In this Episode, Jeffrey Toobin joins the PBD Podcast! Toobin is most well known for getting fired from CNN for a very embarrassing moment on zoom.
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Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
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Okay, so we have a special guest here with us.
You know what I love about this podcast is one week we'll have a guest and there'll be a group that's very happy and there'll be a group that's very unhappy.
Then the unhappy group a couple weeks later are incredibly happy and the happy group is now unhappy.
It's always great so you can, you know, today's guest is going to piss a lot of people off and they're going to say, they've already said, why are you having somebody like that?
But let me formally introduce our guest here today, Jeffrey Ross Toobin.
Jeff or Jeffrey Ross Toobin is an American lawyer, author, blogger, longtime legal analyst for CNN.
During the Iran-Contra affair, Toobin served as an associate counsel on the investigation in the Department of Justice.
He moved from government and the practice into law full-time, writing during the 90s when he published his first books.
He wrote for the New Yorker from 1993 to 2020.
That's 27 years.
He was fired after an on-camera during a Zoom video conference call with his coworkers.
He continued to serve as a legal analyst for CNN for two years.
Toobin has written several books.
We just found that out of the eight books he's written, six of them are New York Times bestsellers.
But again, who's counting?
Including accounts on the 1970s Patty Hearst kidnapping and her time with the SLA, the O.J. Simpson murder case, and Clinton Lewinsky scandal.
The latter two adapted into a television series of FX American crime stories with the Simpsons case premiere in 2016.
Is that the one with Cuba Gunner Jr.?
Yeah, which was pretty wild.
A few other things you need to know about him on both sides.
One side, I don't know how many years ago this was three or four years ago or five years ago when he's on there confidently, you're saying Roe v. Wade is done.
It was so bad that Jim Acosta.
Now, forget about Jim Acosta.
Who else was making fun of you?
You know, the comedian, what's his name?
John Oliver.
John Oliver.
Oh, you said, look, I'm telling my daughter this.
No, that's not what it is.
But you were like, nope, it's over.
So you called it.
It happened.
You were right.
Your peers didn't agree with you.
And you're not somebody that was for it, that it was happening, but you said it was going to happen.
At the same time, we have to give you credit.
I've been in sales for since 21 years old.
Okay, so I've done a lot of, you know, what's that, 23 years.
I think we're on the same page that we miss conference calls more than Zooms because when it was on conference calls, people had no clue what you and I were doing.
Unfortunately, Zooms were a little bit more uncomfortable, more revealing of what we're doing.
So obviously the whole world find out what happened with you.
That was a story that was trending.
SNL was all over the place.
But whether you like, whether you don't like him, whether you agree with him, whether you don't agree with them, you're an absolute heavyweight in the media space the last 30 years.
You've done a lot of great work and it's great to have you on the podcast.
Well, it is a thrill to be here.
Thank you so much for having me.
So let's address the elephant in the room and then we'll get into all the stories here.
So first, when that happened, you're saying you had no clue the camera was on.
You had none of that stuff.
And you've talked about this multiple, multiple times.
My question isn't about your apology.
You've already addressed it, and I actually like the way you did it.
There's some people that didn't like it.
You just kind of said, look, as a lawyer, I can't even defend this.
I can't even say anything about it.
I just, this is what I did.
I'm manning up.
I screwed up.
You know, it is what it is.
I wish they would have kept me, but I understand their reasoning.
These guys brought us back.
Some people said, why would you bring him back?
You know, he should have never had the job.
People for lesser things were fired.
You know, Megan Kelly's been critical of you.
A lot of other people have been critical of you.
But you owned up to it.
We just said, this is what I did.
My question is, what do you talk about during therapy for something like that?
Look, where to start?
You know, I did something wrong, period.
And I am more sorry than I can say to everyone involved, the people on the call, my former colleagues, people who trusted me as a journalist.
I've been working to restore my reputation since then.
I, you know, as I say, I don't make excuses.
I only make apologies.
I'd like to think that, I mean, as we say in school, as we used to say in school, I know this is on my permanent record, but I like to think it's not the only thing on my permanent record.
And, you know, all I could do is, you know, offer a complete apology and try to get on with the work that I do.
I would say this part from my perspective, okay?
I don't think you can be in media for three decades without having some dirt that comes out on you.
Whether it's going to be a DUI, you know, you remember who was a guy that was the best Monday night football guy and then he got a DUI leaving a restaurant aside.
Al Michaels.
Al Michaels and he addressed it.
I got something embarrassing to say, I got a DUI cop hold me over.
It doesn't matter who you are, whether it's politics, media, all this stuff, you're eventually going to do something that's going to be screwed up.
Yours happened to be something that every boy has gone through what you've gone through, except most people get caught with their parents.
It's not on a Zoom.
So you're like the GOAT status of getting, you know, in the space that you went.
But the question I have for you is a very different question.
I run an insurance company.
We've licensed 45,000 agents.
We sold the company last year.
But one of the things that I had to learn as a CEO, when I ran an office with 66 agents, I knew everyone's dirt and it wasn't big dirt.
And then all of a sudden, one of our best guys got a divorce.
And all of a sudden, one of our guys got a DUI.
And all of a sudden, one of our guys, you know, we love this guy, cocaine issues, boom.
We lost him.
Another guy went through marital issues.
Another guy went through drug issues.
And then eventually everyone's like, why is this happening?
And I'm like, listen, everybody sins in a different way.
Everybody's going to do some stuff that they're going to do.
Unfortunately, some of them are going to be public and humiliating, and we got to kind of go through it.
And it seemed like the bigger and bigger the company got, the more stories like this happened.
Was there a part of you, because one guy called me one time and he says, do you know what that guy is doing?
Do you know how that other guy is doing?
I say, listen, you claim you're a Christian.
I do.
Listen, man, you may want to not be that judgmental because in about a couple of years, it's going to be your turn and you're going to want people to be a little bit more gentler on you, okay, when it comes down to your turn.
Did at any point for you, did you kind of sit there and say, shit, this is pretty embarrassing?
And I've been the one that's kind of been hard on that guy and this guy and that guy and this guy.
Did you buy yourself, I'm not talking wife and kids and all that stuff and colleagues, just you versus your mano, you know, like yourself.
Did you say, you know what?
As much as I don't like that guy, yeah, you know what?
That guy also did something here and that guy also did something here.
I guess none of us are perfect.
I have to really work on becoming more forgiving because now I want people to be gentler on me.
Did you ever go through that process?
Short answer, yes.
I think, you know, when you have sinned publicly, you are aware of others who have sinned publicly.
I think one thing that I felt I don't want to say positively about is, you know, even back to the days when I was a prosecutor, I was never the lock them up and throw away the key kind of person.
And that's not the kind of journalist I've been.
I have written about people who have made mistakes, who have come back from them, and written positively about that.
So, you know, my view has always been that, you know, if you acknowledge what you did, if you, you know, try to make amends, try to apologize, then you get another chance.
As people have said to me, you don't get a third chance.
And I'm very aware of that in my own life.
But I don't feel like of all the things you can criticize, you know, accuse me of, and I think there are a lot, hypocrisy is not one of them.
I'm not someone who has always been one strike in your out kind of person.
And so in that respect, I think my reaction is consistent.
Quick follow-up right there.
I've watched you on CNN for 20 plus years.
So one thing that I'm obsessed with, Jeffrey, is the concept of legacy, right?
We talked about reputation.
I started my show when I started interviewing millionaires and billionaires and financial advisors.
And I asked them, all right, after you're doing all the saving and all the investing and everything and the budgeting and the gifting and the philanthropy, I'm like, what's next?
What's next?
And like, it's just, it's legacy.
It's legacy planning.
They actually call it estate planning, legacy planning.
So the question of legacy, so one of my favorite people that I've ever read, their books is John Bogle, Jack Bogle, the founder of Vanguard.
And he said, when I die, my one wish is that I die with my legacy intact.
So you, you've been working in media 30 years, right?
So Pat reads your bio.
And of course, you've done all this work, six time New York bestseller.
And then it's like, oh, by the way, you got cough jacking off on a Zoom call.
By the way, like, that's part of your legacy.
That's part of your reputation.
You know, like the famous joke is like, you can build a thousand bridges and you fuck one goat.
You're no longer a bridge builder.
You're a goat fucker.
Yada, yada, yada.
So very interesting.
I didn't know that joke.
Well, Adam, first time.
Now I'll never forget.
To use a metaphor, some call you the goat.
So even in Urban Dictionary, there's a, like, you're familiar with this?
I'm familiar with Urban Dictionary.
I wasn't aware that I'm now.
Oh, you're a TOA.
Am I?
You go to Tube and you get caught on Zoom.
So like, this is part of your legacy.
Yeah, but I'm going somewhere with you.
Okay, Jeffrey.
Hold on.
So, but we also understand that America likes a comeback story.
We talk about this all the time is that like, this is America.
You get second chances.
You didn't kill anybody, dude.
Like, you didn't do anything like felonious.
Like, you got caught doing what dudes do.
You just happened to do it fucking in an embarrassing fashion.
You know, it's rough.
My question is, everyone's going to have that lowest point in their life.
This was clearly your lowest point.
What's your comeback story?
What's your strategy?
How can someone deal with the lowest part of their life, the most embarrassing thing that could ever happen to you and make a comeback and own it and be on podcasts and be like, yeah, you know, I did it.
How can someone deal with that?
Well, I guess two ways.
One is acknowledge and apologize.
One of the things that I often thought, I've covered a lot of political scandals.
And one of the lines that always irritated me was people would say, well, I'm sorry if you were offended, which is not a real apology.
That's like blaming you.
I'm sorry because I'm sorry because I did something wrong because there's no excuse.
So in that respect, not to try to equivocate about the wrongdoing is just to completely acknowledge that there is no excuse and it was wrong.
The second part is to get back to work, is to do the work that you do.
And fortunately, I was allowed by CNN, by Simon ⁇ Schuster, who published this book, To do the work that I do and do it well.
And that's the way to come back.
I mean, I'm incredibly proud of Homegrown This Book.
This book is the best work I can do.
And I think the reaction to it has been terrific.
And that's the way to try to come back to you.
You know, there's a quick follow-up.
There's a camp out there that would say, never apologize.
Never.
Never say you're sorry.
Own it.
You did what you did.
Do not apologize.
Don't even own it.
Like, there's that camp.
I thought we weren't going to talk about Donald Trump yet.
I was going to go there.
Here we go.
Someone who doesn't apologize.
What would you say to that camp that's saying never apologize?
That's not me.
I mean, I apologize because I think it's the right thing to do.
And, you know, I can't speak for other people.
And obviously, some people, that's their approach.
I can only do what I think is right for me.
And it would never even have occurred to me not to apologize.
So I want to get right into it.
If we can, I want to get into issues is what I want to say.
No, I'd like to talk about this subject even more.
See, this is what I'm talking about.
You kind of got to own it.
Let's circle back.
Let's circle back.
So let's.
Vinny, when was the first time you were caught?
Yeah, I know.
I was.
I was on the hamper.
My dad walked in.
Thanksgiving and grandma.
Vinny.
People need to talk about in the army.
You know what's all good.
I appreciate what Pat wants to take us to the issue, but I'll say one thing.
I mean this sincerely.
I appreciate you're saying acknowledge and apologize and get back to work because I agree with you when people say, I'm sorry, you were offended.
It puts on other people.
It's funny.
I've always thought that when I heard that.
And the other thing that I get that I can't stand when I hear is, but this is not who I am.
Yes, it was for that moment, and you need to own it and just move on from it.
And I really applaud that because it didn't mean you no longer had a Harvard law degree.
It didn't mean that you were no longer a classmate of Elena Kagan.
It didn't mean you no longer had six out of eight New York Times bestsellers and you were a brilliant legal mind on these issues.
That didn't change.
And I appreciate when you go out on the other side and say, hey, there's something more I can do here and there's something I can do.
It's like, you know, one of the bios I appreciated was Chuck Colson.
Now, you didn't commit a felony and a cover-up and all that was the goo that was there, but he basically discovered a current in prison reform and to do something else good without a law license because he was disbarred.
And I think there's far too few of those stories in America.
And there's a little tiny thread of that in what you just said.
So Tom, when was the first time you were caught?
All right.
We got grandma Thanksgiving.
He already said it.
Okay, phenomenal.
Let's get right into it.
Respect to you, Jeffrey, too.
So I got some issues I'm going to go through.
Obviously, a lot of them is current events.
I do want to make it clear, guys.
We're going to put the link below to the book that's here, Homegrown Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism.
We're going to talk about that, obviously, on today's podcast, if we can put it there.
But before we get into that, current events, okay?
When you said Roe v. Wade, okay, no, I'm telling you, and you said, you think this is going to happen?
No, I know it's done.
It's over.
It's this.
And it's like, what is this guy talking about?
It was discouraging to a lot of people.
And then, boom, it happens.
Was it because in your mind you're sitting there saying, these three seats, presidents come and go, but these three seats, you know, six to three or five to four, this stays for 20, 30 years, right?
When you made a comment like that about Roe v. Wade, and then right before midterms, I don't know what the timeline was, six weeks before midterms or whatever it was when they made the whole thing and everybody lost last June.
Yeah, and it was supposed to be, what, a red wave, and it ended up not being a red wave because America's like, listen, man, I would have been a red wave, but this thing that you guys did, probably not.
Some on the left and the right.
It's not like it's just a left issue, you know, both sides.
What made you be so confident at the time to say, I think this is going to happen?
Well, you know, I've covered the intersection of law and politics for my entire career.
And, you know, abortion has been the most contentious issue between, and frankly, it is between left and right in this country.
And, you know, you have to go back to the 2016 campaign.
And remember, Donald Trump, as a private citizen, was open about being pro-choice, in favor of abortion rights.
So when he's running for the Republican nomination, he had to convince the evangelical community in particular that he was trustworthy on their issues.
And so when he ran for president, he essentially outsourced the issue of judicial confirmations to a guy named Leonard Leo in the Federal Society, and they made a list of the judges that they were, that the president, that if Trump won, he was going to appoint to the Supreme Court.
And those judges were all clearly identified with the anti-Roe v. Wade position.
And this was an extremely effective thing that Trump did to ingratiate himself with the Republican Party because most of the Republican Party at this point is in an anti-abortion position.
So, you know, Donald Trump said during the campaign, if I win, I am going to appoint judges who will vote to overturn Roe versus Wade.
And what I think he meant by that was, if he won, he was going to appoint judges who would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.
I mean, that is what he did.
And he appointed the three justices, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.
And they did what was expected of them.
So it was not any great prediction of mine.
It was just listening and watching what was going on.
And it was predictable.
I know you're saying it's predictable.
A lot of people on the right thought it was predictable, but why is it so many people on the left didn't see that being predictable?
Well, I think, you know, Roe v. Wade was 1973.
There were a lot of Republican nominees since 1973 who turned out to be supportive of Roe v. Wade.
You know, think about it.
John Paul Stevens, appointed in 1973 by Gerald Ford.
Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor appointed by Ronald Reagan.
David Souter appointed by George Herbert Walker Bush, all of whom wound up being pro-abortion rights on the court.
So I think there was perhaps some sense that, well, when push comes to shove, the Trump appointees won't vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.
I recognized, I think correctly, that the politics have really changed, that abortion was so central to Trump's appeal to the right in his campaign that there was just no way he was going to appoint any justices who would wind up voting for Roe v. Wade.
So it really is about the evolution of the Republican Party.
That, you know, in the 70s and 80s, there were a lot of pro-choice Republicans.
That is not the case anymore, particularly among Republicans who vote in primaries.
And That abortion rights has really become a party line issue in the way it wasn't in the past.
And to kind of reference the story Pat's basically identifying was it was a CNN panel hosted by Jim Maca.
You're on there, legal analyst, handful of other people, and they're play a John Oliver clip.
And you were blunt.
You're saying Rovers Wade is now dead, done.
Official.
This is in 2019, I believe.
Yeah, it was after Trump was elected.
Okay, whenever it was, but clearly years ahead of your time, you nailed it.
You called your shot.
And the way that, you know, they say that facts don't care about your feelings, the way that you said it was so blunt and so to the point people were shocked on the panel.
John Oliver, who you reference, is like, Jeffrey Toobin's the kind of guy that's just going to tell his kid, not, hey, I'm just going to send my dog out to pasture.
He's like, we took him to the park.
We shot him in the face.
He's dead now.
Right?
Like, just blunt.
So what kind of backlash did you get from people internally in your world saying, Toobin, how the hell could you say something like that?
It's offensive.
Not really.
I mean, I didn't get any backlash.
I mean, one of the things that I think people don't understand, you know, I'm trying to remember.
I mean, I worked at CNN for 20 years, so I can't account for every day.
But, you know, once you establish that you know what you're talking about, people don't tell you, you know, I imagine people said, wow, you know, that was pretty definitive.
You really think that's true?
And, you know, frankly, one of the things I don't love about cable news in terms of my own experience there is the whole prediction business.
I mean, it's very nice that you were focusing on a correct prediction that I made.
But I made plenty of wrong predictions.
Most prominently, and one that I have thought about a lot over the years, was that Hillary Clinton was going to beat Donald Trump in 2016.
And ever since then, the fact that I was so wrong about that has made me very cautious about counting Trump out at any point under any circumstances, even now.
You know, I am very aware of how wrong I was in 2016.
I was a lot of company in being wrong, but that's, you know, and, you know, I just think humility is really called for in terms of political predictions in this country.
And, you know, and that goes for 2024 as well.
Right now, with everything that's going on with the election, you're seeing DeSantis, you're seeing Trump, you're seeing RFK, you're seeing Vivek, you're seeing, you know, obviously Biden, Newsom was on Hannity, all this stuff.
A year from the Republican debate, I'm sorry, the general election, Republican versus Democrat, when they face each other, who do you think is going to be on that stage?
Do you think it is going to be a Biden-Trump?
It certainly looks that way.
Do you think there's any chance Newsom gets in there?
Anyway, Zero.
You're saying Zero chance.
Zero chance.
Tell me why.
Why do you think that?
Because, unless Biden withdraws, there is no chance that Newsom runs against Biden.
Oh, against.
No, I totally agree with the against part.
I agree.
The against.
But do you think, okay, did you see him on Hannity?
I did not see.
I did not see him on Hannity.
By the way, he showed up.
He represented.
And to me, if you think about a guy, I left California because of Newsom, because of those policies.
So I'm not somebody that's sitting here saying, oh, you're great with these policies.
I can't say that part.
But if I were to say if I have a choice between a Newsom or a Biden going on meeting with the enemy or anybody else representing the big stage, Newsom looks presidential.
Biden looks like he's past that.
So wouldn't Democrats want more a Newsom than a Biden?
Okay, let me qualify what I was saying.
I am assuming, I mean, Joe Biden has declared for reelection.
I mean, he is a candidate.
Assuming he remains a candidate, there's zero chance Newsom will run against him.
If Biden, for some reason, were to draw fall down some stairs, break his hip.
You know, what happens to people in their 80s?
Then definitely I think Newsom might run.
And then it would be a free-for-all.
I mean, there would be a lot, you know, vice president would run.
Open primary.
Yeah, there would be half a dozen candidates within a couple weeks.
But, you know, every sign I have is that Biden is going to remain the candidate.
I think he's going to be a strong candidate for reelection.
But why do you think?
Well, first of all, most incumbents get reelected.
It is unusual.
I mean, Jimmy Carter lost, Donald Trump lost, but otherwise.
Senior lost, yeah.
The senior lost.
But most candidates get re-elected.
If the economy remains in a good place, if abortion, as I think it will, will remain a very big voting issue, especially for moderates and independents.
There's a big difference between Donald Trump and Joe Biden on abortion in particular.
And if the country is doing well economically, you know, I mean, you know, no candidate, or let me put it this, every candidate has problems.
Joe Biden's problem is that he's old.
But, you know, the country's gotten used to him.
And he's not going to overcome that problem by becoming younger.
But if he maintains the level of activity and involvement that he has now, I think he's going to be a strong candidate.
So from a perspective of approval rating, one of the lowest ever approval ratings he's got, right?
Even as a person, let's just say if you got a guy on your side and you're Republican, you're like, that's my president, but he's got that kind of an approval rating.
Man, I'm concerned about putting this guy in as my starter as a Democratic side.
You got a low approval rating.
The percentage of Democrats that don't want you to run, the people on media, MSNBC, CNN, that also don't want this guy to run, they would like him to step aside and have somebody else run.
It's not like it's just a Republican Fox News or Bribart or whoever these guys are saying that.
It's people on both sides that are saying, by the way, I have to be honest with you.
If I'm a Republican, I would much rather have Biden run than Newsom run.
I don't want no Newsom run.
Newsome's, for Newsom, I think that's.
Let me give you my argument.
I want to hear from you.
I want you to push back.
That's why you're here.
I don't want you to agree.
So for me, I think one of the things that some of the independents respected about Trump, they're like, where's the meeting?
Who wants to do it?
CNN?
I'll come.
That's enemy territory.
MSNBC, I'll come.
60 minutes, I'll come.
I'll come.
And one of the criticism with Obama was like, he did that one Bill O'Reilly thing, and that was it, right?
But that's Obama.
Biden's not Obama.
Obama can't get away with that because it's Obama.
Biden, he doesn't meet with the enemy.
Newsom went and sat with Hannity.
Hannity's good friends with Trump and he handled it.
That's got to be something where you're like, if this guy is willing to go there, sit calm, no notes, zero notes in his hand, you have to see this very impressive.
For him to handle him that way, I'm sitting there saying, listen, coach, can you put me in?
Like, I can really do this thing here.
I think Republicans would fear more a guy like him than Biden.
But obviously you disagree with it.
I'd like to hear why.
Yeah, well, first of all, you have to remember, I think, how little most Americans follow politics.
Gavin Newsom is probably known by 20 to 25 percent of the voting of the voting population.
Did you say the same about DeSantis?
Would you say no?
He's probably better known by now because he's been announced.
Newsome isn't had than no, no.
Newsom is lesser known than DeSantis.
I guess.
Yeah, because DeSantis is running for president.
And he's gotten a lot of attention.
Fair enough.
And also, California is perceived by most of the country as to the left of the rest of the country.
And it is to the left of the rest of the country.
And I also think it's important to recognize the theater of politics and who's willing to sit with Sean Hannity and who's not.
But there are also issues that there are profound differences.
And one of the things we learned in the midterms was abortion is a voting issue in this country.
No question about it.
And if Joe Biden goes to the public and says if Donald Trump wins, abortion is going to be illegal in the whole country, which it really might be if the Congress passes a law, which a lot of members of Congress want to do.
And if I'm elected president, re-elected, abortion is going to remain legal in the states where it's illegal, where it's still legal.
That may be more important than anything else, because that is a substantive difference that people can see have implications in their real lives more than the fact that he's old.
And you may have a point there.
If the economy stays intact, if there's no Ukraine-Russia doesn't get uglier than it already is today, if China does anything else with Taiwan, if there's not that cyber attack that they're talking about could be coming in the next 12 months, if there's a lot of ifs, ifs, but if none of that happens and it goes intact and he drives that, that's going to be a big issue.
What do you think is going to be the second and third issue that Democrats want to hear?
Well, I think, look, every presidential election at some level is about the state of the economy.
That's certainly going to be central.
And also peace in the world.
It's the economy stupid.
Yeah, it's the economy stupid.
I think at the moment, Biden has a good story to tell.
Also, the fact that he passed that big infrastructure bill, which the projects are going to start to come online where people are actually going to see the bridges, the highways, the mass transit start to be fixed.
All of that, I think, is going to be a big part of his pitch in addition to abortion.
But as you point out, if the economy goes south, that becomes an enormous problem for him.
But at the moment, it hasn't yet.
Well, Pat's absolutely right about the if.
There's always an if.
There's an if.
One could argue if COVID didn't exist, Donald Trump would curtainly be the president of the United States.
Absolutely.
You agree with that.
Well, I mean, certainly COVID played a big part in Biden's victory.
This sort of what if something else had happened, it's very hard to know, but you're certainly right that COVID was a big issue.
And this also goes for DeSantis, too.
You would have not known whatsoever.
Well, and I don't know.
At the moment, it doesn't look like he's going to beat Trump.
But if he beats Trump and becomes the nominee, the way he handled COVID will be a big part of the presidential campaign.
Although presidential elections tend to be more forward-looking than backward-looking.
And, Jeff, do you think that DeSantis even has a chance, considering that the indictment just came out and Trump went up?
He went up in the polls.
I absolutely think DeSantis has a chance.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, has a chance, certainly.
You know, I mean, being indicted is a really bad thing.
Yeah, for sure.
And, you know, his presence in the courtroom in New York and now here in Florida is not going to be optional.
It's not like the civil case, you know, which he lost in New York where he didn't go and he didn't testify.
You know, when you're indicted, and, you know, as a former federal prosecutor, it is worth remembering that upwards of 90% of the people who are indicted in federal court wind up either pleading guilty or being convicted.
So 90% of the people.
90 people.
Yeah.
So ultimately, you're saying there's a 90% chance that he's going to convict guilty.
You know, Donald Trump's case is so he's such an anomalous defendant that I don't know if you can precise, you know, just treat him like an ordinary defendant.
I mean, a lot of these cases are pretty routine.
This is obviously not a routine case.
But especially compared to the New York case, which I think is not a particularly strong case and not something that most voters would see as disqualifying, the federal case is, I think, very different.
And also, just the rules of federal procedure are tougher on defendants than the New York rules are.
Now, again, Trump got a good piece of luck with Judge Cannon, who has been sympathetic to him in the past.
But it's still, I think, yes, in the initial wave, he got a certain boost in the polls, or at least the polls didn't change much.
If he's sitting in court day after day and the public has to ask itself, what if he's convicted?
How does it work to have a convicted felon president of the United States?
I mean, I don't think, you know, we in the news media, we spend a lot of time talking about polls, but the polls change.
And, you know, events change the polls.
So the idea, I don't think the world has fully absorbed the magnitude of what it means to be indicted in federal court.
Because it doesn't disqualify him.
But don't you think, Jeff, just from seeing that one poll, his real supporters here, his real followers, that's making them more energetic because they're seeing that one side is getting treated one way, he's getting treated the other way.
If you think about it, you know this for a fact.
Hillary did the same, if not the exact same type of stuff.
Joe Biden has documents, but they're locked by his Corvette.
And we just saw it with Hunter just yesterday.
They gave him two misdemeanors and something else when we all know, we all know everything that was on his laptop proved it's 100% provable that him with his father, they were peddling money and they were getting bribes.
But like, so don't, no, let's be honest, Jeff, you don't think it's going to help him?
People seeing, like, look at what they're doing to him and what they're not doing to the other side.
You said about five things there, each one of which could be debated.
But you are certainly right that his true believers will be energized by that.
That's not enough to win a presidential election.
His true believers are maybe 30% of the country.
That's a lot of people.
That's a lot of people.
But that's not enough to win the presidency.
And what remains to be seen is how the rest of the public perceives it.
You're absolutely right.
It's enough to win a primary potentially, but it's not enough to pivot to the general election.
I want to stay on the Trump indictment.
As a former attorney, are you still?
I'm still an attorney.
Congratulations.
You've seen Trump's former attorney general, Bill Barr, give a scolding rebuke to what Donald Trump is doing.
And he defends him in many ways still.
Right, yeah.
You know, he basically says that all the Russia collusion stuff and the impeachment stuff was a sham.
But on this particular issue, the FBI search documents, he's basically coming out and vocalizing, yeah, Trump is absolutely in the wrong here.
What's your opinion on what Bill Barr is basically saying about?
Well, I think it's significant because I think, you know, we now live in such an incredibly polarized political environment that any time someone on your side says you're wrong, it becomes very significant.
You know, the fact that Adam Schiff thinks Donald Trump did something wrong, who cares, right?
I mean, exactly.
I mean, that's to be pretty.
That's a good idea, that's to be to be expected.
But as you point out, Bill Barr was his attorney general, was a Trump defender in many respects.
And top attorney in the United States.
And, you know, unlike the New York case, the Florida case is pretty easy to understand.
I mean, it's not a super complicated case.
Break it down like we're all fifth grade.
Well, it's that, you know, when you are president of the United States, you are allowed to declassify anything you want, but you have to actually do it.
But if you take stuff with you and they ask for it back, you have to give it back.
And he seems actively to have known that he had stuff that he wasn't supposed to have, and then in the face of a subpoena, said, I'm not giving it back anyway.
That's a crime.
That's a crime that other people have been, other people have been prosecuted just for possessing the documents.
Forget not giving them back.
And, you know, it's not, and this is where, you know, the difference from the Hillary Clinton and the Joe Biden situation comes along.
They were never asked to give back, and they found the stuff and gave it back voluntarily.
Well, no, no, no.
Hillary destroyed and hold on.
Hillary Clinton had all the Blackberries destroyed.
She had a server in her basement in her house.
And as a United States Air Force veteran who had top secret clearance, that was just all over.
That was done way before any request was.
No, requests are not.
But hold on.
But the FBI asked for it.
They destroyed everything.
No, they destroyed it earlier, before the FBI.
What did she do before?
But you're allowed to destroy anything.
I mean, in your private property, you're allowed to do anything you want.
That's a little weird.
It's a little suspect.
That's a little suspect.
But it was a little suspect.
It's shady, but not illegal.
There's no crime.
It shouldn't be.
So, for example, let's just say.
You have a cell phone, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
If today you want to destroy your cell phone.
That's not a government-issued cell phone.
No, no, that's not a government-issued cell phone.
That was all of her staff's Blackberries.
They destroyed them and then all her emails.
They did that white, what's it called?
Rob one.
Pick all that white shit where you can't ever see a bleach bit.
That's what it's called, bleach bit.
Come on, Jeff.
If you can't admit that there's a double standard right now, and the day that the indictment comes out, it was the same day that we found out about the Hunter Burisma.
Everybody, but Hunter Biden was prosecuted by Trump's U.S. attorney in Delaware.
Okay.
Merrick Garland recused himself.
This was entirely a decision by Trump's U.S. attorney.
What's the what?
How was that Joe Biden protecting his son?
I mean, that was not, Joe Biden and Joe Biden's attorney general had nothing to do with it.
The whole issue was the whole prosecution was conducted by someone appointed by Donald Trump.
I think the issue here is optics.
Vinny, where'd you go to law school again?
United States Air Force.
Okay, gotcha.
So you're not a legal analyst, but he does have an opinion.
Hear me out.
I don't have to be a lawyer.
I mean, I agree.
My point is this: it's a lot of people who share Vinnie's opinion, right?
They're not reading tort reform or they're not going to law school.
They're just basically saying something's fucking fishy here, bro.
But sometimes it takes a legal analyst to be like, hold on.
This is how the law works.
Well, and also, you know, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was someone I covered a lot, someone I liked a lot.
He had something that he said something that always sticks with me.
He said, everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but they're not entitled to their own facts.
And, you know, the idea that Joe Biden or Merrick Garland gave Hunter Biden a sweet deal.
Yeah.
It's just not a fact.
Now, you can argue that Hunter should have been more harshly dealt with, but you can argue that it was somehow a Biden initiative that he did it.
I got a question for you.
I got a question for you.
So let's just say if I have 10 people that at one point in my life were best friends, and prior to meeting me, they had never done cocaine before.
These 10 people, 10 out of 10, eventually became cocaine addicts and killed themselves simply by association with me.
I probably have some bad influence on these people.
Okay.
This lady named Hillary Clinton, one too many of her best friends or close friends have committed suicide in the random ways.
She is not the most trusted person, even by the left.
She was supposed to be president.
You were not alone.
We, everybody thought that was 3:30 in the morning.
I'm on a call with Tom, and he's saying what they were silenced like on what's going on.
You know, the video with all the people losing their minds, crying, all this stuff in the New York at the convention.
Yeah, the convention was already set up.
You know, she called all this stuff.
Nobody believed it.
But why?
Because people didn't trust her, Mess.
Some of the stuff that came up, even with Comey said what he said, and that didn't help him, help her two weeks prior to that.
The level of double standard with how she handled herself, that for sure is there.
There's no questions about it.
When you say something like, well, you can do whatever you want to your phones and you can do whatever you want to this.
I get that.
But if the other guy would have said, hey, accidentally, these files burned, there was a fire in Mar-a-Lago.
Oh, it wasn't.
You guys would have lost your mind if you would have said there was an accidental fire.
All I'm saying is I'm talking only to libertarians and independents.
I'm not talking to Republicans, and I'm not talking to Democrats.
I'm not even talking to rhinos.
I'm not talking to Lincoln Project folks who cannot stand Trump.
I'm not standing to Bush folks.
I'm not standing to McCain folks.
I'm not talking to those people.
I'm talking to independents and libertarians, like a Joe Rogan, like a Musk.
These are people that were voting for the left.
These are people that wanted to vote for Bernie Sanders.
Joe Rogan wanted to vote for Bernie Sanders is who he wanted to vote for.
This is a guy that was for legalizing marijuana, totally okay with LGB, you know, his friend, you know, totally okay with this.
It's like, there's something really fishy here.
So Hillary Clinton's never going to lose your loyalty.
You know, they're not, you're not going to say, I'm going to flip.
You're not going to do that.
And people who are on the MAGA side, Trump's not going to lose their loyalty.
It's just not going to happen.
That's naturally there, right?
It's like a Yankees fan.
How often does a Yankee fan who's been a Yankee fan since six years old become a Red Sox fan at 60 years old?
Just not going to happen, right?
So if you're going to convert religion, you do it early.
If you're going to convert teams, you're going to do it earlier.
You generally do it early.
But the people in the middle who are kind of like, let me see what he has to say and let me see what he has to say.
Come on, bro.
What are you talking about?
You're saying to me that Hillary Clinton didn't, I'm kind of with him here.
I don't agree with you because I see, because you know the argument that the left makes?
And they say, Democrats want Trump as the candidate.
That's who they want because he's the guy that we will beat again.
Really?
If that's who you want as a candidate, then don't do this stuff.
Well, no, we have to indict him and we have to do New York and we have to do this stuff because we just have to do it.
Well, I'm sorry, you said he's the guy that you're certain you're going to beat.
Why don't you not do this?
Because every time you do his posts, go up.
Well, that's strategically because we actually want him to beat DeSantis because we believe he will lose to Biden and we believe DeSantis will beat Biden.
We've heard all that story many, many times, right?
So there's some leaks in the argument where the person who's sitting there saying, listen, I'm not there to see all the reports.
And I know Adam is defending you as a lawyer, saying, listen, Adam, you know, who is Vinny to say this?
You're a lawyer.
You read all these things.
Totally get that.
But the average voter who has this technology that we all possess, especially the independent and libertarian ones, is a bullshit, a moderate, whatever you want to call it, where you're kind of sitting there saying, I smell a little bullshitting here from one side over the other.
I think that party is also sick of it to the point where, you know, Musk and Rogan to say, you want to save America, vote Republican.
If there was two people that you wouldn't have ever thought to say those two things, it was going to be those two guys.
And they changed in their 50s, not in their 30s or their 20s.
That's the community that's sitting there saying they don't trust anything from Biden or Hillary Clinton.
That happens to your son.
They don't trust anything.
I'm sort of amazed that we are, you know, we're talking about the 2024 presidential election and people, you're talking so much about Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton has been out of public life for eight years.
I mean, I put Hillary and Biden in the same camp.
Well, but anyway, I mean, Biden is certainly appropriate to talk about.
And, you know, Musk and Rogan, I, you know, I only brought up Hillary because you brought up Hillary.
You brought up Hillary early.
I don't know.
Well, actually, I think I brought it up in response to what he said, but that's fine.
You know, whatever.
No, no, you brought up Hillary when you said when I got it wrong in 2016.
That's what I'm saying.
I never brought up.
I was wrong.
And as I certainly was wrong in 2016.
I think presidential campaigns.
This is something Bill Clinton often said, and I think he was right, is that presidential campaigns are always about the future and how you envision things going forward.
And what I can never get my hands head around is that we often view these campaigns as a form of theater and who's more likable, who's more trustworthy.
It's like these have real world consequences.
And that's why I think abortion is such a big issue, because it's not about who's more likable.
It's like a big difference in people's lives depending on the outcome of the election.
And same thing about climate change.
I mean, you have people, you know, have one political party that thinks it's not a particular problem.
You have another political party that thinks, you know, the government has to mobilize against it.
That to me, and maybe that's just a flaw in how I see politics, but I see it as more substantive than the theater aspect.
But I recognize that.
And a lot of people are doing it.
And this is my thing, Jeff.
And I respect your opinion, but my thing is when people say stuff like, that's back then, it was Hillary, it was eight years ago.
People like me come up and they say, I just want accountability.
I want, I don't give a damn if it happened, 30, 50, 8, 10 JFK assassination.
We're finding out the CIA was involved.
I want people to be held accountable because, for instance, you see the Russia, the Russia thing.
We just found out that was literally Hillary Clinton set it all up, paid Fusion GPS.
They all set him up.
Now the public is like, wait a minute, can we hold her accountable?
We had to be dragged through CNN, which was the biggest mouthpiece for that big ass lie for all those years.
Now we find out Hillary was behind it.
That was the real collusion.
Hold on, Jeff.
And no accountability?
They didn't do what?
The DNC got fined like $8,000 for dragging us through that nonsense for all those years.
We want accountability.
And when you destroy phones, Jeff, it's not her cell phone.
When your whole staff is government-owned cell phones and you're destroying evidence, and then hold on.
And you talked about Attorney General Loretta Lynch with James Comey.
They're about to, she would have been, her charge would have been gross negligence, which is called, which is, you can go to jail, correct?
For gross negligence.
While all of a sudden, last minute, they changed it to extreme carelessness.
One side has it way better than the other side.
And when you have the FBI kind of leaning towards the left, which we've learned, Jeff, we can't, you can't lie with Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and the whole FBI.
We keep finding out stuff with the Twitter files.
They lean way more left than they do right.
I just want somebody to get be held accountable for what they did.
That's just my point.
That's it.
I respect your point.
And I think, you know, you are very concerned about accountability.
I think presidential elections are going to be much more about the future than about who's accountable for what.
So forget about the, by the way.
No, these not forget about it, but it's just not, I don't think it's relevant to who you're going to vote for in 2024, how you felt about Hillary Clinton's, you know, Jeffrey, I'm going to interject here for a second because I think that's being a little dismissive.
Because, you know, how you said facts don't care about your feelings, opinions.
What Vinny's trying to convey, he's basically a mouthpiece of millions of people who feel that way.
Whether he's right or wrong, good luck convincing somebody not to feel away.
So what I think, and I'm not saying that I'm coming at you like you're the tip of the spear for the DNC or anything like that, but use Vinny as a metaphor for freaking millions, tens of millions America who feel that way, who's basically saying, what the fuck is going on here?
It seems like there's two completely different justice systems.
And dude, I'm as moderate as it comes.
I'll go left.
I'll go right.
I'm down to party.
But there's so many people on the right.
By the way, this is coming from a guy that has never voted for a Republican president ever.
Ever.
So he's saying that.
So what I would say is the following.
Here's what I would say, Woodwoodi said.
By the way, the climate change thing that you said that people are worried about climate change.
Greta Thunberg five years ago, today.
Today, June 21st, she said that because if we don't stop fossil fuels, today was the doomsday today.
This was her.
So we make it through today, by the way.
Climate change scientists is warning that climate change will be wipe out of all of humanity unless we stop fossil fuels over the next five years.
Okay, so that's today.
June 2018.
But this is what happens when you listen to a 13-year-old.
She was 15.
By the way, but by the way, this is not about what happens when you listen to a 15-year-old.
You chose to put this person as a spokesperson and use him as a person of influence to get younger people.
And she was very influential.
Trust me.
This girl's got more influence than most people even believe she does.
I'm not down to her.
By the way, she's not.
I mean, look, what she's saying is not that it will, that on five years from now, humanity will cease to exist.
It's that eventually, and if you look at the melting of the polar ice caps, the melting of Greenland, the melting, the rising of the seas, that's not an unreasonable prediction.
That's not an unreasonable prediction at all.
You really believe that?
That climate change is going to affect you.
I think climate.
Obviously, you don't think climate change is going to affect.
I mean, here we are sitting in South Florida.
You don't think the rising seas is going to affect Miami?
Climate change is.
Okay, so do you want to have the climate change debate?
Let's finish this and then we can touch on it.
I'm at it.
You know, I don't want to get into some of that.
No, no, no, I'm not specialists.
No, but you brought it up.
So let's talk about it.
We can talk about it as none of us being specialists.
Nobody here is an interest.
So whoever gets it, we can all get it wrong.
But let me go back to the point about the future thing.
Okay.
I agree with them partly.
Let me explain to you why.
You remember how the whole thing is like, they stole the election.
They stole the election.
They stole the election.
You know who's the first person that said that?
Hillary Clinton.
100%.
They stole it.
Like Russia because they stole the election, but nobody said anything.
The more she went and the more she did that, the more she looked like a victim.
I couldn't stand it.
When you're a sore loser and you lose and you can't do it, you know who did it next?
Trump did it.
100%.
And guess what?
You're living what?
They stole the election.
They stole the election.
Whether they did or not, either side, voters want you to say, we lost, let's move on.
100%.
Left, right, middle, it doesn't matter.
Let's move on.
However, hey, for those that believe there may have been meddling in the election, et cetera, et cetera, here's what we have to do.
The solution is don't vote by yourself.
Go with twos, go with threes, go with four.
Give me the solution because that's now moving forward, right?
Here's where we want to go.
So that part I agree with them is future.
Obama sold the campaign in 2008.
You know, future.
You know, Clinton show sold future.
Kennedy sold future.
Reagan sold future, right?
Yeah.
And even Trump sold future in 2016 when he won.
Let's make America great again and let's make this.
It's the future.
Okay.
Trump's campaign started sloppy because he wasn't selling the future.
He was selling the past.
All right.
Having said that, there is a part of me that, you know, I want to know.
Like, for example, this whole thing about who cares where COVID came from?
I'm sorry, what?
I want to know where COVID came from.
Do you care?
Who cares?
Like, I remember one time Hillary Clinton was asking, who cares?
They're dead.
They're no longer.
Oh, yeah.
Why does it matter?
What does it matter about Benghazi?
What?
Oh, my God.
What do you mean, who cares?
That's the camp, left or right.
That's the camp that says, who cares?
We're already past this.
No, listen, COVID ruined a lot of people's lives.
The leading surgeon, what do you call it, the surgeon general, came out and said, hey, here's what we learned about COVID: is that these shutdowns led to people needing to be around each other and why it's so important to be around each other.
Wait a minute.
You just realized the Zoom concept didn't work working remotely, that we need to be around each other because we need each other's company.
We're just starting to realize that.
Now we're just starting to realize how this affected kids.
No, no, no.
We can't say who cares.
We have to go back and find out what happened to prevent it from happening again.
And if China did it, they have to be held accountable.
Now we know the first three cases were the doctors that were out of China.
When that came out, that's not even something that's being debated about.
It's public information that they're talking about now.
We have to find that out.
Okay.
And we have to find out whether Fauci was involved with different cases.
Was he gained function?
Were they doing that?
Were they not doing that?
Was he involved with us?
Who was funding it?
Where did the money come from?
People want to know.
There's a reason why.
Think about messages that go viral.
For example, what did we learn midterms?
Republicans screwed up.
Royally.
Not a little bit.
Royally.
They screwed up with abortion.
You're 100% right.
No one's disagreeing with that.
But watch this here.
Who's RFK?
Robert F. Kennedy.
He lost his father and he lost his uncle.
Two people that were loved and admired, probably by both sides.
Establishment didn't like those guys.
The establishment couldn't stand the Kennedy family at all because they were going up against the establishment.
They couldn't stand those guys.
So, all right, can you go on Amazon and type in Robert Kennedy Jr.?
If you can just go on Robert Kennedy Jr. I think he did nobody wanted to publish this book through anybody.
Go to the Anthony Fauci one.
I read that.
It was a great book.
Okay.
So zoom in a little bit.
It's number four this week.
This thing was written two years ago.
It's got 23,000 reviews, over a million copies sold.
And who published it?
Go to the bottom.
Go to the bottom.
Let's see who published it.
Go to the bottom.
Keep going, Oh, my God.
Okay, so terms of agreement on.
Skyhorse Publishing.
Who is Skyhorse Publishing?
Go Google who Skyhorse Publishing.
They publish a lot of books that other publishers won't do.
Oh, God.
So it's kind of like true, yeah.
Okay, perfect.
So Skyhorse Publishing picks some of the guys that people don't want to publish.
So then the question becomes: why did the book do so well?
Why did it sell so many copies?
Maybe because people want to know.
Why did Roe v. Wade create such a big?
Maybe because that's an important thing to women, including left and the right.
So guess what, Republicans?
You have to respect that and pay attention to it.
Guess what, Democrats?
You have to find out what the hell happened with this Anthony Fauci guy.
So to me, the only point I'm making, I'll kind of turn it back over to you and we can go to the next subject.
The only thing I'm saying is the future part, I'm with it.
I agree.
You have to sell the dream of the future where we're going.
But the accountability part, if there's not really any law and order, then this whole thing about a guy like O.J. Simpson who got away, which by the way, you're not liked by O.J. Simpson.
No, I'm aware of that.
By the way, you know what that says?
That's a compliment.
Well, you know, my dad always used to say you can tell someone, you can tell a lot about someone by their enemies.
And, you know, the fact that O.J. Simpson is my enemy, I'm not sure.
But what I'm saying to you is I respect the fact that he doesn't like you because we wanted to know what happened.
So there's a part of the accountability part that there's a lot of people that are saying, I just want to get to the bottom of the see who was behind it.
Well, and this is the thing, you know, the COVID thing, you know, interests me for a specific reason.
I mean, there is an active scientific debate about the ultimate source of COVID.
Did it come from a lab?
Did it come from an animal, you know, an animal?
And I'm just a guy who went to law school.
I know fuck all about epidemiology.
You know, how could you possibly ask someone like me what the source of COVID was?
Oh, that's not what I'm asking.
No, but in general, we rely on Vinny.
Yeah, we should ask Vinny if the source of COVID.
But that is a question that should be addressed in good faith by people who have some idea about how to determine that.
I don't know the source of COVID.
But no, but I mean that's that to me.
But these questions that become politicized, it seems ridiculous to me to have political debates about something that is a scientific question that people should address.
And I'm agreeing that there should be investigations of all that stuff.
By the way, Brett Baer, did you see the interview with Trump?
Yes, I saw it.
Okay.
Excerpts.
Did you think he did a good job?
No.
Oh, you mean Brett Baer?
I thought Brett Baer did a very good job.
I agree.
I think Brett Baird did a great job.
And you know how he said this person said, this person got fired.
That person got fired.
This person got fired.
Why do you not have a good, you know, hypocrite?
So he asked a tough question.
And then, hey, you know, why is it that you're keeping on to it?
They were trying to get it from you.
Well, I wanted to first make sure.
Okay, so guess what?
People want to know.
Great.
But people want to also know with the Corvette backing, with the notes, what you had there with Biden.
People want to know as well.
People want to know what you're doing.
And there is an investigation going on in Biden.
All I'm saying to you is people want to know.
We want to know what's behind the truth.
The comment about the fact that I'm not an opinion, you know, I'm not this, I'm not that.
Totally get it.
The element of that approach, when you say something like, well, you're not the expert in this and you're not the expert in that, there is a very clear, pompous, elitist message behind that.
Like, just like this week when MSNBC and CNN, well, we know what the president is talking right now, Jake Tapper and Rachel Mattabo, you know, we know what the president is talking about.
Listen, we are not going to let him have any airtime and we're going to update you on whatever he says that's necessary because we know he's going to tell lies.
I'm sorry.
Do you think I'm a moron?
Do you think I don't have a mind for my, like, I can't make, what the hell is America all about?
You just said I'm a moron.
That's what you just, you just said to half of America, hey, America, you're a moron.
You can't think for yourself.
That's why you need me because I went to this elitist university called whatever, whatever, Columbia.
I don't know where Rachel went to.
And I know what's best for you.
Guess what?
I don't like that.
That's why I left Iran.
There's a reason why we don't live in Iran for 10 years old when I lived in Iran.
We went to Germany at a refugee camp for two years.
Then we came to America because I want me to make the stupid decision on who I vote for, not you.
Let me make the stupid decision of voting for Biden or Trump.
There's a part of that where when we say, I'm not the expert, you're not this, you're, well, no, you're a smart guy.
That's why you're here.
You're not a regular schlep off the street that doesn't know what you've been involved in a lot of different things I investigated.
All I'm saying is for us to take the approach as well to say, hey, you know, you don't know what you're talking about.
You don't have this.
You don't know what you're talking about.
No, we're here because we don't know everything, but we're here to question things and say, this kind of sounds a little fishy.
Don't you want to know about it?
I do.
Well, no, let's just live in the future, forget about the past.
No, no, no.
I don't want to do that.
I completely agree that we don't have tests to determine whether you're entitled to an express an opinion on a subject.
The only point I was making was there are certain scientific questions like the source of COVID that it really does require some considerable expertise in the subject in order to have a reasonable opinion about it.
That's the only point I was making.
And I'm not saying that, you know, I mean, what is more than legitimate is you or Vinny or anybody saying, we need an investigation of the source of COVID.
That everybody, you know, that's a perfectly legit reason.
100% great.
But the ultimate question of what the source of COVID is, I want to rely on people who know something.
And who's leading that investigation?
Yeah, exactly.
Who is?
I don't know.
That's my fucking point.
And where's this investigation?
And I go.
You investigate laptops and leaks and this and that.
No, no.
Something that shut down the world for two and a half years.
Now, investigate what is happening.
China runs.
Well, if China could fly spy balloons over our entire country over nuke bases and nothing happens, nobody's investigating shit.
But here's my thing.
Which is absurd.
Here's my thing, Jeff.
And you know, I'm not an expert.
Nobody in here knows shit about epidemiology, right?
But guess what?
It doesn't help when the experts were trying to talk and the government was silencing them.
When Peter McCullough was trying to talk, when Robert Malone was trying to talk, they banned them on YouTube.
They took them off Twitter.
How do we even have a chance?
How am I supposed to learn from the experts when they were shut down?
And now it's years later.
And now we're like, oh, it's old news.
No, no, again, accountability.
And that's why I pad the thing with Joe Rogan.
He wants to have that debate with the bring a scientist.
Dr. Peter, are you following that story?
I am following.
What do you think about that?
Yeah, what do you think about that?
I mean, I actually am sympathetic.
You know, if you want to have a scientific debate, have two scientists debate it.
Not Joe Rogan against some scientists.
He doesn't want to do that either, though.
But Hotess doesn't even want to debate two experts that are on the opposing side.
I understand the argument you're saying, like, why should they debate RFK?
RFK is not fine.
Okay, that's a reasonable argument.
But why don't you get a couple other experts from the other side?
I don't want you to do that.
And I would think that's that.
That's fine.
I'm not in that involved.
I just having people who know something about it should debate.
But, you know, I shouldn't debate.
No, of course.
Well, Jeffrey, why do you know anything about it?
America wants to see this debate, conversation, dialogue for sure.
Whether it's RFK or Malone or McCulloch and then versus a Fauci or Dr. Hotep, fill in the blank.
In your non-expert legal opinion, why do you think this debate has not happened?
Why has it not occurred yet here in America?
Well, it is happening.
I mean, look, look, look, we're having this conversation.
No, no, no, no.
But none of us are experts.
I'm talking experts.
There are scientific papers being published all the time.
That's a lot of people.
That is debate.
That is not a debate.
Yeah, how many scientific papers have you read recently?
I haven't read any, but I mean, nobody's reading that.
People want to visualize and see.
You're saying like doctors debating with a camera on.
Is that kind of what you're saying?
I mean, yeah, like a debate.
I mean, not scientific papers.
Scientific papers.
You will, there will be, given the level of interest in it, there will be plenty more discussion on this subject among people who know what they're talking about.
And that's a good thing.
I hope.
And by the way, I hope so because one of the things like when you run a company and there's those that are complainers and you can't give too much credit to complainers because they're everywhere.
So these are the people that complain about everything.
If a person complains about every single issue, they have this much credibility, right?
But if a person who doesn't complain once a year, they say, hey, Pat, can I just bring something up?
I don't like the way we do this here.
You know what I do?
I pay attention to what they have to say.
Okay.
So let's set aside the complainers that just complain about everything in life.
What do we learn about people in America?
Hey, this abortion thing, listen, it's legit.
Kind of pay attention to it.
It's very important to us.
Check, get it.
Respect.
Hey, this thing with COVID that ruined our lives as a mother, I had to stay home and had to do this and had to cost my job.
And I didn't want to take the vaccine, but I did take it and I had to do this.
And I didn't like that part.
Can you guys please not do this again and give me a different option the next time around?
You know what?
This is not a complainer.
This is a positive citizen.
They go to work.
They raise their kids.
They pay their taxes.
Check.
Let's pay attention to this.
All I'm saying is, let's pay attention to the people that are saying those things.
Let's investigate that and give them an opportunity to see the opposing side.
Especially because there are going to be more pandemics.
There are going to be more communicable diseases.
I agree.
Exactly.
I agree.
And We need to know what works and what doesn't.
And I just, I think, you know, planning for future pandemics is what responsible government should do.
Crazy question for you.
Crazy question to see what you think about this.
So 1984, I think it is, that we make advertising.
Can you look up when we made advertising big pharma legal in America?
I think it's 84.
And I think Prozac came out in 88, 87.
If you can look up when Prozac came out and when we made it legal, what year is it?
When we made it legal, is it Google search that?
Zoom and you'll see it.
Okay.
Anyways, while you're doing that, what do you think would happen if out of a couple hundred countries in the world, whatever the numbers, 193 or 208, okay?
Only two countries big pharma gets to advertise in those countries, New Zealand and America.
Okay.
What do you think about if a president campaigned and said, moving forward, guess what?
If your product is good, they'll find it.
No more advertising on media, TV, YouTube, social.
Big pharma, not necessary.
Because it's legalized drug dealers.
If your work is great, if it's doing phenomenal, great.
I feel a little bit uncomfortable that this person, I'm paying $15 million a year or $10 million a year, this much money per year.
Of course, they're going to say good things about the drug because I'm getting the money.
Let's not do that moving forward.
What do you think about us eliminating as a candidate?
Would you, somebody who is on the, you know, maybe on the left, supportive or more on the Democratic side, would you say, I actually would entertain the idea of getting rid of that.
Well, and there's another very good argument for getting rid of drug advertising, which is, you know, one of the big issues with drugs at this, you know, pharmaceuticals at this point, is how much they cost.
I mean, you know, the fact that people can't afford the medication they need.
In a world where there's advertising, why are we, through Medicare or Medicaid or through our insurance, paying these drug companies to advertise?
I mean, it's not that we're learning.
It's not just that we may be getting unnecessary prescriptions.
It's that you're adding to the cost just by the cost of advertising.
It's a very legitimate question.
One of the things that, and I certainly knew this from my time at CNN, in an age when a lot of formerly big advertisers don't advertise anymore.
Like, for example, I'm going to take the liberty of saying that all of you are old enough to remember when airlines used to advertise on TV all the time.
They don't advertise at all anymore.
You never see a Delta ad, a United ad.
If you turn on CNN, if you turn on MSNBC, if you turn on Fox, it's one pharma.
Hold on, after all.
It's not just left and right.
It's everybody.
Well, and also this has to do with the fact that the news audience is older.
Exactly.
And I used to joke.
I mean, this is sort of a dark joke about when I was at CNN that if you look at the ads, our audience is 100% dying because of what they need.
Like there was one ad that was used to run all the time.
It's like, take this drug if you have advanced lung cancer.
Oh my God.
It's like, can't we have a drug for people who have just a little bit of lung cancer?
Where it's like, why do we have to have like advanced lung cancer?
But that's the audience.
And Fox has the biggest audience.
They also have the oldest audience.
But across the board, the ads are for pharmaceuticals because that's the best.
I want to show something.
Rob, I'm going to show this to you because the point you're making right now.
So do you know the patent laws and drugs in America?
Do you know the patent law?
So the patent laws in America, pharmaceutical companies get 12 years guaranteed market exclusivity for biologists and 20 years for each patent.
Okay.
So, you know, it used to be 12.
They raised it to 20.
A senator and a congressman from the left and the right agreed to say, let's lower it to 12.
This is not cool.
And then eventually they brought it back up.
I'm going to send you these two things.
So two of the most popular drugs that we take in America, one of them is, listen, excuse my English being my fifth language, Lipitor.
Am I saying it correctly?
Yeah, it is.
Okay.
All right.
So Lipitor, Rob, I'm going to send this to your mat.
I take it myself.
It's your last two drugs.
All right, so check this out.
Rob, if you can receive it and pull it up, when you see this on what happens the year the patents go away.
Okay, so check this out, if you can show this.
Rob, did you get it or no?
Okay.
I would run on this and I would show this because this whole concept of advertising pharma and us losing these people because they're getting paid behind closed doors, there's loyalty to whoever helps pay your bills.
There's a loyalty to whoever's the advertiser for the most time.
Watch this, for the most part.
Rob, do you have them?
It's uploading.
It's uploading.
Oh, it's uploading.
Okay.
So, okay, there you go.
So if you see the drop-off of these two numbers, the year the patent is over with.
So it's showing what it's selling for and how much the patent expires.
Before we even show it.
Look at it.
Zoom in a little bit.
Can you zoom in a little bit?
This is become generic.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So this is Lipitor.
Okay.
Zoom in and go up a little bit the other way so we can see the bottom numbers.
Okay, so check this out.
Look at that, how high it is.
Okay.
It's going $1.5 billion.
Do you see the chart?
Yep.
So all the way at the top, look what kind of numbers they're doing.
$12 billion is the top.
$12 billion.
2012 is when the patent expires.
Look how low.
It goes from doing $12 billion at its peak to $76 million.
Go to the next one.
This is Lipitor.
Now, let's do the next one here, which is for a drug for bipolar.
And so look at this one here.
$5.628 billion peak 2011.
It expires.
Look how quickly it drops and look how much it's worth in 2021.
21, 92 million versus 5.2 billion in revenues from one drug.
Okay.
Wow.
So this is the part where Americans are like, dude, so really?
It didn't really cost you this much to make it?
No, bro.
It's like pennies on a dollar.
But we charge you $600.
Damn.
There's a part of this where I'm like, look, you know, I don't mind giving you a patent.
You ought to get it because we want innovation in this space.
No questionable.
Like, listen, cancer, we got it cured.
And there's respect to a lot of advancement that we have made.
We have to salute.
My dad's 81 years old.
He should have been then at 65 years old.
Ken Golden, who is one of the original guys from Home Depot, billionaire, $45 billion auto guy.
He had a phenomenal debate with Elizabeth Warren two, three years ago.
He said, my dad died at 62 years old.
He's saying this in his book, I love capitalism.
He said, but if my dad would have been born 20 years later when they invented blood thinners, my dad would have lived in his 80s.
He says, because I've been on blood thinner since I was 60 years old and he's now 83, 84 years old.
So what an interesting testimony.
So we want the innovation, but guess what?
20 years patent?
I don't know about that.
How about we lower it to five years?
And then five years later, the person that came up with the patent, you get to sell it to other people and whatever they sell, 50% comes to you, which means you release the patent that there's still some kind of profits coming back to you.
I think this is another thing that's going to force big pharma to be more honest.
If we eliminate advertising and if we minimize the patent from 20 years to five years, it becomes a little bit more competitive.
You make a great, great point.
We have Medicare and Social Security, which is a safety net originally designed as a safety net to help. the elderly.
So there is a very real spreadsheet that goes on in Medicare to getting life-saving drugs, life-extending drugs to these people.
And it is kind of funked up that the drug companies have less of a copyright or patent than Mickey Mouse.
A couple of years ago, you read about how hard Disney was working to protect the image of Mickey Mouse because of its commercial value and the branding value to Disney.
So why do we have those things which argue that, hey, it was built by a company, it's entertained by people, you can do it, but it's not necessarily as critical as other drugs are.
And I think what you're bringing up, Pat, is instead of opening the floodgates to the generics, because they always talk about the Canadian generics.
If you go deep into the Medicare discussion, you go straight to the Canadian generic 24 months, 24 months after the expiration, hey, why can't we buy the Canadian generics for our older people to say, hey, you can still get your Lipitor, but you'll just get the Canadian generics.
It's a lot less because the patent's up and that we can get over here.
Why not make the licensing option, take away the advertising and provide a longer-term licensing option at the same time finding ways to make the drugs themselves more affordable?
Because we can all scream about the cost and everything, but there's a couple of realities.
The competitive set in the United States is resulting in these drugs.
These drugs are not being invented around the world.
And this is the reason that John Hopkins, you've got, and you know about this, you're familiar with Washington.
You've got entire floors of John Hopkins of Special Security because foreign dignitaries are coming here for advanced healthcare services.
Why is that?
Because the competitive set of capitalism and things and free enterprise in America are resulting in competing to make medical instruments and stuff.
So the right thing is happening because that competition is resulting in great things.
But then long term, we need to get the cost under control.
And you take away the advertising, and Pat, you're right.
You put licensing on it, and you will take five steps in a direction.
I have a question for you, Jeffrey.
It's kind of moving away from the drug stuff, so I don't if we want to stay there, but it is regarding what we were talking about, and that is, of course, CNN.
You worked there for how long?
20 years.
20 years.
So when you were hired, who was the CEO?
Wow, there was a lot of turnover at the beginning.
It was Walter Isaacson was the CEO who hired me.
The Walter Isaacson?
Yeah.
Yeah, he was.
He left a little chapter of his career.
He was the editor of Time Magazine.
And at that point, Time Magazine was owned by Time Warner, which was part of the Time Warner Company.
And briefly, he took over CNN and he hired me.
He used to joke that was the only good thing he did while he was at CNN.
I hope he still feels that way.
But Walter left CNN and then started writing all these terrific books.
When did you work at CNN?
What year was it?
When did I start?
Well, I was at ABC from 96 to 2002 and then CNN 2002 to 2020.
Was Ted Turner still around at that time or no?
Well, I mean, Ted Turner is still around.
No, no, no.
But I mean, it's not a company.
No, no, no.
He was not.
How different is CNN then than it is today?
Considerably different.
When I started, it was still in the era of the line that, and this is a Ted Turner line, was the news is the star.
That it was not about the personalities other than Larry King, who was 9 to 10, the anchors were not particularly well known.
And it was very much like a sort of wire service like the AP.
And that is a dramatic transformation from where it was.
Now, the key point about 2002 is that the internet was still in its infancy.
So if you wanted news, you really had to go to CNN.
As the internet became ubiquitous, people would get the news first on their screens, then on their phones.
And by the time you turned on your TV, you already knew the headlines.
And that's when CNN really started to change a lot.
And you were there up until 2022, I want to say?
Yeah.
So going back to my initial question regarding the CEOs, you were there.
Jeff Zucker was there for a decade or plus.
Yes.
And then recently, Chris Licht was hired, then fired.
I don't know if there's a new CEO right now.
Not that they haven't hired him.
Okay, gotcha.
So you said that things have changed significantly.
You said, you know, the news was the star.
Right.
We've seen recently the stars have actually been fired.
Don Lemon, Cuomo, Anderson Cooper's still there.
Wolf Wlitzer's still there.
You made a little joke about the average age of the audience is dying or actually dead.
Yeah, that's the same thing.
That's approximate.
Yeah, of course.
You know, give or take a few years.
Grandma's watching.
I love you.
Stay strong.
You know, the whole narrative about mainstream media is that it's a dying.
Legacy media is dying and that the average age of people is dead.
The other narrative is that they've lost their credibility.
And that goes across the board.
You know, if you talk to people on the left, Fox has no credibility whatsoever.
Zero.
Why could you even trust that?
The most trusted name in news, what have you.
And then you go to CNN, it's like anyone on the right is like, it's fake news, fake news.
We've all this narrative.
Speaking as someone that's worked for CNN for 20 years, how can CNN regain their credibility?
It's a really tough question.
And I think some of the problems that we're talking about are more structural than about any individual.
I mean, CNN makes most of its money, not all of it, but it makes most of its money from carriage fees from the cable companies.
What does that mean?
That means, like, if you get cable, if you have a cable TV at home, you pay a certain amount per month.
That's why I cut the cord, baby.
Well, this is the thing.
And, you know, let's say you pay $50 a month.
You know, a dollar goes to CNN.
$2 goes to ESPN.
But that business is dying.
There's a debate about how quickly it's dying, but no one really debates about whether it's dying.
ESPN.
And so the question is, how does CNN, and this is true for both MSNBC and Fox, it's also true for ESPN, which is a bigger business than either one of them.
How do they make the transition when people get their news from the internet rather than from cable?
What Zucker recognized was that when, Particularly in prime time, by the time they turned on, everybody already knew the headlines.
They wanted analysis and they wanted from people who were ideologically sympotico.
And so the network, I think, was accurate.
I mean, I don't think anybody was lying on CNN, but it was certainly more ideologically combative with Trump.
Chris Lick tried to move away from that, but there isn't one of the things I think we're learning is that, you know, people go to news organizations now that are ideologically sympathetic to confirm their bias.
Although one of the things that people never talk about here, and it's interesting, it certainly hasn't come up in this conversation, is the network news.
And here, I do a quiz.
My wife gets sick of this.
I want to ask the four of you.
Okay, we love quizzes.
Who are the three network news anchors now?
So you got Cronkite and Roger Meadow.
Who are they?
On CBS, ABC, NBC, who are.
Okay, let me give it a shot.
Okay, so on ABC, you got David Muir, correct?
On NBC, you've got Lester Holt.
Very good.
And then who the hell watches?
CBS?
On CBS, you got Stephen Colbert.
No.
No, but I'm kind of what I honestly don't even really know that you have a gap there.
No.
Those names aren't there.
Did I get two out of three right now?
You got two out of three.
Nora O'Donnell is the correct name.
Yeah, no, no.
But, you know, 20 years ago, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Tom Brokaw were three of the most famous people in the United States.
I mean, forget like.
And they had credibility.
And number one mattered, and it was a war.
It was a war.
And those network shows still draw a significant number of people every night, but they are not part of the political conversation the way cable is.
And, you know, and they are not particularly ideological, those three shows.
But the question, you know, that I don't have the answer to is sort of how the market evolves when cord cutting continues.
Yeah, so back to my other question, the credibility thing.
So, you know, not all talking heads are created the same.
So for instance, I find that Jake Tapper has a lot of credibility.
I actually find him to be a real journalist.
I mean, some people might disagree.
And then you have some people like Don Lemon, what it was so freaking clear that he was biased.
Who do you think is actually the most fair journalist these days?
You know, you got Tucker Carlson up there that he's got a loyal audience.
He's on Twitter now, but people on the left think he's an absolute full of shit.
And then you've got, you know, Rachel Maddow that people love her on the left.
People on the right think she's full of shit.
Who do you find to be credible these days?
Well, I mean, I love my colleagues at CNN.
I think Jake Tapper, Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, Aaron Burnett are terrific journalists and I think do a great job.
And I was very proud to work with them.
So, I mean, they're...
What about on the right?
You think Brett Baer's up there?
Yeah, the problem with Fox.
Let's go for it.
Well, no, but I mean, this is the thing that I really was of great interest and concern to me, was the vaccine talk.
That, you know, Tucker Carlson was, and, you know, we could have a debate about, you know, the sources of COVID, but actively discouraging people from getting vaccines was a monstrous killing act on the part of Tucker Carlson.
And I think that was appalling and a disgrace.
And if you look at the death rates of people, the people who didn't get vaccinated and many of them in red states, in places where the conservative message was out there, I think that was a shameful, shameful thing that Tucker Cross did.
I don't care if he talks about Hunter Biden.
I don't care if he talks about Democrats are terrible.
mind that's that's like opinions and everybody's entitled to that but but the the the vaccine talk was a shameful shameful thing And Rupert Murdoch should be ashamed that he allowed that to go on.
How closely were you following the Dominion lawsuit?
Very close.
Okay.
How much of that do you think?
I have a good piece coming out about it in the New York Review Technology.
I'd love to hear that.
How much of that do you think led to the beheading of Tucker Carlson?
Well, that's something that is a great question.
And I don't know the answer to that.
And all the stuff I've seen in the press about Tucker, about Tucker's firing, has not been persuasive to me.
You know, the New York Times had this big story that there was something he said in an email about someone.
I forgot exactly what it was.
Suzanne Scott.
Suzanne Scott.
It was some like, and it was like, I cannot believe that that was the basis for fire.
The reporters yelling at their news director has been happening since before forever.
And the departure of Tucker from Fox, as far as I can tell, at least so far, has had really bad business implications for them.
I mean, they have not.
Some called out Brett Baer pretty hard on that.
Well, and they, I, you know, we'll see when they appoint a new anchor to that spot.
You know, one of the interesting things that has happened historically is that when what's his name, Beck?
I'm forgetting.
Glenn Beck left.
Glenn Beck left, you know, his influence diminished.
When O'Reilly left, his influence diminished.
When Megan Kelly left, her influence diminished.
Katie Durick.
Katie.
Well, I'm just talking about the Fox people.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I mean, it's true about Katie as well.
I'm applying it across networks.
Well, yeah.
And, you know, for all that these networks are declining, they are still the pathway to influence.
Except for Tucker, though.
Except for Tucker.
What is going on?
60 million, 50 million, 30 million, 70 million?
Well, yes, for the first couple of times.
Let's see how it goes.
So there's two things.
I want to push back.
I wanted to hear you out, and I wanted you and Adam to go through questioning, but I'm going to jump in here for a couple things.
So as a CEO of a company, you know, at first, when you were a salesperson, I went from an employee to a salesperson to sales leader to business owner, and I had no clue what it was to be a CEO.
Trying to be a CEO, you're going to have people from all walks of life.
Those that want this, those that are married, those that are single, those that are widowed, those that are divorced, those that are white, black.
We're 54% Latino.
We're 24% African American.
We're 51% women.
So I have people from all walks of life, different states.
We're in 49 states, all this stuff, right?
And you have to kind of pay attention to what people are saying.
When COVID happened, we had a camp that got the vaccine.
We had a camp that didn't get the vaccine.
We had a camp that was undecided of wanting to get the vaccine.
And it was interesting because it was getting political at one point because the guys that didn't take the vaccine, who were not going to take the vaccine, looked at the vaccine people in a interesting way of why would you take the vaccine?
Why would you put that in your body?
You don't even know what's its own.
Nine-month trial, all this stuff.
And the people that took the vaccine would say, why would you be so irresponsible and not take the vaccine?
And then you had the people in the middle.
Like, I'm kind of undecided.
I don't know what I'm going to do.
We may not.
We're still waiting for three more months.
Great.
So when you say about the disservice Fox did Murdoch and Tucker, brother, one on the other side could say, dude, I was ousted, coerced, judged, demonized for, you know, everybody was forcing it down my throat with videos and commercials and ads and people getting up there and saying, if you don't do this, you have to be fired.
And if they don't do this, you don't bring them and see the other patient.
If you don't let them go in the hospital, military this.
Wait a minute, what are you talking about, man?
I just don't know if I want to take it yet or not.
So I think when I ask and I see a trend like, you know, the red pill movement did very well for like a year and a half, these are men that are like, dude, I feel like I don't have any girls out there for me.
There's no dates.
All the guys are getting the hot girls and I don't have anything left for me.
No one's interested in me.
I'm alone, dude.
I need a girl.
I want to date somebody.
This whole dating gap ruined my life.
At least back in the days, if I'm in a little city, Toledo, and I like Karen, and she was only competing with 17 other guys.
It was me versus 17.
And I'm number three out of the 17 guys in my city.
I have a chance with Karen.
Today, Karen got one Instagram account.
She got 16,000 DMs.
There's no way I can compete with Karen.
They're willing to fly her out to go to New York.
So the competition for the guys, they took a hit once the dating sites came out.
There's a group of people.
Karen must be pretty high.
It's the most trending word the last three years.
And I can tell you, it's probably going to be a name that we will not see for decades out of the next 30 years.
It's like they're narrowing.
No kids named Adolph for a year.
That's right.
So the point becomes that community in the middle, when you see why these trends are doing well, there's a community that's like, look, you try to force down the vaccine on me.
I didn't like that.
I don't like what you did there as well.
So when you say, I don't like what Fox did, there is tens of millions of people that can say, I can't stand what mainstream media did to judge me just because I wasn't ready to take the vaccine.
You made me feel like shit to want to take the vaccine.
You made me feel like I'm a moron because I'm not willing to take it.
That part is a little bit double standard.
It's not a dog.
And I'm sorry, I'm a complete hardliner on this.
Tell me what you mean.
Because is that, you know, at CNN and at Fox, you were not allowed in the building unless you were vaccinated.
You think that's the right thing to do?
I thought it was exactly the right thing to do.
Tell me why.
Because it's a communicable disease that you could reduce your risk to yourself and to the people around you to a scientific certainty.
And that was a rule that was excellent.
And I was glad CNN had that rule.
I'm sure the people at Fox were glad they had that rule.
And, you know, again, this is not, you know, you're allowed to have opinions about anything you want.
But at some point, when your opinions put other people at physical risk, as vaccine denial did, that crossed the line.
You know how ridiculous that is, what you just said?
Because for you to say that, I can hear someone saying that in Iran.
I can hear somebody saying that in North Korea.
I can hear someone saying that in China.
I can see someone saying that even in Italy.
Although things are changing in Italy right now with their new leader that they have.
I can see somebody saying that in Venezuela and Cuba.
I can even hear Justin Trudeau saying that in Canada.
Fine, it's fitting.
America?
But they said that.
They said that the CEA.
But you're not free to put other people in danger.
Wait a minute.
But that's what that, that's, you know, and it wasn't me who said this.
It was the leadership of these companies.
Well, listen, there's a lot of people now that are sitting there saying you forced some people to take it.
They had repercussions, side effects.
It affected a lot of people negatively and you forced it.
For us to sit there and say with a hundred percent that it was the right move to make with only nine months of data that they had, I think that's a little naive.
Now, don't get me wrong.
We can sit there and look at certain vaccines and say, okay, like, you know, some people are like, none of them, you got to go.
I'm not saying that.
There's certain ones like, listen, we have 30 years of research on that.
Polio.
Yeah.
Do you realize what that did?
Do you know what this saved?
Do you know how many people disagree?
Yeah, we didn't have 30 years.
I totally get that, but that's the point, though.
The point of saying we didn't have 30 years is more of a reason to say it's a choice.
You either take it or you don't take it.
Wow.
Just disagree.
I know.
That's okay that we disagree.
All I'm saying is that the part where when you say, I don't like what Tucker did, Tucker spoke to a lot of people that were part of that camp.
You know how many people in the military that love America, that love being a Marine, that love being a Navy or Air Force or Army were forced to leave their jobs they love.
You know how many people are.
Nobody forced them to leave their jobs.
Oh, they had no choice.
No, your choice was to take the vaccine.
And if I don't take it, I'm out.
Correct.
That's forced.
Correct.
Well, that is forced.
Absolutely.
And that's a good thing.
You think that's a good thing?
100%.
Okay, so let me go to a different direction because this forced thing is trending a lot lately.
What do you think about ESG and what BlackRock Vanguard and State Street is doing?
That's so completely different.
I'm not an expert in that.
I don't know.
Okay, you're not following me.
I mean, I'm vaguely aware of it.
But it's not something you have an opinion on.
Not really.
So then let's go back to this.
So you're okay with us forcing something like that on somebody.
So here's.
So it's like we force, your kid can't go to school unless it's got the measles vaccine or the polio.
Not all schools.
This is why some people leave and they can get religious exemptions to not get it.
And those vaccines are also tested.
Whereas the colours are not available.
And then, Jeb, what do you say to this?
So on my show today, I have a captain, Army captain, Katie Hernandez, coming on my show.
They told her, if you don't get this vaccine, you are getting kicked out of the military.
They forced her.
She went to the Capitol Hill and they made her take it.
Guess what she has right now?
Myocarditis patent.
She's driving in a car and she felt like she had a heart attack, heart attack.
What do you say to those people that were forced to do it because it's the government?
And now she is suffering.
She has heart problems because of something like that.
You don't know that the vaccine caused her problems.
They said that she.
I don't believe it.
Okay.
How'd she get myocarditis all of a sudden?
She's a healthy 25-year-old girl.
By the way, by the way, you also don't know that it didn't.
I don't.
But the point is that both of us could be right or wrong.
That's the choice.
You could be right.
I could be right.
Except the vast weight of scientific evidence was behind vaccines.
Okay.
So not necessarily because we didn't have a lot of debate.
Anybody that had an opposing argument, they got silenced.
There were doctors out of Bakersfield, these two doctors that they got out there and they gave their argument.
The video got 20 million views.
First 24 hours, the videos, all of them were taken down.
They couldn't even give.
These are doctors.
These are medical professionals that we're supposed to respect.
You couldn't have an opposing argument.
So again, let me give you the leaks in this argument for a guy like me that I've been a registered independent for probably 20 years who liked Clinton and I voted for Clinton, but I voted both sides of the aisle as well.
When I sit there and I think about, for me, if I have a girl pregnant and I chose to have unprotected sex with this girl, and it's my responsibility when I had unprotected sex, for me, I'm going to sit there and say, hey, I took responsibility.
I didn't have condom.
I was excited.
We had sex.
You're pregnant.
Whatever you choose to do, I support it.
I'd support you having a baby.
But it's your body.
You got to do whatever you got to do.
But if you want to have the baby, I got for a lifetime.
I'm going to take care of this kid.
I'm in.
Okay.
Great.
That's my position.
But for me to not listen to what women are saying is important to them, that's arrogant.
Who the hell am I to not listen to their argument?
What do you mean?
No, you should do this.
No, I'm a Christian man.
I understand what my positions for my faith may be, but I have to hear you out for your argument.
And it's not like it's 20% of women saying this.
It's not like it's 8% of women saying this.
It's in the 60s.
No, you see some places say 40, 50, 60, it's 67% some places.
We've seen all these numbers.
I have to hear them out, right?
So the part where there's contradictions in the argument is why are you forcing women to have an abortion?
Let them have the choice.
Then why are you forcing me to take the vaccine?
This is when the contradictions exposes hypocrisy and there's leaks in the argument.
And an independent guy like me that's purely logical, data-driven, that's just kind of like, I want to hear both sides of the argument.
My mother was a communist.
My dad was an imperialist.
My entire life it was about debate.
I mean, they really were.
Great dinner talk.
No, no, no.
That's what I listened to.
One thought rich people were greedy.
The other one thought poor people were lazy.
This was the argument in my life that I had to listen to for 20 years.
So for me, I want to hear both sides.
And I say, you know what?
The guys that don't want to take the vaccine, I think you have a valid point.
I totally respect it.
So I was my board and the investors one time.
They're like, well, Patrick, we have to have it.
Were you on this?
I don't know if you were on this call.
Maybe maybe immediately prior to me, because I know who you're talking about.
We had this, we had this board meeting and emergency board meeting.
We didn't talk to Patrick.
I'm the CEO and the chairman.
Okay.
Yes.
Hey, what's your position on getting your guys to get vaccinated?
What do you mean?
Are you going to get your guys vaccinated?
A lot of the guys are, and some of them are not.
Okay.
So are you thinking about sending somebody for these guys to take the vaccinations?
So what do you mean?
How about if we pay to send somebody to offices to get everybody vaccinated?
I said, yeah, it's not my style.
It's not what we started a company for.
Well, let me tell you what it is.
If you come into Citigroup, everybody's vaccinated.
If we're going to go meet with these investment bankers that are thinking about buying our company or investing into our company, you have to be vaccinated or you can't go into the meeting.
So we use the technology that you and I don't like, Zoom is what we use.
So we had these meetings with these people and say, oh, let me tell you this.
So, okay, we can only have the meeting there.
All right, no problem.
Preferably, I'm a face-to-face guy.
I want to sit with you and talk to you.
You know what I eventually did?
I eventually made a video and I say, hey, guys, some of you guys are going to like this video.
Some of you guys are not going to like this video.
My recommendation to you all is the following.
If you're vaccinated, don't force the other side or judge them if they're still going through the process of thinking about getting vaccinated.
If you are not vaccinated, don't judge the other people that chose to get vaccinated.
If you're wondering where I'm at, my wife and I and our kids are not yet vaccinated.
But my dad, who is conservative, like at the highest level, like I'm talking like super conservative guy, he's not only vaccinated, he's got four boosters.
And my nanny, who is not our nanny anymore, she's like a grandmother because she's been with us for 15 years, like this woman, whatever she wants, everything's on me.
I take care of this lady.
She got vaccinated and she has all the boosters.
Both of them do.
So it's not a dad, why'd you do this?
It's, dude, what do you want to do?
Salute.
This is what we're doing.
So the part about Tucker that you're talking about, I think he tapped into an audience that was also relating to not wanting to be forced and they want a choice.
So I think there's a little bit of leaks in the argument of it's the right move to make to force people to take the vaccine.
That's all I'm saying.
I, you know, as with a lot of issues, I know a lot of people don't agree with me.
Yeah.
And that's fine.
I mean, I, I, you know, I'm not, I, I, you know, this is one of, you know, it's interesting about why people get into journalism.
And when I used to work at the New Yorker, I, I would, um, there was a very elaborate fact-checking process.
And the fact-chesters tended to be young and kind of idealistic.
And this scene often often would happen.
And I'd write about a controversial thing.
And sometimes a fact checker would say to me, you know, when your story comes out, what do you think's going to happen?
And they'd say, you know, what do you think's going to happen?
And I said, you know what's going to happen?
People will read it and they'll go, hmm, interesting.
And that's all, that's fine.
I mean, that's all I wanted out of my journalism.
I am not someone who writes and goes on TV or writes books because I want to change the world.
I want to tell stories that are interesting, that are thought-provocative.
I have certain opinions.
I have an opinion about vaccines.
But, you know, other people disagree.
I'm not, you know, that's fine.
I'm going to say this to you, though, but I got to say this to you.
We've never broke bread.
We've never had a conversation.
The first time you and I met was two hours ago.
Correct.
Right.
My experience with you of these two hours, I've enjoyed my experience with you.
I have respect for the fact that you can come here and you're respectful.
If I'm given a different side, some things we agree on, some things we disagree on.
Your way of handling that is super respectful, and I applaud you for that.
I got a lot of respect for people that can do that.
I think we need more of this because I think at the end of the day, you know who won on today's show?
Not you, not me, the people that are watching this.
They get to sit there and say, he made a good point.
They get to sit there and say, I disagree.
They get to, I agree, I disagree.
They get to do that part.
That's all we can do.
Simple as that, a great conversation.
To finish up the whole thing here, I want to get into the book with the last five minutes that we have.
Homegrown, Timothy McVeigh and the rise of right-wing extremism.
What is the premise behind this book and why'd you choose to write this?
The Oklahoma City bombing was April 19th, 1995.
Two years later, McVeigh and Nichols went on trial.
The trial was moved to Denver.
And I covered the trial.
I was then working for ABC and the New Yorker.
So I was well steeped in the story, but time had passed and I never wrote a book about it.
In October of 2020, right before the election, the FBI arrested a group of people who were plotting to kidnap Governor Whitmer of Michigan.
And Terry Nichols, who was the co-defendant in that case, was also from Michigan.
He was affiliated with the Michigan militia.
Same with the people who were involved in the kidnapping.
And I thought, wow, this is like, you know, similar.
January 6th happened a few weeks later.
So I decided to look at the story again.
First of all, it's just an incredible true crime story of how McVeigh did this.
And I certainly believe that McVeigh did do it.
It's not like there's some conspiracy that he didn't do it.
He certainly did it.
And the way he organized it and the way he got the fertilizer and the racing fuel and rented the truck, it's just an incredible story.
But McVeigh has since been portrayed as someone who was like a lone wolf and an anti-government person.
It's not accurate.
McVeigh was part of the right-wing movement of the 90s.
He was someone who was a big Rush Limbaugh supporter.
He was a Pat Buchanan supporter.
He was someone who was obsessed with the supposed fear that the government was going to take his guns away.
If you see that ideology moving forward, that ideology has been enduring.
And the difference is that McVeigh didn't have the internet in the 90s.
He didn't have the ability to communicate with like-minded people.
And those sorts of views Are a lot easier to spread now.
And if you look at whether it's January 6th or the mass shooters in El Paso, in South Carolina, in Pittsburgh, in Buffalo, they are all mobilized by the internet in a way that McVay couldn't.
And I want to let Vinny talk now because I know he thinks I'm so foolish.
No, no, no, no.
I think, and you left out that McVay was a psychotic murdering maniac.
He's absolutely to do something like that to kill all those people, you're insane.
I do agree.
Listen, January 6th, some idiots went there and they did some stupid shit, but one person died, and it was Ashley Babbitt.
She's a United States military veteran who was shot and killed.
And we just found out again through all the Twitter files how many FBI agents were down there, basically.
And I saw the video of Ray Epps.
Literally.
Yeah, if all those undercover FBI agents hadn't been there January 6th, how many more would have been killed?
No, what I'm saying is yelling at people, inciting violence and writing from agents on the floor agents.
Let's just be honest with each other, pushing people in to go do it.
One person died.
And here's my question: Jeff.
Can you blame, can you blame a group of people that know for a fact that they already tried to get cheated on January 6th?
I'm sorry, 2016 election.
They know that Hillary and everybody tried to cheat to get Trump out.
That was 100% cheating.
Why would you blame them to think that in 2020, they wouldn't try it again?
So can you blame people for not trusting a system and then going somewhere?
Because I believe in this.
If you have a problem with the system, you don't burn down your city.
You don't do what BLM did.
You don't do what Antifa does, which are actual terrorists.
Antifa are domestic terrorists.
You don't burn down your city.
You go to the heart.
Those people, some of them stupid as hell.
I agree.
Some of them vandalizing and beating the shit out of people.
But when you have a problem with the system, you don't burn down your city.
You go to the system.
You go to the government and they did that.
And I hold on.
And I get it.
When people say threat to democracy, I don't believe that that was a threat to democracy.
I think that was a bunch of pissed off people that were screwed once and they believed.
I don't, believe it or not, they were like, you know what?
I think we got cheated again.
And they went to the heart of the stories.
That's it.
The protests are completely legitimate.
And that's as an American as apple pie.
I agree.
Protest.
But it's not legal or appropriate or in any way defensible to break into the category.
I agree.
Absolutely.
And that's all we're talking about.
I mean, we're only talking about the people in the Capitol.
We're not talking about the people at the equator who were at Trump's rally.
And also, I think, you know, we don't know exactly what went on behind the scenes, but I don't think you can prosecute Trump for what he said in that speech.
I agree.
He said, you got to fight.
Every politician says you got to fight.
That's not the right thing.
The Beast Boy said you got to fight for your rights.
Yes, indeed.
And who could disagree with you?
Because you do have to fight for your rights department.
And this is why, Vinny, I told you.
When you went to January 6th, I want to hear what he has home to say.
But, you know, the difference is the crimes committed.
And, you know, you can't commit crimes.
That's what that's, you know, what to me is indefensible.
And, you know, obviously, you know, McVay did something far more egregious, but the engaging in violence in support of your political position is something that has carried forward.
I agree because I think, listen, anybody.
From only one side?
Far, I mean, this is something that I deal with in the book.
This fantasy that Antifa is somehow as dangerous as the right is a, if you look at the statistics, 75% of the political crimes in this country have been committed by people on the right.
Antifa is a tiny, tiny percentage compared to that.
I mean, from what I've seen, every time the right is trying to do something or speak or protest or have talk, Antifa shows up just to cause havoc and shut them down because, again, you have to silence people in Portland and hardly anything.
No, what do you mean?
They just went to Glendale and they were in Glendale, California, because Armenian people were like, you're not going to teach our kids all this stuff.
They're underage.
Antifa was there and they got their asses whooped by the Armenian community.
And I salute them.
I get messages left and right.
Facts support what you're saying, what the 75%?
It's in the book.
What do you do?
Who cares about the facts?
No, no, no.
I'm going to read this book.
I'm going to take this book.
You said political crimes is what you just said.
Can you break that down?
I know what a violent crime is.
I know what aggravated assault is.
When you say political crimes, politically motivated crimes.
Politically, crimes, you know, that, you know, like the Muslim extremists who shot up, I forgot which Ford it was, one of the army bases, the psychiatrists.
In Maryland, Fort Hood, Texas.
Fort Hood.
Fort Hood.
I mean, that was a politically motivated crime.
It was, you know, Islamic terrorism.
Right.
Are you pulling that from the right?
No, not at all.
I'm saying I'm drawing this distinction.
I'm saying it was not from the right.
That if you look there, there is crimes from Islamic terrorists.
There are crimes from the left, Antifa, and there are crimes from the right.
People like the white supremacists who shot up the Walmart in El Paso, the Dylan Roof, who killed the people in South Carolina church, the Anti-Pittsburgh shooting in the synagogue, the grocery store in Buffalo.
Those are from the right.
Those are the sort of three general categories I'm talking about.
And what would you say?
Because I mean, we hear it all the time from the left, from the White House, from Joe Biden, that the number one threat to the United States is white supremacy.
It's those.
That's what the numbers show, that's where most of the threat comes from.
Because we had two FBI whistleblowers here, and I asked them the very same question.
You know what they both said?
It ain't white supremacy.
He's like, it's the actual insider threat.
And he goes, it's the government against the people.
And these guys, they were sitting right where we're sitting right now.
And they said that that's what the threat was.
He said the percentage, these are FBI agents, that the percentage of white, white supremacist walking around causing problems, that's not the number one problem here.
So.
Wow.
You know, if the audience wants to find out for themselves on the opposing argument or something they agree with, they can order the book home.
Grown, the link's going to be below for you guys to order.
Once again, thank you so much for coming out and being on the podcast.
Absolutely.
Terrific.
Thank you all.
You're a terrific group, and I really am grateful for the opportunity.
You've been a very good sport.
I had no idea how you were going to be, but you've been a good sport, and I respect that.
