Last week, I was talking about RFK Junior a little bit and joking about
how he had a couple of different things he talked about, especially with regards
to abortion. That showed the thing that I sort of suspected about him all
along, which is that at the end of the day, he's a Kennedy,
He's a liberal, and the right wing dalliance with him is just a
little silly. There's a selfish thing I think on the right to think that,
well, if RFK is a serious third party candidate and can actually seriously
cipher votes, he can actually seriously collect a significant number of votes, then
he could actually cause Joe Biden to lose because maybe he pulls more votes away
from Biden than he does from Donald Trump. And I've encountered a couple of
different conservatives who I know know decide declaring that they they were going to support
RFK Junior his presidential campaign, and then just the other shoes start dropping.
Oh, RFK had a literal brain worm. He had a medical some kind
of medical event or something that he had a an actual worm in his brain.
RFK Junior stakes out the most extreme position on abortion possible. Uh.
One thing I saw that was funny, was you know, all the American
people want is just someone normal to vote for. And then I see this
campaign ad whin a day, this campaign add that, the RFK Junior campaign
spinning out whin a win A day of falconry with RFK Junior. Hang out
with RFK Junior and his falcon and learn about falconry. Yeah, just you
know, this is how a Kennedy tries to relate to the little people.
Falconry. It's like when John Carey tried to show he was one of the
little people by windsurfing. You know, a sport that only the wealthiest point
one percent of human beings participate in. You know, the sort of sport
you can only do when you marry the heiress of the Hines catch up fortune.
But one of the things I was sort of saying about RFK Junior was
I just don't think people are as animated by the central thing that made RFK
Junior notable in the first place, which is his broad based skepticism for vaccines
in general and for the COVID vaccine in particular. And on that score,
he really stands out from both Biden and Trump. Trump sort of it's almost
sort of sad how Trump is sort of hanging out there like sort of wishing
he had actually gotten credit for Project Warp Speed and getting the COVID vaccines you
know, funded and researched and developed and ready to go in such a short
amount of time. He sort of he sort of has the perspective of,
Hey, my administration got this done. How come I don't get any credit
for this? You would like to get credit for it. Biden is obviously
very pro vaccine. RFK sort of stands out as the one guy who is
anti COVID vaccine. But frankly, COVID is just not a big political thing
anymore. It was a moment, it happened, and it's done. And
I was saying this of Kennedy the other day, and a part of me
sort of felt a little guilty. Not that I want to keep dwelling on
the topic of COVID, I mean, nobody does. It was a very
unpleasant topic in an unpleasant time, and it's not, you know, something
I relish. I feel guilty because there's a sense that we got had in
a variety of different respects, and that the people who had us, none
of them have gotten held accountable. For all the different deceptive thing, all
these massive inconveniences that they put us through that we're now sort of seeing in
retrospect, were completely full of it. So one of the things that's been
in the news that National Review reported on was a closed door congressional testimony by
doctor Francis Collins, who's the former director of the National Institutes of Health.
And for all the inks spilled about Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins was just at
as central to the federal government's COVID response and messaging and all kinds of stuff
like that, He's actually Anthony Fauci's boss. He was Anthony Fauci's boss.
That was the thing people didn't get about Fauci. His job was not being
America's doctor or anything like that. Fauci's job was he was a federal bureaucrat.
He was a federal bureaucrat who oversaw a division of the National Institutes of
Health whose chief job was ordering and directing federal grant money towards infectious disease research
of various kinds. That was Fauci's actual job, and doctor Collins' job,
as being one click about Fauci was beyond just infectious disease research more broadly,
overseeing the National Institutes of Health and what does the National Institutes of Health do?
They give out federal grant money for research, that's all they do now.
Collins and Fauci, both though, were central in crafting a lot of
the federal guidelines, recommendations, et cetera for how to deal with COVID that
we're introduced by the CDC. You know, two weeks to stop the spread,
social distance, the concept of social distancing, masking, all this stuff
that we're one by one, we're sort of seeing all these different things that
everyone insisted we had to do in response to COVID, which caused massive disruptions
to the economy, massive political disruption. Frankly, I think if COVID doesn't
happen, Donald Trump probably wins the twenty twenty election. All this massive disruption
where piece by piece we're sort of seeing how wrong they were. The COVID
vaccine was not, as it was heralded, this perfect preventative measure. In
fact, it didn't really very effectively stop the spread of COVID. It seemed
to help prevent a severe case of COVID, but once we realized it didn't
really stop COVID from spreading. That undercut all the logic from vaccine mandates.
If it just becomes individual's decisions. Okay, well, if I take the
COVID vaccine and eliminates my risk for a very serious illness. But am I
in a category of persons for whom COVID would be a very serious illness?
I always I sort of took the perspective for me that most of the people
dying from COVID actually or getting very sick from COVID either had some pre existing
condition or they were very elderly. And my thought was, you know,
I was a lot younger than I was, you know, thirty one years
old during COVID. I was a very healthy thirty one year old. So
I thought, well, I am I'm a skinny thirty one year old.
The odds of me getting very sick from COVID or dying from COVID are incredibly
slim. So I don't really want to get vaccinated. You know, if
I were seventy, maybe, and especially if it's not going to prevent me
from spreading COVID to other people, then I don't really want to do it.
I just never got to a point where I felt in my life I
actually needed to do it, or I was ever in a category of job
where I was mandated to do it, or anything anyway, Francis Collins.
So all these different sort of pillars of their ideology, masking the effectiveness of
the COVID vaccine, this, all of these have been knocked down lately,
And I think the frustration is, are none of these people going to be
held accountable for all the disruption they wrought upon the economy, upon people's personal
lives, The huge increases we saw in depression rates, especially among children and
teenagers, the huge learning loss that was occasioned by these liberal bureaucrats who imposed
these crazy health guide these insane health guidelines that weren't really grounded in fact,
and the threat it poses for the future that if some left wing health bureaucrat
declares another kind of health emergency, will a Democrat controlled government. I mean,
they were able to do this with a Republican controlled government. Presumably another
Republican controlled government won't do this again. But although I don't know, Trump
has expressed very little. Trump never apologizes for anything. Trump never expresses regret
over anything. The idea that some health commissar will just snap his fingers and
all of a sudden, the whole country will be in lockdown again. That's
a scary thing to think that you had a whole wing of American political life
openly just saying we should be governed by scientists. We should be governed by
these infectious disease experts, and what they say we should do completely without any
regard to competing interests, without any regard to competing economic or social sacrifices that
come about as a result of this. So anyway, Francis Collins was interviewed
by members of the House of Representatives and it emerged from his closed door testimony
that there was actually no scientific backing for the six foot social distancing rule,
no scientific backing for it. There was never any research in favor of it.
There was a two meter rule that some European researchers had and the Americans
just kind of copied it, but there wasn't any scientific backing for it.
Let's remember that churches, theaters, all kinds of entities were closed down for
years because of that rule, because how do you keep people socially distanced in
a church? How do you keep people socially distanced in you know, whatever
said it, and the impact that had, particularly on churches. I mean,
I look around, you know, I go to Sunday morning Mass at
my church and it's packed. I mean, I go to the main Mass,
it's packed, it's walled wall and I think, boy, during COVID,
even when we were allowed to be inside, half these pews were empty.
So just half of everyone didn't get to go to church half the and
so many churches, their attendance numbers post COVID still haven't caught up to what
they were pre COVID, and possibly never will. COVID I think was this
huge event, a sort of huge convenient event, allowing people to stop going
to church. And as much as I was sort of ragging on RFK by
sort of saying, yeah, you know, yeah, RFK, oh,
the anti vaccine crusade, Yes, that's you know, I just don't think
that message is really revving the engines of a lot of voters anymore. There's
part of me that sort of feels guilty for saying that. Not that I
would ever vote for RFK in a million billion years. Again, he's still
at Kennedy, but I feel guilty for sort of saying like, we shouldn't
forget what these people did, and we should hold these people accountable for what
they did. And I'm afraid we will never actually hold any of them accountable
in any way, shape or form whatsoever. I'm afraid that Anthony Fauci and
Francis Collins, in spite of Francis Collins giving this congressional test, only saying
oh, yeah, there was nothing. You know, we had absolutely no
scientific evidence for the socially distanced six foot rule. There was nothing. I'm
just afraid that these people are going to get to ride off into the sunset
with their nice, big fat federal pensions and just you know, no consequences.
Half of American political life just thinking they were heroes, continuing to pretend
like they were heroes. It just frustrates me that they're probably not going to
get any We're not really going to get any come uppance for these people,
that they're not going to be held accountable. And I sort of wish that
were more of a central point of the presidential debates, but I don't think
Trump. I think Trump realizes people are tired of talking about it, and
so he's not talking about it. When we return, I try to list
out all the things that were allegedly true about COVID that are now no longer
true. Next on the John Girardi Show, Francis Collins, the former head
of the National Institutes of Health, had closed door testimony in front of Congress
this past week in which he admitted that the six feet or more guideline that
he did not issue, but the Centers for Disease Control did issue, that
there was no actual scientific evidence that he can remember actually supporting it. And
this is a huge admission. And let me just recall to you what a
huge thing this is. So the six foot thing, the six foot thing
was the reason for all of the regulations that wound up shutting down businesses,
shutting down schools, limiting people's normal interactions, infringing at certain points on the
free exercise of religion, shutting down churches. That's that was the cornerstone of
it. Was this six foot rule and the impossibility of complying with it in
a movie theater, in a church, in a business with normal operations.
It was the key thing. In a school. It was the key thing
that disrupted the economy over the course of twenty twenty, twenty twenty one,
twenty twenty two. That was the main thing disrupting the whole economy was this
six foot rule from the CDC. Six feet rule comes from the CDC,
that filters its way to all fifty state health departments and becomes the basis for
all the government restrictions. And we get a shrug from Francis Collins, the
head of the National Institutes of Health, one of the key figures and helping
develop and message and promote all these different federal policies. We just get kind
of a shrug sort of oh yeah, I can't really actually remember that there
was any actual firm like scientific evidence for the six foot eh, you know
it. It was this huge thing that this is. It's like, this
is basically and it's almost an admission that everything we did during twenty twenty was
pointless, that it wasn't necessary. Would we have been any worse off if
we had just you know, hey, everybody just be more careful, wash
your hands more blah blah blah. I mean, would we have actually been
any worse off? Would the numbers of people who died from COVID actually have
changed much if given that the six foot rule wasn't really that effective, would
or at the very least, it wasn't grounded any science. I mean,
it's impossible to argue from a negative. I guess we don't know. We
don't have a way of showing that anything would have been better or worse,
or that the change would have been negligible, or or what the death toll
over the norm would have been over excess would have been. But we It's
yet another thing where this was sort of proposed to us as orthodoxy and now
it's not necessarily true. The six foot rule, the fact that you could
still spread COVID after getting vaccinated, the whole origin of COVID argument, and
the labily theory, the lab leak theory which everyone everyone in the healthcare establishment,
Fauci Collins at all were saying, No, no, no, that's
that's a horrible conspiracy theory. Don't you dare spread this horrible conspiracy theory.
Hey, Facebook, shut down anyone who's saying this horrible conspiracy theory that that
COVID leaked from a lab. Well, it could very damn well have leaked
from a lab. But we have no idea. But we don't, We
don't embarrass ourselves because we were giving grant money to that research lab, from
which it could very well have leaked the piece about it in National Review.
The editorial about it written in National Reviews sort of sums it up really well.
Restricting the liberties and marring the settled patterns of life for a nation of
over three hundred million based on guesses and shrugs is simply unacceptable. And I
think this is the problem. I feel like I'm a little bit like I
wasn't, you know, I didn't wake up this morning thinking I'm gonna talk
about COVID on the radio show today, Like I'm not as jazzed up to
talk about COVID anymore. I think everyone in America is tired of thinking about
COVID and very much enjoys living in a non COVID infected political world. Like
to have COVID not be dominating everyone's individual conversations and political conversations, not to
have it be a political issue anymore, is a delight for most Americans.
But I just have this sense that these people got away with it. They
got away with this ridiculous, disastrous response that had massive, prolonged political,
fiscal, social, religious, everything impacts on the whole country, and no
one is going to be held accountable. Really, at the end of the
day, none of these people are getting held accountable for what they did.
When we return, former Fresno area San Waquin Valley congress Member TJ. Cox
takes a plea deal, I will describe what is different between his case versus
a Donald Trump's case. What is fraud? Next? On the John Girardi
Show. I find it bizarre the Trump trial. It sort of doesn't feel
like to me. It has the kind of wall to wall coverage you would
expect of the first criminal trial of a former American president in like ever or
I don't know ever, but certainly of the last one hundred years. And
I guess part of it is probably because the judge didn't allow the trial to
be televised, which probably is a good idea. But I just feel like
the coverage of the oj trial back when I was a kid was like way
more intensive. Again, though that was televised. Nonetheless, the lack of
coverage of the Trump trial I think has masked what a massively unfair trial it
has been for Trump. And before you start saying, oh, you'res a
right wing radio guy, just you know, shilling for Trump. If you
look at all of my discussion of Trump's legal affairs, let's say, I
think I've been pretty fair. I think I've called balls and strikes. I
think that the cases against him in Georgia, framing that as a Rico case,
I think is kind of weak. I don't think there was an ongoing
criminal enterprise there of the sort that Rico in visions or a Rico case is
looking at something like this, at something like the mafia, an ongoing,
enduring criminal enterprise that's intended to go on for a long time once the election
was over. There was no ongoing enterprise of any sort in Georgia. So
I think a lot of aspects of the Rico case and Georgia were silly.
I think a lot of the January sixth charges were kind of a big stretch
to call those things that Trump was actually charged with and was Remember Trump wasn't
actually charged with anything having to do with the violence on January sixth. He
was charged with basically his arguing to Mike Pence and trying to convince Mike Pence
not to certify the election results on January sixth. That's chiefly the thing he
is being charged with at that substruction of that substruction of Congress, or it's
some other kind of offense there when Trump was pursuing a minority legal viewpoint.
Maybe it was incorrect, It's probably incorrect, But I guess I find it
hard to suss out that that was a criminal offense. You might think it's
bad, you might think it's wrong, you might think it's corrupt, you
might think it's a misinterpretation of what the law is. I just don't know
that it gets to the level of an actual criminal offense. Now, though,
with the Mara Lago documents case, I think they've got him more or
less dead to rights. I think he clearly retained a bunch of documents he
was not allowed to hold on to, and he was retaining them in an
incredibly irresponsible fashion. So I actually think they he's more or less they've got
him more or less dead to rights with regards to the retention of documents that
he wasn't allowed to keep holding on to. Yes, he was allowed to
hold on to them as president. No, there doesn't seem to be any
actual record that he declassified those documents, and even if he did, they
were dangerous. They were sensitive materials that jeopardized national security to just have in
an unsecure place, and might have violated federal law anyway, even if he
had declassified them. Now, one thing that at least politically is in Trump's
favor for the document's case is the fact that Biden did the same damn thing
and that Hillary Clinton did a very similar thing, and neither of them are
in any trouble, but he, for some reason, is getting a federal
prosecution for it. So I feel like I've called balls and strikes with President
Trump. And one of the things with this Manhattan trial that has been so
there's a lot of things about the Manhattan trial that have been ridiculous. I
think, though, the central thing is understanding what Trump's been charged with.
And I've discussed this on the show a number of times. Trump isn't being
charged urged in Manhattan with hush money payments. That's not a criminal offense.
Giving someone, having someone sign a non disclosure agreement, and giving them money
for that non disclosure agreement. That is not against the law. Maybe in
certain contexts, for certain kinds of things, it might be against the law,
But in the context of what Trump was doing with Stormy Daniels, giving
her money to not talk about an affair they allegedly had. That's not illegal.
It might be sleazy, it might be distasteful, but it's not illegal.
The thing Trump is actually charged with is allegedly fraudulent misstatement in his books
of the nature of the payment, Fraudulent business records practices, Okay, falsification
of business records with intent to defraud. That's the actual thing in the New
York Penal Code that Trump is charged with, basically within the books of the
Trump organization listing these payments which were made to Michael Cohen. So again,
here's here's the chain of events. Stormy Daniels signs a non disclosure agreement during
the fall of twenty sixteen, signs a non disclosure agreement that she's not going
to tell her story. Michael Cohen has to get money to pay. I
believe it was the National Inquirer who then paid Stormy Daniels. Trump needs to
pay Michael Cohen. So Trump gives Cohen a series of payments to pay him
back for outlaying this one hundred and thirty thousand dollars that went to Stormy Daniels
but Trump was giving him other moneies. Cohen was Trump's ongoing attorney for various
personal affairs. He was helping out with other things. He wanted a bonus
because he for you know, all the work he had done, and he
wanted more money. Cohen was at this time again, we're in twenty seventeen.
Trump has won the election, He's in the White House. Trump was
bummed that apparently he wasn't going to get some kind of role within the administration.
He had these sort of grandiose dreams that apparently he'd be like White House
counsel or that he'd be attorney general, or that he'd be chief of staff
or something, which shows kind of what a lunatic Cohen was. So Trump
gives him way more than the one hundred and thirty thousand dollars he paid Stormy
Daniels. Now, part of this was they were going to classify this as
attorney's fees, and if Cohen is receiving moneies at attorney's fees, he has
to pay taxes on that. If he receiving money as loan repayment, he
doesn't have to pay taxes for it. And that's the core of the prosecution.
It's characterizing the payments to Cohen as attorney's fees rather than loan repayment.
That's the crime. That's the crime putting in his books indicating that the payments
were attorneys fees rather than loan repayment. Now, there are like several threshold
problems with this. First of all, is it really that crazy to call
these payments to Cohen attorney's fees. It's you know, maybe it's inaccurate,
but it's not completely crazy. Cohen was Trump's ongoing lawyer. There was stuff
Trump was paying him for. You know, if he's going to continue to
be your lawyer and you're giving him more, that gives you some buffer of
a retainer. It's not clear that there was anything that It isn't one hundred
percent clear even from the testimony, Even from Cohen's testimony, I don't think
there's nothing that doesn't seem like there's anything explicit in the air that we all
know that this is the loan repayment, but we're gonna hide it in the
books by calling it legal fees. Well, that doesn't that doesn't seem to
me to be very well established. Now, the core problem, and this
is where we'll talk about our beloved former Fresno era former member of the House
Representatives representing King's County and I think portions of Tillarry County, TJ. Cox,
which is this word fraud. TJ. Cox was charged with various counts
of wire fraud. What is fraud? Fraud means lying for money, lying
for money, lying in order to get yourself more money or property. Alvin
Bragg, the District Attorney in Manhattan, is trying to say that this lie,
classifying these payments to Cohen as attorney's fees rather than loan repayment, perpetrated
a fraud in the American people of depriving them of a Hillary Clinton presidency.
That's the fraud. But that's not what fraud means. Fraud, when it's
used in New York law, and as it's used in most jurisdictions, the
term fraud specifically refers to not some general sense of being cheated. Fraud means
deceptive conduct in order to get money or assets or stuff or property. Okay,
that's what it means. And again, a great way of thinking about
it, A great shorthand. When you're reading a news story and you see
the word fraud, think lying for money, that's what it means. So
TJ. Cox was indicted for quote, multiple fraud schemes. When he was
the head of a Fresne company aimed at assisting development investment in financially distressed areas
through the new Market tax credit. He was a partner in a nonprofit that
least the troubled Granite Parks sports complex in central Fresno from the City of Fresno.
He was the partner in an almand processing company, and he was a
candidate for Congress. Comcuters alleged Cox stole more than one point seven million dollars
in diverted client payments and company loans and investments. They said Cox created false
records, lying and a fraudulent loan guarantee again lying to secure a one point
five million dollar construction loan for money through a sports nonprofit for improvements at Granite
Park. So TJ. Cox is clearly demonstrating for us, this is what
fraud is. He's giving false records, records where he's cooked the books for
what for a big fat one point five million dollar construction loan. The indictment
also alleged campaign contribution violations from Straw donors. He gave more than twenty five
thousand dollars to business associates and family members so they could look like they were
donating to his twenty eighteen campaign for congress. Now Trump, let's now look
at Trump. So with TJ. Cox, we see very clearly he's lying
in business records to get loans, to get money, lying for money.
That's what it is. That's fraud with Trump, though, Okay, let's
assume for the sake of argument, that characterizing his payments to Cohen as attorney's
fees rather than loan repayment. Let's assume that that's a lie. I don't
know that it is, but let's assume that it is. Let's assume that
that's wrong. That's inaccurate. What money was he getting, what property was
he getting? Nothing that there was no financial advantage to classifying the payments to
Cohen as attorney's fees rather than loan repayment. If anything, there was a
financial disadvantage. They had to pay more taxes of on it. So again,
an attorney receiving attorney's fees, that's income for the attorney. He has
to pay income tax on it. If it's an attorney just getting a loan
repaid to him. Like, if I loan you fifty thousand dollars and you
pay me back fifty thousand dollars, that's not a And I loan you fifty
thousand dollars on you know, April first, and you pay me back fifty
thousand dollars on May first, I don't have to report that on my taxes.
That's not a taxable event. It's just money out money in. That's
not a tax worthy event. If you give me fifty thousand If I'm a
lawyer and you give me fifty thousand dollars to pay me legal fees, that's
income to me. That is taxed. I have to pay income taxes on
it. So Trump actually wound up giving Cohen way more than one hundred and
thirty thousand dollars so that Cohen could pay his taxes. So far from getting
more money by reclassifying these payments, Trump had to pay more money. The
It was a good deal for the Coffers of the state of New York and
the federal government. They got tax money out of it when they wouldn't have
otherwise. So I think the TJ. Cox thing is showing us sort of
how silly the Trump prosecution is. There was no fraud in the Trump context.
Where again, fraud doesn't just mean anything you think that's deceptive. Fraud
means lying for money. When we return, who is Biden really pandering to
by being soft on Palestinian protesters and soft on the cause of Hamas and Gaza
in general. That's next on the John Girardi Show. A lot of people
have noticed how bizarrely soft the Biden or at the very least confused the Biden
administration has been in its messaging between Hamas versus Israel. Do they support Israel
all the way? Do they not support Israel? Are they soft pedaling this
blah blah blah? And are they doing this for political considerations? Are they
afraid of all these student protesters that they're going to lose the student vote if
they are perceived as two pro Israel? And people are sort of pointing out,
you know, the anti Israel vote in America is really very, very
small. Here's what it really is. A lot of these anti Israel protests
on college campuses are being funded by major Biden donors. I think that's what's
driving this sort of mixed messaging on Biden's behalf. On the one hand,
he realizes most Americans are sort of for the most part pro Israel, so
he doesn't want to tick them off. But he's got some super left wing
donors who are on kind of the opposite side of this thing, and I
think he feels like he can't tick off either side. That'll do it.
See you guys next week on The John Girardi Show.