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Episode One Hundred Fourteen: Introducing The NFFL · The Death Of Journalism

• 0:00
  Welcome to episode number one hundred and fourteen of the Death of Journalism podcast.
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  My name is John Zigler. I'm your host on today's show. Trump is
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  taken off the ballot in Colorado, but only for now. Tucker Carlson is
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  hilariously rationalizing his lack of support for Ron de Santas. The Washington Post almost
• 0:18
  gets it with regard to the minds of football being related to politics and the
• 0:24
  race issue. And somehow three Pittsburgh Steelers play a major and quite legitimate role
• 0:30
  in this particular program. I'm known as the Dutch Digital marketing Man. I'm
• 0:36
  a digital advertising SEO and EMIL marketing specialist that also happens to be a big
• 0:41
  fan of John Zigler and the Death of Journalism. Do you need help preaching
• 0:46
  your target audience? Let me help you develop the right messaging and confated messages
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  in the best channels for your business. Please visit my website, the Dutchdigitalmarketingman
• 0:56
  dot com and let me help you tell your story. The website is the
• 1:00
  Dutch Digital Marketingman dot com. If you want to grow your business, Peter
• 1:06
  can help. That's the Dutch Digital Marketingman dot com. And hey, thanks
• 1:11
  for sponsoring the show. We begin episode number one hundred and fourteen with the
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  big story in the news over the last day or so, which is that
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  in Colorado, a seven judge panel, by a four to three vote,
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  has ruled that Donald Trump is ineligible to be on the ballot in Colorado,
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  both in the primary and theoretically the general election in twenty twenty four in the
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  race for president, citing an insurrection against the United States and a violation of
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  the fourteenth Amendment. And as someone who loads Donald Trump, I am also
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  somebody who very strongly believes this is beyond bullshit. This is absurd at every
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  level. The most obvious is that Donald Trump has never even been charged with
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  an insurrection against the United States. Forget about being put on trial or being
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  convicted. He's not facing technically that charge in any of the indictments currently against
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  him. And while the Constitution doesn't specifically say you have to be convicted,
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  it certainly seems to me that logic and common sense would dictate that that's how
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  it would be interpreted. The idea that somehow the founding fathers believed that you
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  could simply take somebody off the ballot by acclaiming that they led an insurrection against
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  the United States without a criminal conviction is just patently absurd. It's ridiculous.
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  And the idea that Colorado was doing this on their own on a four to
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  three vote in a way that is clearly political, and I believe it's clearly
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  contrived. I mean, it's so obvious what's really going on here that these
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  four judges in Colorado. One they want the attention to, they want to
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  stick at the Trump but three, they mostly are setting the predicate and the
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  foundation for what many people, including myself, believe is going to be a
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  complete shit show in twenty twenty four where the US Supreme Court is going to
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  be forced to weigh in on numerous occasions. And that's what's going to happen
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  here. And so what they're doing, and I hate giving them this much
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  credit, but it just seems so clear cut that this is the motivation,
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  because they even cited Justice Gorsch in their decision, you know, basically trying
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  to claim that Gorsich himself should be in favor of this based upon his view
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  of states' rights, which is ludicrous because to even get to the states rights
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  issue, you have to believe that Trump actually committed this violation of the Fourteenth
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  Amendment for which there is no criminal conviction and very little of any real evidence.
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  And so what the Colorado liberals on that court are doing is that they're
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  trying to use up, or force the US Supreme Court to use up its
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  political capital. The US Supreme Court, because of the abortion decision, is
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  already seen as this right wing court, already seen as being very pro Trump.
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  Three of them were selected by Trump, three of the so called six
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  Conservatives, although I think there's only only four or five conservatives on the court,
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  and Roberts is basically lost unless it's a clear cut decision. But okay,
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  perception is reality, and so what the Colorado Court is doing is effectively
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  starting off twenty twenty four by forcing the US Supreme Court to use up some
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  of it's all already depleted political capital. And what will happen, in my
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  view, is that the Court will rule that this is in a false ruling,
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  that this is not in keeping with the Fourteenth Amendment. They will rule
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  that Trump should be allowed to be on the ballot, and they will probably
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  rule that six to three. Now I never know for sure what Roberts is
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  going to do because he's become completely worosified and he obviously hates Trump. So
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  it may only be five to four, which would be really bad. But
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  my guess is this is so obvious that even Roberts will go along with it,
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  but the three liberal justices will not, and of course the perception will
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  be, ah, there's that right wing court coming to the rescue of Donald
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  Trump, which, in the perception of some people who aren't really that bright,
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  aren't paying much attention, aren't very well educated. All they hear is
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  that the Supreme Court save Trump. That's all they're going to here, even
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  though the reality is that the ruling should have been nine to nothing, and
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  the only people playing politics here are the four justices in Colorado and probably the
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  three liberal justices on the U. S. Supreme Court, but they don't
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  care. It's no longer about the law or the Constitution. It's about politics,
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  pure and simple, and so they want to start off twenty twenty four.
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  Think about it as you know, gasoline in the tank of your automobile,
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  right, how much gas does the US Supreme Court have to get through
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  twenty twenty four, which, if this goes anything close to the way it
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  could, is going to be a massive crap storm, and they're going to
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  be forced a weigh in on multiple occasions regarding Donald Trump. So if they're
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  forced to use up some of the they're already depleted gasoline allotment or whatever they
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  have in the tank, then that's a win for liberals because by the time
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  we get to nove Member of twenty twenty four, their credibility may be shot
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  when it comes to any directly election related rulings that they may have to make.
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  And so that's the strategy here, and it's probably not a bad strategy,
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  especially if you want Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee, because he
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  was already going to be the Republican nominee. But this is absolutely the final
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  nail in the coffin. There is no chance at all that Donald Trump isn't
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  the nominee after what just happened, because there's going to be a further rallying
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  around the flag on behalf of Donald Trump, even by his own alleged opponents,
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  which I'm gonna get to momentarily and all the political impact of this.
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  But first, just for the record, I want to play one clip from
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  one of the few commentators I still have some respect for I don't agree with
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  him all the time. I think he's become too aligned with Donald Trump to
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  align with Fox News Channel to be one hundred percent pure. But Jonathan Turley
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  is a smart guy. He's law professor at George Washington University. He was
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  never a conservative, never perceived as a conservative until recent years when he did
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  have some opinions that were very favorable to Trump, and that's why Fox News
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  Channel fell in love with him. But by and large, I think he's
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  generally right on things and is honest about it. And he excoriated this Colorado
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  decision on Fox News Channel and here's what that sounded like. Well, this
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  court just handed partisans on both sides the ultimate tool to try to shortcut elections.
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  And it's very, very dangerous. I mean, this country is a
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  powder keg and this court is just throwing matches at it. And I think
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  that it's a real mistake. I think that they're wrong on the law.
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  You know, January six was many things, most of it not good,
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  and my view was not insurrection. It was a riot. That doesn't mean
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  that the people responsible for that day shouldn't be held accountable. But to call
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  this an insurrection for the purpose of disqualification would create a slippery slope for every
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  state in the Union. This is a time when we actually need democracy.
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  We need to allow the voters to vote, we need to hear their decision.
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  And the court here just said you're not going to get that in Colorado.
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  We're not going to let you vote for Donald Trump. And you know,
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  you could dislike Trump, you could believe he's responsible for January sixth,
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  but this isn't the way to do it. I mean it is you know,
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  for people that say they're trying to protect democracy, this is hands down
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  the most anti democratic opinion I've seen in my lifetime. I totally agree with
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  Turley. That was my belief even before I saw Turley on Fox News Channel,
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  but that further confirmed my opinion because he is somebody that I trust on
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  these matters, and I am very confident that the use Supreme Court is going
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  to overrule this. There's so much about this that is wrong. A lot
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  of people on the right have pointed to the obvious hypocrisy of those on the
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  left, both in the media and in the Democratic Party when it comes to
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  the issue of preserving democracy. I mean, this is something that everybody can
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  understand. Wait a minute, you're preserving democracy by making sure that somebody doesn't
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  have ballot access for something that they were never even charged with, that just
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  doesn't pass remotely the smell test to anybody. It's an obvious hypocrisy. And
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  by the way, there's also some hypocrisy on behalf of Trump himself, because
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  Trump himself has tried ways to get DeSantis off of the ballot and to get
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  drop out of the race. And of course he has said there shouldn't be
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  a primary, and he hasn't participated in any primary debates. So it's not
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  exactly like Donald Trump is mister Democracy. But of course that's the mantra that
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  suits his self interest. Right now, he's playing the martyr and it's going
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  to work, especially among his people and the fake Obama swamy. Just as
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  I predicted many many months ago, was the first to jump in front of
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  this bullet for Donald Trump. He virtue signaled all over this saying that he
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  will not participate in any primary in Colorado. Of course, he's not even
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  going to be in the race by the time this thing gets to Colorado,
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  and demanded that his fellow alleged Trump opponents do the same thing, and that
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  they need the boycott Colorado. Of course, this is all just a play
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  by for Fake Obama Swamy in his effort to increase his persona and get a
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  stake of maga ink once Trump is gone and maybe, in a fantasy world,
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  become Trump's vice presidential nominee. That's all what fake Obama Swami is about.
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  But as predictable as it was, it was also i'm sure very effective
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  because he got a lot of attention, and of course he forced Ron DeSantis
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  to do exactly the same thing. DeSantis had no choice, as he's had
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  no choice every time Trump has been indicted. It's been, you know,
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  water torture, seeing the same thing over and over and over again. Even
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  as DeSantis continues to fall further and further behind in the polls, and this
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  becomes a more and more hopeless situation for rond de Santis to be the Republican
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  nominee. But I get it, there's no other option here. You have
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  to do this if you want to be taken seriously in a Republican presidential primary.
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  And all of this narrative fits perfectly with the Trump as martyr. This
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  system is rigged against me narrative that I think has been the number one reason
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  why Trump has taken a stranglehold over the Republican nominating process. I pinpointed this
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  after the first indictment back in the spring, and I've said this many times,
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  but it absolutely bears repeating. Once. Tucker Carlson, with the help
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  of Glen Beck, started this narrative on Fox News Channel, with Beck wearing
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  the red Maga hat that this narrative that we have to rally around Trump because
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  if we don't, we're going to lose our country and we can't let liberals
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  get away with this, so we've got to go with Trump. That's basically
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  what they said. That narrative I knew would be devastating, not just because
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  it would appeal to Trumper's but it would appeal to people who were Trump friendly,
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  people who like Donald Trump but were open to another option. And so
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  it also made those people feel better about their support for Trump because it wasn't
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  just about Trump, it was about something bigger than him. It was about
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  saving the country. Well, this plays right into that narrative, maybe even
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  more so than the indictments do, because this is very clear cut. This
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  is as obvious as it gets. This is ballid access being denied by a
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  Democratic party in the minds of most Republican voters, even though weirdly the many
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  of the people behind this lawsuit were Republicans. Although Republicans in name only,
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  they're the true rhinos. They're the real super anti Trump quote unquote conservatives that
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  all sold their souls. I'm the only one left that never did that.
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  But that's another story for another day. The reality here is that this all
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  works out very very well for Trump in his narrative where he can say that
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  these hypocrites, these people that are coming after me, they're all a bunch
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  of hypocrites. They claim to be in favor of democracy, but now they're
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  trying to rig the election. This is elect interference by keeping me off the
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  ballot. Gee, I wonder why they're doing that. They're doing that because
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  I'm so dangerous. I'm the one they fear the most. And of course
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  that's an argument that can't lose right now in the Republican Party, especially when
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  Trump is perceived as beating Biden in the polls, and right now when you
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  add in all of the prospective candidates, not just to head to head with
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  Trump and Biden. Trump absolutely is winning outside the margin of error. I
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  still don't believe that that's the way it'll all work out in November twenty twenty
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  four. It could be. I'm not convinced at all that that's where we
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  are, but that's the perception and that's all that Trump needs right now,
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  and this is the clinching moment for the nomination. Now, he was always
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  going to win, but you know, there had just been some polling in
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  New Hampshire that showed Nicky Haley, who I've been predicting was going to end
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  up second in this whole process for the last several months, that Nicky Haley
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  was making some headway in New Hampshire, that she was within fifteen points of
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  Trump in New Hampshire forty four to twenty nine. Now I'm not sure I
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  necessarily one hundred percent by that Nikki Haley is at twenty nine percent, but
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  I can certainly see a scenario where she gets within striking distance of Trump in
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  New Hampshire. Not New Jersey, but New Hampshire. And there's now a
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  new poll out where Haley is ahead of DeSantis fairly even in Iowa, which
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  is just an absolute death knell for DeSantis. I mean, it is a
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  absolute blood bath right now in the polling for Ron DeSantis. But I first
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  want to deal with Haley because I think Haley is now going to end up
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  being the bigger story, what's left of a story when it comes to the
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  Republican nominating process. Unfortunately, I'm now in the camp. I've been in
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  the camp that Desanta's had no chance since September when I declared the race over.
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  But I've been holding out hope that there is at least a scenario where
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  he was able to save face and this wasn't a complete embarrassment. I am
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  now essentially waving the white flag even on that the most likely scenarow here is
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  complete catastrophe for Ron DeSantis in virtually every way possible. I'll get more to
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  that in just a moment. But with regard to Haley, because a lot
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  of people do not understand how Haley is possibly making this run. She's not
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  appealing to any major group or faction within the Republican Party, and she's been
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  beaten up quite a bit in these debates. So how is it that this
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  is happening? And I have been predicting this for quite a while, and
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  the primary misconception that people have, I think about the entire Republican race,
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  and my thinking has somewhat involved on this even I'm not sure I had it
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  nailed right at the beginning, but I really do believe that we are in
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  a situation where the Republican Party is basically broken down into three groups. Now,
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  I've said this previously, and I've tried to make this point even on
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  News Nation, on Dan Abrams television show, where this is the great misconception
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  that people have about what happened with Ron DeSantis. Desantus never ended up nailing
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  down any of these three groups. But the three groups are the Trump cult
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  members, the Trump like members, and then the anti Trump group. And
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  I think we've now basically figured out that those groups break into forty forty and
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  twenty forty percent of the Republican based primary voters are Trump cult members. They're
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  with Trump no matter what. Forty percent were open to another option, and
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  they were specifically open to another option because of his handling of COVID and because
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  they did not think he could win in an election in twenty twenty four after
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  he had just lost in twenty twenty. So that's forty percent, and then
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  the other twenty percent are people like me who are anti Trump, although they're
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  not really like me, because you know, I'm still a conservative and I
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  would not ever favor Niki Haley unless it was the only other option. I
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  have said that Nicki Haley would have the best chance of beating Joe Biden,
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  and I would certainly take her over Donald Trump in a heartbeat, no questions
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  asked. But I don't particularly like Nikki Haley. But anyway, I'm just
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  describing what we now know about the state of the party. So under this
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  forty forty twenty split, basically what has happened is that that twenty percent has
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  all gone to Haley. Now, in New Hampshire, because of the voting
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  rules, you get a far more liberal or less conservative voting base, a
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  lot of independence. You don't get that in Iowa. So these percentages shift
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  slightly when it comes state the state, especially when in Iowa you have a
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  caucus, so you have the most passionate people who are going to show up
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  at a caucus. So the Iowa caucus voter is far more conservative than the
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  New Hampshire primary voters. So that's why the numbers don't work perfectly. They're
• 20:15
  going to be more than twenty percent anti Trump in New Hampshire, which has
• 20:18
  an anti Trump Republican quote unquote governor who just endorsed Nicky Haley. So that's
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  why she's at twenty nine percent there and has a little bit of room to
• 20:29
  go higher. And so what I think has happened here is that forty percent
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  in the middle essentially forgot about covid is that faded away, and once it
• 20:42
  was perceived that Trump was gonna beat Biden, that concern faded away, and
• 20:48
  the indictments got them emotionally invested in rallying around Donald Trump. And they see
• 20:55
  the polling and they realize all their friends are rallying around Donald Trump, and
• 20:59
  they've voted for Donald Trump several times previously, so they're just all coming home
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  now. And that's why people under the Santas team can't understand why the better
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  he does in these debates and he crushes Gavin Newsom, he does all the
• 21:15
  great things as governor Florida, it doesn't matter because it's not about him.
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  This race was never about him. It was always about Trump and whether or
• 21:26
  not people were going to rally back around him and come home. And so
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  what DeSantis is currently seeing is he didn't ever lock down the twenty percent that's
• 21:37
  anti Trump. He left that wide open for Nicki Haley and to a lesser
• 21:41
  degree, Chris Christy, and he lost the people in the middle because the
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  concerns about Trump faded and the negative perception of his campaign, especially the lift
• 21:52
  off and everything that happened after that, which is why I was so apoplectic
• 21:56
  at that time over the whole Twitter failed launched the event with Elon musk Is.
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  I knew that was going to be a very deadly narrative. People were
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  going to be looking for an excuse to come back on the Trump train,
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  and you can't give them anything. And the idea that the Desanta's campaign wasn't
• 22:17
  up to the challenge and wasn't ready for prime time, that was basically an
• 22:22
  excuse for people to go back to Trump. So Trump held on to his
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  forty percent of the cult, maybe even added to that because of the indictments,
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  that forty percent in the middle has slowly but surely, regardless of events,
• 22:37
  regardless of what Desantas did in any of these debates, has shifted back
• 22:41
  to Trump, not because of DeSantis being bad, simply because of the things
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  I just told you. The concerns about Trump faded away. People forgot about
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  the bad stuff, they forgot about COVID. They rallied around him because of
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  the indictments and this situation I'm sure with the ballot in Colorado is only going
• 23:03
  to add to this. And they started to believe he's gonna beat Biden.
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  And if you think he's gonna beat Biden, then why would you bother to
• 23:11
  not come home to Donald Trump. It makes some sense, at least in
• 23:17
  the minds of a Trump loyalist. And so that's why Haley is doing as
• 23:22
  well as she is. It's really only in relation to the Santis. DeSantis
• 23:26
  is losing that forty percent in the middle that he had a chance at.
• 23:32
  She has the twenty percent nationally or thereabouts. She could get that, especially
• 23:37
  if she does well in New Hampshire. But in New Hampshire she's doing better
• 23:38
  than that twenty percent because of the nature of New Hampshire, and so she's
• 23:44
  not gaining any real loyal supporters. She's just the last option for the people
• 23:49
  who still really do not like Donald Trump, which is about twenty percent nationally
• 23:56
  of the Republican Party. And the great irony of what I see happening right
• 24:00
  now currently in New Hampshire is that the best thing that can happen for Donald
• 24:07
  Trump in New Hampshire is for DeSantis to do well enough in Iowa that he
• 24:15
  continues on into New Hampshire. That sounds crazy, but I really think that's
• 24:21
  where we're at if I'm Trump right now. Not that I'm worried, but
• 24:26
  the only scenario where this becomes a real race is Haley beats DeSantis in Iowa,
• 24:33
  which would be a shocker, but I'm not vetting against that right now.
• 24:37
  I think that's fifty to fifty at worst if you're on the nikky Haley
• 24:42
  side and I'm still on the Rhine de Santa side. So I look at
• 24:45
  that as a situation where I'm still hoping for DeSantis to somehow finish a decent
• 24:51
  second, which I think is still possible. If I come to my head,
• 24:53
  I'd still say, all right, the Santas will probably get second based
• 24:57
  upon passion and organization, but I'm no longer even surer that. But here's
• 25:04
  the scenario where this becomes somewhat of a race Hally wins over De Santis and
• 25:11
  gets a you know, surprising second place finish. The media goes bananas over
• 25:15
  that, and then DeSantis drops out. If that, if you're Trump,
• 25:22
  that's what you want. You want the Santas out because where the De Santas
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  voter is gonna go. Some will never go to Trump, but the vast
• 25:32
  majority are going to go to Trump. But if the Santas stays in,
• 25:36
  if the Santa stays in as a wounded animal and holds on to his ten
• 25:41
  eleven, twelve percent, and if Christy doesn't get out and he's got about
• 25:48
  ten percent in New Hampshire, then that means Trump wins New Hampshire and it's
• 25:52
  all over, because once you win Iowa to New Hampshire, it's all over.
• 25:56
  Even under these bizarre circumstances where someone is facing four indictments, there's no
• 26:02
  scenario where Trump doesn't win the nomination at that point. And Haley probably drops
• 26:07
  out either just before or just after South Carolina and then it's officially over.
• 26:12
  But the great irony here and the weirdness of this situation is if you're Haley,
• 26:19
  you actually you want DeSantis to stay in. You want Christie out,
• 26:26
  but you want DeSantis to stay in because of my baseline belief of what the
• 26:32
  Republican Party currently is, and that is eighty percent have at least some loyalty
• 26:38
  to Donald Trump, and that's where DeSantis was getting his support. From the
• 26:44
  beginning. They were basically disaffected, tired Trump voters, pissed off about COVID,
• 26:51
  worried about him not being able to beat Biden, and liking what Desantas
• 26:56
  did during COVID and what he did in winning big in the midterms in Florida.
• 27:00
  That was the base of DeSantis' support, and almost all of that as
• 27:06
  he eroded because of the reasons I've stated several times already, most importantly that
• 27:12
  there's no longer any fear among Republicans that Trump will lose, which of course
• 27:18
  is insane because this guy is facing four criminal indictments and somehow is going to
• 27:25
  be confirmed as the nominee. In my view, without ever attending a debate.
• 27:33
  We don't know whether or not he's going to be a convicted felon by
• 27:36
  the time November twenty twenty four comes around. We don't even know if he's
• 27:40
  going to be on every ballot, Although I think that he will, but
• 27:42
  it's certainly not official at this point. He's currently not on the ballot in
• 27:47
  Colorado, and we don't even know who is vice presidential pick is going to
• 27:52
  be. We don't even know who is vice presidential pick is going to be,
• 27:56
  which he at least has control over that he doesn't have control over some
• 28:00
  of the other things I mentioned. Loie clearly has control over whether or not
• 28:03
  he actually debates, but that is probably the most stunning part of Trump winning
• 28:10
  the Republican nomination to me, he dodges all the debates, just as I
• 28:14
  predicted. We don't know if he's going to be a convicted felon, which
• 28:18
  is certainly very possible by the time he faces the voters in November twenty twenty
• 28:22
  four. We don't know if he's going to be on every ballot, and
• 28:25
  we don't even know who is vice presidential nominee is going to be. And
• 28:27
  this vice presidential nominee situation is the most important vice presidential pick ever ever.
• 28:37
  Why because we've never had a former president running for election again who can only
• 28:44
  run for one term. He can only serve one term, and he's at
• 28:48
  an advanced age. He'll be in his eighties by the time he's done with
• 28:52
  his one term in office. Should he win, that means whoever he picks,
• 28:59
  especially if he wins, takes over the Republican Party going forward in just
• 29:03
  a couple of years, because there'll be a lame doc actor if he wins
• 29:07
  after the twenty twenty six midterm elections. So who he chooses is gonna be
• 29:15
  huge. Even if he loses, who he chooses is gonna be huge because
• 29:19
  that person will be seen as the heir apparent to MAGA, whether it's MAGA
• 29:25
  InCor the MAGA political machine. But that is clearly a large part of this
• 29:32
  equation. And there was a very interesting moment in an interview that Tucker Carlson
• 29:37
  did with Timpoole at a MAGA event earlier this week. Now, Tim Poole
• 29:42
  was somebody I've mentioned previously. I think I nailed it when I did.
• 29:48
  I pegged him very early on as a bad warning sign for what was going
• 29:52
  to happen, because Timpoole is the guy who cerebrally ought to be a DeSantis
• 29:59
  supporter. I don't even know what his politics really are, but he was
• 30:02
  very anti COVID tyranny, and he said a lot of good things about the
• 30:07
  Santis, but he very early on I think he put his finger up into
• 30:12
  the wind as one of these independent podcaster types and realized that it was in
• 30:18
  his self interest to get on the Trump train as early as possible. And
• 30:22
  I believe I even played a clip of him doing exactly that, based upon
• 30:26
  no logic or reasoning whatsoever. And I said at the time, this is
• 30:30
  a bad, bad sign for where the winds are going to blow. Here
• 30:37
  from a media perspective within the so called right wing media, well, I've
• 30:42
  been one hundred percent right in that analysis. And here he was interviewing Tucker
• 30:47
  Carlson, about whom I've also been one hundred percent right from moment one way
• 30:52
  ahead of the curve and have called Tucker constantly the MVP of the Trump campaign.
• 30:59
  But I want to play two clips from this interview from two very different
• 31:03
  perspectives. The first deals with this issue of the vice presidential pick for Donald
• 31:08
  Trump, and Tucker, of course has been referenced as a possible VP pick
• 31:15
  for Trump. Ordinarily I would say that's crazy, but it's Trump, so
• 31:21
  you never know for sure, And Tucker has not dismissed this idea. Whether
• 31:26
  because he thinks it's a good idea for him to be able to take over
• 31:30
  Magga inc to be even considered as a vice presidential nominee, or maybe he
• 31:34
  really thinks it's possible. Who knows. It doesn't really fit his persona because
• 31:38
  he doesn't claim to be a political guy. He's a commentator, he's an
• 31:44
  entertainer. But okay, whatever, But this clip I'm about to play for
• 31:48
  you is about Nikky Haley because under the most likely scenarios here, we have
• 31:55
  a situation where Haley is going to be the person who finishes a clear second
• 32:00
  in the Republican primary process. She may come very close in New Hampshire.
• 32:06
  I mean, if Desantra stays in and viable Christy gets out, Haley comes
• 32:09
  in second in Iowa and has momentum, I can see Haley coming very close
• 32:15
  to beating Trump in New Hampshire. That's a lot of ifs there, but
• 32:19
  that is a scenario that's not illogical. And if she were to beat Trump
• 32:23
  in New Hampshire, you got a race. Trump's still gonna win, but
• 32:28
  she got a race, especially with South Carolina around the corner her home state,
• 32:31
  so which again I still think Trump would beat her in South Carolina.
• 32:35
  But this is all a plausible scenario where you get a legitimate two person race,
• 32:40
  and under that scenario, you might be forced to pick Haley as your
• 32:45
  vice presidential nominee. I mean, after all, she was Trump's un ambassador,
• 32:49
  and you know previously he has said nice things about her, He's been
• 32:52
  asked about her recently, and did not discount the idea that she could be
• 32:57
  his vice presidential nominee. However, Tucker, his MVP, could not have
• 33:04
  been more declarative in not just discounting Haley as a potential vice presidential nominee,
• 33:12
  but threatening, I think erroneously and in a clear bluff situation, but threatening
• 33:20
  that he would be against the entire Trump Haley ticket if Haley was the vice
• 33:24
  presidential nominee. And here's what that sounded like when Tim Poole and Tucker Carlson
• 33:30
  discussed the topic, would you vote for Trump if he chose Nicky as VP?
• 33:35
  And would you guys think Trump That's the question that I asked you.
• 33:38
  Well, I would not only not vote for that ticket, I would I
• 33:42
  would advocate against it as strong as I could. Wow. Wow, Yeah,
• 33:45
  Well that's just poison I mean, here's someone who's actively opposed to the
• 33:49
  interests of the country I grew up in, who endorsed the BLM riots,
• 33:52
  and who is not only is not left but is neoliberal in the darkest most
• 34:00
  speaking of nihilists nihilistic way, and has no real popular support, is a
• 34:04
  creature of the oligarchs. So yeah, that would be that would be reason
• 34:07
  to oppose the ticket. Even Trump. Haley is a no go Nicki Haley.
• 34:13
  He would get assassinated immediately if that were the case. Yeah, And
• 34:15
  by the way, I just can't imagine a world where that could happen.
• 34:17
  That would be so crazy. I mean anything could happen, of course,
• 34:22
  but picking Nicky Haley, who's utterly treacherous and utterly dismiss it like the interests
• 34:30
  of Americans. Yeah, it's a no go for me, but it's a
• 34:32
  yes for black Rock. Now, to be clear, I think Tucker Carlson
• 34:37
  is bluffing there, because where would Tucker go at that point. Let's say
• 34:44
  this scenario turns out where Haley is the clear number two in the Republican primary
• 34:49
  contest, Trump feels at least somewhat obligated the picker to unify the party,
• 34:54
  not that that's what Trump usually uses, this mode of I mean, that
• 35:00
  would be too logical for Trump to do it that way, but it's at
• 35:04
  least plausible, and I believe that Haley would be the proper pick if he
• 35:07
  wants to win the election, largely because she's a female and because she does
• 35:13
  unite elements of the anti Trump very small, unfortunately anti Trump faction of the
• 35:20
  Republican Party. But that's not the way Trump normally does things. But it's
• 35:23
  plausible, plausible that he could pick Haley. I don't think that Tucker would
• 35:30
  stand by. I mean, that was very declarative language by Tucker. He
• 35:32
  kind of would be in a bine. Although this is a guy who,
• 35:36
  in the Dominion's Voting System lawsuit Discovery said that he passionately hated Donald Trump and
• 35:43
  couldn't wait to stop talking about him. And now he's on the Trump bandwagon
• 35:46
  as big as you can possibly be, showing up with him at UFC events.
• 35:51
  I mean, it's just insane what's happened with Tucker Carlson. But I
• 35:55
  think Tucker's bluffing because I don't think he would have another place to go,
• 36:00
  I mean, politically, business wise, if he jumped off the Trump train
• 36:04
  at that point. I don't know where his audience would be, because the
• 36:09
  Trump fans are gonna stick with him no matter who he picks as vice president
• 36:15
  now, or would some be irritated by a Haley pick. I'm sure they
• 36:19
  would be, especially if Tucker stood by his pledge, you know, to
• 36:23
  stir up trouble. But here's where I think the significance of this lies,
• 36:27
  and I think this is Tucker's play. I think Tucker knows he has enough
• 36:30
  sway within MAGA world, both directly with Trump and as well as with the
• 36:36
  audience, that if he makes a strong stand against Haley and threatens the boycott
• 36:42
  the ticket, then that's probably gonna be enough to sway Trump away from Nicky
• 36:47
  Haley. That, to me, is the significance of the clip I just
• 36:52
  played you. I find it hard to believe that Trump is gonna pick Nicky
• 36:57
  Haley unless he's absolutely forced to, almost a gunpoint, if Tucker, Carlson
• 37:02
  and people like that are so adamantly anti Nikki Haley. Now, as far
• 37:09
  as who Trump will pick, I honestly don't know. If it's not gonna
• 37:13
  be Haley, I don't know who he goes to because it's a very complicated
• 37:17
  decision if you're Trump. And one of the things that makes this more difficult
• 37:22
  is, I'm sure positive that Trump understands what I just stated a few minutes
• 37:29
  ago, that his choice is effectively him picking an air apparent to his position,
• 37:36
  both politically as well as from the business standpoint of MAGA, Inc.
• 37:40
  So he either has to pick somebody he's really in love with and totally comfortable
• 37:46
  with succeeding him, or he has to pick someone who's not a threat.
• 37:52
  Now, in twenty sixteen, he picks someone who was not a threat.
• 37:57
  Mike Pence was not a threat. Mike pen Was never going to take over
• 38:02
  Magga, Inc. And at that point, obviously Trump had theoretically eight years
• 38:07
  to serve. Now he only has four years, and he's much older.
• 38:10
  So the heir apparent situation is far more dramatic, and it's it's much sooner
• 38:17
  in the future than it was when he picked Mike Pence in twenty sixteen.
• 38:22
  Now I realized that what I'm about to tell you is not going to happen,
• 38:27
  at least I don't think it's going to happen, And it sounds absolutely
• 38:30
  bonkers. But I've posted this on Twitter a couple of times, and people
• 38:36
  seem to understand where I'm coming from on this. If God forbid, Donald
• 38:42
  Trump came to me and said, zig I can't go with Haley because Tucker
• 38:46
  is gonna just, you know, go crazy about this. And I don't
• 38:51
  want somebody who is going to be a threat to my kingdom. And I
• 38:55
  don't want I don't want to be picking an air, but I want to.
• 38:59
  I want to pick someone who's going to help me win the election.
• 39:01
  Who should I pick? And I gotta tell you the first Dave that I
• 39:06
  would currently choose. I can't believe I'm saying this. I would say John
• 39:10
  Fetterman. I know that sounds bonkers, But has anybody noticed what has happened
• 39:17
  to John Fetterman since he's suddenly been healing medically from his stroke. It is
• 39:23
  the most underreported political story of the year. I mean, John Fetterman has
• 39:30
  turned into a common sense populist. I don't know, I foots because his
• 39:36
  brain is healing or I have no idea. I really do not know what's
• 39:40
  going on. But on a series of issues, John Fetterman has made pronounced
• 39:47
  statement very very declarative statements that are against the orthodoxy of the Democratic Party,
• 39:53
  and if they came out of Donald Trump's mouth, I would have not have
• 39:58
  blinked an eye. That's Trump. That's trump populism right there. And you
• 40:05
  know, if he picks Fetterman, I think he wins. He wins Pennsylvania
• 40:10
  for sure, probably wins Michigan, maybe wins Wisconsin's the that's the ticket that
• 40:17
  he punched in twenty sixteen, because Fetterman would be a very popular pick among
• 40:24
  you know, populist white Democrats who you know, abandoned Trump in twenty twenty
• 40:30
  but got him elected in twenty sixteen. Not to mention, you know,
• 40:35
  I think the idea of picking a Democrat if you're Trump, because the only
• 40:38
  Trump could get away with that, right, Trump's the only guy in the
• 40:42
  world who could get away with picking someone from the other party because his cult
• 40:45
  would immediately go, this is brilliant, this is amazing, because that's the
• 40:50
  way his cult thinks everything he does is amazing. So we can get away
• 40:53
  with that with the base. It'll appeal to independent voters, especially in Pennsylvania.
• 41:00
  But the most appealing part of that wild of hair theory and proposal I
• 41:07
  have is that it's not a threat to MAGA Inc. Because Fetterman could never
• 41:12
  take over maga ink for a number of reasons. Now would Fetterman ever do
• 41:15
  it? Most people would say no, But I I don't know. I
• 41:22
  think if done under the right circumstances, Fetterman might just say, you know,
• 41:27
  sure, I'll do that for the good of the country. Again,
• 41:30
  it's not going to happen. But this is the bizarrow, upside down world
• 41:35
  in which we now live. It's also an indication of how difficult this VP
• 41:40
  decision is going to be for Trump and how absurd it is that we are
• 41:45
  going to make him the nominee without even knowing who he's going to choose.
• 41:52
  That's probably my most important point here. The right wing media has completely and
• 41:57
  totally failed on two fronts, getting Trump to debate and finding out who his
• 42:02
  vice presidential nominee was going to be. And by the way, not just
• 42:07
  the right wing media failed, but the other candidates failed. I've suggested to
• 42:12
  the DeSantis campaign not that they listen aning I do obviously, or say obviously,
• 42:16
  but to demand to declare who your VP was going to be, and
• 42:22
  demand who we know Trump's VP was going to be, because that is an
• 42:27
  incredibly important decision and it is absolutely asinine and an indication of how totally broken
• 42:34
  our entire system is, especially the right wing media, that we're going to
• 42:37
  nominate Donald Trump without him ever debating, not knowing if he's going to be
• 42:43
  a convicted felon, not knowing if he's going to be on every ballot,
• 42:45
  and not knowing who his vice presidential nominee is going to be. It's astonishing,
• 42:51
  It's absolutely amazing. Now I want to play one other clip from this
• 42:54
  Timpoole and Tucker Carlson interview because it it really hits on something that is a
• 43:01
  pet peeve of mine and something that I've been predicting for a while, and
• 43:06
  that is how people are going to rationalize not supporting Ron DeSantis, because if
• 43:13
  you're a true conservative, you can't do it on a logical or fact based
• 43:19
  basis. You can't. DeSantis is clearly the better candidate in every possible way,
• 43:25
  I mean every possible way. His background, his intellect, the fact
• 43:30
  that he's served in the military, Harvard and Yale, at what he's done
• 43:34
  in Florida, actually getting it done, the way he handled COVID winning massive
• 43:38
  win in re election in twenty twenty two. It can serve two terms as
• 43:44
  opposed to just one term. He's got a young, beautiful wife and a
• 43:46
  wonderful family. There's just no there is no logical argument to be made that
• 43:54
  Ron DeSantis is not the better candidate if you're a conservative than Donald Trump.
• 44:00
  It just does not exist. So therefore you need something to use as a
• 44:06
  rationalization. And I've been predicting this. I've been curious as to how exactly
• 44:12
  people like Tucker Carlson will rationalize it. Tim Poole is in this exact same
• 44:16
  group. Well, we have a clip of Tucker Carlson going through this rationalization
• 44:23
  process in this interview with Tim Poole, where on multiple occasions Tucker says,
• 44:30
  I really like Ronda Santez, which of course he does, because he agrees
• 44:34
  with just about everything he's done, except for the one thing that's gotten up
• 44:39
  Tucker's butthole for some reason, which is the entire Ukraine situation. And look,
• 44:44
  I don't know what to make of the Russian Ukraine War. I don't
• 44:47
  trust anybody. I don't trust Putin, I don't trust Zelensky, I don't
• 44:52
  trust Biden. I don't trust Trump. I don't trust anybody on it.
• 44:54
  I don't have enough information to know who's right who's wrong, you know,
• 45:00
  so I hardly ever talk about it because I only talk about things I feel
• 45:05
  like I have some expertise on. But talker is as anti Ukraine as anybody
• 45:13
  in the public sphere, and in this clip he lies flat out lies about
• 45:20
  one DeSantis's position and two what may have caused an alleged shift into Santis's position.
• 45:25
  So that's the second part of the clip. But the first part of
• 45:28
  the clip is this rationalization that Tucker comes up with for why it is that
• 45:35
  he's not a DeSantis campaign supporter. And here's what that sounded like. Can
• 45:38
  I ask a question, since you all are so on the internet and like,
• 45:42
  I'm not that much, you really get the sense that Ron DESANTISU I
• 45:47
  liked as governor, the people who represent him online are the nastiest, the
• 45:53
  stupidest, and the most zero sum people I've ever seen in my life.
• 45:57
  And I don't think that reflects him. But it's like, this is kind
• 46:00
  of small ball. And by the way, these purported conservatives, Ron Desanti
• 46:02
  has changed his view and I like him. Okay, I think he's been
• 46:06
  a good governor. I just want to be clear about that. I know
• 46:07
  him personally, I like him. But his donor, Ken Griffin, told
• 46:10
  him to change his view in Ukraine from it's a regional conflict we shouldn't get
• 46:15
  involved into. It's a super important thing. We should send more money.
• 46:19
  One donor got him to change his view, and all these so called conservatives
• 46:22
  are supporting that, like it's the most important thing. Every Like, who
• 46:24
  are these people and what is their problem? Like? What is going on
• 46:27
  with them? It does reflect Unran because Ron should have fired the people running
• 46:31
  his campaign a long time ago. Look, I respect that he wanted to
• 46:36
  launch his campaign on x on Twitter, space time and it failed miserably.
• 46:39
  This is a mistake. And now you've got look, I know a lot
• 46:43
  of people groan, but a lot of people laugh the high heels, you
• 46:45
  know, boots scandal. I mean, who's giving this guy advice? And
• 46:49
  why does he keep taking it? Because I will say it, I will
• 46:51
  say it politically and policy wise. We love Rond de Santis. Yeah,
• 46:53
  he's an amazing job. Hey, but his campaign is a train wreck.
• 46:58
  Yeah. Now I'm going to go in reverse order the tweet of that clip
• 47:04
  actually got a community notes. I guess you'd call it a disclaimer put on
• 47:09
  it by Twitter. That's where people who viewed the tweet claim that it's inaccurate,
• 47:17
  and so there's a community note put on it telling people, hey,
• 47:22
  look, there's something that you ought to know about the content of this tweet.
• 47:25
  And in this particular case, they reference that donor Ken Griffin, who
• 47:30
  has not donated to the santiss presidential campaign period. He's not donated, and
• 47:37
  he's even said he's staying out of the Republican race for the twenty twenty four
• 47:44
  nomination. So right there that entire conspiracy theory, which Tucker unfortunately is all
• 47:51
  too prone to buying into bizarre, insane conspiracy theories. But the conspiracy theory
• 47:57
  dies right there. Not to mention, he's greatly exaggerating Desantas's shift on the
• 48:04
  issue, But my god, can you imagine using that same standard that you're
• 48:08
  judging DeSantis buy to judge Trump. By my god, Trump, Trump has
• 48:15
  changed his positions on virtually everything on a constant basis. And this idea that
• 48:22
  somehow, well you know, people online who are DeSantis supporters are just the
• 48:25
  worst Are you fucking kidding me? That's all you've got. That's the best
• 48:30
  you can come up with to rationalize why you're gonna go with Trump instead of
• 48:35
  DeSantis because it's in your personal self interest to do so. Look, every
• 48:39
  candidate in this day and age has bad people supporting them on social media.
• 48:45
  Social media is a cesspool, especially when you have anonymous accounts. It's just
• 48:51
  awful. And are there there? You know? And frankly, there's been
• 48:53
  some Dessanta supporters. It doesn't bother me, you know. I think they've
• 48:58
  been very polite. A lot of them are way too dumb and naive when
• 49:01
  it comes to understanding what's gonna happen here in this primary process. And I've
• 49:07
  I'm sure I've pissed off many, many, many Desanta supporters online because I
• 49:10
  keep telling them they don't understand what they're up against, what's going to happen
• 49:15
  here. So I've been disappointed, and a lot of them have even acted
• 49:20
  like Trumpers. That's partially how I came to my theory that Desanta supporters are
• 49:23
  mostly just disaffected Trump supporters because they're acting exactly like Trump supporters when it comes
• 49:30
  to not believing in polls for instance, And look, the polls could be
• 49:36
  very, very wrong. I hope to this moment they're very wrong. In
• 49:38
  Iowa, caucuses are very difficult to pull, and so it's possible the polls
• 49:45
  are wrong, but they're not this wrong. It's not possible for them to
• 49:50
  be this wrong. It would be beyond historically catastrophic polling error for DeSantis to
• 49:59
  somehow we in Iowa, for instance, at this point, when he's down
• 50:01
  by at least thirty two points and seemingly fading behind Nikki Haley with much less
• 50:07
  than a month left to go, with Christmas in New Year's in between,
• 50:12
  It's just not gonna happen. But look, I think that I spend much
• 50:17
  of my day, unfortunately, on social media, and I see no evidence
• 50:21
  of what Tucker's talking about, especially when the guy he's supporting has the most
• 50:27
  vile supporters of anybody I've ever seen in the history of history. In the
• 50:30
  history of history, You've never gotten more low class, dumber, more hate
• 50:38
  filled people than Trump supporters in general. Obviously not all of them, but
• 50:44
  you know, we're talking about not just the anonymous rank and file, often
• 50:49
  sometimes bought accounts on Twitter, but even the big guns. Nobody's a bigger
• 50:54
  scumbag than Roger Stone who went after Casey DeSantis over not thing, or Laura
• 51:01
  Loomer who goes out to DeSantis and his family over all sorts of things.
• 51:05
  He's a big Trump supporter, or Alex Jones. I mean people, I
• 51:08
  mean, these are the people that are the big online supporters of Donald Trump
• 51:14
  and others. Matt Gates, who is a complete flaming dick. I mean,
• 51:17
  and this is the hill on which Tucker is going to plan his flag
• 51:22
  and say this is why I can't support Ron DeSantis. Are you fucking kidding
• 51:28
  me? Here's what's really going on. And this goes to one of I
• 51:31
  think my better analogies or metaphors to describe this whole race. If I had
• 51:37
  only a few seconds to describe what has happened here between Trump and DeSantis,
• 51:43
  it is this that the Republican base voter is a college aged girl who is
• 51:51
  deciding who to date, and her two choices are the bad boy celebrity alleged
• 51:58
  billionaire and a little bit awkward, somewhat boring, perfect marriage material in rohnd
• 52:06
  de Santis. Those are the two choices, as have been laid out within
• 52:12
  the prism of the media that these people tend to use, which is generally
• 52:15
  on the right wing. And this college girl is making this decision, and
• 52:21
  her brain is telling her to go with the Santis. Most of them,
• 52:23
  those that have a brain, the cult members don't have a brain, But
• 52:25
  I'm talking about this forty percent that I've described. In the middle, the
• 52:30
  brain is saying, boy, this guy ought DeSantis is awesome, great marriage
• 52:35
  material, but boy, it would be a lot of fun to go back
• 52:37
  with that Trump dude. And they have decided to go back to Trump,
• 52:43
  almost all of them, which is exactly the way the average college girl is
• 52:47
  going to make their decision. Trust me, I know this in personal experience,
• 52:52
  being much more the marriage camp than in the bad boy celebrity billionaire camp.
• 53:00
  And so you know, they went with the fun decision. They went
• 53:02
  with the fun choice. But now they have to rationalize it, at least
• 53:07
  some of them do. They have to rationalize their decision, right because the
• 53:12
  deep down they know it's not the right decision, so they have to rationalize
• 53:15
  it. So now every little thing about the Santis, whether it's his footwear
• 53:20
  or his awkward smile or whatever, the Disney thing, which you know Trump
• 53:25
  has tried to and others have tried to use as a weapon against the Sanders.
• 53:30
  Whatever it is, it doesn't really even have to be real, it
• 53:34
  can just be imagined. They need to rationalize why they passed up the perfect
• 53:38
  marriage material and went with the bad boy for the fun ride, because they
• 53:44
  know there's a good chance the fun ride is not going to end up well.
• 53:46
  It's going to end up poorly, just like it has previously. But
• 53:51
  they want to go. They want to go with the fun. Fun wins
• 53:54
  and marriage guy loses, as is going to happen, you know, in
• 53:59
  almost every case when the decider is a college age girl, which is effectively
• 54:04
  the mentality of the base Republican voter right now. So that's really what has
• 54:08
  happened here. And I don't know how ugly it's going to get for DeSantis,
• 54:14
  but it really has the potential to be extremely ugly right now. I
• 54:17
  mean, if I had to give you the most optimistic scenario for DeSantis right
• 54:22
  now, it would be that, you know, the polls are off in
• 54:28
  Iowa, organization still matters, which I'm not sure it really does, but
• 54:31
  it is a caucus, so it might he gets a decent second place finish
• 54:37
  in Iowa. At that point I would hope he would drop out and save
• 54:42
  face. He probably would not, And then from then, you know,
• 54:46
  I don't even know what the good scenario would be because he's not finishing better
• 54:52
  than third or fourth in New Hampshire. He's not. And if Haley is
• 54:54
  still in the race in South Carolina, he's not finishing better than third and
• 54:59
  South Carolina. So I just I don't, I don't. I'm trying to
• 55:04
  be as optimistic as possible. That's that's the best I got, which is
• 55:07
  which is not particularly good. All right. Obviously we'll talk more about the
• 55:13
  Iowa caucuses in the New Hampshire primary before this podcast ends, likely in the
• 55:20
  early February period, and I plan to drop out of public life. But
• 55:23
  that's partially how I determined that timetable, because I wanted to be around for
• 55:28
  Iowa and New Hampshire, which will happen in January of next year. One
• 55:32
  of the other major topics that I have discussed quite a bit on this podcast,
• 55:37
  other than the Republican nominating process, and I think where I have been
• 55:42
  rather prescient and way ahead of the game is on the issue of the death
• 55:46
  the impending death of football in America, at least tackle football in America.
• 55:53
  And let me first explain why I talk a lot about this. When I
• 55:58
  decide what topics I'm gonna tackle to use an appropriate phrase in this particular case,
• 56:05
  one of the main criteria is is there's something I have a strong opinion
• 56:09
  on and or expertise on that everyone else is missing. And I got to
• 56:15
  tell you, this demise of tackle football issue is right at the top of
• 56:21
  the list. I mean, I think I was incredibly prescient and what was
• 56:23
  gonna happen with regard to the Republican presidential nominating process. But I've been at
• 56:29
  least as prescient about what's gonna happen and is already happening when it comes to
• 56:34
  tackle football. And I am astonished that nobody is talking about this from the
• 56:40
  same perspective that I am. Nobody that I'm aware of. It's possible some
• 56:45
  people are. I know some people are raising the issue, but nowhere near
• 56:50
  to the lens that I have, and no one is seeing the big picture.
• 56:54
  And something just happened in the Washington Post which I found be absolutely extraordinary
• 57:01
  and the most amazing part of this is nobody that I can tell in the
• 57:07
  sports media is even discussing this. The Washington Post, in a massive,
• 57:14
  massive investigation slash expose, has laid out, laid out, almost word for
• 57:22
  word, exactly what I have been saying and predicting regarding tackle football. It
• 57:30
  is a blueprint for the end of tackle football in America. I mean,
• 57:37
  it couldn't. I mean, it's almost as if and I'm not suggesting this
• 57:39
  at all because nobody the Washington Post is listening to this podcast, I canna
• 57:43
  assure you, but it's almost as if they have been listening to them to
• 57:47
  this podcast and they decided to do this investigation, putting a liberal spin on
• 57:52
  what I have been saying. And so I want to go through this,
• 57:55
  and it's gonna be long, but I think if you bear with me,
• 58:00
  you're going to find this to be fascinating. And so what I've done with
• 58:04
  this Washington Post really, I mean, this is a huge story that they
• 58:08
  did. What I've done with this expose is I've probably picked out, in
• 58:13
  chronological order, maybe the most interesting fifteen to twenty percent of it, which
• 58:20
  is still going to be a lot, and I'll do some commentary in between.
• 58:24
  But I think this is very much worth going through because nobody else is
• 58:29
  doing so, and it's really important. It's also, I think culturally and
• 58:34
  politically fascinating, especially when it comes to this issue of the liberal conservative divide
• 58:39
  and the issue of tackle football. So the Washington Post story was entitled,
• 58:45
  under the headline the Divided States of Football, the changing face of America's favorite
• 58:52
  sport. How race, politics, culture and money are shaping which kids abandoned
• 59:00
  tackle football and which keep risking its toll. Now for background, the Washington
• 59:07
  Post and The New York Times have been leading the charge against tackle football for
• 59:12
  about a decade a little bit over a decade. They have been very much
• 59:16
  like climate change. They have been banging the drum that you know, that
• 59:22
  CTE and concussion issue is too dangerous, we shouldn't be playing tackle football.
• 59:29
  And they've been drumming up I believe the data. They've been I think exaggerating
• 59:35
  the data because the data when it comes to CTE and concussions is inherently flawed.
• 59:40
  Why well, because you can only test for ct when someone dies.
• 59:47
  That's a big problem one because generally you know they're long past their football career
• 59:53
  at that point, once they've died, not always junior, Sayhowe, I
• 59:58
  think was a seminal moment situation. Former All Pro linebacker for the San Diego
• 1:00:02
  Chargers, then he committed suicide. But you're only tested for this once you
• 1:00:09
  die, and you only get tested if you or your heirs want you to
• 1:00:15
  be tested. Well, why would they want you to be tested well because
• 1:00:21
  they think you might have had a problem, and or they might be setting
• 1:00:27
  up for a lawsuit. Because there's clearly a lot of money involved in this.
• 1:00:30
  There have has already been a lot of money when it comes to the
• 1:00:34
  issue of CTE and concussions, and there's a lot of money to be had
• 1:00:37
  when it comes to the National Football League. So you have an inherent bias
• 1:00:43
  in the tests that are done because the only brains being tested are those that
• 1:00:49
  are highly suspected of having had a problem. Whether that was caused by football
• 1:00:54
  and concussions or caused by something else, we don't know for sure. And
• 1:00:59
  I'm not suggested that this is totally bogus. I don't think it's totally bogus.
• 1:01:02
  I'm suggesting that it might be greatly exaggerated because, for instance, the
• 1:01:08
  inherent bias in the science behind us. But if you're the Washington Post,
• 1:01:13
  science has spoken, just like it spoke with climate change, just like it
• 1:01:15
  spoke with COVID, and you can't go against science otherwise you are a knuckle
• 1:01:21
  dragging Trump supporter who's risking the lives have been a said children. And if
• 1:01:25
  you think I'm exaggerating, I'm not, because that's the essence of this article.
• 1:01:30
  So the article starts off talking about the incredibly significant place that football has
• 1:01:37
  in American culture, and then it gets into the issue of the risk and
• 1:01:45
  the physical toll of a sport linked to brain damage tackle football. There are
• 1:01:52
  wide divisions marked by politics, economics, and race, and an examine by
• 1:02:00
  The Washington Post has found and as the sport grapples with the steep overall decline
• 1:02:06
  and participation among young people, some of those divisions appear to be getting wider.
• 1:02:12
  The Post found with football's risks continuing to be borne by boys in places
• 1:02:19
  that tend to be poorer and more conservative, a revelation with disturbing implications for
• 1:02:27
  the future of the sport. While participation is falling almost everywhere. The Post
• 1:02:32
  found, boys in the most conservative, poorest states continue to play high school
• 1:02:38
  tackle football at higher rates than those in wealthier and more politically liberal areas.
• 1:02:45
  By the way, I believe that, and that's been a basis for a
• 1:02:50
  lot of what I've discussed on this topic. I have said that it's liberals
• 1:02:52
  that are deshrying to destroy football. I have coached high school football in both
• 1:02:59
  a very conservative area of the country and a very liberal area of the country,
• 1:03:04
  and it was night and day. And that was years ago, which
• 1:03:07
  I'm sure it's more dramatic today, but so they You know, there's this
• 1:03:13
  racial and economic divide that the Post found back to their article the politicization of
• 1:03:19
  the Concussion crisis. This is the politicization of science in the minds of the
• 1:03:23
  Washington Post, is forging deeper divisions between those who support youth football and those
• 1:03:30
  who don't. And while precise data about football's racial makeup is hard to come
• 1:03:36
  by, the demographics appear to be gradually shifting. Among kids and teens,
• 1:03:43
  white and black males are playing tackle football at declining rates, while Hispanic boys
• 1:03:51
  increasingly take up the sport. In college, the proportion of white players is
• 1:03:57
  declining and that of black players rising at faster rates than national demographic changes.
• 1:04:06
  Now, let me stop there for a second. This is where liberals can
• 1:04:11
  never ever ever get it, or at least not state the truth when it
• 1:04:15
  comes to issues of race, because they have massive blind spots, and there's
• 1:04:20
  a blind spot when it comes to that data point. Why is it that
• 1:04:27
  at the high school level you have declining rates among whites and blacks, but
• 1:04:31
  somehow black participation in college football is actually increasing while white participation is going down.
• 1:04:42
  Well, it's actually pretty simple. In high school you pretty much can
• 1:04:46
  if you want to play, you can play, you can be on the
• 1:04:49
  team. In college you have to be really, really really good, especially
• 1:04:56
  at the Division IE level. And why is it that there are more blacks
• 1:05:00
  playing college football now in comparison to whites than a decade or previous to that.
• 1:05:06
  Because the game has changed, not because of the concussion issue, not
• 1:05:12
  because of economic issues. The game has become far more wide open. The
• 1:05:17
  game is now promoting speed and quickness far more than it ever did before,
• 1:05:24
  which is fine. I mean I have a problem with that when it comes
• 1:05:28
  to the qualities that football has always promoted, and that it has been a
• 1:05:33
  game and a sport where you had to do all sorts of good things.
• 1:05:38
  You had to be strong, you had to be tough, you had to
• 1:05:41
  be quick, you had to be fast, you had to be able to
• 1:05:42
  throw the ball, catch the ball, block and tackle. You had to
• 1:05:45
  have grit and courage, teamwork, strategy. All of that is what made
• 1:05:50
  football great. Now it's basically becoming a track meet. And I mean that
• 1:05:56
  sincerely. And you know what. I based at partially on my experience coaching
• 1:06:02
  high school football thirteen years ago. Now here in southern California, where it
• 1:06:06
  was super soft even then, I'm sure it's softer now. I've watched a
• 1:06:11
  lot of college and high school football, obviously in this state, and it's
• 1:06:15
  always softer here, but that's seeping into other states. I've been watching highlights
• 1:06:20
  in Ohio, where I used to be a TV sportscaster and wrote a book
• 1:06:24
  about a high school football team. It's becoming a track meet there, even
• 1:06:27
  at the highest levels. Even Texas. I was watching the highlights of the
• 1:06:31
  Texas state championship games this past week and I realized, highlights are highlights,
• 1:06:36
  but it's a track meet. It's basketball with pads. You're running track,
• 1:06:44
  just with some obstacles in your way. I mean, that's really what it
• 1:06:47
  is. Even in Texas well, that is a game. There's a reason
• 1:06:51
  why black people dominate basketball because for whatever reason, black people tend to be
• 1:06:58
  faster, quicker, jump higher than white people or Asian people or Hispanic people
• 1:07:03
  do. The liberal media will never acknowledge that black athletes revel in this.
• 1:07:09
  They love talking about this. Everyone knows it to be true, but we're
• 1:07:13
  not allowed to talk about it. I guess because Jimmy the Green got fired,
• 1:07:16
  you know, thirty five years ago. I don't get it, because
• 1:07:20
  it's as obvious it could as it could possibly be. But the liberal media
• 1:07:24
  will not accept this, and therefore they can't properly interpret the data. But
• 1:07:29
  that's the reason for the divide when it comes to what's happening with participation in
• 1:07:34
  college football among racial lines. But then they get into the politics. And
• 1:07:40
  here's what the Post had to say about that. High schoolers in states that
• 1:07:44
  voted for former President Donald Trump in twenty twenty played football last year at a
• 1:07:48
  rate roughly one point five times as high as those in states that went for
• 1:07:55
  President Biden. So the participation in high school football was much great in Trump
• 1:08:00
  states than in Biden's states something that you didn't need any data to tell me
• 1:08:05
  that I could have told you. That would saved you a lot of time
• 1:08:08
  and effort. Washington Post. But okay, the Post found a significant divide
• 1:08:12
  that also existed a decade ago, so that hasn't really changed very much.
• 1:08:16
  But the poll results revealed that liberals are increasingly more likely to discourage children from
• 1:08:23
  playing football, while conservatives are just about as likely to recommend the sport now
• 1:08:29
  as in twenty twelve. Actually, when you look at the data as I
• 1:08:31
  did, conservatives are slightly more likely to recommend the sport than they were when
• 1:08:39
  this media hysteria began about concussions back in twenty twelve. Now, there's a
• 1:08:45
  quote here that I found to be there's several quotes in this article that I
• 1:08:48
  found to be incredibly enlightening and infuriating. This was one of them. This
• 1:08:54
  is from Andrew Linder, associate professor of sociology at Skidmore College who has studied
• 1:09:00
  the demographics of football participation. Listen to what Linder says. This is astonishing.
• 1:09:06
  There seems to be a very disturbing possibility that who your dad voted for
• 1:09:15
  in the presidential election could influence your risk for a very serious football related ailment
• 1:09:21
  or injury. Oh my god, how the hell did that garbage make it
• 1:09:28
  into the Washington Post. The amount of not just bias, but animous and
• 1:09:38
  you know, almost racism here that is dripping all over that quote is astonishing.
• 1:09:44
  And I'm somebody who can't stand Trump and has had a huge problem with
• 1:09:48
  Trump's supporters, But basically what that person is saying, this alleged expert,
• 1:09:54
  is my god, these Trump dads are putting their poor boy at risk of
• 1:10:02
  concussions and ct and very serious ailments and injuries, all because of their conservative
• 1:10:11
  nature. That is the implication, the clear implication that these knuckle dragging Trump
• 1:10:17
  dads trying to relive their high school glory days, are forcing their poor sons
• 1:10:25
  to endure these inevitable concussions and the CTE that comes with it. Well,
• 1:10:31
  there's so many problems with that. Number One, there's a lot of people
• 1:10:36
  that play football that never get a concussion, especially high school football, and
• 1:10:41
  never suffer from ct and do just find their whole lives. There's also the
• 1:10:45
  issue of do liberals even understand that we all die? Do liberals understand this?
• 1:10:53
  It's an honest question, do they understand that we all die at some
• 1:10:57
  point and that we really don't know when that's going to happen, and that
• 1:11:00
  we only live once, and we're only young once, and we're only young
• 1:11:04
  for a very short period of time, and there's really not that much exciting
• 1:11:10
  about life, and that for some people, playing high school football might end
• 1:11:14
  up being the highlight of their life, and that taking that away from them
• 1:11:18
  because you might theoretically get an injury that could negatively influence your brain function thirty
• 1:11:26
  forty years for now, or you know, give a bad test once you're
• 1:11:30
  dead, is interesting, but it shouldn't in no way, shape or form
• 1:11:36
  stop people from making that decision for themselves. And the implication of this entire
• 1:11:44
  article is these people should not be making this decision for themselves. They're just
• 1:11:47
  not smart enough. They're not understanding science. They're trying to make this like
• 1:11:51
  you know, cigarette smoking, and it's again there's echoes of COVID and climate
• 1:11:57
  change and we know better than you do. And there's also a problem with
• 1:12:02
  the demographics, which are gonna get to more in a bit, because this
• 1:12:06
  idea that if you're from a conservative state and you're playing football, you must
• 1:12:12
  be a Trump supporter. Is ridiculous because a lot of these southern states where
• 1:12:18
  Trump is popular have huge black populations. It's the reason why the SEC is
• 1:12:27
  the best conference in football because they have the best combination of demographics, conservative
• 1:12:34
  white males and lots of black kids in the cities. That's why they're good
• 1:12:41
  at football, because that has always been the demographic formula up until the game's
• 1:12:46
  become a track meet for successful football teams. A understandable, I think enviable
• 1:12:55
  and laudable natural racial diversity. Of the things that made college football and high
• 1:13:01
  school football fantastic is he had natural racial diversity, not contrived equity bullshit.
• 1:13:11
  But it was a place where maybe the only place where white kids and black
• 1:13:15
  kids in a lot of communities ever could work together, become friends and realize
• 1:13:20
  that ninety eight percent of this racial divide is based on bullshit, which is
• 1:13:26
  a fantastic cultural phenomenon that unfortunately the Washington Post and liberals don't understand. But
• 1:13:32
  they don't even understand the demographics of this. It's it's so a lot of
• 1:13:39
  these kids from Atlanta or you know, Georgia is technically a Biden state now,
• 1:13:44
  but it ought to be a Trump state. But you know other cities
• 1:13:47
  in the South in Alabama, Birmingham and Mississippi and Louisiana, they are all
• 1:13:55
  sorts of cities with huge black populations that get count. It is Trump states
• 1:14:00
  when you're doing these stats. And it's just amazing that the Washington Post can't
• 1:14:05
  see this. All Right, So back to their expos The NFL, which
• 1:14:10
  is among the most influential cultural institutions in the United States, has long viewed
• 1:14:15
  the slow decline in high school participation rates beginning in two thousand and six and
• 1:14:19
  accelerating amid the avalanche of negative storylines in the twenty tens regarding traumatic brain injuries.
• 1:14:27
  By the way, they also cite the concussion movie, the Will Smith
• 1:14:30
  Concussion movie in twenty fifteen, which I believe has a lot of historical problems
• 1:14:36
  related to it. And they're also citing essentially their own coverage. I mean,
• 1:14:41
  they're basically citing themselves. Hey, remember when we in the New York
• 1:14:45
  Times started to scare the hell out of everybody, all these parents about the
• 1:14:48
  dangers of tackle football. Yeah, it started to negatively impact participation rates.
• 1:14:55
  That's when we still had some power and trust those are my words, but
• 1:14:58
  that's essentially what the Post is saying here. But the NFL sees this as
• 1:15:01
  an existential threat, the Post writes, the league has targeted it with a
• 1:15:06
  series of responses, most notably an embrace of flag football as an alternative pathway
• 1:15:15
  geared toward coaxing families back into the game. This is exactly what I have
• 1:15:21
  been talking about, where the NFL does view the issue of concussions as an
• 1:15:29
  existential threat, and they are trying to figure out how their incredibly successful business
• 1:15:35
  is going to be able to survive ten twenty years from now, and I
• 1:15:42
  think this article gets close to understanding exactly what their strategy is. And it's
• 1:15:47
  very close to what I've been telling you on this podcast for the last couple
• 1:15:51
  of months. But back to the Post story, viewed from a wider lens,
• 1:15:57
  high school football is in steep study decline. Participation has fallen seventeen percent
• 1:16:03
  since two thousand and six, when more than one point one million boys played
• 1:16:08
  the sport, a larger decline than any of the other top ten most popular
• 1:16:13
  boys sports. Data in the sprawling and unregulated sports industry is less reliable,
• 1:16:18
  but regular participation in tackle football among kids ages six to twelve fell thirteen percent
• 1:16:25
  from two thousand and nine to twenty twenty two. This according to annual survey
• 1:16:30
  data from the Sports and Fitness Industry Association. Even Texas, often considered the
• 1:16:38
  heart of American high school football, has had a twelve percent decline and participation
• 1:16:44
  since twenty thirteen. By the way, going back to those demographics, I
• 1:16:49
  honestly believe that the entire basis of the post claiming that Hispanic participation has increased
• 1:16:59
  is simply be because the Hispanic population of Texas has dramatically increased, and high
• 1:17:05
  school football, even though it's not as popular there, is still extremely popular.
• 1:17:11
  And you simply have a number of Hispanic people playing tackle football because that's
• 1:17:15
  what you do in Texas. And so when the population of Texas becomes more
• 1:17:19
  and more Hispanic, the population of high school football players becomes more and more
• 1:17:25
  Hispanic. Plus there's also the inherent problem of defining races in this day and
• 1:17:29
  age, which is becoming more and more difficult, but that's another story for
• 1:17:32
  another day. Twenty three states in twenty twenty two had high school football participation
• 1:17:41
  that exceeded the national overall rate. Nineteen of those twenty three states went for
• 1:17:47
  Trump in the twenty twenty presidential election. That's pretty extraordinary. I mean,
• 1:17:54
  that is a political divide right there. Twenty three states where high schoo football
• 1:18:00
  is more popular than it is elsewhere, more popular than the median state or
• 1:18:06
  the average state. And of those twenty three, nineteen went to Trump.
• 1:18:12
  And I guarantee George's one of those, and it should have gone to Trump,
• 1:18:15
  so it really should be twenty out of twenty three. That's more than
• 1:18:20
  a coincidence. There's a direct correlation there. And this goes to something that
• 1:18:25
  I've talked about constantly, which is conservatives still understand the value of tackle football
• 1:18:31
  while liberals are abandoning it and trying to destroy it in a very clear and
• 1:18:38
  systematic fashion. And they have a polling result here does the Post that is
• 1:18:45
  really very very telling. The question is would you recommend children today to play
• 1:18:50
  youth or high school football or would you discourage them from it? Now,
• 1:18:56
  interestingly, they did not use the word tackle football. My guess is they
• 1:19:00
  didn't use the word tackle in twenty twelve, and they wanted to duplicate the
• 1:19:04
  same question in twenty twenty three to be able to compare the results. Well,
• 1:19:10
  here are the results they got. Despite eleven years of very negative media
• 1:19:15
  coverage, the percentage of people who would recommend children play youth or high school
• 1:19:21
  football has only gone down by three percentage points, which is really within the
• 1:19:27
  margin of error. It went from sixty seven to sixty four percent. However,
• 1:19:31
  among liberals it's taken a nose dive from sixty three percent to forty four
• 1:19:40
  percent. So now a pretty strong majority of liberals would not recommend children play
• 1:19:48
  youth or high school football, even without the word tackle in there. If
• 1:19:51
  you put the word tackle in there, my guess is that number is way
• 1:19:56
  below forty four percent among liberals. Among moderates it's basically the same as it
• 1:20:01
  was sixty nine sixty six, And among conservatives this is fascinating. Among conservatives
• 1:20:09
  that number is actually increased from seventy to seventy five percent, which tells me
• 1:20:15
  this is kind of like the Trump effect, where conservatives automatically go against whatever
• 1:20:21
  media narrative is being created on the left. So if the left is attacking
• 1:20:27
  football, there's a rally around the flag effect for football, at least to
• 1:20:30
  some degree. When it comes to parents, recommending that children play the game.
• 1:20:35
  But think about the stark difference. I mean, there's no inherent reason,
• 1:20:41
  and historically there wasn't previously any result that was consistent with this. There's
• 1:20:46
  no inherent reason why liberals and conservatives should see football so dramatically different. And
• 1:20:54
  yet seventy five percent of conservatives would recommend children play, only forty four percent
• 1:21:00
  of liberals. And that goes right to the heart of this issue that I
• 1:21:03
  have been harping on that nobody else seems to see the handwriting on the wall
• 1:21:09
  that liberals are going to destroy tackle football for a number of reasons. Now
• 1:21:16
  back to the post article, Football's longstanding racial gap appears to be growing at
• 1:21:23
  the college level. I've addressed why I believe that is. From twenty eleven
• 1:21:28
  to twenty twenty two, the percentage of white football players across all three divisions
• 1:21:30
  fell from fifty five to forty four percent, a decline similar to that of
• 1:21:36
  several other popular men's sports, but one that outpays demographic trends in the United
• 1:21:41
  States. During that stretch, While the national percentage of the black population remained
• 1:21:45
  flat, black representation in college football rows thirty six to forty percent, the
• 1:21:51
  largest increase among men's sports, and the share of football players who describe themselves
• 1:22:00
  as more than one race actually tripled from two percent to six percent, which
• 1:22:04
  I think goes to the issue of confusion over what people's races. But the
• 1:22:09
  point of that whole thing, just to reiterate what I said previously, that's
• 1:22:14
  not an interest situation. Everyone you know who's an athlete would love to play
• 1:22:17
  college football. I mean, if you've ever played football at all, you
• 1:22:20
  don't get to make that choice. That's not your choice. That's the choice
• 1:22:26
  of the colleges and the coaches, and whether you get recruited. You have
• 1:22:29
  to be exceedingly good, especially to play Division one at the top, top
• 1:22:34
  level, and the game has changed and it's putting more of an emphasis on
• 1:22:40
  speed, and that's why you're getting more black players and fewer white players.
• 1:22:45
  Now here's another one of these quotes that is just astonishing. This might be
• 1:22:49
  worse than the previous one that I already cited. Kathleen Bakinski, an assistant
• 1:22:55
  professor of public health at Muhlenberg College, an author of quote No Game for
• 1:23:00
  Boys to Play the History of youth football and the origins of a public health
• 1:23:06
  crisis. Gee, I wonder what her bias here might be. She's a
• 1:23:12
  female professor at Muhlenberg College and has written a book whose title is very clearly
• 1:23:17
  anti football, about as anti football as you could possibly get. And here's
• 1:23:24
  what she said. I think we'll see disproportionately white and affluent families leaving tackle
• 1:23:31
  football over time. And then she says, if that happens, it leaves
• 1:23:40
  the sport in a pretty troubling realm. It raises profound and I would say
• 1:23:45
  troubling questions about what risks we think are acceptable to whom. Now that's the
• 1:23:55
  part of this that is really striking to me, because that's right out of
• 1:24:01
  the COVID playbook. Troubling questions about what risks we think are acceptable to whom.
• 1:24:11
  This is our decision. Now, it's ambiguous as to who she means
• 1:24:15
  as we. Does she mean we the experts, does she mean we as
• 1:24:19
  society? Society? I don't really think she even means we as the parents
• 1:24:25
  or the kids. She she means probably the expert class based upon what we
• 1:24:30
  learned during COVID that we think are acceptable to whom. And it's troubling to
• 1:24:39
  her that you know that we're gonna lose whites from affluent families from playing football.
• 1:24:45
  By the way, I agree with that. I think that's a real
• 1:24:47
  thing because I think that, you know, that's the situation for a lot
• 1:24:51
  of reasons. I mean, I don't I'm even gonna go into why that
• 1:24:55
  is because I'm gonna get sidetracked, and I could probably I will eventually,
• 1:24:59
  hopefully before the end of podcast in February, tell some specific stories about my
• 1:25:03
  experience at a white, mostly white, affluent high school here in southern California
• 1:25:09
  as a high school football coach, and they're hilarious. I mean, the
• 1:25:12
  wussification was beyond comprehension and really had a major impact on my view of where
• 1:25:18
  the sport was headed. But I agree that, and that's a group that's
• 1:25:25
  generally very liberal, especially in places like California, White affluent people who have
• 1:25:30
  other options and are afraid of risk. When you're affluent, you're inherently more
• 1:25:35
  afraid of risk than you are when you're not affluent. That's just human nature.
• 1:25:42
  But I'm more concerned with this idea that it's not our choice anymore,
• 1:25:45
  that after COVID, it's the choice of the experts. Or you know,
• 1:25:50
  the establishment, or whoever's making the rules. And there have been efforts,
• 1:25:55
  which are referred to in this article in several liberal states to ban football among
• 1:26:00
  kids who are younger than twelve. Now, no one has actually done it
• 1:26:04
  yet, and I think the only reason why they have it is because it
• 1:26:08
  would piss off too many black parents. And obviously, if you're a governor
• 1:26:13
  of a liberal state, you don't want to do that. But it's been
• 1:26:16
  proposed in six different states, and so it's coming. It's coming. It's
• 1:26:21
  not just going to be a situation where they're educating you to the risks and
• 1:26:25
  you get to make your own decision. I would be okay with that.
• 1:26:28
  It's going to be a situation where we're going to make the decision for you,
• 1:26:31
  and the NFL is going to be a huge part of making that decision
• 1:26:35
  for all of us. Here's a quote from a top NFL executive, the
• 1:26:44
  future of football is flag. This is in the Washington Post article. This
• 1:26:49
  is exactly what I've been predicting, so I want to repeat it. Quote.
• 1:26:54
  The future of football, top NFL executives have declared publicly several times in
• 1:26:59
  recent minds is flag. Unquote now, I don't know if that's an actual
• 1:27:02
  quote or they're just kind of summarizing what numerous statements have been and obviously with
• 1:27:09
  the embrace of flag football and the Olympics and what have you, I'm not
• 1:27:13
  sure, but that's what the post wrote. So an NFL vice president said
• 1:27:17
  the boom in flag football is at least partly the result of NFL and collegiate
• 1:27:23
  offenses becoming more wide open and passing focused. The game is more about space
• 1:27:29
  and speed, it's more about middle schoolers understanding complex root combinations. Flag is
• 1:27:35
  more positioned now to be congruent and aligned with the way football is going.
• 1:27:44
  That's an NFL vice president telling you, Yep, we're headed towards flag We're
• 1:27:51
  just laying the foundation right now, folks. We're going towards some form of
• 1:27:56
  flag football. Quote in a world where a sizeable percentage of the population once
• 1:28:02
  to imprison Anthony Fauci, Oh my god, this is this quote right here.
• 1:28:06
  This takes the cake because this goes right to my theory that this is
• 1:28:10
  a lot like COVID and you've got to accept the science or you're a knuckle
• 1:28:14
  dragging Trump's supporter, and we need to stop these people from killing themselves.
• 1:28:17
  So this is a quote from Keith Strudler, who's a director of the School
• 1:28:24
  of Communication and Media Montclair State, another state university. G I wonder what
• 1:28:29
  his bias is, who has studied Americans' attitudes towards football. He says,
• 1:28:34
  in a world we're a sizable percentage of the population, meaning Trump fans once
• 1:28:40
  to imprison Anthony Fauci, it's probably not a stretch that they would continue to
• 1:28:45
  let their kids play football. Oh my god, how condescending is that.
• 1:28:54
  And again, it's not just white parents. There are black parents who are
• 1:29:00
  also doing exactly this, who are not Trump fans and who probably don't think
• 1:29:04
  Anthony Fauci belongs in prison. But the part of that quote that I found
• 1:29:10
  to be the most telling is this idea that these experts, even in the
• 1:29:14
  Washington Post article on football, are directly connecting COVID with the demise of football
• 1:29:21
  and the lack of willingness to obey the science experts as a sign that these
• 1:29:30
  people don't know what they're doing. They've got to be stopped. It's just
• 1:29:33
  like COVID, folks, My god, these morons, Look what they're doing
• 1:29:39
  to their kids. They shouldn't be allowed to do this. We must stop
• 1:29:43
  them. We must step in and stop them, just like we did with
• 1:29:46
  COVID. Not that we did anything positive with COVID. We failed at every
• 1:29:50
  possible turn in COVID, but in our minds we didn't. And Anthony Fauci
• 1:29:56
  is still a hero. And and so if conservatives hate Fauci and concer it
• 1:30:00
  Is are still liking tackle football, then that's because they don't accept science as
• 1:30:04
  real. That's the view of these assholes, these supposed experts. It's it's
• 1:30:10
  really astonishing. Then back to the This is back to the flag football issue,
• 1:30:15
  which is what I've been harping on on this podcast for several weeks.
• 1:30:20
  Viewed with a wider lens. Though the debate over youth football may already be
• 1:30:26
  over, within the NFL's embrace of flag football is an alternative gateway into the
• 1:30:31
  sport, many experts and advocates see the beginning of the end of tackle football
• 1:30:38
  for kids. To be clear, if it's over for kids, that means
• 1:30:41
  it's over at high school and you cannot just turn a flip a switch in
• 1:30:47
  college and get the same kind of sport. You just cannot and That's why
• 1:30:53
  I've been so pessimistic because I'm seeing what's happening on the high school level.
• 1:30:56
  It's going to seep in. It's been seeping into the college level and went
• 1:31:00
  on at the top level. The NFL has completely changed the culture and the
• 1:31:03
  rules, something I'm going to get to again with what's happened this past week.
• 1:31:08
  Momentarily it's over. There's no path here for any other outcome. Back
• 1:31:15
  to the article quote, I think the NFL's behavior an embracing flag is very
• 1:31:20
  clear in that they know which way this is going, said as somebody of
• 1:31:26
  the Concussion Legacy Foundation. That's why you're seeing flag football becoming a high school
• 1:31:31
  sport. It's why you see the push to get the sport into the Olympics.
• 1:31:36
  They're trying to make the transition as slow and controlled as possible, which
• 1:31:44
  is something I've also been saying. This is how they can do it.
• 1:31:48
  They know they can't kill football in one fell swoop. They can't do it.
• 1:31:54
  And you know, I have to say, because I've examined my own
• 1:31:58
  thinking, is why does this bother me so much much? It bothers me
• 1:32:00
  because I think the sport as it was was imperfect but great, and we're
• 1:32:03
  gonna lose something truly American when this happens, and we're never gonna get it
• 1:32:09
  back. So that part bothers me. But I'm also bothered by the fact
• 1:32:13
  that we can't just admit what's happening. I can't stand playing pretend in all
• 1:32:17
  areas of life. If you're gonna screw me, tell me you're screwing me.
• 1:32:23
  If we're gonna wimp out, let's admit we're gonna wimp out. If
• 1:32:27
  if we're gonna go with the celebrity bad boy billionaire and Donald Trump instead of
• 1:32:31
  the perfect marriage material in Rond de Santras, let's just admit that's what we're
• 1:32:35
  doing. Can we please? Can we please just admit it? If there
• 1:32:40
  had been a press conference, you know, by Roger Goodell, and he
• 1:32:45
  said, look, we are ending football. We see the handwriting on the
• 1:32:49
  wall. Tackle football as we know it is over. We're gonna play I
• 1:32:54
  don't know, one or two more years, and then we're gonna transition into
• 1:32:58
  flag or some very of flag. I could at least respect that, But
• 1:33:02
  what they're doing is bit by bit, piece by piece, doing so in
• 1:33:08
  a way that I have to say has been incredibly effective because the vast majority
• 1:33:13
  of football fans don't even realize it's happening. You turn the kickoff into a
• 1:33:16
  ceremonial play, but you still go through it because people then think there's still
• 1:33:21
  a kickoff, but there is no kickoff, and then you do little things
• 1:33:26
  that change the game, and before you know it, you didn't even really
• 1:33:30
  understand what was happening until you go back and you watch Super Bowl highlights from
• 1:33:33
  ten to twenty thirty years ago or something like that, which I'm still convinced
• 1:33:38
  are going to be banned from NFL network and ESPN eventually because it's going to
• 1:33:43
  make the NFL look so bad. But this is the strategy. They have
• 1:33:48
  to do so in a slow and controlled fashion. How long it's going to
• 1:33:51
  take, I don't know. I've been using the ten year timeframe. It
• 1:33:57
  could be sooner than that. Based upon this article, it could be sooner
• 1:34:00
  than that that we end up with a fundamentally different sport, even at the
• 1:34:04
  NFL level. Back to the article youth football, this concussion, so called
• 1:34:10
  expert believes is doomed to die off, with a timing dependent on the NFL's
• 1:34:15
  willingness to get behind a ban. If that happens, they said, it
• 1:34:21
  dies very quickly, and if not, it's going to die very slowly,
• 1:34:26
  but it's still going to die. The scientific evidence is too strong. We
• 1:34:31
  go with the the science has spoken, the science is settled. This is
• 1:34:35
  overwhelming. I don't believe it's overwhelming because of the reasons I've already stated.
• 1:34:41
  But you know what, I don't even care if it's overwhelming. This is
• 1:34:45
  something that people should be able to make their own decisions about, educated decisions,
• 1:34:49
  but make their own decisions about risk and reward and the kind of life
• 1:34:54
  they want to live. But liberals don't want you to have that authority over
• 1:34:58
  you, and post co they think they can get away with this. The
• 1:35:03
  future health of the sport then could hinge in part on converting adolescent flag players
• 1:35:11
  into teenage tackle players. And I just don't think that that's realistic. I
• 1:35:15
  think that is a huge leap. Having coached it myself, I've coached both
• 1:35:20
  brands, and I just think that it is a much bigger leap, although
• 1:35:25
  that leap might be diminishing as tackle football becomes wissified. But I think that's
• 1:35:30
  that is a bit delusional. I think that and the later you go here,
• 1:35:34
  if you're going to start transitioning kids at fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,
• 1:35:38
  whatever, when the so called experts say that they're less prone to CTE,
• 1:35:43
  how they without even know that. I have no idea, but you know,
• 1:35:45
  that seems to be the most politically viable path for them to take.
• 1:35:48
  You're going to transition them then then into tackle football. That's just not going
• 1:35:54
  to work. It's just not going to work. And I've already referenced it.
• 1:35:58
  Legislation could hasten the process. Lawmakers and at least six liberal leading states
• 1:36:02
  California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York have
• 1:36:05
  introduced bills in recent years that would ban tackle football for children under twelve,
• 1:36:11
  but so far the legislation has met strong opposition from the youth football industry and
• 1:36:15
  its backers, and none has passed. The reason why, I believe,
• 1:36:21
  is because of the fact that you still have a strong participation of black kids
• 1:36:28
  in tackle football. Once that ends, it's over. It's kind of like
• 1:36:30
  the reverse of what I always said about the COVID pandemic. I believe to
• 1:36:36
  this day that the easiest way for the so called pandemic to end was for
• 1:36:44
  the black community to rise up in opposition. If the black community had ever
• 1:36:48
  been convinced that this was a scam and a hoax or not. I mean,
• 1:36:54
  to be clear, COVID was real, but that what we were doing
• 1:36:58
  was a gross over reaction, unnecessary and counterproductive. If the black community had
• 1:37:02
  been convinced of that, democratic governors would have folded instantly. Well, it's
• 1:37:08
  similar here, only in reverse. If black communities fold when it comes to
• 1:37:14
  tackle football, then tackle football is done. It's over because it'll be eliminated
• 1:37:19
  in liberal states and it'll become purely a niche sport in the Southeast. That's
• 1:37:27
  basically what it'll be. And you know, I just think the whole thing's
• 1:37:31
  a shame. I think it is a classic example of where liberals destroy everything.
• 1:37:41
  I wish liberals were nearly as good at actually governing as they are at
• 1:37:46
  destroying things. They're savants at this. They know exactly how to do this.
• 1:37:51
  And the main reason why they hate this is because they think that it
• 1:37:58
  elevates and celebrates toxic masculinity, and they hate everything about it. They hate
• 1:38:03
  the cheerleaders because it promotes the patriarchy. By the way, it's my impression.
• 1:38:10
  And I have an eleven year old daughter, who you know, was
• 1:38:12
  a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader for Halloween last year, who no longer is all that
• 1:38:16
  interested in cheerleading, and I think partially because they don't show the cheerleaders on
• 1:38:21
  television nearly as much as they used to. And the only reason I'm even
• 1:38:26
  that tune to that is because of my daughter being so into the Dallas Cowboy
• 1:38:30
  cheerleaders. I started looking and realizing they never even show them on show them
• 1:38:33
  anymore, which you know clearly is not because men stopped liking watching cheerleaders on
• 1:38:40
  television. It's because somehow it's politically incorrect within the mindset. And I'm not
• 1:38:45
  even suggesting it's out of a conspiracy. I just think that the people that
• 1:38:49
  are making these decisions now view things like cheerleaders as from a bygone era and
• 1:38:57
  an era of America that was sexist and racist and wrong, and we were,
• 1:39:01
  you know, somehow we're abusing women by forcing them to do this.
• 1:39:06
  And you know, one of the things that they've done with cheerleading, which
• 1:39:11
  I think was a brilliant way for liberals to destroy it, is by in
• 1:39:15
  many cases eliminating cuts. And as soon as you make it no longer prestigious
• 1:39:21
  to be a cheerleader, it's no longer cool. In fact, it becomes
• 1:39:25
  uncool to be a cheerleader, and all of a sudden, the entire dynamic
• 1:39:29
  changes. At the high school level. Now, cheerleading is still very,
• 1:39:32
  very significant, but again it's largely a Northeast phenomenon in this day and age,
• 1:39:39
  and I think it's you know, i'd like to see some numbers on
• 1:39:42
  that as well, because I think that dovetails with all of this. It's
• 1:39:45
  about killing the entire institution under the guise of safety, and it's very similar
• 1:39:51
  to what happened with COVID. And I guess the most astonishing thing to me
• 1:39:55
  is that so few people even understand what's happen opening That's why I keep harping
• 1:40:01
  on this, not just because I'm passionate about it and I have some knowledge
• 1:40:05
  about it. It's because nobody else is understanding the significance of what is happening,
• 1:40:13
  and it's so obvious, and it's going to happen within the next ten
• 1:40:18
  years, I believe, maybe even sooner than that. Now, in a
• 1:40:23
  little bit, I want to talk about something that's happened at the NFL level
• 1:40:28
  that relates to this whole issue of safety in football. But I want to
• 1:40:32
  first talk about something that relates to football and race, because that article in
• 1:40:39
  the Washington Post dealt with a lot of things, safety, politics, race,
• 1:40:45
  and the issue of race came up in a very significant way, in
• 1:40:48
  a very strange fashion, because a former NFL player named Rashard Mendenhall used to
• 1:40:55
  play for the Pittsburgh Steelers. And this is where, oddly, I'm going
• 1:40:58
  to finish the podcast talking about three different Pittsburgh Steelers, which was never part
• 1:41:01
  of the plan when I thought about this podcast originally, But Okay, it
• 1:41:05
  is what it is, and these are all very legitimate and have very little
• 1:41:10
  to do with actual sports. But Rashard Mendenhall, this was a absolutely fascinating
• 1:41:16
  situation that occurred this week where he tweeted quote, I'm sick of average white
• 1:41:24
  guys commentating on football. Commenting on football, y'all not even good at football.
• 1:41:30
  Can we please replace the Pro Bowl with an all black versus all white
• 1:41:34
  Bowl so these cats can stop trying to teach me who's good at football.
• 1:41:40
  I'm better than your goat now a lot of people think men in Hall's nuts,
• 1:41:46
  and he might be ironically, who knows, maybe he's a victim of
• 1:41:49
  CTE. But that tweet I had a dramatic evolution on when it came to
• 1:41:59
  my view of it and my analysis of it. When I first read it,
• 1:42:02
  I had the old school conservative knee jerk reaction of, well, how
• 1:42:09
  racist is that? And by the way, OutKick, a conservative sports media
• 1:42:15
  outlet, had exactly that take. Their take was, that's outrageous. It's
• 1:42:19
  clearly racist. He's saying that, you know, white people can't play football,
• 1:42:24
  and he's ripping into white people. Don't tell me you know who's good
• 1:42:30
  at football. I'm better than your goat. And it was, you know,
• 1:42:34
  obviously hypocritical and discriminatory when it comes to the general rules of public discourse.
• 1:42:42
  If a white guy had said what Mendenhall did. This is the view
• 1:42:45
  that OutKick had and what I originally had. If a white guy said that,
• 1:42:49
  there be hell to pay, right, So that was my original view
• 1:42:54
  of that tweet. I'm like, oh my god, here we go another
• 1:42:57
  example of reverse racism. And then something really interesting happened. People started reacting
• 1:43:04
  to that tweet, and it wasn't just black people or white people, you
• 1:43:11
  know, keep curling into the fetal position and acknowledging the correctness of what Mendenhall
• 1:43:18
  said and not pushing back on it or not having any fun with it.
• 1:43:21
  No, in fact, it was exactly the opposite. This was really eye
• 1:43:28
  opening, and in some ways it was the most important cultural moment at least
• 1:43:33
  of this week, maybe of this month, maybe even longer than that,
• 1:43:38
  because here's what occurred. It was almost magical. And I hate when I
• 1:43:42
  get optimistic, right, Whenever i'm optimistic, I'm like, oh, I'm
• 1:43:45
  going to be wrong about something. But it was almost magical to see very
• 1:43:51
  prominent white players or former players or commentators immediately jump on the tweet and tape
• 1:44:00
  menden Hall up on his proposal. Now, first of all, the idea
• 1:44:04
  that there would be a white versus Black Pro Bowl, my god, the
• 1:44:09
  ratings for that would be off the charts. They've already turned the Pro Bowl
• 1:44:13
  into a flag football game, which is part of why I'm convinced the NFL
• 1:44:15
  is going to become flag in some way, shape or form in the not
• 1:44:18
  too distant future. But if they ever did a real football game between all
• 1:44:24
  white and all black players. The ratings would probably be at least as big
• 1:44:29
  as the Super Bowl, maybe bigger if they did it right. I mean,
• 1:44:31
  we already saw what happened in the NCAA Women's basketball Championship this past spring
• 1:44:36
  when Iowa and Caitlin Clark played against LSU almost all white against almost all black.
• 1:44:43
  The ratings for that were off the charts for a number of reasons,
• 1:44:46
  but I think race played a very significant role in that. So this would
• 1:44:50
  be a fantastic idea, not that the NFL would ever have the balls to
• 1:44:55
  do it, but here's what was significant. All sorts of very major names,
• 1:45:00
  people with stuffed to lose, people like Pat McAfee's making a gazillion dollars
• 1:45:04
  on ESPN, they started to embrace the tweet and say, okay, let's
• 1:45:11
  game plan this out. Who would be the white players, who would we
• 1:45:14
  be the black players? What would we do with Patrick Mahomes who is half
• 1:45:18
  black, half white or whatever I think is racial makeup is? And people
• 1:45:23
  had fun with it, and in my view, it was fantastic. It
• 1:45:28
  was a lot like the whole Tommy DeVito embracing the Italian American stereotypes that has
• 1:45:34
  taken over in New York until the Giants lost their last game this past weekend.
• 1:45:40
  I mean, to me, it was awesome. And you had black
• 1:45:44
  people debating how their team would do against the white team and vice versa.
• 1:45:49
  And guess what. Nobody got harmed, nobody got canceled, nobody got injured,
• 1:45:57
  nobody's feelings seemed to be to have been hurt. It was fun.
• 1:46:00
  It was at times hilarious. I mean, the funniest part to me was
• 1:46:06
  when one particular black commentator went through an entire litany of who the matchups would
• 1:46:14
  include, and he was favoring the black team until he got to the place
• 1:46:18
  kickers and the punters and he said something to the effective, well, hopefully
• 1:46:23
  this game doesn't come down to a field goal. So, I mean,
• 1:46:27
  that's funny. It's also based in some reality, and it's positive. And
• 1:46:32
  so I changed one hundred and eighty degrees. I don't know what Mendon Hall's
• 1:46:36
  intent was, but the result of that tweet was fantastic, And I wonder,
• 1:46:45
  is it possible underlying possible that it's a sign of a change in the
• 1:46:50
  rules, that people are starting to realize we've gone too far here, and
• 1:46:57
  that This was one of those very weird episodes that exposed the ability that people
• 1:47:03
  still have to say, you know what, I'm going to risk cancelation here.
• 1:47:06
  I'm going to break with these unwritten rules and I'm going to have fun
• 1:47:11
  with this, and maybe some new, more sensible rules have been created.
• 1:47:15
  I hate being optimistic, but I do think it's possible that this was ended
• 1:47:19
  up being a positive development on the racial front, at least when it comes
• 1:47:25
  to sports. Now, there was another situation involving a Pittsburgh Steeler, a
• 1:47:30
  guy by the name of demonte Kazi or Casey Casey I guess is how you
• 1:47:34
  say his last name, who has now been suspended for the entire rest of
• 1:47:41
  the NFL season and the playoffs. Should the Pittsburgh Steelers, the team that
• 1:47:45
  he plays for used to play for, if they make the playoffs, which
• 1:47:48
  is doubtful at this point because they're in a noseedive, but Casey was involved
• 1:47:54
  in what might be the seminal moment of the season when it comes to the
• 1:48:00
  dramatic change in football. Casey has gotten a reputation for borderline hits and he
• 1:48:06
  has been punished previously, and he got suspended for the rest of the year,
• 1:48:12
  including playoffs that the Steelers make it because of a hit against the Indianapolis
• 1:48:16
  Colts wide receiver. Now, obviously this is an audio podcast. If you
• 1:48:23
  haven't seen the video, it should be easy to find. But basically what
• 1:48:27
  happened here was there was a pass down the field that was overthrown for the
• 1:48:30
  wide receiver, but the wide receiver could still make a play on it.
• 1:48:33
  But to make a play on it, he basically had to dive for the
• 1:48:36
  ball, which meant that his head. Obviously, if you dive for the
• 1:48:41
  ball, his head was going to be barely off the ground, and Casey
• 1:48:45
  went in to try to make a play to stop the receiver from making the
• 1:48:50
  catch, and his shoulder, not his helmet. His shoulder crashed into the
• 1:48:56
  wide receiver's helmet, and the hit appeared to be gruesome. It appeared to
• 1:49:01
  be, you know, one of those things where immediately go, oh my
• 1:49:03
  god, is that guy gonna be okay, which you don't see very often
• 1:49:08
  in the NFL anymore because of the new rules and the wussification. But it
• 1:49:12
  now has already become physically jolting. Never used to be, but it's now
• 1:49:16
  physically jolting. This is how fast our sensitivity has changed, and without even
• 1:49:21
  you know, anyone declaring that that hitting was over in the National Football League,
• 1:49:28
  but our sensitivity, our sensitivities have changed so dramatically that this this hit
• 1:49:33
  sent shockwaves through everybody in the field, in the announcers booth. Immediately there
• 1:49:39
  were three flags thrown, even before there was a look at the replay,
• 1:49:44
  and he was kicked out of the game and suspended for the rest of the
• 1:49:48
  season and penalized obviously. And when I look at the play, I'm like,
• 1:49:57
  Okay, yeah, that's that's a hit. He hit the helmet.
• 1:50:00
  You're not allowed to do that under the rules, even with your shoulder.
• 1:50:04
  But I have several concerns here. Number one, what was he supposed to
• 1:50:12
  do? What was he supposed to do? I mean, there's there's literally
• 1:50:15
  no way to make a play on that ball, and you're effectively creating And
• 1:50:19
  there was an NFL defensive back coach who essentially said this on Twitter. You're
• 1:50:25
  essentially creating a situation with that large a penalty against the defender where if you
• 1:50:31
  were a smart coach, you'd start teaching that play as an offensive play instead
• 1:50:39
  of trying to throw the pass. You know, at chess level, you
• 1:50:43
  actually try to throw the pass low over the middle because you're now basically forced
• 1:50:49
  to let the receiver catch the ball, because you obviously can't make contact with
• 1:50:58
  someone who's barely off the round without hitting their head. It's not physically possible,
• 1:51:02
  especially in a split second less than split second decision situation. So I
• 1:51:09
  don't even know what Casey was supposed to do. I don't even know for
• 1:51:14
  sure if he could have avoided contact at all by simply making any attempt to
• 1:51:20
  stop the pass from being completed. He was probably inevitably going to be called
• 1:51:26
  for a penalty, but the issue of a suspension for the rest of the
• 1:51:30
  year puts this in a completely different realm, one because of the incentives and
• 1:51:34
  disincentives that it creates going forward, but also from the standpoint of a just
• 1:51:41
  penalty. In order for there to be basically a felony conviction, which is
• 1:51:46
  what this was, there, doesn't there have to at least be some intent.
• 1:51:51
  There should be at least some ill intent, and there was no evidence
• 1:51:56
  of ill intent at all, And by the way, as it turned out,
• 1:52:00
  there was very little damage done. Now that it looked like at first,
• 1:52:02
  there was gonna be huge damage, but the player got up on his
• 1:52:05
  own power. He didn't return to the game, but he's apparently gonna be
• 1:52:10
  okay. He's gonna live. And so you have a situation with no evidence
• 1:52:14
  of ill intent, no real permanent damage where I'm not sure what the hell
• 1:52:17
  else he was supposed to do, and he's out for the rest of the
• 1:52:21
  year. And there's no sign that the players Union's going bananas over this that
• 1:52:27
  I can tell. And so this is I mean, that's a death blow
• 1:52:32
  to trying to play defense of any level. And most interestingly, the person
• 1:52:39
  who most prominently chimed in on this was none other than Tom Brady. Tom
• 1:52:45
  Brady, a quarterback obviously seven times Super Bowl champion, goat the whole business.
• 1:52:53
  He chimed in on Instagram. And the way Brady did this I found
• 1:52:58
  to be fascinating and telling, both in his strategy as well as the way
• 1:53:05
  the media reacted to it. I think his intent and basically what he said
• 1:53:13
  was that, you know, he wanted to blame everybody, essentially, That's
• 1:53:15
  what he said. He said quote to put the blame on the defensive player
• 1:53:19
  all the time is just flat out wrong. It's not okay quarterbacks to get
• 1:53:25
  your wide receivers hit because of your bad decisions. So what I think that
• 1:53:30
  is that's a direct quote, but that's a generalization of what of Brady was
• 1:53:35
  saying on Instagram, which was several sentences longer than that. I think what
• 1:53:40
  Brady was trying to do was to defend the hit without actually getting his hands
• 1:53:45
  dirty. He didn't want to have to say, you know, basically,
• 1:53:50
  how the hell is anybody supposed to defend going forward? Because the hit looked
• 1:53:56
  bad and because I think, you know, he's going to be a broadcaster
• 1:53:59
  supposedly on Fox next year. You know, he's trying to bridge this gap
• 1:54:04
  between telling what he thinks is the truth and also realizing that he's effectively going
• 1:54:10
  to be a partner of the National Football League and one of their biggest broadcast
• 1:54:15
  entities next year. But is Brady big enough with the seven Super Bowl rings
• 1:54:20
  and being the goat to where he can get away with stuff that other people
• 1:54:25
  wouldn't. And so I think Brady was trying to thread a needle. He
• 1:54:30
  was trying to make the bigger point that this this was bullshit would happen,
• 1:54:34
  But he used language that I think ended up making him vulnerable to being attacked
• 1:54:42
  because a lot of the media coverage I saw was based on the idea of,
• 1:54:45
  oh, here's a you know, a boomer yelling at the clouds.
• 1:54:49
  He's only been retired for a year, but you know, this is an
• 1:54:53
  old timer saying in my day, we never threw the ball in a situation
• 1:54:58
  like that to put our wider receiver in a vulnerable situation, which of course
• 1:55:01
  is not true, but that's how the media reacted to this. So Brady
• 1:55:09
  actually got a lot of negative blowback. And of course I'm very suspicious of
• 1:55:14
  suspicious of the sports media in general, but specifically on this issue, because
• 1:55:18
  it's obvious that they're taking orders from their corporate masters, and their corporate masters
• 1:55:24
  are in bed with the National Football League. It's a massive, inherent conflict
• 1:55:28
  of interest. And so I think Brady made a mistake by trying to thread
• 1:55:33
  the needle here, by trying to massage this, by trying to have it
• 1:55:36
  all ways. He wanted to make a point without going too far. He
• 1:55:41
  should have done what he's actually done previously, which is ironic given the fact
• 1:55:45
  that he probably benefited more from the wussification of the National Football League than anybody
• 1:55:49
  else. The only reason why he was still able to play football at forty
• 1:55:53
  five is because of the protection that he got from these new rules as a
• 1:55:57
  quarterback, especially as a quarterback who was a super star celebrity and was protected
• 1:56:01
  by the officials, which I've always thought actually gave him more credibility on this
• 1:56:06
  topic. But the media is not doing any favors to Tom Brady, and
• 1:56:13
  he should have just said, look, we're going too far here. How
• 1:56:15
  are you supposed to play defense? And I got to tell you, I
• 1:56:18
  mean, the loopholes now in the rules are so dramatic that if I had
• 1:56:26
  a crappy NFL offense, and there are a lot of them out there,
• 1:56:30
  I'm telling you my entire strategy would be to basically throw forty yard passes down
• 1:56:36
  the sideline that were purposely underthrown to force basically automatic pass interference penalties, which
• 1:56:45
  are spot of the foul penalties, which is insane. There ought to be
• 1:56:48
  two different versions of pass interference, but you know that would be strategy number
• 1:56:55
  one, because that's like an automatic thirty forty yard game. I mean,
• 1:56:58
  if you do it properly, to throw it, the defensive back still has
• 1:57:01
  his momentum going down the field, the wide receiver stops, the defensive back
• 1:57:06
  runs into the wide receiver. Automatic pass interference. You do that, maybe
• 1:57:11
  you throw a pass across the middle that you purposely throw low enough to where
• 1:57:14
  the defender, now with the legacy of CAZy in his mind, is afraid
• 1:57:18
  to defend it. So you just basically get a free shot. It's either
• 1:57:21
  an incomplete pass or it's a completed pass. And once the defensive backs all
• 1:57:27
  know they're going to get suspended for the rest of the year if they even
• 1:57:29
  make a play on it, the wide receivers don't even have to worry about
• 1:57:30
  getting hit in the head. So you just practice that. Instead of the
• 1:57:34
  traditional trying to hit him in the chest across the middle, you try to
• 1:57:39
  hit it just off the ground. You can't be defended. Then you get
• 1:57:43
  the ball to the one or two yard line and you do the stupid push
• 1:57:45
  push, and you're in the end zone. I mean, how does It's
• 1:57:50
  pretty simple? I mean, I realize I'm oversimplifying it, but not by
• 1:57:55
  much. And that's not football, that's bullshit, but that's what it's being
• 1:58:00
  thanks to these ridiculous rules in the overreaction by Roger Goodell, which is all
• 1:58:05
  based in this It all goes back to that Washington Post article. Casey gets
• 1:58:10
  suspended for the rest of this season, not because of ill intent or even
• 1:58:15
  the impact of the hit, or or what was he supposed to do differently,
• 1:58:18
  but because they need to send a message that they're super serious about concussions,
• 1:58:24
  because they see it as a lethal, mortal threat to their business model
• 1:58:30
  and it's going to lead to the end of football. Mark my words,
• 1:58:34
  it's absolutely in the cards. I just don't know when, and I just
• 1:58:40
  don't know exactly how now, since I've mentioned and even if I hadn't mentioned
• 1:58:45
  two Pittsburgh Steelers in this podcast, I would be remiss if I did not
• 1:58:48
  mention a third Pittsburgh Steeler, and fans of this podcast, especially of our
• 1:58:54
  previous podcast, with the benefit of hindsight, probably know where I'm going with
• 1:58:58
  this because as of this taping on the same Mber twentieth, although you'll hear
• 1:59:00
  this December twenty first or later than that because of the way we do our
• 1:59:05
  taping schedule. This is the one year anniversary of the death of Pittsburgh Steeler
• 1:59:10
  great Franco Harris and You're probably aware that I considered Franco Harris to be a
• 1:59:16
  very good friend of mine. I don't want to overstate the relationship. We
• 1:59:21
  had a special relationship, that's for sure. And it was a year ago
• 1:59:27
  that he suddenly passed away. His heart just stopped while on the couch all
• 1:59:31
  alone, just a couple of days before the world was set to celebrate the
• 1:59:35
  fiftieth anniversary of his Immaculate Reception, which is widely accepted as the greatest play
• 1:59:43
  in the history of football and certainly of the National Football League, something he
• 1:59:47
  was really looking forward to for over a year, and the NFL had scheduled
• 1:59:53
  a game on Saturday night specifically to honor Franco between the Steelers and the Raiders,
• 2:00:00
  which were the two teams that played in Pittsburgh in nineteen seventy two when
• 2:00:03
  that miraculous Immaculate Reception happened and made Franco famous and led to four Super Bowl
• 2:00:10
  victories by the Steelers. And I never even liked Franco Harris when he was
• 2:00:15
  a Pittsburgh Steeler. I was an Eagles fan growing up, and the idea
• 2:00:18
  that I would become very close to Franco was impossible. For a number of
• 2:00:24
  reasons, but it happened because of the entire Penn Stage, Joe Paterno Jerry
• 2:00:28
  Sandusky scandal. And you know, Franco and I were in a foxhole on
• 2:00:33
  that story for many, many years. We had a lot of late night
• 2:00:36
  conversations that I will always cherish. You know, no one's perfect. Franco
• 2:00:43
  wasn't perfect. He and I didn't agree on everything. We disagreed a lot,
• 2:00:48
  but he was a true inspiration to me, someone who I really really
• 2:00:53
  respected, and that I don't say that about too many people, especially not
• 2:00:57
  too many famous people, because I consider fame than celebrity to be a mental
• 2:01:01
  illness. It's probably more devastating than CTE based upon the current science. But
• 2:01:08
  Franco used his celebrity better than anybody that I'm aware of. Franco was imbued
• 2:01:14
  with magic powers because of that immaculate reception and the four Pittsburgh Steelers Super Bowls,
• 2:01:18
  and he used those magic powers not for himself but for everyone around him.
• 2:01:25
  And that's maybe the best thing I can say about Franco Harris, other
• 2:01:30
  than maybe the fact that I miss him so much. There's so many times
• 2:01:34
  when I wish that I could still have at least one last conversation with him.
• 2:01:39
  The fact that he happened to go so suddenly, I think, makes
• 2:01:42
  it so much worse. I've had this happen now three times in my life,
• 2:01:45
  my mother obviously being the most dramatic, where she was killed in a
• 2:01:48
  car accident. In nineteen ninety four. I had another very good friend who
• 2:01:51
  died of a heart attack without anyone around, very similar situation to what happened
• 2:01:58
  with Franco. And and then Franco goes without any you know, warning or
• 2:02:03
  any closure even really understanding what the heck actually happened. And I'm here in
• 2:02:10
  California, and you know, there's They'll never There'll never be any closure for
• 2:02:14
  me on this one either. And in fact, the only element of closure
• 2:02:18
  for me on the whole Franco Harris passing was the fact that effectively that was
• 2:02:24
  the end for me when it came to the entire Penn State, Joe Paterno
• 2:02:28
  Jerry Sandusky story. I still pay attention to it. I still post about
• 2:02:32
  it whenever appropriate. There are still occasionally people who come to me thinking that
• 2:02:38
  they can help save the day, and I listen to them, and I
• 2:02:41
  tell them that they're delusional. But you know, I'll try to help you
• 2:02:45
  if I can, but I'm not going to go out of my way.
• 2:02:47
  You know. Just recently there's been a new reporter was a pretty decent reputation
• 2:02:54
  who's been posting about a lot of my work on the case and the work
• 2:02:57
  of others and is convinced that Jerry and Dusky isn't fact innocent. But I'm
• 2:03:03
  very much aware. I've always been aware that we were going to lose.
• 2:03:05
  But when Franco passed away a year ago today, that was part of the
• 2:03:12
  equation of why it was so sad. That was the end. There's no
• 2:03:15
  going forward, there's no path to even assemblance a victory without Franco, nor,
• 2:03:21
  by the way, for me personally, was there really any reason to
• 2:03:28
  pursue victory. It became both impossible to win, even on the Paterno front
• 2:03:31
  without Franco because of his fame and power and charisma and courage. But it
• 2:03:39
  also became like, what's the point because even if somehow we do win,
• 2:03:43
  at least for me without Franco being around, it's not going to be worth
• 2:03:46
  it. Because there were there were many, many times when I wanted to
• 2:03:50
  give this thing up, and Franco kept me going. And part of it
• 2:03:56
  was I really wanted there to be that one last moment where Frank and I
• 2:04:00
  could celebrate at least some semblance of a victory and a vindication for truth and
• 2:04:06
  justice. Now we had a couple along the ways. Along the way,
• 2:04:10
  you know, when Joe Paterno got his four hundred and nine record wins restored,
• 2:04:15
  that was that was pretty good, But there was you know, getting
• 2:04:17
  the statue restored would have been huge. And it was my impression that Franco
• 2:04:24
  had a deal with the new governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, who was
• 2:04:28
  terrible on this whole story, specifically with regard to Graham Spaniard, who ended
• 2:04:32
  up voting for him anyway because he's such a good liberal. But you know,
• 2:04:36
  Franco and I, thankfully we did have at least one last conversation after
• 2:04:43
  we gotten a little bit of a fight, maybe our biggest fight ever,
• 2:04:45
  because Franco had told me he was not going to endorse Josh Shapiro, the
• 2:04:49
  Democrat for governor of Pennsylvania because of his handling of the penn State situation,
• 2:04:56
  and then he all of a sudden reversed himself and I'm like, Franco,
• 2:04:59
  what the hell, And we had a very difficult conversation. I think it
• 2:05:02
  might have been our last conversation that thankfully ended on a positive note, because
• 2:05:08
  Franco essentially told me I've kind of references previously, but just for the record,
• 2:05:14
  stated again it was my impression that he had a deal with Shapiro that
• 2:05:18
  when Shapiro was governor, that he would help Franco get Joe Paterno's statue put
• 2:05:24
  back up, which Shapiro would have absolutely the ability to do because he had
• 2:05:30
  enormous credibility on the story, having been so anti pen state and being a
• 2:05:34
  newly elected governor of Pennsylvania. If Shapiro wanted to do that, he could
• 2:05:40
  easily, in my opinion, get it done. But now that Franco died,
• 2:05:44
  I'm sure that that deal no longer if it ever did have any real
• 2:05:48
  sway with Shapiro, especially given who I perceive him to be, So that's
• 2:05:54
  likely never going to happen. And I understood and respected what Franco did there,
• 2:06:00
  and it's just a shame he didn't live long enough one to see the
• 2:06:01
  fifteenth anniversary of the immaculate reception, and two to be able to see Paterno's
• 2:06:08
  statue restored as it should be, because Joe Paterno did absolutely, positively nothing
• 2:06:14
  wrong and was a victim of this incredible historic rush to judgment of injustice that
• 2:06:19
  was the entire Jerry Sandusky case. But I psychologically, Franco's death was devastating
• 2:06:26
  to me and it was really the end of my deep involvement in the case.
• 2:06:30
  I just realized this the other day. This was not done consciously,
• 2:06:34
  but subconsciously. I think it's telling to how much Franco's death impacted my view
• 2:06:40
  of the case. We did not send Jerry Sandusky a Christmas card this year,
• 2:06:45
  now that we've done that every year. We always got a letter back
• 2:06:50
  from Jerry ever since I interviewed him in prison for the first time back in
• 2:06:55
  twenty thirteen, and that was always kind of a strange unquote Christmas card to
• 2:07:00
  get. We never really made a conscious decision not to send Jerry a Christmas
• 2:07:04
  card. We cut down dramatically on our Christmas cards for this year anyway,
• 2:07:10
  and sending Jerry is a card is a pain the ass because there's all sorts
• 2:07:14
  of rules that you have to follow, and you're never sure what the address
• 2:07:16
  is year to year. You have to send it to a third party.
• 2:07:19
  I mean I should have done it, but I just never did. And
• 2:07:23
  when I thought about it, I'm like, Eh, who cares. I
• 2:07:26
  mean, you know, poor Jerry, he's going to die in prison.
• 2:07:29
  But at this point it's kind of his fault because he's staying in state court
• 2:07:32
  against my advice, and he's only shot his federal court, especially now with
• 2:07:39
  the Franco's gone, and he was the only only theoretical friend he had in
• 2:07:44
  the state. And Grant Spanners book is out and didn't declare Jerry Sandusky innocent
• 2:07:49
  as it should have. So so all these things combined kind of made me
• 2:07:53
  realize, okay, so that that portion of my life is essentially over and
• 2:07:58
  we're just basically waiting for Jerry Rysindusky to die a horrible death in prison.
• 2:08:03
  And that's also part of why it is I'm ending the podcast and dropping out
• 2:08:07
  of public life sometime in February because I realize that there is no hope on
• 2:08:11
  that front, and without any hope on that front, there's no change in
• 2:08:16
  my particular situation. I'm going to be keep banging my head against the wall.
• 2:08:20
  And there's really no point to that, especially given what twenty twenty four
• 2:08:24
  looks like with Trump and Biden going at it on the presidential level and all
• 2:08:28
  the chaos that's going to be surrounding that insanity and nobody to root for and
• 2:08:33
  what have you. So I just wanted to acknowledge that the one year anniversary
• 2:08:37
  of Franco's passing and the impact that it has had on me personally as well
• 2:08:43
  as on my view of the entire Penn State Joe Paterno Jerry Sandusky case.
• 2:08:48
  I'm not telling people to give up on it totally. You know, as
• 2:08:50
  long as Jerry's still alive, there's still a semblance of hope that there could
• 2:08:54
  be something miraculous that occurs to fix that. It's just not consistent with anything
• 2:09:00
  that I've seen in life in fifty six years, almost fifty seven years now,
• 2:09:03
  and so I'm certainly not counting on that going forward. But Franco,
• 2:09:09
  we miss you. That's for darn shore. I don't miss anybody more than
• 2:09:15
  my mother, but I do miss Franco Harris, and we lost him one
• 2:09:18
  year ago today. One other since I'm doing Pittsburgh Sports Notes, I should
• 2:09:24
  at least mention that I made a mistake in the last episode of the podcast.
• 2:09:30
  One of the reasons I'm ending this podcast is I do two hours plus
• 2:09:33
  each episode, and the only thing I think about is all the mistakes I
• 2:09:37
  made, or the things I should have said that I didn't, or the
• 2:09:39
  things I should have said better than I did, and working without a script
• 2:09:43
  that means you're always going to have mistakes. And one of the mistakes I
• 2:09:46
  made was when I was talking about Tiger Woods and Charlie Woods, and I
• 2:09:52
  was going through modern sports figures that have exceeded their famous dads athletic achievements,
• 2:10:00
  because I don't think Charlie's going to be able to do that with Tiger,
• 2:10:03
  even though I'm rooting hard for him to do so. And I mentioned the
• 2:10:05
  Mannings, and I mentioned Kobe Bryant ironically since I covered him in Pittsburgh for
• 2:10:11
  a local TV station for the NBC affiliate in Steubenville, Ohio Wheeling, West
• 2:10:16
  Virginia. I did not mention Barry Bonds, whose father, Bobby Bonds,
• 2:10:20
  was a very good baseball player, and Barry was better than his dad.
• 2:10:26
  I think the reason I didn't remember to mention him in my defense is that
• 2:10:31
  the whole steroid thing is kind of erased Barry Bond's career in my mind,
• 2:10:37
  even though I literally covered him in a very negative fashion during a couple of
• 2:10:41
  playoff runs when he was with the Pittsburgh Pirates, and he still looked like
• 2:10:45
  a normal human being before he started on the steroids. But that, to
• 2:10:48
  me, it was interesting that I forgot Barry Bonds because it kind of showed
• 2:10:54
  how significant that steroid issue is. In my mind. It basically Barry Bonds
• 2:10:58
  has been erased, and in some of the baseball world he has been,
• 2:11:01
  but there's no question even before he did the steroids, he was even better
• 2:11:05
  than his dad, Bobby Bond, So I wanted to make that correction.
• 2:11:09
  This is our last episode before Christmas, and we only have one more episode
• 2:11:13
  to go before the end of the year because we will be taking off for
• 2:11:18
  the Christmas holiday. In that last episode of twenty twenty three, I do
• 2:11:22
  intend to interview my daughter, eleven year old Grace, about Christmas, among
• 2:11:28
  other things, but that'll be coming out a few days after Christmas, so
• 2:11:33
  obviously I'll be wishing you a merry Christmas. We'll have one more episode before
• 2:11:37
  the new year. Until then, thanks so much for listening to this episode
• 2:11:41
  number one hundred and fourteen of the Death of Journalism. Until next time,
• 2:11:46
  my name is John Zigler, wishing you a very merry Christmas.