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Death of Journalism - Ep 221_FREE · The Death Of Journalism

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to episode two hundred and twenty one of the
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Death of Journalism podcast.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: My name is John Zigler. I'm your host.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: On today's show, Tucker Carlson does an interview with Billy
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Bush about the infamous Access Hollywood tape that I will
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: have the definitive analysis of Mark Zuckerberg suddenly becomes a legitimate.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Free speech advocate.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: The National Football League and DEI make a fascinating and
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: telling combination and bombshell lawsuits create controversy in both the
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: sports media and movie industries. As I taped this episode
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: of the podcast, much of the country is enthralled and
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: horrified by pictures from here in southern California of wildfires
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  Speaker 1: that are raging in and just outside of Los Angeles.
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  Speaker 2: Thankfully, as of right.
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  Speaker 1: Now, where my home is located is not being impacted
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  Speaker 1: this time. The last time we had wildfires at the
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  Speaker 1: end of last year, my town was directly impacted in
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  Speaker 1: a very negative way. Other Thankfully, our house was not,
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  Speaker 1: so thank you for those who.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Have been concerned.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Coincidentally, we have been forced to evacuate from our house,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: but not because of anything having to do with wildfires. Instead,
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  Speaker 1: we I think somewhat stupidly decided to get our floors
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  Speaker 1: redone to begin the tw twenty five year and this
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: has been a nightmare that we did not anticipate. So
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  Speaker 1: I have not been in my house as of this
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  Speaker 1: taping for three or four days, and I am taping
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  Speaker 1: this podcast from a.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: New location with no printer. And you know, not that
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  Speaker 2: I've cold play.
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  Speaker 1: Any considering the way things are going for many people
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  Speaker 1: in the Los Angeles area, but this is not the
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: ideal circumstance for me to be doing this podcast. Hopefully
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: we'll be getting back to normal in the next episode
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: of the podcast next week. I want to begin episode
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: two twenty one in a bit of an unusual fashion,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: talk to you about a story that I guarantee no
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: one else is going to discuss, certainly nowhere near to
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: the extent that I'm going to. I'm a big believer
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: that the bigger a story is the worst job that
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: the news media will likely do in getting to the
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: bottom of it. And there are so many different examples
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: of this phenomenon throughout my career. But I want to
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: discuss at the start of today's podcast a really good
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: example of this, and I'm referring specifically to the infamous
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Access Hollywood tape from the twenty sixteen presidential election. And
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: if you remember anything about the twenty sixteen presidential election,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: especially the last month of that election, you for sure
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: remember the Access Hollywood tape tape that had been recorded
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: eleven years prior by Access Hollywood when they were hosting
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump and they were on a bus and Billy
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Bush was the host, and Donald Trump made some very
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: disparaging comments about women and you know, grabbing women by
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: the P word and them letting them do it if
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: you're a star, and Billy Bush was egging him on.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: And when that tape was released on a Friday, October seventh,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, a friday before a debate was scheduled that
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Sunday between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, it was presumed,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: laughably now in retrospect, that that would be the end
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: of Donald Trump's presidential hopes. That there was no way
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: that he was going to be able to survive this.
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  Speaker 1: There were even calls from many elected Republicans, some of
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: whom are huge Trump fans to this day, for him
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: to either drop out of the race or people not
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: to vote for him.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: It was presumed that it was over.
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  Speaker 1: Well, we now know that that's not the case at all,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: and in fact, there's no evidence that the excess Hollywood
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: tape even hurt Donald Trump's chances in twenty sixteen. You
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: could even make an argument that maybe bizarrely subconsciously, it
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: helped him in twenty sixteen by showing just how anti
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: establishment he is and what a different kind of character
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump was going to be, especially in comparison to
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  Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton. So why am I referencing this now as
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: we prepare for Donald Trump to take office for a
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: second time. That's because Billy Bush, who has been mostly
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: though not totally quiet about the details of the situation
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: since it occurred, has done a couple of now we
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: interviews related to this, but one very high profile interview,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: and that is with Tucker Carlson, an interview that was
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: well over an hour long that made a big splash
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: on Twitter. Elon Musk shared it, and at least within
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: right wing circles, it's been getting a lot of attention
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  Speaker 1: because Billy Bush has said some things that to my knowledge,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: he has never said previously. And this is a story
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  Speaker 1: that has always been very interesting and fascinating to me.
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  Speaker 1: On a couple of different levels, One because of my
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  Speaker 1: suspicion that the news media is always going to blow
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: a story that's really big, it's inevitable, but also because
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  Speaker 1: the details of this particular story have never made total
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: sense to me. How the tape became public, how it
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: was hidden for eleven years, how it all of a
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  Speaker 1: sudden just came to public notice on a Friday before
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  Speaker 1: a Sunday debate, how it is that it was published
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: first by the Washington Post and not by NBC, which
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: was the owner of Access Hollywood, and NBC obviously would
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: have had knowledge of the tape existing, as well as
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: the ability to make it public, but that's not the
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: way this whole thing went down. And of course, Billy Bush,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: if you recall, was the person who was punished by
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: the whole situation. Billy Bush lost his career. At the time,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: he was a rising star at NBC, and in the
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: aftermath of the tape being made public first by the
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Washington Post and by NBC a few days later, it
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: was Billy Bush who had his career destroyed and not
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump. And that's been one of the from a
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: human respective, one of the oddities of the entire Access
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Hollywood tape story is that Donald Trump ends up becoming
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: president of the United States and Billy Bush, at least temporarily,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: maybe permanently, has his career destroyed because of it. So
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: that's the backdrop for Billy Bush deciding to do an
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: interview with Tucker Carlson. Now Billy Bush has an entertainment
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: TV show. I'm suspicious that if he's doing an interview
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: with Tucker Carlson and also with Megan Kelly, that something
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: is up. I mean, I do know that he is
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: about to start his own podcast, and so maybe he
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: thinks the TV thing is going away and he's trying
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: to branch into right wing media, and it's a pretty
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: good way to do it to do interviews with Tucker
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  Speaker 1: Carlson and Megan Kelly. And obviously he has the Bush name,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: he is related to the presidential Bush family. So it
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: seems as if Billy Bush is now trying to make
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: an outreach to the right wing media corner of the universe.
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  Speaker 2: I don't know that for a fact, but just.
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  Speaker 1: Putting two and two together seems to be the motivation here,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: because I don't know why if you're a Hollywood insider,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: which Billy Bush still is you would be doing interviews
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: with Tucker Carlson and with Megan Kelly and just as
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: a little bit more backdrop here and why I am
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: particularly interested in this story. I have had discussions with
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Billy Bush about this whole topic. And the reason why
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Billy Bush and I even became acquainted with one another
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: is because of my involvement in the Matt Lower story. Now,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: this is going to get a little bit complicated, but
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: I'm going to try to make this as simple as
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: possible because from a media perspective, this really is an
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: amazing story, and what Billy Bush has to say about
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson I think is significant, important and needs to
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: be addressed because I think, at least in part, Billy
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Bush is not telling the truth about what really transpired
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: with regard to this entire controversy involving the Access Hollywood tape.
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  Speaker 1: So to review with my interaction here, Matt Lawer, of
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: course my friend from the Today Show considered today one
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: of my best friends, but former Today Show host Matt
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  Speaker 1: Lower was accused of rape by a former NBC employee
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: in a book by Ronan Farrell, and I worked with
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Matt extensively to debunk this ridiculous allegation. It did not
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: happen that way. It was a consensual relationship. It was
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: an obviously consensual relationship that started at the Mosque, not
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: the Moscow, the Sochi Olympics in Russia. And one of
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: the interesting things about that situation is that Billy Bush
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: was there. Billy Bush was literally there the night that
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  Speaker 1: that encounter first occurred.
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  Speaker 2: He was in the bar.
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  Speaker 1: He witnessed Matt there, he witnessed the woman there, he
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  Speaker 1: knew the woman.
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  Speaker 2: And because that, I think.
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  Speaker 1: Billy Bush fully appreciated that this was a bogus allegation
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  Speaker 1: against Matt Lauer. So when I first interviewed Matt Lower
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: in an I guess, off the record interview, but I
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: ended up getting asked to do interviews myself. One of
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: the people that interviewed me was Billy Bush for Extra
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: and he did a fair interview, although it was an
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: interview that I regretted because he asked me at one
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: point whether or not Matt Lower had gotten emotional, and
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  Speaker 1: I stupidly had not thought about this through, and at
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: that time I didn't have nearly the same relationship with
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  Speaker 1: Matt Lower that I do now. Because this was really
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: kind of just a get together to find out what
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  Speaker 1: the facts of the story were. And we hadn't gotten
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: nearly as deeply into this whole thing as we would
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  Speaker 1: later do so with hundreds of hours of conversations on
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  Speaker 1: the phone.
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  Speaker 2: But I still, you know, I regret the.
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  Speaker 1: Way this all went doubt because when I get asked
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: whether or not Matt Lawer got emotional in our interview,
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  Speaker 1: I referenced the word weepy. I think, I said, I
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: think he got Yes, he did get weepy, or something
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  Speaker 1: to that extent, And Matt Lower, understandably has never let
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: me stop hearing about that.
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  Speaker 2: And the use of the word weepy.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, I would say at least three or four
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: times in the history of our relationship, out of the
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: blue Matt will say something like I just have one
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  Speaker 1: question for you, and I'll say, what's that meant?
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  Speaker 2: And he'll say, did you get weepy?
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  Speaker 1: And every single time I will have to acknowledge, Okay,
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  Speaker 1: I deserve that. So this is an ongoing joke between
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Matt Lower and myself. But the reason why it's relevant
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: to this story is that in the interaction that I
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: had with Billy Bush and it wasn't just once, it
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: was actually twice because once Matt Lower finally released his
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: rebuttal to the entire Ronan Pharaoh book in an article
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  Speaker 1: I helped him write for media, it was Billy Bush
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  Speaker 1: that was the only majortream media person that was willing
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  Speaker 1: to come forward on the air and say, hey, look,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: you know, I'd like to hear Ronan Farrow's side of this,
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  Speaker 1: because it seems us if Matt Lower has destroyed and
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  Speaker 1: I'm using my words, not his, but it seems as
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  Speaker 1: if Matt Lower has destroyed Ronan Farrow's entire journalistic work here,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: what's the rebuttal. Of course, there was no rebuttal because
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: there could be no rebuttal because Ronan Pharaoh's a fraud.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: But at least Billy Bush was willing to say that,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: And again I think the reason why why was because
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Billy Bush was there that night and knew the whole
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: story was bullshit.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: That's my interpretation of this whole situation.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: But in the course of my interactions with Billy Bush,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: I have talked with him about the whole Access Hollywood
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: situation and had even asked him whether or not he
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: would do an interview with me about it, and this
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: was several years ago, and he declined, and I respected that,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: didn't expect.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Him to do an interview with me because I'm a nobody.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: But his view of that was, I can't keep talking
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: about this because then the Access Hollywood Tape guy forever
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: and ever. And I understood that, I get it, and
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: so I thought he was kind of done talking about
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: it because he had there were several aspects of the
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: whole situation that he had never really discussed.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: Well.
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  Speaker 1: I was a little bit surprised then when this week
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: comes and he's doing this major interview with Tucker Carlson
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: where he is talking in completely unguarded fashion about his
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: view of what happened with the whole Access Hollywood tape.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: And I was a little bit annoyed because I'm like,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: I thought, you weren't going to talk about this anymore.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: And I was particularly frustrated by the fact that it was.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson, because Tucker Carlson, the guy I used to
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: have a lot of respect for, but I now know,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: has lost his goddamn mind, and you know, he's really
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: not that great an interviewer because he doesn't know the
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: details of things and his agenda is really not about
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: the truth, and you know, he's very conspiratorial now, and
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: so I was not expecting that we were finally going
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: to get to the bottom of what really transpired with
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: regard to this Access Hollywood tape. However, I was surprised
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: that there were some things that were said that I
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: have great problems with. I am very convinced that either
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Billy Bush is misremembering things or he's flat out lying,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: and I'm not sure which it is, but I'm just
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: going to lay it out because I feel like this
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: is the only place where anyone's going to have a
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: record of what really did and did not transpire here,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: So just to review for those of you don't remember. So,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: the original Access Hollywood tape was recorded in two thousand five.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: It wasn't for eleven years later that it suddenly becomes
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: public on a Friday before that Sunday debate in October
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, It's released by the Washington Post, not by NBC.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: All hell breaks loose.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: There's a debate that Sunday, and frankly, the way that
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: the Trump team responded I think is absolutely astonishing and
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: frankly so good that it makes me question the entire
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: narrative of this entire situation. If there was one thing
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I would love to ask Steve Bannon, it would be
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: how the hell in less than two days did you
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: get four accusers, female accusers of Bill Clinton to all
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: agree in the middle of a ship storm, to come
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: to Saint Louis, Missouri, to do a press conference before
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: that Sunday debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. How
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: did you get that done logistically? If you had absolutely
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: positively no idea this was about to happen. I'm not
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: saying it didn't happen that way, but from a purely
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: logistical standpoint, it's absolutely astonishing to me and really requires questions.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: But to my knowledge, Steve Annen has never been asked
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: questions about how he was able to organize this in
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: such an incredibly fast and efficient fashion.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, getting four women to do anything.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: In a day and a half notice is very, very difficult.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Get them to Saint Louis, you know, where there are
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: no hotel rooms or probably even very many flight avail
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: of flights available because it's the site of a major
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: event presidential debate. Anyway, that's a part of this whole equation.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: That I don't think we're ever going to get to
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: the bottom of. But with regard to Billy Bush and
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: his version of what transpired here, probably the reason why
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: I'm even bothering to discuss this is because of one
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: of the first statements that Billy Bush makes to Tucker
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: Carlson in this interview and how he describes and it's
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: important for context that he's going to say here that
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: he's written what sounds like a chapter for a book,
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: and he references making sure that he has all the
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: details right and how he could never forget it.
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: He wanted to make sure he has it all nailed down.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: So it's not like this is off the top of
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: his head. This is Billy Bush claiming that on the
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: Tuesday before before the.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Friday where the Access Hollywood tape explodes as the biggest
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: news story in the world, on the Tuesday before the Friday,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: he claims that Matt Lower was the first person to
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: come to him and ask him about the Access Hollywood
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: tape and what he was going to do about it.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: And here is Billy Bush talking to Tucker Carlson and
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: recollecting what happened in the days leading up to the
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: massive firestorm that would change his career dramatically and theoretically
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: alter the presidential election at twenty sixteen.
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I've written a I have a great chapter that
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: I wrote, and I wrote it years ago, so I
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: wouldn't forget any details of what exactly happened with my firing.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: And it was just it was It's unbelievable.
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: I was playing catch up the whole time.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: I found out that the Access Hollywood bus tape was
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: in the NBC News building by Matt Lower.
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: Matt Lower came.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: To me after I got off the air at the
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: Today Show on a Tuesday morning, and he said, Hey,
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: what are you going to do about the tape? I said,
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: what what do you mean, Matt? He said, did the
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: tape of the bus tape? You and Trump and the thing?
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: I said, what are you talking about? So what do
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: you mean this? And I knew what that I remembered
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: to Davis eleven years now.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: When I saw that, I was like, that doesn't sound
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: right at all. But I was in a bit of
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: a pickle because when the interview first came out, I
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: had texted Matt. I communicate with Matt on a fairly
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: regular basis, depending on what's going on in the world.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: And it was clear to me that Matt one was busy.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: He was in an airport. I wasn't sure where he
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: was going. He's always traveling, but I could tell that
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: he really wasn't into the topic, you know. I told
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: him that Billy Bush had done this interview and that
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: that I already knew that he had been referenced, but
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Matt wasn't that interested, and so I wasn't going to
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: push it. But it was only later that I realized
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: that Billy Bush was making this allegation that it was
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Matt Lauer who told Billy Bush about the Access Hollywood tape.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: So now I got to make a decision.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, do I try to find out whether that's true,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: and do I.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: Bother Matt with this? And I had a.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Suspicion, because this is generally what he does in the wintertime.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: I had a suspicion that he was in New Zealand,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: where he owns a massive piece of property or ranch there,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: And that suspicion turned out to be accurate. And I
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: texted him and I said, I don't know, Matt how
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: busy you are, but if you get a chance, give
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: me a call because this Billy Bush thing is is
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: more about you than I realized originally. And he called
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: me like a minute later, and sure enough, he was
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: in New Zealand. So I felt like a jackass that
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: he's calling me from New Zealand on vacation. But I
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: told him what Billy Bush had told talker Carlson, and.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to quote Matt Lauer.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: But I am positive that Billy Bush did not tell
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: the truth. In fact, it's very clear that Billy Bush
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: did not tell the truth that Matt Lawer never had
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: a conversation with Billy Bush about the Access Hollywood tape
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: before it became public. In fact, Matt had no idea
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: that the Access Hollywood tape ever even existed, never happened,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: not even close.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: So where Billy Bush is coming up with this, I
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: don't know. I mean, it's boy.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: It certainly sounds like Billy Bush is confident that this
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: is what transpired. But I am positive that it did not.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: And it's not just because Matt Lauer is a friend
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: of mine. Matt has an exceedingly good memory. Matt's memory
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: is probably even better than mine in certain situations. And
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: I consider myself you know for things that I care
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: about to have an exemplary memory, so I am positive
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: that Matt is telling the truth. He was emphatic, he
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: was kind of pissed off about it, and also by
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: the way, he reminded me that Tucker Carlson. His original
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: conspiracy theory on the Axis Hollywood tape was that Matt
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: Lauer himself had leaked the tape because he was trying
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: to sabotage Billy Bush, because Billy Bush was somehow going
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: to take over the Today Show for Matt Lower, which
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: was ludicrous because Billy Bush was nowhere near the same
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: level as Matt Lower. In fact, just before all of
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: this hit the fan, it's important to point out that
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: in the twenty sixteen Summer Olympics in Brazil, it was
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Billy Bush who got involved in a controversy involving Ryan
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: lochte The swimmer and Ryan Lochtey had been kind of
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: in almost a Jsty Smalllette situation, and it was Billy
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Bush's interview that really allowed Lochtee to spin this yarn,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: this false story where there were all sorts of holes
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: and Billy Busch was being accused of effectively being Ryan
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Lochte's pr agent and NBC basically had Ryan Lochtey reado
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: an interview with Matt Lower because Matt had to be
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: the adult in the room to.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: Come up, come in and clean things up, and.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: So there was there was no chance Billy Busch was
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: taking over for Matt Lauer. In fact, there's a lot
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: of reason why Billy Bush may have actually had some
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: animosity towards Matt Lower because it was being perceived that
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Billy Bush was the a minor leaguer in comparison to
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Matt Lawer who had to be brought in to clean
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: up his.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Mess on Ryan Lockedey. But my sense of what's going
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: on here with regard to Billy.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Bush and just concocting this narrative and this is I'm
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: the only person the planet that will have this perspective
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: on it. And you're one of the few people in
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: the world that whatever appreciate. If you're a listener to
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: this podcast as a subscriber, obviously you are, and if
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: you're at all aware of our work with the benefit
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: of Hindsight Podcast, this is an analysis that only a
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: very few people appreciate, and it reminds me very much
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: of what happened with Mike mcquery after Joe Paterno died,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: where Mike mcquery's story all of a sudden expanded greatly
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: and he was much more free to talk about details
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: he had never discussed before and his recollections changed.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: Why well, because.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: The only guy that could contradict him was dead in
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Joe Paterno. Well, similarly, it feels to me is if
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: Billy Bush knows that Matt Lower is never going to
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: publicly address anything that he says, and obviously, since Matt
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: Lower is a celebrity and is perceived in a certain way,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: mostly negatively, especially by the audience of the of the
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson Show, that if you throw Matt Lower's name
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: out there all of a sudden, you know, it certainly
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: lends itself to all sorts of right wing conspiracies, and
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Matt's never going to publicly address it, and so it's
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: basically a freebie.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: It's a freebie.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: He gets to make up whatever narrative he wants throw
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: out Matt Lwer's name, and it helps fit with this
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: very conspiratorial mindset that Billy Bush now has.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: And I have to say this is frankly.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: You know, an indication that Billy Bush understands what he
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: is doing when it comes to trying to appeal to
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: this right wing maga Tucker Carlson conspiracy leyden audience. Billy
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: Bush understands the language of the conspiracy maga person exceedingly
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: well based upon this interview. I mean, in certain circles,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: using Matt Lower's name is almost the same thing as
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: using Epstein's name. Oh okay, you don't even to explain
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: anything else to me, Epstein, I get it, okay. And
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: so now all of a sudden, the conspiracy oriented audience
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: is going to buy whatever narrative that you're selling. And
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: if it was just one point that Billy Bush, for
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: some reason misremembers, I mean, that's a pretty big thing
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: to misremember how you first learned of the tape that
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: would end up destroying your career and be the biggest
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: historical footnote of your entire life. I mean, this is
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: what you're going to be associated with until you die,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: is this.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: Access Hollywood tape?
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: And you misremember you can coctus the story where you
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: get off the Today Show on a Tuesday and you
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: get asked by Matt Lauer about it, something that again
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: did not happen. That did not happen, By the way,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Billy Bush basically contradicts himself during other points of this interview,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: where he implies that he knew of the existence of
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: the tape and a transcript, and that it had been
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: kind of being talked about at NBC even before this
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: alleged conversation with Matt Lauer.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: That did not happen.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: And this is days before it becomes public. So I don't.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: Think that Billy Bush is being consistent.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: I know he's not being truthful about Matt, and I
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: realized that Matt's a friend of mine. But the historical
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: record is important to me and I would like to
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: get to the bottom of what really transpired here. But
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: this is not the truth. What Billy Bush is saying
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: here is not the truth. But it doesn't It doesn't
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: end there. By the way, I got off the phone
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: fairly quickly with Matt and apologized for bothering him. But
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: he didn't have a problem with it because he knew.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: I was just trying to figure out what really happened here,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: what the truth of this whole situation is here. But
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: I want to move on to another portion of this
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: interview between Tucker Carlson and Billy Bush, because Tucker Carlson,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: of course, being an egomaniac, wants to relate Billy Bush's
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: destruction with his own destruction at Fox News Channel, and
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: he also wants to talk about how he was giving
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Billy Bush advice when this whole thing went down. And
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: so Tucker Carlson and Billy Bush talk about what Tucker
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: would have had Billy Bush do during this firestorm back
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, and he comes up with this idea
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: that he really should have gone on Good Morning America.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: Billy Bush should have and spilled all of his secrets
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: about NBC and about the NBC brass, specifically the head
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: of NBC News I think Andy Lack at the time.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: And Billy Bush very masterfully throws in another Matt Lower reference,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: very much like Epstein, even though he knows he knows
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: that Matt Lower is innocent of any sort of allegations
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: of sexual abuse, one because he was effectively a witness
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: to the situation, and two because I've had direct conversations
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: with him about this and I know the only reason
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: why he did the two things that he did in
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: somewhat of defense of Matt Lauers because he's well aware
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: that the whole allegation is bullshit, but that doesn't stop
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: him from using it because he understands the Tucker Carlson audience,
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: and he gives them exactly what they want here when
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: they discuss, okay, what should have happened when the shit
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: hit the fan for Billy Bush back in twenty sixteen,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: after the Access Hollywood tape was made public.
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: I'm on a plane that Friday, two days before the debate.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: I'm going home to Los Angeles to my family, and
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: right before the wheels go up, might look at my
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: phone one last time and bang, there's the story in
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: the Washington Post. And I go, oh my god. And
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: the next week is the most chaotic week? Did you
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: have so higher on the plane, I got Wi Fi
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: fifteen minutes later, and I had a million messages from Noah,
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: You're going to be fine, You're okay.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Don't worry.
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: We'll take care of you, the head of communications in NBC.
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: Don't worry. You didn't do anything. You did nothing. We've
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: got you. Don't worry. We've got you security. You'll be
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: waiting for you at LAX. We have a car, a
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: security guy will take you to the car, car will
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: take you home.
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: Don't worry.
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: We've got you. We've got you. Next day, we've got you.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: We've got you.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: Did you got me to the point your wife texts
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: you on the plane?
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: My wife texted me and we had a dinner at
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: a friend's house that night, and they're like, hey, are
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: we still on?
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, yeah, of course, what do you mean
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: are we on?
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: Like this is sort of big, I think, I mean,
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: it's kind of huge, it's kind of everywhere.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, no, no, they got me. We're good.
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: They got me because they didn't do anything. They got me.
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: We land tmz bapa rozzi.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: I get home.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: Wait, next day, I buy five thousand dollars worth of
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: new suits, because as much as they give you pay
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: you on the Today Show, they don't buy your clothing.
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: And I'm like, well, I.
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: Got to get some new suits. I mean, I got
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: a fancy new job. I'm an important little guy. This
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: is great.
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: I buy a bunch of suits. I have someone tailoring
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: them in my living room.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: I'm doing all this.
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: The next day Sunday, I go out and there's a
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: car and driver in the driveway and As I'm about
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: to open the door of my bags, the driver says, uh, hey,
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: they just canceled the car. I said, what, it's gotta
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: be a mistake. What are you talking about. No, they
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: canceled the car, and I'm oh god. I called my
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: lawyer and said, what's going on. He said, yeah, they
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: want to suspend you tomorrow. I said, I need to
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: be able to talk tomorrow. I need to be able
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: to say something. Can't suspend me. He's like, they're suspending
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: you tomorrow. And then from there just this shit unfolded.
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: I think I did call you on Saturday and said
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: they're going to try and screw you. I think you did.
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: As a man who knows what it looks like when
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: it's coming.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry. I couldn't resist.
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: I said, hey, buddy, you're you're fucked.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah I did say.
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: I said they're going to try and fuck you. And
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: you're like, no, no, no, I've been here for this company.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: No, they love me.
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: This is the network that raised me. No, no, no,
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: they couldn't do that to me.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: I didn't do anything.
• 31:51
  Speaker 5: I'm so my advice I'll never forget it was because
• 31:53
  Speaker 5: I still think it's good advice. March into any lax
• 31:56
  Speaker 5: office and say, listen, bitch, Can I call you bitch?
• 32:00
  Speaker 5: You may have some thought about destroying me and my
• 32:04
  Speaker 5: father of children, so you can't.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: I just didn't see it.
• 32:06
  Speaker 5: But if you do that, I will go on Good
• 32:09
  Speaker 5: Morning America on Monday and We're going to talk about
• 32:12
  Speaker 5: your marital infidelity.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: Just so you know.
• 32:15
  Speaker 5: No, no, no, because like you knowledge to destroy me,
• 32:17
  Speaker 5: So like, how about don't do that.
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: All your sexual harassment claims were everywhere you've ever been, right,
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: you who would later go on to fire you know,
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: Matt Lower and claim you knew nothing exactly.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: Please.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: That clip actually probably disappointed me more even than Billy
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: Bush lying or grossly misremembering about how it is that
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: he found out about the existence of the Donald Trump
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: ac says Hollywood tape, because.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: Again he knows, he knows that there is.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: Nothing to know about when it comes to Matta Lower's
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: sex abuse allegations, but he goes along with it because
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: he knows loves that narrative and he's sure that the
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson, right wing maggot conspiracy oriented audience is also
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: going to lap it up. And that then led to
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: the third and final clip I'm going to play from
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: this interview, and it deals with, to me, what the
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: most important part of this whole story is, So, how
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: did this tape suddenly become public and how did it
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: become public in the Washington Post as opposed to NBC
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: because obviously the Ockham's razor, it's NBC that has the
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: most possession of this, the most knowledge of this. They're
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: obviously a news organization. It's a massive news story. How
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: have they been sitting on this for all this time?
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: Trump has already won the Republican nomination, and nobody at
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: NBC ever decided that this was an important thing to
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: know about.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: And really that might be the most significant part of
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: this whole deal.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: That's the part of the story that changed history because
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: had this tape come out during the Republican primary process
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: of twenty sixteen, had it been released at exactly the
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: right time now, I don't know when that would have been,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: probably after Trump didn't win Iowa going into New Hampshire,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: that probably would have ended the entire Trump phenomenon. I
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: can't say that definitively, but I still believe we were
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: living in a rational world, a semi rational world. If
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: the Access Hollywood tape comes out in early twenty sixteen,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: and it's released in a proper fashion and with good timing.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: I think Trump probably does not win the Republican nomination
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, but because it somehow remained hidden until
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: October of twenty sixteen, by the time it comes out,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: Republicans have nowhere else to go.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: That's so important.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: It's how the tape got rationalized by so many Republicans. Okay,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: this is terrible, but we have no other option at
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: this point. It's him or Hillary, and we don't want Hillary,
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: so we got to stick with Trump, and somehow we
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: ended up winning despite this whole thing. But that doesn't
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: mean that the tape wouldn't have had potency, a lot
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: of potency had it been released earlier. And so, you know,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: how it gets released is important because to me, it
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: should have been released way earlier, way earlier. At some
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: point during the primary process of twenty sixteen is when
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: that tape should have been released. But it wasn't until
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: October seventh of twenty sixteen, a Friday before that Sunday debate,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: and it gets released not by NBC but by the
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: Washington Post. And so this is where Tucker really starts
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: to sink his teeth into this, because this is the
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: real conspiracy stuff. I mean, there's no conspiracy theory that
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson doesn't love, and he gives Billy Bush the
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: opportunity to open up in a way that I've never
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: heard Billy Bush do so before on this topic, where
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: he just lets lose with Frankly.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: A crazy conspiracy. I shouldn't say it's a crazy conspiracy theory.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: It's an absolutely deep conspiracy that is to me, not
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: consistent with the facts or with any logic, and doesn't
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: seem to make a whole lot of sense in the
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: bigger picture, although I know to Billy Bush it does
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: because I actually texted with Billy Bush after I watched
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: this clip that we're about to play for you, and
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: I was not particularly satisfied with Billy Bush's answer.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: I'll get to that momentarily.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: But here there is Billy Bush's theory about how it
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: is that the Access Hollywood tape gets released on that
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: Friday in the Washington Post, and it deals with the
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: head of the Today Show and the Washington Post reporter
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: Noah Oppenheim. Noah Oppenheim was the guy who was running
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: the Today Show at the time, and David Fahrenholt was
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: the Washington Post reporter, and their relationship back at Harvard
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: and it's all very much well suited to the Tucker
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: Carlson conspiracy view of the world. And here was Billy
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Bush explaining what he thinks really happened back in twenty sixteen.
• 37:42
  Speaker 5: I lighted over, which is how it got from the
• 37:45
  Speaker 5: vaults at NBC News to the Washington Post.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: Who did it go to?
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: We don't know exactly, but if you want to begin
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: the internal investigation. Noah Oppenheim is the president of NBC.
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: He's the head of the generalman manager of the Today Show.
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: His co editor of the Harvard Crimson newspaper back when
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: he was a Harvard man was a writer named David
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: Fahrenholt from the Washington Post and Farhreennholt is the one.
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: They ran the Crimson together. They were both groomsmen in
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: Hillary in Chelsea Clinton's wedding, actually co groomsman. Oh yeah,
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: because one of their other buddies was the guy that
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: Chelsea married, So they were groomsmen in the wedding together. Anyway,
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: that guy's the one who released. It's like the paper
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: trail is terrible. I mean, I could start there.
• 38:34
  Speaker 5: Hey, so the college buddy of the NBC Press is
• 38:39
  Speaker 5: now a writer Washington Post.
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: And then two years later, a year and a half later,
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: he begets his own NBC News contributing gig, and he
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: gets a sweet gig over at MSNBC.
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: So they pay him back for the hustle, is what.
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: That's where I would start the investigation, not saying that
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: that happened, but I would begin there and just see
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: if it saves you some time.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Now, I will acknowledge that I don't know for one
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: hundred percent fact how much of what Billy Bush claimed
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: there is total bullshit. But I do know that there's
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: a massive problem with that entire theory, and that is
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: that David Fahrenholt from the Washington Post made it very clear,
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: very very early on in this entire process that when
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: he went to work that day at the Washington Post
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: on that Friday, he had no idea that the Access
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: Hollywood tape even existed. And that to me, again, is
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: it possible that he's lying? I guess, So, I asked
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: Billy Bush via text, does he believe that Fahreenhaalt is lying,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: and he didn't really respond to that.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: And in fact, you know.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to go into the direct interaction that
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: I had with Billy Bush via text, but it was
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: I was very polite with Billy Bush, and I said, Billy,
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: I think your timeline is wrong here. And what about
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: the fact that Fahenholt has said that he didn't even
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: know that that tape existed. That doesn't sound like the
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: type of thing that was a sophisticated deep conspiracy leak, right,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: because I mean, you don't have much time here. If
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: you're trying to get this thing out before the Sunday debate,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: which is Billy Bush's theory and makes a lot of sense,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: if you're trying to make sure it's out so that
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: this blows up the Sunday debate between Donald Trump and
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton, then you're gonna make damn well sure that
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: your source, your college buddy, is at least working that day,
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: or at least it's prepared.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, these things take time.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: You have to verify the validity of the tape, and
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: this doesn't happen instantaneously. And yet this reporter from the
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: Washington Post made it very clear that.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: The first they ever heard of it.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: Was when they came into work that day, which is
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: also remarkable. I mean, the speed of the turnaround was
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: astonishing and raises big questions for me about what really
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: transpired here.
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: But I believe Fahrenhael because if.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: That was a lie, that was a very very dangerous
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: lie and something that could have easily been disproven and
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: might have backfired on him spectacularly. But Billy Bush, when
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: I asked him about it, basically said no, that fully
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: fits my theory of the whole thing and does not
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: address He does not address whether or not Fahrenhalt is
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: lying about the fact that this was the first he'd
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: ever heard of the Access Hollywood tape on that Friday afternoon.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: But to me, the whole idea of these.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: Massive conspiracies, and also Tucker Carlson and Billy Bush, my god,
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: I guess when you get to a certain level of
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: the news media, your ego is so big and your
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: view of the world is so focused on yourself and
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: you have so little self awareness that you really true
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: believe he truly believe that you're firing is like the
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: most important thing in the world. I mean, Tucker believes
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: this when it comes to what happened to him with
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: him at Fox News Channel, and Billy Bush believes the
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: same thing at NBC. And I'm like, people, you're just
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: not that important in the overall scheme of things. These
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: are not things that are done because of massive conspiracies.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, I understand that Billy Bush had his life destroyed,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: but if even listening to the way Billy Bush described
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: it about you know how the cars were all of
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: a sudden canceled and he was told everything was going
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: to be fine, and then it turns out it wasn't.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: That happens because these.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: People have no fucking idea what they're doing. And I
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: said this to Billy Bush in our text exchange. I said,
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: these people are not that smart, these corporate suits. The
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: plan changes because they don't know what the hell they're doing.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: And they're panicked.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: And in my view, what happened with the Excess Hollywood
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: tape is that NBC was in an impossible position because
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: they couldn't be in a spot where they were if
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: they were condemning Donald Trump for what he said on
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: that tape, they also had to condemn their own reporter
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: or the guy that was currently working for them on
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: The Today Show who was participating in the same exact behavior.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: So in order to be able to attack Trump, they
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: found themselves in a situation where they had to sever
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: ties with Billy Bush. They probably didn't anticipate that when
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: the whole thing went down, but it wouldn't have been
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: that difficult to figure out that you were going to
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: be in an impossible spot. You can't keep Billy Bush
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: on a staff of The Today Show while also condemning
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump for what he did and said on the
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: Access Hollywood tape. So for me, the bottom line of
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: this whole thing is one I fully acknowledge that I'm
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: one of the few people that still really cares about
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: this topic, and then I have a particularly deep investment
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: in it, farsely because of my relationship with Matt Lauer
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: and I guess my interactions with Billy Bush, and also
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: the fact that I'm very frustrated by what a conspiracy
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: there is Tucker Carlson has become. But I really do
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: believe that through this story we can see just how
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: totally broken every element of the news media is. We're
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: never going to really know what truly transpired in that
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: whole Access Hollywood tape story, and part of it is
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: because we've got so many different egos and we've got
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: a broken media ecosystem, and now here Billy Bush is
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: finally really willing to seemingly come.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: Forward and tell the full story.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: But he's doing so in an attempt to try to
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: playcate or become I guess, part of.
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: The right wing media. You know.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: That's why he's doing interviews with Tucker Carlson, and he's
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: exchanging interviews with Megan Kelly. Megan Kelly did an interview
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: with him. He's doing an interview with Megan Kelly. And
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that the interview with Megan Kelly when it
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: comes to this whole Access Hollywood tape thing, is going
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: to be way worse because of what I've talked about previously,
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: of herbandetta against Matt Lauer and herban debt against NBC
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: because she's trying to justify why she failed at NBC
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: Today Show. So all these people, they don't give a
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: damn about the truth. It's all about what's ever favoring
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: their agenda at the moment, and Billy Bush's agenda is
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: to now become I guess part of the right wing media.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson has a conspiracy agenda, and Megan Kelly has
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: the agenda of trying to figure out a way to
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: rationalize why she failed at NBC and The Today Show,
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: and everybody is helping each other in that, and the
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: actual truth of the matter doesn't seem to make any difference.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: And the most important part of this whole deal is
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: how is it that that tape did not take Donald
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: Trump out in the Republican primary process of twenty sixteen,
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: Because it absolutely could have and should have, had it
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: been released properly, but it was not, and instead, the
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: history of the entire country is potentially vastly different because
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: of it. You could argue better for worse, but there's
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: no question that the history of the country would be
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: vastly different if the Access Hollywood tape had not been
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: kept under lock and key by NBC during that critical
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: period of early twenty sixteen, and they overplayed their hand.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: They thought that.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: However, they decided to release it, whether it was through
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: the Washington Post or who the hell knows at this point,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: because I don't think we're going to find out from
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Billy Bush.
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: But however, this happened.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: They thought that, Okay, we'll take them out in the
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: general election, and they fundamentally didn't understand. They did not
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: understand that when you give especially Republicans, one other choice,
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: that choice is Hillary Clinton, it's not going to matter
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: what Donald Trump says in the Access Hollywood tape. If
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: they still have other options, like in the Republican primary process,
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: then it might matter, and it might matter a lot,
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: especially before Donald Trump was a god. At that point,
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump was not yet a god. He hadn't even
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: defeated the wicked Witch of the West, Hillary Clinton yet.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: So you have to remember who Donald Trump was in
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, especially early twenty sixteen, in comparison to who
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: he is today. So that's probably more than you needed
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: to know about the entire Billy buysh Tucker Carlson interview.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: But since no one else is going to provide you
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: that analysis, and because I have a particular interest in it,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: and because I do think it's important, one from a
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: historical perspective, and two in understanding just how totally broken
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: at every life level, every element of the news media is.
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: That's why I.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: Devoted so much time to that particular story. Now, Mark Zuckerberg.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: In a weird way.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: This does sort of relate to the entire Access Hollywood story,
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: at least the theme of it, which is the big
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: media censoring things that they do not like. Mark Zuckerberg,
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: the guy who owns Meta or Facebook, has been slowly
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: but surely changing his tune rather dramatically on the issue
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: of free speech. And you may recall that last year,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg basically did a Mia Kulpa. I even went
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: on News Nation television and discussed this topic, where I
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: strangely was praising Mark Zuckerberg for doing an about face
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: on the issue of free speech.
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: But at the.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: Time, there was still a lot of skepticism as to
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: whether or not Mark Zuckerberg was really sincere, was he
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: really going to do anything about this, or was he
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: just simply placating Trump voters during an election year. Well, now,
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: obviously Trump has won, and Mark Zuckerberg has announced numerous changes,
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: significant changes to the way that Meta and Facebook are
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: doing things that appear to be very much more pro
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: free speech and against censorship. And this is where you know,
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: I'm going to give Donald Trump some credit. This is
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: where elections have consequences. This is where winning matters, because
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: I don't believe that Mark Zuckerberg would have come to
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: this conclusion, wouldn't have made these dramatic changes if not
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: for the fact that Donald Trump had won. I mean,
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: he's doing the right thing now, but he's only doing
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: the right thing, in my opinion, because it was.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: In his self interest to do the right thing.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: And the only reason why it's in his self interest
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: to do the right thing is because on Trump one,
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: and that matters, one from a regulatory perspective, and two
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: from the standpoint of understanding that at least half or
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: maybe more than half of the country seems to be
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: on his side. And so maybe it's not a great
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: business decision for me to be against over half the country.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: And so you know, I'm gonna give Zuckerberg some credit
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: because I actually think we're seeing Mark Zuckerberg become an
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: adult before our eyes. I don't have one hundred percent
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: cynical view of this. I mean, something is changing in
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg. And this has happened to many people before.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: When you become an adult, you suddenly realize that liberalism
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: isn't perfect, and maybe that the liberalism has a lot
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: of problems, and you know, we saw that remarkable video
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: on fourth of July of Mark Zuckerberg with an American
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: flag and a beer while surfing in a tuxedo. I
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: mean that doesn't happen just because he's trying to play
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: Kate Trump fans. I mean something has happened with Mark Zuckerberg,
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: and I would like to give him the benefit of
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: the doubt.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: So I would say I have about a fifty.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: Or sixty percent cynical view of what's going on with
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg. But this is significant, This is important. This
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: is a huge victory, or at least I guess you
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: would say it would be the removal of a defeat
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: when it comes to free speech and what Mark Zuckerberg
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: is going to do now to allow Facebook to be
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: far more free and he has a multi prong approach.
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: I'm going to play about four minutes of the address
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: that he gave in outlining exactly what Facebook and Meta
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: are going to do when it comes to being far
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: more pro free speech than they have been in the past.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: Where Zuckerberg has acknowledged that they censored things, especially during
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: COVID that turned out to not even be misinformation. I
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: wish there'd be more specificity as far as what that means.
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: No one ever really wants to get specific because then
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: they have to get into controversial topics.
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: But it wasn't just.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: A situation where Facebook was censoring false information. At times,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: they were censoring on behalf of the government and in
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: situations where they weren't even on the side of truth,
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: and it wasn't even close. And I think Zuckerberg understands
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: that now, and I think that's partially what's motivating his
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: dramatic shift when it comes to the way Facebook will
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: do things in the future. And here's about four minutes
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: of Mark Zuckerberg outlining how and why he's making these changes.
• 52:39
  Speaker 6: Hey, everyone, I want to talk about something important today
• 52:42
  Speaker 6: because it's time to get back to our roots around
• 52:44
  Speaker 6: free expression on Facebook and Instagram. I started building social
• 52:48
  Speaker 6: media to give people a voice. I gave a speech
• 52:51
  Speaker 6: at Georgetown five years ago about the importance of protecting
• 52:54
  Speaker 6: free expression and I still believe this today. But a
• 52:57
  Speaker 6: lot has happened over the last several years. There's been
• 53:00
  Speaker 6: widespread debate about potential harms from online content. Governments and
• 53:05
  Speaker 6: legacy media have pushed to censor more and more. A
• 53:08
  Speaker 6: lot of this is clearly political, but there's also a
• 53:11
  Speaker 6: lot of legitimately bad stuff out there. Drugs, terrorism, child exploitation.
• 53:16
  Speaker 6: These are things that we take very seriously and I
• 53:18
  Speaker 6: want to make sure that we handle responsibly. So we
• 53:20
  Speaker 6: built a lot of complex systems to moderate content. But
• 53:24
  Speaker 6: the problem with complex systems is they make mistakes. Even
• 53:27
  Speaker 6: if they accidentally censor just one percent of posts, that's
• 53:31
  Speaker 6: millions of people, and we've reached a point where it's
• 53:34
  Speaker 6: just too many mistakes and too much censorship. The recent
• 53:38
  Speaker 6: elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once
• 53:41
  Speaker 6: again prioritizing speech. So we're going to get back to
• 53:44
  Speaker 6: our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies,
• 53:48
  Speaker 6: and restoring free expression on our platforms. More specifically, here's
• 53:53
  Speaker 6: what we're going to do. First. We're going to get
• 53:56
  Speaker 6: rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes
• 53:59
  Speaker 6: similar to X. Starting in the US, after Trump first
• 54:03
  Speaker 6: got elected in twenty sixteen, the legacy media wrote NonStop
• 54:07
  Speaker 6: about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried,
• 54:11
  Speaker 6: in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the
• 54:14
  Speaker 6: arbiters of truth, but the fact checkers have just been
• 54:17
  Speaker 6: too politically biased and have destroyed more trusts than they've created,
• 54:21
  Speaker 6: especially in the US. So over the next couple of months,
• 54:24
  Speaker 6: we're going to phase in a more comprehensive community notes system. Second,
• 54:30
  Speaker 6: we're going to simplify our content policies and get rid
• 54:32
  Speaker 6: of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and
• 54:35
  Speaker 6: gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.
• 54:39
  Speaker 6: What started as a movement to be more inclusive has
• 54:42
  Speaker 6: increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out
• 54:45
  Speaker 6: people with different ideas, and it's gone too far. So
• 54:49
  Speaker 6: I want to make sure that people can share their
• 54:50
  Speaker 6: beliefs and experiences on our platforms.
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: Third, we're changing how.
• 54:56
  Speaker 6: We enforce our policies to reduce the mistakes that account
• 54:59
  Speaker 6: for the vast majority of censorship on our platforms. We
• 55:03
  Speaker 6: used to have filters that scanned for any policy violation.
• 55:07
  Speaker 6: Now we're going to focus those filters on tackling illegal
• 55:10
  Speaker 6: and high severity violations, and for lower severity violations, we're
• 55:14
  Speaker 6: going to rely on someone reporting an issue before we
• 55:17
  Speaker 6: take action. The problem is that the filters make mistakes
• 55:21
  Speaker 6: and they take down a lot of content that they shouldn't,
• 55:23
  Speaker 6: so by dialing them back we're going to dramatically reduce
• 55:26
  Speaker 6: the amount of censorship on our platforms. We're also going
• 55:30
  Speaker 6: to tune our content filters to require much higher confidence
• 55:34
  Speaker 6: before taking down content. The reality is that this is
• 55:37
  Speaker 6: a trade off. It means we're going to catch less
• 55:40
  Speaker 6: bad stuff, but will also reduce the number of innocent
• 55:43
  Speaker 6: people's posts and accounts that we accidentally take down. Fourth,
• 55:48
  Speaker 6: we're bringing back civic content. For a while, the community
• 55:51
  Speaker 6: asked to see less politics because it was making people stressed,
• 55:54
  Speaker 6: so we stopped recommending these posts. But it feels like
• 55:57
  Speaker 6: we're in a new era now and we're starting you
• 56:00
  Speaker 6: get feedback that people want to see this content again,
• 56:03
  Speaker 6: so we're going to start phasing this back into Facebook, Instagram,
• 56:06
  Speaker 6: and threads while working to keep the communities friendly and positive. Fifth,
• 56:11
  Speaker 6: we're going to move our trust and safety and content
• 56:14
  Speaker 6: moderation teams out of California, and our US based content
• 56:18
  Speaker 6: review is going to be based in Texas. As we
• 56:21
  Speaker 6: work to promote free expression, I think that will help
• 56:24
  Speaker 6: us build trust to do this work in places where
• 56:27
  Speaker 6: there is less concern about the bias of our teams. Finally,
• 56:31
  Speaker 6: we're going to work with President Trump to push back
• 56:34
  Speaker 6: on governments around the world. They're going after American companies
• 56:37
  Speaker 6: and pushing to censor more.
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: I thought that was very well done by Mark Zuckerberg,
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: and I applaud the changes that he's making. I'm a
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: huge free speech advocate, and I think it's incredibly important
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: that we do everything we can to preserve free speech
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: and the fact that we're moving more in that direction,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: and I obviously see Elon Musk's influence and all this.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: It's not just Donald Trump, but it's also Elon Musk,
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: where effectively Mark Zuckerberg is copying the X model, literally
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: getting rid of fact checkers and using community notes instead.
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: I think that that really is a testament to the
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: influence of Elon Musk when it comes to the issue
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: of free speech. So kudos to Mark Zuckerberg. Now, there
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: have been a couple of hilarious things that have happened
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: as a result of this pronouncement by Mark Zuckerberg. The
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: New York Times and others. Brian Stelter at CNN have
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: had meltdowns over this whole issue of getting rid of
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: fact checkers, and the fact checkers apparently were blindsided, and
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: now they're all.
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: Up in arms.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: Oh my God, no one told us we were going
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: to lose our jobs. And of course, very few people
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: on the right, including myself, are weeping over the loss
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: of jobs by these fact checkers, because these fact checkers
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: are some of the worst people on the planet, and
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: they're not about checking facts.
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: By and large.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: Fact checker is just a weapon by the lap to
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: try to censor information that they don't like. And that's
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: really what it became, especially during COVID and The New
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: York Times had a headline that says, meta says fact
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: checkers were the problem.
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: Fact checkers rule that false.
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that New York Times is obviously trying to
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: be a little bit cute with that. But Kyle Mann,
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: who runs The Babylon B, the conservative parody a website,
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: actually tweeted out that headline meta says fact checkers were
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: the problem. Fact checkers rule that false with the following message,
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: he said, I'd like to offer whoever wrote this headline
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: of The New York Times a job at the Babylon B,
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: which is probably pretty appropriate, because I mean, that's that's hilarious.
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, that really is the.
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: Problem right there, is that we have such reliance on
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: these fact checkers on the left that you know, we're
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: willing to say that, Okay, this is they're not really
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: the problem here. Yes they were the problem because they
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: weren't really fact checkers. That's just a way for liberals
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: to stifle arguments that they can't win, not in every situation,
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: but in a lot of circumstances. And again I go
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: back to COVID, because that was the most obvious example
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: of this.
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: Experts say, fact checkers say, no, it's in it.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: It's nothing but a weapon in a war. This is
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: all about an agenda. And Mark Zuckerberg deserves credit for
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: understanding that that's the way that fact checkers were used.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: We see this with Wikipedia all the time. One of
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: the founders of Wikipedia recently gave an interview where they
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: acknowledged that this is what destroyed Wikipedia, was that it
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: becomes a way for the left to stifle any descent whatsoever.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: That the so called fact checkers really aren't objective fact checkers.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: They are liberal activists, and they have a liberal activist
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: view of the world. They don't even see the world
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: through prism where objectivity can possibly be obtained in any way,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: shape or form, because they're just that biased and I
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: guarantee you, I guarantee you that the fact checkers had
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: meta if you did a political analysis something that they
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: would have to be ninety nine percent. I'm pretty confident,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: even though that's an unscientific analysis, I would guarantee you
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: they're ninety nine percent extremely liberal. And it's not you know,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: because if you're liberal, you're more likely to be interested
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: in facts or want to become a fact checker. It's
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: because everyone doing the higher ring is also a liberal,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: and they have come to view fact checking as a
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: weapon in this war that it's all about agenda, it's
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: not about objectivity or truth. And so once again I
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: give Mark Zuckerberg the benefit of the doubt, and I
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: give him a kudos for seeing the error of his ways,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: because he's effectively admitting that he was wrong, which is very,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: very difficult to do, especially in this day and age,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: especially for someone whose ego has got to be as
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: large as Mark Zuckerberg's.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: And I will also acknowledge.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: That he's going in this direction at least in part
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: because Donald Trump won the election. So this is where
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: elections have consequences, and in this case, it's a positive consequence.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: In the realm of free speech now somewhat similar to
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg bowing down effectively to Trump fans. And again
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: I acknowledge that that's part of his motivation, even though
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: he's doing the right thing, but he's being attacked by
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: the Brian Stelters of the world, is basically caving in
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: too trump Ism. I don't think that's really fully what's
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: going on here, but there's no question that Trump winning
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: has facilitated a lot of the titans of Silicon Valley
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: bowing down to him in ways that would never have
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: happened previously. And I think the Zuckerberg free speech thing
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: is an example of where a good thing has occurred
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: because of it.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: We're also seeing Amazon.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: Which is obviously associated with Jeff Bezos, who owns The
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: Washington Post. We saw what happened with the Washington Post
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: just before the election not putting out an endorsement of Kamala.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: Harris, which upset a lot of their subscribers.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: And it appears as if Jeff Bezos made a good
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: decision there, because obviously Trump ended up winning the election. Well,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: Amazon has now announced that they have paid forty million
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: dollars forty million dollars for a Milania Trump documentary forty
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: million dollars, outbidding everyone else by three or four times
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: the amount of money for Milania Trump's participation in a
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: documentary on her life.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: Now, folks, I'm sorry.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: I realized that there's a lot of interest in Milania
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: Trump because there's a lot of mystery surrounding her. She
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: doesn't do much media. She's obviously beautiful, she's obviously the
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: first lady. I get that it's a compelling story, but
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: there is no chance in the world that it's going
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: to be worth forty million dollars to Amazon to pay
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: for a month Lannie and Trump documentary.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: There's no chance none. It is not a business decision.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: This is much more like an nil in college athletics decision.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: They're not paying because this is going to have a
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: return on investment for Amazon. They're paying really very much
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: like this is an oligarch situation. This is this is
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: the type of thing that conservatives and people on the
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: right would be screaming bloody murder about. Rightfully, So if
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: it happened in the opposite direction, that can you imagine
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: if Amazon was paying forty million dollars for the hunter
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: Biden documentary in twenty twenty one. That's effectively what this is.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: This is a payoff. This is Amazon getting in the
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: good graces of Donald Trump by paying forty million dollars
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: for what will surely be at least mostly of not
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: totally positive documentary on Milania Trump. So if you're going
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: to be consistent, if you're a conservative, you should have
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: problems with this. This is this is We're heading in
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: a very very dangerous territory here. This is very much
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: like an oligarchy, and I'm not comfortable with it at.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: All, because this is a payoff. This is a payoff.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: This is a lot like.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: The Saudis paying Donald Trump by via the use of
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: his golf courses for live golf events where there and
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: at least in that situation, it's not even knowing how
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: much money the Saudis are directly funneling to Donald Trump.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: At least here we know that, Oh, effectively, Amazon and
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos are paying the Trump family forty million dollars
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: for this documentary on Milania. But you're not gonna hear
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: anybody in Trump world get upset about it because they
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: like it. I mean, folks, if it's going to happen
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: in one direction, you've got to be consistent, because when
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: it happens in the other direction and you don't like it,
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: you'll have no credibility whatsoever. Of course, we don't seem
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: to care about that stuff anymore now. Obviously this week
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: was the certification of Donald Trump's election. Obviously there was
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: also the anniversary of January sixth. We saw one more time,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: and I don't want to belabor it, but it's at
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: least worth repeating because it drives me crazy. And obviously
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: I'm not even a Trump fan. But every time we
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: talk about the anniversary of January sixth, the Democrats and
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: the media continue to lie about, specifically the deaths that
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: occurred on January sixth.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: Of twenty twenty one.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: And yes, one more time, we saw it yet again,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: where this narrative continues to persist that five police officers
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: were killed because of January sixth.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: That did not happen. That didn't happened.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: One police officer died of natural causes the next day
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: that may have been exacerbated by the events of that day,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: but no one was ever charged with any sort of
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: murder or manslaughter or.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: Anything related to the death.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: The tragic death of that police officer, and the four
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: other police officers committed suicide. Well after January sixth, and somehow,
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: the Biden administration and the Democratic Establishment and much of
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: the mainstream news media continues to promote this lie to
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: this day, that five police officers died. I will give
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump credit, because without him, I doubt anybody in America,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: or hardly anybody would America, would know that the only
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: person who was actually killed that day was Ashley Babbitt,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: a Trump supporter who was unarmed, who was killed by
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: a police officer who happened to be black, by the way.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, can you imagine if all this had been reversed,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: how many people would know Ashley Babbitt's name. But Trump,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: at every opportunity references that fact. It's got to drive
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: the news media crazy because in this particular situation, he's
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: right and they're wrong, and they're the purveyors of misinformation.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: But it's just amazing to me that we all these
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: years later, now we can't get it right. Four years later,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: we can still not get it right. As Okay, were
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: people actually killed that day? Yeah, one person was killed
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: that day, a Trump supporter named Ashley Babbitt, who was unarmed.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: Now I'm not defending what she was doing, but I
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: don't believe that she deserved to get shot by a
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: police officer and she lost her life because of it.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: And so once again, the legacy of January sixth is
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: that the Democrats in the news media way overplayed their hand.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: It was an absolute embarrassment to the country. But the
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: way that it has been portrayed and the way that
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: Democrats have overplayed their hand and the news media has
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: enabled it, has allowed the truth to be law. And
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: I think to a certain degree it probably even played
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: into Donald Trump's hands when it came to the twenty
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: twenty four election.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: Now, how this is all.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: Gonna work out once he pardons and commutes the sentences
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: of most of not everyone, that was involved in that,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know, But you know what, Democrats kind of
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: get what they deserve on this. I would like to
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: believe that Trump is gonna have some semblance of discipline
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: on this, and that you know, the people that actually
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: committed real crimes and did some really seriously wrong things
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: are not going to be lumped in with everybody else.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: But I don't have that much confidence in that. So
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: my guess is I'll probably condemn Trump when he eventually
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: issues all those pardons, and probably because he'll go way
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: too far.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: That's the way Donald Trump is.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: The January sixth is going to be a situation where
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: everyone gets it wrong. Everybody from every political shape, size,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: color direction is going to get this wrong.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: To some degree.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: It was an embarrassment for our country. But Democrats way
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: overplay their hand. And now my guess is Trump's going
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: to overplay his hand when it comes to pardons and commutations.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: As far as Trump is concerned, it is getting a
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: bit comical about where this second term seems to be going,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: at least from the perspective of.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: Renaming things alone.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: So in just the last few days, we've had Trump
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: talk about changing the Gulf of Mexico to the Golf
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: of America. He's still talking about Canada being the fifty
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: first state, even as Justin Trudeau has has decided to
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: finally resign as the Prime Minister of Canada, which is
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: fantastic news, if only from a symbolic perspective, because Trudeau
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: is awful. He's basically the brother from another mother of
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: our governor here in California, Gavin Newsom, and you know,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: for Trudeau to go down as badly as he is
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: in Canada is certainly, I think a strong indication that
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: the Gavin Newsom is not going to be able to
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: ever come close to being president of the United States.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: I do think that there's a pretty direct connection there.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: But but we've got Trump, even if he's just trolling
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: still talking about Canada being the fifty first state. Elon
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: Musk is trolling Justin Trudeau over his resignation. We've got
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: you know, this idea that Greenland has become is going
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: to become a US territory that seems to be an
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: obsession of Donald Trump's. We're going to take over the
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: Panama Canal. Oh, by the way, where we're going to
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: change daylight savings time?
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, where where was that?
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: None of this was anything close to being part of
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: the actual campaign.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: It's really comical.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: And with Trump, you never know what's real and what's
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: a joke, what's trolling.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: You have no idea, and I honestly don't know what's
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: real and what's trolling.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: I don't think that there's any chance in the world
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: that Canada is going to become part of the United States.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: I don't have enough knowledge about the Greenland situation. It
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: seems crazy to me, you know, the whole Panama Canal thing.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: The Golf of America.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: By the way, I was surprised that Trump just didn't
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: decide to say, instead of changing it to Gulf of America,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: why don't we just change it the Gulf of Trump.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: That's really where we're headed with this, isn't it.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: Speaking of oligarchies, I mean, all of this, if you
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: were to take it seriously, would be rather problematic. But
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: we're living in a world where all bets are off.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: We have no idea what's real, what's not, what's a joke,
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: what's a troll, what's a serious policy proposal? We have
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: no idea none. But Trump benefits greatly from this because
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: if it doesn't work out, oh, it was just a joke.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: It was just the true.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: It's a tremendous fallback position for Trump, especially among his base,
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: because he's never accountable to anything if it doesn't happen. Oh,
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: he was never really serious about it. That must must
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: be a wonderful world to live in.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: That's for sure.
• 1:13:16
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