Speaker 1: Hey, Michael Steele podcast listeners, you're listening to Make Mine
a Double, a little segment I put together where I
can share just a bit more of what I really
think about today's news and political crazy. So sit back,
relax enjoin me for a few SIPs of sanity, and
make Mine a double.
Speaker 2: Disney should be working around the clock to go and
make amends with Ronda Saints. If you don't want to
pick a fight with this guy, well.
Speaker 3: It seems like that.
Speaker 4: I mean, does you know, does Bob Iger ever reach out?
Do you have any sense of what their direction is here?
Speaker 2: Well, look, if I'm Bob Iger, I am work working
around the clock to try to figure out how to
make amends with Ronda Sants, just like Bud Light should
be working around the clock to go kiss Kid Rock's ass.
This is a problem needs to be addressed.
Speaker 5: It is wide open and that ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 3: It was Florida's chief financial officer Jimmy Petronas stating this
week that Ron DeSantis has the advantage here, that Bob Eiger,
the head of Disney, should be shaking in his boots
and trying to figure out how the hell I fix
this with Ron. That is the largest bucket of bullshit
served up this week, and there was a lot of
it served this week, folks.
Speaker 5: It just amazes me.
Speaker 3: The incredible amount of arrogance it takes to think that
Disney should be afraid of Ron de Santis, particularly given
that Mickey Mouse has already punked the hell out of
Rond de Santis. If anything, from my humble estimation, what
we're looking at here is a situation where Ron DeSantis,
quite honestly, should be trying to figure out how to
avoid mister Eiger taking Mickey Mouse's other foot and shoving
it up his ass. As this battle between Disney and
DeSantis continues to roil the politics and the business community
in Florida, it just again makes me really crazy when
you have this kind of fronting by individuals. Instead of
taking a responsible posture and basically saying, look, let's work
this out, you get a doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on
stupid where people are out here making claims that they
can't back up, making claims that they know make no sense,
and arguably frustrate the purposes of trying to keep businesses
in the state of Florida grow. Those businesses in the
state of Florida and to make sure that.
Speaker 5: You get over this so you don't have a negative.
Speaker 3: Impact on job creation and opportunities there.
Speaker 5: But then there's a.
Speaker 3: Whole other level of crazy that comes into play from
the governor himself, who had this to say recently about oh,
I don't know property development near Disney.
Speaker 4: If you look at this whole special District, well, Disney
Corporation obviously owns a lot of it, but the district
owns other land.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Quite frankly, I wasn't even thinking.
Speaker 5: About that land.
Speaker 4: We just wanted them to live under the same rules.
Pay the debt, pay the taxes, all that stuff. Oh
but come to think of it, now, people are like,
what should we do with this land? People have said,
maybe create a state park. Maybe how to do more
amusement parts. Someone even said like maybe you need another
state prison.
Speaker 5: Who knows?
Speaker 4: I mean, I just think that the possibilities are endless,
and so that is now going to be analyzed to
see what would make the most sense.
Speaker 3: So you have the Governor of Florida proposing to place
a state prison next to a themed park Disney.
Speaker 5: That is attended to buy children and their families.
Speaker 3: Again, more performative bullshit from petuant little boy who thinks
it's cool and cute to suggest that, oh, perhaps we'll
look at putting a state prison next to a park
where kids go to enjoy Mickey Mouse and Goofy. So, Governor,
if you want to analyze putting a state prison next
to Disney, when families stop visiting Disney, and Disney's seventy
five billion dollars worth of economic impact and it's five
point eight billion dollars in tax revenues begin to drop
and fall off when it's seventy five.
Speaker 5: Thousand employees face layoffs and.
Speaker 3: Four hundred and sixty three thousand other jobs that are
created and depend on the countless millions of tourists that
go to Disney every year are also imperiled. What would
your analytics say caused that to happen? Hmmm, maybe you
should consult Dumbo because the suggestion, even joking, is a
dumb idea. And again, folks, it goes to what the
governor and patronas are doing here. They're trying to make
an example of Disney by extending the culture wars into
the business relationship between the state and Disney. There is
no place for that. That is not a position or
place that Republicans especially.
Speaker 5: Have ever been in. And so now we are culturally
at war with our communities.
Speaker 3: We are trying to take down businesses because those businesses
are responding because they're customers, their clients, the people who
use their services, are responding to the ham handed authoritarian
activities of Republican state legislatures and governors like Ron de
Santis who just want to sling their dick around that
we have the power to do whatever we want to
do to you. And so when the businesses respond, when
the community responds, this is the kind of pushback you
get from people who are not serious in governing. And
y'all need to wake the hell up and recognize that
you've got to stop electing people who aren't serious about governing.
Our times require us to be serious about governing. Who
governs us, how they govern us, what policies they are
advocating on our behalf. What Ron DeSantis and other governors
and other state legislatures, like for example, in Tennessee are
advocating is antithetical to the fundamental principles of a free
society right and certainly antithetical to the fundamental principles that
have governed the Republican Party for well over one hundred
and sixty years. But because everybody now is all up
on Trump, this maga wokeism is at play.
Speaker 5: So while they scream at the.
Speaker 3: Left about being woke, they discount or not even pay
attention to their own version of woke. It reminds me
of the Gospel passages for all my god fearing, good
little Christian boys and girls who like them tell people
how to live their lives. Where the Lord remind us,
before you start criticizing the plank in your neighbor's eye,
you better get that plank out of your own. You
better recognize it's in your eye as well.
Speaker 5: And that's what you have here.
Speaker 3: So as we get ready for what is going to
be a torturous campaign. If y'all think it's not going
to be, you're deluding yourself house. But what is going
to be a torturous campaign this upcoming year. This is
the kind of stuff you need to be aware of.
This is the kind of actions and activities that you're
going to see coming from Republican governors and legislators, members
of Congress and the like that will stoke and continue
to infect us with this kind of anti democratic, anti business.
Speaker 5: Kind of rhetoric and behavior. It is.
Speaker 3: Amazingly difficult to watch this happen and to watch people
just very quietly.
Speaker 5: Ignore it. You can't.
Speaker 3: You just can't, because we're going to wake up one
day and you're going to see that you won't be
able to keep your legislators because they're going to kick
them out for standing with their citizens.
Speaker 5: They're going to kick them out of the legislatures.
Speaker 3: You're not going to Women aren't going to be able
to access their the healthcare their need because the legislature
and the governors have decided that they control your body
and you don't. You're not going to be able to
read the books that you want your kids to read
to expose them to a broader world. Oh wait, wait,
that shit's already happening. Hmm, I guess I'm too late.
Speaker 5: Anyway.
Speaker 3: Moving on, So, Clarence Thomas apparently has for.
Speaker 5: Some time now.
Speaker 3: Claimed income from a defunct real estate firm. I didn't
say it currently operating, I said defunct.
Speaker 5: You can't make this shit up, people. What the hell
is going on with the Supreme Court? What is going on?
Here and the.
Speaker 3: Collective yawn about all of this, where, oh, we can't
impeach them, Oh, we don't have the votes for this. Oh,
they you know, they have to decide whether they want
to impose ethical restraints on their activities. If you have
a Supreme Court justice who's reporting income from a company
that does not exist in amounts of fifty to one
hundred and thousand dollars a year, and there is.
Speaker 5: No mention of any other firm that arguably does.
Speaker 3: Exist, You've got to scratch your head and ask yourselves
what's happening here? And when you have individuals defending this,
what does that say?
Speaker 5: There's no anymore? I mean you you can serve in.
Speaker 3: A job for life and and just hang out with
whomever you want and have them pay all your expenses
and buy your mama's house and set up dumbing companies
that will pay you or your wife an income that
and no one cares. This is a troubling pattern pattern
that's that's emerging right now on the court. Uh, and
it's certainly centered around Justice Thomas. But the Chief Justice,
in my view, has to take control of this and
this idea of everyone rushing down to defend Clarence Tom
defend him from what defend him from cheating the system?
Speaker 5: Making excuses?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, there were no ethical rules in place,
and the rules and what he was told really didn't apply.
Speaker 5: Why don't we Why aren't we so quick to make
excuses for such bad behavior.
Speaker 3: Instead of Thomas just standing up and saying, damn, my dad,
let me let me fully disclose what I've been doing
over the last twenty years. Got to get a grip,
got to get a grip, got to get a grip,
And finally you had the dominion lawsuit. Just just a
quick few thoughts on that. So dominion winds up settling this, uh,
this lawsuit over over the election claims for seven hundred
and eighty seven million dollars, and a lot of.
Speaker 5: Folks pretty much had their had their.
Speaker 3: How do you put it, had there had their their
senses turned upside down about all of this because they
didn't think justice was served and they didn't think that.
Speaker 5: Dominion pursued this all the way. Well, a couple of
things on that, real quick. Dominion did do us all
one huge favor. It got out into the public space.
Speaker 3: Information and text messages and emails and conversations that we
otherwise would not have known about.
Speaker 5: We otherwise would not have been able to.
Speaker 3: Contextualize around the events of twenty twenty or the events
of January sixth, and how one fed into the other.
But I think you know, a number of folks are
talking about, you know, there's got to be accountability. Liars
have to be fired. You know, we need Fox needs
to change its orient on this. It ain't happening, folks.
It just doesn't happen. Y'all just need to understand from
Fox's perspective, that's seven hundred and eighty seven million dollars
was a win.
Speaker 5: Was a win.
Speaker 3: And here's why this victory works for them because the
very anchors Sean Hannity and Laura and Tucker who promoted
the lies, they won't need to be held accountable by
having live testimony in front of the American people, right,
So they're not going to that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so you got my text message, But now I
don't have to talk about all that went.
Speaker 3: Into creating that text message, the timeline of events, and
the narratives and the follow up questions on that text
message that Tucker put out saying he absolutely hates Donald Trump.
All of that now it's not discussed in the court
of law on a stand the owner of Fox, Ruber Murdoch,
who okayed the lies in the first place, who said
to his host, y'all keep doing you boo, it's working.
Speaker 5: They're going to pay.
Speaker 3: Dominion what amounts to a rounding era for Fox seven
hundred and seventy and eighty seven million dollars when you've
got six billion dollars roughly six billion dollars in cash
in cash, okay available. Yeah, not real hardship there. But
more importantly, the viewers who consumed the lies would never
be told otherwise. Fox is not going to go on
there and say we got past that one, folks, and
we are sorry. Why because it didn't have to admit anything.
They didn't have to admit that they lied. It's enough
to pay the seven hundred and eighty seven million dollars.
Speaker 5: We're done.
Speaker 3: No apologies, no admittance, nothing, silence, and in fact, we'll
barely cover it on our network.
Speaker 5: This is what.
Speaker 3: This moment means for me at least, and for a
lot of Americans, and why it's frustrating. I get the
whole civil versus criminal suits. I forget the you know,
the way the system works. But at the end of
the day, you have immediate enterprise that is engaged in
a disservice to the American people and to its audience.
It has upended, in fact born up any journalistic integrity industreds.
And for them to say that we acknowledge the court's rulings,
finding certain claims about dominion to be false, and that
the settlement reflects Fox's continue commitment, here's the part where
you're choking gag commitment to the highest journalistic standards. What
an insult, what a bold faced lie, What a big
f you America. We got away with it, and now
you know why I make minor domb