Episode Two Hundred Sixty Six: So It Begins

Republicans get trounced in Tuesday races, Elon on AI, Newsom owns California and has his eyes on DC, the reign of Mamdani begins, the two fear factors, an important interview with Cyrus Nowrasteh  and Zig's big halloween.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcomed episode two hundred and sixty six of the Death
of Journalism podcasts. My name is John Zigler. I'm your
host on today's show. The off year election results are
even worse than I expected for Republicans and for the country.
I'll tell you what it all really means. My close friend,
movie director Cyrus n Rosta joins us to discuss his
latest great movie to hit theaters this weekend, called Sarah's Oil.

(00:24):
Elon Musk makes some very disturbing comments about AI, plus
a review of Maybe Our Last Family Halloween and my
reunion trip to Washington, d C. In the last episode
of the podcast, I made several predictions about the off
year elections which transpired last night as we were taping

(00:46):
this on Wednesday morning, and those predictions, unfortunately all turned
out to be true and accurate. I told you it
was going to be a very good day for Democrats
and for progressives and for socialists, in a very bad
day for Republicans in general. I was even correct when
I told you that it did not matter whether or not

(01:06):
the Republican in New York City got out of the race,
because Zorn Mondani would win regardless. He did get over
fifty percent of the vote, not by much, barely, but
it would not have mattered in the end who he
ran against, he would have won. And while there are
a lot of very disturbing results that we'll get to

(01:28):
in this off yr election, I want to begin with
what happened in New York City, because, if only from
a symbolic and maybe from a practical perspective, this is
one of the most disturbing developments in American political history,
and I do think we need to at least take
a moment to comprehend what it all truly means and

(01:52):
just how utterly insane it is that New York City,
you know, the premier city in the world, and the
largest in America, the center of commerce and finance in
the world, and in America, some people believe the greatest
city that's ever been created in the history of man

(02:13):
is now going to be run by a guy who
is foreign born, who is a Muslim, who is a
Marxist socialist, who is an anti Semite, who has almost
no experience, who basically has a fraudulent biography. I mean,

(02:35):
this is all happening twenty four years after nine to eleven.
I mean, if you had created this as some sort
of a fictional account. Even a couple of years ago,
no one would have believed this was possible. He's not
a celebrity. He wasn't a celebrity until basically fifteen minutes ago.

(02:58):
And yet this has all now happened, and it has happened.
I have to at least mention that it happened. Not
that this mattered to the results, but it happened with
the backing of even former conservative commentator Bill Crystal. I
just have to acknowledge the utter insanity of the fact
that Bill Crystal once a leader, a thought leader in

(03:21):
the conservative movement, a guy who I've had some pretty
significant contact with because at one time his funder was
my father's boss, a guy by the name of Roger Hurtog,
And that was that even facilitated the conversation between myself
and Bill Crystal back when Bill Crystal was still pretending

(03:42):
to be a conservative. And he has lost his mind
more than any other alleged conservative commentator in the era
of Trump. He's gone so off the deep end. He's
such an anti Trump quote unquote conservative, but he's not
that he even felt the need to vertue signal by
showing just how anti Trump he is by deciding that

(04:04):
he would endorse or Mommi for the mayor of New
York City. Now he didn't influence any votes, but just symbolically,
I just thought, my god, there it is. In a nutshell.
There's that's where we are. When it comes to the
quote unquote conservative movement or the anti Trump, never Trump
conservative movement, We've got Bill CRYSTALSMI make it stop, somebody please.

(04:32):
What a fucking frauds. Just unbelievable. The entire anti Trump
conservative movement is full of frauds, which is partially why
I'm as in the wilderness as anybody possibly could be
because I'm an anti Trump conservative. But I never sold
out any of my principles, unlike Bill Crystal, who just

(04:53):
completely jumped the shark a long time ago but now
is irredeemable. I mean just comical. Comical is the only
way to describe it, because if you're either gonna laugh
or you're gonna cry, and at least in that situation,
I prefer to laugh. But with regard to the bigger picture,
with Zaramandami winning with just over fifty percent of the vote,

(05:15):
I mean, this is this is startling this is. It's
not shocking because we knew this was going to happen,
but it is. It still shakes you to your core,
especially if you're of a certain age and you believed
in America in the way that I did, and you
spend a lot of time in New York City, as
I did, because that's where my father worked as when

(05:36):
I was a kid, and I meant to many sporting events,
many many sporting events in New York City, spent a
lot of time in New York City. You don't want
to see it burn. And I have really dealt quite
a bit internally and on this podcast with the idea of, okay,
do you'll just let New York City burn? Is this
potentially actually a good thing for the rest of the

(05:59):
country to see New York City burn? Because they now
have a Marxist who's naive and inexperienced and incompetent and
ignorant of basic realities in charge, and if he gets
what he wants, it's going to be a complete and
total disaster. Do you root for that? Well, you know,

(06:20):
a large part of me doesn't want to root for that,
because you don't want to see New York City go down.
In figurative, if not literal flames. But I'm also not
convinced at all that what a lot of Trump Fans
and Republicans think is gonna happen is going to be
the message that the vast majority of the public is

(06:40):
gonna get, partially because it's obvious that the media in
large part is in the tank for Mondannie, although that's
not as important as it used to be. I'm just
not one hundred percent there that even if New York
City burns to the ground because of Mondanie being the mayor,
that that's going to have the impact that we think

(07:02):
that it will. It might. Part of me now hopes
that that's the case, because that's the only good scenario
out of all this, But I'm not sure we still
live in that world. I'm just not sure. And did
we just see what the beginnings of what has already
transpired in Europe happened here in America, even in New

(07:26):
York fricking City. I think that's a scenario that's quite possible.
So is this going to be a situation where the
rest of the country wakes up to the dangers of this,
or is this now a situation where the Mandans of
the world have gotten traction in a very big way

(07:48):
where he is in charge of the largest city in
America and maybe the most important city in America. And
so it was just really quite shocking to watch the
whole thing actually take place, even though you knew it
was going to happen. You knew it was going to happen,

(08:08):
and yet it was still startling to actually see it.
And Mandami gave his speech, which was, you know, the
thing that the media was most eager to see all
night long, because by that point it was very, very
obvious that it was going to be a fantastic night
for Democrats across the country, and everyone wanted to know, Okay,

(08:30):
so which Mondami was going to show up in this speech?
And the Mondamie we got was I think probably the
real Mandami, which is a very angry, very militant, and
almost evangelical socialist, Marxist, Islamisist. I mean this, Everything that

(08:56):
you think that could be bad about came out in
his address, his victory speech to his supporters in New
York City, so much so that even Van Jones, a
black liberal commentator on CNN who I've mentioned many times
on this podcast, seem to be a bit uneasy about it.

(09:19):
David Oxelarod was uneasy about it. They both criticized it
for basically, these are my words with being too militant,
or as the I think the better way to describe
it is. They were basically saying to Mandami, you know
you're supposed to keep this quiet, dude, this is not
the part that's supposed to come out publicly. You're supposed

(09:41):
to be Obama in public, not this, dude, whatever this
character is, you're creating. No. No, you said the quiet
part out loud. You're not supposed to let people see
this kind of stuff, especially not in such a high
profile situation. It's okay that you believe this. They don't
have a the problem with his beliefs. They just don't

(10:03):
like the fact that he's saying it so publicly in
such a prominent situation, because they know that for a
large portion of the population, not nearly as large as
it should be or it used to be, this is
going to cause some problems, at least in theory for Democrats.
And there were many elements of this speech that were

(10:24):
extremely disturbing, Probably the most chilling line that any major
politician has ever said in a victory speech at least
to my knowledge in America, was quote we will prove
that there is no problem too large for government to
solve and no problem too small for government to care about.

(10:50):
I want you to I'm gonna repeat that right because
that is that is chilling right there. I mean, that
is government as HOA and in the era of AI
when they're going to have an increasing ability to crack
down on anything they want to. You should really be

(11:11):
disturbed when the mayor of New York City in his
victory speech says, quote, we will prove that there is
no problem too large for government to solve and no
problem too small for government to care about. In other words,
government runs your life. In other words, COVID on steroids,

(11:32):
COVID panic on steroids. That's what man Donnie is promising here.
But it didn't stop there. I'm going to play one
fairly significantly long clip from this speech where he specifically
addresses Donald Trump and the war that he perceives he

(11:54):
is now in with Donald Trump. And this is the
end of his speech where he attacks Trump, lays out
a litany of all the socialist fantasies that he's intending
to fulfill in New York City and then ends it
by declaring that an immigrant is now in charge of

(12:17):
New York City and that you're going to have to
deal with him and all those like him. And here's
what that sounded like election night in New York City.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump
how to defeat him, it is the city that gave
rise to him. And if there is any way to
terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions
that allowed him to accumulate power. This is not only

(12:52):
how we stopped Trump, it's how we stop the next one. So,
Donald Trump, since I know you're watching, I have four
words for you.

Speaker 3 (13:09):
Turn the volume up. We will hold bad landlords.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
To account because the Donald Trumps.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
Of our city have grown.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
Far too comfortable taking advantage of their tenants. We will
put an end to the culture of corruption that has
allowed billionaires like Trump to evade taxation and exploit tax breaks.
We will stand alongside union and expand labor protections because

(14:03):
we know, just as Double Trump does, that when working
people have ironclad rights, the bosses who seek to extort
them become very small.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
Indeed, New York will remain.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
A city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered
by immigrants, and as of tonight Land by an immigrant.

(14:50):
So hear me, President Trump, when I say this, To
get to any of us, you will have to get
through all of us.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
Now, that is pretty much a really disturbing synopsis of
his speech in general and what Mandami is intending to do,
and he was not bashful about it. I've already referenced
the Van Jones and David Axelrod on CNN. You know
we're basically saying, hey, dude, keep it quiet. Be more

(15:24):
like Obama. Mandami is a lot like Obama, except Obama
either didn't have the balls or was too willing to
listen to his advisors and never let it come out
quite like that. So maybe Mandani is Obama with balls.
Now with Mondami, it's always trunck to tell what's real

(15:47):
and what's acting, because he absolutely is an actor. But
let's just presume that he really does believe in most
of not all of this stuff that he's promising. If
he gets it, it's going to be a disaster for
New York City. That is as clear as could possibly be. Right,
And I could talk for a very long time about

(16:08):
why that is. He still needs to get approval from
the you know, the governor of the state, you know,
in some cases for what he wants to do. But
let's just presume he gets most of what he wants.
The fundamental problem, and there are many, but the number
one fundamental problem with what he wants to do is
this flaw that liberals. It's so incredibly obvious that this

(16:32):
is a flaw in liberal, progressive, socialist thinking, but they
just either don't understand it or they will not accept it.
I don't know what which it is. Maybe it's a
little bit of both. But when you make something free,
this is a universal truth that literally my young children
can understand. If you make something free, people are going

(16:55):
to use more of it. Right. That's it's the number
one problem with universal healthcare, right because there's a whole
slew of things we don't even bother to go to
the doctors for because we know we're going to have
to pay for it. Well, but if everything's free, that
changes so and that goes for every little thing that

(17:18):
Mondamie wants to do for free, whether it's childcare or bussing,
whatever the hell it is. When it's free, people will
use more of it. You probably saw that on Halloween.
There's every Halloween now there's ring videos of people stealing
buckets of Halloween candy that people leave on their front

(17:38):
porch because they're not home or they don't want to
answer the door. Well, when it's free, people will take
more of it. It's just an obvious human reality. So
it's not going to work. It is not going to work.
But will it fail in time and will that failure
be properly presented to the rest of them Marria, so

(18:01):
that this doesn't spread and maybe actually creates a backlash.
That's the part I don't have an answer for. I
just don't know, And that's going to be the key
question I believe as Mandamie becomes the next mayor of
New York City, But there is no question that in
the history of this country, this is a significant marking point.

(18:25):
To have New York City have a mayor with the
profile in the persona of Zoran Mandani is is incredibly disturbing.
It is very very telling about where we are and
where we are headed. And yes, Donald Trump plays a
role in that, because you know, Donald Trump plays a
role in all of this. His fans don't want to

(18:47):
accept that. But you cannot believe that the results of
last night are completely irrelevant to Donald Trump. When Donald
Trump is the entire brand of the Republican Party and
the most dominant figure in all of our politics. He
has an impact on everything. And I'm going to get
to more of that impact in a moment, but I
want to go through some of the other results from

(19:10):
Tuesday's election. I had told you that I did not
believe my two friends in New Jersey who were telling
me either that the Republican was going to win the
governorship or that it was going to be very very close.
I thought it would be closer than it turned out
to be. But I did predict that the Democrat would
win in New Jersey. I said, maybe, just maybe, if

(19:31):
there was a backlash to the Mandani impending victory, that
who knows, you could pull off some sort of a
massive upset in New Jersey. But I did not predict that.
I predicted that the Democrat would win. The Democrat won,
but the most important part of that was the margins.
And this is one of the many things that maga

(19:52):
Republicans that, based upon my experience online are universally not
accepting or not seeing. They think that this was no
big deal. What happened last night was no big deal
because Democrats won in places they're expected to win. By
the way, I didn't realize that we're now accepting that Virginia,

(20:13):
which are going to get to momentarily, is somehow a
blue state. They have a Republican governor currently who is
actually pretty darn popular. So I don't quite understand that thinking.
But the rationalization here is very very strong, very strong
among the Maga Republican Trump bas But the idea that

(20:38):
this was just about who won is ridiculous. It's the
margin stupid. The margins here were shocking, you know, and frankly,
Mondamie getting barely over fifty percent might have been one
of the better results of the night. That's how bad
it was, because in New Jersey it wasn't even close.

(20:59):
I was wrong about the margins. I actually believed the
polling and my friends and some polling actually had the
margins close to what it turned out to be. And
I always try to be as optimistic as possible. I
did not think the Republican had a real chance of winning,
but they got slaughtered and so now there's a democratic

(21:21):
governor in New Jersey by a large margin, and there's
a democratic governor in Virginia by a very similar margin.
It was also double digits. And so how in the
world a maga Republican can rationalize that, Wow, it's no
big deal that we went from a popular Republican governor
in Virginia to the first female governor in Virginia's history,

(21:46):
winning by double digits over the lieutenant governor of the
current governor. Now I realize people think she was a
bad candidate. I spent most of the weekend in Virginia,
saw a ton of commercials. I frankly thought some of
the commercials being run against the Republican female lieutenant governor
happens to be African American, we're a bit racist. If

(22:08):
they had been running out a Democratic black female, they
would have been considered to be racist. But that's the
world we live in. A lot of people didn't think
she was a good candidate. It doesn't explain the massive
margin of the loss. And you cannot spin that. You
cannot spin that that that has no political significance or

(22:31):
ramifications beyond just those two candidates. There's just no way
to go from a popular youngkin to a Democrat winning
by a massive margin over his lieutenant governor. Not just
that either. That to me actually was the least upsetting
result in Virginia. They elected a Democrat Attorney General by

(22:55):
a fairly safe margin who is all one record in
social media posts saying that he fantasizes about Republicans dying.
That's not an exaggeration, and the media kept that story
under raps to the extent where he actually won the

(23:15):
race fairly comfortably for Attorney General of Virginia. And then
there was the the state legislature races in Virginia, complete
total wipeout by Democrats of Republicans wipeout. I mean, this

(23:38):
could not have been a more clear cut victory. Now,
the government shut down probably played more of a role
than even I thought was likely, because you know, I'm
a logical thinker, and I talk all the time about
how Virginia in national elections and a presidential election is

(23:59):
clearly a bluestone because you have massive numbers of federal
workers in the northern part of the state, but you
can still have in theory a Republican governor because those workers,
while they're Democrats, they're not as deeply invested in someone
being a Democrat or not being a Republican in the

(24:20):
governorship because it doesn't impact their job. Well, you know,
you would think that that would not really matter very
much because the state has nothing to do with the
federal government shutdown. But I think symbolically, people just wanted
a way to express their anger. They're anger at Trump,
they're anger at the shut down, and so they all

(24:42):
showed up. And so the Democratic turnout was extraordinary for
an off year election in Virginia. And so whether it
was conscious or subconscious, maybe even subliminal, the government shutdown
clearly hurt Republicans in Virginia, even though that's totally illogical

(25:02):
because none of the people that were up for election
had anything to do with the shutdown whatsoever, because obviously
that's federal as opposed to state. But you know, people,
when they are angry and they get any sort of
an outlet to express that angry, that anger, they're going
to do it. And that's what happened in Virginia. And

(25:25):
so it was a disaster in New York City. It
was a disaster in New Jersey, especially with regard to
the margins. It was a complete and total disaster in
Virginia up and down the ballot, and here in California
it was also a complete and total disaster with Proposition fifty,
the redistricting proposition that was created by Governor Gavin Newsom.

(25:49):
And it first looked like, you know, it was going
to win by only a couple of points. Except when
I first talked about this, I thought it was going
to be fairly close. I thought two to four points
is what but Proposition fifty would win by then last
week I waved the white flag because it was clear
this was over. But even I did not anticipate the

(26:10):
massive margins by which Proposition fifty would win. Right now
currently has sixty three percent of the vote, which is
just an absolute slaughter, even in a state where about
sixty three percent of the voters are Democrats. But the
exit polling on Proposition fifty presented maybe the most stunning

(26:37):
result in the history of exit polls. And I realize
that sounds like hyperbole. I don't think it is. I
cannot recall a result that is more stupefying and in
some ways more depressing than this one. So if you
are unfamiliar Proposition fifty allows the state constitution to be shit,

(27:01):
and instead of the independent Commissions determining what the congressional
districts are gonna be for the next election in twenty
twenty six, essentially the Democratic Party is gonna be allowed,
in fact, literally to draw their own congressional districts against
the state constitution, allegedly temporarily. But that's in my view

(27:22):
bullshit on every level. I mean, first of all, I
don't believe that they're gonna abide by the temporary element
of this, But it almost doesn't matter because if this
holds up in court, what you're gonna do is you're
gonna wipe out almost every Republican in the States. So
even if you go back to the independent Commission in

(27:44):
twenty thirty, it's not gonna matter because there will be
no Republicans to run because there will be no incumbents
and you're gonna have like fifty Democrat incumbents. So that
and that's a huge advantage, especially in the state that's
overwhelmingly Democrat. So there's so many problems with the proposition itself.

(28:08):
It's in my view on constitutional I believe it's a
moral it's incredibly expensive. I can't believe Gavin Newsom got
away with spending over two hundred million dollars on a
one question ballot initiative that was obviously partisan politics, and
obviously it intended to help his run for the presidential

(28:29):
nomination in twenty twenty eight. I mean, this is as
brazenly political as anything you could possibly get. All less
than a year after a massive wildfire burns most of
Los Angeles to the ground, there's not a sign of
any kind of rebuilding. And Newsom gets away with spending
this kind of money on a politically partisan proposition that

(28:51):
is clearly intended to help prop up and promote his
presidential ambitions, and he gets away with it completely. But anyway,
here's the result of this exit poll that and this
was reported on Fox News. I don't know who did
the exit poll, but this is just amazing. So the
thing passes with sixty three percent support. And what it

(29:14):
does is it takes the power away from the Independent
Redistricting Commission and gives it to the Democratic Party. Okay,
that's what this proposition does. So sixty three percent of
people who voted voted in favor of that. Yet in
the exit polls it indicated that ninety two percent, ninety

(29:38):
two percent of people who voted across the board wanted
the lines to be drawn by the independent commission. Only
seven percent wanted it drawn by the political parties themselves.
So your mind just he gets blown by this insanity.

(30:03):
Ninety two percent of people who voted strongly disagreed with
the what the impact of this was gonna be or
should be, or how this should go, and yet sixty
three percent of the people voted for it. So if
you just do the numbers, well over fifty percent of

(30:25):
the voters voted for something that they philosophically disagree with
based upon their answers in the exit poll. He just
can't make this up. And I don't know how many
of those people even understand what they did. There's probably
a large percentage who just voted for whatever their friends

(30:49):
were doing, whatever the signs told them to do, or
if they're a Democrat, you know what Newsom told them
to do. But even the people that voted for this
boon did not agree philosophically with the way that the
districts ought to be drawn. And it's just incredibly frustrating,

(31:10):
especially as someone who's now lived in California for far
too long, over twenty years, and looks like I'm doomed
to die here hopefully soon's it's just unbelievable, and this
is going to have far reaching implications if it is
not thrown out in court, and it will be challenged,
and I actually I hate whenever i'm a little bit optimistic,

(31:33):
because it always turns almost always turns out that I'm wrong.
But it almost feels like there's got to be a
lot of confidence by Republicans that this is going to
eventually be overturned, probably by the US Supreme Court, because
the level of outrage and the amount of history onics

(31:56):
and the people that are very upset about this on
the national level is pretty small. I'm not seeing anywhere
close to the level of outrage that I should or
people being incensed by this. I mean, first of all,
forget about the fact that it looks like Democrats are
going to pick up at least five new congressional seats,

(32:18):
and I thought at first it would be maybe four,
maybe five. The New York Times thinks they might get
a completely clean sweep, depending on how that goes in
the next midterm election. If these lines that just got
approved by voters are accepted as legitimate by the court system,
which of course would have a massive impact on next

(32:40):
year's midterms and almost ensure that Democrats will take over
the House Representatives, even if yesterday wasn't a disaster for Republicans.
But I gotta believe that there must be some confidence
that this is going to be overturned. I'm just reading
the tea leaves based upon the fact that people are

(33:02):
not nearly as enraged by this result on the national
level and upset by it as they should be. Now,
maybe you know, they're over confident, maybe I'm misreading it,
maybe I'm being too optimistic. But assuming that this holds
and is not overturned by the US Supreme Court, which
I think it should be, I mean, there's so many

(33:24):
problems with the way this was done, but you know
that doesn't often matter anymore in this very strange world
in which we live. But if this holds, it means,
first of all, that Democrats will almost certainly win the
House of Representatives in twenty twenty six. And here in California,
it's now Katie bar the door. The floodgates are open.

(33:45):
I mean, the floodgates have been open for a long
time here, but now there's zero ambiguity about it. Democrats
can do whatever the hell they want with literally zero opposition,
zero position. And you know, you want to talk about
a real world impact of some of this stuff. You know,

(34:06):
you may recall in the clip from Mondami that I
just played, one of the things that he goes into
is how they're going to go after landlords, unfair landlords,
and you know, they're gonna they're gonna fix the rent
and freeze the rent. You know, that actually had a
massive impact on me when I watched that speech, knowing

(34:29):
what was happening with Proposition fifty, and knowing that we
have a gubernatorial election here in California next year, and
how every single one of the candidates on the Democratic
side is going to mimic Mandami. I said to my wife, well,
you know what I think our plan to buy a
rental property here in Ventura County along the shoreline, which

(34:50):
is had been our plan. In fact, we had put
a bid on one a couple of months ago. It
should have been accepted, but stupidly the owners did not
accept it. I think they're going to regret that. But anyway,
the point is We've been in the market for a
condo along the beach, and the point of our doing
that was to rent it out before we eventually use

(35:13):
it as a place to retire to, and so we
would be renting it out for a fairly significant number
of years. And I just don't feel comfortable doing that
anymore because I am convinced that in an effort to
mimic Mandami, these lunatics in California, now knowing they can
get away with anything, are going to do the exact

(35:35):
same thing when it comes to rents. And you know,
the pendulum, which has already swung very much from the
landlord to the tenant in liberal states like California, is
going to go to the extreme and getting a tenant
out of your property or getting them to pay their rent,
or increasing the rent if inflation goes crazy, is going

(35:56):
to be impossible. It's you're basically going to make it
an idiotic idea for someone to be a property owner
and to rent out their property. That's where this is
gonna go. And I mean, it's obvious to me this
is where it's gonna go. And proposition fifty winning by
that larger margin basically told the Democratic Party. Hey, go

(36:18):
go knock yourself out. You can do whatever the fuck
you want now. Haha. Happy days are here, you know it.
And Mandami is gonna show the way. Mandamie is going
to show them that anything is possible. You should not
be limited by your imagination anymore about what you can
do to impose your progressive socialist Marxist will on the

(36:45):
people of your state, or in Manami's case, the people
of your city. And so this is a very very
dark time we're heading into, and it's going to have
real world impact and it's going to happen probably pretty
darn quickly. Now, as far as why this all happened,

(37:07):
I get that as an anti Trump conservative, everyone's going
to expect me to be blaming Donald Trump. Donald Trump
is not the only element to blame for what transpired
last night, but he is absolutely one of the key
elements to blame. And I think it's important to take
a moment to now consider who Donald Trump is as

(37:30):
a political entity. Now, you may recall that one of
the things that happened when Trump won the twenty twenty
four election is that my view of him, at least
temporarily significantly changed because my biggest, not my only by far,
but my biggest objection to Trump has always been he's

(37:52):
a political loser. This is before the twenty twenty four election.
That he's been a political loser that you're going to
sell If you're going to sell out, you got to
at least get something really good in return. And it's
always been my view that Republicans had completely sold out
their soul and their long term credibility and all their

(38:12):
principles in exchange for what. Well, prior to twenty twenty
four's election, it was in exchange for very little. Three
Supreme Court justices, two of which have turned out to
be one's turned out to be good, but by and
large it's not been a tremendous result on the Supreme

(38:34):
Court side. Yes, there's been some some cases that have
gone in directions that were good that wouldn't have happened
if Trump had not gotten those justices on the Supreme Court.
And yes, Hillary Clinton was prevented from being president. And yes,
there was a tax cut, so there was a few
things good that had happened. But on the negative side

(38:56):
of the leisure prior to twenty twenty four, there was
all sorts of terrible things. There was a mid term
loss that was very significant in twenty eighteen. There was
the COVID panic that was facilitated and embraced by Donald Trump.
The fauci the Fauciization of America, if you will, facilitated

(39:18):
by Donald Trump. You had after he lost that twenty
twenty general election, you had him then effectively costing two
losses in Senate seats in Georgia. You had a significant
situation that was similar in twenty twenty two, where most
of the candidates that Trump endorsed lost and other than

(39:40):
Ron DeSantis winning in twenty twenty two, it was a
very disappointing night for Republicans because the Trump brand so
dominated Republican politics, and Trump is and has been the
GOP brand since twenty sixteen. You got to take the
good with the bad on that, and there was bad

(40:02):
in twenty twenty two. But then in twenty twenty four
he won. And I said, you know what, Now he's
won two out of three presidential elections. He's prevented Hillary
Clinton and Kamala Harris from being president. He's prevented a
second Joe Biden term. There's positives to that, and at

(40:23):
least now I can see a scenario where, while the
sellout is still probably not going to work out in
the long run, at least it wasn't as bad a
deal as I thought it was before Trump won the
twenty twenty four election. But now here we are a
year after winning the twenty twenty four election, and I
think we have to start to reevaluate that again because

(40:47):
now we have a complete disaster in this off year election.
Now we still don't know how it's all going to
turn out with Mondami. Is it still possible that maybe
down the road that turns out to be a great
thing for America because he's seen as a disaster and
the experiment fails. Yeah, that's possible, But you cannot argue that,
at least as of right now, this was not a

(41:09):
terrible result for America and for any semblance of conservatism,
not just in New York but throughout the country. That
the results in New Jersey, in Virginia, and what's going
to happen in California, and what's gonna happen with the
midterm elections, because if it holds a proposition fifty, that
there's almost no chance for Republicans to hold the House

(41:33):
of Representatives, and without the House, effectively, Trump's presidency is over.
From a legislative perspective, of course, he hasn't really given
it damn about passing actual legislation. But I got to
tell you, folks, reading the margins, and that's the part
that Maggie is really not understanding. Reading the margins. Especially

(41:53):
in Virginia, it is not difficult to see that the
mood of the country is such that the Senate majority
in twenty twenty six is also in jeopardy. Based upon
last night's results, you can see easily a world where
Republicans lose Senate seats in North Carolina, in Ohio, in

(42:16):
Iowa where the tariffs are not playing well at all,
and you may lose a very moderate Republican in Maine
and Collins. But when it comes to Supreme Court battles,
you know, Collins and Murkowski are already useless. So you
really only have fifty one votes plus jd vance as
a tiebreaker if you want to, you know, convince Clarence

(42:39):
Thomas and Sam Alito to retire, which I'm all in
favor of now. I mean that to me is one
of the subheadlines of last night's results, Clarence Thomas and
sam Alito need to retire now. And I have no
expectation that's going to happen, but they need to retire
now because, based upon what we saw last night, the

(42:59):
midterm elections at twenty twenty six could be as big
a disaster. And under that scenario, you lose the House,
you lose the Senate, and now there is no ability
to replace Clarence Thomas and sam Alito, and the Supreme
Court might be the last bashion of defense against this
onslaught of progressive socialist Marxist insanity that we're going to

(43:24):
be facing potentially with a goddamn Gavin Knewso presidency in
twenty twenty nine. And that is not an exaggeration. And
so I actually think we start to reevaluate in the
rational world, we start to reevaluate what the twenty twenty
four election really was about, because look, I gave Trump

(43:48):
all sorts of credit for that, but he has greatly
exaggerated the nature of his victory. He did not get
fifty percent of the vote. He did win the popular vote,
which is signific and amazing, but he won the electoral
college because he won three states by less than two
percent of the vote. The so called you know Midwestern

(44:12):
firewall that never turned out to be a firewall for
Democrats Wisconsin and Michigan, Pennsylvania, and so you know, if
those states go a point in the other direction or
point and a half in the other direction, Harris actually
wins the election, which I mean, which is, you know,

(44:35):
similar to what happened. The last three elections have all
been very very similar. Three states go the other direction
and the losing candidate actually wins, and so yes on
paper to someone who doesn't really understand the way this works,
Trump's victory looked tremendous. It really wasn't that tremendous. It
was impressive historically, but you also have to remember what

(45:00):
the circumstances were. Trump ran against a geriatric Joe Biden
who shit the bed in the first debate. Then Trump
got shot and survived in incredibly dramatic fashion. Then Democrats,
in an incredibly undemocratic and hypocritical fashion, installed Kamala Harris,

(45:26):
a terrible candidate, in at the last second. So all
three of those events are basically unprecedented in American modern
political history. You're running against somebody who physically can't do
the job, and that gets exposed in a national debate.
You get shot, and with blood dripping down your face,

(45:50):
you pump your fists and say fight, fight, fight, live
on national television. You can't get any better than that
from a political theater perspective. And then you have a
terrible candidate installed at the last second to run against you.
And even under those circumstances, Trump didn't get fifty percent

(46:11):
of the vote. And as I've already said, if he
loses those three states where's he only won by a
point and a half each, he loses the election. So
I think, while I'm not changing my opinion that okay,
you can't call Trump a loser on the presidential side,
I do think that in retrospect now we need to reevaluate.

(46:36):
And I think one of the ways where we should
be reevaluating this is what does it mean to be
a Trump voter, to be a Maga voter. It is
abundantly clear now that we have enough data that there
is a large group of people who will vote for
Donald Trump in a presidential election but will never vote

(46:59):
for a Repubt publican in any sort of state or
local election. Now, what's driving these people, I don't fully know.
I'm sure that there are some people who are just
live and die with Donald Trump. They love him to death,
and either they just don't care that much about the
other elections, or they're philosophically not motivated to actually vote,

(47:20):
or whatever it is. Maybe they're actually voting Democrat. Who
knows that's possible too, So I'm sure that there are
some people in that category. However, I'm now convinced, and
I'm theorized about this before on the podcast. I'm now
convinced that some of these Trump only voters have just
been voting for the laughs and the chaos. I truly

(47:42):
believe that. I don't know what the number is. I
don't think it's possible to know what the number is.
But now that we have enough data and enough elections
under our belt to be able to perceive what's really
transpired here, it is clear to me that there must
be a not insignificant number of people who voted for

(48:04):
Trump for president in sixteen and in twenty and in
twenty four simply because he's funny and they love the chaos.
These are the arsonists of the world. These are the
anarchists of the world. These are the let it burn
to the ground people. I just want entertainment voters, and

(48:26):
those people were never Republicans, they weren't even really Trump fans,
and who knows, they may have been the difference between
him winning and losing in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty four.
By the way, those are exactly the type of people
who would elude polsters. So not only does this make
sense from the perspective of, okay, how do you understand

(48:49):
why these people don't show up in non Trump elections,
it would also explain why pollsters have had such a
difficult time in Trump elections, because the people I just
described are not going to be responding to pollsters, and
they're going to be very easy for posters to miss.

(49:10):
And I don't have proof of this, It's just a theory,
and I think the results from last night certainly promote
that idea to at least be something to consider. Now.
Trump's reaction to this was typically bizarre and narcissistic. Trump

(49:31):
posted on social media that there were two reasons, based
upon what so called experts were saying, two reasons why
Republicans lost. One because Trump wasn't on the ballot. Okay,
I've just explained my perspective on that. And two, because
of the government shutdown, which was quite remarkable for the

(49:51):
President of the United States to effectively, if you use
your brain, essentially take credit or ownership over the shut down,
and to acknowledge that it's been a political loser. Now,
I'm somebody who thought that Republicans were actually holding their
own when it came to the narrative of the shutdown.

(50:11):
And I've already dealt with how I think people underestimated
how significant the shutdown was going to be when it
came to Virginia voters for reasons that don't make sense logically,
but they may make sense psychologically. And so Trump is
trying to claim that if we had just had him
on the ballot, then it might have been different for Republicans.

(50:35):
And I guess if he hadn't approved the government shutdown,
then also it wouldn't have been such a bad night
for Republicans. And so it's just unbelievable that Trump has
this kind of reaction to what's going on. He's also
apparently seemingly thrown down the gauntlet on Mandami, putting out

(50:56):
a social media post overnight late at night saying so
it begins, which you can interpret as almost anything, but
many people have interpreted as it's going to be war
between Trump, obviously a guy who spent most of his
life in New York City, and Zorn Mundani, who is
now the new mayor of New York City. But as

(51:17):
much as I'm concerned about Mondannie, I'm actually more concerned
right now about Gavin Newsom, not just because he's the
governor of my state here in California, but because this
is all breaking absolutely perfectly for him to be the
Democratic nominee in twenty twenty eight and potentially, very potentially
being the president of the United States in twenty twenty nine,

(51:40):
and he's been doing all sorts of interviews. One of
the many boondoggles involving proposition fifty is that I guess
the media decided, because these rules are now nebulous, that
interviewing Gavin Newsom, who clearly could not be more associated
with proposition fifty, is not a situation that requires them

(52:04):
in any way, shape or form to provide you some
sort of fair use or you know, the old doctrine
that used to indicate that he had equal time that
doesn't exist anymore. But there used to be at least
some semblance of fairness that, Okay, if you're gonna have
Newsom on constantly on major media outlets to promote yes

(52:27):
on Proposition fifty, shouldn't you have somebody on the other side. No, no, no,
that that doesn't count anymore. So Newsom was getting two
bites of the apple with all these interviews that he
was doing leading up to election day one. He was
promoting Proposition fifty with no opposition, with nobody there to
mention that the comparison to Texas is utterly bogus. I mean,

(52:51):
that was the biggest lie of Proposition fifty was that
somehow this was in response and this was exactly what
Texas was doing, stealing Republican seats in Texas. So now
we got to steal Democratic seats in California. That is bullshit,
And anybody that's looked at it remotely objectively knows it's
bullshit for a whole host of reasons. I mean, what

(53:14):
Texas did was perfectly legal. What California did was going
against their own state constitution. What Texas did was in
response to the Biden administration, essentially forcing their hand on
what transpired. But Anyway, the point I'm getting at here
is that that Newsom got to not just promote proposition

(53:35):
fifty in all these interviews, but also to promote himself. Obviously,
that's what he cares about most. He's a sociopathic narcissist,
which is why it's interesting that he and Trump have
seemed to have this love hate relationship. And how at
one point Trump probably considered Newsome to be part of
his clan because Newsom used to be married to Kimberly Guilfoyle,

(53:57):
who was once the fiance of Donald Trump Junior. The
mind boggles, and how this whole thing has gone down.
But Newsom and Trump are actually very very similar psychologically,
and so he's been promoting this notion while also pretending
that he's not thirsting after it, that he's going to
be the Democratic front runner in the twenty twenty eight

(54:20):
nominating process. And one of these interviews that he did recently,
and he's all he's been doing has been interviews. I mean,
as if he has nothing else to do. Is governor
of California, where we have this deficit, and this city
of Los Angeles is trying to recover from having burned down.
And here he is spending hundreds of millions of dollars
on this partisan, politically advantageous proposition that really is very

(54:44):
much not just about promoting democratic interest in Congress, but
promoting his campaign to be the Democratic presidential nominee. In
twenty twenty eight, he did an interview with Kristen Welker
on NBC's Meet the Press, and this was really quite amazing.
This got mocked quite a bit on social media, especially
on x and rightfully so, because Welker asks Newsome about

(55:08):
the issue of running for president in twenty twenty eight,
and Newsom lies and claims that he doesn't want to
run for president in twenty twenty eight, and then in
the next breath talks about how he hates when politicians
lie to you. I mean, you just can't make this up.
He's literally condemning lying while lying, and anybody with a

(55:30):
brain can see right through it. And here's what that
sounded like on NBC's Meet the Press.

Speaker 4 (55:36):
You've said, as we've discussed, you are considering a run
for president, and you've said you'll make a decision about
whether to run for president after the midterms. Yeah, I mean,
why do governor, Let me ask you why do you
want to be president?

Speaker 1 (55:50):
I don't. I'm not suggesting I am.

Speaker 5 (55:52):
I'm saying I have in response to someone talked about it.
And I hate when I nothing. I dislike more than
the politician that sits there and lies to you and
we all just sit there, roll in our eyes, going
give me a break. So as it relates to that
there's nothing on the road, I'm focused on Prop fifty.
I'm focusing on fair, free elections and to the extent,

(56:14):
fate the future. There's an alignment. You have a big
enough why, you have a what and how you meet
a moment, and that moment presents itself in a year,
year and a half, we'll see what happens.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
Now. While that was rightfully mocked on right wing social media,
the problem I have is that Gavin Newsom is actually
an extremely good liar. He makes Bill Clinton look like
an amateur. Bill Clinton was considered to be a great liar.

(56:50):
Newsom is even better now. Just because a lot of
people can see through it doesn't mean that he's not
a great liar and can't get away with it with
a majority of the American people. And there is way
way too much complacency among right wing maga Republicans about

(57:12):
a Gavin Newsom presidential nomination in twenty twenty eight, just
like there was way too much overconfidence after the twenty
twenty four election. Maga people tend to be delusionally optimistic,
and they overestimated Trump's victory in twenty twenty four, and
they're underestimating the dangers of Gavin Newsom, because just because

(57:38):
conservatives and Republicans can so easily see through Gavenussom does
not mean that the people that are going to determine
who wins the twenty twenty eight presidential election will be
able to see the same thing, especially if the economy
sucks and Trump is causing all sorts of chaos when

(57:58):
it comes to who is success is going to be,
and you have a situation where the country is already
very very divided in presidential politics basically fifty to fifty.
In my view, Newsom is going to be a very
very dangerous man. He is a sociopath, He is evil.
I hate this man more than I have hated any

(58:21):
other politician. I have an OJ Simpson nineteen ninety four
ninety five level of hatred of Gavin Newsom. But you
have to understand how this thing is shaping up right
now in a way that could not be more perfectly
suited for him, and the media is buying right in

(58:44):
the media is lovingness. This is almost a comically parody
like headline that came from ABC News just a couple
of days ago, and this was mocked again on X.
But this is emblematic of where I'm seeing this narrative
going when it comes to the media and how they're

(59:04):
gonna be embracing Gaven Newssom, if not as the clear
favorite to be the Democratic nominee in twenty twenty eight,
clearly a person who is gonna have to be reckoned with.
Here's the actual headline from ABC News ABC News. California
Governor Gaven Neussom is a leader running miles ahead of others,

(59:28):
experts explained to ABC News. What Gavin neussm is a
leader running miles ahead of others, experts explained to ABC News. Boy,
that sounds awfully objective. I wonder who these experts were.
Were these the masks stop COVID experts? Where these the

(59:56):
vaccine is very effective and totally safe experts? Where these
are the experts that you know that said that the
Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation that you know you can.
The list could go on and on forever, this so
called expert class that has been completely discredited. But here

(01:00:16):
the bigger and more important picture here is it is
obvious that the media is thirsting for a clear cut
democratic nominee in twenty twenty eight, and they see Newsome
now as potentially the antidote. And at first it seems
counterintuitive because he is so far left and he has

(01:00:39):
been such a disaster for California, and in irrational world,
he would be incredibly easy to defeat. Interrational world, all
you gotta do is show the price of gasoline in
California in comparison to the rest of the country, and
it's game, set match. That's all you'd have to do.
Interrational world, we have to get to homelessness and deficits

(01:01:02):
and the price of living and inflation and the cost
of living and the cost of housing and all sorts
of all sorts of other problems that California has. But
we don't live in that world anymore. Rationality doesn't matter,
truth doesn't matter, And so you would think they would

(01:01:27):
be looking for someone who would be a moderate that
could appeal to the states that actually determine who wins
presidential elections. But we live in a world of perception
and persona and celebrity, and I think what they're seeing
is we've got a guy who's got enough celebrity, he's
well known enough. He's a white male. Right, we didn't

(01:01:49):
do so well with the black female, and we lost
in twenty sixteen with the female. So it's clear that
we need to have a male, and we probably need
to have a heterosexual male, and we probably need to
have a white heterosexual. Now there doesn't seem to be
another Obama on the horizon. And he's a good looking guy,
and boy is he a good talker, and boy is
he a great liar, and most importantly, he's taking the

(01:02:12):
fight to Trump and winning and winning. Newsom is going
to be perceived in Democratic ranks as having led this
victory in twenty twenty five, that he was the one
carrying the flag, he was the lead one leading the charge.
So in reality he's a left wing sociopathic lunatic. But

(01:02:36):
in perception, there's enough there for the media to use
to sell this. And again you have to understand the
difference between a democratic primary voter and a general election
voter if he gets the nomination. Now it's Russian Roulette
because of the circumstances. I've already mentioned that there's nobody

(01:02:59):
in the Republican side that's gonna have an enormous amount
of popularity, a huge amount of celebrity. Trump is going
to cause all sorts of problems for that person under
the best case scenario. And you've already got a country
that at best is divided fifty to fifty. And that's it.
That's assuming the economy doesn't go to shit and the
Republican brand isn't even worse than it is today after

(01:03:21):
a catastrophic loss last night. So I am actually gonna
institute a brand new I guess I would call it
a rating on every episode of this podcast where it's relevant,
which is probably gonna be almost every single week. I
am now instituting the Gavin Newsome Fear Factor rating, which

(01:03:46):
is gonna be on a scale of zero to ten,
ten meaning it's over, we're all gonna die. So ten
is a very very very high threshold. And so and
I don't want to start off too too high because
I don't want to have no place to go, and
we are still quite a long ways in the twenty
twenty eight election. But right now I'm going to institute

(01:04:07):
for the first time our Newsom fear factor rating at
six point five. That's where I am. That's my personal
Newsome fear factor rating with regard to him being the
next president of the United States, a six point five,
and I'm actually trying to be as optimistic as possible.
By the way, We're also going to be instituting an

(01:04:28):
AI fear factor rating as well whenever relevant. But we
start the news fear factor rating at six point five,
and I could actually make an argument that it should
probably be higher than that, considering how much momentum he's
going to have coming out of Proposition fifty winning in
a massive landslide and Democrats doing so incredibly well in

(01:04:51):
last night's election. And you know, part of why I'm
so fearful of Gavin Newsom and how difficult it would
be to defeat him, far more difficult than Republicans understand,
should he be the Democratic nominee in twenty twenty eight.
And by the way, I actually think it might be
easier to defeat him in a Democratic primary than it

(01:05:11):
would be to defeat him in a general election, which
is why I'm desperately hoping that Kamala Harris runs, because
I think if Kamala Harris runs, I think Newsom has
a much more difficult time getting the Democratic nomination. But
part of the equation, and why it is that I
think Newsom would be so difficult to beat in a
general election, is that Trump himself has paved the way

(01:05:35):
for Newsom in many ways, because, and I've said this
a million times, you enjoy as a Trump fan. You
enjoy him breaking all the rules, breaking all the norms,
not giving a shit about principle, not giving a damn
about the quorum. You enjoy that when it's your guy

(01:05:56):
in charge. But guess what that also means. It also
means that the rules no longer exist. There are no rules.
Trump blew up all the rules. And because he blew
up all the rules, it opens the path for someone
like Gavin Newsomb, who, prior to Trump would have had

(01:06:18):
no chance, no chance to be president of the United States.
I mean Newsom from a personal standpoint alone, couldn't possibly
be president. He admitted that he had sex with his
best friend's wife while she was working for him when

(01:06:41):
he was mayor of San Francisco. That's game set match
before Trump, Before Trump, that's game set match. But we
gave up when we sold our souls to Trump. We
gave up everything. We gave up every possible argument we
could ever have against so many people like Gavin Newsom,

(01:07:06):
so many people who are morally corrupt. We decided, oh,
that doesn't matter. We sold our soul. Well, the price
of selling your soul is you don't have it when
you need it. You don't have it when you need
to be able to say, well, come on, this guy
is morally corrupt. He can't be president. And by the way,
that sex schedule is just a tip of the fricking
iceberg when it comes to Gavin Newsom. I mean, these

(01:07:29):
are things that are happening all the time. Just recently,
he got exposed for lying about his son being a
Charlie Kirk fan. He said his son was a Charlie
Kirk fan back when he interviewed him on his podcast,
and then after Charlie Kirk got assassinated, he got asked
a question about how his son reacted to Charlie Kirk's assassination,

(01:07:51):
and he basically said he wasn't ever a fan of
Charlie Kirk. What the fuck is that all about? He
claims to be a big Tailor Swift fan. What his
favorite Taylor Swift song was, He couldn't come up with one.
He's a complete, total fraud, a liar. But none of
these things matter anymore because Trump blew up all the rules.

(01:08:16):
And I've always said, we're going to pay for that,
and we may pay for it far more than I
ever imagined, because we may pay for it with a
Gavin fucking knwsome presidency in an era where AI is
overtaking the world, and we're going to see the COVID
panic on steroids, with a guy who has already told

(01:08:38):
us exactly what he's willing and able to do when
it comes to tyranny. And in a large way, it'll
be because if it happens, it'll be because Donald Trump
paved his way, not on purpose, but because of who
Trump is and how all principles went out the window,

(01:08:58):
all right and wrong the window. All rules went out
the window. And we have another example of this that
just happened in the last week. I mentioned briefly, probably
far too briefly, in the last episode of the podcast
that Donald Trump just did something when it came to
his pardon power that was utterly outrageous, maybe the most

(01:09:20):
outrageous pardon in the modern history of America, where he
pardoned the founder of this company called Binance, this crypto
company where it is obvious that the Trump family has
a massive, not even just theoretical, but real world conflict

(01:09:41):
of interest where they have made billions, billions of dollars
since retaking office as a direct result of this company, Binance.
And then Trump pardons their founder who had pled guilty,
pled guilty to very significant crimes, in fact, crimes that

(01:10:06):
most experts believe were the reason why Bidance became as
big as it did. These were crimes involving money laundering.
And so Trump pardons this dude Binance, then immediately openly
promotes the Trump cryptocurrency. These are things that are way

(01:10:29):
bigger than that. You know, the Trump people of the
House representatives all upset about the Joe Biden auto pen
and the pardons that he gave and maybe didn't approve of.
And I'm all in favor of that being investigated. And
I wouldn't be surprised at all if Biden had no
idea who he was actually pardoning, and that is absolutely
a scandal in interrational world. But that's nowhere big as

(01:10:53):
nowhere near as big as scandal as what the peers
happened here. And the scandal got even bigger, if that's possible,
when Trump did an interview with Nora O'Donnell on CBS's
Sixty Minutes and gave one of the most stupefying answers
I could ever remember Trump giving, because she laid out

(01:11:14):
on sixty minutes the facts surrounding the pardon, and then
Trump's response was he doesn't even know who this guy is,
which is both a lie as well as an indication
that what he's doing with his pardons is just as
bad and not worse than what Republicans are claiming Joe

(01:11:35):
Biden was doing with the auto pen And if you
think I'm making it up, I'm not. Here's what it
sounded like on sixty minutes.

Speaker 6 (01:11:44):
So far this year, the president has pardoned or shortened
the sentences of more than sixteen hundred people. The latest
pardon was for a cryptocurrency tycoon who is known as CZ.
The company CZ founded Binance, helped to boost the profile
of the Trump family's crypto firm, World Liberty Financial. He

(01:12:05):
pled guilty in twenty twenty three to violating anti money
laundering laws. The government at the time said that CZ
had caused significant harm to US national security, essentially by
allowing terrorist groups like Hamas to move millions of dollars around.
Why did you pardon him?

Speaker 7 (01:12:22):
Okay, are you ready? I don't know who he is.
I know he got a four month sentence or something
like that, and I heard it was a Biden witch hunt.

Speaker 6 (01:12:30):
In twenty twenty five, his crypto exchange Finance helped facilitate
a two billion dollar purchase of World Liberty Financial's stable coin,
and then you pardoned CZ. How do you address the
appearance of pay for play?

Speaker 7 (01:12:47):
Well, here's the thing. I know nothing about it because
I'm too busy.

Speaker 1 (01:12:49):
Doing the other.

Speaker 6 (01:12:50):
But he can only tell you that.

Speaker 7 (01:12:52):
I can only tell you this. My sons are into it.
I'm glad they are because it's probably a great industry crypto.

Speaker 1 (01:12:59):
I think it's good.

Speaker 7 (01:13:00):
You know they're running a business and not in government.

Speaker 6 (01:13:02):
Because World Liberty Financial has denied any involvement in the pardon.

Speaker 1 (01:13:08):
Now, how does that happen? How does Donald Trump try
to claim on sixty minutes that he doesn't know who
this person is, which I don't believe. But even if
it's possibly true, I mean, I guess it's theoretically true
that he's that out of the loop, he's that clueless,
that his sons are just in control of this whole situation.

(01:13:29):
It's actually worse. It's actually worse because he's just going
by what his sons, you know, under that scenario, what
his sons told him to do. But when you consider
that this guy got elected president claiming he was going
to drain the swamp, and where we have the Republicans
and the House of Representatives with a very significant investigation

(01:13:51):
ongoing into Joe Biden's auto pen pardons, and this one
makes all of those pardons in comparison when it comes
to scandal and outrage. It's it's really stunning. But it
also goes to the issue I just reference when it
comes to Trump paving the way for someone as corrupt

(01:14:14):
as Gavin Newsom because there are no rules anymore, there's
no credibility that Republican Party and the right wing media
has no credibility to go after someone like a gaven
Neussom on almost anything, because in almost any situation, they're
going to be able to say, well, you are upset

(01:14:35):
about X, but what about when Trump did why? And
so it's not going to be effective. The you know,
the antidote or the poison will be deluded to the
point where it won't work on a Gavin Ussom all
because everyone sold their soul to Donald Trump, who has

(01:15:00):
no morality, no principles, no ethics, and is willing to
use his own personal power for the enrichment of him
and his family, even in a situation that forget about
how corrupt it is when it comes to cryptocurrency, maybe
undermining our very currency, the dollar, which you know, the

(01:15:21):
long run, may be the biggest element of this whole situation.
So now, to be fair, I want to since I've
mentioned the autopen circumstance, I have to play this clip
from former Biden White House Press secretary Kareem Jean Pierre,
who was an absolute idiot and who is in the

(01:15:41):
process of having one of the worst book launches in
political history. I mean she, I mean she's getting hit
from all sides, and I'm sure the book's doing very
poorly and her career is going down in flames because
she's now's no one in her audience, I mean, and
she's basically pissed off everybody. But she was testifying in

(01:16:05):
front of the House Oversight Committee related to this whole
issue of Joe Biden's health and the auto pen pardons,
and she said something rather extraordinary and that is obviously
something that The Death of Journalism podcasts should cover because
it relates to just how closely the legacy media and

(01:16:30):
the Democratic Party worked together as a team. And here
is Kareem Jean Pierre talking about the issue that we
discussed on the podcast at the time, back in the
twenty twenty four election, where there were these videos that
were going viral online, mostly on X of Joe Biden

(01:16:52):
appearing to be very confused and out of it and
wandering around cluelessly, and Karine Jean Pierre started to refer
to these videos as cheap fakes. Now, no one had
ever heard the phrase cheap fakes before. I guess it's

(01:17:13):
kind of a play on deep fakes and the concept
that in this new world of editing and AI and CGI,
you can basically fake almost anything you want. And the
implication was that these videos of Biden looking clueless are
not real and so Kareene Jean Pierre was asked where

(01:17:35):
did that come from the whole concept of cheap fakes,
and she acknowledged that they plagiarized cheap fakes from the
media because the legacy media was promoting this narrative and
they were just taking advantage of it. And here's what

(01:17:55):
she said to the House Oversight Committee.

Speaker 8 (01:18:00):
You use the term cheap fakes. Was that choice of
words in the moment or was that something that had
been prepared ahead of time as a talk it was prepared,
Did you or did anyone ever verify if the videos
you were talking about were in fact cheap fakes?

Speaker 9 (01:18:17):
I believe So.

Speaker 1 (01:18:19):
What is a cheap fake?

Speaker 3 (01:18:21):
I really don't know.

Speaker 9 (01:18:22):
It was something that we did that coin. It was
something that the media coined. They did the work, they
did the legwork on coming up with that terminology, and
so we were just elevating essentially what.

Speaker 8 (01:18:38):
The media was saying, what the press was saying.

Speaker 1 (01:18:40):
But you know where it is.

Speaker 9 (01:18:42):
I mean, it basically is laid out how you defined
it with what President Biden was actually doing, and it
took away from what he was actually doing or created
an illusion of something that just did not exist.

Speaker 8 (01:18:58):
We're all clipped circulated on social media or otherwise showing
President Biden being confused or freezing at times? Were those
all faces?

Speaker 9 (01:19:09):
I can't speak to every everything that was.

Speaker 8 (01:19:13):
On social media, sure, but there were instances where videos
were circulated of President Biden appearing confused or freezing for
a moment that were real, correct.

Speaker 9 (01:19:27):
Not that I recall this. What we were trying to
lift up was something that was very very clear that
what they were showing was not actually what was happening.

Speaker 1 (01:19:40):
I mean, right, there is a smoking gun when it
comes to the relationship, the incestuous relationship between the legacy
liberal media and the Democratic Party at the very highest
levels on a topic that's extremely important, especially when it
comes to issues related to AI and how we don't

(01:20:01):
know what's real and what's fake. I mean that maybe
is the most outrageous part of that story, is that
what's real and what's fake needs to be treated as
sacred ground going forward, and for the Democratic Party and
the White House apparatus to engage in an alliance with

(01:20:23):
the legacy news media to try to trick people into
believing that videos that were real were actually fake, all
because they didn't like how people were understandably interpreting those
videos is really outrageous and incredibly dangerous. I mean, we

(01:20:45):
are living in a very very concerning time when it
comes to the entire issue of what's real and what's fake,
and so you should not, you know, when someone fakes that,
when someone lies about that, that should be taken very
very seriously. That should be considered a felony crime when

(01:21:09):
it comes to to, you know, political scandal because you
you couldn't you should not be allowed to mess with that.
Because once we're in a world where we don't know
what's real and what's fake, and we have the presidential
Press secretary telling us a video is fake when it's
actually real, stick a fork in us. That goes way

(01:21:31):
beyond just trying to get out of a political scandal
or win an election. That goes to the essence of
everything that matters, because if you don't know what's what
is real and what's fake, how can you possibly function.
So to my opinion, this is a scandal that is
not getting nearly enough attention, even in the right wing media,

(01:21:55):
but I needed to play it here on the Death
of Journalism podcast For obvious reasons. Thanks for listening to
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(01:22:19):
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