:20:28
  looks like we are in a third world country. Boy did I get in
• 1:20:34
  trouble for that? But it was the truth. It was the truth.
• 1:20:39
  So tell me what happened after you said it was a third world country?
• 1:20:42
  Oh well, I mean I got I got the calls immediately, you know.
• 1:20:46
  And and here's here is the biggest issue that I have with with local
• 1:20:51
  news at this point and news itself, is that people don't understand if you
• 1:20:58
  go against the narrative, if you speak up, if you do anything in
• 1:21:03
  that nature, you will absolutely get retaliated against, get intimidated, you will
• 1:21:10
  be shunned in so many ways if you don't go with their plan. And
• 1:21:16
  you have to understand, John, there's a lot of good local journalists out
• 1:21:19
  there, there's in regardless, maybe we don't even think the same politically,
• 1:21:24
  I don't care. That's what makes the world go round. Sure, fair
• 1:21:27
  enough, but at least be your true, authentic self and put both sides
• 1:21:30
  of the story up. Isn't that our job? But the problem is is
• 1:21:34
  that these folks, they depend on their paychecks, They have families. This
• 1:21:38
  is how they put food on the table. And if they're being retaliated against
• 1:21:42
  or intimidated, they're not going to go up against these the big conchos.
• 1:21:46
  They're just not Well, you've just did on What I think is one of
• 1:21:49
  the many, many, many problems with modern quote unquote journalism or the news
• 1:21:55
  media, and that is, Look, we all, if we have a
• 1:21:59
  good job, we want to keep it right. But I think that that's
• 1:22:01
  particularly the case in the news media for a couple of reasons. Number one,
• 1:22:05
  these jobs are so difficult to get. I mean you have to you
• 1:22:10
  have to be willing to you know, at a mentor early on in my
• 1:22:14
  career say, the only way you get in this career is if you're willing
• 1:22:16
  to step over your dead mother to get the job. I mean, that's
• 1:22:19
  basically, and that was a quote, and that's not too far from from
• 1:22:24
  the truth. And and so so the jobs are very difficult to get.
• 1:22:29
  They're very good. The good ones are very cushy and very lucrative, not
• 1:22:32
  as lucrative as they used to be, but what they're very cushy and lucrative,
• 1:22:36
  and they have the perception of power. Now there's no very little real
• 1:22:41
  power anymore, but but they have the perception of power. So you so,
• 1:22:45
  you your identity, your I mean, I've I've been in a lot
• 1:22:48
  of different realms of life, but you know, as an on air news
• 1:22:53
  or sportscaster, your identity in the world in life is I'm on air in
• 1:22:58
  this position, and every buddy in the town or you know, back in
• 1:23:00
  the old days, most of the people in the town you were in new
• 1:23:03
  it. And so to lose that, you not only lose your job and
• 1:23:08
  your livelihood and you're you're you know what you're doing on a daily basis,
• 1:23:12
  you lose your identity and getting another good job is very very difficult to do,
• 1:23:18
  especially if you know you're having to be a white male you're really screwed
• 1:23:24
  like me, let's let's be fair here, or a white blonde hair well
• 1:23:28
  well, white white female who's really good looking. Brittany, you might have
• 1:23:30
  a few more advantages than than than You don't agree with that, by the
• 1:23:34
  way, you don't. You don't agree that is a white female who's attractive,
• 1:23:39
  that you're at least a stepa two ahead of the of the white male
• 1:23:43
  when it comes to trying to find a job. Yeah, I think it
• 1:23:45
  as far as a white male. Yeah, okay, nor agree, not
• 1:23:51
  that it's a contest, but I'm just trying to be trying to be fair
• 1:23:56
  about this. So so my point here this of this what you what you
• 1:24:00
  said was, you know, no one wants to lose their job. And
• 1:24:02
  when you go outside of the herd, and and and let's face it,
• 1:24:06
  there's a herd mentality on big stories, especially, there's a herd mentality that
• 1:24:11
  you cannot go outside of the herd or you will be run over by the
• 1:24:15
  herd and no one will come to support you and you may not work again
• 1:24:18
  in the industry. And that is not that is not hyperbole, That is
• 1:24:23
  not a theory. That is the reality. And um and and nobody,
• 1:24:29
  nobody's going to push back against that except people, you know, like yourself,
• 1:24:32
  who um, you know, have a little bit more going on.
• 1:24:35
  You have your feisty uh, you believe in things. I mean, that's
• 1:24:40
  a pretty rare combination of characteristics in the media, because most people are much
• 1:24:44
  more willing to just get along, to keep the gig and stay on TV
• 1:24:49
  and um. And I think we saw it a lot during the time period
• 1:24:54
  that you already articulated, which is BLM and COVID combined, right, because
• 1:24:59
  these the Black Lives matter, go ahead, right, But mind you,
• 1:25:05
  I did do that for eighteen years, so almost two decades. I did
• 1:25:10
  go with the flow, as you're saying. And why did you do that?
• 1:25:17
  Because of the exact reasons that you said. My health insurance was dependent
• 1:25:23
  on CBS Los Angeles and getting a certain amount of hours. I'm a mother,
• 1:25:29
  you know, I have a family to take care of. I mean,
• 1:25:32
  these certain things were brought up, but I think more than that,
• 1:25:39
  it was exactly what you said. It was the fact that I worked so
• 1:25:44
  hard and I had made so many sacrifices in my twenties and thirties. When
• 1:25:48
  so many of my friends were partying and having these great jobs, I was
• 1:25:53
  up, you know, early mornings, late nights, working weekends, holidays
• 1:25:58
  and so yeah, and there was also this little bit of a narcissist,
• 1:26:02
  you know, mentality of that powerful. I'm a TV journalist and I didn't
• 1:26:09
  want to lose that. I certainly didn't want it taken away from me,
• 1:26:15
  right, No, And I think I commend you for acknowledging that, because
• 1:26:19
  I've found very few people in the industry who are willing to admit that.
• 1:26:24
  Hey, look, I went along because I didn't want to lose the job.
• 1:26:28
  And these are the reasons why I didn't want to lose the job that
• 1:26:30
  are unique to this industry and are exacerbated in the realm of especially and by
• 1:26:35
  the way it gets here's what the other part of this. It's important,
• 1:26:38
  Brittany. The higher you get in the industry, the more power and influence
• 1:26:42
  you have, the more unlikely you are to do anything to risk the gig
• 1:26:45
  because the gig is that much better. So, of course, and John,
• 1:26:50
  you can hit the nail on the head. You said it so well.
• 1:26:53
  I'm currently you know this, but I'm currently studying in a master's program
• 1:26:57
  clinical psychology. I graduate in June with my master's in clinical psychology. So
• 1:27:02
  I am able to reflect and look back and see the psychosis of it,
• 1:27:06
  of this power trip, and it is just that, and if anyone denies
• 1:27:12
  that they are, they are delusional. Hmm, well, good for you
• 1:27:15
  for admitting that. And I think that that. I've always said that one
• 1:27:20
  of the many, many problems in quote unquote journalism in the news media is
• 1:27:25
  that you pretty much have to have a little bit of illness to want to
• 1:27:29
  do the job to begin with, right, I mean, I want to
• 1:27:33
  person agree with you. Now mix that little bit of whatever you want to
• 1:27:38
  say, my sugarunar and you know, my Yiddish way. Mix that with
• 1:27:44
  far left wing ideologies, then what do you have. You've a bag of
• 1:27:51
  bullshit coming out you. Okay, that's what you have. So so mix
• 1:27:57
  too, Because let's be honest, John, the majority of the p people
• 1:28:00
  who are working in the newsrooms today are not are not right leaning conservative even
• 1:28:06
  centrist independent folks. These are left leaning, you know, farther than Democrats
• 1:28:15
  who are running the shows in our newsrooms. So we have so we have
• 1:28:20
  two two illnesses going on simultaneously, the liberal mindset and the celebrity mindset.
• 1:28:27
  I mean, celebrity is an illness, right, I mean I mean no,
• 1:28:30
  it really is. I mean celebrity, you you know, you knew
• 1:28:33
  more celebrities than I do. But I've known more than my share of celebrities.
• 1:28:36
  And it is an illness I mean, I mean and sometimes not your
• 1:28:41
  fault, I mean being treated. You are literally treated differently than the rest
• 1:28:45
  of society, and eventually it's going to get to your brain. And it
• 1:28:49
  is. And and the bigger the celebrity, the usually the greater the illness.
• 1:28:53
  Not always, but you know, I've been lucky to meet a few
• 1:28:56
  people that somehow eluded that illness, but by and large, that illness is
• 1:29:00
  there. And that creates a combustible combination when it comes to try and do
• 1:29:06
  journalism or news, because again you go the hesitancy to do anything that will
• 1:29:15
  risk that position in life, risk that celebrity, risk who you are and
• 1:29:20
  your identity. And the easiest way to do that is to go against liberal
• 1:29:25
  orthodoxy, especially on a third rail issue, which black lives matter and COVID
• 1:29:31
  represented, not just a third rail issue, maybe a fourth rail of the
• 1:29:34
  reason even such a thing as a fourth rail, that's how that's how dangerous
• 1:29:39
  those issues were, because the easiest way to get fired, especially if you're
• 1:29:43
  a white person, is to say anything remotely against a racial narrative, and
• 1:29:48
  so tell me you agree with all that. So, Brittany, tell me
• 1:29:54
  you said you went along, went with the flow for a long period of
• 1:29:57
  time, and then in twenty twenty, you know, Black Lives matter and
• 1:30:00
  COVID happened and you started to push against it. Why did that happen?
• 1:30:04
  Why did you start to push against that narrative or there any narrative? Listen.
• 1:30:10
  I don't think that it was a premeditated, calculated decision to push against
• 1:30:14
  it. I was just being true to myself. Black lives do matter.
• 1:30:20
  They matter. Obviously, every human beings life matters. I'd be a sociopath
• 1:30:27
  if I didn't feel that way. Okay, but there were things that I
• 1:30:32
  was seeing holes that Wait a minute, we're not putting the whole truth out
• 1:30:36
  here. We're this is a riot that is happening behind me, and I'm
• 1:30:42
  supposed to call it an uprising and there's people who are saying death to our
• 1:30:46
  law enforcement when there's some bad apples within the law enforcement. Yes, and
• 1:30:53
  does some change need to sure, we can. You know, that's a
• 1:30:56
  different type of conversation here, but it just will be honest. It was
• 1:31:00
  truly when COVID began. It's it's when I started to really see the absolute
• 1:31:12
  bias that was happening. And I had felt that given this worldwide pandemic,
• 1:31:20
  that the American people, especially who were watching the local news because they might
• 1:31:25
  not be able to get their news elsewhere, they should have all of the
• 1:31:30
  information out there, not just one side. Here's where I saw a major
• 1:31:35
  shift. I was neighbors with Joseph Latipo. Okay, he is a black
• 1:31:42
  man who graduated top honors from Harvard Medical School. He was working as a
• 1:31:56
  surgeon at UCLA and researcher at UCLA. He just so happened to be a
• 1:32:01
  neighbor of mine and our kids played with each other. And during this whole
• 1:32:08
  COVID, right in the beginning, he was finding other things he was saying,
• 1:32:15
  not what the mainstream media was saying. And I had an exclusive interview
• 1:32:23
  with this man. Brilliant, brilliant man. I mean, this is one
• 1:32:27
  of the take a look at his credentials, brilliant man. But yet he
• 1:32:32
  was going against what you know, doctor Fauci and others were saying. And
• 1:32:41
  I said, look here, I have this exclusive interview with this man who
• 1:32:45
  happens to be my next door neighbor. Let's put him on. We can
• 1:32:48
  also put the other side on as well, but let's give him a shot.
• 1:32:51
  Let's give him, let's give him some airtime. They refused. What
• 1:32:58
  did they tell you? What they say? They said, no? I
• 1:33:00
  mean, what else are they going to say. They're not going to give
• 1:33:03
  a reason. They're not going to leave a pay portrayal pay portrayal that They
• 1:33:06
  just said No. Did they know what he was going to say, like
• 1:33:10
  what he was that he was going to be contrarian or how at that point
• 1:33:15
  information they had, the information of his findings, his research from UCLA m
• 1:33:27
  that was going against what the mainstream media was putting out there, what other
• 1:33:30
  researchers and doctors were saying. And why do you think that they did that?
• 1:33:35
  What do you think the motivation was? Was it fear? Was it
• 1:33:39
  a political agenda? Was it they believe the guy was a crackpot? What
• 1:33:43
  do you think was going on in the minds of those who made that decision
• 1:33:45
  at your television station. Well, first of all, this guy is smarter
• 1:33:48
  than than most of the people running that newsroom and network, So um,
• 1:33:54
  I have no idea. I think that that's the million dollar question, John,
• 1:34:00
  and I think that we can ask that until our faces turn blue and
• 1:34:04
  we will never know the answer, because I still to this day have no
• 1:34:09
  idea why during a worldwide pandemic we weren't putting out there other information and other
• 1:34:17
  findings regarding the vaccine, regarding the COVID. You know, I don't understand.
• 1:34:26
  That's not our job. Again, that's not our job. Our job
• 1:34:30
  is to provide the most accurate information on both sides. We shouldn't be manipulating
• 1:34:38
  and brainwashing people. And that's exactly what the news is doing, mainstream media
• 1:34:43
  is doing, especially local news. Think about it, John, if you're
• 1:34:46
  continuously watching a certain agenda, if you're continuously hearing just one side, what
• 1:34:56
  is your brain going to do? You're automatically just going to believe that.
• 1:35:00
  In my opinion, from a clinical perspective studying this, that's manipulation and brainwashing.
• 1:35:08
  Is it not put both sides out there and let the people have an
• 1:35:14
  opinion. Well, I have a theory on what actually transpired. I'd like
• 1:35:19
  to run it past you and get your your thoughts on it. Um.
• 1:35:23
  You know, I am a person who isn't ardent. I think you know
• 1:35:26
  this about me already. I'm an ardent anti conspiracy person. I don't believe
• 1:35:30
  in conspiracies in general, and I certainly don't think the news media is competent
• 1:35:33
  enough to engage in a massive conspiracy, you know, especially in a panic
• 1:35:39
  situation like this. I tend to believe in Okham's razor. And what I
• 1:35:44
  think happened here was we have a panic, right. People don't deal well
• 1:35:47
  in panics to begin with, and then you have a situation where it's unprecedented
• 1:35:51
  what we're dealing with, this this alleged you know, massive emergency pandemic,
• 1:35:57
  and you have every media outlet saying the same thing, right, because they're
• 1:36:01
  all latching onto this panic narrative, which, by the way, happens to
• 1:36:08
  fit happens to fit their political agenda. Because everybody knows that if we go
• 1:36:14
  down this path of shutting down the world, it's going to destroy the economy
• 1:36:17
  and it's gonna hurt Donald Trump's chances of being reelected, right, I mean,
• 1:36:20
  everybody knows this intrinsically. It's not you don't. It doesn't take a
• 1:36:26
  political science or scientists or a rocket scientist to figure this out. So everyone's
• 1:36:30
  realizing that it's good for their political agenda. By the way, it's also
• 1:36:35
  really good for the news because what's the number one thing? News outlets need
• 1:36:42
  news, and the bigger the news, the better for them. And by
• 1:36:45
  the way, in this particular story, we're gonna keep everybody home for extended
• 1:36:51
  breeds of time. What is there to do when they're home? I don't
• 1:36:56
  know, watch the news. I will say there was a time though,
• 1:37:00
  where you know, even including myself, I didn't know what was going on.
• 1:37:04
  I have a family, I'm out there reporting. It's documented. I
• 1:37:06
  have pictures and videos of it on YouTube where I'm in gloves and you know,
• 1:37:13
  you know what I mean. Like, so, so I will admit,
• 1:37:15
  naturally we didn't know what was going on. But I'm talking more a
• 1:37:19
  year in here, two years in bringing other information. So let me let
• 1:37:26
  me let me but let me let me so let me continue on my path
• 1:37:29
  here. Yeah, so we the media reacts in this dramatic fashion. There's
• 1:37:34
  only one truth. There's only one truth. We all have to accept it
• 1:37:39
  because if we don't, we're in favor of the virus and we're in favor
• 1:37:42
  of death. That's the narrative, right, And so once everyone becomes invested,
• 1:37:48
  and it's you know, it's funny you mentioned gloves. I mean,
• 1:37:51
  whatever happened at washing hands? Remember how washing hands was the most important thing
• 1:37:57
  on the planet and then it just got dropped a few months into this thing
• 1:38:01
  because they realized that wasn't doing anything. But we're never going to admit we
• 1:38:04
  were wrong about this, And that's where that's where the long term narrative becomes
• 1:38:10
  so powerful, Brittany, because no one wants to admit they were wrong,
• 1:38:15
  especially when they put all their chips down on one side, especially when there's
• 1:38:20
  so much damage being done. This was not a harmless mistake. So I
• 1:38:26
  counterintuitively, the more damage that is done, the less likely someone is to
• 1:38:31
  acknowledge or admit they made a mistake, because then they own that damage.
• 1:38:38
  This wasn't just a theoretical mistake, my god, we were destroying our way
• 1:38:44
  of life and destroying kids' lives and destroying businesses and all that. So therefore,
• 1:38:49
  when someone comes forward with a contrarian point of view, as you tried
• 1:38:55
  to do with a credible new subject, that's far more threatened because you're you're
• 1:39:01
  not just giving the other side of a story. No, no, no,
• 1:39:03
  no, No, you are effectively going up against a religion because does
• 1:39:09
  it become a religion at that point because their investment both not just from a
• 1:39:14
  psychological standpoint, but from a credibility perspective. If they were wrong about this,
• 1:39:19
  Brittany, both the experts and the media working in tandem, I mean,
• 1:39:24
  my god, they worked in total tandem. If they were wrong about
• 1:39:27
  this, what would they ever be believed about again? And so that's that,
• 1:39:33
  to me, is what drove so much of this. You don't do
• 1:39:36
  you see that or not? Oh? I hundred percent agree with you,
• 1:39:41
  John agree with you. And at the end of the day, as we
• 1:39:47
  mentioned earlier, it's also about power, and so this coincides with exactly what
• 1:39:53
  you're talking about. And then and then it trickles down to again rating because
• 1:40:00
  what is ratings equate to advertising dollars? The I mean and what I don't
• 1:40:06
  understand is eventually now that we're what twenty twenty three going into this, and
• 1:40:12
  more light is being shed and more people are, you know, kind of
• 1:40:15
  waking up so to speak, and like not just getting their information from the
• 1:40:19
  local news or MSNBC, CNN or even Fox News. They're they're they're opening
• 1:40:26
  their brains a bit more and they're learning more. Ratings, the trust in
• 1:40:32
  news is at an all time low, wouldn't you say so? My question
• 1:40:36
  is is how I don't think local news is ever going to go away,
• 1:40:40
  and I don't think the news is ever going to go away. But I
• 1:40:44
  don't really understand how this is sustainable just sitting there and watching news on television
• 1:40:50
  like we used to do and having these TV journalists run them up and basically
• 1:40:57
  the saying in news is if it if it bleeds, it leads mentality.
• 1:41:04
  It's just I don't being sustainable. Well, that's I agree with you,
• 1:41:09
  but that's a different issue. I think you would agree that news media people
• 1:41:14
  are not exactly known for being forward thinking. I mean, it's it's about
• 1:41:17
  feeding the monster that day. Whenever narrative works that day, that beyond tomorrow
• 1:41:26
  is forward thinking for the news media. I mean, you know what's going
• 1:41:29
  to happen next month or next year, forget about it, And what do
• 1:41:32
  you say? There's an overall general umbrella of an agenda though regardless if that's
• 1:41:40
  it, yes, I know, it's it's that day. It's that day
• 1:41:43
  of like I could bring a great story that day the next and they love
• 1:41:47
  it that day and go turn it, go turn it, do it.
• 1:41:50
  But then the next day it's it's no, no, no, that's not
• 1:41:55
  the story. That's not that's not what's popular. So we know this,
• 1:41:59
  But don't you think there's a general umbrella of a certain agenda. Well,
• 1:42:04
  it depends on what you mean by agenda. I mean when everybody agrees,
• 1:42:09
  right, I mean, let's face it, especially in the market like Los
• 1:42:11
  Angeles, every virtually every single person working in the news is either a leftist
• 1:42:17
  or they are afraid to express their views, right one and so and so,
• 1:42:28
  and by the way, I know a few conservatives I mean why,
• 1:42:31
  I mean, I mean, you know and and and you know they they
• 1:42:34
  are they they contact me, you know, underground. They're afraid to have
• 1:42:39
  their real views be stated publicly. I'm sure you've experienced the same things.
• 1:42:45
  But if everybody in the room agrees, see this is you know, if
• 1:42:48
  I was ever to god forbid, advise a major news network or a station,
• 1:42:54
  to me, there ought to be at least one unabashed conservative in the
• 1:43:00
  room to be able to say, hey, guys, this doesn't make any
• 1:43:05
  sense, or what are we doing here, or what about the other side
• 1:43:09
  of this, and that doesn't exist, and if it doesn't exist, that
• 1:43:13
  person is afraid to lose their job. That there you go. That's my
• 1:43:17
  entire point. I was that person within the newsroom, and and I was
• 1:43:23
  retaliated against. My days were starting to get taken away from me to the
• 1:43:27
  point where then they wouldn't even allow me on live TV. I mean,
• 1:43:30
  there was just chipping away at different things. So I was that person,
• 1:43:35
  and this is this is the whole point of this conversation. And again,
• 1:43:40
  I don't care who you vote for. It is not my job to sway
• 1:43:44
  you one way or the other. It should be our job to just provide
• 1:43:48
  the most accurate information and all sides to the story. I don't care who
• 1:43:55
  you vote for, if you're Biden, whatever. Okay, okay, all
• 1:44:01
  right, I'm right there with you. But let's go back to what you
• 1:44:04
  just said about you being retaliated against, and and you've referenced COVID was a
• 1:44:09
  real big turning point. Um, tell us about the story about you wearing
• 1:44:14
  an American flag mask on the air and what happened there. I mean,
• 1:44:18
  look, so during COVID, we were required to wear masks on air outside.
• 1:44:25
  Well, I can't even say it with the street face because you know,
• 1:44:28
  looking back, I'm just thinking, you know, um, it's it
• 1:44:31
  just seems so you know, crazy to me. But look, these are
• 1:44:35
  still let me let me stop you there. Did did you or anybody else
• 1:44:40
  push back on the idea that you had to wear a mask on the air
• 1:44:44
  outside? First of all, I looked horrible. There's a little bit about
• 1:44:47
  narcissism in me. I mean, yeah, you know, while outside listen,
• 1:44:54
  I always wanted to be respectful to anyone, and if God forbid,
• 1:44:58
  there was someone there, you know, who was autoimmune, compromised or whatever,
• 1:45:02
  I always wanted to give them the respect if they felt more comfortable with
• 1:45:05
  me in a mask. But I was literally doing stand ups outside with no
• 1:45:12
  one around me. So yeah, I thought it was completely ludicrous that I
• 1:45:16
  had to wear a mask in that setting. What happened? Did you push
• 1:45:19
  back or not? Well? I did push back, and I did question
• 1:45:24
  it, and then all I was told is this is the rules. These
• 1:45:27
  are the you know, this is these are the rules right now. So
• 1:45:30
  then I wore an American flag mask and I get a call from our then
• 1:45:36
  assistant news director. She keeps flip flopping back and forth between the executive producer
• 1:45:42
  or assistant news director whatever. I get a call and she says to me,
• 1:45:46
  you can no longer wear that American flag mask on air. And I
• 1:45:50
  said, what, We're in America, I'm an American TV journalist. How
• 1:45:55
  is it that I can't wear an American flag mask? And she said,
• 1:45:59
  we just you can't wear it. It's uh, it looks like you're aligning
• 1:46:03
  with President Trump, and it's you know, there were so many reasons of
• 1:46:09
  like it was. It was a phone call. Again, there was no
• 1:46:12
  paper trail of this, and she said, look, you just you cannot
• 1:46:15
  wear an American flag mask. And I just was thinking to myself, this
• 1:46:18
  is so bizarre. But John, I'll give you another example of how bizarre.
• 1:46:23
  Second all I said before we move on to because that example is too
• 1:46:26
  good to just let pass. All right, So so so so, not
• 1:46:29
  only are you forced to wear a mask outside, which is insane and we
• 1:46:32
  knew it was insane at the time, but you do around alone. But
• 1:46:38
  but when you wear an American flag mask, which it doesn't have any no
• 1:46:42
  indication of Trump, it doesn't have MAGA on it, nothing like that right,
• 1:46:45
  obviously right, she don't even flask, and your boss actually references Trump
• 1:46:54
  in in in in in giving you a reprimand for that correct. Correct.
• 1:47:00
  Now. To me, this is fascinating on a couple of levels. One,
• 1:47:02
  it just shows the insane beyond bias of the issue and how invested the
• 1:47:09
  liberal media was in masks. But also it goes to my entire theory,
• 1:47:14
  right that I already stated to you that I think that the re election of
• 1:47:18
  Donald Trump was a huge part of this entire equation and the idea that someone
• 1:47:25
  in the liberal media would automatically equate even a mask. See, I think
• 1:47:29
  the mask became popular on the left as an anti Trump virtue signal to begin
• 1:47:34
  with. I really think that's what flipped masks from being unpopular to being popular.
• 1:47:39
  I think on the left it became a signal of your virtue in general
• 1:47:43
  and your opposition to Donald Trump, because Trump was seen as being not pro
• 1:47:46
  mask, which was hilarious because at times he actually was pro mask because he
• 1:47:50
  was listening to Fauci, who was flipping and flopping all over the place on
• 1:47:55
  masks trying to figure out where the popular side was. But here you have
• 1:48:00
  a member of the liberal media reprimanding an on air reporter for wearing an American
• 1:48:04
  flag because she associates it with Trump. They had Trump on the brain at
• 1:48:11
  every moment of this, and that it was so toxic that even as you're
• 1:48:15
  being forced to wear this useless pie piece of cloth, which, by the
• 1:48:19
  way, hinders your ability to communicate on the air, can we just state
• 1:48:24
  that, right? I mean, not only not only does it cover up
• 1:48:26
  your beautiful face, but it hinders your ability to communicate. You're literally talking
• 1:48:30
  through a mask into a microphone, right right, right, right, exactly.
• 1:48:35
  The level of the levels of insanity here are so deep. And and
• 1:48:41
  the fact that the flag somehow equates to Trump and that this disqualifies you wearing
• 1:48:46
  an American flag mask, I think was very very telling. So so move
• 1:48:50
  on to the Okay, so give me the next example. You were gonna
• 1:48:54
  you were gonna, you know, another example in twenty twenty one, the
• 1:48:58
  Palestinian and Israel conflict. I mean, when are they not in conflict?
• 1:49:01
  But this was a major event that was taking place. John. You know,
• 1:49:06
  I'm Jewish and I have a lot of family in Israel, and I'm
• 1:49:12
  I'm pro Israel. It doesn't mean I'm anti Palestine. It doesn't mean I
• 1:49:16
  want to see Palestinians hurt or killed. It just means that I do believe
• 1:49:20
  that Israel should be a standing country and she should be defending herself when she
• 1:49:27
  needs to be. And during this time in twenty twenty one, I posted
• 1:49:33
  on my Instagram stories and on my Instagram, you know, information, historical
• 1:49:41
  information about Israel, because there's so much misinformation as far as you know,
• 1:49:46
  it's Palestinians land, this and that, blah blah blah, blah blah.
• 1:49:50
  And I was apparently reported by two co workers to h R and then this
• 1:49:59
  is in paper trail. This was major back and forth for months of them
• 1:50:04
  telling me I need to take down my pro Israeli stance, my pro Israel
• 1:50:15
  posts and my In my defense, I said, well, how is it
• 1:50:21
  that these TV journalists that are on error are allowed to have their pro BLM,
• 1:50:28
  pro doctor FAUCI, pro vaccine, pro trans, pro LGBTQ, pro
• 1:50:34
  Hispanic Heritage month, pro Asian pride. How are they allowed to put that
• 1:50:42
  up? Don't forget the Ukrainian flag, by the way, that pro black
• 1:50:45
  pride, all those things, which is absolutely fine, okay, but why
• 1:50:50
  is it when I put a pro Israel which literally it was just a picture
• 1:50:56
  of Israel that said am Hi Israel, which means, you know, one
• 1:50:59
  Israel like Israel forever? Why why is that so wrong? And and and
• 1:51:05
  mind you, Israel's also our ally and I just the whole thing is just
• 1:51:12
  like it. I mean, it's just complete nonsense. And the fact that
• 1:51:15
  two co workers allegedly reported me to h R, you know, I mean,
• 1:51:21
  it just it's it's just there's so many there's so many things that just
• 1:51:27
  and then you know, another example was on Twitter. I got into a
• 1:51:30
  public argument with an la Unified School District's union, a union that's that was
• 1:51:38
  pro masking our children for the third year in a row. And I debated
• 1:51:44
  them on Twitter. And and mind you, my daughter doesn't even go to
• 1:51:48
  an la USD school. She goes to a private religious school. So I
• 1:51:51
  just couldn't believe that. I was like, I was being told by this
• 1:51:58
  union, I know who your co workers are. They follow our agenda.
• 1:52:02
  Why are you trying to go against what we're doing. Why are you speaking
• 1:52:06
  publicly like this? You're going to get in trouble, You're gonna get fired
• 1:52:11
  at this point, they had already taken my days away and I was only
• 1:52:13
  working one day a week. I lost my health insurance, I was told
• 1:52:16
  I couldn't go live anymore. So what else were they going to take away?
• 1:52:20
  Because so I didn't give I didn't give a crap. I'm going to
• 1:52:23
  stand up for these children who, for a third year in a row,
• 1:52:26
  this union was trying to mask again. So when ended up happening? I
• 1:52:31
  mean, obviously you've outlined a series of situations where you were reprimanded for doing
• 1:52:38
  very rational things and things that other people were doing in other ways and not
• 1:52:43
  being reprimanded for. I mean, is that why you ended up not being
• 1:52:45
  with CBS Los Angeles anymore. I think there was a series of events that
• 1:52:50
  led up to the ultimate phone call of saying we need a part ways.
• 1:52:58
  And it was after that public verbal altercation on Twitter with a LA Unified School
• 1:53:05
  Districts union that was wanting to mask our children again for the third year in
• 1:53:11
  a row. So this was September twenty two, unbelievable. So the final
• 1:53:15
  straw was not had nothing to do with your work on air. This is
• 1:53:21
  you am debating, I'm sure in a respectful fashion on a situation that obviously
• 1:53:29
  is a paramount importance where you're defending children and you're one hundred percent right on
• 1:53:33
  the science as well as the impact of it, and somehow that ends up
• 1:53:39
  being the final straw for you leaving your job at CBS Los Angeles. I
• 1:53:43
  mean, if that doesn't tell you the death of journalism, I don't know
• 1:53:45
  what does. You said it, yep, and you are absolutely right,
• 1:53:49
  John. And here's the thing is, this was my main question to them,
• 1:53:54
  why why do you want to mask our children up for the third year
• 1:53:58
  in a row. Why? And they couldn't. The reason was because they
• 1:54:02
  didn't want to have to admit that they were wrong for the first two years.
• 1:54:05
  That's what Because if they don't do it and nothing happens, which is
• 1:54:10
  what occurred, then they look like idiots. And then they brought it.
• 1:54:14
  They brought in other all it will remain nameless, but they brought in other
• 1:54:19
  on air TV journalists that they said, you know, these are your co
• 1:54:24
  workers, and they tell me you're not a real journalist. They tell me,
• 1:54:28
  you know, all these things that were putting me down, putting my
• 1:54:30
  credibility down, knocking me and saying you're going to get in trouble for this.
• 1:54:36
  You know, Cbsla's already now knows what you're trying to do here.
• 1:54:43
  It was unbelievable, unbelievable, But look at that point, Look at that
• 1:54:46
  point, John, I had made an executive decision that, you know,
• 1:54:51
  getting paid barely anything. It wasn't worth saying. I'm a TV journalist for
• 1:55:00
  CBS News. You know, my God comes first, my family comes,
• 1:55:04
  you know, right up there with with God, and it's it's it was
• 1:55:08
  as easy as pie for me to just figure out, like, I don't
• 1:55:11
  want to do this anymore. So I don't know why I was holding on
• 1:55:14
  to it for as long as I did, but I was good for you
• 1:55:18
  for for and acknowledging that. I do think it's important to at least point
• 1:55:23
  out though, had you been arguing the other end of the mask debate and
• 1:55:29
  been totally wrong, nothing would have happened to you. Right. Same thing
• 1:55:34
  with vaccines. Had you been arguing, had you been arguing to stick a
• 1:55:40
  needle in every kid's arm and give them an experimental mRNA vaccine, which would
• 1:55:46
  be insane, you would be not reprimanded at all, because that's the accepted
• 1:55:53
  position on the left well, and I try to live life without regrets.
• 1:55:58
  We we you know, rather learning experiences. But you know, I was
• 1:56:02
  so reluctant to get this vaccine, and that was the other thing. A
• 1:56:05
  CBSLA, it was required, and meanwhile I was fighting for our children for
• 1:56:14
  it to not be mandated, especially within the private schools. Yet here I
• 1:56:17
  was reluctantly going and getting that shot that I just I hate that I ended
• 1:56:25
  up getting it, But you know, at the time, I was scared,
• 1:56:28
  and I definitely feel like I was bullied into having to show proof that
• 1:56:33
  I got this vaccine. And that was the other thing is I'll admit for
• 1:56:38
  a while there I was running around with a fake vaccine card because I didn't
• 1:56:43
  want to get it. And then you know, I was worried. I
• 1:56:47
  was scared that, you know, I would have gotten into major trouble,
• 1:56:51
  and so you know, it's just the whole thing. Looking back, I
• 1:56:56
  just I just it's it's mind boggling to me. And you know what it
• 1:57:00
  is, now that I have been off air since September, I really feel
• 1:57:08
  sorry for a lot of the folks that are in this industry because there are
• 1:57:11
  a lot of good, talented, hard working people in the news rooms.
• 1:57:15
  Despite if they are far leftist or whatever, I still believe that there's a
• 1:57:19
  lot of good. But it is such a corrupt industry that I feel badly
• 1:57:29
  they don't have a choice and they are stuck, and that to me must
• 1:57:33
  be a miserable way to live. Not to mention the hours that are taken
• 1:57:38
  away from them, from their kids and their families, all for what to
• 1:57:42
  the power the power to say that they are on the news, I don't
• 1:57:46
  know, it's not worth it to me. Well, good for you,
• 1:57:50
  and I really appreciate you being honest about this, and you're one of the
• 1:57:55
  very few that I think have had the introspection to be able to be really
• 1:58:00
  very straightforward about what has transpired both in the industry in general as well as
• 1:58:03
  what happened with you in particular. I do want to shift gears a little
• 1:58:08
  bit, not that this is at an important story, but um but you
• 1:58:12
  and I have talked off the air about a subject in the media that that
• 1:58:16
  I think has been grossly misreported and a lot of lives have been unfairly ruined
• 1:58:23
  over. And that's I guess what you call the me too issue, the
• 1:58:28
  issue of meat too, and sexual harassment or worse is a huge issue in
• 1:58:32
  the news media in my view, partially because, and I don't know if
• 1:58:39
  you'll agree with this, the news media is a bit of a combustible set
• 1:58:43
  of circumstances. You have a bunch of very you know, high powered,
• 1:58:47
  often narcissistic, often very attractive people whom you know crave attention, and people
• 1:58:55
  who crave attention I think are probably more likely to engage in risky relation ships
• 1:59:00
  and especially in the sexual realm. So it's this very combustible situation where invariably,
• 1:59:06
  and I'm sure I don't know if you've experienced, but I'm sure you've
• 1:59:09
  seen it in my much shorter period of time in the television news industry,
• 1:59:14
  I know I saw it and experienced it, where there's a lot of intra
• 1:59:18
  office relationships. You know, people they tend to live in a bubble,
• 1:59:24
  and these are people within their bubble. They have common interests, they have
• 1:59:28
  access to each other, they live, they work often the same hours,
• 1:59:30
  which are unusual hours. I mean, there's all sorts of reasons why these
• 1:59:36
  types of relationships occur. But now, all of a sudden, over the
• 1:59:40
  last few years, we've decided and you know, there's all sorts of different
• 1:59:44
  varieties of these relationship. But most recently we saw it happened at ABC with
• 1:59:48
  Amy Robot and her co host and Good Morning America both getting fired for having
• 1:59:55
  an extramarital affair. But you know, and I don't want to lump everything
• 1:59:59
  together because obviously, sexual harassment is different from a consensual affair. Uh,
• 2:00:03
  you know, an extra marital affair is different from a you know, two
• 2:00:06
  single people getting together. And obviously there's theoretically the realm of more than harassment.
• 2:00:13
  There's assault or rape or you know, so obviously there's always going to
• 2:00:16
  be different sets of circumstances. But in general, right, would you agree
• 2:00:20
  with me, Brittany that the met to panic went too far when it came
• 2:00:28
  to the news media. Would you agree with that? I agree with that,
• 2:00:32
  um, and I agree with everything that you just said as well.
• 2:00:35
  There's always circumstances, there's always you know, but as a whole general,
• 2:00:41
  generally speaking, a lot of these incidences were consensual. Why weren't the women
• 2:00:49
  held accountable for going into certain people's offices or up into certain people's hotel rooms
• 2:00:59
  and they were married men, none married men? Why why I personally,
• 2:01:05
  but like, there's there's obviously wrongdoing morally clearly, but from a criminal perspective,
• 2:01:14
  and to be as like just fired and and your entire family publicized to
• 2:01:20
  the point of absolute embarrassment, I just thought was wrong. Um, you
• 2:01:27
  know, and there's different there's listen, there's different levels of this me too
• 2:01:30
  moment where you know there are some are worse than others, you know,
• 2:01:34
  let's be fair. Um, but I think some of these women should have
• 2:01:39
  been held accountable as well. That's I do. I mean obviously, as
• 2:01:45
  a as a white male, I have no credibility unlike you on this issue.
• 2:01:47
  But I have to say that having investigated some of these cases and when
• 2:01:53
  I get to one of them in particular in a second, but um,
• 2:01:56
  it certainly seems to me as as if some of these situations where where women
• 2:02:02
  were attracted to men because get this, they're powerful and famous. And now
• 2:02:08
  this is shocking, right, this is shocking that attractive women in media who
• 2:02:12
  want to be famous would be attracted to men who are powerful and famous.
• 2:02:15
  This seems to be something we've completely forgotten, Brittany, right, I mean,
• 2:02:18
  and that women and that just been finished. The point that when women
• 2:02:23
  find a man to be very attractive because he's rich and powerful and famous,
• 2:02:27
  they might do things that in retrospect they would regret. And that that doesn't
• 2:02:32
  mean it was rape. That means you made a mistake that you regret in
• 2:02:36
  the sexual realm. Do you do you see where I'm going with that.
• 2:02:40
  I do see where you're going with that. And to play the devil's advocate
• 2:02:43
  from from some of the readings in the research that I've done, some of
• 2:02:45
  these women felt that had they not performed, they would have lost their jobs
• 2:02:51
  or they would have been retaliated against. And that's totally wrong, and that's
• 2:02:56
  totally wrong, absolutely wrong, and I and that is a victim in itself
• 2:03:00
  that that's I'm against that, so let that be known. However, we
• 2:03:04
  also know that there were some women who willingly, voluntarily wanted to pursue and
• 2:03:13
  see where it was going to go with this high prolific, you know,
• 2:03:19
  wealthy, powerful, famous, married man. And I guess the part that
• 2:03:29
  bothers me most other than you know, the lives of innocent quote unquote innocent
• 2:03:33
  people being destroyed for things that before would never have been an issue. But
• 2:03:39
  I guess the part that bothers me the most from a from a substantive standpoint
• 2:03:43
  is that we're just playing pretend that that somehow women are not very attractive,
• 2:03:49
  even though sometimes ugly men who are powerful and who are famous, and Harvey
• 2:03:59
  Weinstein, I mean, well, look the Harvey Weinstein story. I'm not
• 2:04:03
  any means. I mean, I don't know how you know, I mean
• 2:04:06
  so well, you know I have my stake in the Harvey Weinstein story is
• 2:04:12
  that Ronan Farow was credited with bringing him down. And I despise Ronan Faraoh
• 2:04:18
  for reasons that I'll mention in a second, But I believe Ronan Faraoh to
• 2:04:23
  be a fraud. And if the media was honest about Ronan Faraoh, they
• 2:04:27
  would tell you the story that. Oh, by the way, the whole
• 2:04:30
  thing that started me to that whole Ronan Pharaoh story when it came to Harvey
• 2:04:34
  Weinstein's court cases was largely not totally, but largely discredited. I mean,
• 2:04:41
  Weinstein got convicted not on the stuff that Ronan Faraoh reported, but mostly on
• 2:04:45
  the narrative that Ronan Farre reported. Ronan Farrell was wrong about a lot,
• 2:04:51
  and he reported a lot of things that were very borderline and you know,
• 2:04:56
  Look, I'm sure that Weinstein was guilty of some stuff, but I have
• 2:05:00
  never understood, I have never understood this idea that we couldn't accept the notion.
• 2:05:05
  Do you know what? Women who want to make it in Hollywood might
• 2:05:10
  voluntarily engage in sex acts with an ugly guy if they think it's gonna work
• 2:05:15
  for them, Like as if that's not a possibility. How did that become
• 2:05:17
  not a possibility when when everybody knows that's reality. I mean, am I
• 2:05:24
  wrong about that? Brittany? Yeah? I think the Harvey Weinstein situation,
• 2:05:30
  I mean, I think he took advantage of a lot of women. I'm
• 2:05:33
  not I'm not saying it didn't, and I'm not saying that was right,
• 2:05:38
  And I'm not And I've never defended Harvey Weinstein, although there are people I
• 2:05:41
  know who know the case better than I do, who who still believed that
• 2:05:45
  legally he did not commit any sort of rape. But that's not even my
• 2:05:47
  point. And Weinstein is probably a bad example. I will say this about
• 2:05:53
  Hary Weinstein, Britney. Let me put it this way. Maybe you would
• 2:05:55
  agree with maybe wouldn't if Harvey Weinstein looked like Brad Pitt or even close to
• 2:06:00
  Brad Pitt. No, nothing would have happened to him. He could have
• 2:06:03
  been engaged in exactly the same behavior. And John, John look at look
• 2:06:10
  at Matt Lower. Matt Lower is a good looking man. He's not a
• 2:06:13
  he's not a Harvey Weinstein face. So I mean, and Matt Lower got
• 2:06:18
  went through the ringer with what happened there, and I'm in positive that sure,
• 2:06:25
  morally it was very wrong the things that came out. However, I
• 2:06:31
  think that some women, um you know it was consensual and went into his
• 2:06:36
  office, you know, thinking I don't know. I mean, I would
• 2:06:42
  never want to speak for any other woman who in that position, But I
• 2:06:44
  just can't imagine all of them, you know, I don't know. Well,
• 2:06:49
  you mentioned Matt um and I was going to get to Matt partially because
• 2:06:53
  I'm very much connected to him publicly. I consider him to be a great
• 2:06:57
  good friend. You also know Matt. Let's be clear, you never had
• 2:07:00
  an affair with Matt, just to be clear, that doesn't that's not how
• 2:07:02
  you know Matt. But but you you know Matt through a through a social
• 2:07:08
  family situation, and you don't believe that Matt Lower ever raped anybody, do
• 2:07:14
  you, I do not. Yeah, I don't mean. I mean,
• 2:07:17
  and you know Matt well enough to have a pretty good assessment of who he
• 2:07:21
  is as a man, right, Um, I mean yeah, I just
• 2:07:27
  I couldn't imagine that happening. Um, you know, having said that,
• 2:07:35
  though, there are people who do horrible things that you would never think that
• 2:07:42
  they could ever do. Um, you know, but was it ever proven?
• 2:07:47
  Did he ever even get no char the ra the rain ballot? No?
• 2:07:53
  No, no, yeah, it was it was never It was never
• 2:07:58
  even a llegend in court. It was never even a lawsuit. I mean,
• 2:08:01
  I mean right, it was. It was it was just women.
• 2:08:03
  It was it was multiple affairs that came to light, and it basically ruined
• 2:08:09
  and tainted the image of NBC in the Today Show, and essentially he and
• 2:08:15
  his family were publicly scrutinized and he was you know, chewed up and spit
• 2:08:20
  out essentially, right, And then what happened is because rape is a whole
• 2:08:24
  other thing that you know, he was never right, He was never a
• 2:08:28
  even alleged that. It was more about these multiple, multiple, multiple affairs.
• 2:08:33
  And to me, where where's the accountability for the women? Where where's
• 2:08:39
  the accountability that the women went up into his office and and you know,
• 2:08:45
  participated in these affairs knowing that he was married and had a family. Just
• 2:08:50
  to be clear on the rape allegation. The only time that that even came
• 2:08:56
  up was when Ronan Faroh wrote his book. And Ronan Farow needed a new
• 2:09:00
  headline because he was out of Weinstein material, and so he was writing a
• 2:09:05
  book about me too, and so he needed something new and he needed a
• 2:09:09
  new famous target. And so Matt had been fired from NBC as the host
• 2:09:13
  of the Today Show for having an affair with an NBC quote unquote co worker,
• 2:09:20
  although this person never worked for him or even with him at the time,
• 2:09:24
  and doing so quote unquote on company property. That was a violation of
• 2:09:28
  Matt's contract. He never even fought it. He got fired, and then
• 2:09:33
  Ronan Farrow, I believe, convinced that woman to turn a consensual affair into
• 2:09:39
  his definition of rape, which is basically a dramatic imbalance in workplace power,
• 2:09:46
  which I don't believe it's the definition of rape, but that's what Ronan Farrow
• 2:09:52
  did, and so he then used the R word in that book. Matt
• 2:09:56
  was never even remotely investigated criminally. He wasn't even sued. There was never
• 2:10:03
  any lawsuits about from anyone. He's got lots of money, He's incredibly vulnerable
• 2:10:07
  to a lawsuit here. That woman never sued him, Nobody ever sued him.
• 2:10:11
  He's innocent. There's no evidence he was guilty. There's no logic he
• 2:10:15
  was guilty. You know him, I know him exceedingly well. He admits
• 2:10:20
  that he did wrong in his marriage, obviously, but he had his entire
• 2:10:24
  career destroyed overnight, and then his reputation further blemished by this bogus Ronan Paraoe
• 2:10:30
  allegation. The guy who did this day is still considered to be a god
• 2:10:33
  in the news media when he's actually a fraud. And so I can't I
• 2:10:37
  can't talk about Ronan because I don't. I don't know him. I don't
• 2:10:39
  I don't know that. I won't speak on that, but I will speak
• 2:10:43
  on the fact that, like, it wasn't just Matt's career, Matt Lower's
• 2:10:46
  career. We're talking about three children's lives right well, and his ex wife.
• 2:10:54
  I mean, it was just you know, And that's that's the problem
• 2:10:56
  too with the media, is you know, people people don't realize that this
• 2:11:01
  is a ripple effect that it has on people when you take something, and
• 2:11:07
  you know, I do what what the media is doing right now, this
• 2:11:11
  whole cancel culture and everything else. I mean, it's it has a ripple
• 2:11:16
  effect, and it's it's horrible in my opinion. And you you know,
• 2:11:20
  and I know that Matt's three children love him dearly. He's very close to
• 2:11:26
  all three of them, and I actually believe that he I know, he
• 2:11:31
  didn't respond because he was trying to protect them. And you know, if
• 2:11:33
  he had, if his three children were not a major part of the equation,
• 2:11:37
  he would have responded much differently to the allegations that he did. But
• 2:11:41
  he was very concerned about their lives and they one hundred percent aside with him
• 2:11:48
  in this situation. And there's no question that there was, as you say,
• 2:11:50
  collateral damage in that. But I just wanted to mention the issue in
• 2:11:54
  general, and because we have this Matt Lower connection in common, I wanted
• 2:11:58
  to mention him at particular because to me, he's by far the most dramatic
• 2:12:03
  example of somebody who was done wrong by this entire subject. And I'm positive
• 2:12:07
  with one certainty that he never did anything with any woman that was not consensual
• 2:12:13
  mistakes in his marriage, which he acknowledges, but nothing remotely illegal or immoral
• 2:12:20
  for me from the standpoint of sexual harassment or even the R word. All
• 2:12:24
  Right, the last thing I wanted to talk to you about, Brittany,
• 2:12:26
  it kind of goes with where you're gonna go next. I saw an interview
• 2:12:30
  that you just did in One American News where I've never seen this before in
• 2:12:33
  my entire life. They essentially offered you a job on the air. So
• 2:12:37
  are you going to start working for One American News? That was quite unique?
• 2:12:41
  So what's up with that? Listen, I'm humbled and flattered, you
• 2:12:46
  know, three different times they offered me a position. But look, I
• 2:12:52
  you know, I graduate in June with my master's degree in clinical psychology.
• 2:12:54
  I just finished my proxicum Marriage and Family Therapy. I just really looking to
• 2:13:01
  take some time off and be more present with my family, my daughter,
• 2:13:05
  do some summer traveling, and then in the fall we'll see. Um.
• 2:13:11
  You know, people always say go to a more conservative news network. At
• 2:13:16
  the end of the day, it's it's not about that, you know.
• 2:13:20
  It's really about the hours and being the most present mom that I would like
• 2:13:26
  to be in right now. So you know, I don't know. I
• 2:13:33
  don't know what career, what the future holds career wise. I'm open to
• 2:13:37
  a lot of possibilities, but it has to work around me being as present
• 2:13:43
  of a mother as I possibly can be, and so going and working for
• 2:13:48
  Fox News or Newsmax or one American news network, it just doesn't really fit
• 2:13:52
  my priorities right now. Well, certainly as a now out of the closet
• 2:13:58
  concern vative who's blond and beautiful and female. You have a lot of options
• 2:14:03
  in front of you. But I do want to ask you since you mentioned
• 2:14:07
  the conservative media, obviously the biggest issue in the conservative media going forward over
• 2:14:11
  the next year is very likely to be Trump or De Santis and how you
• 2:14:16
  handle Trump and how you handle the Ron De Santis perspective challenge to him for
• 2:14:22
  the Republican nomination in the twenty twenty four election. Where does Britney Hopper stand
• 2:14:28
  on the Trump to Santis divide right now? Yeah, so here's where Brittany
• 2:14:33
  Hopper stands. I can't really tell you whether it's more Trump or to Santis.
• 2:14:39
  I think that what I will say, the biggest uphill battle that the
• 2:14:43
  GOP has right now is gun control and abortion. And I think that these
• 2:14:50
  two issues obviously set apart in many ways a conservative and a Democrat. But
• 2:14:56
  I think that the GOOPE needs to come together and hear this out, to
• 2:15:01
  lean lean up a bit on something, because this is what's hurting the GOP
• 2:15:05
  more than anything, are those two issues. And I think that the younger
• 2:15:09
  generation's coming in and uh, it's going to be a major uphill battle for
• 2:15:16
  either Trump or to Stantis. That's my answer. So you're you're you're trying
• 2:15:22
  to avoid You're going to avoid the Trumps say this question. I was a
• 2:15:26
  teen journalist for eighteen years. I definitely know how to. When you were
• 2:15:30
  talking about the Mattel Hour and then Harvey Weinstein, I was getting a little
• 2:15:33
  uncomfortable. I don't you know. I don't necessarily um want to say right
• 2:15:39
  now at this point because I don't really think it has any value whether I'm
• 2:15:43
  a pro Trump or pro to Stantist and who I think is going to be
• 2:15:46
  better for our country. I just think that as someone who identifies more with
• 2:15:50
  conservative policies. However, I will say I do believe in some gun control,
• 2:15:56
  gun reform. We need to figure this out. And the abortion issue
• 2:16:01
  I think is really really hurting. I'm pro life up until a certain point.
• 2:16:05
  I think that you know, up until the first trimester twelve weeks,
• 2:16:11
  and because of medical reasons, a woman should be allowed. So I think
• 2:16:15
  that these two major issues are absolutely hurting the GOP moving forward. I get
• 2:16:20
  where you're coming from, although I would and to be clear, I wasn't
• 2:16:24
  asking your opinion on Trump to Sanders because it will influence others. I was
• 2:16:28
  curious about it from the standpoint of I find you to be an interesting person
• 2:16:31
  and I was curious as to where you come down on it. But obviously
• 2:16:35
  I respect your yeah right not to come out publicly. John. This is
• 2:16:39
  what I'll say about about Trump. Um. You know, I think a
• 2:16:46
  lot of the things that comes out of his mouth ruin his mission. But
• 2:16:52
  I think his policies are are you know, are pretty spot on in many
• 2:16:58
  ways. If you're a more conservative voter and thin fair enough, where can
• 2:17:03
  people find you on social media? Brittany? Oh well wait, well,
• 2:17:07
  maybe just add one more thing. And then to Santa Santis, I think
• 2:17:11
  it's the opposite. He comes off more presidential to me in the way his
• 2:17:18
  delivery, but he has some hardcore policies himself. It's going to be an
• 2:17:22
  interesting, interesting next two years and twenty twenty what is it, twenty twenty
• 2:17:28
  four. I mean that's actually it's less than two years, which is mind
• 2:17:31
  boggling given everything that we're seeing happening in this country. Well, well,
• 2:17:35
  actually, I think the election will be decided in less than a year in
• 2:17:39
  all likelihood, because whoever the nominee is will determine how the general election goes.
• 2:17:45
  And I think that a year from that we'll know for sure pretty much
• 2:17:48
  who the Republican nominee is. So do you think it could be does Santis
• 2:17:52
  versus Newsome? Well, if it was De Santis versus Newsome, I would
• 2:18:00
  be a very happy man. I would if you could give me De Santis
• 2:18:03
  versus Newsom right now. Um, I would give my left pinky finger and
• 2:18:07
  maybe both my I use the interlocking grip and golf, so I probably wouldn't
• 2:18:11
  want to give up my right pinky finger, but I would. I would
• 2:18:15
  give maybe a couple of toes. Um. I would give almost anything,
• 2:18:20
  is what I'm trying to say for it to be desantist Newsom, because I
• 2:18:22
  believe de Santists would clean Gavin Newsom's clock. I don't believe that's where we're
• 2:18:28
  gonna end up. I know a lot of people think that's where we're gonna
• 2:18:31
  end up, but I'm not one of them. I think I think we're
• 2:18:35
  gonna end up. I'm curious. I would love to know. I think
• 2:18:37
  we're gonna I think we're gonna end up. Oh well, thank you.
• 2:18:41
  I appreciate I'm with someone else believed that, but I appreciate that you do.
• 2:18:46
  I believe that we're most likely gonna end up with Biden versus Trump.
• 2:18:50
  That's the most likely scenario by by a long long stretch. Um as far
• 2:18:54
  as Newsom, I don't think Newsom can run if Biden does, unless you
• 2:19:00
  know something, you know, really dramatic happens with his health and so m
• 2:19:05
  so obviously, if if Biden runs, it pretty much blocks Newsome. Not
• 2:19:09
  totally, but I think almost entirely. And if it's not, if Biden
• 2:19:13
  decides not to run, I think it's interesting between Harris and Newsome because that'll
• 2:19:20
  be what the battle is. But it's still hard for me to believe.
• 2:19:24
  How see how Newsom beats even Harris, and people say well, Harris is
• 2:19:26
  so incredibly unpopular, which she is, but people need to remember she's been
• 2:19:31
  vice president now, which elevates her dramatically. And in order to win the
• 2:19:39
  Democratic nomination, you must must win a huge percentage of black votes. And
• 2:19:46
  so, can someone tell me how in the world Gavin Newsom beats come out
• 2:19:50
  Kamala Harris for the black vote. I realize that she's technically not African American.
• 2:19:58
  Yeah, there's no way. I think that that's also his you know,
• 2:20:03
  his plan with these reparations going on in the state of California. Um,
• 2:20:07
  you know, to get those black voters essentially, I don't think.
• 2:20:11
  I just don't think that's gonna work. I just think that he is,
• 2:20:13
  you know, Governor Hergel, coming from a super rich background, being as
• 2:20:20
  white and as privileged as he is. I just I just don't see how
• 2:20:24
  he's going to resonate with black voters in South Carolina. I mean, black
• 2:20:28
  voters in South Carolina are gonna be like, what, get the hell out
• 2:20:31
  of here? Um, And that's where that would be decided. So UM,
• 2:20:37
  I hate Gavin Newsom as much as anybody on the planet. I fear
• 2:20:41
  a presidency of his about as much as anybody in the planet. But I
• 2:20:45
  just really don't see currently, barring deaths, maybe multiple deaths, I don't
• 2:20:50
  see how that happens now. I will say Trump Newsome would be the would
• 2:20:56
  be an even bigger nightmare than than Trump Biden in my view, because if
• 2:21:01
  for no other reason, you know, Biden can only serve another four years
• 2:21:05
  and he's going to be ancient. Newsom could serve eight years, and he
• 2:21:09
  would really want to radically change the country. So I'm as bad as Trump
• 2:21:16
  Biden is. I don't think it's the worst scenario. The worst scenario we
• 2:21:20
  could possibly end up here with is Trump Newsome, because Newsom could beat Trump.
• 2:21:24
  Brittany, Now tell me where people can find you on your social media,
• 2:21:28
  sure Brittany TV on Twitter that's b ri I T t n e y
• 2:21:33
  TV, or on Instagram Brittany Hopper TV, b r I T t Any
• 2:21:39
  y Hoppe r TV. Always great to talk to you, Brittany. Please
• 2:21:43
  keep in touch and let us know what's going on with you. Okay,
• 2:21:46
  thank you, John, We'll do all the best to you and your family.
• 2:21:52
  Thanks so much for Brittany for her time. Very much enjoyed that.
• 2:21:54
  Hope she did as well, as is always the case. Please remember to
• 2:21:58
  subscribe, rate, and review this episode, and also share it with others.
• 2:22:03
  If you do so on social media, please tag me. I'll be
• 2:22:07
  happy to share it myself. Until next time. This is episode number fifty
• 2:22:11
  three of the Death of Journalism podcast, and my name is John Ziegler.