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Oct. 5, 2024 - The Charlie Kirk Show
54:30
THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 58 — Pete Rose, Hall of Fame? The Best Burger? Mansplaining?
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Hey everybody, here on the Charlie Kirk Show, Thought Crime.
We talk about some J.D. Vance debate, fallout, what is mansplaining, what is a better burger, In-N-Out or Whataburger, and Pete Rose, should he be in the Hall of Fame?
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Okay, everybody, welcome to Thought Crime Thursday.
Honored to be with you as always.
Joining us are our legendary co-host, Blake Neff, who's been getting a lot of screen time lately, producer Andrew and Jack Posobiec.
We begin tonight by talking about mansplaining.
What is it? Who wants to define it as we are for men mansplaining to the audience right now?
Blake, explain what is mansplaining and why we're supposed to care about this.
All right. Hey, Charlie.
Well, obviously the reason we're talking about it is it's now been two days since the presidential debate, or the vice presidential debate, J.D. Vance versus Tim Walls.
I think the general consensus is our boy J.D. crushed it.
He won pretty big.
We talked about that on Tuesday night, of course.
But the follow-up that we're getting, the sort of cope from the left about why...
It was not a disaster.
Actually, Vance lost.
They're saying that JD mansplained too much.
He was too much of a mansplainer.
That's not okay.
All the women watching are going to be turned off, and they're going to go rush to vote for the Tim Walls ticket.
You can find this in a few spots.
I think probably the most direct one was Nicole Wallace at MSNBC claims that Vance was mansplaining when he did that bit where he was explaining how you can download a phone app and use the app to just illegally enter America on parole and go to Springfield or Charleroy, Pennsylvania or Wherever you want, because that's how you can just legally get into America.
As long as you have basically nothing to offer, then we're happy to let you in.
But that was mansplaining.
So mansplaining, of course, bigger picture is, as the name implies, is the idea that men sort of...
In a patronizing way or an irritating way will explain things to women that women don't need explained to them or that women even know better than men already.
It's the sort of thing you see a lot of unhappy women on the internet complain about a lot.
If you've been online, you've been hearing people complain about this for years on end.
I think I remember running into it when I was in college even.
So that was 15 years ago.
I'm getting old. I'm going to die.
And you see it more and more.
And Charlie actually had a very good tweet about it just earlier this week where he points out that, yeah, I guess in theory there can be a guy who tediously over-explains things.
But the real truth is, is like for a lot of people, it's like, this is what you tweeted, Charlie.
Complaints about mansplaining are, just cope, that low IQ, insecure, medicated, this is a very important part, medicated liberal women used to shut men up.
Prove me wrong. And no one could prove you wrong because you probably didn't even read the replies.
Well, let's play the tape in question, right?
Let's play this. Play cut 112.
And I actually think if you're a woman, that might be the worst moment J.D. Vance had because he was going to mansplain right over that mute button.
And again, I don't pretend to know how everyone will react to this.
I think that a lot of women in positions of authority that should command respect just by virtue of that dynamic will see themselves and some dude that disrespected them and talked over.
I mean, there was a moment like that with the vice presidential in the Harris-Pence debate.
You know, I have to say, just, you know, kind of a meta, before I get into the direct response, sort of from a meta perspective, this really is the first time where two debates in a row, now one presidential, one vice presidential, we've had one man versus three women.
So, you know, of course, you had President Trump, Kamala Harris, Lindsay Davis, and Davey Muir.
And this time around, you've got the two female moderators, Tammy Walls and J.D. Vance.
Basically, this has become, like most of wokeism, I kind of feel like this mansplaining gripe is really just a cope.
So it's a cope that when you know you're wrong, when you know that you've been proven wrong, and you realize that you don't actually have any facts of the situation, and you don't have the ability to respond on a factual or legitimate basis, what you do then is exactly what this moderator did.
In the instance where not only does she like keep talking over JD while he's trying to explain his point, which again, by the way, in a political debate, that's what you're trying to do.
You're trying to explain what your positions are and the role of like, like if you were like, if journalism was real or journalists were real journalists, that you'd be attempting to tease the true information out of the candidates.
Whereas what she does is she doesn't like his stance.
So she talks over him.
Then he doesn't stop talking, which then they claim is mansplaining.
And because he's trying to make his point and explain what he means, she doesn't like that, so she actually turns off his microphone, which is just, I gotta say, that's sort of like the ultimate girlbossing move.
And you notice, by the way, that throughout the rest of the debate, they haven't, they didn't really do that afterwards.
So I wonder if she got pulled aside in the break or something like that, because that was just, I think she lost a lot of credibility in that moment.
Let's play the clip in question here.
Let's play 96. Let's play cut 96.
Thank you. Senator, we have so much to get to.
Margaret, I think it's important because...
We're going to turn out of the economy.
Thank you. Margaret, the rules were that you guys weren't going to fact check.
And since you're fact checking me, I think it's important to say what's actually going on.
So there's an application called the CBP One App, where you can go on as an illegal migrant, apply for asylum or apply for parole, and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand.
That is not a person coming in, applying for a green card and waiting for 10 years.
That is the facilitation of a legal immigration, Margaret, by our own leadership.
Thank you, Senator, for describing the legal process.
We have so much to get to, Senator.
We have so much to get to. Thank you, Senator, for describing the legal process.
It's like if America was a giant middle school.
Andrew, what was your take on this?
My take on this is pretty simple.
I think this is all toxic femininity.
I think that this is wine mom culture gone wrong, gone awry, and that it's...
J.D. was beating up on them so badly that Nicole Wallace had a freakout that night thinking that all hope was lost and she was trying to spin and paddle her legs under the water to try and right the ship.
There's no writing what happened last night.
I mean, there was even a Washington Post published this where, you know, a bunch of undecided voters, I mean, J.D. Vance We took this thing and ran away with it last night and was one of the most lopsided victories in presidential or vice presidential history.
And everybody on the left knows it.
And I think this is a female cope that needs to be called out because it's actually, as one of our people said, Charlie, that we were on a chat together, women actually, women's plan over men far more often and far more aggressively And so, yeah, he was a total gentleman.
But, like, there's a bunch of hypocrisy in this discussion.
And the fact that this word, mansplaining, popped back on the internet this week because of Nicole Wallace is a really disgusting fact of modern life.
It's also just so out of the nomenclature.
Jack, continue. Yeah, no, it's like...
And I'm sure all of us on this stream, and Tyler, if he were here, would probably say the same thing, that it kind of goes back to everyone...
In school, that if you were someone who did well in school, or if you were someone who just, even if you didn't do on test, if you just understood the material or something, it's one of those situations where, you know, it's like, you know, the right answer to whatever the subject is, but the teacher's got the teacher edition and the teacher edition has the wrong answer in it.
And JD is the kid in the class who's saying, no, I think the teacher's addition is wrong.
And the teacher's getting mad at him and the teacher is snapping at him, is criticizing him, telling him to sit down, punishing him, admonishing him with these administrative, you know, sort of judicial procedures that they have at their fingertips.
When in actuality, you know, you could go After the class and look and it turns out that, oh wait, the teacher's edition did have a misprint in it.
So rather than listen to the student who is focused on learning through trying to understand the issues and trying to understand what's actually going on, instead the teacher, and you saw this throughout the debate, this is kind of like the sort of meta-narrative of the debate where JD Vance is doing what they call the folk wisdom or the common sense wisdom, I think was the word he said.
Uh, as opposed to the experts and the PhDs, which, you know, and it's a whole nother discussion, but they did the exact same thing when they talked about the hurricane.
And rather than talk about the people who are currently in the, uh, in the path of the hurricane, who have had, who are in the aftermath of it, who are dealing with that, that are in harm's way, who need relief.
They didn't sit there and say, oh, let's, let's put out the, you know, websites where people can donate money or something.
No, they said, oh, no, this is climate change.
Try to suck them into a debate on that, again, predicated on these expert statements.
So it was a situation where someone used an administrative position to try to exert force over someone who just simply was correct and had command of the facts and command of the details.
You know what I just realized, Charlie, is that your tweet was so right on during the debate where you said JD Vance is dominating over three of the three women on stage, did like millions of engagement, and you were making a joke about Tim Walz.
But what I just realized is that this is all a very underhanded insult to the masculinity of Tim Walz.
What the women are basically saying is that Tim Walz couldn't hold his own on that stage, needed these women to sort of put JD J.D. Vance in check.
It's all a backhanded insult to Tim Walz.
He couldn't hang on the stage.
They tried to bail out their beta male on stage, and J.D. just bowled right through it.
So it's mansplaining.
It's mansplaining to three women.
Totally pathetic. Speaking of trying to bail out Walz, there's some really funny stuff they've done.
Politico did this, they did sort of a body language analysis of the debate,
except what they said was like manifestly insane.
So first of all, when they were assessing Vance, their take was, I'm going to read
it here, yes, Vance's beard matters.
Vance is the first White House wannabe president or vice president
to have facial hair in 80 years.
Research indicates that voters see beards as more masculine.
That can be positive to some, but to others, especially women, it can be
negative, conveying aggression and opposition to feminist ideals.
And then, this is even crazier.
They have, for Walls, with his bulging eyes like a lunatic, it says, Eye-popping can sometimes be a sign of surprise, but for Walls, it simply revealed his emotional intensity, like during an exchange about abortion.
The dynamic and emphatic facial motion grabs the viewer's attention.
For Walls, it gave extra weight to his feelings and held our gaze.
And what I love is they have it zoomed in.
If you're watching, you can see it there.
They have it zoomed in right on his eyes.
And there's a test out there that you can take that they give to adults.
And it's a way of testing whether someone is on the autism spectrum.
And the way they do it is they show just a person's kind of eye area.
And they ask you, what emotion are they expressing?
And it can be shock. It can be attraction.
It can be horror. Things like that.
And I can guarantee you that if they had that set of eyes and you said that this was showing passion, you would not score well on this quiz.
So they're doing a lot of heavy lifting over at Politico.
Can you imagine if the roles were reversed and that was J.D. Vance's face and what they would be saying about it?
They wouldn't be using the word passion.
They would be scared, intimidated, incompetent.
The double standard is pretty infuriating.
I think we talked about this before when we were getting into the Tim Walls pick a couple weeks ago when he was chosen over Josh Shapiro.
I can't imagine why it was the Democrats did that.
But there's this idea that Tim Walls is the man that the Democrats want you to be.
This is the mode they want you in.
He's been in the military for decades, and yet he's still just vastly overweight and unwell.
And he's only 60, by the way, folks.
There are lots of 60-year-olds out there that are way better looking than that guy.
I mean, he looks just unhealthy.
He looks very unhealthy.
He's also very timid.
He's very shy.
He's unsure of himself.
He's scared. He's nervous.
This is the 90s male who's in touch with his feelings.
This was that whole thing they used to push back then, the new male that they want, the metrosexual male,
which you could kind of see a little bit.
And there was this idea, I think, that no dude is ever gonna want to follow that guy.
That's why they're so terrified about this.
And keep in mind, when we talked about this when he first picked as well, this was the guy they were trying to tell us was the epitome of masculinity.
Remember the new face of masculinity?
Doug Emhoff and Tim Walz and all the camo stuff and the Hicklib stuff.
We have that. We have that.
Oh, we have the clip? Yeah, yeah, let's play the clip.
This is Jen Psaki saying Doug Emhoff has reshaped our model masculinity or something like that.
131. Talked about your role here.
How your role has reshaped the perception of masculinity.
And I'm not sure you planned on that, but you are an incredibly supportive spouse.
Has that been an evolution for you?
And do you think that's part of the role you might play as first gentleman?
It's funny. I've started to think a lot about this.
I've always been like this.
My dad was like this.
And to me, it's...
I've always been like this.
That's the most emasculating clip I've ever seen of a man on network television in my life since, like, you know, Jussie Smollett or something.
Like, that's just really hard to watch.
But this is the version of the man that they want.
They don't want one that is self-confident, assertive, that is willing to go in the wilderness and stand up for truth and for justice.
One that is subservient, one that is rule-following, even when the rules are not rooted in wisdom or prudence.
And J.D. Vance, I thought, was terrific.
He is the type of man that you want your son to be.
I thought it was excellent. Well, good.
Well, now Doug Emhoff, by the way.
I was going to say, funny enough, after that, so I showed, you know, do you have that, do we have that side-by-side again of JD and Tim Walz?
Just the one where it's like the, you know, he's doing the gym from the office, side-eyes to the camera.
Can we throw that up? There it is. So I showed this to my son just randomly.
I was up in New York, and then we got home, and after the debate, I was showing him this, and he knows who JD Vance is.
He's going to JD Vance events, and...
And I showed him to him walls, and he just goes, Dad, ew!
It's so gross!
He's so bald!
He's so weird!
And to be fair, he has met Blake, and he didn't have that kind of reaction.
Okay, alright.
No, Blake, you remember meeting Jack-Jack?
He was definitely not, like, all grossed out by you.
Or if he was, he kept- I'll take the wins that I can.
I'll take the wins I can. Yeah, take not being all grossed out by you.
But yeah, like, a six-year-old had that unique, that, like, natural response of just revulsion to seeing Tim Walz and be like, this guy is, like, something's just weird with him.
But then he looks at JD like, oh, that guy's funny.
Like, I would watch his YouTube channel or whatever.
Excuse me, excuse me, his Rumble channel.
So we have to finish the loop here, though, because Doug Emhoff is now the subject of allegations for slapping his girlfriend after she apparently talks to another gentleman.
So that's not good.
What are all the details of this, though?
Yeah, we've actually got the...
Here. We'll pull them up.
Apparently his girlfriend at the time...
This is after impregnating the nanny in 2009.
This was in 2012.
She was talking to another gentleman, he didn't like it, and he slapped her.
And these allegations are just coming out now.
It's a Daily Mail exclusive.
It's forcefully slapped ex-girlfriend for flirting with another man and booze-fueled assault after date to star-studded gala.
So, this is in May 2012 at the Cannes Film Festival in France.
One of her friends told DailyMail.com that the woman called him immediately after the incident sobbing in her car and described the alleged assault.
DailyMail.com is not naming the woman who is a successful New York attorney but will refer to her by the pseudonym Jane.
A second friend said Jane, who had been dating Emhoff for three months, also told her about the alleged violence at the time.
A third friend told DailyMail So, yeah. And there's a picture of Doug with this woman.
So he not only knocked up the nanny, slapped his girlfriend drunk in France, and now he's getting emasculated.
Yeah, go ahead. Wait, so my time...
I'm actually trying to hold the timeline together as you go through it.
So this was after he had the nanny get the abortion, and that's when they broke up with his first wife, and that's why he's single and he's got this string of girlfriends that he's beating?
Yes. Okay, so he starts off with knocking up the nanny, makes her get the abortion, then he has the girlfriend that he beats up in France, and then he has another girlfriend between her and Kamala Harris?
Yeah, it sounds like this was in 2012, and then allegedly he got on a blind date.
But then he said there was another one in 2014.
Kamala on a blind date in 2013.
That's the story. In 2013, but maybe they weren't like totally together then, because this...
I remember, by the way, also that, you know, the timeline never works up whenever they talk about Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff, because I remember when the ex-wife, who was the mother of the kids, came out in response to the whole the JD, the cat lady thing, and they were...
She was saying like, oh, she's been a wonderful mother to the kids.
And it's like, when exactly was she the mother to the kids?
Because after the 90, then you've got the girlfriend in 2012, you've got the girlfriend in 2014.
They don't meet until this blind date that's much later.
They were grown.
They're well grown at that point.
They have not actually been together that long.
And think about it, she's AG, she's district attorney in San Francisco, AG in California, runs for Senate 2018, runs for president, president in 2019, becomes vice president.
This woman has been full-time campaigning and politicking basically their entire relationship.
So I'm sorry, there wasn't a whole lot of family time.
Yeah. But yeah, it was...
You could throw up this time, and this is from NWokeness.
It's 2009, impregnated his child's nanny.
2012, physically assaulted his girlfriend.
2023, lectures us on toxic masculinity.
2024, hailed for redefining masculinity.
And that leaps out the fact that he made the nanny get an abortion.
That's not even in the timeline. Do we know that that's true?
Or do people just presume that?
Because there's no kid that we know of.
Oh, I thought it was in the head.
I mean, I thought it was factual.
I could be totally wrong. I'm pretty sure that came out.
Yeah, I could stand totally corrected there, but based on everything I read, it seemed pretty...
I see pretty central to the narrative there.
Charlie's like, I did not agree to live fact-checking.
But I will go with it anyway.
People try to go to me all the time on camp.
You know, I got to be honest. The most annoying thing is when a kid comes up and starts trying live fact-checking you in the campus debate, which is why I try not to argue about, like, studies and stuff.
I try to argue about broad-picture morals.
I come up and I say, you know, houses are more expensive than they were under Donald Trump.
Really? I'm going to look that up.
I'm like, that's... Really?
Okay, sure. Like, this is...
Yes, they were.
It's self-evident. So here's the story of the abortion.
The second gentleman reportedly strayed from then-wife Pearson over a decade and a half ago with a blonde nanny, Najin Naylor, who taught at a private school attended by their two kids.
Naylor did not keep the baby.
A close friend with direct knowledge of the affair in pregnancy told the Daily Mail.
It says it's unclear exactly what the friend meant, so it could be adoption, but yeah, abortion's the most likely.
Yeah. Hours after the outlet, Emhoff admitted having an affair in a statement to CNN. That's some wild stuff.
This is what the friend wants men to be, I guess.
Wearing a fanny pack, being emasculated on network television, beating their girlfriends, impregnating nannies, getting abortions.
This is the left. They ruin everything they touch.
No, she's noteworthy in some respect.
And she's now an executive at Audible, the e-book company.
She's an executive at Audible?
That's what it says on the New York Post article.
An Asian Naylor is now an executive at Audible.
Do you think that, I mean, this is a legitimate question, and it's worthy of, do you think Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff actually have a romantic relationship?
They don't even live together, apparently.
They live on different posts. Or do you think it's kind of like a Hillary, Bill Clinton thing?
I mean, they married late enough.
I mean, that's what we're getting at. That's what we're getting at.
Like, I don't know.
I don't know that it's like a total Shan marriage, but maybe it is.
Like, it might be... You know, when people are in their 50s, they seek different things from companionship, I guess.
But, like, they obviously didn't get married to have kids, so...
Look, look, it's...
I'm just gonna say it, okay?
It really looks, and I think what everybody's kind of thinking, we're all sort of dancing around it, it looks as though Kamala Harris...
wanted to run for president and she knew that the one thing that she lacked was a husband and kids and she was like this is one more stepping stone that while I was running around and running for all these different offices and you know campaigning etc that I just never got around to so let me just check this box and you know I'm sure that she and Doug get along just fine I don't think they have any issues between the two of them I certainly hope that he's not beating her But it's clearly a marriage of ambition, if you will. And that happens all the time.
I mean, this is a very common thing.
I could rattle off four or five that we know of confirmed situations like that.
So it's not like that's unusual.
Blake was about to be an arranged marriage.
It's highly common. I don't know if people know that.
Members of Congress? Probably 10% of members of Congress are basically just arrangements.
But what was interesting is that in Blake's arranged marriage, he actually rejected it.
He saw her and he was like, no, I can't do this.
I'm sorry. Okay. All right.
Blake's got to become a member of Congress.
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Pete Rose, Charlie.
We're gonna talk about... You go first, Blake.
Introduce the audience. Who is you?
What's the significance? Who introduces...
Okay, people know who Pete Rose is.
Okay, for anyone who doesn't know, Pete Rose...
You'd be surprised. Pete Rose is an all-time baseball legend.
There have been many thousands of people who have played professional baseball.
Pete Rose has the most hits out of all of them.
He had... I think about 4,200, I think.
Let's see. Total hits.
Let's see. Yeah, 4,256 hits in his career.
That's more than anyone else.
But he is not in the Hall of Fame because...
In the 1980s, he was caught betting on baseball games.
That is a big no-no.
Famously, there is a rule posted in every single clubhouse in Major League Baseball that you cannot bet on baseball games.
And if you do, you will be declared permanently ineligible, which is banned from baseball for life.
So he was caught doing that.
He got banned for life.
He is not in the Hall of Fame.
He died earlier this week at the age of 83, and of course, that is going to reignite the perennial debate, which is, they were having this multiple times while he was alive, should he be admitted to the Hall of Fame despite the scandal?
Yes. Why do you think so, Charlie?
All right, here we go. Okay, so Blake, first of all, understand that the context of when he was betting, betting was way less scrutinized than it is today.
Yes, it was illegal, but a lot of players had connections to gambling back then.
And the severity of the ban on betting wasn't clearly as understood, and a lot of players and managers did it.
Now, yes, it was wrong.
It was against the rules, but it was not unique in the, let's say, the context of that era.
Okay, that's number one. Number two...
Can we agree, Blake?
He was... Go ahead.
We haven't explained why he was banned.
Yeah, we did. He was caught betting on baseball.
Well, I mean, fair, fair.
But I mean, like, we didn't really go into what it was.
It wasn't just betting. It was betting on his own games.
Like, that was the real thing.
Like, while he was a manager, not just a player.
So it wasn't just betting in general.
Well, let's let Charlie finish his whole bit.
Yeah. I have a whole, like, catechism, not catechism, liturgy here.
Yeah, I'm just trying to think of people that have no background info, that's all.
Sure. So that's the second point, is that when he was investigated for gambling by both the federal government, MLB, and later ESPN, he was never found to be gambling against his team.
He only ever was discovered to be gambling against We're good to go.
And by the way, we know this because Pete...
Yeah, and this is important because there is not an instance where Pete Rose was never on the field where he was not the most hustle, like, ridiculous, over-the-top player, right, Andrew?
He was called Charlie Hustle for a reason.
If this guy was ever throwing a game...
Show me an instance when Pete Rose ever threw a game, okay?
This guy is the all-time hits leader in baseball.
He is the most games ever played.
And even Blake would agree objectively, like, an unprecedented achievement in the sport, right?
Like, literally unprecedented.
The records that he set were just remarkable.
Impact on the game, as I mentioned, Charlie Hustle was, you know, his name, and it wasn't like he was a player that was known to kind of, like, leave early or not put in the work, or he was someone that was kind of like a sloppy drunk that was constantly, you know, making suspicious, let's just say, like, at-bats late in games, right?
There's no evidence of that whatsoever, right?
Andrew, do you understand what I'm detailing here?
Where it wasn't as if he had a reputation for being...
There was a slip in his career where it was very obvious that he wasn't himself.
He was always 10 out of 10, completely invested in the game.
Finally, after Rose was banned from Major League Baseball, banned completely, Rose has expressed remorse for his actions and he sought to engage in every way possible to try to reconcile for it.
And finally, this is very, very important, is the subjectivity of the punishment against Pete Rose is disgusting.
The enforcement of Major League Baseball's gambling policy has always been inconsistent.
And so the point that I want to get at here is that he objectively from his career deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, no doubt.
He never bet in a way that impacted the game that we know of.
In fact, I would make the argument, Blake thinks it's a silly argument, I think it's a good argument, that every single day you are betting on yourself in baseball.
By showing up, you are betting on yourself.
By definition, you are betting on yourself to get a better contract.
You are betting on yourself to try and hit the bonuses to try to make the playoffs.
Yes, this should not be legal to go to off You know, off-street betting and gambling.
But if the evidence, Blake, was to say that he was hedging against himself to lose, totally get that.
And finally, and I think most importantly, is that Pete Rose then became an advocate and a vocal advocate for changing all the issues and rules around gambling.
So should he be in the Hall of Fame?
The dude is 83 years old and now dead, actually.
And the punishment is way worse than the crime.
The... Pete Rose changed the game and his accomplishments in general.
It could have been this amazing redemption arc of somebody that made a bunch of mistakes.
He was remorseful for it.
He sought reconciliation.
And his impact on America's sport, America's pastime, was...
Irrefutable. That is my case.
That is my liturgy. Feel free to discuss.
I want to add two really important facts to the Pete Rose case too that no one ever talks about with Pete Rose.
One, he voluntarily accepted the ban.
I'll respond to that.
Nobody ever talks about he voluntarily accepted the ban.
He brokered a deal with the MLB. The MLB at the time had an interim commissioner.
So the commissioner at the time was interim.
After making the decision or accepting the voluntary response, the rules at the MLB were that he could reapply to get back into the MLB after it was like a year or two years or something like that.
And the guy who was the interim commissioner that had just stepped up, he wasn't even going to be permanent, died eight days after accepting Pete Rose's Yeah, anointed ban.
So he's accepted that he would be put on the ineligible list, stepped down, could reapply basically.
The guy that was the commissioner. And so that added to absolute chaos and confusion and probably one of the most important points in maybe baseball American history.
So, I guess I'll respond on a few points here.
First of all, he did accept the ban, but it's not like he just accepted it out of the goodness of his heart.
He was under investigation at the time, including for actual criminal behavior.
Yeah, but that was the deal, and baseball didn't actually formally recognize that he did anything wrong because he self Yeah, because he agreed to accept a lifetime ban.
So when we say there was not proof of him betting against his own team, that is substantially because Major League Baseball terminated its investigation because whatever they were going to find, Pete Rose apparently decided it's better to take a lifetime ban.
He didn't accept a lifetime ban. He accepted the ban and the rules of the MLB at the time.
Which is to be made permanently ineligible.
No, it's ineligible he could apply a year later.
Blake is intellectually honest.
Blake, do you think looking at the track record of his reputation as Charlie Hustle, when he was a player, not a manager, do you think there's any instance where he would bet against himself?
Is there any evidence that the type of player he was?
He kept playing well after he was a good baseball player.
The last few years of Pete Rose playing, he was an active detriment to his team.
That sounds like Michael Jordan for the Washington Wizards.
He can do things like he can manage his pitchers in a manner that makes them more likely to win some specific game he is betting on, but less likely to win in the long term, less likely to get into the playoffs, less likely to win a title.
So he's already corroding the integrity of the game when he does that.
The other thing I would contest is he didn't atone for what he did.
After he was caught, after he accepted being ineligible, he spent almost two decades lying constantly saying, I never bet on baseball.
I never did it. I'm innocent.
It was a setup or whatever.
It was all a misunderstanding.
Then in 2004, he comes out, and basically because he's able to cash in with a book deal, he says, okay, I admit it.
I bet on baseball.
And then he still says, but I only bet while I was a manager, because this is part of his defense, was that it was ironclad, you cannot bet while you're a player.
But he said, I only bet while I was a manager.
I never bet while I was a player.
ESPN investigates it in 2015.
That was a lie. Turns out he was betting while he was a player.
He was doing it all of the time.
And on top of this, it's weird to me that people bring up what a great guy Pete Rose is.
Pete Rose is a disgusting guy.
There's evidence that he was sleeping with a girl when she was 14 years old.
There's a huge drug user.
He's like a piece of crap.
And I guess I'll get banned from the city of Cincinnati for arguing this.
And yeah, there's a lot of pro players who are awful.
But what I will say with Pete is he had a very long-term pattern of lying about this
Over and over and over he gets caught he has to face the consequences and it's like boo-hoo
About this he's not in the Hall of Fame. No like He could have he could have been a legend for his entire
lifetime All he had to do is not do break the one rule that they
have posted in your frickin clubhouse Which is don't gamble on baseball
And the answer is, yeah, I think he probably did bet against his own team.
And that he managed to prevent them discovering it because he got them to scuttle the investigation.
And even if he didn't, the truth is, he's probably covering something up because that's why he cut a deal to have this investigation be terminated.
I don't know. I find it bizarre that people cape so much for Pete Rose.
He's the hit king.
He'll always have that, but I think he disgraced himself.
You know, I have to say the one vote in favor of what Blake is saying is that in a world where we don't have a border, we don't have rules, gender bending, all of this stuff, as much as I admire the guy, there's something refreshing I have to say, that part of me, I find it refreshing.
That there's a consequence that people don't like.
And that's the thing. It's not like they only do it.
There's a player they banned this year for betting on baseball.
He was so exceptional, and this saga played out for so many years.
I mean, what's interesting too, Blake, though, on the counter, on the flip side of this, is that he became a Fox post-game analysis, you know, A correspondent in recent years.
So he was covering baseball on Fox during the playoffs.
And then in 2022, they welcomed him back to Philly.
He got some boos, certainly.
But he was getting sort of embraced in recent years.
And so, I mean, I just think it's one thing to do it with a guy that has a mixed record who is barely...
If you're kind of debating whether he gets into the Hall of Fame or not, Okay, maybe.
But it puts so much pressure on it when you have a guy who has the most hits in the history of such an old game and in a game that matters so much, the statistics matter so much.
It's such a different dynamic.
I think you just got to put the guy in and put it to rest.
Let everybody put it to rest.
I definitely care a lot.
I mean, I thought it was important that he was banned for life.
He died. If you want to honor him now, it's not as big a deal for me.
The commissioner that was there at the time that oversaw this entire proceeding when they accepted the deal died eight days later.
That's like Hillary Clinton stuff.
Who would have killed him?
It might have been Pete Rose.
Pete Rose would have probably known the kind of people.
He had all these connections to organized crime.
I want to say something about what Andrew said.
I hear what you're saying about the rules and how baseball and preserving the integrity of the sport.
And that would be great if they had actually done that to baseball.
But instead, what have we seen since this happened in the 19th?
Which, by the way, Mickey Mantle I think?
And so the understanding, of course, was that when Pete Rose agreed to the deal that his would be overturned the way that Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays had been overturned.
But what have we seen with baseball since then?
A complete degradation of the sport, a complete degradation of the integrity of the game, and just the massive embrace of gambling.
And that's obviously not isolated to baseball, but it's to everything.
And so you've got to look.
The Houston Astros were able to keep their rings after it was proven that they stole the signs and broke all the rules in the World Series.
They should have lost them.
I would have done it. I would have been maximal.
They should have lost the rings in two seconds.
Lost the rings in two seconds.
And so I remember reading that and finding out about that decision.
Saying like, okay, if the Astros can keep their rings, then why can't Pete Rose be in the Hall of Fame?
Because now what you've done is make it look like this is a personal thing rather than standing on the rules.
And to wit, there was a former commissioner, not the one who died, obviously, but Faye Vincent, who I think was the guy who took over after the guy died eight days later.
And he's still around.
He's not the commissioner anymore, obviously.
But he gave a quote to...
Sorry, that thing's playing. To Fox News, where he said, if Rose had come clean in the first place, admitted wrongdoing, and made an effort to deter young people from betting on baseball, he probably would have forgotten in a long while ago.
And it's like, okay, well, this is, you know, he's talking about the moral dimension to honors and corruption of the game, etc., etc.
And it's like, Okay, that's fine, but how come you don't seem to hold any of these other standards to any of the other players or any of these other instances that we can point to?
And that's just off the top of my head.
I mean, I think the Houston Astros probably being the most egregious one and the embrace of betting being just this massive double standard.
You can bet in every single MLB stadium now.
So Pete Rose is the hit king.
Pete Rose is the hit king.
But the best hitter, in my opinion, to ever walk the face of the earth is Barry Bonds, who's also banned.
Well, the guys...
Bonds is not banned. Bonds is a informal ban.
See, no, no, no.
I think Royds is far more egregious than sports gambling.
I totally disagree.
I think Royds is way more disgusting.
Because Royds are performance-related.
Yeah, steroids are so disgusting.
Steroids are more egregious.
I agree, actually.
Okay, good. You agree. I think steroids is way more egregious than gambling.
I take a totally different approach.
I think baseball was the funnest moment ever in baseball was Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bond.
Sammy Sosa. That was the funnest era of baseball.
Imagine baseball was a pitcher.
It was so outrageous. I grew up with that.
That combination of the Cubs guy.
That combination of steroids and gambling, I think we should actually have full gambling, full steroids, pitch clock.
Baseball would be so much better.
That's what Peter Thiel's doing with the Olympics.
I'm interested in that, Charlie.
For you, what makes steroids beyond the pale?
First of all, if you're gambling against yourself, totally agree with that.
The steroids, first of all, it's not allowed.
Secondly, it's so egregious.
Gambling's not allowed. Of course, I'm getting to it.
It's just there's something so self-mutilating to steroids, though, where you're actively making a decision that is so bad for you physically and is only for the purpose of trying to get a competitive edge in a prohibited way.
That it is so unfair.
It is the closest thing to biological cheating that we have in sports.
More so than any other sport.
If you take steroids in football, it helps you a little bit.
But performance enhancing steroids in baseball is such an advantage.
Jack, you said it right.
Steroids is performance enhancing.
Betting is not. That's exactly right.
It's akin to a girl competing against a boy that, you know, just, you know, had his junk cut off.
But here's the thing.
I remember Barry Bonds when he came over from the Pirates in, like, 93.
And he was Skinny Barry at that point, his pre-Royd era.
And he was still the best frickin' hitter on planet Earth.
He just got kept getting better with age, which you're not supposed to do, right?
So he was like 36, 37.
And the guy, you couldn't get a fastball by the guy.
It was, if it was in like three, you know, inches of the strike zone,
the guy would put it into the bay.
But he was still the best I've ever seen, even before Roy.
Going back to Pete Rose, though, here's the ridiculousness of it, and we talk about Barry Bonds now.
The guy that was the commissioner before the guy that was the eight-day commissioner Keelover guy was the guy that reinstated Willie Mays.
I'm pretty sure. The guy that reinstated Willie Mays was the guy who quit to hand off to the guy who miraculously had a heart attack within eight days that he made the decision on Pete Rose, that they came to those terms.
He was the guy that forgave Willie Mays.
Willie Mays also happened to be the godfather of Barry Bonds.
He's like the godfather of Barry Bob.
So it's all in our case.
And MLB has forgiven Mark McGuire, has forgiven Sammy Sosa, has forgiven.
But before that, Willie Mays, just as Jack brought up.
But Pete Rose is the example that I wanted to add this thought about it, especially since when Pete Rose was doing it, gambling was a lot more legally fraught.
We have tragically made it much more legally open now.
But a big reason you don't want to have gambling on the game, it's not just that it corrodes the integrity directly, it's that Gambling, especially, was really mobbed up.
It still is really mobbed up.
And so, like, Pete Rose would get into debt with these bookies.
And that is how they get the tendrils in it, where, you know, oh, you owe $40,000 to your bookie, and that's a lot, because you're broke.
And the way you get out of trouble with your bookie is, you agree to throw a game.
And that's how boxing got messed up, is you had, you know, individual boxers who would have to, you know, take a fall for money.
And... I would just be way more worried about our umpires and our referees.
I gotta interject here. Our umpires and referees are way more susceptible.
Yeah, I think that's right. Okay, let me get to one of our reads and then we'll talk about how great In-N-Out is.
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Okay, let's go really quick.
Who wants to take the what? Jack, you're awfully passionate about this In-N-Out Whataburger thing.
Go ahead. So just, I'll set it up with some context here, which is someone put up a billboard to troll In-N-Out because I guess, which burger was it that did it?
They like beat In-N-Out.
This is Habit. Yeah. I don't even know what that is.
It started in Santa Barbara, actually.
Funny enough. Alrighty, so Habit Burgers, that's the name of it?
Habit Burger, they beat In-N-Out as the number one tastiest fast food burger, and now they're trolling In-N-Out by putting up a congrats on number two billboard.
But I just wanted to have that context.
Yeah, Habit is really good.
So, look, this is kind of what, you know, funny enough, JD Vance and Tucker got into this when I saw them in Hershey regarding the Quarter Pounder and the Big Mac.
And JD was arguing that the Quarter Pounder is a better meal because you get more meat.
And Tucker was like, yeah, but there's no special sauce.
And JD responds, he goes, Tucker, you have been manipulated by the elites.
Special sauce is nothing.
It's all about which burger has more meat.
And that's kind of where I come down on this, that Whataburger just has more meat to it, that it's got more meat than In-N-Out.
So I'm like, I don't know.
I feel like I like that burger, man.
Charlie, are you allowed to eat burgers?
Who wants to defend In-N-Out? I'm on this weird diet right now.
But typically, In-N-Out is the best.
And Tyler, you have to admit, Arizona became a better place when In-N-Out came here.
So, In-N-Out, if you're a West Coaster, especially growing up, now it's kind of like it's...
It's everywhere now. I think they just opened up in In-N-Out.
Good for them, by the way. Opened up in In-N-Out in Tennessee.
But when I was growing up, it was like we longed to go to – every time we go to California, you longed to go wait in line at In-N-Out and just go to In-N-Out, and everybody did that.
That still kind of exists for people who are on the East Coast.
For the most part, but like it was, if you asked an East Coaster about In-N-Out, nobody really knew what it was at all.
Like no one ever, like pre-social media, all that stuff.
So it was like really the pre-era of it was, and Andrew can probably add to this too, being from Nevada.
If you're from like Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, you know, probably like Utah and like other parts, people would go and that was like part of your experience.
So it was like culturally part of visiting California was In-N-Out Burger.
So I would, I actually, the way I view In-N-Out Burger is different than probably how younger people view In-N-Out Burger, which is that it has a taste that's associated with memories, especially vacation memories and beach memories that you can't break.
But people who don't have that appreciation for it, that pre-era, it just has a different meaning to you.
So I love In-N-Out Burger because It has all these memories.
It's straight up California.
It's invariably attached to it.
When they came to Arizona, it was the biggest deal ever.
When they first opened up the first restaurants in Arizona, it was such a big deal.
And it still is. You go to any In-N-Out Burger any night, it's like Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A In-N-Out.
It's the longest lines that you'll find in the entire state.
The taste, I still, every time I taste it, the spread, it's like, I think of being in California, the beach, I can almost like smell like the sea air.
This is an embarrassing story.
In 2016, my dad, I was out of the home by this point.
My dad flew our family, so a lot of my siblings were still at home, but he's also like, Blake, I'll buy you a ticket, you have to come with us.
And he flew our entire family To Los Angeles.
This is the first time I had been to Los Angeles so that we could go visit the Reagan Library and the Reagan Ranch, which is definitely like the most I am a baby boomer conservative thing that my family has ever done.
But, as part of that, we ended up going to In-N-Out, I think, two or three separate times because our Airbnb was close to one.
And it's as you describe, it was very long lines.
This was right when I think the cult of In-N-Out was really becoming a nationwide awareness thing.
And yeah, we went there a bunch.
I did like In-N-Out quite a bit.
I don't eat enough fast food burgers to have strong opinions on which one is the best.
To be honest, I usually get chicken sandwiches if they offer them.
My favorite burger that I actually eat regularly, we have a place here in Phoenix.
I have no idea if they're elsewhere, but Cold Beers and Cheeseburgers, they have a peanut butter and jelly burger on their menu.
And every time I go, I order that.
And I always tell them, I've never been there.
Is the food good there?
This burger is good.
I always tell them, don't wuss out on the peanut butter and jelly.
Like, really, like, slather it up.
And they do when I tell them to.
And it's kind of disgusting.
You end up with peanut butter everywhere.
It's a little gross. But, oh, it's satisfying and delicious.
And it's even more delicious knowing that Charlie will never be able to eat one.
That's right, Blake. That's really sick and sadistic.
All right, everybody. I have to go try to chase ballots with Dr.
Carson and do some stuff here.
Go support your local In-N-Out.
Get it animal-style.
Double-double. Get the secret sauce.
Animal-style is incredible.
Extra peppers. It's incredible.
Animal-style is incredible. Here's the order.
Get two 4x4s, animal-style, protein-style, extra secret sauce, extra pickles, extra peppers.
Heard it here first. Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
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