July 18, 2025 • 45 mins
Hot Takes and Heated Topics!
In this lively episode, we dive into some of the most buzz-worthy stories in the media world. First up: a mysterious birthday letter allegedly from Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein resurfaces—just in time to stir up controversy. Is it coincidence, or calculated distraction?
Next, we react to the surprise cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. What happened to the golden age of late-night laughs? We explore how these shows have shifted from light-hearted comedy to full-on political theater.
And finally, we take a hard look at NPR—once a trusted voice for public service journalism, now seen by many as another outlet for partisan commentary. What changed?
Don't miss this fast-paced episode packed with insight, humor, and sharp commentary.
Follow Billy Dees on X https://x.com/BillyDees
In this lively episode, we dive into some of the most buzz-worthy stories in the media world. First up: a mysterious birthday letter allegedly from Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein resurfaces—just in time to stir up controversy. Is it coincidence, or calculated distraction?
Next, we react to the surprise cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. What happened to the golden age of late-night laughs? We explore how these shows have shifted from light-hearted comedy to full-on political theater.
And finally, we take a hard look at NPR—once a trusted voice for public service journalism, now seen by many as another outlet for partisan commentary. What changed?
Don't miss this fast-paced episode packed with insight, humor, and sharp commentary.
Follow Billy Dees on X https://x.com/BillyDees
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
You are listening to the Billy D's podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
All right, well, hello everyone, and welcome to the program
if you are new here. We are primarily an interview
and a commentary based podcast. My name is Billy D's.
On Friday nights, we try to go live. We have
studio productions that are out quite often. A great interview
with Christy Michelson, great interview with Bill Thompson, all in
(00:35):
our playlist anywhere you find us. You can find our
playlist and those two studio interviews are available. We do
go live on Friday. As I mentioned, it's commentary, and
you know, it's just having a little fun with the
news sometimes.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
You know, in this day and.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Age, it's real easy to get pegged as right or left,
and then somebody has to put you on the scale.
You're kind of left of center, right of center, you know,
they push you on. I try not to be on
the scale at all, okay. I try to examine individual
issues not from the right of the left, but from
(01:13):
three hundred and sixty degrees okay. And depending on your leanings,
you might say, well, you're right, you're left, or this
or that. But you know that's what I try to
do is give a perspective that you don't get elsewhere,
whether it be on cable news or the other podcasts
or whatever. That's kind of our niche. I try to
go into a direction that a lot of people just
don't go or maybe don't consider, and hopefully that brings
(01:36):
you some entertainment, it brings you some value. But anyway,
in a nutshell that is our podcast, we're going to
talk about Stephen Colbert and his show getting canceled.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
We're going to talk.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
About, obviously the Epstein thing, and a number of other things,
including NPR.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
We touch on.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Media quite often here, and there is a very, very big,
rapidly changing media landscape within the last I'm gonna say
eighteen months that recent podcasts, for example, played a huge
role in the last election. You might argue, for better
or for worse, things like Substack, all those have really
(02:19):
grown in popularity. And quite frankly, it's gonna be because
of a lot of the things we're touching on in
today's program, the biases, the other things, the one sided views,
and the bubbles that everybody's in trying to cater to
a particular audience. I don't know that that serves everybody well,
(02:40):
I really don't, but we're going to get into some
of this.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Let's start.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
I'm just gonna mention I haven't had a chance to
thoroughly investigate this story yet, but as we go live.
This is eight o four pm Eastern Standard Time, Friday,
July eighteenth. As we're going live, there's some news. Chelsea
gabb in particular, has some information about how a former
(03:04):
administration handled the Russia hoax, or as Trump says, the
Russier the Russier hoax. And we're gonna see how this
plays out, and we might feature it coming up, you know,
within the next week or so. But as it stands
right now, that's just breaking. I haven't had a chance
to thoroughly get into it. Right now here Again, as
(03:26):
we're going live, the big issue is this a letter, Okay,
And I'll tell you what. I'm gonna let Cuomo, our
good friend Cuomo, talk about this. This is a letter
that supposedly Donald Trump wrote to Jeffrey Ebstein. And this
(03:48):
was a long time ago. This was like two thousand
and three or something, and I caught this from Cuomo,
Chris Cuomo, and I thought it was a good clip.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
So let's check this out first.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
This Wall Street Journal piece is a hack job.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Okay. The Epstein story.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Is about abusing kids who didn't have the power or
agency to do anything about it. That rich and powerful
people may have known it was going on and they.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Got away with it. That's the story. Okay.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
It's not that Trump liked a scumbag. Okay, now I
get that. In the media, this is great because it's
bad for Trump. But he's going crazy and he's gonna
pump and move the story for the Wall Street Journal
right now by saying it's fake and it's wrong, but
it doesn't move the needle in the country. It's gonna
make you some money, Rupert, Great for you, just what
you need. But this is why we can't get anywhere.
(04:42):
The guy says, I didn't write the letter. The letter
is meaningless. You put out the piece anyway, and there's
no light on what really matters.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
That is exactly right, and that's why we can't get anywhere.
But here again, I'm gonna put some of the blame
on the audiences. And I don't necessarily mean the audiences
of shows, but I mean the voting public. This is
the kind of bullshit that we pay attention to and
the answer is very simple, he says, why put it?
(05:12):
You know, why do this? It's meaningless. It is because
it's going to stir up a certain fraction of the
public that are going to hop on this thing about
how And I want to be very clear, like I
just said at the beginning, I'm not necessarily a pro
Trump person. If you followed the show last year, that's
when we had the last year's when we had the
(05:32):
big episode when I criticized from a marketing standpoint why
the Democrats were on their way to lose, and it
was not partisan, and that's the you know, the episode
that blew up last year, that's what got me criticized
by a lot of the left wing media. And here
again I wasn't being partisan. I was breaking down why
they were going to lose. Okay, But everybody is on
(05:55):
a team now, Okay, and I am. I waited almost
about a month before the election before I revealed who
I was going to vote for, and quite frankly, I
did it without a lot of enthusiasm. The fact of
the matter is I leaned towards Trump because the Democrats
were off the rails crazy in my opinion. Okay, And
(06:22):
objective analysis by people is becoming.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Very rare.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
You don't criticize somebody that's in your camp. So what
happens is is they take some red meat, like this letter,
and this letter apparently here again, I don't know if
you can prove one way or another the origin of
this letter, but suffice it to say that apparently going
(06:50):
back twenty five years or whatever, almost twenty five years,
twenty two years, there was apparently a letter in which
a drawing of a nude woman was there and it
was very crude, it was very salacious. Here again, I
don't we don't need to go into it a lot
of detail, but here's what's going to happen. This red meat,
(07:10):
this bloody raw red meat, is gonna get thrown into
the piranha infested river, okay, and all the bubbles are
going to start. And what happens is is the people
that hate Trump are going to magnify their dislike for this.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
They are going to chomp a chomp at chompet and
just this, devour it as fast as they can, and
the people that love Trump are going to say this
is false, it's a hoax. It's this or that or
the other thing, and they're going to hate the left
for promoting this, and all it does is entrench people
(07:56):
in their positions and give that much more more division
and dislike and in some cases hatred for the other side.
And if you are automatically jumping on this story one
way or another, if you are automatically saying Trump is
a deviant because of this story, or if you are
(08:16):
automatically defending him without the facts being known, without being
able to verify things, You're part of what I'm talking
about here, okay, And that's what people count on now,
you know, anytime you get into a camp, I am
(08:36):
pro this, i am anti this, and it's gonna be
that way no matter what. And I'm gonna support the
people that support my position and to hell with everybody else.
The danger of that, and I don't hear this mentioned enough,
but the danger of that is you become very easy
(08:57):
to manipulate. All's they have to do is put it
in the order for what they want. We want outrage, okay,
and they put the order out and everybody fills the
order on demand. And that's part of the problem, you know.
So when we turn to the media and say, well,
they're they're feeding these stories. They're feeding these stories because
(09:20):
they get eaten. Okay, And if we were demanding more
thorough reporting, if we were demanding more you know, encompassing
coverage and three hundred and sixty degree coverage on things,
and it shows that covered the nuances of things got
(09:41):
the ratings, that's probably what we would get at least
more of. Now. The manipulation in the media is a
whole nother thing that I mean, I think that's very deliberate,
and it goes with a lot of these big companies
now that have agendas of their.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Own, that own media.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
You know, when the founding fathers were talking about a
free press back then, they were talking about you know,
a little a little shack in the uh in the
small town that had, you know, a little printing press,
and you know, we're trying to get the stories out
that mattered to that community. They never envisioned these massive
(10:21):
corporations that control the narrative for hundreds of millions of people.
And we have to be very careful about regulating this.
That's not something that I want to get into. I
don't want to do that. However, I think we do
have to in so many like in so many other industries.
(10:42):
We have to be concerned about monopolies, and right now
there's one or two or three companies that just about
run the gamut on everything. So with that being said,
you know, I'm still going to get back to the
audience here. I'm going to get back to the public
on here. So many times during the elections, I always
hear people say, oh, you know, I'm so tired of
(11:02):
all these negative ads, these negative heads. All as I
do is tear down the other guy. And the fact
of the matter is research is very clear on this
negative ads work. If sunshine and chirping birds and blue
skies made candidates get votes, that's what they would do.
(11:24):
But the fact of the matter is when they get behind,
somebody in their camp says, we got to go nuclear. Okay,
we got to go negative, and it works. So we
have to be more savvy in terms of how we
give these these channels, in terms of the media, our attention,
(11:45):
give them the ratings. And if you're online, you have
to be careful if you give your clicks to make
people earn. Your clicks, make people earn, you know, your
very valuable attention, because if they're just throwing you out, hey,
we're on your team, and you go, hey, all right,
you are making.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
It too easy for them. Okay.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
So here again, that's why this letter thing is working.
And quite frankly, like Cuomo indicated there, in a lot
of cases, Trump is feeding into this. He's giving it
more blood in the water for the piranha to go
crazy over. He's feeding the piranha by making all these
(12:31):
grand statements and the lawsuits and everything else. The other
thing I would point out about this letter is where
has it been, you know, especially when the Democrats were
in control, when Biden was in office and they were
going after Trump, you know, with this whole thing, with
(12:51):
the you know, the manipulation of funds of the campaign,
that whole thing, that whole thing. Even Cuomo's father said
when he Attorney general, that's a case had it been
anybody else, that would have never made it to the courts.
That was political shenanigans. That was paper shuffling, and in
(13:13):
any way saying it's it's a moral right thing, and
you know that there's nothing wrong with what happened ethically.
Should you be doing that kind of stuff when you're
married or whatever, probably not okay, But that's not what
we're talking about here. We're talking about the prosecution of
a former president, something that has never happened before, and
(13:35):
it happened over political shenanigans. And if you watch the
faces of a lot of these very biased political pundits,
if you go back and check out some of those videos,
you go back and check out some of the Democrats,
they were crazy, insane with distemper, okay, like one of
those raccoons that's out on your back porch that isn't
(13:57):
quite right, making all the faces that. It's what they
were like with that whole Trump prosecution. They were insane,
rabid with it. And if they had this letter, then
if they had access to all of this information, where
was this letter? Was it like just sitting on somebody's mantle.
(14:21):
And I'm sure they're going to have some explanation as
to where this thing turned up. But here again, you
really have to pay attention to timing. Okay, these things,
these allegations, these damaging stories always come up at very
interesting times. They never come out. It seems like when
(14:45):
the subject of let's say, Epstein just isn't in the
news cycle anymore. It's not there, Okay, it's not driving
the six o'clock news. It's not why people are coming
in to watch the news. It's not why people are
hopping on X. You know, they're worried about something else,
and then all of a sudden, this letter comes out.
That isn't when it comes out. What comes out is
(15:05):
the controversy over this Epstein client list. Now, there's a
number of possibilities about the Epstein client list and its
existence or non existence. I doubt very much that there
was a so called black book laying around. If you
(15:27):
are dealing with very rich and powerful people doing very
bad things, you want them to feel safe in what
they are doing. And the idea that there's a detailed
list laying around somewhere is very unlikely. And if there is,
it's probably coded. You know, there's different aliases and different names,
(15:52):
things that you really have to have a lot of
investigation involved to find out who they connect to. With
that being said, I don't think that there's nothing to
this story. Like a lot of the people in the
Trump administraistration are saying, there are some caveats here. For one,
(16:14):
there's a good chance that Trump and a lot of
other people in this whole investigation. Their names are in there,
and here again in this day and age, they could
be in there for something very meaningless in terms of
their connection to Epstein. It could be business connections. It
could be they flow on their plane, they were involved
in some sort of charity together, etc. And here again,
(16:37):
people on the left they don't care. And I'm saying
in a lot of cases on the right too, but
in this case the left, if they find somebody they
don't like on that list in the most innocent manner,
they are not going to care.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
They don't care.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
If they destroy someone's life, they are going to jump
on it and throw that name in into the water
where all the piranha are feeding, and at the detriment
of who's ever innocent and whoever just got caught up
in the meat grinder by accident. So that's why these
things are often they have some hesitation going in because
(17:18):
you don't want to damage innocent people. And the last
thing I'll say too is this about this subject is
just the accusation a lot of times is most harmful.
You know, there's that old adage about accusing someone of
being seen in a field trying to have sex with
(17:41):
a horse.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
They can come out and vehemently deny it. They could
threaten to sue you, they can do all kinds of stuff,
and you say, okay, I take it back, you know,
before the cease and desist letter comes in and I
need it was a mistake. The person who said that
isn't reliable and we shouldn't have reported that. The damage
(18:04):
is already done because you are now in a position
of having to deny having sex with a horse, and
that is what people remember. It's damaging, especially in this
day and age where if you're on somebody's idle like list,
you're gonna mark that down on your list of things
to hate him for and mention it every single time
(18:26):
you can, okay, And that's why these things come out.
It doesn't matter how relevant this letter is it to me,
It doesn't even matter if Trump and Epstein had some
sort of a weird relationship together as to adults. If
it doesn't impact the investigation into the wrongdoing, into the
(18:48):
trafficking and everything else, it's irrelevant. But the problem is
is that people like to connect the dots for people
that they don't like, and that's why this letter came out.
And I do agree with Chris Cuomo. There. You know,
the fact of the matter is is there's the real
(19:08):
issue is the trafficking. The real issue is the harm
that was done to innocent people, that was done to
underage people. That's the harm that's the problem, not a
twenty to twenty three year old weird letter that we're
not even sure came from Trump. But it's just the
latest example of red meat that has been thrown into
(19:32):
the water and it is being devoured. Okay, the next
thing up here is Stephen Colby. If you listen to
this show with any regularity, you know that I that's
one of the people I cannot stand. I cannot stand
(19:55):
this guy, and boy does There's a lot of things
I want to cover here. Here's the issue. Stephen Colbert's
show was canceled. Late Night whatever it is with Stephen Colbert,
and of course this is the follow up to Late
(20:16):
Night with David Letterman. Now, David Letterman had his leanings too,
but David Letterman would at least punch in both directions,
and he had a certain amount of snark. I remember
when I'm old enough, I'm of a certain age, and
I can remember when Carson retired and the decision was
(20:41):
going to be between Jay Leno and David Letterman, and
objectively speaking, I would have to say David Letterman was
probably more of an edgy type of individual and maybe
he should have got the job. But in that moment
I agreed and I still do that Jay Leno was
(21:02):
the better replacement because of the snark. Carson, for the
most part did not have it. I mean, obviously you
used sarcasm in your humor, but he did not have
that snark, you know that looking off.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
To the side.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah, well, that little snicker. And I'm not sure that
you know this is nineteen ninety two. The audience for
thirty years was very use to a friendly, nice person there,
and Johnny Carson always treated whether it was Academy Award winner,
(21:43):
whether it was you know, a former president, or whether
it was a potato farmer from in the middle of
the country, they always received respect. They always were treated
with a certain amount of dignity. And I felt that
Leno was the better choice all of the people that
(22:04):
I mentioned here, Carson, Leno, Letterman, And at the time
there was few people that made a little bit of
a dent in Carson, not by much. Our Sinio was one,
and of course, actually when Nightline first came on, Nightline
was a response a news program to the hostage crisis
(22:25):
in nineteen seventy nine. In nineteen eighty, that's when Nightline
kind of rose to prominence, and as time went on
it became a featured show. And those things kind of
made a dent in Carson, but not by much. Carson
ruled the time that he was on and always treated
people with respect. All of those people that I just
(22:46):
mentioned are head and shoulders above any of those three
that are on now. And what's really bad about these
three is they turned late night TV into something. And
I am surprised that Stephen Colbert stayed on the on
(23:06):
the show as long as he did. The ratings are falling.
The show does not bring These shows are incredibly expensive
to produce, these late night shows, and I don't understand why.
It's not like they have the best writers in the world.
It's not like there's anything technically happening happening on this show,
but there's millions upon millions of dollars that are poured
(23:29):
into these shows, and they just don't bring in the
revenue like they used to. And a lot of that
is the fault of Stephen Colbert and the other two. Okay,
I really don't like any of the three major talk
show hosts on late Night. Now, getting back to Stephen Colbert,
there's a lot of people that are upset about the
(23:50):
fact that Stephen Colbert is being canceled because they allege
it's something that he said about his boss. And here's
a very small snippet of that, just so you know
what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
Corporation Paramount paid Donald Trump a sixteen million dollar settlement
over his sixteen minutes lawsuits. As someone who has always
been a proud employee of this network, I'm offended and
I don't know if anything will ever repair my trust
in this company, But just taking a stab at it,
I'd say sixteen million dollars would help. Now, I believe
(24:23):
this kind of complicated financial settlement with a city government
official has a technical name in legal circles.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
It's big fat Bride. Because this all.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
Comes as Paramount's owners are trying to get the Trump
administration to approve the sale of our network to a
new owner.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Sky Dance. Yeah, what a twit that that.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
I'm sorry, that's my personal opinion of course, but that
is a real twit right there. Now, listen to what
he just did. He bad mouthed his boss, and everybody's
so shocked about oh, his right to speak and all this.
Imagine any of us speaking shit about our boss publicly
(25:09):
and with such glee, dancing around like a little twit
and being shocked that would be fired that. You know,
it's shocking when somebody like Stephen Colbert gets fired for
doing this. But one of the little peons, like the
rest of us, you know, a customer walks into the
(25:30):
store where we work and we say our boss is
a blah blah blah blah, and then we get fired.
And do you think would be shocked?
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (25:41):
The idea that this is shocking is shocking to me.
But it goes beyond this. Do you noticely that little
diatribe there, in that little tweety commentary there, that there
was nothing in terms of comedic material there. These shows
(26:04):
have become political commentary shows. They're not entertainment shows anymore.
That's one of the major reasons why they can't support themselves,
all right, not own not the only reason. With the Internet,
now you have younger people listening to podcasts, which is great,
(26:24):
and you have them listening to substack and doing things
on the internet and not staying up late for broadcast TV,
especially when it's nothing but horseshit.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
And I know you might say, well, these shows have
the right. You know, everybody has the right to voice
their opinion, and celebrities have the right. Okay, here's here's
the real issue. Number One, people turn in. When Carson
ruled at the end of a long day, you didn't
want to get charged up, Okay, at the end of
a long day, you wanted to to listen into an
(27:00):
old friend, you know, have a few laughs. They poked
out some genuine fun that that that the current president.
But it was nothing mean spirited. It was nothing, you know,
everything was just fun. And Carson was asked about this
by Mike Wallace during a sixty minutes interview and he
(27:21):
brought up something And this applies not only to talk
show hosts, but it applies to musicians in particular. I
think musicians, especially with very young fans, they have a connection.
They want to emulate their heroes. They're rapping heroes, their
(27:41):
guitar heroes, whatever, their musical heroes, people that make them
feel good. Okay, when people make you feel good, they
can be very influential in your psyche. So if you
have a favorite star, and your favorite star you know somebody,
you have the poster on the wall and all that.
As a young person, if they start talking negative about
(28:02):
a given president or whatever, you're inclined to follow that.
That is very powerful. And Mike Wallace on sixty Minutes,
Mike Wallace asked Carson, this was in the late seventies,
this was when he was at the height of his power.
Why he doesn't take on more serious issues? And this
(28:23):
is what Carson said.
Speaker 5 (28:30):
Do you get sensitive about the fact that people say
he'll never take a serious controversy? Well, I have an
answer to that. I said, no. Tell me the last
time that Jack Benny red Skelton Benny comedian used his
show to do serious issues. That's not what I'm there for.
Can't they see that?
Speaker 6 (28:51):
But you and I do.
Speaker 5 (28:52):
They think that just because you have it tonight's show,
that you must deal in serious issues. That's a danger.
It's a real danger. Once you start that, do you
start to get that self important feeling that what you
say has great import and you know, strangely enough, you
could use that show as a form you could sway people,
and I don't think you should as an entertainer.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
That is just my point.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
You know, if Steven Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel, who's right
behind him on people, I don't like they've turned these
shows into political commentary. They've turned them into some influential thing.
Everything comes from the same angle, and you know, the
(29:36):
self importance. And Jimmy Kimmel will often cry when he's
making these points. He's so passionate about all this bullshit.
These shows here again from keeping them on show business
all right. Late night was a fun place and it
(29:57):
has turned into cable news. It has turned in to MSNBC.
And I would go step farther and say that the
lack of creativity with all of these shows is astounding
to me, absolutely astounding to me as a creative myself.
(30:18):
Carson and his predecessor, which a lot.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Of people don't remember. I was too young when Jack
Parr I was on, but I don't know even sure
I was born.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
But I know who he is, you know, just like
Abraham Lincoln was before my time, but I know who
he is. He kind of established that format. But Carson
took it to a whole other level, all right, And
of course David Letterman wrote that, and so did other
people a few others, where you come out and you
do this routine, and now the format is this. You
(30:49):
come out and you do this routine, and you throw
a couple of digs at the president, if it's President Trump.
Because young hit people who are indoctrinated and are of
college age and traditionally was always a fan of these
types of shows, they don't like Trump. But the only
problem is is that those people aren't watching the shows anymore,
(31:11):
all right, and the ratings just aren't there. You know,
the type of bullshit that you're getting from Stephen Colbert
and Jimmy Kimmel, you can get at eight o'clock in
the evening from Rachel Maddow and she just doesn't masquerade
as a talk show. And this You come out there
(31:34):
with this routine, this monologue, and you throw a few
digs at the president. Then you do this screwball skit
that is not funny by any stretch of the imagination.
And then you bring some privileged celebrity, some celebrity who's
the son of some rich, famous parents who wrote this
(31:57):
book about how terrible their parents were, how they grew
up in misery and rich and this is what the
show has become. You have a two or three of
those people on plugging their latest book, their latest TV program, whatever,
their latest movie, and then you end with a musical
act that you probably never heard of. That's the format
(32:18):
of Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and The Tonight Show. That
that's what they all three do. As a matter of fact,
they pretty much look the same physically. You know, you
could flip through NBC, CBS and all these others here
(32:41):
Jimmy Kimmel's on ABC, the to Night Shows on NBC,
and Stephen Colbert shows on CBS. You could go all
through all three of these and they're pretty much indistinguishable.
They look the same, and I would be willing to
bet they sync up. Donald Trump is orange, Donald Trump,
this Donald Trump. That it's the same stuff. And as
(33:04):
far as being original, you got to keep in mind
Carson had extreme longevity through many presidents. You know, the
political leanings. If you're trying to be an entertainer, the
political leanings shift, you know, and they can shift not
only every four years, they can shift every two depending
on how influential on what's going on with the midterms.
(33:26):
So when you have based your show on being anti Trump,
and that's only going to last so long, and there's
nowhere to go when a Democrat gets in there, and
all of a sudden, you don't have no one to
rail against you, you're stuck with trying to be creative again.
(33:49):
And like I said, these shows are indistinguishable. They could
have the same writers for all three and save a
lot of money because they do the same stuff. There's
nothing innovative about the format or anything else. I've been
saying for a long time. Fox call me. We could
do some great stuff of late night. I envisioned something like.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
A like a like a like.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
A commentary fun type thing and mix in a little
bit of Saturday Night live elements and a live music
and have it run for an hour and a half
and uh, you know, and cover the political gamut, cover
current events, make fun of world events, lampoon things. There's
(34:32):
so much you could do other than the same old thing. Hey,
how's everybody doing tonight? Hey he holds the band doing?
Trump is Orange? You know it's the same bs every night. Okay,
enough of that, you get my feeling about that. The
next thing up is in PR and you know what,
(34:53):
I'm not kidding I do. I do a lot of voiceovers.
I have a lot of software and all this other
stuff for voiceovers. And there's actually a setting and some
software for the NPR sound. You click on the NPR
sound today. What we're going to be doing is where
are we going to be talking about the yellow bird?
The yellow bird is quite frankly seen in mostly southern regions.
(35:17):
And okay, that is what I envision. NPR's purpose was
the original vision of public programming. And you know, just
getting back to what the original purpose of the Tonight
Show was, which was lighthearted, end of day entertainment. That's
what That's what the original Tonight Show was. And that's
(35:39):
what Johnny Carson took to the stratosphere. Okay, he made
it part of pop culture identity for that era. Okay,
NPR not quite that. But NPR was designed to in
the day and age of ratings driven news, which is
(36:00):
problematic as it is, as I talked about earlier, but
in ratings driven news, the idea behind public product and
not just ratings driven news, but ratings driven entertainment. The
idea behind public broadcasting was We're going to give you
something that isn't ratings driven but still is important still
(36:24):
that there are things that people want to hear about.
So whether it be you know, animals, animals, stories about animals,
and the things that would not get big ratings on
EBC on Thursday night, you know, things of whether it
be a concert, violinists and the arts, and a different
(36:47):
way of looking at public service and the things that
are going on, problems that are going on across the
country in underserved communities and not just underserved in the city,
but underserved in the country. You know, places that don't
get a lot of attention because you don't have to
drive through them on your way to work. You know,
those were the things that Public NPR, in public broadcasting,
(37:13):
was supposed to be showing. And that isn't what it became.
It became cable news. Our good friend, I say, our
good friend John Kennedy from the great State of Louisiana.
He posted some of these and I'm aware of them.
They're they're all over. These are some of the stories
(37:35):
that NPR talked about. NPR reported that country music and
birds are racist, told American people to stop eating beef
and promoted the Russia Gate conspiracy, and as I said,
there's news breaking on that. NPR claimed that President Biden's
presidential debate performance didn't change the election days before he
(37:59):
dropped off of the race. And getting back to that,
you know, I mentioned that episode that I had last
year in twenty twenty four, I was saying, for a year,
this show originally got its traction leading up to the
presidential election, and I was saying for a year, and
my cohost Cynthia agreed with me during the time, there's
(38:22):
no way he's going to run. And everybody came after
me like, oh, you're playing into the conspiracy to discredit
a sitting president. No, he was not capable, all right.
And now there's all these books, you know, all these
(38:43):
all these political pundits claimed they were duped from CNN
and they write these dumbass books. Yeah, right, President President
Biden's presidential debate performance didn't change election. It was it
was just fine, nothing wrong with it at all. And
PR reported that there's no evidence that biological women have
(39:03):
excuse me, NPR reported that there is no evidence that
biological men have an unfair advantage over biological women in sports.
NPR also called America's interstate highways racist. NPR referred to
rural Americans as Christian nationalists. Now Here Again, some of
(39:24):
them might say some of these statements are correct, and
that's fine. But what I'm pointing out is there's nothing
here that indicates to me that there's some purpose that
NPR is fulfilling. All of these kind of things you
can find on cable news. You can find all these
things on cable news. There is no reason at all
(39:47):
the public funds that taxpayer money, and we're talking about
millions upon millions upon millions of dollars. There is absolutely
no reason for public funds to go into this. This
was the commentary from NPR HI.
Speaker 6 (40:06):
I'm Catherine Marer, CEO of NPR. Congress just voted to
eliminate all federal funding for public media. This decision hurts
communities across America. It means fewer local reporters covering town
councils and state championships. It means fewer stories about local farms, fisheries, businesses,
about what's happening in the state house, about musicians and
(40:27):
civic leaders who make our communities tick. It means fewer
voices reflecting the richness of who we are as a nation.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Yes, and you could tell she's so sincere because she says,
hi a mar from NPR. You know originally when you
listen to that, that's what That's what NPR was intended
to do. But not reporting all this bullshit over here.
NPR was intended to serve an audience that is not
(40:56):
served by mass media. And that does not mean promoting
left wing ideals. It means bringing up topics, bringing up concerns,
bringing up stories that it is simply not possible to
get a large wide audience on paid advertising or paid
(41:16):
TV that would support it. So that's the whole thing
with public entities is to serve an area that is
not served by for profit, large ratings driven entities. That
is what National Broadcasting, Public broadcasting was four and instead
(41:44):
it has turned into a radio version of MSNBC where
we're going to talk about the evil and vile Donald Trump.
That is what NPR has become. And as far as
(42:04):
I'm concerned, if you disagree with me, if you think
NPR is a great thing, then give your money to them,
because that is what she's asking for.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
So if this.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
If this NPR is so vital and is so wanted
and so desired, then they shouldn't have any problem either
selling advertising or asking for donations to support their wonderful
(42:34):
and interesting NPR material. It is just absolutely enchanting to
hear this type of programming, and this programming is made
possible by people like you. Yes, it most certainly is.
Have at it, have a great day, all Rightbilities. You
(42:56):
can find the Abilities podcast anyway podcasts are found. We
have a ten year history on all the major platforms.
So on any platform you go to and search out
the Billy D's podcast, boom, we are there, okay, and
there's no paywalls. You can subscribe. We don't do pay
(43:17):
walls all right for our listeners. Listeners listen for free.
So if you subscribe to the Ability's podcast on any
of these platforms, there's no oh, well to get this,
you got to do that. And we do the same
thing on social media. I know there's a big move now,
you know all these creators say, oh, you got to
(43:37):
sell subscriptions. And if you want to listen to the
Bbilit D's podcast on any major podcast platform, it is
absolutely one percent free and it will stay that way.
There are no pay walls, and if you follow us
on X which is the former Twitter at Billy D's,
that's kind of like my social media home for trending topics,
breaking news, things like that. X is still of one
(44:00):
of the strongest places to be. We don't sell subscriptions there. Okay,
you follow us anything we're putting out any of the
spaces we do whatever else is on pay wall free.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
We don't do too much on Facebook.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Our Facebook page is really small, but we do have
more detailed information there. Maybe things were doing in the
background to promote the podcast. Sometimes we get some new software,
new microphone, something like that, we talk about it. We
don't just talk about how great our latest episode is.
We try to have some fun on the Facebook page,
(44:36):
so very small niche kind of following there, but you're
welcome to join and follow us there the abilities podcasts
on Facebook, but I would have to say X is
where our primary focus is, So give us a follow
on X. All right, I am Billy D's and I
don't want to thank you very much for listening to
(44:57):
the podcast, and we will up to you again a
very very sision.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
I'm Billy D's and host of.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
The self titled podcast, The Billy D's Podcast. We are
primarily an interview and a commentary based podcast featuring authors
and creators talking about their craft, advocates for community issues,
and myself in an array of co host discussing current events.
There's no partisan renting and raving going on here, just
great content. You can find The Billy D's Podcast on
(45:31):
your favorite platform and on Twitter at Billy D's. Thank you,
and I hope you listen in
You are listening to the Billy D's podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
All right, well, hello everyone, and welcome to the program
if you are new here. We are primarily an interview
and a commentary based podcast. My name is Billy D's.
On Friday nights, we try to go live. We have
studio productions that are out quite often. A great interview
with Christy Michelson, great interview with Bill Thompson, all in
(00:35):
our playlist anywhere you find us. You can find our
playlist and those two studio interviews are available. We do
go live on Friday. As I mentioned, it's commentary, and
you know, it's just having a little fun with the
news sometimes.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
You know, in this day and.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Age, it's real easy to get pegged as right or left,
and then somebody has to put you on the scale.
You're kind of left of center, right of center, you know,
they push you on. I try not to be on
the scale at all, okay. I try to examine individual
issues not from the right of the left, but from
(01:13):
three hundred and sixty degrees okay. And depending on your leanings,
you might say, well, you're right, you're left, or this
or that. But you know that's what I try to
do is give a perspective that you don't get elsewhere,
whether it be on cable news or the other podcasts
or whatever. That's kind of our niche. I try to
go into a direction that a lot of people just
don't go or maybe don't consider, and hopefully that brings
(01:36):
you some entertainment, it brings you some value. But anyway,
in a nutshell that is our podcast, we're going to
talk about Stephen Colbert and his show getting canceled.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
We're going to talk.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
About, obviously the Epstein thing, and a number of other things,
including NPR.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
We touch on.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Media quite often here, and there is a very, very big,
rapidly changing media landscape within the last I'm gonna say
eighteen months that recent podcasts, for example, played a huge
role in the last election. You might argue, for better
or for worse, things like Substack, all those have really
(02:19):
grown in popularity. And quite frankly, it's gonna be because
of a lot of the things we're touching on in
today's program, the biases, the other things, the one sided views,
and the bubbles that everybody's in trying to cater to
a particular audience. I don't know that that serves everybody well,
(02:40):
I really don't, but we're going to get into some
of this.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Let's start.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
I'm just gonna mention I haven't had a chance to
thoroughly investigate this story yet, but as we go live.
This is eight o four pm Eastern Standard Time, Friday,
July eighteenth. As we're going live, there's some news. Chelsea
gabb in particular, has some information about how a former
(03:04):
administration handled the Russia hoax, or as Trump says, the
Russier the Russier hoax. And we're gonna see how this
plays out, and we might feature it coming up, you know,
within the next week or so. But as it stands
right now, that's just breaking. I haven't had a chance
to thoroughly get into it. Right now here Again, as
(03:26):
we're going live, the big issue is this a letter, Okay,
And I'll tell you what. I'm gonna let Cuomo, our
good friend Cuomo, talk about this. This is a letter
that supposedly Donald Trump wrote to Jeffrey Ebstein. And this
(03:48):
was a long time ago. This was like two thousand
and three or something, and I caught this from Cuomo,
Chris Cuomo, and I thought it was a good clip.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
So let's check this out first.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
This Wall Street Journal piece is a hack job.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Okay. The Epstein story.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Is about abusing kids who didn't have the power or
agency to do anything about it. That rich and powerful
people may have known it was going on and they.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Got away with it. That's the story. Okay.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
It's not that Trump liked a scumbag. Okay, now I
get that. In the media, this is great because it's
bad for Trump. But he's going crazy and he's gonna
pump and move the story for the Wall Street Journal
right now by saying it's fake and it's wrong, but
it doesn't move the needle in the country. It's gonna
make you some money, Rupert, Great for you, just what
you need. But this is why we can't get anywhere.
(04:42):
The guy says, I didn't write the letter. The letter
is meaningless. You put out the piece anyway, and there's
no light on what really matters.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
That is exactly right, and that's why we can't get anywhere.
But here again, I'm gonna put some of the blame
on the audiences. And I don't necessarily mean the audiences
of shows, but I mean the voting public. This is
the kind of bullshit that we pay attention to and
the answer is very simple, he says, why put it?
(05:12):
You know, why do this? It's meaningless. It is because
it's going to stir up a certain fraction of the
public that are going to hop on this thing about
how And I want to be very clear, like I
just said at the beginning, I'm not necessarily a pro
Trump person. If you followed the show last year, that's
when we had the last year's when we had the
(05:32):
big episode when I criticized from a marketing standpoint why
the Democrats were on their way to lose, and it
was not partisan, and that's the you know, the episode
that blew up last year, that's what got me criticized
by a lot of the left wing media. And here
again I wasn't being partisan. I was breaking down why
they were going to lose. Okay, But everybody is on
(05:55):
a team now, Okay, and I am. I waited almost
about a month before the election before I revealed who
I was going to vote for, and quite frankly, I
did it without a lot of enthusiasm. The fact of
the matter is I leaned towards Trump because the Democrats
were off the rails crazy in my opinion. Okay, And
(06:22):
objective analysis by people is becoming.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Very rare.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
You don't criticize somebody that's in your camp. So what
happens is is they take some red meat, like this letter,
and this letter apparently here again, I don't know if
you can prove one way or another the origin of
this letter, but suffice it to say that apparently going
(06:50):
back twenty five years or whatever, almost twenty five years,
twenty two years, there was apparently a letter in which
a drawing of a nude woman was there and it
was very crude, it was very salacious. Here again, I
don't we don't need to go into it a lot
of detail, but here's what's going to happen. This red meat,
(07:10):
this bloody raw red meat, is gonna get thrown into
the piranha infested river, okay, and all the bubbles are
going to start. And what happens is is the people
that hate Trump are going to magnify their dislike for this.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
They are going to chomp a chomp at chompet and
just this, devour it as fast as they can, and
the people that love Trump are going to say this
is false, it's a hoax. It's this or that or
the other thing, and they're going to hate the left
for promoting this, and all it does is entrench people
(07:56):
in their positions and give that much more more division
and dislike and in some cases hatred for the other side.
And if you are automatically jumping on this story one
way or another, if you are automatically saying Trump is
a deviant because of this story, or if you are
(08:16):
automatically defending him without the facts being known, without being
able to verify things, You're part of what I'm talking
about here, okay, And that's what people count on now,
you know, anytime you get into a camp, I am
(08:36):
pro this, i am anti this, and it's gonna be
that way no matter what. And I'm gonna support the
people that support my position and to hell with everybody else.
The danger of that, and I don't hear this mentioned enough,
but the danger of that is you become very easy
(08:57):
to manipulate. All's they have to do is put it
in the order for what they want. We want outrage, okay,
and they put the order out and everybody fills the
order on demand. And that's part of the problem, you know.
So when we turn to the media and say, well,
they're they're feeding these stories. They're feeding these stories because
(09:20):
they get eaten. Okay, And if we were demanding more
thorough reporting, if we were demanding more you know, encompassing
coverage and three hundred and sixty degree coverage on things,
and it shows that covered the nuances of things got
(09:41):
the ratings, that's probably what we would get at least
more of. Now. The manipulation in the media is a
whole nother thing that I mean, I think that's very deliberate,
and it goes with a lot of these big companies
now that have agendas of their.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Own, that own media.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
You know, when the founding fathers were talking about a
free press back then, they were talking about you know,
a little a little shack in the uh in the
small town that had, you know, a little printing press,
and you know, we're trying to get the stories out
that mattered to that community. They never envisioned these massive
(10:21):
corporations that control the narrative for hundreds of millions of people.
And we have to be very careful about regulating this.
That's not something that I want to get into. I
don't want to do that. However, I think we do
have to in so many like in so many other industries.
(10:42):
We have to be concerned about monopolies, and right now
there's one or two or three companies that just about
run the gamut on everything. So with that being said,
you know, I'm still going to get back to the
audience here. I'm going to get back to the public
on here. So many times during the elections, I always
hear people say, oh, you know, I'm so tired of
(11:02):
all these negative ads, these negative heads. All as I
do is tear down the other guy. And the fact
of the matter is research is very clear on this
negative ads work. If sunshine and chirping birds and blue
skies made candidates get votes, that's what they would do.
(11:24):
But the fact of the matter is when they get behind,
somebody in their camp says, we got to go nuclear. Okay,
we got to go negative, and it works. So we
have to be more savvy in terms of how we
give these these channels, in terms of the media, our attention,
(11:45):
give them the ratings. And if you're online, you have
to be careful if you give your clicks to make
people earn. Your clicks, make people earn, you know, your
very valuable attention, because if they're just throwing you out, hey,
we're on your team, and you go, hey, all right,
you are making.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
It too easy for them. Okay.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
So here again, that's why this letter thing is working.
And quite frankly, like Cuomo indicated there, in a lot
of cases, Trump is feeding into this. He's giving it
more blood in the water for the piranha to go
crazy over. He's feeding the piranha by making all these
(12:31):
grand statements and the lawsuits and everything else. The other
thing I would point out about this letter is where
has it been, you know, especially when the Democrats were
in control, when Biden was in office and they were
going after Trump, you know, with this whole thing, with
(12:51):
the you know, the manipulation of funds of the campaign,
that whole thing, that whole thing. Even Cuomo's father said
when he Attorney general, that's a case had it been
anybody else, that would have never made it to the courts.
That was political shenanigans. That was paper shuffling, and in
(13:13):
any way saying it's it's a moral right thing, and
you know that there's nothing wrong with what happened ethically.
Should you be doing that kind of stuff when you're
married or whatever, probably not okay, But that's not what
we're talking about here. We're talking about the prosecution of
a former president, something that has never happened before, and
(13:35):
it happened over political shenanigans. And if you watch the
faces of a lot of these very biased political pundits,
if you go back and check out some of those videos,
you go back and check out some of the Democrats,
they were crazy, insane with distemper, okay, like one of
those raccoons that's out on your back porch that isn't
(13:57):
quite right, making all the faces that. It's what they
were like with that whole Trump prosecution. They were insane,
rabid with it. And if they had this letter, then
if they had access to all of this information, where
was this letter? Was it like just sitting on somebody's mantle.
(14:21):
And I'm sure they're going to have some explanation as
to where this thing turned up. But here again, you
really have to pay attention to timing. Okay, these things,
these allegations, these damaging stories always come up at very
interesting times. They never come out. It seems like when
(14:45):
the subject of let's say, Epstein just isn't in the
news cycle anymore. It's not there, Okay, it's not driving
the six o'clock news. It's not why people are coming
in to watch the news. It's not why people are
hopping on X. You know, they're worried about something else,
and then all of a sudden, this letter comes out.
That isn't when it comes out. What comes out is
(15:05):
the controversy over this Epstein client list. Now, there's a
number of possibilities about the Epstein client list and its
existence or non existence. I doubt very much that there
was a so called black book laying around. If you
(15:27):
are dealing with very rich and powerful people doing very
bad things, you want them to feel safe in what
they are doing. And the idea that there's a detailed
list laying around somewhere is very unlikely. And if there is,
it's probably coded. You know, there's different aliases and different names,
(15:52):
things that you really have to have a lot of
investigation involved to find out who they connect to. With
that being said, I don't think that there's nothing to
this story. Like a lot of the people in the
Trump administraistration are saying, there are some caveats here. For one,
(16:14):
there's a good chance that Trump and a lot of
other people in this whole investigation. Their names are in there,
and here again in this day and age, they could
be in there for something very meaningless in terms of
their connection to Epstein. It could be business connections. It
could be they flow on their plane, they were involved
in some sort of charity together, etc. And here again,
(16:37):
people on the left they don't care. And I'm saying
in a lot of cases on the right too, but
in this case the left, if they find somebody they
don't like on that list in the most innocent manner,
they are not going to care.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
They don't care.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
If they destroy someone's life, they are going to jump
on it and throw that name in into the water
where all the piranha are feeding, and at the detriment
of who's ever innocent and whoever just got caught up
in the meat grinder by accident. So that's why these
things are often they have some hesitation going in because
(17:18):
you don't want to damage innocent people. And the last
thing I'll say too is this about this subject is
just the accusation a lot of times is most harmful.
You know, there's that old adage about accusing someone of
being seen in a field trying to have sex with
(17:41):
a horse.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
They can come out and vehemently deny it. They could
threaten to sue you, they can do all kinds of stuff,
and you say, okay, I take it back, you know,
before the cease and desist letter comes in and I
need it was a mistake. The person who said that
isn't reliable and we shouldn't have reported that. The damage
(18:04):
is already done because you are now in a position
of having to deny having sex with a horse, and
that is what people remember. It's damaging, especially in this
day and age where if you're on somebody's idle like list,
you're gonna mark that down on your list of things
to hate him for and mention it every single time
(18:26):
you can, okay, And that's why these things come out.
It doesn't matter how relevant this letter is it to me,
It doesn't even matter if Trump and Epstein had some
sort of a weird relationship together as to adults. If
it doesn't impact the investigation into the wrongdoing, into the
(18:48):
trafficking and everything else, it's irrelevant. But the problem is
is that people like to connect the dots for people
that they don't like, and that's why this letter came out.
And I do agree with Chris Cuomo. There. You know,
the fact of the matter is is there's the real
(19:08):
issue is the trafficking. The real issue is the harm
that was done to innocent people, that was done to
underage people. That's the harm that's the problem, not a
twenty to twenty three year old weird letter that we're
not even sure came from Trump. But it's just the
latest example of red meat that has been thrown into
(19:32):
the water and it is being devoured. Okay, the next
thing up here is Stephen Colby. If you listen to
this show with any regularity, you know that I that's
one of the people I cannot stand. I cannot stand
(19:55):
this guy, and boy does There's a lot of things
I want to cover here. Here's the issue. Stephen Colbert's
show was canceled. Late Night whatever it is with Stephen Colbert,
and of course this is the follow up to Late
(20:16):
Night with David Letterman. Now, David Letterman had his leanings too,
but David Letterman would at least punch in both directions,
and he had a certain amount of snark. I remember
when I'm old enough, I'm of a certain age, and
I can remember when Carson retired and the decision was
(20:41):
going to be between Jay Leno and David Letterman, and
objectively speaking, I would have to say David Letterman was
probably more of an edgy type of individual and maybe
he should have got the job. But in that moment
I agreed and I still do that Jay Leno was
(21:02):
the better replacement because of the snark. Carson, for the
most part did not have it. I mean, obviously you
used sarcasm in your humor, but he did not have
that snark, you know that looking off.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
To the side.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah, well, that little snicker. And I'm not sure that
you know this is nineteen ninety two. The audience for
thirty years was very use to a friendly, nice person there,
and Johnny Carson always treated whether it was Academy Award winner,
(21:43):
whether it was you know, a former president, or whether
it was a potato farmer from in the middle of
the country, they always received respect. They always were treated
with a certain amount of dignity. And I felt that
Leno was the better choice all of the people that
(22:04):
I mentioned here, Carson, Leno, Letterman, And at the time
there was few people that made a little bit of
a dent in Carson, not by much. Our Sinio was one,
and of course, actually when Nightline first came on, Nightline
was a response a news program to the hostage crisis
(22:25):
in nineteen seventy nine. In nineteen eighty, that's when Nightline
kind of rose to prominence, and as time went on
it became a featured show. And those things kind of
made a dent in Carson, but not by much. Carson
ruled the time that he was on and always treated
people with respect. All of those people that I just
(22:46):
mentioned are head and shoulders above any of those three
that are on now. And what's really bad about these
three is they turned late night TV into something. And
I am surprised that Stephen Colbert stayed on the on
(23:06):
the show as long as he did. The ratings are falling.
The show does not bring These shows are incredibly expensive
to produce, these late night shows, and I don't understand why.
It's not like they have the best writers in the world.
It's not like there's anything technically happening happening on this show,
but there's millions upon millions of dollars that are poured
(23:29):
into these shows, and they just don't bring in the
revenue like they used to. And a lot of that
is the fault of Stephen Colbert and the other two. Okay,
I really don't like any of the three major talk
show hosts on late Night. Now, getting back to Stephen Colbert,
there's a lot of people that are upset about the
(23:50):
fact that Stephen Colbert is being canceled because they allege
it's something that he said about his boss. And here's
a very small snippet of that, just so you know
what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
Corporation Paramount paid Donald Trump a sixteen million dollar settlement
over his sixteen minutes lawsuits. As someone who has always
been a proud employee of this network, I'm offended and
I don't know if anything will ever repair my trust
in this company, But just taking a stab at it,
I'd say sixteen million dollars would help. Now, I believe
(24:23):
this kind of complicated financial settlement with a city government
official has a technical name in legal circles.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
It's big fat Bride. Because this all.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
Comes as Paramount's owners are trying to get the Trump
administration to approve the sale of our network to a
new owner.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Sky Dance. Yeah, what a twit that that.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
I'm sorry, that's my personal opinion of course, but that
is a real twit right there. Now, listen to what
he just did. He bad mouthed his boss, and everybody's
so shocked about oh, his right to speak and all this.
Imagine any of us speaking shit about our boss publicly
(25:09):
and with such glee, dancing around like a little twit
and being shocked that would be fired that. You know,
it's shocking when somebody like Stephen Colbert gets fired for
doing this. But one of the little peons, like the
rest of us, you know, a customer walks into the
(25:30):
store where we work and we say our boss is
a blah blah blah blah, and then we get fired.
And do you think would be shocked?
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (25:41):
The idea that this is shocking is shocking to me.
But it goes beyond this. Do you noticely that little
diatribe there, in that little tweety commentary there, that there
was nothing in terms of comedic material there. These shows
(26:04):
have become political commentary shows. They're not entertainment shows anymore.
That's one of the major reasons why they can't support themselves,
all right, not own not the only reason. With the Internet,
now you have younger people listening to podcasts, which is great,
(26:24):
and you have them listening to substack and doing things
on the internet and not staying up late for broadcast TV,
especially when it's nothing but horseshit.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
And I know you might say, well, these shows have
the right. You know, everybody has the right to voice
their opinion, and celebrities have the right. Okay, here's here's
the real issue. Number One, people turn in. When Carson
ruled at the end of a long day, you didn't
want to get charged up, Okay, at the end of
a long day, you wanted to to listen into an
(27:00):
old friend, you know, have a few laughs. They poked
out some genuine fun that that that the current president.
But it was nothing mean spirited. It was nothing, you know,
everything was just fun. And Carson was asked about this
by Mike Wallace during a sixty minutes interview and he
(27:21):
brought up something And this applies not only to talk
show hosts, but it applies to musicians in particular. I
think musicians, especially with very young fans, they have a connection.
They want to emulate their heroes. They're rapping heroes, their
(27:41):
guitar heroes, whatever, their musical heroes, people that make them
feel good. Okay, when people make you feel good, they
can be very influential in your psyche. So if you
have a favorite star, and your favorite star you know somebody,
you have the poster on the wall and all that.
As a young person, if they start talking negative about
(28:02):
a given president or whatever, you're inclined to follow that.
That is very powerful. And Mike Wallace on sixty Minutes,
Mike Wallace asked Carson, this was in the late seventies,
this was when he was at the height of his power.
Why he doesn't take on more serious issues? And this
(28:23):
is what Carson said.
Speaker 5 (28:30):
Do you get sensitive about the fact that people say
he'll never take a serious controversy? Well, I have an
answer to that. I said, no. Tell me the last
time that Jack Benny red Skelton Benny comedian used his
show to do serious issues. That's not what I'm there for.
Can't they see that?
Speaker 6 (28:51):
But you and I do.
Speaker 5 (28:52):
They think that just because you have it tonight's show,
that you must deal in serious issues. That's a danger.
It's a real danger. Once you start that, do you
start to get that self important feeling that what you
say has great import and you know, strangely enough, you
could use that show as a form you could sway people,
and I don't think you should as an entertainer.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
That is just my point.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
You know, if Steven Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel, who's right
behind him on people, I don't like they've turned these
shows into political commentary. They've turned them into some influential thing.
Everything comes from the same angle, and you know, the
(29:36):
self importance. And Jimmy Kimmel will often cry when he's
making these points. He's so passionate about all this bullshit.
These shows here again from keeping them on show business
all right. Late night was a fun place and it
(29:57):
has turned into cable news. It has turned in to MSNBC.
And I would go step farther and say that the
lack of creativity with all of these shows is astounding
to me, absolutely astounding to me as a creative myself.
(30:18):
Carson and his predecessor, which a lot.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Of people don't remember. I was too young when Jack
Parr I was on, but I don't know even sure
I was born.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
But I know who he is, you know, just like
Abraham Lincoln was before my time, but I know who
he is. He kind of established that format. But Carson
took it to a whole other level, all right, And
of course David Letterman wrote that, and so did other
people a few others, where you come out and you
do this routine, and now the format is this. You
(30:49):
come out and you do this routine, and you throw
a couple of digs at the president, if it's President Trump.
Because young hit people who are indoctrinated and are of
college age and traditionally was always a fan of these
types of shows, they don't like Trump. But the only
problem is is that those people aren't watching the shows anymore,
(31:11):
all right, and the ratings just aren't there. You know,
the type of bullshit that you're getting from Stephen Colbert
and Jimmy Kimmel, you can get at eight o'clock in
the evening from Rachel Maddow and she just doesn't masquerade
as a talk show. And this You come out there
(31:34):
with this routine, this monologue, and you throw a few
digs at the president. Then you do this screwball skit
that is not funny by any stretch of the imagination.
And then you bring some privileged celebrity, some celebrity who's
the son of some rich, famous parents who wrote this
(31:57):
book about how terrible their parents were, how they grew
up in misery and rich and this is what the
show has become. You have a two or three of
those people on plugging their latest book, their latest TV program, whatever,
their latest movie, and then you end with a musical
act that you probably never heard of. That's the format
(32:18):
of Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and The Tonight Show. That
that's what they all three do. As a matter of fact,
they pretty much look the same physically. You know, you
could flip through NBC, CBS and all these others here
(32:41):
Jimmy Kimmel's on ABC, the to Night Shows on NBC,
and Stephen Colbert shows on CBS. You could go all
through all three of these and they're pretty much indistinguishable.
They look the same, and I would be willing to
bet they sync up. Donald Trump is orange, Donald Trump,
this Donald Trump. That it's the same stuff. And as
(33:04):
far as being original, you got to keep in mind
Carson had extreme longevity through many presidents. You know, the
political leanings. If you're trying to be an entertainer, the
political leanings shift, you know, and they can shift not
only every four years, they can shift every two depending
on how influential on what's going on with the midterms.
(33:26):
So when you have based your show on being anti Trump,
and that's only going to last so long, and there's
nowhere to go when a Democrat gets in there, and
all of a sudden, you don't have no one to
rail against you, you're stuck with trying to be creative again.
(33:49):
And like I said, these shows are indistinguishable. They could
have the same writers for all three and save a
lot of money because they do the same stuff. There's
nothing innovative about the format or anything else. I've been
saying for a long time. Fox call me. We could
do some great stuff of late night. I envisioned something like.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
A like a like a like.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
A commentary fun type thing and mix in a little
bit of Saturday Night live elements and a live music
and have it run for an hour and a half
and uh, you know, and cover the political gamut, cover
current events, make fun of world events, lampoon things. There's
(34:32):
so much you could do other than the same old thing. Hey,
how's everybody doing tonight? Hey he holds the band doing?
Trump is Orange? You know it's the same bs every night. Okay,
enough of that, you get my feeling about that. The
next thing up is in PR and you know what,
(34:53):
I'm not kidding I do. I do a lot of voiceovers.
I have a lot of software and all this other
stuff for voiceovers. And there's actually a setting and some
software for the NPR sound. You click on the NPR
sound today. What we're going to be doing is where
are we going to be talking about the yellow bird?
The yellow bird is quite frankly seen in mostly southern regions.
(35:17):
And okay, that is what I envision. NPR's purpose was
the original vision of public programming. And you know, just
getting back to what the original purpose of the Tonight
Show was, which was lighthearted, end of day entertainment. That's
what That's what the original Tonight Show was. And that's
(35:39):
what Johnny Carson took to the stratosphere. Okay, he made
it part of pop culture identity for that era. Okay,
NPR not quite that. But NPR was designed to in
the day and age of ratings driven news, which is
(36:00):
problematic as it is, as I talked about earlier, but
in ratings driven news, the idea behind public product and
not just ratings driven news, but ratings driven entertainment. The
idea behind public broadcasting was We're going to give you
something that isn't ratings driven but still is important still
(36:24):
that there are things that people want to hear about.
So whether it be you know, animals, animals, stories about animals,
and the things that would not get big ratings on
EBC on Thursday night, you know, things of whether it
be a concert, violinists and the arts, and a different
(36:47):
way of looking at public service and the things that
are going on, problems that are going on across the
country in underserved communities and not just underserved in the city,
but underserved in the country. You know, places that don't
get a lot of attention because you don't have to
drive through them on your way to work. You know,
those were the things that Public NPR, in public broadcasting,
(37:13):
was supposed to be showing. And that isn't what it became.
It became cable news. Our good friend, I say, our
good friend John Kennedy from the great State of Louisiana.
He posted some of these and I'm aware of them.
They're they're all over. These are some of the stories
(37:35):
that NPR talked about. NPR reported that country music and
birds are racist, told American people to stop eating beef
and promoted the Russia Gate conspiracy, and as I said,
there's news breaking on that. NPR claimed that President Biden's
presidential debate performance didn't change the election days before he
(37:59):
dropped off of the race. And getting back to that,
you know, I mentioned that episode that I had last
year in twenty twenty four, I was saying, for a year,
this show originally got its traction leading up to the
presidential election, and I was saying for a year, and
my cohost Cynthia agreed with me during the time, there's
(38:22):
no way he's going to run. And everybody came after
me like, oh, you're playing into the conspiracy to discredit
a sitting president. No, he was not capable, all right.
And now there's all these books, you know, all these
(38:43):
all these political pundits claimed they were duped from CNN
and they write these dumbass books. Yeah, right, President President
Biden's presidential debate performance didn't change election. It was it
was just fine, nothing wrong with it at all. And
PR reported that there's no evidence that biological women have
(39:03):
excuse me, NPR reported that there is no evidence that
biological men have an unfair advantage over biological women in sports.
NPR also called America's interstate highways racist. NPR referred to
rural Americans as Christian nationalists. Now Here Again, some of
(39:24):
them might say some of these statements are correct, and
that's fine. But what I'm pointing out is there's nothing
here that indicates to me that there's some purpose that
NPR is fulfilling. All of these kind of things you
can find on cable news. You can find all these
things on cable news. There is no reason at all
(39:47):
the public funds that taxpayer money, and we're talking about
millions upon millions upon millions of dollars. There is absolutely
no reason for public funds to go into this. This
was the commentary from NPR HI.
Speaker 6 (40:06):
I'm Catherine Marer, CEO of NPR. Congress just voted to
eliminate all federal funding for public media. This decision hurts
communities across America. It means fewer local reporters covering town
councils and state championships. It means fewer stories about local farms, fisheries, businesses,
about what's happening in the state house, about musicians and
(40:27):
civic leaders who make our communities tick. It means fewer
voices reflecting the richness of who we are as a nation.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Yes, and you could tell she's so sincere because she says,
hi a mar from NPR. You know originally when you
listen to that, that's what That's what NPR was intended
to do. But not reporting all this bullshit over here.
NPR was intended to serve an audience that is not
(40:56):
served by mass media. And that does not mean promoting
left wing ideals. It means bringing up topics, bringing up concerns,
bringing up stories that it is simply not possible to
get a large wide audience on paid advertising or paid
(41:16):
TV that would support it. So that's the whole thing
with public entities is to serve an area that is
not served by for profit, large ratings driven entities. That
is what National Broadcasting, Public broadcasting was four and instead
(41:44):
it has turned into a radio version of MSNBC where
we're going to talk about the evil and vile Donald Trump.
That is what NPR has become. And as far as
(42:04):
I'm concerned, if you disagree with me, if you think
NPR is a great thing, then give your money to them,
because that is what she's asking for.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
So if this.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
If this NPR is so vital and is so wanted
and so desired, then they shouldn't have any problem either
selling advertising or asking for donations to support their wonderful
(42:34):
and interesting NPR material. It is just absolutely enchanting to
hear this type of programming, and this programming is made
possible by people like you. Yes, it most certainly is.
Have at it, have a great day, all Rightbilities. You
(42:56):
can find the Abilities podcast anyway podcasts are found. We
have a ten year history on all the major platforms.
So on any platform you go to and search out
the Billy D's podcast, boom, we are there, okay, and
there's no paywalls. You can subscribe. We don't do pay
(43:17):
walls all right for our listeners. Listeners listen for free.
So if you subscribe to the Ability's podcast on any
of these platforms, there's no oh, well to get this,
you got to do that. And we do the same
thing on social media. I know there's a big move now,
you know all these creators say, oh, you got to
(43:37):
sell subscriptions. And if you want to listen to the
Bbilit D's podcast on any major podcast platform, it is
absolutely one percent free and it will stay that way.
There are no pay walls, and if you follow us
on X which is the former Twitter at Billy D's,
that's kind of like my social media home for trending topics,
breaking news, things like that. X is still of one
(44:00):
of the strongest places to be. We don't sell subscriptions there. Okay,
you follow us anything we're putting out any of the
spaces we do whatever else is on pay wall free.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
We don't do too much on Facebook.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Our Facebook page is really small, but we do have
more detailed information there. Maybe things were doing in the
background to promote the podcast. Sometimes we get some new software,
new microphone, something like that, we talk about it. We
don't just talk about how great our latest episode is.
We try to have some fun on the Facebook page,
(44:36):
so very small niche kind of following there, but you're
welcome to join and follow us there the abilities podcasts
on Facebook, but I would have to say X is
where our primary focus is, So give us a follow
on X. All right, I am Billy D's and I
don't want to thank you very much for listening to
(44:57):
the podcast, and we will up to you again a
very very sision.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
I'm Billy D's and host of.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
The self titled podcast, The Billy D's Podcast. We are
primarily an interview and a commentary based podcast featuring authors
and creators talking about their craft, advocates for community issues,
and myself in an array of co host discussing current events.
There's no partisan renting and raving going on here, just
great content. You can find The Billy D's Podcast on
(45:31):
your favorite platform and on Twitter at Billy D's. Thank you,
and I hope you listen in
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