Latest / The Death Of Journalism / Episode One Hundred Fifty Three: The Climate Crusader
Transcript
- Welcome to episode number one hundred and fifty three of the Death of Journalism podcast. My name is John Zickler. I'm your host on today's show. President Biden gets confronted on CNN about the economy. Trump's trials seems to be reaching its climax, so to speak. Gavin Newsom brings the climate change in Sanity to a whole new level of lunacy. The Cuomo Brothers make some stunning COVID admissions, and college graduations provide some very telling moments. We begin another jam packed episode of the podcast with CNN, of all places, confronting President Biden about the state of the economy. Now, it's very rare for Joe Biden to make himself vulnerable to any questioning, and usually he could feel pretty safe doing so when the questioner is from CNN. But in this particular case, this was several days ago, and we've had a lot of news since then, so it may seem like a lot long time ago to the listeners of this podcast, but it happened after episode number one hundred and fifty two. So I wanted to lead this episode with this interview because even though it shouldn't be extraordinary, at all in the era of the death of journalism. It actually is for CNN and Aaron Burnett in particular to have a one on one interview with the President of the United States and ask basic questions about, for instance, the state of the economy, and seeing Joe Biden's response was extraordinarily telling. First of all, he looked weak and tired and barely with it, but the substance of what he said was pretty extraordinary as well, and interrational world would be the topic of massive mainstream news media coverage because he really seemed out of touch with regard to what's happening with so called real people in this economy. Now, there's been a narrative in the media that no, no, no, you morons, you don't understand how good, how good the media. You don't understand how good the media is. You also to't understand how how good the economy really is. And it appears as if Democrats have adopted that same narrative. No, no, no, no, the economy is actually quite good, even if people's perceptions of the economy are not good, largely because of inflation and inflation not really going away, and high mortgage rates and the cost of living and the cost of housing and everything else that is related to the economy. And of course the Biden administration likes to pretend that they've done great things because they get the benefit of coming in just as the COVID panic was ending, which of course this absolutely shatters the legitimacy of all the economic statistics. I mean, Biden continually lies about the fact that his jobs record is amazing. Well, of course, his job's record is because he came into office in twenty twenty one, and we got the vaccines and then everyone started to reopen and virtually all the jobs that were lost in twenty twenty were eventually recovered in twenty twenty two. That has nothing to do with him. In fact, he actually made that process take longer than it should have, and who knows, probably distorted it in many ways as well with his own economic policies. But he certainly didn't do anything to make it better. So that's the context for this interview that Biden did on CNN with Aaron Burnett. I want to play two clips. The first one is a little bit long, and at the beginning of it, Aaron Burnett just lays out some basic facts about the economy in a way that I'm quite certain Biden has never been forced to confront before, and he does so in a completely inadequate fashion, not just in form and style, but from a substance perspective as well, basically only coming up with so, you know, the idea that he's reduced with his magic wand of executive orders, he's reduced some fees that people get for bouncing checks and whatnot, and that somehow this is an attempt to try to fix this massive problem of the cost of living. And then, of course he blames it on corporate greed. That was a theme throughout this interview. Corporate greed, which is a complete fallacy. And you know, why was there no corporate greed causing inflation during the Trump administration. I mean, corporate greed has always been around, It's always existed. But if you understand the laws of supply and demand, you understand how that gets held in check and that prices under the right circumstances get held in check. But that has not happened during the Biden administration. It's not because suddenly in twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four, twenty twenty two, whatever it was, us that corporate greed suddenly got out of control. It's never existed before, but suddenly now during the Joe Biden administration, it's reared. It's ugly had. So here is the longer of the two clips, this interview that Joe Biden did with Aaron Bernad from CNN. So when you talk about the economy, of course, it is by far the most important issue for voters. It's also true right now, mister President, that voters by a wide margin trust Trump more on the economy. They say that in polls, and part of the reason for that may be the numbers, and you're aware of many of these. Of course, the cost of buying a home in the United States is double what it was when you look at your monthly costs from before the pandemic. Real income when you account for inflation, is actually down since you took office. Economic growth last week far short of expectations. Consumer confidence, maybe no surprise, is near a two year low with less than six months to go to election day. Are you worried that you're running out of time turn that around? We've already turned around. Look you look at the Michigan survey for sixty five percent of American people think they're in good shape economically. They think the nation's not in good shape, but they're personally in good shape. The polling data has been wrong, all wrong. How many you guys do a poll with CNN. How many folks you have to call to get one response? The idea that we're in a situation where things are so bad the folk that I mean, we've created more jobs. We've made in a situation where people have access to good paying jobs. And last I saw the combination of the inflation, the cost of inflation, all those things that's really worsome to people with good reason. That's why I'm working very hard to bring the cost of Reynolds down to increase the number of homes that are available. Let me prest it this way. When I started this administration, people were saying they're going to be a collapse in the e commune. We have the strongest economy and the world, we said again, in the world. Although GDP last week was far short of expectations, Oh it wasn't. Look GDP's still grow. Look at the response to the markets overwhelmingly positive, morewhelmingly positive, and one of the reasons why people feel good about it not being as strong as it was before. Is they believe that the Fed's going to respond. They hope they're going to get a recut. Yeah, well so what I mean, no president's had the run we've had in terms of creating jobs and bring you down in fishing. It was nine percent when I came to office. Nine percent. But look, people have a right to be concerned. Ordinary people. The idea that your your bounce a check and you get a thirty dollars fee for bouncing the check. My change had it you can't charge more than eight books that or your credit card, you know, your late payment thirty five dollars. I mean, there's corporate greed going on out there, and it's got to be dealt with. Now. It's important to point out that Biden there about the statistics regarding inflation, and I'm going to get to that in greater detail in a second. Aaron Burnett does not call him on that quite obvious lie. Just for the record, inflation was not nine percent when Joe Biden took office. Inflation was less than two percent. Now, again, there's some context to that that I want to add in just a little bit, but I think it was a mistake for Aaron Burnett to not directly confront Joe Biden on that very very key lie. But she does at least follow up on the issue of inflation specifically, and once again Biden lies and Biden has no answer, and then he blames corporate greed again because that's all he's got. And here's what that sounded like. What about I mean, but there's real pain. I mean, grocery prices are up thirty percent, more than thirty percent since the geting of the pandemic, and people are spending more on food and groceries than they have at any time really in the past thirty years. I mean, that's a real day to day pain that people know. No, it really is, and it's real. But the fact is that if you take a look at what them people have, they have the money to spend. Its angers them and angers me that you have to spend more. For example, the whole idea of this notion that Senator case you talk about shrinkflation. I think you know, it's on your price for a smaller bottle of it. Some example stickers were they did a thing and it's like twenty percent less for the same price. That's corporate greed. That's corporate greed, and we've got to deal with it. And that's what I'm working on now. This shrinkflation narrative that Biden loves so much and pretends that he has some sort of control over that, frankly, is maybe one of the scariest elements of Biden's views on the economy that he thinks as president that he can force companies to not reduce the size of a Snicker's bar. And by the way, it's my understanding that that whole Snicker story is not accurate either. I don't have any expertise on that, but I have no problem believing that Biden is either exaggerating or lying about that. And the general issue at hand, I've already said this whole issue of corporate greed is ridiculous. No one ever confronts him on this. So why is corporate greed all of a sudden a problem? And do you not understand the laws of supply and demand? That's the key issue here. But there's still a disconnect. There's still Biden saying things like, well, people have the money to spend now, so that inflation basically doesn't mean as much. That would seem to be his implication there, which is totally out of touch. I mean, it is unbelievable how much the cost of living has increased in numerous ways for huge portions of population. Now, is this all Joe Biden's fault. No, of course not. It's a lot of people's fault. But you know, we're supposed to be living in a world, legedly where Biden's even said the buck stops here where where he's supposed to take responsibility. If you want to take credit, which he's bizarrely trying to do with the job numbers improving after the end of the COVID panic, then you've got to take the bad too. And the bad here is that the cost of living has increased dramatically. And then there's the other issue of Biden not being truthful. Biden lies constantly. He really lies pretty much as the same amount or you know, in just in a different way as Donald Trump does. Both these guys are liars, and in some ways, I think the way that Biden lies is more offensive. Not all the time, but oftentimes it's more offensive than the Trump lies. The New York posted an analysis of this seventeen Minutes that aired on CNN with Aaron Burnett, and they came up with almost a lie per minute. That's tough to do, almost a lie per minute in this interview with CNN. Now, one of those lies, which is clear cut I've already referenced, is this issue of what the inflation rate was when Biden took office. He claimed bizarrely and inaccurately and deceitfully that it was nine percent. It was not nine percent. It was less than two percent. However, However, to be fair about this, these things take time to filter through the economy, and there is absolutely no doubt that the COVID panic and I wish the news media so many things I wish the news media did when it comes to the impact of the COVID panic. But the fact that huge portions of America still do not connect the COVID panic with the mass of inflation that ensued is just beyond ridiculous. It's so obvious that that's what directly and indirectly caused this inflation bomb. But that bomb was lit, the fuse for that bomb was lit by Donald Trump and doctor Anthony Fauci. That's a fact. So all Biden did is continue the same policies that Trump started in response to the COVID panic which led to the massive inflation. There is zero doubt about that it was Donald Trum. It was literally Donald Trump's name on the checks that went out to people for doing nothing during the middle of the COVID panic. It was Donald Trump who basically approved and sign off on, not just massive spending and PPP loans and people getting unemployment forever, for incentivizing people to not work during the COVID panic, making it almost impossible to get people to incertain industries to get back to work during the COVID panic. All that was enabled and approved by and at times promoted by Donald Trump because of his reaction to the COVID panic, which was led, of course, by doctor Fauci, to whom Trump site essentially advocated his presidency and made a superstar by putting him on national television on a daily basis, live during a time period when there was nothing else to do, where the entire nation was riveted by what was happening. The television ratings were insane, and once doctor Fauci became a media superstar and the media realized it was in their self interest on numerous levels, to buy into what doctor Fauci was selling. It was all over. And so just because the inflation didn't explode until after Trump left office doesn't mean he's not responsible. He's absolutely responsible, both Trump and Biden. Now, of course, there are are people who logically say, well, this inflation bomb began way before the COVID panic, and I will agree with that with regard to our monetary policies and our spending and everything else. But it was under control until then. In fact, I'll never forget the conversation I had with my I guess now, former very good friend, former Democratic Congressman John Yarmouth from Louisville, Kentucky, who was the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, and when COVID was destroying everything, we were in the midst of the panic. He and I had a conversation about inflation. Here's the chairman of the House Budget Committee. We're in the midst of what it is we're going to do after shutting down the country in response to this. And I said, John, we're gonna have mass of inflation because of this. And John said, well, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but this is pretty good paraphrase. You know, the thinking on that has changed. We believe we're not going to have massive inflation because of this, that there's just some magic. He didn't use that word, but that was what I interpreted. Was what was he saying somehow that the thinking among the DC elites was that we can basically do anything and we're not going to have massive inflation. And I told him I thought that was crazy, because this is obviously an unprecedented situation. Well, guess what, shockingly me, using basic common sense, I was right. The chairman of the House Budget Committee was totally wrong, and so was so we're so many of the other experts. But it took time for this to filter through the system, and it still doesn't completely filter through the system. And it's not because of corporate greed. Now, it has corporate greed taken advantage of certain situations because our expectations have changed and people at least at first seem willing and able to pay more money for stuff. Absolutely, I've seen this in my own life, where there doesn't seem to be any logical reason for why a particular service or product has increased dramatically in price. Restaurants are a pretty good example of this. Other restaurants are a complicated situation, but we got this idea, you know, during COVID that because it was a privilege to be able to even eat at a restaurant, you could be charged more for it, and they just went crazy with this. They saw an opportunity. So yes, I understand that there are elements of the economy that are being dictated not by something new called corporate greed, but that corporate greed has maybe a little bit more leeway in the post COVID panic era to take advantage of people because our expectations are all off. The way we evaluate these things got set into a tizzy, and so therefore we were taking advantage of That's absolutely part, a small part of the equation. But that's pretty much over now. And inflation is not dramatically reduced. It is significantly reduced, but it is stubborn. It is staying where it was for the last several months. The increase in interest rates has not had a dramatic impact in lowering the inflation rate. And of course when you have massive interest rate increases, that causes all sorts of other problems other than just inflation. There are very very few people, for instance, buying houses in this particular environment because interest rates are so high, and the housing market can't fix itself if in fact it really is overpriced. I think it is, especially in ser in areas of the country like here in southern California. But if it is overpriced, supply and demand can't really take effect because there aren't enough people that are willing to buy because the interest rates are so high, and there aren't any people willing to sell because if they sell and they have to get a new mortgage, their mortgage is going to go from two or three percent to seven percent, and they don't want to do that, so they just decide to not sell. So there's no inventory. So and this is all either directly or indirectly as a result of what we did during the COVID panic. And of course that point is never brought up by Aaron Burnett or CNN or anybody else, and it's the most important thing. Of course, no one has an incentive to bring it up. The media doesn't have an incentive to bring it up because the media was all on board with the COVID panic. Biden doesn't have an incentive to bring it up. And for reasons, I just stated, and Trump doesn't have a reason to bring it up because it's a very vulnerable issue for him. You know, there are many conservatives who just pretend, literally pretend that Trump was not president in twenty twenty. Glenn Beck of The Blaze recently put out an analysis with a poll, are you better off than you were five years ago? That's a fact, that's a quote five years ago used to be. You know, are you better off than you were four years ago? That was the famous Ragan line that maybe won is his election against Jimmy Carter in nineteen eighty, But no, it's are you better off than you were five years ago? Because we're just going to pretend that twenty twenty didn't happen, because there's there's no good way to spin this. If you're a Trump loving person who's remotely conservative, you just can't do it. I mean, Trump tries at times, he's all over the map. His position on what happened and what he did and what the impact was changes on almost a daily basis. But by and large we just played pretend. Everyone just plays pretend. We're just pretending that we don't have this inflation still in twenty twenty four because of what we did in response to the COVID panic in twenty twenty. And it's a classic example of a broken news media because this message ought to be as clear as day. The media ought to be willing to admit this, but they won't because it it indicts them specifically in many, many ways. So look, I'm blaming everybody for inflation and the state of the economy, But if you're the incumbent president, I'm sorry. That's the way the game is played. You got to deal with it, and to get away with lying about it is wrong and CNN should have called him on that, but they did not. Now, there was another episode involving Joe Biden, which was more of a dimension dementia situation, which is also combined with Biden's pinch it for lying that occurred right around the same time of this Aaron Burnett's CNN interview, and it happened in Wisconsin, which of course is a key swing state. I think it might be maybe the most important state, at least probably the most underrated state. You know, Michigan's getting a lot of attention, Pennsylvania gets a lot of attention. I'll talk a little bit more about some new polls that are out that are pretty interesting on this front. But Wisconsin, which seems to be a dead heat, is pretty much a must win for Biden. So he goes to Wisconsin, and of course he wants to connect to the people there by somehow telling a story that involves the Green Bay Packers. Obviously most people in Wisconsin love the Green Bay Packers. And he's reading the teleprompter, and we remember this comes in the context of a very similar situation. We played this clip on this podcast a few episodes ago, where Biden's reading a teleprompter and basically that the teleprompter is telling him to prompt the crowd to start chanting four more years, which, by the way, is an insane thing for the Biden people to even want to emphasize, because at the age of eighty one, you don't want people thinking about the fact that, holy shit, this guy's going to be still president at e five. But that would be the least productive mantra if you're if you're the Democrats, if you're the Biden campaign team, you don't want people thinking about four more years. You don't even if people like Joe Biden and hate Donald Trump. So I don't even understand why they did that to begin with. But the reason why that became a news story, if you remember, was that Biden literally said the word pause while reading the teleprompter, when in fact that was an instruction. He wasn't supposed to read the word pause, so he said pause, and then he kind of chuckled. I think he might even said it twice, and then meekly the crowd started chatting, as they were supposed to. Four more years. Well, a very I believe similar thing happened in Wisconsin because Biden started telling this story. And whenever he tells a story about something that happened in as long ago pass, you can pretty much bank it that it's a lie, especially if he tries to connect it to something that's in his self interest, and especially if it sounds too good to be true. You know, and we've all had this, we all have, you know, grandparents or people that are older that we know, especially men. This is just part of the nature of being an old guy. Either you don't remember fully or you just embellish the story over time to make it sound better. And this is not unusual, but when you're president, these things aughto matter at least a little bit at least they used to matter. So he's telling this story about a teacher that he used to have, and he tries to tell the story that somehow this person named Riley, named Riley was drafted by the Green Bay Packers. Now, in the course of telling the story, he says Riley last name, and before I give my take on this, which is a little bit different than what I perceived. The public reaction to this was on social media. Here's the actual clip of Biden telling this story and suddenly referencing the phrase last name. My geology professor at the Catholic school I went to was a guy named Riley last name, and he had been drafted by the Green Bay Packers. Now, when I saw that clip, I immediately said, Okay, this is bullshit because the story sounds too good to be true. And as it turns out, I do believe that the story involving the Green Bay Packers and a draft pick is not true. But let's try to break this down as to what was really happening here. Because a lot of people, including news media that you know, like the New York Post, tried to investigate this claim of this guy who was allegedly drafted by the Green Bay Packers, and they went looking for someone whose last name was Riley, And I thought that was a mistake because the way I interpreted what happened here, and I could be wrong about this, and doesn't really matter that much as far as discerning the truth of the whole Packers element of the story, because there's other reasons to be very dubious of this. But what I thought was happening was he said Riley as a first name, and then much like with the previous episode, with the pause on the teleprompter, someone had put maybe like in parentheses last name, as if they needed to put in the last name, but they never got around to it, or they never or they thought Biden would know the last name, or for whatever reason, the last name was not updated or included in the teleprompter script. So Biden was saying Riley and then he read last name when last name was supposed to be the real last name put in there. By the way, this is also consistent with the idea that the stories made up. Doesn't prove it, but it's consistent with the theory the whole story is made up and they just needed a last name to make up and they never got around to it. That's a I don't have any evidence of that, but that's that's a possible scenario here. So to me, what he was not claiming that Riley was the last name. I think Riley was the first name, because Riley can be a first name or a last name. Of course, this was a person he's talking about from a long time ago, and Riley was probably not a particularly popular male name in that era. None of this really matters that much because the story is clearly false, and he's told other versions of it in a completely different context. So he's at best mixing and mashing together a couple of different stories in a way to make it sound like he has some connection. It's as distant as it may be to the Green Bay Packers. So you know, to me, the biggest point of this is, here's Biden making up stories again and reading the teleprompter in a way that's completely clueless, where he doesn't even understand what he's supposed to do. And this is the second time this has happened in fairly short order. Now there is apparently nobody ever drafted with the last name Riley by the Green Bay Packers that would fit the timeline at all of this story. But I don't think anybody. I don't think the Green Bay packer story had any credibility to it from the beginning. I am a little bit curious as to, Okay, what was really going on there with Biden and his teleprompter. But you know, this is Biden being Biden. Of course, that's already kind of baked into the cake with regard to the way people and the news media perceive Biden. And it doesn't help that, you know, Trump is doing similar things on a fairly regular basis, but not quite that dramatically. Now, on a more substantive level, Biden has signaled that he's effectively abandoning might be too strong a word, but he is certainly not supporting Israel militarily to the extent that he needs to. Lindsey Graham went on a Sunday morning show this past weekend Republican senator from South Carolina and was very emphatic that Israel needs to do whatever the hell they can do just to survive. And it does appear as if Biden, who is trying to thread an unthreadable needle here in not offending anybody, has at least currently decided that he is pulling full support from Israel and trying to dictate what Israel will do in their war against Tamas. And politically, it sure seems as if the motivation here is very overtly political, that it's all about the state of Michigan. Michigan seems to be the state that Biden and his people are deathly afraid of when it comes to this issue of Israel versus Amas, because Michigan has a very large Muslim population. Rather famously or infamously, during the Democratic primary there this year, there were over one hundred thousand uncommitted votes in the Democratic primary. That was seen as a warning shot to Democrats that the Muslim vote was not going to show up for Joe Biden if he supported Israel to the hilt, and Michigan is a must win state for Joe Biden. If you told me right now that Donald Trump was going to win Michigan, if that was a lock, I would tell you that Donald Trump was going to be the next president of the United States. Now, there are scenarios where that doesn't happen, but I think they are exceedingly unlikely. So of all the must win states, Michigan for Joe Biden. Michigan is right at the top of the list, and it sure seems to be driving policy with regard to Israel and Amas. Now there are Democrats who are very agitated about this, saying hello, there are a lot more Jewish voters who care about Israel than there are Muslim voters who care about Hamas, and I tend to agree with that calculus. Of course, we're not worried from a presidential standpoint about the national popular vote. If you want to win, it's about the electoral college, and that means that those votes have to impact a particular state. And I can see, even though Michigan has a rather significant, not huge, but a significant population of Jewish people, that you could see where Michigan is a place where Biden may not be very eager to support Israel publicly because it might hurt him there. However, there are other states. Pennsylvania is probably the most prominent where there is a larger Jewish population than there is a Muslim population than the Jewish population in Pennsylvania todditionally has been a Democratic stronghold, and so you could argue that Biden is making himself vulnerable in Pennsylvania, especially when Pennsylvania has Senator John Fetterman, who has suddenly become one of the strongest defenders of Israel that there is. John Fetterman is more conservative on some of these issues now than many Republicans are, and certainly more outspoken about it. So the Biden team is in a bit of a conundrum here if you're looking at this purely politically, which of course is insane that this is where we've come to, but this is where we are. So how they make that balance, how they thread that needle between Michigan and Pennsylvania, I think is going to be very difficult. Now, these are not huge voting blocks we're talking about, but they are key because if they flip. If you flip a particular voting block in a state that that is that close, and both Pennsylvania and Michigan are, that can make a huge, huge difference. And there's some more data that I'm going to get to momentarily that certainly seems to back that up. And interestingly, Michigan right now, at least according to the New York Times poll that just came out this morning, is Biden's best swing state. It's the only state where he is currently winning by one point depending on how many candidates you include in the survey. So it seems as if the Biden strategy may be working in Michigan to at least some degree. Who knows what's noised, but it's kind of interesting and maybe more than coincidental that Michigan is Biden's best swing state in the current cycle of polling, and that seems to be the state that he's trying to placate with his very convoluted thread the needle perspective on Israel versus Comas. Now, before we get to the polling data in particular, I do want a reference. You know, we've talked a lot about the RFK Junior effect, and there was some amazing news that came out about Robert Kennedy Junior, who is going to be the third party candidate or the third leading candidate as an independent, expects to be on most, if not all ballots in November, and how he's going to impact this race has gotten a lot of concern and commentary, and I'm still confused as to which way that's going to break. I mean, I am completely baffled because there are some polls where RFK Junior helps Trump. There are other polls where he helps Biden. There's some polls where on the state level, he you know, goes in both directions, and on the national level it goes in the opposite direction. I don't know what's noise because it's always within a couple of points, and that's usually within the margin of error. So I don't think we have any good idea yet. I mean, gun to my head, I think RFK Junior, as of this date, probably helps Trump more than he hurts Trump. But that could change, and that could be different state to state. But we've learned in the last few days that RFK Junior testified in a deposition for a workman's comp situation. This is reported by the New York Times that he once had a worm in his brain, a worm in his brain, and that the worm ate part of his brain and then died. I'm not making this up. I have no idea how this happened. You know, my completely ignorant gut instinct to come and sense perspective as well. This is a guy who had a very long bout with heroin addiction, So either directly or indirectly, maybe that had something to do with it, but I've never heard of this happening before. But you know, he testified under oath to this incident, this episode where he had a worm in his brain, eating part of his brain. And so now we have this incredibly, unbelievably bizarre situation where we have an incumbent president running for reelection at the age of eighty one with a rotting brain. We have the guy who might be the leading candidate, a former president who clearly has a diseased brain, in Donald Trump. And now we have the third candidate, RKA Junior, with a worm eaten brain, literally a worm eaten brain. This is the best we can do. This is our choice. Thanks for listening to today's free drop of the abbreviated show. If you're interested in listening to the entire show, you must become a patron. Please go to Patreon. That's pat r e O n dot com. Patreon dot com slash the Death of Journalism with John Ziggler. My name is j y h N z I E g L e R. That's patreon dot com. Slash the Death of Journalism with John Ziggler. Good luck to you on that. But that's how you can subscribe