9-24-25 - 7am - Why We Care About the Cabal

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Michael, let's remind the audience of two names, Roseanne Barr
and Gina Carrero. Now, Gina did work for Disney, since
Star Wars owns it, and Roseanne Barr's sitcom was in
collaboration with Disney via ABC. They both got ran out,

(00:21):
never be heard from again. But kim O, because he's
a good leftist, he gets to come back.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yes, And let's not forget the disclosures this week, which
we've generally known about before, but we now have as
the kids say, we've got the receipts about Google at
the request of Now we've already knew about Facebook Meta,
but now we know we've got the receipts from Google

(00:50):
at the request of the Biden administration deplatforming people, you know,
subverting in that people had about COVID, descending opinions, actually
engaged in censorship. Now, I want to argue that, or

(01:13):
I would contend that when a president, in collaboration with
a private company Google Alphabet says specifically, we want that
information taken down, we want that to not appear in

(01:33):
search results, we want that to do it, and they comply,
that's a violation of the First Amendment, because that's government
directing a private company, and the private company agreeing to
do what they said to do in terms of don't
put out that information. The distinction between that and the

(01:57):
Kimmel and the covert or anybody else. I think Kibble,
Kimmel and Colbert are two entirely different sets of circumstances. Clearly,
CBS is doing their decision based on pure economics. That
may be a little bit about Yeah, the ratings are
damn blah blah blah blah, and there's too much of
this other crap, but Kimmel is an entirely different situation.

(02:22):
Public airwaves, public interest. Brendan Kahr makes a statement which
is was a stupid statement in my opinion, we can
either do this the easy way or the hard way.
As I said, I wish you know he's acting as
the chairman. He ought to stay quiet about it. But
they should start looking at is are they doing things
in the public interest?

Speaker 3 (02:43):
Because well not.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Because in addition to that, we need to understand going
back to girl Dad's comment about who is this Kimmel
guy and why should I care about him? Remember yesterday
how I went through extensive dissertation about the changing landscape
of the media and how people now have so many

(03:08):
other places to go. Well, I really got to thinking
about that yesterday afternoon, and you can divide the sources
of information from the left and the right into two categories,
and it seems to me that those of us on

(03:28):
the right have so many different non institutional sources that
we go to.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
Now.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
I use a very loose definition of institutional because you
think about talk conservative talk radio, that is, in some
you could consider that an institution. But think about how
many different voices there are on conservative talk radio.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
I tagged.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Clay Travis yesterday in a post on X because it's
something he said about he was conflating the First Amendment
in Kimmel all on the same thing, and I thought
it was absolutely wrong. So here are two guys actually
working for the exact same company, Premiere Radio Networks, and

(04:28):
we've got entirely different viewpoints about the First Amendment. And
I think, quite honestly, Clay's not a lawyer. I think
he's just kind of got this general understanding of the
First Amendment and doesn't understand the nuances of it. There
are I compete with a guy that's playing right behind

(04:49):
me on the syndicated station that I think is very,
very preachy, is all it's like to me. It's a
almost like listening to a sermon. And quite frankly, even
though I am on his radio network on the Saturday program,

(05:10):
which I find so ironic and hilarious, that guy over
there doesn't like me. And quite frankly, although occasionally I
hear him on other programs and I'm like, oh, yeah,
that's a very good point. I don't really like him either,
but we're both conservative talk show hosts. There's just a
within this big ten, there's all sorts of things. We've

(05:31):
got Fox News, an Newsmax, that's pretty much it. When
it comes to newspapers, there's a dearth of conservative newspapers.
If you take someone like to take something like the
Wall Street Journal, the editorial page is predominantly conservative, but

(05:51):
not one hundred percent conservative. The news pages are decidedly
left the center. So there's just these all these places
where people get their information. We never stop and think
about the left. There's a person on substack that I
don't read often because most substacks well get You can

(06:14):
get a free account, but you don't get all of
the content. Some substacks I think are worthy of a subscription,
Others I don't. This one is one that I do
I do not, although I might change my mind because
something I read recently I can make a whole program
out of. On September fourteen, Heather Cox Heather Cox Richardson,

(06:41):
she's a substack writer. She claimed in her daily writing
that the radical right is working to distort the country's
understanding of the Charlie Kirks of Charlie Kirk's murdering that
the alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, wasn't on the left, just

(07:05):
like Kimmel made the joke about. Rather, he was, in
her own words, a young white man from a Republican
gun enthusiasts family who appears to embrace the far right.

Speaker 3 (07:18):
Close quote.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
So clearly this Heather Cox Richardson was buying into the
theory circulating on the left that Robinson the assassin, was
a groper. Now what's a groper? But I had to
look it up. A groper is a devotee of the
far right, provocateur and white supremacist nationalist Nick Fantes Proud

(07:46):
Boys group, and that he killed Charlie Kirk.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
Robinson did for.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
The sin of insufficient right and reactionary radicalism. In other words,
he wouldn't radical enough for those right wing jobs on
the far far fringes of the right. Now, even in
the fall of speculation and conjecture that always follows that
kind of shocking event, any informed observer would recognize that

(08:16):
that theory was generously, to put it as best I can,
totally bereft of any evidence.

Speaker 3 (08:23):
At the same time, evidence.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Was already accumulating that Robinson had left wing motivations.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
But here she is. Now, why is that important?

Speaker 2 (08:34):
Well, hang on one second. The evidence actually became too
clear to deny after court documents got released that spelled
out the broad contours of the assassin's rationale, even his
mom telling the Cobs that he had become more pro
gay and trans write oriented over the past year. But

(08:56):
Richardson over at Substack, rather than admitting that she had misjudged,
she remains defiant, writing the day after that after the
document's released, that Robinson's motive remains unclear. Wow, that's that's amazing.

(09:20):
Now why am I? Why am I picking on a
single writer on Substack who, like many, twists the truth.
When American politicians and professional pundits, you know, crack crank
out countless lies and distortions every single day. Well, because
you're probably not familiar with her, you maybe you may

(09:43):
know somebody in your sphere of influence that does know her,
because they're left of center.

Speaker 3 (09:49):
She writes a substack letter. It's called.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
I don't I don't want you to give money to her,
but I want you to know who I'm citing. It's
called Letters from an American. Do you know that she
has the world's most popular sub stack. She boasts more
than two to two point six million followers as of

(10:15):
this month. Put that in perspective, that's the same as
almost a quarter of the New York Times combined digital
and print subscribers. And she is one individual. You think
about that, nearly a quarter of the combined subscription of

(10:38):
the New York Times digital and print subscribers. And the
New York Times has bureaus.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
All over the world.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
They have reporters all over the world. They have print
operations all over the world. They have an entire server.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
Farm farms all over the world.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
To get their addition out so that when you pop
up The New York Times, you don't wait for it
to cash.

Speaker 3 (11:02):
And pull up.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
A single person. A single person has almost twenty five
percent of what The New York Times has in terms
of subscribing. I doubt that there are many other media
outlets and that she is a media outlet with more
influence on liberal leaning Americans than this one individuals. This

(11:27):
one individual letters from an American. It's kind of difficult
to kind of position on the traditional establishment anti establishment access,
if that's the binary we want to look at. On
the one hand, you know who she is. She's a
professor of history at Boston College. She has hundreds, if

(11:52):
not more, academic publications, and they always get this laudatory
coverage in the legacy media outlets. On the other hand,
the nature of her substack letter means what, Well, she's
only accountable to her audience. Now, yes, you can leave comments,

(12:14):
but she's not accountable to any peers or fact checkers
or big money supporters. Yeah, she's a credentialed expert. She's
also a free agent. I commented yesterday on X, I
forget what the post was about, but you know, community
notes is kind of a review system on X, so

(12:36):
that if you see something on X and X has
identified you as someone who they want to be able
to write community notes, which fortunately X has given that.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
Ability to me.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
If I see something that I think is wrong, I
can post a community note and provide links to evidence
about why I think the note is wrong. I'm also
asked occasionally I'll get it. I'll get a message from
the community notes account on X that says, hey, something
that you commented on, or something that you reposted or

(13:13):
liked has some notes. Would you go review those notes
and see if.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
They're correct or not.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
Or there is a post that's getting a whole lot
of comments and likes, would you see if it needs
a community note? Not me, not just me, But they'll
ask thousands of people to do that, and I'll look
at it, and sometimes I put a note up and
sometimes I don't. So there is some accountability on X

(13:43):
on substack. The only accountability is that if if I
were a subscribing payer to her substack, I could leave
a comment, and I could leave a link that says, hey,
you're entirely wrong about this article and here's why, and
I could put some URLs in the comments. But she's
under no obligation, and I would venture to say that

(14:05):
ninety nine percent of people that read substack or newsletters
from substack never look at the comments. I tend to
do so simply because if I'm going to use that
as program material, I want to see what's being said,
so I'll actually go onto their site, as opposed to
just reading the newsletter that pops up in my inbox.

Speaker 3 (14:30):
There's a book.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
From Jonathan Ross from back a couple of years ago
called The Constitution of Knowledge, and in that book he
portrayed institutions like academia and the Cabal as epistemic epistemic
meaning their knowledge generating knowledge generating machines. Well, actually, at

(14:55):
their best, those institutions, at their best, you use checks
and balances to keep their participants honest and trustworthy. But
public confidence and the expert class continues to diminish. In fact,
many believe their self regulatory mechanisms have completely broken down.

(15:19):
How many times have we heard about some study but
then we find out it's never been peer reviewed, that
no one's ever looked at it, or it's been peer reviewed,
and the peer reviews say this is total bull crap,
And yet the academic institution or the journal or whatever
it might be, continues to leave it up continuing to
feed those on the left who primarily look at those

(15:45):
kinds of articles, treatises, whatever they may be, from academia
as that's the gospel. Some I've heard it said that,
you know, liberals read and conservatives watch TV.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
Do you want to argue that conservatives in the MAGA
group derive their beliefs directly from Donald Trump and grassroots sources,
and liberal opinion comes from only an intermediate class of activists, lawyers, journalists, professors, bureaucrats. Well,
I think the left really does tend to get their

(16:32):
information from those institutions, the networks, the dominant media, all
of the activists, all of the nng os, and the
lawyers that represent the NGOs, some of the public interest
law firms, Journalists obviously as part of the cabal, professors, bureaucrats,

(16:53):
that's who the left looks to. So Jimmy Kimmel fits
right in there. So when Jimmy Kimmel says something, even
though his audience may not be very broad, I can
almost guarandamn to you that every morning, if he has
said something, or Colbert has said something on our clipping service,

(17:18):
they have put a clip, maybe a minute and a half,
maybe not you know, maybe two minutes, maybe only fifteen seconds,
but they have taken something that one of those late
night hosts has said, or that some network anchor has said,
and they have disseminated that out to everybody, much like

(17:41):
local newspapers will take articles out of the New York
Times of the Washington Post and reprint those in their
newspapers and that becomes the established narrative. That's why someone
like Jimmy Kimmel gets my attention, because I know that
the people that are listening to him take what he

(18:02):
says as gospel, just like I've always made fun of
the people the coping seals at the View. It's so
easy to make fun of the View because of how
stupid they are. That's the easy part. The difficult part
is understanding that, oh my god, the people that show
up as Dragon points out for those free tickets to

(18:23):
go to that show, and there's a line out the
ABC studios to get in to see that program, because
the View is reinforcing and or establishing the narity that
those people in that audience will take once they leave
their little trip to New York City.

Speaker 3 (18:42):
Will even take back home to their circle of influence.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
Moring Michael. As soon as we're done not laughing at
the comedian, how about you break out some funny dish,
up some funny word salad out of Kamala.

Speaker 3 (18:55):
We can hear all about the things that she wrote
in her book. I find this seeing. I have at
least one, two, three, four five.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
I have five text messages correct to me that Clay
Travis is a lawyer. In fact, forty eight seventy one
rights Michael, Clay Travis is a lawyer, as he points
out multiple times a day, also a former leftist and
a self congratulatory pompus blowhard who knows why he's still
in the air with.

Speaker 3 (19:24):
Buck uh nine.

Speaker 2 (19:29):
Apology if I misheard, But Clay Travis actually is an
attorney Georgetown Law School, I believe, holy crap, practicing the
Virgin Islands for an extended period. Well, I guess that
answers a lot uh Georgetown And Okay, I don't know,
but based on what I was listening to the other day,
I thought, Wow, did you pass con law? I mean,

(19:52):
I'm now thinking that did you pass con law? What
kind of grade did you get in con law? I
stand corrected, and I and I'm amazed by it too.
For years, actually probably for decades, where you get all
this disinformation the expert class, well, i'll give you an example,

(20:19):
the notion promoted by those former fifty plus intelligence officials
and parroted uncritically by the cabal that the Hunter Biden
laptop story was Russian disinformation. Those kinds of incidents have destroyed,
at least, I think, for almost everybody on the right

(20:41):
and maybe some on the left, have led us to
conclude that the expert regulatory mechanisms that govern that work
within our government are.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
Just completely broken.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
I think some Democrats are actually beginning to believe that too.
Think back before Joe Biden dropped out of the rate
twenty twenty four, there were Democrat partisans who were really
upset that the New York Times and some of the
other mainstream outlets were waging some sort of vindictive campaign
against him and trying to actually trying to sabotage the

(21:15):
Democrats' chances by failing to point out that, oh, you
may just feel like the economy is not good, but
here's all the data to prove that the economy is great.
And you may think that prices arising inflation is out
of control, but here's data to prove that it's not. Wow,

(21:37):
how quickly we forget go back to twenty twenty. All
the calls for moral clarity and journalism that is explicitly
biased reporting, All those calls for moral clarity, they didn't
take root. The demand for institutions to cater directly to

(21:59):
progressive by remains persistent among almost all consumers of the
media on the left.

Speaker 3 (22:08):
There's no moral clarity they truly are.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
You know, I talk about active listening, being a discerning
consumer of the news, don't be, as Rush called them,
a drive by consumer of the news. That's what most
of the left really is. I find it ironic that
I don't know back when Rush was in his heyday
that because things that Rush would talk about would be

(22:38):
probably the dominant topics of the day, which meant that
any other talk show host might be talking about the
same topic, which is again why I refuse to listen
to any other talk show hosts, because I don't I
just don't want anything to influence what I want to
talk about Rush would talk about. How you know, the

(22:59):
Democrats claim that, you know, we're all getting our talking
points from the RNC. Well, actually, the Democrats kind of
do that. They actually kind of get their talking points,
but it comes from the expert class, which is part
of that cabal. For some time, the central force of
audience preference on the left has existed, being counteracted to

(23:25):
some degree by inertia, but always deference given to those
with legacy credentials. Oh I'm a New York Times reporter.
Oh I'm a contributor on MSNBC or CNN, I'm wolf Blitzer, whatever.
But now with substack and this person like Susan Richardson,

(23:49):
who has the largest readership in the world on that platform,
her numbers are a quarter of what the New York Times,
the left winging partisans now have more tools than ever
to isolate themselves in like minded bubbles. They're the ones

(24:14):
living in a bubble. So if you believe that right
wing institutions have turned into some sort of trumpest organs
over the last decade, and you know, that's where everybody just, Okay,
we just live in a bubble over here. I don't
think that we do. I could be wrong, but I

(24:38):
really don't think that we do, because I think that
most people on the right are seeking out differing viewpoints.
And we do that because we want to be able
to understand fully all aspects of a particular issue. We
want to be able to debate those issues solidly with data, logic, reasoning,

(25:03):
and emotion. You always you still need some emotion in there.
So I don't think that we are, but I think
the Left is becoming even more and more ensconced in
that bubble of the cabal. I'll give you an example.
We pick on Jimmy Kimmel for the stupid thing he
said about you know, MAGA is trying desperately to Neil

(25:26):
push off the assassin onto somebody else because he was
part of the MAGA group. Well, some of the traditional
gatekeepers on the left continue to spread misinformation about Kirk's assassin.
Joan Donovan a professor at Boston University and a quote
nationally recognized online disinformation researchers. She's one of the people

(25:53):
that the New York Times or the LA Times, maybe
the networks would go to as an expert because she
is supposedly this nationally recognized online disinformation researcher, which she
told a reporter for the LA Times that the messages
that Robinson the assassin was carving into the bullets, that

(26:16):
those messages indicated that he indeed was a graper. Now
even more ludicrous, really ludicrous.

Speaker 3 (26:25):
An article in the.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
Left wing Byeline Times claimed that this slav Squat costume
that Robinson the Assassin wore for Halloween back in twenty eighteen,
that somehow that indicated that he had been radicalized by
far right online movements. Now where did that come from?
That came from a partially deleted Twitter thread written by

(26:52):
a random video editor back in twenty eighteen. Now, as
someone who was like Robinson, the fifteen year old boy
immersed in online culture in twenty eighteen, the slav Squad
is instantly recognizable as a wildly popular a political mean
has nothing to do with Grouper's at all, nothing whatsoever.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
But it's stuck.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
It's stuck to the so called facts of the case
regarding his assassination of Kirk. So in that context, I
think it's pretty easy to understand the role that Richardson's
substack is playing. If you're an avid consumer of political
news that may playfully characterize yourself as a masochist. In fact,

(27:40):
there's a text let me highlight my note right here,
because I'm going to go to a text message somebody
said about why should I even be doing this? I mean,
I can't find the text, but some money on the

(28:00):
text line was basically saying, why should I be doing this?
Why should I be involved in politics? Why should I
be paying attention to all this?

Speaker 4 (28:09):
It's a very long text, but the end of it
it says it made me sad, but also made me
question my extreme interest and time spent listening and paying attention,
which often makes me quite angry and upset.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
If you are an avid consumer of political news, you
might characterize yourself as they are sort of doing, as
a massacres But then you will fall victim to the
powerful lure of simply reinforcing your own beliefs Now, Where
the New York Times hesitates because of its reporters, its

(28:44):
reporters adhere to their institutional standards and their left leaning narratives,
there will be a dozen independent outlets that will compete
to capitalize on the gap because there is a gap
in the demand for a belief party line narratives, and
this sub stacker Richardson has seen the most success among

(29:06):
all of those people. By combining her she does. She
has legitimate creditionals. She's a professor at Boston College, and
then she's able to use level headed language. But in
a post truth appreciation for catharsis and for reinforcement over factuality.

(29:30):
That's why you have to stay engaged, and that's why
you have to continue to be involved, because if you don't,
that dominant narrative that is fed to everybody will take
over and whatever gains we have made and are making
will instantly dissipate.

Speaker 4 (29:49):
I mean, seriously, can we just bring back Macarthyism?

Speaker 5 (29:52):
Is it really that hard? Well, no, it's not that hard.
And I don't know whether you being facetious or not,
But was it McCarthy wright?

Speaker 3 (30:09):
Huh? Was he?

Speaker 2 (30:10):
Was he think about that? According to to make my
point about these narratives. Now, granted this is from September fourteenth.
I haven't found a newer poll, but from a September
fourteenth you Gov poll, forty percent four zero percent of

(30:33):
Democrats believe that Tyler Robinson the Assassin was a Republican. Now,
I hope that number will decrease as the truth about
his associations and his activities begins to disseminate more widely
and the American left will wake up and realize, oh,

(30:56):
we were wrong about that. But there's no guarantee that
that will happen. There's no guarantee of the faltering influence
of all these so called fact based institution is going
to hold forever. So while ABC suspended Kimmel's show in
response to his remarks, I'm afraid that that will actually

(31:19):
build up his imagery as a martyr for the truth,
so that whatever he says becomes the established narrative. That's
why it's important to focus on something that you and
I and I think probably ninety percent of this audience
or even more probably doesn't give a ratsass about, and

(31:41):
that's Jimmy Kimmel, but to show you how bad they are.
A so called free speech advocate and a defender of
Jimmy Kimmel Sonny Houston in September of five, she defends Kimmel.

(32:04):
But then let's go back to see what she said
in twenty eighteen about Oh Roseanne barr.

Speaker 6 (32:10):
Our founders drafted the First Amendments specifically to protect the
rights of citizens to criticize the government. And you cross
that kind of societal norm, you must pay the consequence
and firing her was the right thing to do. I'm
thrilled and able to consider.

Speaker 3 (32:26):
And they all applaud. Yes, the seals applaud.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
But listen again, because this is the conflation that drives
me up the wall.

Speaker 6 (32:36):
Our founders drafted the First Amendments specifically to protect the
rights of citizens to criticize the government.

Speaker 2 (32:43):
Ye true, how's that applicable in this situation with Kimmel. See,
that's not the point. That's not the nuance that anybody
wants to deal with. It's just simply, Oh, the First
Amendment protects a right to criticize the government and to
make fun of the press.

Speaker 3 (33:00):
That or do whatever we want to do, blah blah.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:02):
Well, yes, but not necessarily on a public airwave. And
you can certainly criticize the president on the public airwave.
But if you do it so incessantly, and you do
it consistently and constantly, that if your ratings start to
drop off because it becomes a.

Speaker 3 (33:22):
Tiresome thing, well then there's.

Speaker 2 (33:25):
A business decision to be made that doesn't even touch
a First Amendment issue. Jimmy Kimmel, if they had decided
to terminate the contract, eliminate the show, like they did
with Colbert. Oh, he could probably make a deal with Netflix.
He can make a deal with Serious, he can make
a deal with YouTube. He can make a deal with

(33:47):
Meta or X or anybody else, and he can go
stream or he can start his own. He could do
a video substack and become as big as Richardson is
if he could. That might take some work on his part.
Right now, he has a complete infrastructure supporting him.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
So why why would he go out?

Speaker 2 (34:07):
What's the incentive to go out and try to build
something new when you've got a complete infrastructure that's supporting
everything that you are doing. Becky, I recognize that right here,
I've got an infrastructure that supports the streaming and the
podcast and the broadcast at all, right here at my fingers.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
Why would I go else?

Speaker 5 (34:28):
NOI