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Aug. 17, 2024 - The Megyn Kelly Show
01:02:27
20240817_best-of-the-week-media-gaslighting-state-of-2024-a
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Time Text
Trump's Media Tour vs Harris Silence 00:11:26
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon.
No tax on tips.
Sound familiar?
It must, because former President Donald Trump came up with it.
We discussed that with the EJs, plus the JD Vance media tour this week, while the VP nominee on the Democratic side entirely avoids all media.
Nate Silver made his first appearance ever on the program.
We spoke about the state of the 2024 race and why his model, his famous model, shows Harris ahead, but why Trump might be the better bet to win.
I also did a deep dive on the media gaslighting on various political stories, but particularly on Tim Wals's actual record in Minnesota, which is far more radical than the corporate media is portraying.
And our friends from the fifth column were here.
We had some fun on a few of the big media stories of the week, as we always do with those guys.
Check it out.
Have a great weekend, and we'll see you Monday.
JD Vance is everywhere.
He's everywhere.
Trump held this long presser on Friday.
They're putting themselves out there.
No one from the Democratic ticket is.
And here's JD Vance doing a pretty masterful job of trying to spin Dana Bash's attempt to club him.
I mean, how many weeks have we been on the cat story now trying to club him like a harp seal and he flips it back on her watch?
What do you say to key voters like that?
Republicans, swing voters, who are put off by your views.
Look at what I said in context.
The Harris campaign has frankly lied about what I actually said.
Kamala Harris has two stepchildren, Pete Buttigig and his husband, have adopted twins.
Do you recognize them as parents and more broadly as being part of families?
Well, of course I do, Dana.
She's answering some bizarre statements.
She has said things like, it's reasonable not to have children over climate change.
You now ask me three questions about comments that I made three years ago.
I wonder what Kamala Harris thinks about the fact that she supported policies that opened the American Southern border.
I wonder what Kamala Harris thinks about the fact that she lied to the American about Joe Biden's middle facility for the office.
You are interviewing me, Dana, because I respect the American people enough to sit down for an interview.
I appreciate that.
Kamala Harris has been the nominee for three weeks.
She hasn't sat down for a real interview.
We are asking.
Okay, you're asking, but then they're still going along with it.
They still, all of them, cover her rallies, ride in her plane, write about her nonstop with the joy and the all-you-go girl with their madam president t-shirts on.
But truly, Eliana, the answer by these sycophant media members needs to be: F off.
We will not cover you until you sit for an interview.
We are not there to do PR.
That's what's happening here.
Look, the reason that Trump and Vance are out there so much doing interviews is that the media has made it impossible for them to dominate a national news cycle until since Harris was elevated to the top of the Democratic ticket three weeks ago.
And the same thing should be happening for Harris until she sits for interviews.
It should be very, very difficult for her to dominate the news cycle simply with rallies and speeches.
But again, I don't blame her.
It is the fault of the press that's allowing her to lead the headlines and lead the front pages of newspapers with positive press every single day without sitting for interviews or taking critical questions.
But that is precisely the reason that you see Trump and Vance out there.
And Vance, I think actually Megan did a better job in that CNN interview than he did on your show responding to questions about that.
I think he, after, you know, a rough week rollout has found a more solid footing as Trump's vice presidential nominee.
I thought he did a nice job in that interview.
So what we're seeing now, though, instead of the media demanding access and even in the absence of access, just doing in-depth reporting on these insane policy positions that they have said that they hold and that in Tim Walt's case that he has enacted as governor of Minnesota, they're doing stories on Trump allegedly calling Kamala Harris a bitch behind closed doors.
Okay.
His team denies it.
I couldn't care less.
Who gives a flying fig?
I'm sure he probably did call her a bitch.
Who cares?
This is what she says about him.
Listen.
I took on perpetrators of all kinds.
Predators who abused women.
Fraudsters who ripped off consumers.
Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain.
I know Donald Trump's type.
Why am I supposed to care, Emily, if he, in response to being called a sexual predator, fraudster, criminal by her openly behind closed doors may have said she's a bitch.
I don't know if you saw Mike Allen of Axios tweet out the story, but he put three siren emojis on top of Kamala Harris reportedly being called a bitch by Trump.
Like this is some major piece of news.
And again, it just shows how little they understand about their own audiences.
The news consumer, the American public, who's for so many of them, you can tell them that Donald Trump has been calling Kamala Harris a bitch.
You could call, they could hear that he called the Statue of Liberty a bitch, and they would still vote for him because they think Kamala Harris's policies are terrible.
And they're scared of the extreme policies of the left.
And the media doesn't, another reason they don't ask Kamala Harris's questions, like the one about Waltz's extreme LGBT children policy, is because they don't understand that that does also matter to voters.
They have no understanding of their audience.
So they get tied up in these ridiculous stories about Donald Trump allegedly calling Kamala Harris a bitch.
That does not matter to anyone, let alone anyone to the degree.
No.
And you know what?
With the way they manipulate the narratives, they could easily be doing stories right now on how JD Vance, to the point Aleana just made, found his footing, how he has been media forward.
While Kamala Harris and Tim Waltz hide from the press, JD Vance is going out there.
We know if he were a Democrat, that is the story that they would be doing on JD Vance, that he is crushing it in interviews, that even though he's getting bad press, he's going and talking to journalists.
He's talking to them on the plane.
He's talking to them in sit-downs.
He was all over the Sunday shows this week.
But no, none of that.
We're still talking about the cats.
Well, speaking of calling Statue of Liberty a bitch, when Bo Deedle, colorful character at Fox News, who's often on Hannity, ran for mayor, there was some quote in his campaign where he was like, I'm going to keep this city safe, you know, all the way up from the Bronx down to that slut in New York hub.
That's so bowedle.
That's so bow needle.
The other thing we've gotten today is JD Vance pictured in a female Halloween costume.
Like he was, they're saying, he likes drag because like, I mean, like many people, one year on Halloween in 2012, he dressed up, I don't know what it was, but he was wearing a blonde wig and was in women's clothing.
It was a Halloween costume.
And now he's supposed to be a hypocrite, a hypocrite, you see, because the Republicans don't like drag in front of young children.
They did this same thing to Carrie Lake.
Carrie Lake spoke out about drag being forced on little kids in public spaces and schools.
And then they were like, she had a drag queen come and perform at her birthday party.
It's not the same thing.
And any rational person knows that.
But I guess we're just going to go with, he's like a drag queen now.
It's also so insulting to actual drag, like actual drag artists.
Like JD Vance just put a lot of wig on.
He looks like a women's study professor.
Like that's my guess as to what this costume was.
And by the way, Eliana, didn't you go to Yale?
Yeah.
Are your friends as mean as JD Vance's friends?
Because every day another one releases some private correspondence with the guy, private pictures of him at a party.
They seem like terrible people.
By the way, well, he went to the law school, which is like the most radical school within Yale, well known for that.
But the correspondence is quite interesting.
The correspondence that's gotten a lot of attention is his correspondence with a friend of his who is trans.
And at no point in the correspondence that this person has released is he disrespectful in any way.
I actually thought it reflected quite well on him.
And I wasn't quite sure what the upshot of that story was other than he was that he was totally respectful to a friend with whom he had developed personal disagreements.
He was loving, kind, and supportive of this trans person.
The person broke up their friendship because he came out publicly and said he doesn't want these treatments for children.
And that was enough for this person to completely turn on him, try to publicly humiliate him, go to the New York Times, go to CNN, elsewhere to try to embarrass him publicly.
This person's a bad person.
This person's an ass.
All right.
That's it.
That's all there is to it.
A bad friend, as is whoever tried to embarrass JD Vance with a stupid Halloween costume.
I mean, it's just so absurd to try to make that a comparison.
The gyrating leather strap bondage drag performances that we're seeing in like the bluest of blue states in front of the young ones, trying to make them look at some guy's naked ass with nothing but a leather strap through his crack.
That is not the same as a law student male going as some sort of a female character on Halloween.
I hate to break it to you, but that's another thing normal people understand.
It's just very go ahead on it.
The New York Times quoted another friend of Vance's from law school who cited as the reason for friction in their relationship that Vance's barbs about the elites at Yale became too pointed.
And the Times actually quotes this as some kind of shot at Vance, as if any normal person would take umbrage at the fact that JD Vance Arrived at Yale and found the place snobby and out of touch, or that he's criticized, you know, ivy legally since then.
It's that genre of journalism of what your former classmate said about you is not a strong one.
I don't think.
Oh my God, talk about empty calories.
The Plausible Vance Proposal Story 00:15:50
All right.
So now particularly, by the way, at a school like Yale, full of strivers who one can presume are incredibly envious of where he's ended up in life compared to them.
Yeah.
I know.
Well, the same thing.
And I've got Tim Wallace every day criticizing him for graduating from Yale Law School and going on to work for Peter Thiel as a Silicon Valley billionaire.
He's like, oh, sure, he's working class.
Sure.
He went to Yale Law School.
Hello, that's the American dream, Emily, right?
To like give yourself up, improve your circumstances.
I was going to say, Minnesota's own Eliana Johnson went to Yale.
No, now she's a partisan hack elite.
You're not allowed to do that because then you're not, you've lost all touch with your roots.
I wish I could say it was a working class success story, you guys.
Sorry, Eliana.
Not really.
You're not from Minnesota anymore.
Not really.
You have saved the Twin Cities kid.
That is all Tim Walz had to do when they misstated his military credentials many, many times.
Just be honest, like Eliana just did, just a gentle, good-humored correction of the record.
We're going to do his military thing in the next segment, so I'll just table it for now.
But I do want to get to back to Kamala.
So we don't hear from her at all.
No media interviews, her stupid tarmac interview with a couple of reporters, which was 71 seconds long.
And so we glean little bits and pieces here and there on her stupid speeches, which are completely curated.
And she dropped this doozy on, was it Saturday, where she stole Trump's proposal on tips for service workers.
It was Saturday in Vegas.
All right.
So first, I'm just going to give you, I'm going to give you what she said on Saturday in Vegas, where she slipped in a new proposal, allegedly of hers.
When I am president, we will continue our fight for working families of America, including to raise the minimum wage and eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers.
Oh.
Oh, you don't say.
So she stole that from Trump, which he tweeted out, and he was 100% right.
It was his proposal, and he made it months ago.
And he explained how he came up with the idea when he spoke at the Republican National Convention.
Listen.
We're having dinner at a beautiful restaurant in the Trump building on the strip, and it's a great building.
And the waitress comes over.
How's everything going?
Really nice person.
How's everything?
Oh, Sarah, it's so tough.
The government's after me all the time on tips, tips, tips.
I said, well, they give you cash.
Would they be able to find him?
She said, actually, and I didn't know this.
She said, very little cash is given.
It's all put right on the check.
And they come in and they take so much of our money.
It's just ridiculous.
But I said to her, let me just ask you a question.
Would you be happy if you had no tax and tips?
She said, what a great idea.
I got my information from a very smart waitress.
That's better than spending millions of dollars.
And everybody, everybody loves it.
Waitresses and caddies and drivers.
Now, this reminds me of the second working girl reference in a week on this show.
Working girl.
When Melanie Griffiths' character, who is a secretary working for Sigourney Weaver, who then goes on some fancy vacation, breaks her leg and gets laid up.
Melanie tries to pose as her boss.
She came up with an idea while posing as the boss for this merger between Trask Industries and this other industry.
And the guy loved it.
And she was putting together this big deal, but then Sigourney Weaver, the boss comes back from the broken leg.
And she steps in and tries to claim this deal as her own.
And Mr. Trask figures out that this was not Sigourney's idea.
This was the idea of the lowly secretary.
And he goes to each of them and asks in his investigation to figure out who deserves credit, how did you come up with this idea?
And we've cut a clip.
This is Forbes.
It's just your basic article about how you were looking to expand into broadcasting, right?
Okay, now the same day, I'll never forget this.
I'm reading page six of the post, and there's this item on Bobby Stein, the radio talk show guy who does all those gross jokes about Ethiopia and the Betty Ford Center.
Well, anyway, he's hosting this charity auction that night.
Real blue bloods and won't that be funny?
Now I turn the page to Susie who does the society stuff and there's this picture of your daughter.
See, nice picture.
And she's helping to organize the charity ball.
So I started to think Trask, radio, Trask, radio.
And then I hooked up with Jack and he came on board with Metro.
And so now here we are.
Harker, let me ask you a question.
How did you come up with the idea for Trask to buy up Metro?
How did I?
Well, let's see.
Well, you know, I would have to check my files.
I can't recall exactly.
Ms. Parker is Kamala Harris.
I mean, I'm sorry, but I nailed it.
That's the perfect analogy for what we just saw.
It's ridiculous, Emily.
Also, that was encyclopedia-level knowledge of the working girl plot.
I love everything, the detail.
But yeah, I mean, it's this is another great example of media coverage.
They would be going crazy if this had happened in the other direction.
And by the way, Trump's story about how he came up with that proposal, it sounds plausible.
It sounds believable to me.
I don't know that it's true just because Donald Trump says it doesn't mean that it's true.
It sounds plausible.
Either way, if he were a Democrat, one big storyline of this election would have been how he came up with that idea, because it's really brilliant and it's a very powerful political narrative.
And that's obviously why Kamala Harris is cribbing it.
I mean, in Nevada, this goes a very, very long way towards appealing to working class voters who are hugely supportive of Donald Trump more than they have been for other Republican candidates.
So it's really, really smart.
And the media at the time, some outlets legitimately tried to undercut it and say, ah, this is just nonsense.
It doesn't mean that much to workers.
It won't make that big of a difference.
And now Kamala Harris does it.
And people are like, wow, this is so smart.
Where did it come from?
So it's just like another perfect case study in what we've been talking about.
And the media is just total double standards.
So pathetic.
Trump tweeted out or posted on Truth Social.
Kamala Harris, whose honeymoon period is ending and is starting to get hammered in the polls, just copied my no taxes on tips policy.
The difference is she won't do it.
She just wants it for political purposes.
This is a Trump idea.
She has no ideas.
She can only steal from me.
And Eliana, what we saw over the weekend on X was hysterical posts.
Like, there was this one.
Was it Curtis Hooke?
Oh, no, he did, not this one.
Here's for the listening audience.
There's one guy taking a test on the left and writing Trump, no tax on tips.
And one guy copying off of that guy and labeled Kamala Harris, like in a testing situation.
And then look at this one.
They're saying this is Kamala Harris at her next rally.
It's her wearing a Trump wig.
I love this so much.
She, you know, I guess if you can't beat them, join them.
But there'll be no acknowledgement, Eliana, that she completely copied Trump's homework.
Well, it's quite interesting to take a serious look at this that this is the one specific policy proposal she's put out to date.
And it is one of Trump's policy proposals.
Not only that, but this is a proposal, as Emily mentioned, that's aimed at the working class.
And these are the voters that the Democratic Party over the past eight years has been bleeding to the GOP.
So if you want to think about what Kamala Harris may try to do, and we're supposed to see more economic policies from her this week, I think that's the way to look at this.
I saw a headlight on a headline on MediaIte the other day suggesting that you were displeased that 538's been like the forecast has been suspended.
They're now affixing a note to the top of it where it could formally be found, the forecast saying as of July 21st at 2 p.m. Eastern, President Biden has suspended his campaign for the Democratic Party, whatever, for president.
And I guess they decided to suspend the forecast.
And you suggested, at least according to MediaIte, that this is being done for political reasons.
Can you explain that?
I don't think it's being done for political reasons as much as maybe to save them a model they don't trust or that could be embarrassing to them in some ways.
They had said back in July that their model had Biden doing substantially better than Kamala Harris, which I don't think made any sense at the time and definitely doesn't make any sense now, given the polling.
Their model actually doesn't look very much at polling.
It relies on things like the economy and incumbency.
So, you know, I don't know why they don't have the model back on.
It's one of the most fascinating periods in American political history.
I mean, the amount of attention paid to anything having to do with the horse race and politics and polls is very high right now.
So I can't speak to what's going on there.
But like, I mean, there's an issue, Megan, where if you leave a brand and they get to keep the brand name, I mean, 538 was, I'm no longer associated with it, but they have the brand name.
It's a little bit of an awkward spot if you think they're putting out a product that doesn't live up to, I mean, I'm a demanding person, but it doesn't live out up to the standards that you created.
And they have great people there.
The people I work with are still there, but they hired a new guy that I had feuded with and thought, you know, was not someone I would have hired.
And so whatever.
I mean, you know, I got the model.
I got my model.
I got, I have myself.
And so I got the valuable things out of that relationship.
But it's frustrating to have a version of a product that is not the product that you helped create.
That would be horrible.
That would be like me somehow losing control of the Megan Kelly show and being permitted to go off and form my own show, but the new person could call it the Megan Kelly Show.
I would hate that.
But do you think that there is, I mean, because that's maybe they'll start the forecasting now that Kamala's back and it's going well for her.
I mean, because to me, it seems so obvious that they lost interest in doing that when it when it looked like Joe Biden was doing so poorly.
Well, because their forecast had been the most optimistic forecast for Biden, right?
When Biden left the race, they still had it at 50-50, which I think is simply wrong based both on the polling and based on kind of common sense, right?
I mean, this is a guy who was having trouble delivering even prepared remarks.
And certainly anything off a teleprompter was very difficult for the president.
So look, I don't know.
I mean, the guy who runs the model, I think, has definitely seemed like he's more of a partisan leaning Democrat.
But look, you need to separate out your rooting interests from your ability to do analysis and reporting, right?
Correct.
You know, I am, full disclosure, I will vote probably for Kamala Harris.
It's not going to matter.
It's in New York.
But if Trump is ahead by three points in Pennsylvania on election day, then that's what our forecast will reflect.
And I'm not going to spin it.
And I'm not going to indulge, you know, critiques from Democrats because people say all of a sudden, when we had Trump way ahead, they're like, oh, Nate is MAGA now, right?
Nate's being funded by the right wing.
And now that it's 50-50 again, or we actually have Harris slightly ahead, then, oh, you're back in good graces.
I think people don't understand that some folks are able to separate out their journalism from, you know, I think it's fine as a citizen to have opinions about public affairs and for transparency reasons to even articulate that for context when you're going on a media appearance or writing about the election.
But we can decouple these things from one another.
I think it's, I think people should hold themselves to a higher standard of being able to, you know, walk and chew gum at the same time.
Yeah.
I mean, it's been a while since I've taken statistics and probability, but those seem like models that one could follow irrespective of one's bias.
However, I guess there are some people who put inputs into the models that could change the outcome and they do.
It's a fine line because when you're building a model, especially for elections, you know, the other thing I do is sports.
And in sports, there are hundreds of NFL games played every year and thousands of baseball games.
It's easier to kind of have the data speak for itself.
For elections, we have one election every four years.
The political climate is always changing.
Conditions are different.
So you have to be more assumption driven.
And that requires you to think very carefully about like, you know, what are the assumptions I make if I actually had to bet my own money on this election?
That's the standard I think people should use because otherwise you get in a trap where your rooting interest tends to, you know, surface in all types of different ways with all these decisions that you make when you build the forecasts and how you average the polls together or what standards you have for X and Y and Z.
So it's a hard problem, actually.
It's a difficult problem.
And, you know, the longevity I have, having done it since 2008, is a real asset because I've been, it's not my first rodeo.
So, all right.
So just to take a look at your latest probability, you've got Harris at 54.8% chance of winning the electoral college, Trump at 44.7%.
So not quite a 10-point difference between them, but the race has shifted dramatically toward the Dem's favor since the substitution.
We went back and I know that you know this, but you had predicted that Hillary had something like a 71% probability of winning in 16.
She didn't win.
So that's just as a caution for the audience that this doesn't mean that Harris is going to win.
It's a probability based on an input of what?
All the latest polls or the polls that you trust?
Like, how do you come?
How do you decide what goes into the mix?
We try to be as inclusive as possible, right?
As long as it's a professional poll, professional scientific poll, we include it regardless of the political ideology of the pollster.
You know, if there are polls that are amateur polls, like someone doing it on a blog and they pay 300 bucks for a survey monthly survey, not those, but we are the most inclusive of the different sites because we believe in the wisdom of consensus and the wisdom of crowds.
And there are years where some of the polls people demean as outliers wind up being right.
And so we're kind of following a process there.
And the other thing you said, I mean, look, Harris is, it's basically a coin flip.
5446 is not much removed from a coin flip.
And you're right that in 2016, Trump won with longer odds.
He was at 29% in our model.
Now, what I would say as a poker player, gambler, sports betterer is that you look at where is your prediction relative to the market.
The belief there, if you wanted to bet on Trump, you could get odds of six to one on Trump.
So we said it should be actually three to one.
So if you're a gambler and you looked at our forecast, you'd say, I have a good bet on Trump because when it pays off, it'll pay off more than enough to make for the times when the favorite wins.
So from my standpoint, that was what I call a plus expected value forecast, meaning you play out the election 100 times and you make money from it.
But understandably, you know, not many people before have come from this poker playing background into becoming this prominent election forecaster.
Poker Logic in Close Elections 00:13:07
So understandably, I know why kind of like the conventional media is not going to get that.
And that's okay.
It's a hazard of doing the job.
But I do want to emphasize that the uncertainty is there for a reason.
The polls can be off.
They were off in both 2016 and 2020.
2020, Biden had a big enough lead in the polls that he held on, but like they were off by four or five points again in states like Wisconsin.
So what, I mean, of course, at this point in the race, there are many Republicans who are starting to get very worried, right?
Because Trump looks so much better four weeks ago than he does today.
We had the New York Times Sienna poll that came out yesterday showing Harris over Trump by four points in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, the must-win Pennsylvania.
We had Cook Political Report moving three states in the Sunbelt from lean R to toss-up, including Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada, which Trump had been looking really good in Nevada, which is not historically blue, but he, sorry, red, but he'd been looking really good there.
So a lot of Republicans are starting to get very nervous with these polls coming in.
You've got Trafalgar, which is historically, I guess, more friendly toward Republican voters.
They understand them a little bit better.
I think the way he polls is very interesting.
He's got likely voters, at least in Pennsylvania today, Trump up two, all within the margin of error.
So how do we make sense of today's polling on this race?
I mean, that's kind of exactly what a polling average is designed for, where it includes the New York Times and it includes the Trafalgars.
I don't mean to totally compare them.
I mean, we have polls to ratings based on their historical accuracy and Trafalgar has had great years and not so great years, for example.
Look, there's a pretty clear consensus that Kamala Harris is ahead in most national polls right now by an average of two or three points.
National polls, however, do not determine the election because the popular vote doesn't determine the election.
In Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, she's ahead by a point, maybe two points, but that's really within the margin of error of the polls, right?
If you had the election today, which would be a little bit weird, but if you had the election today and Trump won Wisconsin, that would be not surprising in the least, right?
I mean, I think you'd take Karis, get 50-50 odds, but it's very close.
And the fact that, look, one way to look at it is that we've had three straight close elections with Trump, one where he came out a little bit ahead, one where he came out a little bit behind.
And Harris is like a league average Democratic candidate, right?
I mean, you know, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by two points.
I frankly think Kamala Harris is a better candidate than Hillary Clinton.
So if she wins by three points, the popular vote, then you have a close electoral college race where I think she might be the slightest favorite, but would be very competitive.
Okay.
So to those despairing on the right, it's too soon for that.
To those celebrating on the left, same message.
No, look, I think both parties have, look, Democrats went from a terrible position.
I mean, Biden was way behind.
And I think if anything, our model overrated Biden's chances because he was not able to do the normal things that a candidate does.
His fundraising was drying up.
He had another debate to survive.
So, you know, I thought Biden's chances might have only been 10% or something.
And now it's 50-50 or 54 or 55.
I mean, that feels great when you're a poker player and you're down to your last few chips and all of a sudden you're a real player in the game.
But like Democrats are maybe getting a little bit carried away here.
Kamala Harris is going to have her convention next week.
And typically that produces a further boost in the polling.
So I think August will remain a rough month for the GOP.
But September, she will face a different type of pressure, the pressure being a perceived frontrunner potentially.
That can be more difficult.
I mean, being an underdog is a powerful kind of constituents or powerful meme in American politics.
It's a sympathetic situation.
And in some ways, in some ways, it's a great story, right?
I mean, she takes over with this old guy and performs way better than people thought.
Um rises in the polls, could become the first woman president.
It's understanding, understandable by voters, and certainly the media find this story compelling.
But but usually there are twists.
Once you get after Labor Day and having this debate, september 10th which, by the way, is still pretty early for a debate um, that's the most obvious fork in the road for a momentum swing.
Have you been able when you've been watching the media, I mean it's been such a whiplash right of them eventually deciding Biden had to go?
Okay, we're gonna do our shoe leather reporting.
Let's get to the bottom of this.
We're suddenly interested in all of his fails and stumbles and then, as soon as she got anointed, it was like not interested anymore, forgot all our shoe leather problems.
Let's just let her.
Let's let her coast and be her pr agents on the back of the plane and back of the bus and not insist on interviews etc.
Yeah look, I think the Biden story should have been covered first and foremost as a governance story.
It's the hardest job in the world.
Um, you know how much uptime does Biden have?
Seems like a valid question and, by the way, I think these questions can be asked of Trump too, I think.
I think candidates should be more transparent about their medical records and their mental health and things like that as well, and people should have the right to ask questions.
But yeah it's, it's not a great look that once the force race aspect of the story was resolved, that that the story faded from the headlines so quickly.
Um, because it's about you know, if there's a 3 a.m phone call from from North Korea, then do you have the best person in office to take that job?
And and I don't know, I mean I I, you know the fact that Biden's been cagey about his diagnosis, if he has one.
It's not been.
It's not been a great look and it's a sign of how I mean.
What's weird about me is like you know, i'm someone who is kind of in the liberal media establishment but also critical of it at times, and I think in election years in particular, you sometimes see behavior that's more, more strategic.
I guess i'd say my gosh.
I mean that's such a sweet interpretation of it, but well, I mean i'm corrupt if you ask me, but that's me.
But on your point about Joe Biden, um, Tom Bevin, over at REAL Clear Politics, actually went and pulled the president's schedule just to see what he's actually doing what Joe Biden's actually doing.
This is last week.
He posted this on august 8th and he wrote, uh, his schedule this week is truly absurd.
One phone call on monday, nothing on tuesday, nothing on wednesday.
One phone call and a ceremony on thursday, and then off to the beach house.
He adds, any employee or ceo who did this would be fired.
Biden is the leader of the free world, working 10 hours a week, and our media couldn't care less.
They want him to coast.
I guess they feel like he deserves deserves it because he stepped down.
So it's like out of respect, even though we have two wars going, the Middle East and Ukraine, and we may be seeing an expansion of one or both.
Yeah, look, there are various things.
There's like the old Goldwater rule about not wanting to diagnose a candidate's physical or mental health from afar.
But look, you know, audience capture is a thing too.
And even the more highbrow, you know, center left outlets will publish more stories that get more page views and get more traction.
Those are generally stories that have good news for their, for their Democratic leaning audience, right?
So just organically, that can sometimes emerge.
And I've worked for the New York Times, and I don't think they kind of consciously go out and say, let's, you know, cater to the left today, but I think their readership leans that way.
And so and so you have, you know, that's reflected in the coverage a little bit.
Yeah.
And so are the reporters, which has an effect.
Yeah.
And I feel like I say that.
You know, Roger, I was just going to say at Fox, Roger understood that when you hire young journalists, they're going to be left-leaning.
Like young people tend to be left-leaning, certainly young people out of journalism school.
And he understood that you weren't not hired at Fox because you were a left-leaning person.
You just got the talk about that's not what we do here.
If you, if you want to just write left-leaning things for left-leaning readers, go someplace else.
If you actually want to do fair and balanced news, which is, you know, Britt Hume used to call it like pick money up off the street.
It's just like the whole lane of stories not told, not touched in a fair way, then you can work here.
But I don't think that reporters at the New York Times get that speech.
Yeah, I know, again, I am a little conflicted out here.
I freelance the New York Times, so I don't want to speak, you know, and you should account for that conflict.
Look, I think the issue is that there's kind of the pipeline issue where the Times is hiring from lots of elite colleges and universities, young people from elite colleges and universities.
And, you know, they're very bright people.
I mean, they get the best and brightest people in their class, but people coming out of those elite institutions are progressive Democrats.
And look, there are more journalists than you could might expect.
I push back.
There are a lot of journalists who care about the truth and are able to separate out their rooting interest from their journalism.
I mean, I think the majority even, maybe even the super majority.
Who's coming to mind?
I'm not going to name names.
I mean, look, the majority, that's insane, Nate.
That's insane.
I'm not going to deny there are some, but the majority, absolutely not.
Look at the news coverage.
I mean, look at the news coverage.
Did you see the headlines today after that Elon Trump thing last night?
The media knew exactly what to do.
It sucked.
He sucked.
Elon sucks.
All our concerns about being kind toward people with special learning and so on out the window when it's Elon Musk, who everybody knows is on the spectrum.
No, we can make fun of him to, you know, it's like this is just today's example, but we'd be here all week.
It's definitely not the majority.
I hear we have a difference of opinion.
Go ahead.
Look, I mean, I've worked in these spaces as well.
And I think there are a lot of good people there.
I think sometimes the people who care more about the journalistic standards are reluctant to speak up to younger colleagues who want to take the news from in a more progressive direction.
And you have a lot of internal battles.
You know, one thing about the Times is that, you know, at the Times, the kind of more traditionalists actually said, hey, if you want to turn this into like a progressive newspaper, then this is not the place for you exactly.
And they've they've shifted a lot from kind of the peak of 2020, peak wokeness or whatever you want to call it.
I read so much stuff and, you know, and I might not say that about outlets X, Y, and Z.
I don't want to make enemies now, but there are outlets that I wouldn't say that about.
Yeah.
I said it.
Yeah.
There's plenty more.
I want to play this because you said it's not considered appropriate to diagnose from afar in the context of Joe Biden.
President Trump did not get that memo.
He feels perfectly comfortable doing it.
And here is a little bit from his discussion with Elon last night.
Now, Biden's, you know, close to vegetable stage, in my opinion.
Okay.
I looked at him today on the beach and I said, why would anybody allow him?
The guy could barely walk.
Why would anybody allow him?
Does he have a political advisor that thinks this looks good?
You know, he can't lift the chair.
The chair weighs about three ounces.
It's meant for children and old people to lift and he can't lift it.
The whole thing is crazy.
I mean, it's clearly like we just don't have a president.
You don't have a president.
And she's going to be worse than him because she is.
a San Francisco liberal who destroyed San Francisco.
And then as an attorney general, she destroyed California.
Okay, so he's getting a little bit more on message there at the end.
But Nate, do you think, and I realize you're more in the statistics and probability game, but do you think there's a chance they actually might sub out Biden before November so she could run as an incumbent?
I mean, I don't know that we can connote an advantage to her.
It would certainly make her campaigning schedule more difficult.
But I do think there's a chance just because if you look at, look, I spend a lot of time looking at curves, right?
Curves for how baseball players are going to do or how the polls are trending.
And the trajectory for Biden is, you know, seems to be pretty negative.
That instead of an occasional senior moment, that that's kind of like the norm now.
And we also know if you look at actuarial tables or if you've just had older relatives that once you kind of hit the late 70s, early 80s, that you often hit an inflection point where someone goes from having good days most of the time to bad days most of the time.
And so, yeah, I mean, the fact that he wanted to be president for another four years, if you sent out that curve, I mean, that was, you know, kind of an untenable ask of voters.
It's the main reason that he was losing.
But it's a perfectly logical question to ask, you know, why not just step aside now?
I think that's perfectly logical.
And the media should ask that question more.
We were gaslit on President Joe Biden's mental acuity for years.
As recently as March, we had MSNBC telling us this was the best Joe Biden ever.
Media Narratives on Tim Walsh 00:04:44
Most cognitively fit, better than ever.
And then they were exposed at that debate, but the lie was never acknowledged.
They just moved on.
Same for Vice President Kamala Harris.
She defended the president as totally fine, mentally robust even for years, never came clean, just quietly subbed in for him, and three weeks later hasn't said one word about any of it.
The same media is now telling us Harris is suddenly a wordsmith, someone who speaks with merry conviction, has social warmth.
And that was from the Wall Street Journal.
Imagine what the left is saying about her.
And is tougher.
She's tougher than the guy who just got shot in the face and rose up with the fist pump.
The same media is telling us that those two Olympic boxers who won gold medals this weekend did not test XY and are in fact female.
But they did test XY and they are male.
The International Boxing Association is on record through its doctor saying as much.
And now we've had the former NBC and LA Times reporter Alan Abramson come forward and verify earlier reports that he personally saw the test results and they showed male.
Similarly, Emain Khalif, the one boxer from Algeria, her trainer, his trainer, has revealed, reports Redux MAG, that a French hospital found a problem with Khalif's chromosomes and that Khalif was well aware he, quote, might not be a girl.
This, as a commissioner of the Spanish Boxing League, comes forward to reveal that Khalif was considered too dangerous for women to fight in Spain, saying, quote, whoever we put Khalif with was injured, end quote, and that they had to pair Khalif with one of Spain's top male boxers before finding an even match for Khalif.
Even the IOC, which had been maintaining that these two boxers were female based on their passport identifications, as female, appeared to give up the game this weekend, saying, quote, it is not as easy as some may now want to portray it, that the XX or the XY is the clear distinction between the men and the women.
This is scientifically not true anymore.
And therefore, these two are women.
They're not.
You got XY, you're male.
And these two have XY, according to more sources now than I can count.
And a woman is going to get killed if we keep allowing this.
This same media is telling us that Governor Tim Walsh did not quit the National Guard in order to avoid going to Iraq, that he filed his paperwork to quit the Guard before he got any notice that he was being deployed.
That's not true either.
We know for a fact that Mr. Walsh was told he would be getting deployed in March of 2005.
There was a notice saying it's coming.
And his office publicly circulated that notice at the time.
We've seen it.
But a commander from his unit told CNN over the weekend that it actually was earlier than that, that Mr. Walsh and the unit knew the commanders well before Walsh filed any papers to run for Congress that they were going out.
They were about to get deployed.
And that that notice came as early as the fall of 2004.
In any event, Walsh did not quit the Guard until May 2005.
That was three months after the written notice that he'd likely be going.
And it's true that while the final official deployment notice didn't come until July, Walsh knew well before July that he was likely going to Iraq with his unit.
And there's no question that he quit anyway.
Everything else is revisionist history.
All right.
He quit knowing they were about to be deployed.
That is a fact.
The same media telling us that he made a mistake when he exaggerated his rank in the National Guard repeatedly, something he continues to do.
That he misspoke when he claimed he served in war, which he didn't.
That he misspoke again when he said or allowed others to say that he served in Operation Enduring Freedom, meaning the war in Afghanistan, which he didn't.
He misspeaks a lot and always in one direction.
This same dishonest partisan hack media is telling us that Governor Walsh did not make Minnesota a refuge for kids with gender confusion, that he did not sign a law allowing young children to come to Minnesota fleeing their parents who do not wish for them to cut off their healthy genitals.
Tampons, Boys, and Gender Mandates 00:07:43
That he did not allow courts to take custody of these young confused children and allow minors to sterilize and mutilate themselves away from their loving parents.
But he did.
He did exactly that.
And finally, they're telling us that Tim Wallace did not sign a law mandating tampons in all grades 4 through 12 bathrooms, including the boys' bathrooms.
Except he did, and there's no doubt about it.
A woman named Jill Burkham with the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a hack paper dedicated to helping Democrats, wrote a piece over the weekend trying to argue that because the law has not yet been followed in one large school district in Minnesota, instead, they're putting tampons only in their gender neutral and their girls' rooms, that the law must not include the mandate it says it does.
I have news for you, Jill.
The fact that a district is ignoring the law does not invalidate the law itself.
And if a trans student sued that school district tomorrow for noncompliance, they'd win.
The law says tampons must be made available to menstruating students in all bathrooms used by kids in grades 4 through 12.
Republicans tried to amend the bill to limit the language to only girls' bathrooms.
That amendment was defeated.
The sponsor of the law said, quote, trans boys, meaning girls pretending to be boys, need tampons too.
And therefore, sanitary products must be placed in the boys' rooms.
The products must be available to all menstruating students.
I think there was some discussion earlier about boys' bathrooms.
Would that allow a school district, at least now, especially in the elementary age, to not have to put these products into the male, the boys' bathroom?
This bill requires that schools provide free period products in all student bathrooms grades four through 12.
Trans boys menstruate.
And they use boys' bathrooms and would need these products.
In order to ensure that all menstruating students have full access to period products, it is important that we include them in all bathrooms where trans students who menstruate may need to access them.
Okay.
That woman won the argument.
And now the law is perfectly clear.
The mandate is unambiguous.
And while Jill points to a clause that says a plan must be developed by the school district for the implementation of the law, that does not allow the law to be ignored.
Jill, let me give you a little legal lesson.
That's not how laws work.
You don't say, here's a mandate, but then you can totally ignore the mandate if you want to ignore the mandate.
Implementation speaks to how the law will be complied with.
For example, what amount of tampons to put in the boys' rooms versus the girls' rooms.
This was specifically debated as the law was under consideration with an understanding that the boys' rooms could have fewer supplies.
But whether to comply with the mandate is not up for debate.
It's a law.
Tampons to any menstruating student in all bathrooms 4 through 12.
And Minnesota believes trans boys menstruate, that they use boys' bathrooms, and those bathrooms must stock up on tampax.
By the way, so offended was Star Tribune reporter Jill Burkham with my reporting that she encouraged yours truly to try doing some journalism.
I guess to come up with a misleading, legally misguided report just like hers.
Maybe I'll do that, Jill, and become a reporter just like you, who no one has ever heard of doing partisan hack journalism for a dishonest paper that has endorsed nothing but Democratic presidential candidates for the last 40 years.
To be clear, you needn't even be a reporter to figure out how this law works.
Being able to read and understand a statute is sufficient.
Maybe Jill can't do that because she's not an attorney, but I can and the law is clear.
It's a mandate.
As for Jill and her stellar journalism advice, I think I'm going to pass.
We decided to pull some of Jill's very journalism-y musings for the Star Tribune editorial board on which she sits.
And I got to say, I'm slightly doubtful about Jill's objectivity.
Just a few examples.
She and her board urged Trump to quit the presidential race back in 2016, lamented the overwhelmingly white jury in the Kyle Rittenhouse case, which involved a white man shooting other white men who attacked him, applauded the Trump farce fraud verdict handed down by Judge Engeron, suggesting the Trumps have no conscience and that voters in November should be guided by Judge Engerong's use of the term pathological when it comes to Trump.
She and her pals called Trump a disgrace after the business records case conviction, celebrated the label of convicted felon, and chastised voters who still planned to vote for Trump.
See, Jill knows better.
In the COVID madness, Jill and her colleagues defended mask mandates, begged for booster shots, and as recently as 2022, Jill personally expressed a vague hope that maybe someday, this is 2022, someday, quote, with vigilance, COVID-19 will be more manageable.
But for the time being, encouraged vaccinating, boosting, masking up again, switching over to remote work, putting other mitigation measures back in place.
She and her paper backed DEI in Minnesota schools, naturally.
Such an objective journalist doing so much journalisming.
As soon as Waltz was picked by Harris, Jill and her board buds celebrated the choice, writing, Waltz makes the ticket.
Good.
Then Jill personally tweeted a link to the Harris campaign's lies about Trump supposedly blessing Tim Waltz's handling of the Minneapolis riots, commenting, well then, Jill, what happened to the journalism?
That was a fake news report.
Or were you too busy trying to find a school district blowing off the tampon mandate to do some real reporting on what happened in your own state?
On August 6th, she tweeted this about Waltz's first campaign speech.
Op, Waltz went there with the couch reference.
So fun and what a moment to celebrate and circulate, Jill.
Tim Waltz, for whom it appears lying is a signature move, lies again, but it's so fun because it makes JD Vance look bad.
Did you journalism there, Jill?
Did you report that this was a disgusting smear?
You know, like you did on all the Tim Waltz stuff that was actually true?
Didn't see it.
Maybe it's still coming.
I'll wait.
The point here is not to pick on some sad little lady whose Democrat dreams may be endangered by her hero Tim Waltz's far left policies.
The point is Jill and her paper and this disgusting, enabling, lying, partisan hack media, are gaslighting us all on so many important issues.
And there is no choice for those of us who can still report truthfully, who one, are able to do that, capable of doing that, and two, have the platforms to do so, that we must, that we must do so all the time, no matter what.
Gaslighting Women with Partisan Hacks 00:06:38
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This is another funny moment, which the press is totally misunderstanding.
It was from his exchange with Elon the other night, and he's making a remark about that ridiculous Time magazine cover showing Kamala Harris like, oh, God.
Yeah.
Like Joan of Arc up there.
I mean, it was ridiculous, the depiction of her.
And here's what Trump said, and then I'll play you the media reaction.
Listen.
But she's getting a free ride.
I do a picture of her on Time magazine today.
She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live.
It was a drawing.
And actually, she looked very much like a great first lady, Melania.
She didn't look like Camilla.
That's right.
But of course, she's a beautiful woman.
So we'll leave it at that, right?
Since when does he sound like Buddy Hackett?
Yeah.
There was a problem with the audio.
Then they released the original audio because he was saying something and it was better.
But listen, okay.
My take on that exchange.
He's obviously suggesting Kamala Harris is not attractive, but was made to look attractive by this sketch artist who put her on the cover of Tom.
Like he's like, they made her look like Melania for the love of God.
And he's like, right?
That's what he's saying.
And then listen to how the media reacts.
I think this is Julie Roginski on CNN.
This is the same kind of misogyny we talked about before, right?
She's dumb.
She's terrible, but she's hot.
In other words, let me say.
So I guess she's going to get a free ride because she's hot, right?
Because women who are hot in his words and his terms get a free ride.
I mean, this is a woman who's a former prosecutor.
She's a former attorney general.
She's a former senator.
She's a sitting vice president.
She's accomplished.
You may not agree with her.
You may not think that her policies are the right policies, but she's accomplished.
And yet he's reducing her down to her looks and basically saying that she's dumb, she's not so smart, but because she's a good-looking woman, kind of like my wife Melania, she's going to get a free ride from the media.
Oh my God.
I like Julie.
Julie's usually pretty smart and she, wow, whiffed badly on that one.
That's Donald Krilli.
Right?
Talk about, that's how little they understand this guy.
In no universe does Donald Trump think Kamala Harris is hot.
It's going to get a pass.
No, he's clearly saying that this is Time Magazine's kind of visual hagiography.
And they made her look like Melania, who's really hot.
And that's not what she looks like.
Can you imagine Donald Trump using the phrase visual hagiography?
I just was.
He said that visual.
Yeah, visual hagiography.
I said, sir.
That's not what she looks like.
She's not Melania.
Bless her heart.
Yeah, that's an insane reaction.
I know.
But this is, you know, of course, again, what Trump is up against.
And I don't know the solution other than message discipline.
On the subject of the media, I got a couple of other for you guys.
You've probably seen the viral Caitlin Collins clip on Stephen Colbert.
She is on CNN.
She goes over, you know, to get the lovely treatment from Stephen Colbert on how amazing she is and how amazing CNN is.
And the left-wing New York City audience brought some truth to the matter.
Watch.
Trump has kind of been thrown on his heels by this and he's not really sure how to go after Vice President Harris.
He knew his attack lines on President Biden.
He really has struggled with how to go after someone who's 20 years younger than him, who is a different gender, a different race.
It's kind of been this moment where he has not been able to coalesce around a single attack line.
I know you guys are objective over there that you just report the news as it is.
Oh, I know.
CNN makes it.
Is that supposed to be a lab line?
It wasn't supposed to be, but I guess it is.
That hurts.
Unbelievable.
How humiliating and good for that audience.
They knew that was a farce.
What is the number of trust in the mainstream media?
Something 17%, some vanishingly smaller.
I think it might be lower.
So I think that the audience, even in New York City, knows that that's ridiculous.
I mean, it is.
Stephen Colbert is a great example of this, right?
I mean, a comedian, if you go back and look at the late night shows of the Leno, Conan O'Brien, Letterman era, you would have occasional political jokes.
They never turned into cheerleading for one political candidate, one side, which is what has made it so boring.
I mean, you look at the ratings they have, which are low.
Stephen Colbert, I mean, everyone remembers the unbelievably embarrassing vaccine dance.
Do you remember this?
With all the shots on stage dancing.
I mean, it's like, what is happening?
It's like North Korean television, but less funny.
That was routinely encounter like clips of him on the daily show, just old daily show segments back from its floory days.
And there were so many times where they were lampooning the left and lampooning the right, even with Kamala Harris, quite frankly, up until somewhat recently, it was not so surprising to see them lampooning her.
But that sort of thing, like in a moment like this, seems far less likely to happen.
Oh, gosh, never.
I mean, look, who were the faces of CNN over the Trump era?
Jeff Zucker was running it.
Egg Vibes and CNN Ratings 00:02:25
We all know about him.
He's ruined CNN.
Chris Cuomo, okay, that didn't end well.
He's obviously a Democrat partisan, masquerading as a journalist, just like Stephanopoulos.
And Don Lemon.
Now, Don Lemon ultimately got forced out because he made one too many stupid sexist comments.
And so they turfed the guy.
But I'll just give you a little sample of Don Lemon and how he's covering the news these days.
The guy who was the face of CNN for all these years.
Take a listen.
We meandered over to his podcast.
We're the one.
And we found the following in-depth discussion.
I think you're right.
Is it clawed?
Because people are like, oh, you know, how the kids say, the kids call it being sus, right?
Oh, well, he's sus, whatever.
I think it's fair to be questioning JD Vance's sexuality or because, you know, they say Val Doth protests too much.
I'm just one.
I'm not saying he is or he isn't.
Some people are like, you know, I have great guitar and I don't know.
What do you think, Alejandro?
Sorry.
No worries.
I think with some of my friends in the group chat, there were like kind of being like egg vibes question mark, which like for folks out of the trans community, like egg means like someone who hasn't come out as trans yet, but gives off like a lot of vibes, like they're trans.
Listen, one of my friends who is trans is in the chats in these here chats is Flame Monroe.
Flame, let me know what you think in the chat.
That's what I want to know.
I want to know what you think about all of this.
Do you think it's just fun?
What do you think?
Because I hear people, you know, I see people are putting up the egg emoji or what have you.
Remember when he thought the plane like it maybe disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle or UFO?
Is that crazy?
Is it a UFO?
That's giving off the same vibes to be there, Don.
How much was he making?
Just asking if JD Vance is gay or trans.
I'm just asking.
That's all.
Just ask him.
Yeah.
Is it fair to ask?
Because I don't know.
I got good, great gay dog.
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