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Episode One Hundred Seventy Four: The Trump Monarchy · The Death Of Journalism

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Welcome to episode number one hundred and seventy four of the Death of Journalism podcasts.
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My name is John Zigler. I'm your host on today's show. Why
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I was wrong about Joe Biden not dropping out, but not about what was
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behind the reports that he had already decided to do so. Did the Trump
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Convention miss a golden opportunity to preemptively blunt Kamala Harris and did they get out
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played? And the latest on the Secret Services Trump assassination attempt to Bockle In
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the last episode of the podcast, episode one seventy three, towards the end,
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I was more confident than probably ever since it became a major issue that
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Joe Biden was not going to be dropping out of the presidential race. And
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in case you haven't heard by now, I was catastrophically wrong when I made
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that statement. Now, this is not the first time nor the last time
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that I have been wrong about something. Being married, by the way,
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makes it a whole lot easier to admit when you're wrong because you get so
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much experience in doing so. That's one of the many things I've learned in
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my many years of marriage. But I do think that the reason I was
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wrong deserves some explanation here, because obviously Joe Biden has resigned from the race,
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not the presidency. We'll get to that a little bit later on.
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In what is now the fourth major earthquake of this campaign in not particularly long
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period of time, We've got the Trump convictions, the debate debacle, the
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assassination attempt, and now the switcheroo where Joe Biden suddenly decides, very suddenly
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decides to withdraw from the race, and it now appears as if, as
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I've been telling you many many times over the last year or so, Kamala
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Harra was the only option to replace him. We'll get to that as well.
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Of course. Now, part of the reason I was wrong about this
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for a lot of reasons, but part of the reason that I was wrong
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is that there were a few things that one I did not know at the
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time of episode one seventy three, and then there were a few things that
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happened, maybe even more significantly after we recorded Episode one seventy three, which
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changed the dynamic just enough where Biden finally decided to get the heck out of
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the race. The first thing I want to mention, and I did not
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know this at the time of episode one seventy three is that there was apparently
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a conference call between Biden and Democratic congressional leaders that went very, very very
2:50
poorly. And I always talk about how I'm a big believer that pressure matters.
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Pressure is a remarkable human phenomena. You put people under pressure, and
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oftentimes bad things happen. I've talked a lot about that with regard to my
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goals in the Penn State Joe Paterno Joysondusky case, trying to get some pressure
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on the accusers, for instance. I've talked about it with regard to my
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experience in the OJ Simpson case, where you put OJ Simpson under pressure and
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eventually Las Vegas happens. Well, Joe Biden was put under an enormous amount
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of pressure via public attempts to basically bully him out of the race, and
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that, combined with his age, I think, finally created a circumstance where
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he broke and by all accounts, that conference call was a disaster where he
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started to lose his temper, he lost his cool, he started lashing out
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at allies, and I think that the general consensus from that call was what
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the fuck is going on? Here, this cannot go on, and so
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I think that rebirthed the effort to get rid of Biden that had kind of
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dissipated in the wake of Trump's assassination attempt. I mean, I was one
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of those who believed, okay, weirdly, encounterintuitively, the assassination attempt may
4:20
have saved Biden's candidacy, one because it changed the subject, but two because
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it changed the tone. Right. You know, it's hard to pull off
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this machiavellian coup in the aftermath of this unity moment where we're all coming together,
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at least pretending to when Donald Trump came within an inch of his life,
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and it just wasn't a good look. It wasn't consistent with the vibe
4:46
of the nation for Democrats to knife their incumbent president in the back in this
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atmosphere. I bought into that to a certain degree, but I think that
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conference call really reignited the urgency among Democrats. And then the other thing that
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happened is we're now living in a world where our attention spans are so short
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that the aftermath of the assassination basically lasted four or five days, and then
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we were on to normal life, which is remarkable for other reasons, but
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I think that's a major part of this has probably not been getting enough play.
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And then there was a really baffling especially in retrospect, if Biden wanted
5:31
to stay in. I'm assuming that Biden was trying to stay in and all
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this. He made a lot of mistakes strategically that may have been because he's
5:39
just not up to the job, but one of them was he changed the
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standard for what would force him to get out of the race. Remember he
5:48
was the Lord Almighty could come down and I might get out of the race
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if he told me to get out. Well, that changed just a few
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days before, for Biden announced that he was withdrawing to if I have a
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medical situation that would prevent me from doing the job, I would get out.
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Now that was a brand new threshold, and I think the changing of
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the threshold is important on a number of different levels. But I actually think
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and I could be wrong about this, because obviously I was wrong in what
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ended up happening, But my reaction to Biden making this statement about if I
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had a medical situation, A lot of people perceive that as Aha, he's
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getting out and he's going to use some sort of medical situation, whether it's
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Parkinson's or whatever, as an excuse. I did not interpret it that way.
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I interpreted it as he was trying very and artfully and ineffectively to say
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he doesn't have a medical situation, that currently he's perfectly fine, but just
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to show on being reasonable, folks, if I get a medical situation that
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prevents me from doing the job, I'll get out. I think the message
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was supposed to be that that's not currently the case. Well, that message
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didn't get out there effectively. And then right after that he gets COVID.
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Now I know there's some people that claim he I don't think he really got
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COVID, but it's just unbelievable that we don't believe anything in this world anymore.
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Everyone on the left hand and right have lost so much trust in our
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institutions and our media. We don't believe anything. But I believe, call
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me a knave. I believe that Joe Biden actually got COVID. And you
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know this was, Ah, this is gonna be the reason. This is
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going to be the excuse for why Biden gets out, And it was not
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the excuse. But I do think it played at least subconsciously a role.
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Who knows, maybe even Biden thought it was a sign from the almighty that
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he needed to get the hell out. But very critical moment, very critical
8:03
moment. Biden was even more physically weakened than he was previously because he got
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COVID, and so I think all these things plus some bad polling that came
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out. Internally, there was a horrendous poll. I mean, frankly,
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this was before Biden announced his withdraw There was a poll out from the Detroit
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newspaper, which is obviously a very liberal outlet. They had a poll where
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Trump is leading Michigan by seven points. Now seven points in Michigan. That's
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way outside the margin of error. And that's ballgame. I mean, if
8:46
that poll is even close to accurate, that's ballgame. Because if Biden is
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losing Michigan by seven, there is no chance he's beating Donald Trump, you
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know, even with you know, even a black swan event in this environment
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may not change that reality. So there was some bad polling internally, there
9:09
was that one bad poll. Publicly, there was still calls for Biden to
9:13
get out of the race. Joe Manchin even added his name to the list
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on Sunday morning, though apparently the decision had already been made by then,
9:22
and so Biden shocked everybody, including his own staff, by getting out on
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Saturday. On Sunday afternoon. Now, I mocked the idea that he was
9:35
getting out this weekend or this past weekend, which had been I believe predicted,
9:39
although some claimed they were reporting. There were a lot of reports quote
9:45
unquote claiming that Biden was going to get out by the end of the weekend,
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which obviously means Sunday. And so, you know, mid Sunday morning,
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while watching the British Open golf tournament, I was like, why is
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there no sign that Biden is getting out? And so I mockingly asked the
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question, does anyone know what time Biden is withdrawing because I haven't seen any
10:05
sign of it yet. And the implication was, obviously, it's not going
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to happen, because these quote unquote reports were not based in reality. They
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were predictions being disguised as reports from people who really didn't know what was going
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on. May have had an agenda, whether it's personal or political. Most
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prominently among these was the formerly famous pundit Mark Halprin, who put out a
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tweet that got like sixteen million views claiming that he knew that Biden was going
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to resign by the end of the weekend. And it's important to point out
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he got all sorts of the details totally wrong, including the fact that Biden
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would not endorse Kamala Harris. That's one of the several details he got wrong.
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But now it's perceived that he knew what was happening, he had inside
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information, his reporting was solid, and that somehow, you know, people
11:03
like me who mocked it were wrong. Well, that's just ridiculous, not
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just that he got some very important details wrong, which indicate that he didn't
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really have inside information. He just got lucky. It's remarkable to me how
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many people don't seem to have the ability to tell the difference between a report
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and a prediction, a prediction that just happens to turn out true. I
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would put Bill O'Reilly and Tucker Carlson clearly in this category, although they made
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reports three weeks ago that clearly were based on nothing but bullshit, because if
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they had been real, Biden would have gotten out of the race long ago
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now. But of course, the conspiracy theorist will tell you this was all
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just an act. This was all a bargaining. This was a negotiation process
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that Biden was just holding out until he got the right price. Oh my
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god, Look, is it possible that the Biden's going to get a going
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away prize of some sort? He got some sort of agreement with somebody.
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I'm sure that's possible. There's no evidence of that yet. The timing of
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this I don't think is consistent with that. But you know what, the
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way this went down is not consistent with a blatant, overt fake negotiating ploy.
12:28
And the reason for that is that the threshold kept changing. If this
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was a negotiation ploy, the messaging would have remained the same. Instead,
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it changed rather dramatically. And before I get to how it changed and how
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I think this all went down, I do want to share a bit of
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irony, and I think it's interesting. It's potentially hilarious, but it's a
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lot of the things. I tweeted this on Sunday after Biden announced his withdraw
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in very strange fashion via a written statement and no, not even a video
13:11
statement to go along with it. I'll get to that momentarily, but it
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was rather weird for me. Personally that publicly, I was expressing so much
13:20
skepticism, especially on Twitter, about these reports that Biden was going to withdraw
13:26
this past weekend. And the reason I was, you know, expressing skepticism
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really had to do with who was making the reports, Like Mark Halprin.
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You know, when you always be very skeptical of someone who used to be
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famous in the media world but now is not, especially when they're basically working
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independently or for a crappy organization like Halpern works for Newsmax, which is a
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joke because you're constantly basically playing a lottery. These guys are to try to
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regain credibility, using their name recognition and the perception of some semblance of credibility
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to have their reports be taken seriously, and then they're banking on the idea
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of this lottery ticket. Well, if I'm right, I will look like
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I'm back, I know what I'm doing, I'm in the know. And
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if they're wrong, well things changed or people will just forget about it.
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And you already got the sixteen million views for your tweet prediction that turned outur
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quote unquote report which actually turned out to be at least half false. In
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several of the data points or the reports being completely wrong and so. But
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the reason why this was particularly odd, maybe telling, maybe ironic, maybe
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stupid on my part, I'm not sure yet, is that on Friday,
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I received an email from my father, who I've referred to on this podcast
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many times. He's eighty three years old. He lives most of the year
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in retirement community, although it's more like a resort, although this summer he's
15:03
not in the retirement community. And you know, he is a political moderate.
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He's always been a very well connected guy. I've referenced his relationships with
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a lot of very famous people, including Donald Trump, including Nancy Pelosi and
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Paul Pelosi, but not like super connected and certainly not anything close to being
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within the Democratic Party elite. He's also not somebody who has ever, to
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my recollection, ever done anything close to this prior in my entire life.
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It's possible he did, but I don't remember anything like this. He sent
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out an email to me and eight other people I think it was, And
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these eight people, they're not famous people, but they're prominent people. There
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were at least three or four people on this email chain. If you knew
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who they were, you wouldn't know their names, but if you knew their
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background, you'd be like, oh, okay, that's an important person.
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People who are you know, very rich, have been, or are still
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somewhat powerful. These you know, people that are you know, people that
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you would think of as prominent people. Not again, not famous, but
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you know, not like you know, the everyday guy on the street.
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Okay. So I found that little bit odd that this was an email list
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that my father sent this message to. But here was the message with the
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subject line in all capital letters. Again, this is not like my father.
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Inside information. This is on Friday. Okay, this was on Friday,
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inside information from reliable sources in DC. Joe Biden will resign this weekend.
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Kamala Harris will run for president. Mark Kelly from Arizona will be VP
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candidate. And that was it. Now. When I got this email,
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first of all, I was surprised that my father would do anything like this
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because it's not his MO. I was a little bit taken aback by who
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else was on the email list, but I kind of felt bad for my
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dad. I felt like, okay, geez, wow, you know eighty
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three years old, you know you're willing to buy almost anything. And you
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know, I have a bedrock belief, bedrock belief based upon a lot of
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experience in this area that whenever there is a huge story, a lot of
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people are gonna think that they have legitimate inside information. And especially people who
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think they are special or have been in circles of people who are special in
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their life. They think they know something special, and they tend to overrate
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the information that they are getting. And I've seen this time and time and
18:07
time again, especially among wealthy people or people who think they're in the know.
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If they hear a rumor, they automatically think that that rumor has value
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because otherwise, you know, why would they be hearing it. Stuff that
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they hear must have more value to it, must have more validity to it.
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Because I'm not saying consciously, I'm saying subconsciously, they think that they're
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in a club of the elites. Now again, I don't my father is
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not like this, but he runs in this kind of circle. And I've
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seen this happen so many times in big stories, and so my initial reaction,
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and I even responded to him, I was trying to be as nice
18:56
as possible, but I kind of mocked the message of the email, saying,
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Dad, there are a lot of people who think they know something that
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they don't really know. We don't really know what's going on. I forget
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exactly what I said, but I was actually probably a little bit too disrespectful,
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especially in retrospect, given the fact that it seems as if, if
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only by luck, this turned out to be somewhat true. But I was
19:23
very skeptical, based upon my experience that this is a phenomenon that when a
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story like this happens, everybody thinks their information is good information, because why
19:37
would someone lie to me? Why would someone tell me a story? And
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you know, get you get the whisper down the lane effect, and you
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know, bad rumors get traction. So I didn't say anything about public about
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this publicly. I thought about it, but I didn't really give it a
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lot of credibility at all. And then, and of course, Biden,
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seemingly at the last minute, based upon all the reporting which would bring into
20:06
question, how my father could possibly have quote unquote inside information on Friday actually
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happened. So I followed up with my father. I'm like, so,
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what was this all about? And interestingly, and perhaps tellingly, he did
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not give up his source. I've not spoken to him, I've emailed and
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texted him. I didn't push it hard, but I'm like, come on,
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you got to give me some semblance of who this source was. The
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quote unquote secret is out of the bag. You know, where where did
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you hear this from? And he jokingly told me that he had had a
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casual conversation with Biden and Biden had told him, which is obviously meant as
20:47
a joke and not to be taken seriously. However, and eventually I think
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I'll have a conversation with my father about this. There is a potential,
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potential, theoretical path for this information to come down. And I hesitate to
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even talk about this because it could totally be false. But as I'm trying
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to figure out, okay, what really transpired here? Was this just dumb
21:18
luck? Was this like about Mark Halpern's you know, maybe even this was
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somehow related to the Mark Alpern thing, that someone had seen Mark Alprin's tweet,
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And then they told my father that's possible. This could be complete bullshit,
21:33
But there is a potential path, and that is that, as I've
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told you many times, my father was very prominent in Georgetown University politics,
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and the era in which he was very prominent at Georgetown was the era where
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the president of Georgetown was Father Leo O'Donovan. Now what's interesting about this is
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why I am aticipending so much time on this it could be again total bullshit,
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is that Leo O'Donovan felt as if my father had basically gotten him fired
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and replaced by the guy who's currently the president of George Downlow. He just
22:14
had a stroke a god of Jack de Joya, so he's not doing particularly
22:18
well right now. But anyway, I digress. So Leo and my father
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used to have a very very close relationship that was strained because of what happened
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with Leo feeling ironically a little bit like Biden that he was forced out of
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the presidency of Georgetown partially by my father. Now why is this relevant,
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Well, at Joe Biden's inauguration, the invocation was given by Father Leo O'Donovan.
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And at Leo O'Donovan's ninetieth birthday party which my father attended, which just
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happened a few months ago, Joe Biden was there via I believe a taped
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message I don't think he was there live. I think it was a taped
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message video that that Biden had provided for leo'donovan's ninetieth birthday party. So I'm
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wondering, could I can kind of see I could theoretically see where if Biden
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is mulling this over, who would he trust, Well, he would trust
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a ninety year old priest who had a very similar situation at the press when
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he was president of Georgetown, and he might give him this kind of information,
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And then I could kind of see Leo in a on maybe even a
23:44
passive aggressive fashion, deciding to brag to my dad that, you know,
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he's still relevant and he's got this kind of kind of inside information that So
23:55
that is a theoretical path, or it could be complete total bullshit. But
24:00
my father has never done this before, and I feel like an idiot one
24:04
for reacting the way that I did to my father's email and also not allowing
24:10
it to influence my public commentary on this. So I hopefully will eventually get
24:15
to the bottom of this. I really don't know for sure if this has
24:21
any validity at all, or why my father did it, but he had
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never done it before, and I did find the story to be interesting.
24:27
I probably spent too much time on it, but you know, like I
24:30
said, I think it's an interesting story. But let me go back to
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what actually transpired here and why I'm convinced, kind of in contradiction to my
24:40
father's narrative that this was not known until very much the last minute, that
24:48
those that you know, for instance, that like Tucker Carlson and Bill O'Reilly,
24:53
they had no idea that Joe Biden was going to actually resign. They
24:59
were just making or from the withdrawal from the race, they were just making
25:02
a prediction. And part of my theory on this is that if this was
25:07
all a plot, if this was all a plan, if this was all
25:10
negotiation, the narrative would not have changed, especially as dramatically as it did.
25:18
I believe in the very human explanation for this. I think what was
25:23
really going on was that an old man was trying to be convinced by those
25:30
close to him to give up the car keys. And at first he was
25:33
saying fuck no, and then he said hell no, and then he said
25:37
no, and then he said maybe, and then he said, well maybe,
25:41
if this happens, I'll do it, and then eventually they wore him
25:45
down and he gave up. That to me is more consistent with the facts
25:52
and the logic of this situation. And by the way, part of what
25:57
facilitated this was douse this self fulfilling prophecy of the reporting that he was getting
26:04
out. The reporting that he was getting out clearly created more and more pressure,
26:11
caused more and more people to call for him to get out among Democratic
26:15
officials. I compare this to what happens in the National Football League, where
26:22
reporters are being used to create fake draft and fake trade narratives because the teams
26:30
are trying to do headfakes on what their plans are or to either get a
26:36
player undervalued or overvalued, or to make people think that their strategy is one
26:41
way when it's actually another, and then it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
26:47
And many of these reporters are so stupid they don't understand what the true self
26:52
interest is of their anonymous sources. These anonymous sources can have any sort of
26:57
agenda, and it's very possible that these anonymous sources actually had an agenda for
27:04
Biden to get out of the race, and that they were making stories up
27:08
about the fact that he was about to get out. We don't know that,
27:12
but it's certainly consistent with a lot of the facts of this situation.
27:18
It's certainly consistent with the broken nature of the news media because these reporters are
27:23
not that bright. They love a big story. This was obviously one of
27:27
the biggest political stories of our time. They want to get the big scoop
27:33
and they will go for almost anything if they can claim sources close to Biden
27:37
or White House sources say that Biden is getting out. It doesn't matter whether
27:44
or not that's based than anything. It doesn't matter if the anonymous source has
27:48
a clear agenda or even a hidden agenda, They're gonna go with it.
27:52
Well, these things don't happen in a vacuum. They have an impact because
28:00
they have an influence over what the thinking is of other people involved in the
28:03
process, whether it's those close to Biden who are advising him or those that
28:08
are on the fence as to whether or not to support him publicly. And
28:14
so this reporting, which I don't think was based in reality, most of
28:18
it had a major influence. It was a self fulfilling prophecy and essentially eroding
28:26
Biden's ability to continue on. But let me get back to this issue of
28:33
how the narrative for Biden changed and why I'm convinced that this was not a
28:41
plot, this was not a plan. I mean, there's, first of
28:44
all, the fact that all evidence indicates that everybody was shocked that was close
28:49
to Biden that they didn't know until one minute before it was posted on Twitter.
28:53
I mean, even Elon Musk tweeted basically bragging that Twitter about this before
29:00
many people close to Biden did, and so that is a huge indication that
29:07
this was a last minute decision. There's also reporting indicating that this was not
29:11
even really talked about until Saturday afternoon, when Biden brought in some close advisors
29:17
to start to craft a letter announcing this. And so, you know,
29:22
all the indications are that this again contradictory to my father's email, that this
29:29
was not a done deal until at the very least Saturday evening and maybe not
29:34
even till Sunday morning. By the way, I should note that when I
29:40
theorized while watching the British Open that you know, hey, where's the Biden
29:45
with draw announcement? Our executive producer Mike Gagavino indicated that he thought, well,
29:48
maybe Biden's waiting until after the British Open was over. And sure enough,
29:52
I mean literally the second that the British Open was over, that's when
29:56
the Biden statement hit Twitter, which I'm not sure is totally coincidental, but
30:03
I thought it was hilarious that Mike Agavito had nailed potentially that particular element of
30:08
this entire story. But back to the differing standards that Biden used in all
30:15
this, and you know there and let's go back to the beginning. So
30:18
there's the initial aftermath of the debate, the initial calls for Biden to get
30:25
out, and Biden does that interview with George Stephanopholis on ABC. Now you
30:30
may recall that I made a huge deal of this at the time, and
30:34
I probably should have trusted my instincts more than I did. That's one of
30:37
the whenever I make mistakes, it's generally in not trusting my instincts, and
30:42
I did not fully trust my instincts here because I found this clip, which
30:48
we're going to replay for you, to be incredibly significant, and even more
30:53
so now in retrospect because in this clip, now most people when they all
31:00
this, their takeaway was Biden has said the Lord Almighty would have to come
31:06
down for him and tell them to get out of the race for him to
31:08
withdraw. That's about as strong a statement as it gets. And I understand
31:12
why that was the focus of this particular clip. From this particular clip,
31:18
I get it because that's about as strong a ligne as you can draw in
31:22
the sand. If the Lord Almighty comes down, then maybe I'm gonna get
31:26
out of the race, but that's not gonna happen. But I found there
31:29
to be another element of this kit clip, just before he makes the Lord
31:33
Almighty statement that was even at the time, maybe more significant, and now
31:38
in retrospect, I think it was even more important than the Lord Almighty because
31:45
Stepanopholis talks to Biden about what happens if the Democratic leadership asks you to get
31:52
out or tells you to get out, and Biden basically pushes that aside and
31:57
says that's not gonna happen. And if you watch this video, I urge
32:01
you to do so. When Biden says that he thinks it's absolutely preposterous to
32:08
think that the Democratic leadership is going to ask him to get out, and
32:14
Stephanopolis follows up by asking the question are you sure? Are you sure?
32:24
And that set off alarm bells for me, because you got to understand who
32:30
Stephanopolis is, how connected he is, obviously a former Democratic operative himself.
32:37
This is a guy who's not asking that question idly. That's a guy who
32:43
has been told by the Democratic elite if Joe doesn't going to get out,
32:47
if he doesn't get out, we're going to force him out. That's my
32:52
interpretation. That was my interpre interpretation then. But at the time I thought
32:57
Biden holds enough cards where he can hold on here if he to, there's
33:00
no real mechanism to get rid of him without mutually a short destruction. Well,
33:07
Biden eventually was worn down like the old man giving up his keys.
33:12
But the key part of this clip is just before the Lord Almighty declaration.
33:19
And here's what that sounded like. What seems like for reforgo a week after
33:23
the debate on ABC with George Debnopolis. I mean, at a more practical
33:29
level, Washington Puss just reported in the last hour that Senator Mark Warner is
33:32
assembling a group of senators together to try and convince you to stand down because
33:37
they don't think you can win. Well, Mark is a good man.
33:40
We've never had that. He also tried to get the nomination to Mark'snott.
33:45
Mark can I have a different perspective. I respect him. And if Chuck
33:52
Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi come down and say we're worried that if
33:58
you stay in the race, we're going to lose the House in the said
34:00
it, how will you respond? I go into detail with them. I've
34:04
speaking of all of them in detail, including Jim Kleimber, every one of
34:08
them. They all said I should stay in the race. Stay in the
34:12
race. No one said. None of the people said I should leave.
34:15
But if they do, well, we're not going to do that. You
34:21
sure, well, yeah, I'm sure. Look, I mean, if
34:25
the Lord of Mighty cannot say, Joe, get out of the race,
34:28
I've got the race and Lord of Mightey's not coming down now. In retrospect,
34:32
it's clear that Joe Biden was in over his head. From a purely
34:38
political strategy perspective, he is clearly a very naive and poor political tactician,
34:49
especially for a guy who has been at it at the highest levels. Of
34:53
DC for basically his entire adult life, because he he himself was totally blindsided,
35:01
as that clip proves, and the Stevenopolis question should have alerted him,
35:08
just like it alerted me that whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
35:13
whoa, what's going on here? There's a coup going on. It's
35:16
a slow moving coup. They're gonna hope that I'm gonna bail, but eventually
35:22
they're gonna do everything they can to get me. And I actually believe just
35:28
to show how poor a tactician Biden is, assuming he wanted to really stay
35:34
in, and all indications are that he did, I think he could have
35:37
easily easily survived this situation if he had played hardball politics. And it's not
35:45
just because he could have stayed and there's not much they could have done if
35:50
I had been advising Joe Biden and the goal was to stave off a coup.
35:57
In my opinion, here's all you had to do, Kamala. Can
36:00
you come to my office please? Yes? Joe? What do you need?
36:04
Kamala? I need you to, maybe even with me, make a
36:08
very public statement that you back me as the nominee and that if for some
36:16
reason I was forced out of the race. You have no interest in being
36:22
the nominee. Now. I don't know whether Kamala Harris would have gone for
36:27
that. That would have been a tough call for her, but she would
36:31
have been in an impossible situation because if she goes along with that, I
36:38
think that ends the coup, because now they have no viable alternative scenario without
36:45
massive chaos in a civil war, because the only way they get through this
36:50
is by galvanizing behind Kamala Harris. And if she decides not to go along
36:58
with that, the press president of the United States can now destroy her as
37:02
being disloyal. And that's that's all she has going for her. The only
37:10
thing she has going for her as a presidential candidate is she's Joe Biden's vice
37:15
president. She has to be seen as loyal to him. And so if
37:21
it gets out there before Biden withdraws from the race that Harris has been disloyal
37:29
and effectively participating in the coup, now she's just had her entire image destroyed
37:39
in the minds of a significant number of especially swing voters. The hardcore Democratic
37:46
voters aren't gonna give shit. They'renna vote against Trump no matter what. But
37:50
not everybody who's going to vote for this case Harris or against Trump is a
37:55
hardcore Democrat. Her image, which is still hardly set in stone. Most
38:01
people don't know that much about Kamala Harris, would have been corrupted in a
38:07
fundamental way if she was seen as benefiting from a coup to get rid of
38:15
this old man. So she would have been between a rock and a hard
38:19
place, and I think she probably would have made the decision to come out
38:23
and strongly publicly support Biden, condemned the coup and say she ain't gonna be
38:32
the nominee, she is gonna benefit from taking out my beloved president. Well,
38:38
clearly Biden never did that stupidly if he wanted to hang in there,
38:44
and I think that that would have ended this thing again, he would have
38:47
had enormous leverage over her and the party because if she doesn't do it now,
38:52
all of a sudden, her image is destroyed because she's gonna benefit from
38:57
the coup. And you cannot when you're only your only claim to fame is
39:02
that you're Joe Biden's vice presidential nominee. You can't then run for president if
39:08
you're seen as having taken him out or been participating in the effort to take
39:15
him out. So I actually think that Biden, maybe this is a sign
39:20
of his age. Maybe he's just not very bright. Maybe he didn't want
39:23
it badly enough. I don't know, but you know, to me,
39:28
this was a massive tactical error on his part. But back to this differing
39:35
standard, you know, the Lord Almighty to uh, you know, it
39:39
changed to well, I might get out if I feel like I can't win,
39:45
which may have ended up being the threshold that was passed because of the
39:49
internal polling he was shown over this past weekend. And then it changed from
39:55
you know, I'll get out if I can't win to I'll get out if
39:59
I have a medical ailment. Well, that leads us to what happened with
40:02
COVID. And I mean, you got to hand it to the writers of
40:07
our simulation, right, it feels like we're in a simulation. We've had
40:12
four earthquakes already in this campaign, and this all feels like it's being written
40:17
in Hollywood somewhere. But you just can't give the writers of our simulation enough
40:23
credit. Where Joe Biden, the guy who told us that if you take
40:29
the vaccines, you're not going to get COVID, which was a lie.
40:34
And he's taken the vaccines and surely every possible booster, and he gets COVID
40:38
at the worst possible time and it helps facilitate him withdrawing from the presidential race.
40:45
My god, you just can't make this kind of stuff up. So
40:49
congratulations to the writers of our simulation. And oh, by the way,
40:54
after he gets COVID, he's walking around without a mask, he's doing a
41:00
events with people where he's very close to them. I mean, completely destroying
41:04
the entire liberal totalitarian narrative of how you're supposed to deal with COVID. But
41:09
I mean, it's just all so amazing and so rich and so hilarious.
41:15
But there's two clips that I want to play from the liberal media regarding the
41:20
issue of Biden and COVID. This is obviously before Biden announced that he was
41:25
going to withdraw from the race, and both of these clips I think are
41:29
so telling and at least a little bit hilarious. The first one is really
41:34
funny. This is on MSNBC, and this is during the Republican Convention where
41:39
MSNBC was pretending to be there but they really weren't, which is just another
41:45
indication of the death of journalists. So MSNBC is pretending to be at the
41:50
Republican Convention, they're really not. Joy Reid, who is just a complete
41:54
nut job and an idiot, and who has basically said, and she's not
42:00
sure that Trump was even shot, that basically it was a the whole thing
42:05
was fake somehow. That's what she's strongly implied, which is just that's even
42:09
more idiotic than the right wing conspiracy theory that it was an inside government job.
42:15
I mean that I don't believe in at all, but at least I
42:19
don't think you're inherently mentally ill if you think that, I think it's okay
42:22
to at least question that. I think you're totally wrong based upon the current
42:28
evidence that we know of. But to think that the whole thing was staged
42:31
to make Trump look good, or that he may not even have been shot
42:37
is just unbelievable. But that's Joy Reid, and you'll see just how dumb
42:42
she is in this particular clip where she's trying to make the argument. This
42:45
is in the last throws of desperately trying to defend Joe Biden. That somehow,
42:52
if Biden were to beat COVID, which is of course not the same
42:57
COVID as it was, you know, four years ago, if he were
43:01
to somehow beat COVID, that this should be as much of a badge of
43:07
honor as Trumps surviving a gunshot. I'm not making this up. And you
43:14
know, maybe the funniest part of this is that she re brings in Jen
43:16
Vasaki, who's the former Biden press secretary, who's not a dumb person and
43:22
at least lives somewhat in reality, and Jen Vasaki feels as if she has
43:27
to go along with this idiocy to a certain degree. But here's what it
43:31
all Satellite on MSNBC question that I have on that these two men are both
43:37
elderly. Donald Trump is an elderly man who, for whatever reason, was
43:42
given nine seconds to take a iconic photo op during an active shooter of the
43:46
situation. Weird situation. We'll figure that out one day. But his survival
43:52
of that and bouncing right back and going right to his convention is being conveyed
43:57
in the media world as a sign of straing this. The current president of
44:00
the United States is eighty one years old and has COVID. Should he be
44:06
fine in a couple of days, Doesn't that convey exactly the same thing that
44:10
he's strong enough, older than Trump to have gotten something that used to really
44:15
be fatal to people his age. So if he does fine out of it
44:20
and comes back and is able to do rallies, isn't that exactly the same?
44:23
I mean, it's not exactly the same. It's not same incident,
44:25
but it's an elderly man coming through out of an illness, absolutely hilarious and
44:32
so telling for how completely out of touch with reality MSNBC so very often is.
44:39
Then there's CNN, and I've talked a lot when it comes to the
44:45
issue of Joe Biden potentially getting out of the race regarding Van Jones, who
44:52
is a black commentator on CNN who I generally like, although I disagree with
44:58
him a lot. I think he's smart. I think he's more courageous than
45:02
most commentators. You may recall it was a long time ago. It might
45:07
even have been a year or so ago. It might have been over a
45:09
year ago. I theorized that if there was going to be a first major
45:15
liberal commentator to put their foot in the water regarding the issue of Joe Biden
45:24
can't run for reelection, that it would likely be Van Jones. I said
45:30
almost exactly that, And you may recall that Van Jones maybe put a toe
45:37
or two in the water. He never took the full dive, but it's
45:42
clear that he felt somewhere that Joe Biden should not run because of the age
45:50
issue. And my sense of Van Jones what we've seen post debate is that
45:57
he has a lot of regret. I could be wrong about this, but
46:00
this is just me as a human being watching him and based upon what I
46:07
perceived was going to be his take on this a year or so ago,
46:09
and how he almost did it and decided not to. My sense is that
46:15
he regrets not having the guts to really lead the charge back when he could
46:21
have saved the day and started a movement before the primaries that hey, it's
46:27
time for Joe to go well at the Republican Convention again before Biden withdraws,
46:35
but after the diagnosis of Biden getting COVID, Van Jones put the post assassination
46:43
post COVID diagnosis comparison between Trump and Biden in the most stark and dramatic terms
46:51
possible, and here's what that sounded like. A bullet couldn't stop Trump.
46:58
A virus just stopped by. You've got the nominees of this party getting their
47:05
butts kissed. Biden's getting his butt kicked by his own party. The Democrats
47:12
are coming apart, the Republicans are coming together. Now. You can't put
47:15
it any more dramatically than that, especially as a liberal commentator on CNN.
47:22
And you know, that was probably another nail in Joe Biden's coffin, because
47:28
you know, that's the contrast where you can't win an election, especially when
47:32
you're already down in the polls and your opponent, Donald Trump has already been
47:38
president before and so's he's gone through that presidential threshold that's so important for many
47:46
Americans to accept the idea that you could be president of the United States.
47:52
And so, you know, I think what Van Jones said was accurate.
48:00
I do think it was laced with some regret on his own part, but
48:05
I also think it had a little bit of an impact as far as the
48:07
freakout level of Democrats because like, oh my god, this just looks so
48:15
terrible. You know, Trump couldn't be brought down by a bullet and here
48:20
Biden is being brought down by COVID. I also found it interesting consistent with
48:24
the revisionist history on COVID. Wait a minute, so at least Van Jones
48:29
is inherently acknowledging that getting COVID isn't a big deal. Again. I know
48:36
that it's not the same thing as it was in twenty twenty. I'm the
48:38
first to acknowledge that. But it is pretty amazing that the mask mandate and
48:45
vaccine mandate president gets COVID and he's walking around without a mask, and he's
48:52
not social distancing, and many of the commentators, like Van Jones are actually
48:59
diminishing unlike Joy Reid is trying to make it sound like it's a bullet shot,
49:04
is diminishing the impact of having COVID to the point where they're making you
49:09
look weak because you were just taken out of commission by a virus. Which
49:15
I agree with Van Jumps that shouldn't be that big of a deal, but
49:19
at eighty one, at eighty one, it is a big deal. Thanks
49:24
for listening to today's free drop of the abbreviated show. If you're interested in
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