Latest / The Death Of Journalism / Episode Ninety Three: Is He Dumb Or Is He Evil?

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Episode Ninety Three: Is He Dumb Or Is He Evil? · The Death Of Journalism

• 0:00
  Welcome the episode number ninety three of the Data Journalism Podcast. My name is
• 0:04
  John Ziggler. I am your host on today's show. The second Pretend Republican
• 0:09
  Debate was even worse than I predicted. Gavin Newsom has his evil side on
• 0:15
  full display. I'll be the last person in America to a pine on the
• 0:19
  Taylor's Swift and Travis Kelsey Insanity. And I returned to my high school for
• 0:25
  probably the last time with interesting results. I'm known as the Dutch Digital marketing
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• 0:36
  be a big fan of John Ziggler and the death of Journalisten. Do you
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  story. The website is the Dutch Digital Marketing Man. If you want to
• 1:00
  grow your business, Peter can help. That's the Dutch Digital Marketingman dot com.
• 1:06
  And hey, thanks for sponsoring the show. There were several reasons why
• 1:10
  we only had one episode of the podcast last week, one of which was
• 1:15
  that the second Republican presidential debate was scheduled for Wednesday evening, and generally we
• 1:22
  taped this podcast on Monday and Wednesday mornings, and so in order for us
• 1:29
  to have analysis of the debate, I would have to do the recording on
• 1:36
  Thursday or very late on Wednesday. And I had a travel plan, which
• 1:41
  I'll talk about later on in this episode of the podcast cross Country, that
• 1:46
  would make that very difficult logistically. But also part of the equation was that
• 1:52
  I did not believe that the Republican debate was going to be nearly significant enough
• 1:57
  to warrant a massive change in our programming and our scheduling for taping, mainly
• 2:05
  because one, as I said in episode number ninety two, I believe the
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  Republican race has now been decided. If you happen to miss episode ninety two,
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  it's entitled I have seen enough, and that's the way I make my
• 2:21
  predictions. Whenever I have finally seen enough, I say, Okay, I
• 2:25
  can make a call. And after hesitating to do so for a very very
• 2:30
  long time, in episode number ninety two, I finally said what I've been
• 2:35
  dreading for a very significant period of time, many months. The reality is
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  that, barring death or imprisonment, Donald Trump is going to be the twenty
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  twenty four Republican presidential nominee. So therefore these foe pretend debates aren't very significant
• 2:53
  to begin with. But I also felt as if the debate itself was going
• 2:58
  to be a porterline disaster, that the dynamics without Trump and the Santists barely
• 3:05
  holding on to second place, and with everybody with an incentive to try to
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  figure out a way to get the second place, and because of the fact
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  that it's going to be too many people on the stage, and because we've
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  learned already that even Fox News is not to be trusted when it comes to
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  the handling of a Republican debate, that all of these factors we're going to
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  make this whatever you want to call it, this debate, quote unquote,
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  a joke, and that it was not going to be significant, It was
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  not going to be a positive situation. If anything, it was probably going
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  to further diminish the Santis, and it was going to diminish everybody because Trump
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  gets to avoid it, and everyone looks weak, everyone looks like a beata,
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  everyone looks desperate. It brings down the level of everyone involved. That
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  was my anticipation for what was going to happen. Well, I was at
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  least partially wrong, because it was far worse than I expected, far worse,
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  and I had very very low expectations for this. As I said,
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  we decided not to do an extra episode of the podcast or go to a
• 4:14
  great lens to produce an episode of the podcast under very difficult circumstances, mainly
• 4:18
  because I didn't think the debate was going to be significant, and for the
• 4:21
  reasons I've already stated. But even I did not anticipate that it would be
• 4:26
  this bad. Everything about this debate was horrendous. Although Rohn de santa Is,
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  at least towards the end, did try his best to redeem himself,
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  but I don't think it's gonna matter very much at all. There were so
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  many elements of this debate that were absurd. Just the entire concept of having
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  a non Trump debate at this stage is ridiculous. I mean, none of
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  these people, even Rohn de Santas, Unfortunately, but certainly the non de
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  Santis candidates have no chance, none, zero, of being the Republican nominee.
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  There is no chance of this, so everything is academic. It's all
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  just a waste of time. It's all trying to pursue perverse self interests that
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  have nothing to do with becoming president or helping the Republican Party or defeating Donald
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  Trump, or god forbid, helping the country that has nothing to do with
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  any of this. It all seems so pointless. In the middle of this
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  thing, I tweeted that it felt a lot like if the members of the
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  Kansas City Chief Offensive Line we're getting together to debate how they would court Taylor
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  Swift if Travis Kelsey suddenly died. Now I realized that's an extended analogy metaphor
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  here, but it's actually pretty good. You know, like any of the
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  members of the Kansas City Chief Offensive Line not named Travis kel would ever have
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  a shot with Taylor Swift even if Travis Kelsey died. Well, in this
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  particular situation, I don't think any of the mother than Ronda Santis would have
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  a shot even if Donald Trump died, which is not going to happen.
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  This is all fantasy, This is all pretend, so inherently it's it's absurd
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  endeavor. But Fox News Channel the alleged conservative news network handled this so poorly.
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  They did a terrible job in the first debate. It was way way
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  worse in the second debate. They had a female anchor person from Univision who
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  was coming at the candidates from the left constantly on immigration issues. I mean,
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  can you imagine Democrats ever having a presidential debate where they had somebody from
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  a conservative news outlet coming at their candidates from the right on a hot button
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  issue like immigration. That would never happen in a bazillion years, But this
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  is happening on the alleged conservative news network, Fox News, which was hosting
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  this debate. The questions were stupid, The obsession with immigration from the left
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  was insane. There were too many people on the stage this time, there
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  were seven instead of eight. The questions were dumb, There wasn't enough time
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  to answer. This is not a real debate. I mean. One of
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  the many criticisms by the commentation, I love this. The commentators on Fox
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  News Channel afterwards were criticizing their own debate as if they didn't have a major
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  role in this. Their network didn't have a major role in this, but
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  they were. Several of them were saying, well, gee, there were
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  no great moments. Whatever happened to the good old days where you know Reagan
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  Mondale? You know Reagan with his famous line, I will not use my
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  opponents youth and experience against him for political gain. Well, first of all,
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  the reason why you're able to do that in the era of Reagan Mondale
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  is that that is a one on one debate where our attention spans weren't five
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  seconds long. You can't have a moment like that when you have seven people
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  on the stage and the moderators don't have control, and everyone's jumping in,
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  everyone's interrupting each other, everyone's throwing mud, everyone's desperate for attention. You
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  can't be the bigger person. Rod A. Santis, for the first i
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  don't know, half hour forty five minutes of the debate, didn't even seem
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  to be there because he wasn't butting in. I joked that trump On I
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  attack him for skipping the debate himself, which would have been hilarious. The
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  second half of the debate, I thought the Santis was more dominant, especially
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  towards the end, but by that point I'm not sure how many people were
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  actually watching. As I predicted this debate had a smaller audience than the first
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  debate by about three point five million people. So I mean, you know,
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  still a good audience for a normal night on Fox News Channel. Way
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  larger than normal, but way smaller than the first debate by about twenty five
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  percent or so. By the way, just for the record, I predicted
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  that that might be the last debate of the entire twenty twenty four cycle going
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  into it. I believe currently they will probably have at least one more.
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  I think the next one's scheduled for Florida, you know, because the Santists
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  is the is the candidate who as the most support, who will actually be
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  there. They'll probably do it, but you know, it'll probably be three
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  strikes and you're out. That's my revised prediction that the next Republican debate,
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  I think it's in a little over a month, that that will be the
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  last one, and then there will be no more debates anywhere, either on
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  the democ side the Republican side. Whether or not those general election debates I'm
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  very dubious of because I don't think Biden has any incentive to do them,
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  and we'll have this unprecedented situation where we don't have general election debates because it's
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  Trump Biden two point zero. But anyway, this debate was was completely pointless,
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  and it was counterproductive because it dragged everybody, including the Santis down,
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  and it elevated Trump because he wasn't there. How insane is that everything about
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  what is happening is upside down, opposite world Alison Wonderland stuff. Where Trump
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  ought to be being attacked relentlessly for skipping the debates and instead he's benefiting from
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  skipping the debates because he looks more and more alpha and these other candidates look
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  more and more beta. And you know, De Santa's fans keep getting lulled
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  into this delusion that because DeSantis looks the best of this bad lot, that
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  somehow he benefits from that. That's not what's happening. He's being lumped in
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  with the non Trump losers, and while he is at the top of the
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  non Trump losers, he's the alpha of the betas all of them. You
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  know, they say the rising tide lifts all boats. This is the receding
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  tide sinks all boats. For Dominon, everyone is being diminished and Trump by
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  default is being elevated, which at this stage is too much to overcome,
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  especially with all the other inherent advantages that Trump has. And I want to
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  give at least one specific example how pathetic and sad this debate really was,
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  and what a bad job Fox News Channel did, and how de sand has
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  at least tried his best to rise above the muck after this ridiculous exercise for
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  almost two hours. Danta Perina, who I used to like, he decided
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  to play this game, which I guess was typical of how serious everyone was
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  taking this debacle, where she was going to get cute and she was going
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  to ask all of the candidates to write down the name of the candidate on
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  stage that they would have voted off the island, since you know, there's
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  too many the implication being there's too many candidates, people need to drop out.
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  So who do you think ought to drop out? Now? This this
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  talked about demeaning. I mean, this is this is essentially, you know,
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  right out of the Trump playbook here, where everyone at this debate then
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  therefore gets diminished. I mean, it's incredibly trivial, it's juvenile, it's
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  disrespectful. And it was Rond De Santis who stood up and said no,
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  now, if you may recall, in the first debate he did something similar
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  when they asked for a show of hands. He should have done it the
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  second time when they asked for a show of hands regarding support for Trump if
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  he was convicted of a felony. But I think he blew it on that
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  one. But he did the right thing in the first debate by saying,
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  no, we're not going to do any stupid hand raising. This isn't the
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  kindergarten class. Well, he did the same thing here, and you know,
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  he showed leadership. And I think there's no question that the crowd was
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  on his side here because it was just so silly. It was just so
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  absurd. So here's what it sounded like when Fox News Channels Dana Perino tried
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  to get all the candidates to throw somebody on the at stage under the bus.
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  None of you have indicated that you're dropping out. So which one of
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  you on stage tonight should be voted off the island? Please use your marker
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  to write your choice on the note pad in front of you fifteen seconds starting
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  out of the people on the stage, who should be I'm I mean,
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  we're here, like, well, you know, we're happy to debate.
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  I think that that's disrespectful to my fellow competition of the country. Now that
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  was I thought a really good move by De Santis. I couldn't find a
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  clip that combined what happened next, But what happened next was almost as interesting
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  and significant as what you just heard, because Perino decides to surrender. I
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  think she got her her ego bruised. She was embarrassed that her question got
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  laughed at and shot down, so she immediately said, Okay, Ryan DeSantis,
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  if you're not going to answer my question, you're not gonna play my
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  game. I'm gonna go after you. By the way, maybe the most
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  relevant questions she asked all night, although it was motivated by I think retribution
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  for what Desantists had just done to her. She says to De Santist,
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  Okay, so what's your path for beating Trump? And I'm like, oh,
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  okay, so now you're gonna ask a relevant question. We're now going
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  to actually acknowledge the elephant, the missing elephant in the corner of the room,
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  which is where's Trump? And how do you beat Trump? So that's
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  the only thing that really matters, But we don't We're not going to talk
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  about that. We're gonna just pretend that somehow these other issues matter. If
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  you, you know, if you can't beat Donald Trump, if you can't
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  beat Donald Trump, other than that, Missus Lincoln, how was the play?
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  So it's all absurd. So this was actually a relevant question with I
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  think a perverse MODEI of Tion and Desantists answered it properly. And his basic
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  answer on this is, look, you know, we don't get a mulligan
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  on the twenty twenty four election. And then Desantists went through all the reasons
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  why he thinks that he would be better suited to be the candidate in twenty
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  twenty four than Donald Trump. Now is that going to impact anybody? No,
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  But it was the best answer that he could have given under the circumstances.
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  But I also think the larger issue here is that Fox News Channel is
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  not serious about this this. I don't know what their agenda is. I
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  mean, obviously ratings is always number one. I don't think that they have
• 16:41
  some conspiratorial agenda to make sure that Trump is the nominee at this point.
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  Although I'm sure many people at Fox News Channel would be happier if Trump was
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  the nominee from a ratings perspective. But the bigger issue here is that this
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  was not a serious endeavor and that Ron Desanders is a serious candidate trying to
• 17:03
  deal with the process that is not serious, that is not at all conducive
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  to a good outcome. That the system is entirely and completely broken, and
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  a broken system, a broken machinery, is not going to generate a good
• 17:22
  outcome. We're seeing this throughout the entire country. Everything is broken, and
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  when all the systems are broken, the results are gonna be bad. It's
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  just about how bad they're going to be. And that's the way it was
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  with this debate. The result was bad unless you're Donald Trump. Trump was
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  again the winner, just as I said he would be, which is why
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  I felt comfortable calling the race before this debate, because I knew it would
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  provide no good outcome. And even I am a bit surprised by how bad
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  this was despite the Santas's best efforts. Now the Santa's fans, continuing their
• 18:03
  delusion, are latching onto anything and everything that can indicate that maybe, just
• 18:11
  maybe this thing really isn't over. There was a poll out that indicated a
• 18:17
  national poll that indicated that among Republicans, only twenty percent of Republicans are only
• 18:23
  considering Donald Trump when it comes to their choice for the twenty twenty four nomination,
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  and boil Boy, the Santa's fans were cheering loudly, shouting this from
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  the mountaintop. They were very excited about this, And of course, it
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  is my belief that this data point is being grossly misinterpreted. I agree that
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  it's somewhat surprising that that number would only be twenty percent, but the number
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  of people that were in the only Trump category or in the considering Trump category,
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  when you add those two numbers together, they're basically seventy percent. And
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  you know, obviously seventy percent is a blowout, and the fact that you're
• 19:10
  still considering Trump at this point means you're very likely to vote for him because
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  he's the alpha, he's the leader. People tend to go with the leader.
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  So basically, what you're really saying is the Trump may end up with
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  close to seventy percent of the vote. Now, is he gonna get all
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  that if you know, desantists and others stay in the race. Highly unlikely,
• 19:32
  But those are people that are predisposed to voting for Trump. The twenty
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  percent number are people that are willing to tell a polster who they know doesn't
• 19:41
  like Trump that they are only considering Donald Trump. You're basically telling the poster,
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  yeah, I'm a member of the Trump cult. Because by saying you're
• 19:52
  considering other people, it actually makes you open minded. There's nothing negative about
• 20:00
  saying that. The only negative would be esposedly to a polster, would be
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  no. No. I have already decided in late September of twenty twenty three
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  months before there's actual voting, that I'm only going to consider Donald Trump.
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  That is a negative connotation to it. And so this number is not nearly
• 20:21
  as significant as it may seem. It is, I believe, being grossly
• 20:26
  misinterpreted, and the actual polling data post debate has been horrific. I mean,
• 20:34
  there's one poll that now has Trump up by fifty one points nationwide in
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  the Republican race, and that one doesn't seem to be an outlier. Yes,
• 20:47
  de Santis has held on to second place mainly because I think Nicki Haley
• 20:52
  and the fake Obama Swamy blew their opportunity. I did not think that they
• 20:57
  came across well at all all, and I had predicted that they would.
• 21:02
  I thought that there was a chance that if Nicki Haley had a really good
• 21:06
  debate, that she might get her moment. But I did not think that
• 21:10
  happened at all. She got in the mock of fake Obama, Swamy got
• 21:14
  in the mock. They did not seem presidential, they did not seem likable.
• 21:19
  There were no great moments. I mean, Chris Christie and my view
• 21:23
  embarrassed himself with the you know, I'm not going to call you Donald Trump
• 21:27
  anymore, I'm gonna call you Donald Duck line, which was incredibly contrived,
• 21:33
  not that funny, and rather juvenile, and it was kind of in keeping
• 21:37
  with the whole grade school notion of the whole thing. So you know,
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  it was a disaster all all the way around, except for Donald Trump.
• 21:48
  Unless you're Donald Trump. The second debate was the disaster, which of course
• 21:52
  means there is absolutely positively no chance, as I had predicted from the beginning,
• 21:57
  of Donald Trump ever doing a Republican debate, certainly not the next one,
• 22:03
  which I am now with a revised prediction saying that that will be the
• 22:07
  final debate of this entire twenty twenty four presidential process. And certainly the last
• 22:15
  debate on the Republican side, because you know, three strikes when you're out
• 22:18
  that the ratings will keep going down. People will realize this is all a
• 22:22
  joke, this is all pretend it doesn't matter because Trump's not there. Trump's
• 22:26
  going to be the nominee. Why are we even bothering with this? And
• 22:32
  you know those De Santis fans that criticized me for months and months and months,
• 22:36
  Saint John, the debates will change everything. And I told you Trump's
• 22:38
  not gonna do the debates, and if he doesn't do the debates, the
• 22:41
  debates are going to be bad news for Desantists. Nobody was willing to believe
• 22:45
  me, and I was right. In fact, I was more right than
• 22:48
  I even realized. The final nail and the DeSantis coffin, in my view,
• 22:53
  was doing these debates. He should never have done these debates. And
• 23:00
  Trump said he wasn't going to do the first debate, and I said this
• 23:03
  at the time. De Santists should have said, okay, then I'm not
• 23:06
  doing them either. I'm fully willing to debate Donald Trump anytime, anywhere or
• 23:11
  any place, but I'm not debating if the guy who's the front runner isn't
• 23:17
  going to be there because that's not a real debate. Now, obviously thought
• 23:22
  that he had no choice because he needed exposure and he needed to show that
• 23:26
  he was willing to debate other candidates. No, he should have alphad the
• 23:32
  other betas and said no, I'm not doing this. And if you had
• 23:36
  no Trump and you had no Desantists, then there would have been no debate.
• 23:40
  And if they had gone through with it, it really would have been
• 23:41
  it looked ridiculous and it would have diminished all these other candidates as a joke,
• 23:48
  and it would have helped the Santists keep his grip on the second place
• 23:53
  position, which is incredibly important, especially in a race where Donald Trump,
• 23:59
  with all his problems, is the front runner. Now, the trip to
• 24:03
  California was not a complete loss for Ronda Santis because he did an interview with
• 24:08
  Bill Maher on HBO's Real Time and I got to say, you know,
• 24:14
  we're living in such a strange world. The fact that Bill Maher has now
• 24:17
  become the voice of reason on the left, especially when it comes to COVID,
• 24:22
  is just amazing to me. I mean, I've never had much respect
• 24:26
  for Bill Maher because I thought his motivations were not about the truth, and
• 24:33
  he's a liberal. I thought he's funny and you know, not dumb.
• 24:37
  But the fact that he would become this truth teller is really extraordinary. And
• 24:45
  he did so in an interview with Ronda Santis on real time and specifically about
• 24:51
  COVID. Here we had this very strange situation where Rond to Sandus, who's
• 24:56
  being attacked by Donald Trump and by Carrie Lake and by right some right wing
• 25:03
  media figures who are Trump bands for you know, being a lockdown ron and
• 25:11
  having closed beaches and favored masks and favored vaccines. Just a complete revisionist history
• 25:18
  of what happened. Let's be clear about what happened. You know, for
• 25:22
  a month and a half, maybe two months, the Santists bought into the
• 25:25
  BS. Why because he trusted Donald Trump, and it was Donald Trump who
• 25:30
  was leading the way, not providing any chance for somebody like Ron de Santists
• 25:36
  to be a contrarian. Then the Santists figured it out on his zone and
• 25:40
  took a different path, and he was right and the country benefited as a
• 25:45
  whole from it, because without Ronda Santist doing that in Florida successfully we would
• 25:49
  still in blue states be under major COVID restrictions to this day in my opinion.
• 25:56
  But in this interview, Bill Maher, more clearly and dramatically than any
• 26:03
  major right wing media figure that I'm aware of, gives Ron de Santis his
• 26:08
  due, gives him the credit, and criticizes those who attack the Santists on
• 26:15
  his COVID stance. And frankly, I think the Santist tries to be a
• 26:19
  little too humble here. I understand why he did it, but this clip
• 26:25
  was really extraordinary on a couple of different levels. Here is Bill Maher praising
• 26:30
  Ron de Santis for his COVID response on HBO, and I think it's unfair
• 26:37
  what they did to you because you did handle it better. You did handle
• 26:41
  it better. You were right. You were like, let's target the people,
• 26:45
  protect the people who are most vulnerable, and everybody else can go on
• 26:48
  with their lives a little better. You open schools sooner, and a lot
• 26:52
  of this stuff that's commenced the information we have after now we've had a few
• 26:56
  years to look at it. You were more right. And they won't get
• 27:00
  credit for the New York credit. For me, though, it's not about
• 27:02
  credit for me, okay, but about them admitting that we're wrong, right,
• 27:07
  they are setting us up. If this happened again, they would repeat
• 27:10
  the same playbook all over again. And if we don't have accountability, that's
• 27:14
  what's going to happen. So I'll bring accountability so it never happens in our
• 27:17
  country again, I said the New York Times. It's such a despicable hit
• 27:21
  piece on you that I saw, because I forget what the lead headline was,
• 27:25
  but it was basically Ron descent, this fucked up the pandemic. And
• 27:30
  then like at the very end, it says Florida's death rate overall was better
• 27:34
  than the national average. You, now, if you're going to do an
• 27:37
  article, if you're gonna do an article about Florida and the pandemic, shouldn't
• 27:41
  that be the lead? Shouldn't that be the I mean? Now, One
• 27:45
  of the many reasons why that clip is extraordinary is that Bill Maher is willing
• 27:52
  and able to do that as a left winger, when major right wing media
• 27:56
  figures are not willing and able to do that. Why because it opens them
• 28:02
  up to being seen as anti Trump, or being criticized by Trump fans,
• 28:07
  or potentially turning off their core customers, which are Trump cult members. So
• 28:15
  we have this upside down world situation where it's Bill Maher who's willing to do
• 28:21
  this. And part of the reason why Bill Maher is willing to do this
• 28:23
  is he's on HBO. HBO is very, very, very liberal, but
• 28:29
  they are subscription based. And I have it on very good authority that HBO
• 28:33
  now aren't owned by Warner Discovery, which is the same company that owns CNN.
• 28:40
  I have it on very very good authority from two very different and very
• 28:44
  solid sources that HBO is being very supportive of Bill Maher on this particular front.
• 28:51
  I'd enough one of those sources as Bob Costas, who used to host
• 28:55
  a show on HBO. So HBO has made it clear to Bill Maher that
• 29:00
  this is okay for him to do. And I have no idea what the
• 29:06
  reaction of his personal audiences to this. I mean, this is not new
• 29:10
  information that Bill Maher is a COVID contrarian, but you know, at least
• 29:15
  within a segment of the population, at least within his audience, this is
• 29:22
  acceptable. But it's not going to help Ron De Santis because even though Bill
• 29:27
  Maher is seen by someone who was correct among liberals on COVID. Those people,
• 29:36
  anyone who cares about what Bill Maher might say, is probably already on
• 29:41
  the De Santis side. It's not going to change Trump voters minds that Bill
• 29:45
  Maher on HBO is giving Ron de Santis the proper credit for his COVID response.
• 29:52
  That's not going to happen. Weirdly, it makes somehow the Santis look
• 29:57
  like a guy who is being favored by the left. I mean, again,
• 30:00
  this is all upside down world stuff. In a rational world, this
• 30:06
  would be wow. Bill Maher even sees that Ron DeSantis got it right.
• 30:12
  And isn't this an incredibly potentially beneficial narrative for a general election where here Ron
• 30:22
  Desandis is able to appeal to this portion of the population that Donald Trump could
• 30:26
  never dream of appealing to. And as far as the rest of the interview,
• 30:32
  I mean, marsh tried to go after DeSantis on a bunch of issues
• 30:34
  and I thought De Sandis did a fine job. But again it's on HBO.
• 30:38
  These are not generally core Republican primary voters that are watching this. So
• 30:47
  it was a great job by Desandis. It should be a feather in his
• 30:49
  cap. In a rational world it would matter, but in the world in
• 30:53
  which we do live, it does not matter. And then there's the issue
• 30:59
  of the debate that's going to happen apparently between Ronda Santis and our king here
• 31:04
  in California, King Gavin Newsom. Although he calls himself Governor Newsom, my
• 31:10
  daughters call him Governor Poosom for his tyrannical response to the COVID panic that has
• 31:18
  now officially been scheduled for the end of November. And I have made it
• 31:23
  very clear that I despise Gavin Newsom. I mean I really despise him.
• 31:30
  I hate him more than any other politician, maybe more than any other public
• 31:34
  figure, mostly because of what he did to my children during COVID. But
• 31:41
  it's gone way beyond that. And you know, I'm always on the edge
• 31:45
  with Newsome when it comes to is he dumb? Is he evil? Is
• 31:48
  he a combination of the two? And I am one who always presumes stupidity
• 31:56
  first. But I am starting to believe that Newsome is mostly evil, and
• 32:05
  this comes after an awful lot of thought and consideration, and that he may
• 32:09
  not be that dumb at all. He may actually be an evil genius.
• 32:15
  Genius is probably too strong a word, but I now believe that a lot
• 32:20
  of things that he is doing that are clearly very very very very dumb.
• 32:25
  He's not doing them because he thinks they're smart. He's doing them because he
• 32:31
  is evil. He is a sick person, he is a tyrant, he's
• 32:37
  an authoritarian, and of course, like a lot of people, he projects
• 32:43
  onto others his own worst qualities, and Newsome is doing that with Ronda Santis
• 32:51
  in a big, big way. So we finally have this debate being set,
• 32:55
  which I think, regardless of the Republican presidential process, is an incredibly
• 33:00
  important debate for what kind of country we're going to live in, if only
• 33:05
  because of the very very very different COVID responses between Newsome and De Santists,
• 33:12
  This debate has very significant ramifications. Now it's going to be on Fox News
• 33:17
  Channel hosted by Sean Hannity, which gives me the hives because Hannity is a
• 33:22
  moron and I don't trust him, largely because he's obviously on Team Trump.
• 33:29
  But Newsome is now attacking Ron De Santists for accepting his own debate proposal.
• 33:39
  Let's be clear about how this happened. Hannity did an interview with Newsome.
• 33:46
  During that interview, a couple of months ago, the idea of a debate
• 33:51
  with the Santists came up. Newsom took the debate, accepted in concept the
• 34:00
  idea of debating ron De Santis. He then even kind of mocked the Santists
• 34:07
  when De Santis did not originally accept it, which I disagreed with. I
• 34:12
  thought they should have been saying, yes, let's do this today, because
• 34:15
  that I think could have been a potential game changer when it came to the
• 34:21
  Republican nominating process, if people could see how the Santists would do against Gavin
• 34:27
  Newsome. But it was Newsome that took the first step here the Santists simply
• 34:31
  accepted it. Well, this asshole. Newsome then does the interview with Elix
• 34:38
  Michaelson, who is an anchor the Fox affiliate here in Los Angeles. I
• 34:44
  go, a guy I know I've spoken to, I communicate with quite a
• 34:47
  bit on Twitter. Is a former colleague of the former co host of this
• 34:52
  podcast, Liz Abibe, who worked at the same station with Elix for many
• 34:57
  years, Fox eleven here in law Los Angeles, and Newsom did an interview
• 35:02
  with Michaelson in which he attacks Ron de Santis for accepting the debate proposal,
• 35:12
  And I mean, this is there's a lot in this clip I'm about to
• 35:15
  play for you, but this is this is Newsome at his most evil,
• 35:21
  being a complete asshole, revising history. And then at the end of this
• 35:27
  projecting, I believe, dramatically onto the Santis his own evil nature. And
• 35:35
  this is what it sounded like on Fox eleven and Los Angeles this week.
• 35:38
  We learned that it's going to happen a debate between you and Ron De Santis
• 35:44
  November thirtieth, Fox News Channel seawan Annity in Georgia without a crowd, just
• 35:49
  the two of you. Why are you doing that? And what is your
• 35:52
  strategy? Well, and I don't know if that's the right question. Why
• 35:54
  is he doing it? Is the right question? He's running I think I'm
• 35:59
  not sure we're after tonight, but currently he's running for president United States.
• 36:04
  And you think he's still you think he's still be a candidate in November thirteen.
• 36:07
  That's an open ended question. Part of me wonders, if you know
• 36:10
  the fact that he took this debate, the fact that he took debate in
• 36:16
  relationship this debate, so is that he's completely uncollified at the president United States.
• 36:21
  That's my humble first said, you're debating him with the debate on course,
• 36:23
  I mean, why is he debating a guy he's not even running for
• 36:25
  president When he's running for president, He's showing up at the Reagan Library hollowed
• 36:30
  ground, and he puts out an ad today not for his presidential campaign,
• 36:34
  to promote a debate against the governor of California. I mean, this guy's
• 36:37
  distracted. So I don't know that he hasn't in his heart. I think
• 36:42
  here's my personal opinion about Ronny Santis. He regrets running for president. He
• 36:46
  made a huge mistake. He listened to his consultants, he bought his own
• 36:51
  hype. He had this little glad God complex. I mean, look at
• 36:54
  the ads themselves, literally God created. I mean, he bought into all
• 36:58
  this stuff, and he quickly regretted. He stuck. And here's the problem,
• 37:02
  get one chance of first impression. He's belly flocked. He's down thirty
• 37:06
  plus points where he started. So it's a terrible situation for him. I
• 37:10
  found that clip to be really infuriating because what was De Santis supposed to do.
• 37:19
  If he doesn't accept it, then Newsom's going to say that he's a
• 37:22
  coward who can't stand up for his beliefs, won't defend his COVID record.
• 37:27
  I mean, this is a guy Newsome who has been attacking the Santis for
• 37:30
  two years, largely because DeSantis has been living rent free in his head over
• 37:36
  the COVID response, and now De Santis is willing to go head to head
• 37:42
  manoamano with Newsome, and Newsome is claiming that somehow this makes him ineligible to
• 37:49
  be president, shows he's not qualified to be president because he got bated into
• 37:52
  doing the debate. Well, no, this is an important debate. Newsome
• 37:58
  and DeSantis represent two incredibly different views of the role of government in the United
• 38:05
  States of America. I think the debate ought to be all about COVID.
• 38:09
  I don't trust Hannity to be smart enough to do that, but you know,
• 38:15
  I would like to believe that at least a large portion of that debate
• 38:19
  will be about the COVID response, that from a historical standpoint, is incredibly
• 38:23
  important. Having nothing to do really directly with who the Republican nominee is in
• 38:30
  twenty twenty four. I mean, even if De Santists were to drop out
• 38:34
  between now and November thirty, when this debate is scheduled for, I still
• 38:38
  believe they ought to do the debate, and I still believe it would be
• 38:42
  very, very important, and for Newsome to either not see that or pretend
• 38:47
  that he doesn't simply just try to score vindictive political points against Newsome. I
• 38:53
  mean, let's be clear. Let's be clear what's really happening here. The
• 38:58
  Santists proved, as Bill Omart said, prove Newsome wrong, and it bothers
• 39:05
  the hell out of Newsome, who's an egomaniac, and so now he is
• 39:09
  on an attack and destroy mission on RHN de Santis simply because DeSantis had the
• 39:16
  gall to prove Newsome wrong, and it had not been for De Santis,
• 39:22
  Newsome would have gotten completely away with the absurd COVID response in California because there's
• 39:28
  no media to column on it here in California. The national media largely ignores
• 39:32
  California in general, even during the COVID panic, and they were largely in
• 39:38
  agreement with Newsome to begin with, and so without the Santists proving this in
• 39:45
  Florida, Newsome would have gotten away with this completely scott free. Now he's
• 39:50
  already gotten away with it. He got reelected, by the way, with
• 39:52
  a slightly smaller margin against the non opponent in California than De Santists did against
• 39:59
  the legitimate opponent in Florida, which is really remarkable. And I hope that
• 40:04
  De Santis points this out in the debate. But the bottom line reality is
• 40:07
  this is not about truth. This is not even really about politics. This
• 40:12
  is about personal vendettas on the part of Gavin Newsom, and it's not just
• 40:20
  ripping him for taking his own debate proposal. Newsome had the gall to try
• 40:29
  to attack Ron de Santis get this on the issue of energy independence. He
• 40:36
  tweeted just the other day, I just signed a bill that will strengthen California's
• 40:40
  protections against off shore oil drilling. It would really be a shame if we
• 40:47
  took this moment to remind Ron De Santis of his work in this space.
• 40:52
  Congrats on your leadership, Ron exclamation point. Where then, what happened here
• 40:59
  is Newsome is shaping an old article in The Orlando Sentinel with the headline Ron
• 41:04
  de Santis Environmental plan help everglades, ban fracking, stop green algae, study
• 41:12
  red tide, making De Santis seem like some sort of environmental lack job.
• 41:19
  Well, the first response I had to this is, wait a minute.
• 41:22
  So you're saying that Rond de Santis did something good. What he's really doing
• 41:28
  is he's trying to cause trouble for DeSantis with his own base by and this
• 41:32
  came up at the debate, and the De Santist people tried to knock this
• 41:37
  down as a complete misrepresentation of reality, but that somehow De Santis is weak
• 41:44
  when it comes to energy independence or on environmental issues when it comes to energy
• 41:51
  independence, and that's just not true. This has to do with the voters
• 41:57
  of Florida protect their environmental wetlands in a situation where De Santa's had no power
• 42:05
  over this. They voted for this and a referendum. And so the Newsome
• 42:10
  is talking out of both sides of his mouth here. This is evil stuff,
• 42:15
  you know, complimenting him in order to try to make him look bad
• 42:20
  with his own voters. But from Newsom's perspective, the most absurd part of
• 42:24
  this is here's a guy bragging about making it more difficult to drill offshore for
• 42:31
  oil in California than it already was, where it was basically impossible to begin
• 42:37
  with. All while the price of gasoline in California is at a record high,
• 42:43
  nearly twice as high as the national average. I saw it almost at
• 42:46
  seven dollars a gallon in Los Angeles last week. I mean, how this
• 42:53
  is not a major national story and twenty four seven and the low news is
• 43:00
  completely beyond me. But it's there's incredibly small amounts of coverage here locally about
• 43:07
  the fact that we're paying almost seven dollars per gallon of gasoline when the rest
• 43:13
  of the country is on average paying less than four dollars a gallon for gasoline,
• 43:19
  and that Newsome is during this process actually making even more difficult to drill
• 43:25
  for oil that's right here that would theoretically lower the price. I mean,
• 43:31
  it's just a matter of supply and demand, which is basic economics that Newsom
• 43:36
  pretends not to understand and the media goes along with. But the reality here
• 43:42
  is that Newsome should be getting crushed for this, and instead he's only getting
• 43:47
  confronted about it by Sean Hannity after the Republican debate. Now again I don't
• 43:53
  trust Hannity because he's a moron and because he's on Team Trump, and he's
• 43:58
  a terrible debater. And Newsome is a very good liar. He has zero
• 44:05
  qualms about lying. He throws all sorts of bullshit statistics that he knows the
• 44:09
  media is not going to be smart enough or quick enough to correct him on
• 44:14
  because it takes nw once to be able to do so. So he understands.
• 44:19
  This is what is starting to convince me that Newsom is actually evil and
• 44:23
  here is a subject on which he should be dead to rights, the price
• 44:27
  of asolete so Hannity after the Republican Debate, because it's in California, Newsome
• 44:32
  was there. Why the hell is Newsome even there? I mean, this
• 44:36
  is a you know, I mean, he's attacking Roda Santis for doing debates
• 44:40
  with a guy who's not even running for president. Well, you're injecting yourself
• 44:45
  into this situation. You're literally at the Republican Debate doing interviews on Fox News
• 44:52
  Channel with Sean Hannity after this whole thing has aired. So you've made yourself
• 44:58
  part of this process, you asshole. And for reasons that a lot of
• 45:02
  people I think understandably are suspicious of given the fact that Joe Biden is such
• 45:07
  a weak frontrunner or presumed candidate on the Democratic side. More on that in
• 45:14
  just a little bit, But here he is a slightly edited I didn't do
• 45:17
  the editing, but it's a slightly edited version of the discussion slash confrontation between
• 45:24
  Sean Hannity and Gavin Newsome over the price of gasoline and why it is so
• 45:30
  much higher here in California than it is elsewhere in the United States of America
• 45:36
  for dollars a gallon and every other state seven dollars. I saw here seven.
• 45:42
  Why is your state two dollars? As of today, I have monitored
• 45:45
  this very close. I just did a special session. We became the first
• 45:47
  state in the country to price gouging legislation with a new monitor just went into
• 45:52
  effect. These oil companies are ripping us off two dollars, only ripping all
• 45:57
  sell a point of two dollars and six sets this miss three surcharge that they've
• 46:00
  been advancing him for years and years. Let the average around in the countries
• 46:04
  Fowre and I saw anywhere between six, six fifty and seven dollars two dollars
• 46:09
  in six cents higher. You're absolutely right, your state is much more than
• 46:13
  every other state, exactly two dollars higher, because they're screwing us. There's
• 46:16
  no justification, not regulation. Tax, yes, eighty five cents, eighty
• 46:22
  five cents, low carbon fuel standard. Anybody was California. You get per
• 46:24
  gallon for gasoline tax. When you add the gas tax, you add cap
• 46:30
  and trade, and you add the low carbon fuel standards, and then periodically
• 46:34
  add and I'm full, I'm being as transparent so I can be, and
• 46:37
  you add our unique blend. You get a differential around eighty five cents that
• 46:43
  you can justify, not two dollars and six cents. That's where you should
• 46:47
  be a dollar more again than when Donald Trump was president. Gasoline prices dationwide
• 46:52
  never averaged three dollars again, just keep making that up. No, we
• 46:58
  no one make it up. You're making it up energy independent and now we're
• 47:00
  not our energy independent. We're not now handed He had him dead to rights
• 47:05
  there and let him off the hook a little bit. You know with this
• 47:09
  idea that Newsom can just claim that the oil companies are ripping us off,
• 47:13
  Well, they're ripping you off. Why are us here in California, why
• 47:16
  not the rest of the country. The reality here is what Newsom describes as
• 47:22
  they're ripping us off, is no, they're charging for the price of having
• 47:28
  to deal with California regulations when it comes to every aspect of the process of
• 47:35
  getting oil into the gas tanks of Californians, and that's all about government regulation.
• 47:44
  And that's something that Newsom will not take responsibility for because he lives in
• 47:47
  a world where you can regulate up the wazoo and somehow that doesn't impact price.
• 47:54
  That's not realistic. That's not the real world. But that's the world
• 47:59
  that wants to pretend we live in. And so, you know, I'll
• 48:04
  give Kennidy some credit for at least taking Newsome on on this incredibly important topic
• 48:08
  where he is absolutely dead to rights. But he does not score a knockout
• 48:13
  here because Newsome is such a good liar and has absolutely no guilt about it
• 48:20
  whatsoever. He's almost a sociopath when it comes to lying and spewing these BS
• 48:25
  statistics. By the way, when it comes to this whole issue of the
• 48:30
  price of gasoline and environmentalism, you know, there's several interesting things that have
• 48:36
  happened I'll quickly review them. In the last few days, we've got a
• 48:40
  story in the Wall Street Journal that get this, get this, in order
• 48:46
  for electric batteries to be made, it looks as if at least there's concern
• 48:54
  that it could cause a climate catastrophe. This is an article in the Wall
• 48:59
  Street Journal that because in Canada, where they need the materials for electric batteries,
• 49:07
  that it would release a massive amount of carbon into the atmosphere that climate
• 49:15
  alarmists are concerned might cause a climate catastrophe, because after all, we've been
• 49:21
  told that carbon is the worst thing in the world, unless, of course,
• 49:25
  you know, you're someone in charge of college sports realignment and you don't
• 49:30
  care that the carbon footprint of every single athlete on both sides of the United
• 49:36
  States of America is going to expand dramatically and you're not even gonna say boo
• 49:39
  about it. But that's something I've talked about previously. But we've got a
• 49:43
  situation where the production of electric batteries in the environmentalist world may cause a carbon
• 49:52
  climate catastrophe. Then there's a story out of Kansas where it turns out that
• 49:59
  the reduction of electric car batteries there is taking up so much energy, it's
• 50:06
  called it needs so much energy to create these electric car batteries that a coal
• 50:13
  plant that was scheduled to be closed is going to be remain open indefinitely.
• 50:21
  Now, how hilarious is this? We need a coal plant scheduled for closure
• 50:25
  to stay open in order to produce electric car batteries. You can't make this
• 50:34
  stuff up. It's hilarious, but it also exposes the scam here. I've
• 50:42
  talked many times before electricity is not magic. Liberals seem to think that it
• 50:46
  is, but there have been numerous pieces of evidence that indicate that when you
• 50:52
  take it in its totality, that there's actually more environmental alleged damage done in
• 51:00
  the creation of electric cars, for instance, then there is for gasoline powered
• 51:07
  cars. And yet The Washington Post recently ran a column A thought experiment is
• 51:14
  how they described it, where they considered a world without fossil fuels. The
• 51:22
  Washington Post seriously considering a world without fossil fuels with a straight face. Men,
• 51:32
  this is insanity. Fossil fuels are the greatest thing that ever happened to
• 51:36
  humanity, and now the Washington Post wants to consider a world a complicated world
• 51:42
  complexities, their complexities to a world without fossil fuels, the Washington Post admits,
• 51:47
  but it's still fun to imagine the awesomeness that would occur if we lived
• 51:53
  in a world without fossil fuels. This is total insanity. And here we
• 51:59
  have a situation where, you know, the leader of this movement, Gavin
• 52:01
  Newsom, is heading a state that is paying almost seven dollars per gallon of
• 52:08
  gasoline. This ought to send shivers throughout the rest of the country, you
• 52:13
  know, to end any contemplation at all of Gavin Newsom being the twenty twenty
• 52:17
  four presidential nominee. And the media is asleep at the wheel on this wheel,
• 52:24
  either being gas leader or electric powered. I'm not sure, it doesn't
• 52:28
  matter. The media is completely in the gas tank on this, even here
• 52:34
  in California, where this ought to be a twenty four seven story, because
• 52:37
  it's directly as a result of Gavin Newsom and overbearing government regulation and taxes,
• 52:45
  and every Californian and every American ought to know about this, and unfortunately the
• 52:52
  media is too broken for that to happen. Now, Newsome isn't stopping there
• 52:57
  with his evil Newsom is also just raise the minimum wage. He just raised
• 53:02
  the minimum wage, not for all workers, but for fast food workers in
• 53:08
  California to twenty dollars an hour. This is how Newsome described it in a
• 53:14
  tweet. Fast food workers in California will now be paid the highest minimum wage
• 53:20
  of any state in the country. I just signed the bill that will ensure
• 53:23
  these workers receive the fair pay they deserve. Again, twenty dollars an hour,
• 53:30
  just for fast food workers. Well, I would certainly not have described
• 53:36
  this law the way that Newsom did because he's not ensuring that fast food workers
• 53:39
  are going to get twenty dollars an hour. No, that's not what's happening.
• 53:44
  He's forcing fast food employers to pay twenty dollars an hour to their employees.
• 53:53
  That's an incredibly important distinction because guess what's going to happen. Yeah,
• 54:00
  I know, basic supply and demand, basic economics. Because the price of
• 54:05
  labor is going to go up, fewer people will actually be employed. So
• 54:12
  it's not as if there's a lock on the number of fast food workers in
• 54:15
  California and they're all now going to receive twenty dollars per hour. A lot
• 54:20
  of them are going to receive zero because they're not going to have their jobs
• 54:23
  anymore. They're gonna be unemployed. But that may not even be the most
• 54:30
  evil part of this. I mean, there's so many, so many horrendous
• 54:34
  aspects. Number One, prices are going to go up. You know,
• 54:38
  my kids happy meals at McDonald's are going to go up. Employee employment numbers
• 54:45
  are going to go down. They're going to be kids who lose their job
• 54:47
  to animation, and you know, the experience is going to be even worse
• 54:52
  than it currently is and getting fast food. My daughters love going to McDonald's.
• 54:57
  That experience is not going to be the same. It's going to be
• 54:59
  more. We're expensive, and it's going to be worse going forward. But
• 55:01
  maybe the most evil part of this that the media is completely missing is the
• 55:08
  fact that he is somehow manus him is somehow carving out I mean, there's
• 55:14
  no logical rationale for Okay, why just fast food workers. I'm not a
• 55:21
  lawyer, but I gotta believe that if you run a fast food joint in
• 55:27
  California, you could absolutely can challenge this in court because this is the targeting
• 55:35
  of your industry in a way that is nonsensical, doesn't seem to have any
• 55:42
  reason for it. Why are you being signaled out and your industry that you
• 55:45
  have to pay a higher minimum wage than any other industry. But the motivation
• 55:52
  here is what is what is really interesting and I think actually evil, because
• 55:58
  you might be thinking, well, why is McDonald's and Burger King and the
• 56:02
  other large franchises, why are they not apoplectic about this, because it appears
• 56:09
  as if they actually want this to happen, or at the very least they're
• 56:15
  not upset about it happening. Why Because it gives them an out. It
• 56:22
  gives them political cover to do what they've already wanted to do, which is
• 56:28
  to get rid of employees and to go automated. And so Newsome is actually
• 56:34
  giving the McDonald's of the world a tremendous excuse to say, see, sorry,
• 56:40
  we couldn't do this. Otherwise we'd have to raise your prices too much.
• 56:45
  And so we're going to get rid of employees and we're going automated.
• 56:50
  And guess what else that does. That gives the McDonald's of the world a
• 56:54
  huge advantage over any and all of their competitors, who are not yet economically
• 57:01
  or logistically in a position to go automated because their prices are gonna skyrocket with
• 57:08
  a twenty dollars a minimum wage. McDonald's will not because McDonald's will have options
• 57:16
  to get rid of employees and do what they have always desired, which is
• 57:21
  to make it a largely automated shop. And so Noson gets to claim he's
• 57:27
  raising the minimum wage for this very smallest liver of workers. The media will
• 57:31
  never hold him accountable, accountable for all the lost jobs that will happen,
• 57:37
  or for the increase in the price of the happy meal, and McDonald's and
• 57:42
  Burger King and others are probably going to benefit from this in the long run
• 57:46
  because they will go automated. And so to me, I am now convinced
• 57:52
  that Gavin Newsom is actually evil. He cannot be dumb enough. He cannot
• 57:55
  possibly be dumb enough to not realize that increasing the minimum wage to twenty dollars
• 58:02
  for fast food workers is not going to cause greater unemployment and larger prices.
• 58:08
  He has to understand that. And so this is how I conclude he's evil
• 58:13
  because he doesn't care. He actually wants this. He actually wants this,
• 58:19
  and the only thing that people will know about him, you know, the
• 58:22
  average person in California and nationwide is here's a guy who's a champion for a
• 58:28
  higher minimum wage. That sounds great for me. When it's all totally bullshit
• 58:34
  and it doesn't even stop there. I mean, I realized I'm spending a
• 58:37
  lot of time on Gavin Newsom, partially because I do think there is a
• 58:39
  decent, not great, but certainly more than zero chance he's going to be
• 58:45
  the Democratic presidential now, meaning in twenty twenty four, but also because these
• 58:50
  are such incredibly important stories that the media is blowing it on almost into tally.
• 58:57
  But Newsom just appointed the successor for Diane Feinstein. Now, Newsome has
• 59:02
  also just announced the replacement for Diane Feinstein, who passed away over the last
• 59:08
  week at the age of ninety, longtime senator from California, and Newsome has
• 59:15
  announced her replacement, and the replacement is extraordinary. I mean, if we
• 59:22
  lived in a remotely rational world, this is a story that would be a
• 59:27
  massive scandal that would maybe bring down Gavin Newsome as governor, even though he's
• 59:34
  he's been re elected. I mean, I don't know, you might even
• 59:36
  get a recall election in a remotely rational world based upon what he has done
• 59:42
  here, he has chosen a woman by the name of Labhanza Butler. Now,
• 59:49
  who is Butler? Butler is someone who very few people have ever heard
• 59:52
  of. She works for a very very pro choice organization. But why was
• 1:00:00
  she chosen? What are her qualifications? I mean, they're forty million people
• 1:00:05
  in California. This is an incredibly important job US senator that this person is
• 1:00:09
  going to have without any votes at all, just by edict by the governor
• 1:00:15
  of California saying here, you are our senator for a year and a half,
• 1:00:20
  representing forty million people, one out of a hundred US Senators, And
• 1:00:24
  the only qualifications she seems to have are she's very pro choice, she's black,
• 1:00:31
  she's a female, she's gay. But get this, she does not
• 1:00:37
  even live in California. She doesn't vote in California. She lives in Maryland.
• 1:00:44
  So California forty million people are going to be represented by two US Senators.
• 1:00:52
  One of them was already chosen by Gavin Newsom when Kamala Harris became Vice
• 1:00:57
  president. Now the second is osen by Gavin Newsom purely because of her demographics,
• 1:01:04
  the color of her skin, her alleged gender, which I guess her
• 1:01:07
  gender is female and her sexuality being gay, And it doesn't even matter that
• 1:01:15
  she doesn't live or reside or vote in californiaat but in Maryland. And I
• 1:01:23
  mentioned Elex Michaelson, the Fox eleven anchor who did that interview with Newsom.
• 1:01:30
  By the way, with Michaelson, you know ardent listeners through this podcast,
• 1:01:36
  it may remember that I had chided Michaelson about a story in The New York
• 1:01:40
  Times involving horrendous school truancy rates in California and asked him when he was going
• 1:01:46
  to confront his buddy, Gavin Knewsome about this, and he promised me that
• 1:01:51
  he would the next time he talked to him. So I saw that interview,
• 1:01:53
  I said, Okay, Alex, what's the story. Did did you
• 1:01:57
  interview Newsom? And when you interviewed k Newsome, did you ask him about
• 1:02:00
  the New York Times truancy story? And he gave me a song and dance
• 1:02:04
  about how they didn't have any time. They gave us a very short window
• 1:02:09
  and you know, I'll try to do it again some other time. And
• 1:02:12
  I'm like, okay, wait a minute. You asked him about the Ron
• 1:02:15
  DeSantis debate where he went on for a minute and a half, but you
• 1:02:19
  can't ask him about truancy rates and schools as as articulated in the New York
• 1:02:24
  Times as being a disaster in California. I wasn't even surprised, because I
• 1:02:30
  know the way Elix works. But it's it's just so indicative of how incredibly
• 1:02:35
  broken the news media is at every single level. But here Michaelson, who
• 1:02:38
  clearly has a love fest with Gavin Newsome. He commented on Twitter about the
• 1:02:47
  fact that Butler, his choice for US Senator, is not from California,
• 1:02:52
  doesn't live in California, doesn't vote in California, and he described it as
• 1:02:58
  interesting. Interesting. That is the worst critique that the Fox eleven anchor in
• 1:03:06
  Los Angeles is willingly able to give about Gavin Newsom for hand picking someone as
• 1:03:10
  a US Senator for a year and a half who is not even really tied
• 1:03:17
  to California. The LA Times desperately tried to say, well, she's got
• 1:03:22
  ties to Los Angeles. We've got forty million people in the state. This
• 1:03:27
  is the best that Newsom can do when it comes to picking somebody to fill
• 1:03:32
  an incredibly important role for a year and a half, she's not qualified.
• 1:03:37
  This is the you know, demographics uberallis identity politics, affirmative action on steroids
• 1:03:45
  that the Democratic Party has become. Well, she's black, she's female,
• 1:03:50
  she's gay, she's pro choice. That's all that matters to be a US
• 1:03:53
  senator. By the way, here's what's really going on. This is where
• 1:03:58
  Newsom is evil and he's not dumb. What he's really doing here is he's
• 1:04:04
  checking all of the woke liberal boxes, giving this position to somebody for a
• 1:04:11
  year and a half in a way that will very likely not disrupt the Democratic
• 1:04:17
  primary for the same position, because this position is up for reelection next year,
• 1:04:26
  and it is my view that Newsom had a very difficult set of circumstances.
• 1:04:31
  He could either pick somebody who was going to run for the position,
• 1:04:35
  in which case he's essentially deciding the primary. Like if he had picked Adam
• 1:04:41
  Schiff, then Ship is the incumbent and he's clearly going to win the race
• 1:04:46
  next year unless he does something colossally stupid. So he gets to check all
• 1:04:51
  these boxes, signal his virtue and stay out of the primary fight because well
• 1:05:00
  it's possible Butler may run in the actual race. It wouldn't shock me if
• 1:05:04
  she did. She might have a difficult time because she doesn't even live in
• 1:05:09
  California and she's clearly not qualified, and it's obvious that the other Democrats aren't
• 1:05:15
  just going to lay down and give her the position because she's young. She
• 1:05:20
  may have this position almost as long as as Diane Einstein did. I mean,
• 1:05:27
  this is a position for life in California. Because we only have one
• 1:05:30
  party political rule, we live effectively an authoritarian state right now. Currently in
• 1:05:38
  California, the attorney General, the Secretary of State, and our two US
• 1:05:44
  Senators were all literally chosen not by the voters but by King Gavin Newsom for
• 1:05:50
  a variety of different reasons. It has been a little bit of a domino
• 1:05:54
  effect as to why that has happened. But we do not have democracy in
• 1:05:58
  California. And once Newson picks them, because we only have one political party
• 1:06:02
  in this state, we have a messed up primary system that is further designed
• 1:06:08
  to make it almost impossible for a non liberal to win. Then once Newsom
• 1:06:14
  picks them, it's their job for as long as they can hold it.
• 1:06:17
  And it's just incredibly frustrating. But once again the media will blow this.
• 1:06:25
  I mean, I was watching the local news here in Los Angeles this morning,
• 1:06:29
  not one word about Butler's pick and the controversy over the fact that she
• 1:06:34
  is not a Californian, not to mention she's also not qualified, not to
• 1:06:39
  mention that she's clearly an affirmative action pick on multiple levels, and this is
• 1:06:44
  an incredibly important position. But this is the price we pay for a broken
• 1:06:48
  news media. And by the way, folks, as I say all the
• 1:06:51
  time, the reason why Knewson matters is not just because he might be the
• 1:06:57
  twenty twenty four Democratic nominee, which God help us all if that happens,
• 1:07:01
  but because this is what's going to happen to the rest of America. California
• 1:07:05
  is the precursor, the foreshadowing for what happens in the rest of the country.
• 1:07:10
  And if you don't understand it, I'm sorry, because this is the
• 1:07:14
  reality. You've been warned. You've got to hold the line because there's nothing
• 1:07:18
  unique about California. It just happens here sooner for a variety of reasons,
• 1:07:24
  including demographic shifts. My only hope about Newsome is it might be too early,
• 1:07:30
  that there might be enough of America left to stop Newsome that if I'd
• 1:07:35
  actually haven't rather have him run in twenty twenty four than twenty twenty eight,
• 1:07:41
  because you know, with every single day, it becomes more and more likely
• 1:07:45
  than America might actually embrace a Gavin Newsom. There might be enough of America
• 1:07:49
  left to reject Gavin Newsom. But I'm not out to present confident in that
• 1:07:55
  anymore because largely because of our completely and totally oken news media. Now,
• 1:08:00
  there's been a couple other political situations where our broken news media has reared its
• 1:08:06
  ugly head. I have to mention what happened over the weekend with the fight
• 1:08:11
  over when not to shutdown the government, which once again has been kicked down
• 1:08:15
  the road. We're totally broken when it comes to this whole government's shutdown issue.
• 1:08:19
  Republicans lose every single time because now all the definitions and the way that
• 1:08:27
  the media frames the issues are very much in the favor of Democrats. But
• 1:08:31
  in the process of this, Democratic Congressman Jamal Bowman from New York set off
• 1:08:39
  the fire alarm in the Capitol to stop a vote to stop the voting.
• 1:08:45
  Now, I'm sure that every conservative podcast in America is going bananas over this,
• 1:08:50
  and rightfully and understandably so. But it's the fact that the media is
• 1:08:56
  allowing Bowman to get away with an incredibly bogus explanation, which is that he
• 1:09:01
  is apparently a complete and total imbecile who did not understand that that was a
• 1:09:06
  fire alarm and he thought that this was opening a door. Now, the
• 1:09:10
  explanation makes absolutely no sense at any level. By the way, the most
• 1:09:15
  obvious reason it makes no sense is that Bowman used to be a high school
• 1:09:19
  principle. Now, anyone who's ever worked at a school, especially as a
• 1:09:25
  principle, knows exactly what a fire alarm is, what it looks like,
• 1:09:29
  what it does. I mean, it's almost a cliche as to know how
• 1:09:33
  to get out of a bad situation at school, you ignite the fire alarm.
• 1:09:39
  Obviously, there's fire drills multiple times a year at most high schools.
• 1:09:44
  So it's absolutely preposterous that Bowman didn't know what he was doing. There's pictures
• 1:09:48
  of him doing it. And I will be the first to acknowledge that Republicans
• 1:09:54
  are right in claiming hypocrisy on the issue of how, for instance, January
• 1:09:59
  six was handled and the insurrection, and you know, the basis of that
• 1:10:03
  whole thing was that somehow this were people stopping an official proceeding, stopping the
• 1:10:11
  official votes for president of the United States, and that that's what made this
• 1:10:15
  so incredibly serious. We'll hear you have a congressman stopping a vote related to
• 1:10:20
  the government shutdown by setting off a fire alarm and then blatantly lying about it.
• 1:10:28
  I mean, I can't imagine what would be more obviously scandalous than this.
• 1:10:32
  And the media has reported it, but they've they've accepted his explanation is
• 1:10:38
  at least being plausible. He should be mocked, This should be Justy's small
• 1:10:43
  let level mocking here. But he's a black male who is a liberal,
• 1:10:48
  and that I think gives him some protection here. Obviously he in the media's
• 1:10:54
  mind, he's on the right side of things, and so they're more than
• 1:10:57
  willing to give him a pass if there's any even plausible deniability or benefit of
• 1:11:02
  the doubt, although in this case I don't think there's either. And then
• 1:11:06
  this also gets to this issue I've talked about many times before about how in
• 1:11:11
  this day and age, it's not what gets reported, it's what gets repeated,
• 1:11:15
  and so every news outlet will say, well, we reported this,
• 1:11:18
  we're going to forget about. It's super fast, especially now that the shutdown
• 1:11:23
  fight is over for about forty five days, and then we're gonna go through
• 1:11:26
  this whole rig and rawle all over again. Republicans will once again lose,
• 1:11:29
  and assholes like Matt Gates will we'll try to use their leverage for their own
• 1:11:33
  personal benefit and screw the country and screw Republican causes. And it's just a
• 1:11:39
  horrendous situation. But this is a This is one of those moments. You
• 1:11:43
  know, what about smoking gun to mix a metaphor with the fire alarm.
• 1:11:47
  This this should be one of those situations that resonates because every American ought to
• 1:11:53
  know about the media ought to make sure every single American knows about and if
• 1:11:57
  they did, they would they would realize what's, at least in part,
• 1:12:00
  what's really going on here. But that won't be the case because the media
• 1:12:04
  will not repeat this story over and over and over again. Similar situations going
• 1:12:10
  on in New Jersey with Senator Robert Menendez, who is facing absolutely horrendous bribery
• 1:12:15
  charges. Frankly, they seem treasonous to me. Where he's being charged with
• 1:12:23
  taking bribes effectively on behalf of the country of Egypt, taking massive amounts of
• 1:12:30
  cash and gold bars, having his wife be involved in this. This is
• 1:12:35
  a guy who's had numerous ethics charges against him in the past, which somehow
• 1:12:40
  he has survived. Now, what's most interesting to me about this other than
• 1:12:45
  the whole You know, the media will quickly forget about this, unlike with
• 1:12:48
  Trump, you know, which is a constant drumbeat that now they've reported on
• 1:12:53
  Menendez and now until those legal proceedings, we're not going to hear much more
• 1:12:58
  about this. There's been calls on the Democratic side for Menendez to withdraw or
• 1:13:03
  resign from office, not so much from the Republican side, and part of
• 1:13:09
  that is because he's up for re election in twenty twenty four. This is
• 1:13:12
  a little bit like what Newsom's doing with his pick to sixty Feinstein, where
• 1:13:18
  you know, it's all about politics, and Menendez would normally be in a
• 1:13:24
  very safe seat in New Jersey, but these allegations are so horrendous and even
• 1:13:29
  the governor of New Jersey has called on him to resign that it may actually
• 1:13:34
  give a republic in a chance in a very very democratic state like New Jersey,
• 1:13:41
  and I think that's what has Democrats so very concerned and why they want
• 1:13:45
  him gone. But it does not appear as if he will go. Instead,
• 1:13:48
  he's trying to play the Latino card. Somehow this hall happened because he
• 1:13:55
  is Cuban and that this you know, he had lots of cash because he
• 1:13:59
  was of You know, what would happen if the government took all of his
• 1:14:03
  assets or some craziness. I don't know. I don't even understand what his
• 1:14:08
  explanation is. It doesn't make a lot of sense and would be easily proven
• 1:14:12
  if it was true. If he was really withdrawing cash from his bank account,
• 1:14:15
  there would be voluminous bank records to prove that. To my knowledge,
• 1:14:20
  that has not been produced. So I have no problem believing Menendez is guilty
• 1:14:26
  as hell. But it'll be very very interesting to see how that race plays
• 1:14:29
  out in twenty twenty four, especially when Donald Trump is likely the presidential nominee
• 1:14:34
  on the Republican side, facing all sorts of not similar although that you could
• 1:14:40
  argue maybe the classified documents cases at least in the same realm or ballpark,
• 1:14:45
  but where he's facing criminal indictments as well. And to see the media disparity
• 1:14:51
  and hypocrisy when it comes to the treatment of Mendet, that Menendez, and
• 1:14:55
  the treatment of Donald Trump. Now, speaking of Trump, he has all
• 1:15:00
  sorts of legal problems, and this week he is in court again, this
• 1:15:03
  time in New York over his business empire, which a judge has found as
• 1:15:13
  a result of Trump defrauding banks and insurance companies by illegally inflating the valuations of
• 1:15:19
  real estate holdings. This is a situation that started last week and the actual
• 1:15:27
  trial is slated the start this week. It will go on for quite a
• 1:15:30
  while. The Blaze reporting New York State Supreme Court Judge Arthur and Gouron said
• 1:15:36
  last week that Trump overestimated the value of his properties and his net worth in
• 1:15:43
  order to seek favorable financing for about a decade. The claim is a key
• 1:15:47
  part of the two hundred and fifty million dollars civil lawsuit filed by New York
• 1:15:54
  Attorney General Latita James. Now, let's be clear, Latita James literally campaigned
• 1:15:59
  on the idea of getting Donald Trump, but this is a suit filed against
• 1:16:02
  Trump, his two sons, and the Trump organization. The ruling allows James
• 1:16:08
  to impose sanctions on Trump, his co defendants, and his attorneys, and
• 1:16:14
  this is a situation that could be a mortal threat to the Trump organization.
• 1:16:17
  And look, this is another one of those circumstances where I'm conflicted. It's
• 1:16:23
  obviously a political vendetta on James's part, but I also think that there's a
• 1:16:27
  lot of truth in what's happening. I've said many, many times over the
• 1:16:30
  years that Donald Trump is a fraud in general, but he's a financial fraud
• 1:16:35
  in particular, and that he has always overestimated the value of everything in order
• 1:16:43
  to leverage all sorts of things like loans. And then of course there's the
• 1:16:48
  weird situation where part of this is avoiding taxes because he himself, when it's
• 1:16:56
  convenient, has lowered the valuation of certain properties in order to lower his tax
• 1:17:01
  bill. But at the essence of all this, the essence of this is
• 1:17:05
  that Donald Trump is not as rich as he claims. How rich is he,
• 1:17:10
  I don't know. He's clearly a very rich man. Is he a
• 1:17:14
  billionaire? I don't know. He's certainly not worth ten billion dollars, which
• 1:17:16
  is one point is what he has claimed. He does not care about the
• 1:17:21
  truth, and he is willing and able to do anything he possibly can to
• 1:17:28
  gain the system. He basically bragged about this much to his benefit in the
• 1:17:32
  twenty sixteen presidential election against Hillary Clinton, and in those debates where Hillary Clinton,
• 1:17:39
  you know, tried to go after him on that paying any taxes and
• 1:17:42
  Trump said, damn right, I don't pay taxes. I'm too smart to
• 1:17:45
  pay taxes because I understand the system and I'm gaming it. And people love
• 1:17:50
  that. So, you know, this is one of those situations where it's
• 1:17:56
  a pox on all their houses. Trump's a fraud, Jane is a fraud.
• 1:18:00
  The media is a fraud for the way they're handling this, making it
• 1:18:03
  sound like a much bigger deal than it is. I mean, you would
• 1:18:06
  have thought when this ruling from the judge came down that Trump had lost his
• 1:18:12
  entire business empire. That's not the case at all. But on the other
• 1:18:17
  hand, there's no question that this is a legitimate issue and that this is
• 1:18:21
  a problem for Trump going forward. I mean, you know how many different
• 1:18:27
  legal burdens can he have at one time while running for president? As you
• 1:18:31
  know, an underdog going against an incumbent that ought to matter to Republican voters.
• 1:18:36
  There ought to be a threshold where people go enough is enough, Okay,
• 1:18:40
  just take care of your own problems. I'm sorry they're doing this to
• 1:18:43
  you. You don't deserve it, but the country is at stake here and
• 1:18:46
  we have other options. Unfortunately, that mindset is held by a very small
• 1:18:53
  minority of Republican voters, and the more they go after Trump, the more
• 1:18:57
  it is likely to can tinue to substantiate his lead and maybe even increases lead,
• 1:19:04
  but certainly harden his support and make it more and more difficult and not
• 1:19:11
  impossible for anyone to make any significant headway now when it comes to the general
• 1:19:16
  election in twenty twenty four. I have made a statement a few months ago,
• 1:19:23
  I think is when I said it, at least a few weeks ago.
• 1:19:25
  It's hard to keep tracks sometimes that I'm sure a lot of people thought
• 1:19:29
  was crazy. And I said that the wild card here for Democrats and the
• 1:19:33
  twenty twenty four election is Taylor Swift. And I guarantee there are people when
• 1:19:40
  I said that, John, what the hell are you talking about? Taylor
• 1:19:42
  Swift is going to decide this election. And my basic thought process was,
• 1:19:46
  you know what, you know it may look, you know, very like
• 1:19:50
  a very close election between Biden and Trump, but the reality is the Democrats
• 1:19:56
  have a secret weapon. And her name is Taylor Swift, and it's obvious
• 1:20:00
  that she has the largest, most passionate cult in America. It's obvious that
• 1:20:04
  she's a liberal and all she has to do is snap her fingers and her
• 1:20:11
  cult will vote against Donald Trump. And that since they are a demographic that
• 1:20:16
  generally doesn't vote as often as other demographics, young single females, that this
• 1:20:21
  would be a boom to Democrats, by the way, not just at the
• 1:20:26
  presidential level, but probably also downballot as well well. Since I said that,
• 1:20:31
  there's been numerous pieces of evidence that I am right, and in fact,
• 1:20:35
  some media outlets have picked up on this very same phenomenon. But we
• 1:20:42
  now have actual hard evidence to show this in two different ways. Number one
• 1:20:47
  is the fact that she simply shared voter registration information on her Instagram account and
• 1:20:57
  instantaneously there was a massive unpressed. Then it increase in the number of people,
• 1:21:03
  especially in her demographic, who were registered to vote, huge numbers,
• 1:21:10
  and this was reported widely. And you know, in the olden days,
• 1:21:15
  getting people to register to vote, if there was a demographic that, you
• 1:21:19
  know, it wasn't on your side politically, that would be concerning, maybe
• 1:21:24
  problematic, But now it's a death knell because now we have effectively universal mail
• 1:21:31
  in voting, and so now the nexus between registration and actually voting has been
• 1:21:39
  greatly reduced because in the past, prior to COVID, you still have to
• 1:21:45
  get your butt to the poll, which doesn't sound like much, but for
• 1:21:48
  a lot of people that was that was a big deal. Now you've got
• 1:21:55
  a month or whatever to fill out a piece of paper and stick it in
• 1:21:59
  the mail. That's a lot easier for people. So when you get people
• 1:22:04
  to register, you're almost essentially getting them to vote, and it's all,
• 1:22:11
  you know, one of the greatest boondoggles Democrats have our registration drives or get
• 1:22:16
  out the vote campaigns, which are allegedly nonpartisan, and that's total bullshit.
• 1:22:24
  In this very divided era, if you target particular demographics for getting out the
• 1:22:30
  vote, you're essentially doing the work for the Democratic Party. And sometimes this
• 1:22:36
  is even done with public funding. I mean, I mean, it's it
• 1:22:41
  is the biggest boondoggle in our electoral political system. Get out the vote as
• 1:22:46
  somehow being nonpartisan. Well, if you're trying to get people in the inner
• 1:22:51
  city or young women to vote, you're essentially doing the work of the Democratic
• 1:22:59
  Party. So Swift doesn't even have to go out on a limb here.
• 1:23:02
  All she has to do is share voter registration information and urging people to register
• 1:23:10
  to vote, an allegedly nonpartisan act for which she cannot be criticized and we'll
• 1:23:16
  get no blowback. But it's an overtly political act because of her demographic and
• 1:23:21
  because of her own personal politics, and if need be, you know,
• 1:23:29
  she'll put put her foot down a little bit more on the accelerator. In
• 1:23:33
  a general election, if Trump is leading or if it's close, all Taylor
• 1:23:40
  Swift has to do is not in a particular direction and urge her people to
• 1:23:46
  make sure they vote, and if she has to, you know, to
• 1:23:49
  vote against Donald Trump. And it's gonna happen, and it's gonna happen in
• 1:23:54
  a big way among a demographic that generally wouldn't be vote in very high numbers,
• 1:24:01
  and they're going to vote universally against Republicans and against Donald Trump. And
• 1:24:10
  it's very obvious and this effect is real. Now how big it is,
• 1:24:15
  We don't know yet, but it's gonna be big enough to make a difference.
• 1:24:19
  And if you were not convinced to that prior to the most recent insanity
• 1:24:28
  evolving her and Travis Kelsey, y ought to be now because look what has
• 1:24:32
  happened when it came to the economic impact of Taylor's Swift simply going to a
• 1:24:41
  couple of football games. That's all she's done. She just decided to go
• 1:24:45
  to a couple of football games played by the Kansas City Chiefs amidst rumors that
• 1:24:51
  she's dating Kansas City Chief tight end Travis Kelsey. The whole world has changed.
• 1:24:58
  TV ratings have skyrocketed, sales of Travis Kelsey's jersey have skyrocketed. Tickets
• 1:25:05
  to the game where she was she was attending, just attending the New York
• 1:25:11
  Jets game on Sunday Night Football. They went through the roof. Travis Kelsey's
• 1:25:18
  online presence has exploded, the number of Instagram followers and Twitter followers and everything
• 1:25:27
  else, all because Taylor Swift is a seemingly dating Travis Kelsey. She doesn't
• 1:25:34
  have to do very much. They're not engaged, they're not married. By
• 1:25:40
  the way, if they were married, I think this story would be far,
• 1:25:44
  far less insane because a large part of the reason why people care about
• 1:25:48
  this story is the mystery, you know, the mystery of are they dating
• 1:25:54
  or are they not dating? Basically are they having sex? So they're not
• 1:25:57
  having sex, that's what people care about. If they were married, the
• 1:26:00
  mystery would be over and the news media story would be far, far less
• 1:26:05
  impactful. But my god, I mean, we've already seen two sports miniseries
• 1:26:13
  in the sports media come and go, and we're only in week five basically
• 1:26:18
  of the football season four or five depending on your proer or minor league college
• 1:26:25
  football perspective. But we started off the football season with the Aaron Rodgers mini
• 1:26:30
  series that lasted four plays before he blew out as Achilles Tendon. The Dion
• 1:26:35
  Sanders Coach Prime mini series, which exploded immediately as the Rodgers mini series was
• 1:26:43
  imploding. But now that Colorado was as predicted, lost their last two games,
• 1:26:47
  that mini series is fading quickly, now replaced by the Taylor Swift Travis
• 1:26:53
  Kelsey miniseries, which maybe even bigger than Aaron Rodgers or the Dion Sanders mini
• 1:26:59
  series because it involves this massive cult that Taylor Swift has which is an untapped
• 1:27:05
  demographic when it comes to sports in general and football in particular. These are
• 1:27:13
  young, generally single women who do not generally watch NFL football games. So
• 1:27:20
  the NFL sees this as a bonanza. All this publicity, NBC was promoting,
• 1:27:30
  you know, unabashedly, unapologetically the Chiefs Jets game on Sunday Night based
• 1:27:40
  upon the whole Taylor Swift Travis Kelsey dating narrative, using Taylor Swift music,
• 1:27:46
  saying the game was Taylor made for Sunday Night. During the game, they
• 1:27:51
  showed Taylor Swift as many times as they possibly could. During the pregame they
• 1:27:56
  did Taylor Swift Travis Kelsey hype. Then during a commercial break there were commercials,
• 1:28:01
  not coincidentally, for Taylor Swift's coming concert movie. And oh, by
• 1:28:08
  the way, same commercial break had commercial a commercial from Travis Kelsey for Visor
• 1:28:15
  and the vaccines. And Kelsey is super woke, you know, he's doing
• 1:28:19
  bud Light commercials, Visor vaccine commercials, and so you know, you've got
• 1:28:25
  this left wing dynamic duo here that I think, uh, you know,
• 1:28:30
  potentially if this goes on, and who knows if it will, is very
• 1:28:33
  very dangerous for Trump in particular and maybe Republicans in general. Should this thing
• 1:28:42
  continue into twenty twenty four, who knows it might end next week, and
• 1:28:45
  who knows if they're if they're even really dating, And there's a lot of
• 1:28:48
  debate as to what the situation there really is. I honestly don't know.
• 1:28:53
  To me, you know, it's it's pretty odd that Taylor Swift is doing
• 1:28:58
  all this if they're not at least dating. But I'm not an expert on
• 1:29:02
  that. I do find it interesting that that's that this that this combination has
• 1:29:10
  captivated the imagination of so many people. I do think from an evolutionary standpoint,
• 1:29:15
  it really kind of goes to the desire that a tribe or community has
• 1:29:20
  to have two of their their best, two of their elites get together romantically,
• 1:29:28
  you know, in theory, in a way to propagate the species of
• 1:29:31
  the tribe. I mean, it's kind of like why it became cliche that,
• 1:29:35
  right, the captain of the football team and the head cheer leader or
• 1:29:39
  the homecoming queen that they get together. I mean, there's that's been a
• 1:29:43
  theme throughout TV and movies for many, many years, and that's kind of
• 1:29:46
  what's happening here. Although there's a different spin on it in that in this
• 1:29:51
  particular situation, the female is the dominant one, clearly the dominant, which
• 1:29:58
  I think is consistent with what's happening in our culture where we're becoming more and
• 1:30:01
  more feminized and all about female empowerment. I mean, we've seen somewhat similar
• 1:30:09
  situations in football before Tony Romo and Jessica Simpson and Reggie Bush and Kim Kardashian.
• 1:30:16
  They didn't get nearly this kind of publicity, largely because social media wasn't
• 1:30:19
  as powerful in that era, and maybe they weren't as big as Taylor Swift
• 1:30:25
  is. But this is a situation where Taylor Swift is clearly the alpha in
• 1:30:31
  this matchup, in this relationship, and I think women like that. Although
• 1:30:38
  CNN put out an article by a super liberal who was which was saying that
• 1:30:44
  essentially, this is a very problematic relationship because it goes to anequated notions of
• 1:30:51
  white male entitlement. I mean, just complete ridiculousness. But it's typical of
• 1:30:59
  CNN and lefties. I'm gonna the opinion piece headline was the Taylor Swift Travis
• 1:31:04
  Kelsey narrative has a dark side. This is an opinion piece in CNN by
• 1:31:10
  Frankie dla Curtaz something like that, but it's a female who's super liberal.
• 1:31:16
  And the whole idea was basically that, you know, somehow Kelsey felt entitled
• 1:31:24
  to Swift and that's you know why he put out feelers that he was interested
• 1:31:29
  in dating her. It's all complete garbage. I mean, it was Swift
• 1:31:32
  that made this public by showing up in the Kansas City Chief superbox next to
• 1:31:39
  her Travis Kelsey's mom, wearing Kansas City Chief paraphernalia and cheering like crazy for
• 1:31:45
  everything that Travis Kelsey did, and then taking all of her celebrity friends to
• 1:31:50
  the next game with the New York Jets. I mean, this is all
• 1:31:54
  on her, and she may be playing for us for all we know.
• 1:31:57
  I mean, this all might be at least partially control. But everybody has
• 1:32:01
  had a take on this. I feel a most stupid being the last man
• 1:32:04
  in America because of timing and logistics having a take on Taylor Swift Travis Kelcey.
• 1:32:11
  But I do think that there's a political element to this. I also
• 1:32:14
  think that this is a classic situation where football has jumped the shark. NBC
• 1:32:20
  jumped the shark with their promotion of the Chiefs Jets game, and the NFL
• 1:32:26
  has completely embraced this. And the core issue here in the way that we're
• 1:32:31
  living in twenty twenty three, in this very fragmented era, is that we
• 1:32:36
  have again the upside down world theme where the core demographic of any endeavor is
• 1:32:45
  actually now the most likely to get shipped on it. And what I mean
• 1:32:50
  by that is you would think that your core customer base would be the people
• 1:32:56
  that you would be most concerned about offending, But we have seen in the
• 1:33:00
  NFL time and time again that the core customer base, which is generally middle
• 1:33:06
  aged white men who are not liberals who love football's that is the core demographic
• 1:33:15
  for the NFL, always has been, likely always will be. They're the
• 1:33:18
  ones that get shipped on, whether it's you know, the whole Colin Kaepernick
• 1:33:23
  situation and all the wokedom or the rules that essentially make football into flag football,
• 1:33:30
  all these things that the core demographic does not agree with. The NFL
• 1:33:36
  doesn't care because they know that core demographic isn't going anywhere because they love the
• 1:33:43
  NFL too much. Too much of their lives are devoted to the NFL.
• 1:33:47
  They're never going away, and so even though you're the most loyal demographic,
• 1:33:54
  you can actually make yourself vulnerable, vulnerable to being shit on because you're too
• 1:34:00
  loyal, because they know you're not going anywhere. So this allows the NFL
• 1:34:05
  and their media partners to go pursue other demographics and to do things like virtue
• 1:34:14
  signaling to you know, minority groups or to liberal groups. But in this
• 1:34:19
  particular case, Taylor Swift has opened up a brand new, incredibly powerful and
• 1:34:27
  potentially lucrative demographic that is completely untapped young single women, and so they're going
• 1:34:35
  after them one hundred percent. It doesn't matter if the core demographic gets offended
• 1:34:42
  by this, that hey, what are you doing? This is a football
• 1:34:45
  game? Why am I seeing Taylor Swift all the time? It's okay to
• 1:34:48
  mention it occasionally, but this is becoming like the major theme, the major
• 1:34:54
  narrative of the game. The NFL doesn't care, and largely because the NFL
• 1:34:59
  has gotten too big, and when you get this big in an era of
• 1:35:02
  fragmentation, the NFL is really the only entity left that is still trying to
• 1:35:12
  effectively broadcast as opposed to narrow cast. We live in a world of narrow
• 1:35:17
  casting and cult casting. You know, even the major sports like hockey has
• 1:35:24
  become a niche sport. It's just you're completely just feeding your core demographic.
• 1:35:30
  But the NFL is so large, and the economics are so enormous, and
• 1:35:35
  the need for growth is so strong, and there's so much money at stake
• 1:35:42
  that the NFL has to to lunge after every opportunity to expand their base.
• 1:35:49
  How in the world you keep all these people, all these different demographics under
• 1:35:54
  one umbrella. I have no idea. The NFL has done a pretty decent
• 1:35:59
  job of that, better than anybody else has recently, mainly because again,
• 1:36:02
  that core audience is willing to be shipped on and not go anywhere because they're
• 1:36:08
  so devoted to the NFL. But we have now a situation where Travis Kelsey
• 1:36:14
  and Taylor Swift are the story. And it's not just academic. This is
• 1:36:20
  where I want to end on this. It's not just theoretical or academic or
• 1:36:26
  annoying. I think it's actually impacting the games themselves. It's not just the
• 1:36:32
  coverage. I think there is evidence, especially from the Chiefs Jets game,
• 1:36:38
  that the games themselves are being impacted by the insanity of the Travis Kelsey and
• 1:36:45
  Taylor Swift narrative. What do I mean by that, Well, there's a
• 1:36:48
  couple of ways in which this happens. It's not just the coverage being annoying.
• 1:36:54
  The number one way it impacted the game, which nobody, at least
• 1:36:58
  not on the broad cast, had the ball's dimension. But Patrick Mahones,
• 1:37:03
  the star quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs, who had had a terrible portion
• 1:37:11
  of the game about the middle. In the middle part of the game,
• 1:37:13
  he was absolutely awful. He was good at the beginning, good at the
• 1:37:15
  end, but the middle two quarters he was terrible. He threw not one
• 1:37:19
  but two interceptions, horrible interceptions. And what happened on those plays where he
• 1:37:28
  threw the interceptions he was throwing to Travis Kelsey, and he was throwing to
• 1:37:34
  Travis Kelsey in double or triple coverage balls he never, ever, ever,
• 1:37:42
  ever should have thrown. They were horrendous interceptions. I mean, two of
• 1:37:47
  the worst balls I've ever seen Patrick Mahons throw. Now, how does that
• 1:37:54
  relate to what I'm talking about? I believe, at least subconsciously, I'm
• 1:37:59
  not claiming that this was a conscious decision on Mahomes's part, but at least
• 1:38:03
  subconsciously because of the insanity and the overriding narrative of the Taylor Swift Travis Kelsey
• 1:38:13
  story. I believe Mahomes had to feel pressure to get Kelsey the ball.
• 1:38:20
  Kelsey is the story of the whole game. He's got freaking Taylor Swift with
• 1:38:25
  a whole bunch of other celebrities in the suite watching the game. The entire
• 1:38:30
  media narrative is about Taylor Swift and her celebrity friends coming to see Travis Kelsey,
• 1:38:36
  her alleged boyfriend. It would be human nature for Mahomes to think,
• 1:38:44
  I gotta get Travis the ball. And when you have to make that incredibly
• 1:38:47
  split second decision as to whether or not a guy is open or not,
• 1:38:53
  that can make a big difference. And twice it led, I believe,
• 1:38:58
  at least indirectly of not directly, to interceptions that could have determined the outcome
• 1:39:03
  of the game. The Chiefs had the game one, and those two interceptions
• 1:39:08
  allowed the Jets to come back. The Jets almost won the game. But
• 1:39:12
  then there's the second element of this. The Chiefs got the benefit of a
• 1:39:15
  couple of very significant calls, one a holding call that was called and won,
• 1:39:21
  a holding call that wasn't called on the last drive there that clinched the
• 1:39:27
  game for the Chiefs. Now, I am an anti conspiracy person. I
• 1:39:31
  don't believe in conspiracies. I don't think there's a conspiracy in this particular situation.
• 1:39:38
  But you at least have to question whether or not the NFL and their
• 1:39:44
  officials understand because of the incredible mania surrounding the Chiefs and Taylor Swift, that
• 1:39:53
  it is a benefit to everybody for the Chiefs to win, for the Chiefs
• 1:39:59
  to keep going. Now, are we there yet to where you can pinpoint
• 1:40:03
  Okay, this was a situation where the refs gave the Chiefs to win because
• 1:40:10
  you know, it's good for the NFL. I don't think we're there yet,
• 1:40:14
  but we're to a point where you at least have to consider that as
• 1:40:17
  a potential perverse motivation, and just by virtue of the fact that it's gotten
• 1:40:25
  to that point is incredibly damaging, because I guarantee you a lot of fans
• 1:40:30
  have already considered this, that the NFL is now incentivized to keep this going,
• 1:40:38
  and the Chiefs they're defending chance but they don't seem to be as good
• 1:40:41
  as they were last year, and so now every call they get in their
• 1:40:45
  favor is going to be seen through that prism, which goes right to the
• 1:40:49
  heart of the credibility and the sanctity of the sport. You know, it
• 1:40:56
  just drives me crazy that people don't understand that certain actions create reactions, That
• 1:41:01
  things don't happen in a vacuum. You know, that their unintended consequences,
• 1:41:06
  That there's things called the slippery slope. This is a slippery slope, and
• 1:41:13
  you know, it used to be the people understood that you must draw a
• 1:41:15
  line and that there's dangers in going down particular paths. And this is a
• 1:41:23
  good example of that. Jumping the shark on Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey has
• 1:41:29
  caused already both theoretical as well as I believe, practical problems for the very
• 1:41:36
  sanctity and essence of the game. And the NFL is playing with fire here.
• 1:41:42
  They're playing with fire, and they're doing it because of that thirst for
• 1:41:45
  demographics and growth and ratings and revenue. And that's what Taylor Swift is providing,
• 1:41:53
  whether she's dating Travis Kelsey or not. And so you know, I
• 1:41:59
  realize I'm the last first to chime in on this, but hopefully I have
• 1:42:01
  done so in a typically unique Zigler fashion. Speaking of sports, I have
• 1:42:08
  to at least mention the Ryder Cups, and I'm a golfer, the biannual
• 1:42:14
  event between the United States and Europe, which as almost always created controversy every
• 1:42:20
  single time it has played in some way, shape or form, But this
• 1:42:25
  particular year was played in Rome. The United States was the defending champions,
• 1:42:30
  I guess you would call it. Europe ended up taking back the cup.
• 1:42:34
  They won fairly handily, although it ended up being a little bit closer than
• 1:42:38
  it looked like it might early on in the weekend when the Europeans were completely
• 1:42:43
  dominating. But from immediate perspective, I have to at least mention the complete
• 1:42:47
  and total absurdity of the narrative that dominated almost the entire weekend of the Ryder
• 1:42:55
  Cup. And I have been very outspoken about how completely and totally broken the
• 1:43:00
  golf media is. And it's how how symbolic, how pathetic the golf media
• 1:43:04
  is about how bad journalism is in general. In other words, the golf
• 1:43:10
  media is the rest of the news media on steroids because of unique circumstances surrounding
• 1:43:16
  golf. One that the relationship between the reporters and the players is incredibly cozy.
• 1:43:25
  Too, that the gigs are incredibly uh, you know, cushy,
• 1:43:30
  because you're going to beautiful places and going and covering events that all your friends
• 1:43:34
  want to be at. You know. Also, the power structure is such
• 1:43:41
  that the players have all the power and the media is beholden to them.
• 1:43:45
  Also, there's massive conflicts of interest when it comes to the corporate partners and
• 1:43:48
  oftentimes even the reporters themselves and the players and and things like the PGA Tour
• 1:43:58
  or the tournaments themselves. I mean, there's all sorts the conflicts of interest.
• 1:44:00
  So there's a unique set of circumstances, almost a perfect storm that makes
• 1:44:04
  the golf media particularly broken. But none of that explains really the absurdity that
• 1:44:12
  happened over the weekend of the Ryder Cup, where quite literally the number one
• 1:44:15
  story was why one of the American players, Patrick can't Lay, was not
• 1:44:20
  wearing a hat. Now, because it's a competition between the United States and
• 1:44:28
  Europe, they are a team uniforms and all of the American players except for
• 1:44:31
  Patrick can't Lay were wearing hats with the American flag on them, and there
• 1:44:38
  became one report on Twitter from a golf I guess you'd call them reporter that
• 1:44:43
  I've never heard of before, indicating the can't Lay was not wearing a hat
• 1:44:47
  as a protest because he thinks that players should be paid to play in the
• 1:44:53
  Ryder Cup, which, by the way, they are indirectly paid a lot
• 1:44:57
  of money. They get two hundred thousand dollars to give to the their charity
• 1:45:00
  of choice, and there's a massive amount of money on the PGA tour side
• 1:45:04
  that goes to their pension funds based upon the revenue from the Ryder Cup.
• 1:45:10
  So they're getting paid, they're just not getting paid directly. And I have
• 1:45:14
  no doubt that Patrick Cantley does believe that, but there's no evidence at all
• 1:45:17
  that that's why he wasn't wearing a hat. Well, this thing became a
• 1:45:21
  huge story. The crowd got involved in it. Cantley didn't even understand what
• 1:45:28
  was happening, why the crowd was responding. It even indirectly resulted in a
• 1:45:32
  massive dust up between Patrick Cantley's caddy and Rory McElroy, which was really strange
• 1:45:41
  since Joe Lacava Patrick Cantley's caddy was Tiger Woods's caddy and Tiger and Rory are
• 1:45:48
  literally business partners and super good buddies, so that was very, very strange.
• 1:45:54
  I mean, it actually created a little bit more interest in the final
• 1:45:59
  day of the Ryder Cup that would have happened ordinarily. But the point of
• 1:46:01
  this is the story itself was total bullshit, so much so that when can't
• 1:46:08
  Lay was asked about it, he didn't even seem to understand what the hell
• 1:46:12
  anyone was talking about. Now, I do think he was playing a little
• 1:46:15
  koy about his opinions on whether or not players should be paid, because his
• 1:46:18
  denial on that or avoidance avoidance of that issue seemed to indicate to me that
• 1:46:24
  that's really does that is what he believes, which is fine. I disagree
• 1:46:28
  with it strongly, but I can see where he's coming from on that,
• 1:46:31
  at least to some degree. But that was not why he was not wearing
• 1:46:35
  a hat. In fact, hilariously, we may have found out the real
• 1:46:41
  reason why he wasn't wearing a hat the following evening after the entirement was over,
• 1:46:46
  after the United States had lost and they were doing their post mortum press
• 1:46:50
  conference. Finally, someone may have gotten to the bottom of this issue,
• 1:46:56
  which is get this. Patrick can't Lay was getting married the day after the
• 1:47:01
  Ryder Cup. And you can certainly see the logic here, as any woman
• 1:47:06
  would tell you that you don't want to have a massive tan line on your
• 1:47:11
  very high forehead when you're about to get married and taking all these wedding photographs,
• 1:47:16
  and that that may have been the very simple reason why Patrick Cantley was
• 1:47:21
  not wearing a hat. That actually makes more sense to me than the protest
• 1:47:26
  over Ryder Cup players not getting paid theory. I'm not one hundred percent sure
• 1:47:31
  what the actual explanation is because he was Can'tley was a little bit coy about
• 1:47:35
  that as well, but he didn't deny it either, and I found it
• 1:47:41
  particularly telling and hilarious that Patrick Cantley's hat was the biggest story for two days
• 1:47:48
  and these morons in the news media, the sports media, the Gulf media
• 1:47:53
  weren't able to figure out until Sunday evening that Patrick Cantley was getting married the
• 1:48:00
  day after the Ryder Cup, which by the way, would be a significant
• 1:48:03
  story without the hack controversy, because especially when the team is losing. To
• 1:48:11
  me, that makes you wonder about the priority system. Right, I Can'tley
• 1:48:15
  play great, so it's not relevant to how it impacted the American team.
• 1:48:20
  But just by virtue of scheduling your wedding for the next day, and obviously
• 1:48:26
  a lot of his teammates I'm presuming are going to go to the wedding itself,
• 1:48:30
  that has to at least play a little bit with the mindset and the
• 1:48:34
  scheduling and the priorities and everything else. These are things that when you lose,
• 1:48:41
  become narratives. And these morons in this golf media, they've got nothing
• 1:48:45
  else to do. You know, how does this somehow evade them? How
• 1:48:49
  does nobody in the sports golf media figure out, Oh, by the way,
• 1:48:55
  Patrick Cantley is getting married tomorrow. I mean, these are things that
• 1:48:58
  are not that difficult to figure out if there's actual real journalism going on.
• 1:49:02
  But of course there is no real journalism. There's just people happy to be
• 1:49:05
  in Rome, eating free food and watching golf with access that their friends are
• 1:49:13
  very jealous of. That's what it's all about. It's not about reporting.
• 1:49:17
  It's not about journalism, And this was a situation where it really impacted the
• 1:49:23
  competition, not unlike what I'm theorizing happened with regard to the Patrick Mahomes and
• 1:49:30
  Travis Kelsey situation with the Chiefs and the Jets game. It's happening more and
• 1:49:34
  more, and at the core of it is a broken news and sports media
• 1:49:41
  that is causing all of this. One last thing I want to talk about
• 1:49:44
  and has to do with why episode number ninety three was a little bit delayed
• 1:49:47
  and why we only had one episode last week, and that is because I
• 1:49:51
  was traveling from here in California back to basically where I grew up, which
• 1:49:58
  was the Philadelphia area of Piladelphia suburbs, to an attend an event at my
• 1:50:02
  old high school, Holy Ghost Prep in Ben Salem, Pennsylvania. And the
• 1:50:09
  event was to honor my high school basketball coach. And I have to acknowledge
• 1:50:15
  that the age of fifty six when you start to feel very, very old.
• 1:50:18
  It was a great source of comfort for me that up until the last
• 1:50:24
  few months, or at least earlier this year, I had the following reality
• 1:50:29
  which I guaranteed no other fifty six year old could possibly have. I mean,
• 1:50:34
  this is almost statistically impossible. Up until the middle of this year,
• 1:50:40
  I had my high school basketball coach still coaching at the same high school.
• 1:50:45
  I had my university, Georgetown University, being coached by Patrick Ewing, a
• 1:50:50
  guy who was there when I was at Georgetown University. He's been fired.
• 1:50:56
  Now I have my college golf coach at Georgetown still there to this day,
• 1:51:02
  which he's no signs he's gonna get fired. So he's still still around,
• 1:51:08
  which is extraordinary. So my college golf coach is still at Georgetown. And
• 1:51:12
  the guy I wrote a book about in nineteen ninety three, a high school
• 1:51:17
  football coach, a led endary high school football coach in Steubenville, Ohio named
• 1:51:21
  Reno Sukosh, is still coaching at Steubenville High School, despite a national media
• 1:51:28
  effort to destroy him several years ago when the entire about ten years ago,
• 1:51:32
  when the entire so called Steubenville High School football rate case got completely blown out
• 1:51:38
  of proportion and directed on him, and he somehow survived it ended up winning
• 1:51:42
  a state championship and is still there as of this taping. Well, you
• 1:51:48
  know, as I said, Patrick Ewing has been fired, and my basketball
• 1:51:53
  coach, Tony Chapman has retired after forty five years and nine hundred and twenty
• 1:52:00
  eight wins, which is just a ridiculous number, one of the highest numbers
• 1:52:02
  in the history of Pennsylvania and the history of the country when it comes to
• 1:52:06
  high school basketball and about now. To be clear, I did not actually
• 1:52:11
  play varsity basketball at Holy Ghost Prep. We were a powerhouse, and I
• 1:52:19
  was way too late a grower and not nearly good enough athlete to play varsity
• 1:52:25
  basketball at our powerhouse high school. However, I lettered in basketball for four
• 1:52:30
  years because I was the team manager. Now it's a little bit of a
• 1:52:35
  misnomer to call me the manager, because I took that role and expanded it
• 1:52:41
  beyond when anybody had ever seen before. I was essentially the sports information director.
• 1:52:47
  I was almost an assistant coach. I did scouting, you know,
• 1:52:51
  there were all sorts of things that I did that a normal manager would not.
• 1:52:56
  I was also very very close with coach Chapman. I thought I was,
• 1:53:00
  although he was never the type of guy that you would get really really
• 1:53:03
  close to, but we spent a lot a lot of time together, you
• 1:53:06
  know, going to games to scout. You know, I would always sit
• 1:53:11
  with him on the bus to and from games. He was obviously a teacher
• 1:53:15
  of mine, and you know, we had fallen out of touch over the
• 1:53:18
  years. I felt like he had screwed over my brother, who actually did
• 1:53:24
  play on his varsity basketball team after I left Holy Ghost, and that didn't
• 1:53:28
  help. But you know, I never had any ill will towards him and
• 1:53:32
  our school. Holy Ghost was holding this event last week to honor his forty
• 1:53:38
  five years and nine hundred twenty eight wins, and I had not been back
• 1:53:42
  to the school in many, many years. And a couple of my friends
• 1:53:45
  who were on the team that my class at Holy Ghost, guys by the
• 1:53:51
  name of Terry Murphy, who was our star basketball player, and Dave Petruco,
• 1:53:56
  who was basically the leader of our pack and has become a very very
• 1:54:00
  successful businessman. They said they were going to go, and I thought,
• 1:54:04
  Okay, this will kill a bunch of birds with one stone. I want
• 1:54:08
  to pay my respects to coach Chapman. I'm curious to see how Holy Ghost
• 1:54:13
  has evolved. I want to see Terry. Terry and I played some golf
• 1:54:17
  while I was there, and you know, good to see Dave, who
• 1:54:21
  I'm also fallen out of touch with, and so I was looking forward to
• 1:54:27
  this trip, and I haven't made many trips. You know, with two
• 1:54:30
  young kids, it's very difficult to make long trips, especially when you're responsible
• 1:54:34
  for kid duty during school days, which I am. I'm the one who
• 1:54:40
  does to pick up and so that takes a whole bunch of logistical issues to
• 1:54:43
  be taken care of, and of course it's also expensive. But I thought,
• 1:54:45
  this is a once in a lifetime situation. I may never go back.
• 1:54:50
  I may never have this opportunity to do this again. And I'm big
• 1:54:55
  into paying off debts. I'm also, by the way now, after my
• 1:54:59
  mother was killed in the car accident in nineteen ninety four, I think subconsciously
• 1:55:03
  I'm big into closure and I'm big into goodbyes. And when you're in your
• 1:55:10
  fifties, you start to realize that these there are a lot of things are
• 1:55:14
  going to happen in your life for the last time that you know this is
• 1:55:17
  the way the world works, and a lot of times you don't know for
• 1:55:20
  sure is this the last time? But I was pretty confident, Okay,
• 1:55:25
  there's never going to be any reason for me to go across country to go
• 1:55:28
  back to my alma mater in high school, Holy Ghost, which you know,
• 1:55:32
  for most people, high school is a huge deal, and it was
• 1:55:35
  for me as well. I mean, Holy Ghost Prep was a massive part
• 1:55:40
  of my life. And for those of you know, maybe curious, Holy
• 1:55:45
  Ghost was a prep school, but it wasn't a boarding school. We're not
• 1:55:47
  talking about like, you know, a scent of a woman type of situation
• 1:55:53
  where dead poet society. You know, it was not you know, you
• 1:55:57
  didn't live there. But it was a pretty prest just prep school, very
• 1:56:00
  very high academic standards. But when I went there and I graduated in nineteen
• 1:56:05
  eighty five, it was known mostly as a middle class prep school. Tuition
• 1:56:13
  was very, very low, and it was mostly catering to people in northeast
• 1:56:17
  Philadelphia. Well, my class came in from the suburbs of Philadelphia and it
• 1:56:24
  really kind of changed the school from there because it went from being I wouldn't
• 1:56:29
  call it urban, but certainly you know, city based, and a much
• 1:56:35
  different demographic. Middle class went from middle class to upper class, and the
• 1:56:42
  tuition exploded, absolutely exploded. And with the tuition, the campus itself has
• 1:56:50
  completely changed, and you know, it's basically a college campus now. So
• 1:56:55
  it went from this quaint, little little engine that could type of school to
• 1:57:00
  now, you know, having all these luxuries, all these amenities, all
• 1:57:04
  these buildings that I've never seen before. A lot of it was the campus
• 1:57:10
  was completely unrecognizable, and I'm like, Okay, well that's that's amazing.
• 1:57:16
  What has happened here when I think about the facilities that we had in the
• 1:57:19
  nineteen eighties, you know, good for these kids. Well, as part
• 1:57:23
  of this celebration for our coach, there were two events. There was one
• 1:57:29
  in the morning where there was a school assembly, and then there was one
• 1:57:31
  at night for the actual adults and alumni, former players, people that were
• 1:57:40
  you know, fans of the program, what have you. That there was
• 1:57:44
  a dinner and a program put on that night. And since I was in
• 1:57:48
  from California, I came in a day early because I couldn't come in that
• 1:57:51
  day, so I had nothing to do that morning of the Tony Chapman Day,
• 1:57:58
  that's what they were calling it, Tony Chapman Day. In fact,
• 1:58:00
  that was declared throughout the county of Buck's County Tony Chapman Day as well as
• 1:58:06
  Holy Goes Prep. I went to the assembly and I was really shocked.
• 1:58:12
  I'm always trying to figure out, Okay, what is it that is indicative
• 1:58:15
  of some sort of societal evolutionary phenomenon that might be relevant to a larger discussion,
• 1:58:27
  or the people that don't give a crap about me going back to my
• 1:58:31
  high school might be interested in And to me, the biggest difference that I
• 1:58:38
  saw, and what was so shocking to me was who was in charge and
• 1:58:45
  the atmosphere among the kids of the school. And I realized that it's become
• 1:58:51
  cliche that, you know, people when they get older, they think back
• 1:58:57
  to their time in school and the whole I went to. I had to
• 1:59:00
  walk six miles uphill both ways in the snow to get to school, and
• 1:59:05
  a lot of that's exaggerated, and we remember what we want to remember.
• 1:59:11
  I get all that, but I can tell you with one certitude, when
• 1:59:16
  I went to Holy Coast Prep in the mid nineteen eighties. You know,
• 1:59:20
  first of all, we had a very strict dress code of coats and ties
• 1:59:25
  and slacks and dress shoes, and there was fear. There was legitimate fear
• 1:59:32
  that every student I knew had for most of the teachers, not all,
• 1:59:38
  most of the teachers, but the general atmosphere was basically walking into a church
• 1:59:45
  during most of the day where you were terrified of even making a sound under
• 1:59:51
  certain circumstances. And there was a particular priest that was the personification of this
• 1:59:59
  whole thing. He was bathing the backbone of the school is. His name
• 2:00:01
  was Father Brown. Now Father Brown was only I think like five foot nine,
• 2:00:06
  but I can tell you that every single freshman thought in their mind that
• 2:00:14
  Father Brown was six foot five and two hundred and fifty pounds. He was
• 2:00:17
  that much of an intimidating presence, and he really was the person who instilled
• 2:00:25
  all of the fear and discipline. But he was a beloved figure. I
• 2:00:30
  mean, unfortunately he died of cancer soon after we graduated, but he still
• 2:00:35
  revered at the school to this day, and he represented all the old school
• 2:00:44
  values of Holy Ghost Prep. Well, imagine my shock when I go to
• 2:00:48
  this assembly to honor my coach, my high school coach to whom I was
• 2:00:54
  very very close, you know, some thirty five forty years earlier, and
• 2:00:59
  the atmospe was completely different from anything that I had ever experienced. And on
• 2:01:04
  this particular day, there was no dress code. Nobody was in a coat
• 2:01:09
  or tie. They were all wearing the T shirts given to them or most
• 2:01:13
  of them were wearing the T shirts giving to them for Tony Chapman Day,
• 2:01:16
  which okay, fine. I mean in my day, if that we had
• 2:01:19
  ever had something like that, you would have put the T shirt over your
• 2:01:24
  shirt and tie or maybe even your jacket. But there was none of that.
• 2:01:28
  And I do think dress codes matter because I think they create an atmosphere.
• 2:01:32
  I think they create an expectation for behavior. I think people are far
• 2:01:36
  far less likely, especially kids, to get out of line if they are
• 2:01:41
  dressed up, and so I think that you know, that is important.
• 2:01:45
  Now, apparently Holy Ghost still has some sort of dress code. I couldn't
• 2:01:48
  understand. I asked what the new rules are, but they're apparently days now
• 2:01:53
  that they don't have to abide by the dress code, and this was one
• 2:01:57
  of them. But it was the atmosphere that really made me feel as if
• 2:02:00
  it was the kids that were in charge here, like the amount of stray
• 2:02:05
  talking and the whole energy of the place, and when the headmaster or the
• 2:02:12
  school president went to the podium to begin the proceedings. I mean in my
• 2:02:16
  day and age, First of all, there never would have been all the
• 2:02:19
  yammering and talking, but once the headmaster got to the podium, there would
• 2:02:25
  have been total silence, and that did not happen here, And it really
• 2:02:30
  felt as if essentially the inmates were running the asylum. The kids were in
• 2:02:34
  charge. And you know, when you think about it from the standpoint of
• 2:02:40
  economics, that's really what I think has happened in a lot of academia,
• 2:02:45
  where as things have gotten more and more expensive, right like it has happened
• 2:02:50
  in Holy Ghost. The higher the tuition, the more leverage and power the
• 2:02:57
  parents have because they're paying massive amounts of money for tuition, and because the
• 2:03:01
  parents no longer in general are instilling any sort of fear or discipline and their
• 2:03:09
  kids, and in fact they are often taking the side of kids when it
• 2:03:12
  comes to any potential dispute between teachers or administration and their kids. They effectively
• 2:03:17
  see that power to their children, to the students, and so now everything
• 2:03:25
  has been flipped. The power has gone from the school to the students.
• 2:03:31
  And I could really see that as clear as day in my observation of that
• 2:03:39
  school assembly. And the reason why I think this is significant I kind of
• 2:03:43
  use this example all the time where I take an institution where if it's even
• 2:03:47
  happening here? What hope is there for other institutions. I've used Augusta National
• 2:03:55
  Golf Club a lot when it comes to this, and Augusta Nash went woke,
• 2:04:00
  especially during COVID. And if even Augusta National Golf Club has gone woke,
• 2:04:04
  we're completely screwed. Well, if even Holy Ghost Prep he's in a
• 2:04:10
  situation where the kids are not dressed properly and aren't respecting authority properly and are
• 2:04:18
  running the show that Holy Ghost Prep. My god, what hope is there
• 2:04:25
  in public school? And I shared this with my public school teaching wife,
• 2:04:29
  and she was not at all surprised, and she completely agrees, and she's
• 2:04:32
  been a teacher for a long time, and she absolutely agrees that the balance
• 2:04:38
  of power has shifted, that the kids are in charge. And that's at
• 2:04:41
  a public school where there's not tuition that gives the parents a lot more leverage.
• 2:04:46
  So that was kind of shocking. And when I talked to our coach
• 2:04:51
  about this, I did get some solace from the fact that here he was
• 2:04:58
  now retiring in his seventy and I think this was the last thing I said
• 2:05:01
  to him that night, probably the last thing I'll ever say to him in
• 2:05:03
  my life, I said, Coach, I got to ask you, if
• 2:05:08
  father Brown had attended that assembly this morning, would he have had a cardiac
• 2:05:15
  arrest? And Coach Chapman knew exactly what I was talking about immediately, and
• 2:05:21
  he said his response was effectively, yeah, I think so. Probably so,
• 2:05:27
  because there's no question that everything has changed now. You might even argue
• 2:05:33
  maybe it's somewhat for the better. And we talked about the pendulum effect on
• 2:05:38
  this show a lot. But to me, the problem with the pendulum effect,
• 2:05:42
  especially when it comes to academia, is that it's always going to go
• 2:05:45
  too far in the other direction and there's no bringing it back. And something
• 2:05:49
  has been lost at Holy Ghost Prep, and I think it's probably indicative of
• 2:05:55
  something larger that's going on in academia as well as our society as a whole.
• 2:06:01
  As far as the nighttime event, the biggest takeaway from that was the
• 2:06:06
  generational divide when it came to giving a shit because there was absolutely no question
• 2:06:15
  and might hear this coach had coached for forty five years. Again, he
• 2:06:18
  was not a beloved figure, but incredibly successful, and you know, the
• 2:06:24
  bond at a high school like a prep school like Holy Ghost and you know
• 2:06:30
  somebody that coaches you for that long and that intense and environment and Holy Ghost
• 2:06:34
  Prep basketball was really a powerhouse in the heyday. And so this was an
• 2:06:40
  intense bond that was created among teammates and between coaches and players and the school
• 2:06:48
  and the program. And so, you know, you would think that there
• 2:06:53
  would be a massive turnout among all years that Ony Chapman had coached for those
• 2:07:00
  forty five years. That was not the case. There was a clear delineation
• 2:07:06
  between the older generations and the younger generations. Not part of that can just
• 2:07:12
  be logistical, right, The younger generations, the guys that graduated in the
• 2:07:15
  two thousands, you know, they're younger, they're maybe busier, they don't
• 2:07:19
  have as much flexibility. Maybe they have young kids like I do, even
• 2:07:25
  because I got a late start when it came to kids. There's also maybe
• 2:07:29
  they're moving around the country more at a younger age. Who knows, they're
• 2:07:32
  all there are possible explanations, but there was absolutely a phenomenon that the older
• 2:07:41
  classes were far more likely to have shown up and the average age the people
• 2:07:46
  who showed up there were about two hundred people there for this event. It
• 2:07:49
  was a nice event, was way older than you would consider average for a
• 2:07:56
  guy who you know, has been coaching for forty five years. Obviously was
• 2:08:01
  coaching up until this past spring. And I found that to be really interesting
• 2:08:05
  and also a little bit depressing. And I think the core issue there is
• 2:08:11
  the value that each generation, or lack thereof, is putting on what has
• 2:08:16
  happened in the past. I think one of the fundamental changes in our culture
• 2:08:22
  has been that we no longer really care much at all about the past.
• 2:08:28
  Everything's about today and tomorrow. What might happen tomorrow is a much bigger deal
• 2:08:35
  than huge things that have happened in the past. You see this with regard
• 2:08:37
  to media coverage all the time. Sports media coverage is ninety eight percent about
• 2:08:43
  what's going to happen in the future or what might happen in the future,
• 2:08:46
  very little about what's already actually happened in the games. And I think this
• 2:08:52
  translates into the value that we put on history, the value we put on
• 2:08:58
  tradition, the value we put on loyalty, the value we put on honoring
• 2:09:03
  somebody for forty five years of service and unprecedented success, winning nine and twenty
• 2:09:09
  eight games, and I am very big into this generational divide that has been
• 2:09:16
  created in America, that there is something wrong with these younger generations. And
• 2:09:22
  one of the things that concerns me most is that because there's this cliche that
• 2:09:26
  every generation says this about the younger generation, that it doesn't get taken seriously
• 2:09:31
  because there's no question that's a generational phenomenon. Every generation does think that about
• 2:09:37
  the younger generation. But this time it's real, this time it's actually happened.
• 2:09:41
  There's something wrong, there's something broken, and we're seeing it in so
• 2:09:46
  many different areas of life, many of which are far more dramatic than not
• 2:09:50
  showing up to honor your high school basketball coach who's been there for forty five
• 2:09:54
  years. Something has happened, but there's been a size is make shift in
• 2:10:00
  the value system that the past no longer matters. History doesn't matter, tradition
• 2:10:07
  doesn't matter. It's all about today, tomorrow, next week, next month,
• 2:10:13
  next year. And you know, it kind of goes to the definition
• 2:10:16
  of loyalty. I think the definition of loyalty in my lifetime has changed from
• 2:10:22
  what has someone done for you in the past two what is someone likely to
• 2:10:30
  be able to do for you in the future, and that is a massive
• 2:10:37
  difference. The difference between those two definitions is night and day. I grew
• 2:10:41
  up in the world where loyalty was based upon, Hey, this person did
• 2:10:46
  this for me in the past, I owe them. That's gone. It's
• 2:10:52
  all about what might they be willing or able to do for you in the
• 2:10:54
  future. And so therefore retirements or are irrelevant to younger people. Oh so
• 2:11:01
  he's not even the coach anymore. What's he going to be able to do
• 2:11:03
  for me? I don't care. He's retired. He's meaningless now, he's
• 2:11:07
  irrelevant, and I don't any sure these are conscious decisions or thoughts that are
• 2:11:13
  being made, but there's no question that it's impacting the way people run their
• 2:11:18
  lives. And so that was one of my big takeaways from the Nighttime event.
• 2:11:24
  I will also say that fans of our podcast, with the benefit of
• 2:11:28
  hindsight, would have been fascinated to know and to witness if possible that because
• 2:11:35
  there were not one, but two Pennsylvania State senators who attended this event.
• 2:11:43
  Me being who I am and being afraid of no one, I took the
• 2:11:48
  opportunity to lobby, both of them individually, separately, very very very hard
• 2:11:56
  on the whole penn State Joe Paterno Jerry Zandusky story, and boy did I
• 2:12:00
  knocked their socks off. Interestingly, neither one of them. One was a
• 2:12:03
  Democrat, one was a Republican. State senators in Pennsylvania were all shocked by
• 2:12:11
  what I had to say and seemed to be getting where I was going with
• 2:12:16
  this. And we're both at least very willing to hear more, which I
• 2:12:22
  will try to educate them with very low expectations. But you would have loved
• 2:12:26
  seeing this, folks, if you're a fan of With the benefit of hindsight,
• 2:12:31
  I went in hard and fast, and I said, look, I'm
• 2:12:33
  going to knock the socks off, but the whole penn State Joe Paterno story
• 2:12:37
  is bullshit. And they were both were like, wait a meute, I
• 2:12:41
  mean the whole thing or just a Paterno party said no, no, no,
• 2:12:43
  no, the whole thing, And like I said, I think I
• 2:12:46
  made some progress. There's been some movement by one of the two state senators
• 2:12:52
  to put me in touch with some other people. I'll see if that goes
• 2:12:54
  anywhere. But I was I was working hard folks. There were all sorts
• 2:12:58
  of angles on this particular trip, so that's why there was no episode ninety
• 2:13:03
  three last week, but there is one at the beginning of this week,
• 2:13:09
  and that'll do it for this particular episode. We'll do another episode in a
• 2:13:11
  couple of days, where by the way, I promised to get to the
• 2:13:16
  Katie Curic revelation that shockingly yes, she's now willing to admit that she's always
• 2:13:20
  been a liberal, and how that impacts my life in a very dramatic way.
• 2:13:24
  I wanted to save that for the next episode of the podcast, which
• 2:13:28
  we will get to an episode number ninety four, But that'll do it for
• 2:13:31
  episode number ninety three of The Death of Journals and Podcast. Thanks so much
• 2:13:35
  for listening. Please remember to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast,
• 2:13:39
  share it with others, share it on social media. If you do so,
• 2:13:41
  please tag me and I'll share it with my followers on Twitter and my
• 2:13:46
  friends on Facebook. Until next time, my name is John Ziegler. This
• 2:13:50
  has been the Death of Journalism podcast.