Jake Novak frames America’s current chaos as a "Second Civil War," blaming leftist violence—from Trump assassination attempts to Alex Predty’s armed clashes with ICE—while slamming DA Larry Krasner and NYC Mayor Zorhan Mamdani for stoking division. He ties economic crises, like NYC’s $1B heating deficit, to reckless spending on immigration over disaster prep, then rips media for ignoring China’s purge of General Zhang Yizhou (nuclear leaks) and Iran’s 40,000-protester uprising while obsessing over staged stories like Ilhan Omar’s town hall. Novak argues corporate media’s bias silences experts like Gordon Chang, humanizes U.S. troops near Iran less than NFL drama, and risks rural hospitals—all while America burns. [Automatically generated summary]
Abolishing ICE: A Small Bunch of Wannabe Nazis00:12:12
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Download and subscribe at BeBullish.com This is The Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
People love him and respect him.
Roger Stone.
Now, get him a zone.
It's the stone zone.
Here's Roger Stone.
And welcome, everyone, to the Stone Zone.
I am filling in for Roger Stone this evening.
I'm Jake Novak, and I'm really, really grateful for all of you who are going to stand by with us and stand by with me as I fill in for Roger.
Especially grateful to Crowlis and Phil on the other side of the glass, who have been so helpful to me coming in here tonight on very short notice.
But boy, what a great opportunity this is to talk to all of you, speak to all of you across the country.
And for those of you, I think some of you probably listening from outside the country.
It's a great opportunity.
It feels great.
But what doesn't feel great is the big picture in America right now.
And I wish this weren't true.
I'm not saying this to get clicks or to get more people to listen to me.
I only tell you the truth.
If it does get great more clicks and more listeners, that's great.
But we, ladies and gentlemen, are absolutely in the midst of the Second American Civil War.
There's no other way to say it.
Now, when I say that, I'm not talking about a Civil War like million man armies on either side fighting battles with cannons and bayonets and tanks and missiles and things like that.
We're not there.
I really hope we don't get there.
We did that once in this country.
And when you count all the military deaths and the civilian deaths, by the way, there's some new estimates.
It used to be 500,000 when I was a kid.
Then the historians upped it to 600,000.
Now they're saying that in the American Civil War of 1861 to 1865, there were 700,000 Americans who died, civilians and military combined.
So I really, really hope we don't get there.
But for those of you who are Civil War buffs or remember your high school American history, here's where we are right now.
We are in the bleeding Kansas period of the Second American Civil War.
You know what Bleeding Kansas was?
This was a territory before it was declared a state.
And there were pro-slavers in Kansas and there were anti-slavers in Kansas and they used to kill each other.
Literally.
They went out and they killed each other with pitchforks, with guns, the whole nine yards.
Now, we're in the bleeding Kansas portion of this Second American Civil War.
That said, only one side is really doing the killing.
In Bleeding Kansas, it was the pro-slavers and the anti-slavers who got pretty good body count on both sides.
It's still the left.
It's still the American communist movement.
It's still the anti-Trump movement.
It's still the anti-constitutional movement.
It's still the tyrannical movement that's doing just about all of the killing right now.
And yes, I understand that ICE has had to neutralize some of these people, but those were responses to attacks on them first.
The attacking and the physical violence, whether we're talking about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, the continued attacks on ICE agents and even the hotels or cars that may be associated with them.
These are very violent people.
And they remind me of the pro-slavers.
And I'll tell you why I make that comparison in a second, another reason why.
They remind me of the pro-slavers I learned about in junior high and high school.
And then later in college, I took an amazing course in college, the history of the American South with Barbara Fields.
And I don't know what her politics were.
That was a nice thing about college back then.
You didn't know your politics of your professors.
But we learned a lot about those years leading up to the Civil War and how violent it was in this country.
And granted, we didn't have militias.
We didn't have full-on armies going up against each other.
And we're not there now.
And I sure hope we don't get there.
But you'd have to be blind not to see that we are in the midst of a second American Civil War right now.
And I don't like it.
Yes, I'm very angry at the left.
Yes, I'm very angry at the people who are attacking ICE.
I'm very angry at the people who are perpetuating illegal immigration who have attacked President Trump.
I'm very angry at them, but I don't want to kill them.
I really don't.
I'd like to see them arrested.
I'd like to see them punished.
But I'm not picking up a pitchfork.
I'm not picking up my shotgun in Nassau County and going and shooting a bunch of lefties.
I'm not doing that.
I hope we don't lead to that.
We get there.
And I'm sure that almost all of you listening right now, as angry as we are at some of these people, we don't want to go there.
Well, you know, again, it just feels like, however, that is, we're getting a little close to that.
And that's not what I want to see.
Now, for those of you who think, oh, this is a little hyperbole.
We got a guest host, Jake Novak in for Roger Stone tonight.
He's trying to grab some attention.
He's saying we're in the middle of a second American Civil War.
He's trying to be hyperbolic.
Well, you know, I'm sorry, but I'm not the one who started the hyperbole.
I'm not the one who started the violent talk and the warlike talk.
Lots of people, especially from the left, started it.
And here's one of the people who did it just recently.
This is Larry Kramer, the DA of Philadelphia.
This is cut one.
And listen to his terminology, the way he talks about ICE.
Listen to this.
This is a small bunch of wannabe Nazis.
That's what they are.
In a country of 350 million, we outnumber them.
If we have to hunt you down the way they hunted down Nazis for decades, we will find your identities.
We will find you.
We will achieve justice.
Larry, Larry, Larry, Larry Kramer.
First of all, Larry, members of my family were murdered by the real Nazis.
They were lined up and shot in a town called Mariampole, Lithuania.
So you make those comparisons with me and you're going down the wrong path.
You're not going to appreciate what I'm going to say about you if you do that again.
So don't you dare do that again.
But second of all, hunt you down, federal agents.
You don't like what ICE is doing?
Go vote for a different president.
Go vote for different federal officials who can change the rules and maybe open your borders again.
I don't approve of that.
I don't want you to do that.
But you're going to hunt these people down?
What the heck are you talking about?
This is what I mean when I say we're in the bleeding Kansas stage of the second American Civil War.
This is really, really, really bad.
Now, just in the last couple of hours, we've seen more of the nature of these combatants from the left.
And they're not protesters.
They're not even agitators.
They're terrorists.
They're urban terrorists.
They're domestic terrorists, whatever you want to call them.
And you know that over the weekend, we had one of them killed, Alex Predty.
And the left tried to make this guy into an absolute martyr.
In fact, MSNBC didn't just make him into a martyr by changing his or balancing out or tilting his resume.
They literally photoshopped up his picture to make him more attractive looking.
It's like the opposite of what Time magazine did with OJ.
Those of you a little bit older, remember when OJ got arrested and they put him on the cover of Time magazine and they literally darkened his skin and darkened the background.
And it was a huge scandal and rightfully so.
You know, I think OJ was guilty, but I mean, you got to darken his picture on the cover of Time magazine.
Well, this is the opposite of that.
They were trying to make this guy look saintly and more friendly.
Well, just in the last couple of hours, new video of Alex Predi spitting at federal officers while his gun is visible.
And this was on January 13th.
So this was a few days.
This is a couple of weeks, I guess, before he was killed and kicking out the taillight of one of the ICE vehicles.
I mean, you can see this guy is totally unhinged.
You can see that he is a combatant in this second American Civil War.
He's the guy with the pitchfork coming after, coming after folks.
And there's a lot of people who should be embarrassed by these new revelations about Alex Predty, not people like you and me.
I think most of you listening knew this guy was bad news and didn't fall for the sugarcoating of this guy.
But one of the people who not only fell for the sugarcoating of this guy, but promoted it quite aggressively, was one of the great geniuses of the American illiterati.
Not really.
Anna Navarro.
Cut six.
Here's her take on Alex Predty.
They chose to, they killed the wrong guy, right?
Because this is like the perfect guy.
Alex Predi is the guy you would want to date your daughter.
The guy you want your son to grow up to be a decent human being who was serving humanity, serving sick veterans who is, you know, there is nothing that has been said about that man that isn't wonderful.
And so they can't malign him.
They can't malign him because we have the videos.
You know, I have a lot of Latino friends, and obviously I have a lot of friends who are women.
Aren't you embarrassed by Anna Navarro?
I mean, there are so many very, very smart, even left-wing smart Latinas and women who they could be putting on TV instead of this moron.
I mean, really, this is incredible.
Why would you do that?
You don't know this guy from Adam and you're talking about him in this way.
Are you kidding me?
And now we see this video.
Listen, I have two daughters.
I don't want my daughters dating a guy like that.
You kick out my taillight.
There's going to be some, there's going to be some bad things happening to you, whether you're dating my daughter or not.
All right.
I mean, it's just outrageous.
And it's amazing how there's a balance here for all the praise that they give these people, whether it's Renee Good or Alex Predty, they balance it out with overly just as false, just as false lies about our ICE agents.
And by the way, God bless these guys.
You know how many tens of thousands of encounters our ICE agents are having every single day?
And so far this year, we've got, what, four or five shootings, all of them completely justified?
Every police department in America would love to have that kind of ratio, have that percentage of encounters with violent people to actual shootings.
And these were absolutely justified shootings, every single one of them.
But nevertheless, they are demonized.
Now, you ever heard Larry Kramer earlier in this segment talk about, you know, call them Nazis, which is bad enough.
But here you have an even, I think, a more subtle, but I think even more dangerous characterization of what these guys are doing of ICE from none other than New York City Mayor Zorhan Mamdani.
This is cut two.
Listen to him describe ICE's mission.
I want to know where you come down on abolishing ICE and if you believe that ICE has any legitimate law enforcement role.
You know, I am in support of abolishing ICE and I'll tell you why.
Because what we see is an entity that has no interest in fulfilling its stated reason to exist.
We're seeing a government agency that is supposed to be enforcing some kind of immigration law, but instead what it's doing is terrorizing people, no matter their immigration status, no matter the facts of the law, no matter the facts of the case.
And I'm tired of waking up every day and seeing a new image of someone being dragged out of a car, dragged out of their home, dragged out of their life.
America is not terrorized by ICE.
The people who are terrorized by ICE are the illegal aliens who have also committed additional crimes, and they should be terrorized.
And you can say that, by the way, about every police officer in America.
They make you scared.
I remember I was a kid.
They spent a lot of time in kindergarten trying to tell us, don't be afraid of the police.
You know, as long as you're a good boy, you'll be okay.
I mean, this, to me, is even worse than calling them Nazis because when you call them Nazis, we can all hear the hyperbole.
Here's this guy saying they don't have, they're not doing anything.
They're not stopping illegal immigration.
They're not going after illegal aliens.
They're just scaring people.
I mean, which is even more ludicrous than calling them Nazis, really, in a lot of ways, and very, very, very dangerous.
That's not the way it works.
And again, God bless these people in ICE.
Why They Scare People00:02:59
You know, by the way, I think that they did a little bit of a random study.
And either the plurality of ICE agents or the majority of them are Latinos.
So they know darn well.
And by the way, that helps.
That's helpful.
They speak Spanish, most of them, and that's very helpful.
So that's what they're dealing with.
And it's very, very important to push back on this kind of stuff.
I can't believe that elected leaders, I understand they lie and they grandstand and they do stuff like that.
And yeah, they call people Nazis.
And that's not acceptable.
But what's really not acceptable is what Mayor Mamdani did saying that they're not really doing it.
They're just there to scare people.
Really?
I mean, he doesn't even believe that.
It's such a, and then of course he said that on the view.
That was a soundbite from the view.
And of course, they're all clapping like trained seals like they do on that program.
It's it's really scary right now, but this is similar.
This is why I call it the Second American Civil War, because one of the major characteristics of war is propaganda, especially organized propaganda.
That started in World War I. World War I was the first real propaganda war fought in the press, a little bit the Spanish-American War too, but you know what I'm talking about.
And the propaganda aspect of this war is in full swing.
All right.
When I want to talk about though, and one of the things I've been in TV news and radio news and regular news for 32 years, and one of the things I never like to do is ignore the elephant in the room, the really big story.
And if you live in about any one of 35 or so states in America right now, I know what your personal number one story was today.
And I'm going to talk about it when we come back.
Thanks for joining me.
I'm Jake Novak filling in for Roger Stone on the Stone Zone.
Really appreciate you joining me.
This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
He likes politics and he's a professional at the highest level.
Roger Stone.
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This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
Roger Stone is the very, very, one of the smartest political minds.
Roger Stone was persecuted.
People forget he's actually a brilliant, brilliant political analyst.
Now, get him a zone.
It's the stone zone.
Here's Roger Stone.
And welcome, everybody.
I'm Jake Novak in for Roger Stone tonight.
Mainstream Media Bias?00:15:47
Thank you so much for letting me fill in for him tonight and listen to me tonight.
By the way, you can follow me on Twitter at JakeJakeNY and also follow WABC Radio at 77WABC Radio.
Really important to get on these social media platforms, not only for the latest news, but for a chance for us to hear what you think.
I've been in news for a long time.
And every time there's a new technology that allows people in news to actually hear from the audience, whether it's viewers, listeners, readers, the old school bosses hated it because they don't want to hear from you.
And I always loved it.
So when email started, I was like, this is great.
We can actually hear from our viewers when I was doing local news.
And they were like, oh, no, we don't want to do that.
And same thing with social media.
So, I do want to hear from you.
It doesn't mean I'm going to agree with everything you say, but that's important.
Hey, everybody, pop quiz.
And don't try to be smart with this.
This is not a trick question.
What is the number one story in America for most Americans, not only right now tonight, as I speak to you just before 8:30 Eastern time on the East Coast, but really the last several days?
Come on.
What's the first thing you said to members of your family in the morning this morning or people that you saw on the street?
Did you get the answer yet?
Okay, here's the answer: it's freaking cold.
We have record-breaking temperatures in so many states in the United States.
This is not just a New York story.
It's not just a Texas story.
It's several states, as many as 35 at first, and now still many, many states.
And, you know, this is not my opportunity to tell the joke about, well, everyone talks about the weather, but they don't do anything about it.
No, that's not what I'm doing here.
I'm trying to tell you this is a very important story.
This has political ramifications.
And here's a soundbite again from Mayor Mamdani here in New York that actually is about the weather, believe it or not.
Check it out.
This is cut three.
We are speaking about a fiscal crisis at the scale greater than the Great Recession.
And so there will not be one single thing that can answer that crisis.
It will require us to pursue every single avenue.
That means looking inward into savings and efficiencies.
That also means raising taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers, the most profitable corporations.
Yeah, well, look, folks, no surprise, the communist mayor Mamdani didn't waste any time, day 28 in office, and he's talking about raising taxes.
Now, the reason why this is related to the weather, folks, is because whatever number they're throwing out right now, $10 million to $12 billion of a deficit for New York City, it's going to be a lot more in just a few days.
The cost of heating these schools in the city, heating the buses, heating the government buildings alone, let alone all the other costs that are going to come to the hospitals, for example, the city hospitals, is going to be massive.
And this is exactly why you don't spend money on stuff that doesn't help your citizenry and isn't important.
Instead of inviting millions of illegal aliens into your town and giving them money and housing them, make sure that you got enough money in the bank for when you get sub-32 degree temperatures for 15, 16 days in a row.
I spent most of my life here in New York City, in the New York City area.
I'm 55 years old, grew up mostly in the South, but didn't come here until high school time.
So most of the last 55 years, I've been here in New York City.
I can tell you something right now.
I've never seen cold temperatures like this for so many consecutive days.
And we're looking at like 10 more coming up.
So this is a big story and it's a reason why the deficit's only going to get bigger and why we should cut our spending and not raise the taxes.
All right, we come back.
Another story, a big story you haven't heard.
This isn't like the cold that you knew, and you should have heard it.
We'll talk about that.
This is the Stone Zone.
Now, get in the zone.
It's the stone zone.
A man who's gone through hell, but he's kept going and he's smart and he's strong and people love him.
Not everybody, but people love him and respect him.
Roger Stone, where's Roger Stone?
Here's Roger Stone.
And I'm Jake Novak in for Roger Stone this evening.
I've gone through hell too, but that's because I'm a Jets fan.
We'll talk about that a little bit later.
So I really appreciate you guys taking me in this evening.
I'm able to fill in for Roger.
Thanks to the help of Phil and Crowlis, who are on the other side of the glass.
Really, really kind of everyone to bring me in here on short notice and do the program for you tonight.
You know, something funny about me.
I grew up in a community where almost everyone's a liberal.
I went to a university and a grad school where almost everyone's a liberal.
And I've been working in an industry, the mainstream media and then, you know, then some of the niche media, but I've been working in the media for many decades where almost everyone's a liberal and I'm not.
So either I don't listen or maybe I'm just like just an iconoclast or something like that.
That said, one of the things that really bothers me about the mainstream media is not just the liberalism, but the fact that they don't seem to know how to do their job well from a business standpoint.
If you're listening to this tonight and you think, well, the biggest bias in the mainstream news media is liberalism.
Actually, it's not.
It's in the top three.
The number one bias is negativity.
I mean, I think that's been true since the first media, which I would say is the caveman drawings.
If it's scary, if it's dramatic, if it's divisive, that is the bias that the news media is going to go with all the time.
I mean, even when Barack Obama was president, they love Barack Obama.
If you turned on MSNBC every night when Barack Obama was president, you weren't happy.
They weren't presenting a Shangri-La vision of America by any stretch.
It was pretty scary every night.
So that's the number one bias.
The other one is geographical bias.
You know, I've lived in New York for most of my life, but I am able, I'm detached enough to see that if stories affect this city, somehow it becomes a national story much more than if it's another city.
So if you have, God forbid, 200 people die in a fire in Idaho and 10 people die in a fire here in New York City, it's likely to be a national story, the New York City fires.
Just the way it is.
Those of you in the business know what I'm talking about and paying attention.
So that's another bias.
And those two are actually bigger and more common.
I don't say they're worse, but they're more common and more noticeable than that bias for politics.
So this next story that I really think is a huge story, and not because I think that you guys should care about internal Chinese politics, go um, but just because how can this not be a major story on the mainstream media as I describe it to you?
And everything I'm about to tell you is an established fact.
The number two man in China behind President Xi Jinping, he's a general.
His name is General Zhang Yizhou, has been purged.
And more than just purged, he's not only out of a job, they are accusing him of leaking nuclear secrets to the United States.
Are you kidding me?
Is that not a big story or what?
I don't care how much, I don't care if you can't find China on a map.
And by the way, a lot of the people in the mainstream news media newsrooms I've worked in over the years cannot find China on a map, but I don't care about that.
It doesn't matter.
That is a huge story.
This is the number two economy in the world, the number two military power in the world, a very scary nation, which I believe is really the most evil nation in the world by far.
And it has its hands in every evil pot there is.
And there's some kind of purge going on there.
Now, there have been now, all that is absolutely confirmed.
What I just said before that, not any doubt about what I just said.
But second part is in doubt, whether or not there's some kind of pushback over this purge.
Are there members of the rank and file Chinese military who are in some form of revolt over this?
That is not confirmed.
I'm not seeing a huge amount of evidence of that, but there does seem to be something funny going on.
All of that is stuff that we hopefully will find out in the coming days.
But this is a huge story, and it's yet again indicative of how the mainstream media forget about their political bias, which is horrible and annoying.
But what about the fact that they don't seem to want to make money?
Don't you want to have the people who would click on a story like that?
Who isn't going to click on a story?
Top general in China, number two guy in the whole country, accused of leaking nuclear secrets to the U.S. That's a sexy headline.
A fifth grader who's doing a journalism project could write that up in a way that you would want to hear about it, let alone someone who's supposed to be a professional.
And it's not being covered.
I haven't seen it anywhere in the mainstream news media.
I haven't seen it so much in the conservative news media either, by the way.
Hello, you guys out there who think you're so much better, you're not.
It's a huge story.
And again, not because we care so much who's in and who's out in the Chinese government.
I don't expect people to care about that.
I mean, I think that we should, but I don't expect that.
I understand my audience.
I understand the audience in this country.
But it doesn't matter.
It's a huge, huge story.
And it's just another example of something that I talk about a lot that hopefully will help all of you understand one of the key natures of the mainstream media.
And that is they aren't really after making money that much.
If they make money, great, but they have another agenda.
And when you take a look at the corporate-owned mainstream media, whether we're talking about a CNN or any of the three-letter broadcast networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, or MS Now, even though they've spun it off to another company, and even ESPN, I believe all, and I believe this for a long time.
I remember I worked at some of these places.
I believe that all these places are basically lost leaders.
They're lobbyist arms.
Because if you're talking about CNN, CNN isn't owned by CNN.
They're owned by Warner Brothers.
And they have a lot of properties that actually do make money for the corporate owners that are very, very susceptible to regulatory scrutiny.
So you create a CNN, you nod and you wink to the Democrats or the swamp in D.C. and say, hey, we'll parrot your messaging.
We'll put your guys on the air.
We'll put Nancy Pelosi on the air anytime you want.
And then maybe the next time you take a look at our property rights at some of our theme parks or our streaming rights, you won't bother us.
Comcast, which owns all the NBC properties, you know what they make their money on?
They don't make it on MS Now and they don't make it on NBC Nightly News.
They make their money on broadband cable, broadband internet.
And you better believe broadband internet is something where people in Washington could snap their fingers in a second and put that out of business.
And I really believe that this is all about lobbying.
And it has to do with China as well.
You will be very hard pressed to find in mainstream media any story that depicts China in any kind of a negative light.
And this isn't even such a negative story about China necessarily.
It's just an intriguing story, but it doesn't make it look like a stable country.
So they're not going to cover it.
And boy, have we come a long way just in the last 25 years or so?
I remember the day that China was awarded the 2008 Olympics.
I was at CNN.
I was working with a guy named Jack Hafferty.
Those of you from New York know this guy's name very well.
And even if you're not, you remember he was on the national CNN broadcast for years as well.
And we got the message, we got the wire that said that China's been awarded the 2008 Summer Games and Jack went off.
He's like, oh my God, China, this is a repressive country.
They do horrible things to their own people.
How can the International Olympic Committee give them the Olympics and on and on and on?
And we did get a little bit of pushback.
We got a call from the Chinese consulate in New York and they were complained about it.
Well, let me tell you something.
If somebody did that today on the air, they would be getting a lot more than a call from the Chinese consulate.
They'd be off the air for a long time.
The bowing down to China because of their investments in these companies and the fact that these major owners of the corporate owners, the big time corporate owners are so reliant, but they think they are.
They're actually going to end up losing money in China in the end, like they always do.
Gordon Chang, who's a regular guest on this channel, talks about it a lot.
So don't just take my word.
Don't just take Jake Novak's word for it.
But nevertheless, they have a lot of money invested in there and they're just not going to do anything negative about China.
And to me, this is just maddening to me.
You know, I really would like to see these corporate entities realize that the days of using these channels as lobbyist arms to protect their money-making entities are over.
Trump's in charge now.
Better to put out a product that people actually want to watch.
And if you're putting on TV just the same story all the time, and obviously the Minneapolis, I mean, I led with the Minneapolis story tonight, basically.
I know it's a big story.
But take a look at the story counts at some of these places.
When I got out of journalism school in grad school and started doing local news, let alone national news, I used to pound it into our heads.
22, 25 stories per half hour.
Go, go, go.
They do like two or three stories per hour now on these channels.
And that includes the Foxes and the other, they all do it.
They're not really trying to get your attention as much as they should be.
They're just, they're acting as some kind of lobbyist arm.
It's outrageous.
This is a hot story that people should pay attention to, even if you can't find China on the map.
Now, another hot story that should be getting more attention.
And maybe it's because people are a little bit tired of it because we heard so much about it at the beginning of the month.
But what's going on in Iran right now looks like it's percolating again.
We're starting to see videos of large-scale protests again that look like they're pretty current.
So the people haven't given up despite all these confirmed reports of at least 20,000, 30,000, maybe 40,000 people dead.
And President Trump isn't happy about this.
And here's what he is now threatening Iran with.
Listen to this.
This is cut four.
I just, and by the way, there's another beautiful armada floating beautifully toward Iran right now.
So we'll see.
I hope they make a deal.
Yeah, he's saying they better make a deal now or they will suffer consequences much worse than the taking out of their nuclear facilities that we saw last summer in June.
And simply from a mathematical standpoint and a military standpoint, he's got a lot to back him up on that statement because as I speak to you right now, folks, we have a lot more military assets within striking distance of Iran than we did in June of 2025, just six and a half months ago, seven months ago.
That's just a fact.
And he, again, this is a big story.
Incredible courage of the people in Iran.
But, you know, maybe they've reached the point where they realize they had all these protests where there were hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, as terrible as maybe 40 or 50, whatever the number is, of people dead, 40, 40,000 or something like that dead.
Thankfully, that's still a small fraction of the people who were out in the streets before.
And maybe they've decided we can outnumber all these people and somehow maybe they've come up with some new tactics.
These people are very, very courageous.
Now, I'm not saying we should go and invade these people.
I'm not even saying that we should attack them, even though President Trump's talking about that armada and all those assets.
That's not what I'm saying here.
What I'm saying here is this is something the American people should know about.
One of my pet peeves is, you know, there's a lot of people in the United States who have family in the armed services and in the major media centers in this country, in the big newsrooms, you'd never know it.
I remember there was a day during the Gulf War.
It was probably 2004, 2005, and I happened, it was a very nice day, and I happened to have been walking all around Manhattan, just doing errands and things like that.
And it occurred to me, I've been walking on the streets of Manhattan for about three hours, and you'd never know we were in a full-on war in the Persian Gulf at that moment until I walked into the post office and there was a little box, donate your used cell phone for our troops.
Now, again, it doesn't mean you have to support military action.
Doesn't mean you have to wave the flag every time for the troops, but at least be aware that armada that President Trump just talked about, that's not just machinery and jets and missiles and lifeless.
Those are human beings, folks.
Those are our sons and daughters.
Those are our sisters.
Those are our aunts and uncles who are in harm's way right now.
And the mainstream news media won't put that front and center.
What are they doing?
It's clickable story.
It's an eyeball gathering, attracting story.
Eyeball Gathering Stories00:08:38
Why won't you cover it?
Now, I think you should cover it for other reasons, just like I think you should cover the China story.
I think it's interesting.
I think it's a great way to get people interested in geopolitics, but I'm not naive.
I know that people don't want to have a college class when they turn on their radio and TV, even if it's news.
If that were the case, then when public television in Maryland started in the 1950s and they just filmed University of Maryland classes, that would still be the number one TV show in America.
Nobody wanted to watch that.
And it was good stuff.
It's like free college.
Okay, so I get it.
I get it.
But if you can't, honestly, now, honestly, I don't think you should fly, but if you can't sex that up and let the people understand why that's important, then you shouldn't be in this business.
But apparently you are, which just drives me nuts.
It just drives me nuts.
On the other hand, we do have incidents that happen that everyone does cover because they gather attention.
And our friend, Congresswoman Ilan Omar, provided that for us last night in what seemed like a staged event.
This was this audio when she was supposedly attacked during a town hall.
Listen to this.
So that was just the audio.
You've probably seen the video where somebody stands up, sprays her with something.
Boy, did it look staged.
I'm sure a lot of the hosts here on not only this channel, but many others that you may have checked out have all told you why this seemed very staged, not the least of which that the guy had a bottle of water they was drinking sitting in the front row.
And everyone else who came into that room had to basically let their water bottles be confiscated and throw them out for security.
It seemed very staged.
She didn't duck.
She seemed to be really prepared for it.
On and on down the line.
And for the people who say, like, it doesn't matter whether it's staged or not, the whole thing is just so annoying.
I agree with you 100%.
But this is where we are in America right now with our news coverage and with our political discourse.
We are in the midst of the second American Civil War.
And all we're seeing is video and the fixing up of someone's picture to try to make a martyr out of someone who's a professional terrorist, like this Alex Preddy.
And instead, and we have so many of our sons and daughters in harm's way in the Middle East right now.
And we're more interested in dissecting every little thing about Elon Omar.
Absolutely cover that.
I just did.
So I'm not trying to be a hypocrite here.
Absolutely cover that story.
It's a story, but it's not my lead story.
And it's not going to be my big, hey, let's take the pulse of America right now.
Stop giving these kinds of people oxygen and don't forget the big stories out there.
You know, these aren't like stories about kiddies getting saved from a tree.
You know, you hear this all the time.
Well, the news media can't cover good news.
It doesn't cover good news anymore.
And a lot of people say, what are we supposed to do?
Cover every plane that lands safely at Dulles International Airport and JFK?
That would be a little bit boring.
Granted, I have some ideas about how to cover good news stories.
And one of the ways to do that is to remind people how bad it was before this good thing happened.
So instead of leading with, hey, they figured out how to desalinate the water throughout the whole world and we're not going to die.
You start with the, you know, they said we were going to die for 10.
And you do that for 10 minutes.
You get everyone really scared.
And then you deliver the good news.
But in this case, this isn't about a good news story.
It's just something that affects so many of us in ways that are so, so emotional.
And they won't cover it.
Elon Omar getting sprayed, whether it was staged or not, affects no one.
Not even her, because the thing, I think the thing was staged.
It affects no one.
So absolutely cover it.
I understand it's dramatic video.
I'm not saying you don't do it, but give it the few seconds it deserves and move on.
And they just won't do it.
They just won't do it.
And it's driving me crazy.
I think it drives a lot of you crazy as well.
It's really not where we want to be right now in America.
We really want to give our sons and daughters who are in harm's way, who are in the military, much more of attention.
We want to focus on, yeah, what's going on in China.
China is our enemy.
And the guy who's running the military there may or may not have leaked nuclear secrets in the United States.
If he has, I think that's a good news story.
Maybe there's one righteous man in Sodom.
I don't know.
But that's worth discussing.
Put the guys on the air who talk about it.
Gordon Chang should be getting booked on CBS and all those channels, but they won't put him on because they literally won't do anything that makes China look shaky.
So they won't cover it.
What a strange world we are.
Again, you've heard that term, you don't hate the news media enough.
I get it.
But it's not just because of the partisanship.
It's because they don't do their business well.
I hate seeing poor businesses, whether it's the sandwich shop or the bagel shop behind my house or whether it's the mainstream news media.
I like to see businesses excel.
All right, when I come back, I'll talk to you about another reason why you don't hate the news media enough, and it's coming from the sports world.
But believe it or not, it has political undertones as well.
I'm Jake Novak filling in for Roger Stone.
Thank you so much.
We will be right back.
This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
And he's a great, great person, Roger Stone.
The Stone Zone is The Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
Roger Stone, who's a very, very, one of the smartest political minds.
Roger Stone was persecuted.
People forget he's actually a brilliant, brilliant political analyst.
Now, get in the zone.
It's the stone zone.
Here's Roger Stone.
And I'm Jake Novak in for Roger Stone this evening here on 77W ABC Radio.
Serendipity, everybody.
Serendipity.
I am about to talk about the arrogance of people in the news media.
And so I'm going to do something very not arrogant, admit I made a mistake.
I called the Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Kramer.
It's Larry Krasner.
Sorry about that.
And by the way, it was an astute listener who tweeted that at me.
And he's absolutely right.
I don't know why I said Kramer.
I know it's Krasner, but I got it wrong.
So there you go.
You don't hate the news media enough, and not because they're so liberal.
And by that, I mean the mainstream news media.
They're not because they're so liberal and so negative all the time, but because they're so freaking arrogant.
And if you think it's just about their political reporting, that they have an arrogance in Washington, they have an arrogance about MAGA people.
It's not.
It's about everything.
And we found out that in really cold, in a cold, hard way just in the last 24 hours, when the sports writers in America who choose, who go into the, who goes into the NFL Hall of Fame ridiculously, outrageously did not vote Bill Belichick into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot, which is just an outrageous and stupid and yes, arrogant thing.
Now, for those of you who think they didn't vote him in because of the spy gate controversy, remember they caught some hidden cameras at other teams' practices or the deflate gate controversy where they were deflating some of the footballs so Brady could grab them, Tom Brady could grab them better.
Baloney, that's not what it is.
It's because of the way Bill Belichick treated the news media.
He was arrogant with them.
He was short with them.
He was kind of rude.
Here's what I say to that.
So what?
He won six Super Bowls as a head coach.
He went to many others.
He won another two as a defensive coordinator for the Giants.
And I'm not a Patriots fan.
And I'm not even a Giants fan.
But there's absolutely no reason other than committing a massive number of felonies that you wouldn't vote for this guy to be in the Hall of Fame.
And why didn't they do it?
Because these sports writers didn't like the way he treated them because they're so important.
And that's the sports writers who actually do know their topic a lot better than I think the political writers in the news media.
But still, that kind of arrogance is present in America's mainstream newsrooms.
And that is something you need to understand if you're going to understand their other biases.
It's outrageous.
This is all about personal self-importance.
And you know, I got to tell you something.
I don't really like Bill Belichick either, but it would be no doubter in my mind if I were voting.
Of course he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.
And it's because of mainstream news media reporter and on-air people and writer arrogance.
And they are really, really robbing the American people of important news and perspective because of it.
I'm Jake Novak.
I was happy to fill in for you today.
Thank you so much.
Have a great evening and stay warm.
Hospitals 24/700:00:56
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