Speaker 1: So I was very confused by two things happening in
Speaker 1: fairly quick succession. First was a couple days ago, learning
Speaker 1: that the Los Angeles Times decided not to endorse anyone
Speaker 1: for president, and I thought, that's a curious move.
Speaker 2: Why would that be.
Speaker 1: There are some people saying, well, there's this new owner
Speaker 1: for the LA Times and that maybe he had wanted
Speaker 1: to work for Trump at some point, and okay, whatever.
Speaker 1: Then I hear that the Washington Post decided they're not
Speaker 1: going to endorse anybody for president. Then I hear that
Speaker 1: USA Today is not going to endorse anybody for president.
Speaker 1: And newspapers do this, I mean, newspapers have editorial boards
Speaker 1: that are opinion givers. That's what newspapers do. They have
Speaker 1: editorial boards who give opinions, and they try to have
Speaker 1: their editorializing section be different from the news reporting section,
Speaker 1: hopefully near the towyin shell meet. But I think in
Speaker 1: practice that's not necessarily true. People go from straight news
Speaker 1: reporting to editorializing. And I've sort of left scratching my head.
Speaker 1: Why are all of these major newspapers deciding to not
Speaker 1: endorse anybody for president, especially the Washington Post. I think
Speaker 1: the Post was the one that I really kind of
Speaker 1: scratched my head with. I have, I think, a better
Speaker 1: sense of it when in the wake of saying they
Speaker 1: weren't going to endorse someone for president, the Washington Posts
Speaker 1: readership is, I think we have to understand d C
Speaker 1: is so liberal, the greater DC area, Washington, d C itself,
Speaker 1: northern Virginia, southern Maryland.
Speaker 2: Is so liberal.
Speaker 1: That their readership were furiously mad that this newspaper didn't
Speaker 1: affirm their beliefs that Kamala Harris should be president and
Speaker 1: Donald Trump should. I've seen reports of like large numbers
Speaker 1: of people unsubscribing from the Washington Post blah blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, like, oh, this is terrible, this is outrageous
Speaker 1: to not take a moral stint when I think most
Speaker 1: people would agree with me. I don't think newspapers endorsements
Speaker 1: have much of an impact at all. In fact, I
Speaker 1: would say our local experience here in Fresno is that
Speaker 1: the Fresno b endorsement is could be a negative for
Speaker 1: someone I've I've genuinely seen with a race here in Fresno,
Speaker 1: George Rodanovitch running against David Tanjipa. Even though I like
Speaker 1: Tanjipa a little bit better myself. I think they're both
Speaker 1: pretty conservative. I've gotten to know Tanjipa a little better
Speaker 1: than Radanovic. Radanovic has used the B's endorsement of Tanjapa
Speaker 1: against him, actually sent out electioneering mailers against Toni with
Speaker 1: oh see, he's the choice of the Fresno B.
Speaker 2: I'm the choices like that.
Speaker 1: That's how little people regard newspaper endorsements. Now that's in
Speaker 1: a super conservative election, but you get the hint. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think newspaper endorsements do that much.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos, who is the owner of The Washington Post,
Speaker 1: one of the wealthiest men in the world, the founder
Speaker 1: of Amazon. He published an op ed in his newspaper,
Speaker 1: The Washington Post, in which he explained a little bit
Speaker 1: the decision by The Washington Post not to endorse a
Speaker 1: presidential candidate, and honestly, it was pretty darn andsightful.
Speaker 2: Here's what he has to say. In the annual public.
Speaker 1: Surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have
Speaker 1: regularly fallen near the bottom, often just above Congress. But
Speaker 1: in this year's Gallup poll, we have managed to fall
Speaker 1: below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all.
Speaker 1: Something we are doing is clearly not working. Let me
Speaker 1: give an analogy. Voting machines must meet two requirements. They
Speaker 1: must count the vote accurately, and people must believe they count.
Speaker 2: The vote accurately.
Speaker 1: The second requirement is distinct from and just as important
Speaker 1: as the first. Likewise, with newspapers, we must be accurate
Speaker 1: and we must be believed to be accurate. It's a
Speaker 1: bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the
Speaker 1: second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone
Speaker 1: who doesn't see this is paying scant attention to reality,
Speaker 1: and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion.
Speaker 1: It would be easy to blame others for our long
Speaker 1: and continuing fall and credibility and therefore decline an impact,
Speaker 1: but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not
Speaker 1: a strategy. We must work harder to control what we
Speaker 1: can control and increase to increase our credibility. See this
Speaker 1: is why I'm sure everyone who works at the Washington
Speaker 1: Post is freaking out. Everyone who works at the Washington
Speaker 1: Post is a coddled millennial lefty or most of the
Speaker 1: people at the Washington Post are coddled millennial lefties. They
Speaker 1: immediately do go to victim blaming, to a victim mentality. Basically,
Speaker 1: these coddled millennial liberals who work at the Washington Post,
Speaker 1: they have lived in this echo chamber of liberal ideology
Speaker 1: for so long, ever since they were in college. Now
Speaker 1: into their professional lives as reporters for the Washington Post,
Speaker 1: staffers for the Washington Post, where all of their peers
Speaker 1: are liberals, all of their neighbors are liberals, everyone surrounding
Speaker 1: them as a liberal. They are so suffused with liberalism
Speaker 1: that they don't see how bad it is. And when
Speaker 1: they see nationwide opinion polling that journalists are just not trusted,
Speaker 1: that the media is not trusted, they are going to
Speaker 1: just blame everyone other than themselves. Bezos is coming at
Speaker 1: this from a tech computer science slash business perspective where
Speaker 1: he says, no, this is a problem. We need to
Speaker 1: solve the problem. What are the variables under our control
Speaker 1: that we can solve. It doesn't matter just pointing that
Speaker 1: you're not going to fix anything by just pointing the
Speaker 1: finger and blaming other people. We have to control what
Speaker 1: we can control, and if there are things we're not
Speaker 1: doing well, then we need to fix it. We are
Speaker 1: getting these outcomes from our current inputs. Clearly we need
Speaker 1: to change our inputs. I think you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: here to sing the praises of Jeff Bezos that he's
Speaker 1: some one wonderful human being. He's clearly very left wing.
Speaker 1: But he's clearly intelligent enough to realize that this isn't working.
Speaker 1: I'll get to why I think he's realized that in
Speaker 1: a bit. Let's continue with the piece he writes. Presidential
Speaker 1: endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election.
Speaker 1: No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, I'm
Speaker 1: going with newspaper aise endorsement.
Speaker 2: None.
Speaker 1: What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias,
Speaker 1: a perception of non independence. Ending them is a principal decision,
Speaker 1: and it's the right one. Eugene Meyer, the publisher of
Speaker 1: the Washington Post from nineteen thirty three to nineteen forty six,
Speaker 1: thought the same, and he was right. He goes on
Speaker 1: and then he talks about that that I want to
Speaker 1: make it clear there was no quid pro quo of
Speaker 1: any kind is at work here. Neither campaign, nor candidate
Speaker 1: was consulted or informed at any level or in any
Speaker 1: way about this decision. It was made entirely internally.
Speaker 2: Da da da Da.
Speaker 1: He goes on talks about how Amazon is sort of
Speaker 1: a complifier, a complexifier for the Post, because Jeff Bezos
Speaker 1: has so many business interests that it's hard for the
Speaker 1: Post to do things or report on things without people
Speaker 1: thinking there's some connection to bezos businesses. But he continues
Speaker 1: to go on. He talks about the lack of credibility
Speaker 1: that media has. Lack of credibility isn't unique to the Post.
Speaker 1: Our brethren newspapers have the same issue, and it's a
Speaker 1: problem not only for media, but also for the nation.
Speaker 1: Many people are turning to off the cuff podcasts, inaccurate
Speaker 1: social media posts, and other unverified news sources, which can
Speaker 1: quickly spread misinformation and deepened divisions. The Washington Post and
Speaker 1: the New York Times win prizes, but increasingly we talk
Speaker 1: only to a certain elite. More and more we talk
Speaker 1: to ourselves. It wasn't always this way. In the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: we achieved eighty percent household penetration in the DC metro area.
Speaker 1: While I do not and will not push my personal interest.
Speaker 1: I will also not allow this paper to stay on
Speaker 1: autopilot and fade into irrelevance, overtaken by unresearched podcasts and
Speaker 1: social media barbs. Not without a fight. It's too important.
Speaker 1: The stakes are too high now more than ever. The
Speaker 1: world needs a credible, trusted, independent voice. And where better
Speaker 1: for that voice to originate than the capital city of
Speaker 1: the most important country in the world. To win this fight,
Speaker 1: we will have to exercise new muscles. Some changes will
Speaker 1: be a return to the past, and some will be
Speaker 1: new inventions. Criticism will be part and parcel of anything new.
Speaker 1: Of course, this is the way of the world. None
Speaker 1: of this will be easy, but it will be worth it.
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful to be part of this endeavor.
Speaker 2: Blah blah blah blah blah. All right, why is Bezos
Speaker 2: doing this? Why is he doing this all of a
Speaker 2: sudden a week before the election, announcing this like big,
Speaker 2: like sort of shift in the tone and focus and
Speaker 2: in character of this newspaper, this media endeavor. Well, I'd
Speaker 2: like to think here's my best guess. The Washington Post
Speaker 2: went all in on.
Speaker 1: Being anti Trump, that Trump was hitler, Trump was terrible,
Speaker 1: that January sixth was the worst thing that ever happened,
Speaker 1: the pursuit of Trump going after him.
Speaker 2: This theme of preserving democracy democracy dies in darkness was
Speaker 2: their logo they very over dramatically adopted for themselves. They
Speaker 2: went all in on it. The Post perhaps.
Speaker 1: More so than almost any other newspaper, and Washington in particular.
Speaker 1: Washington in particular despises Trump in a way that I
Speaker 1: don't think any other area of the country does, because
Speaker 1: I think so many people in Washington, d C. Work
Speaker 1: in politics, work for the federal government, work for federal contractors,
Speaker 1: work in the intelligence community, work in the Department of Defense.
Speaker 1: And Trump has alienated basically everyone in all of those groups.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying Trump is alienated military rank and file personnel,
Speaker 1: but clearly Trump doesn't think the same way about foreign
Speaker 1: policy as a lot of our military top brass do.
Speaker 1: He doesn't think about you know, he doesn't think about
Speaker 1: foreign policy the way they do. He clearly has divergent
Speaker 1: ways of thinking on all kinds of things. There is
Speaker 1: universal Trump hatred in DC, even among conservative leaning people
Speaker 1: and Republican leaning people.
Speaker 2: They hate Trump.
Speaker 1: January sixth had a different feel for people in DC
Speaker 1: than it did for people anywhere else. There was a
Speaker 1: moment on January six where things felt really scary and
Speaker 1: people blamed Trump for it. So people in DC are
Speaker 1: much more alarmed by January sixth than people the entire
Speaker 1: rest of the country are.
Speaker 2: The Washington Post, as a result, went all in on
Speaker 2: anti trumpetude, and for the last four years, no one
Speaker 2: was more aggressive on this. No one was more aggressively.
Speaker 1: Anti Trump over the last nine years and especially the
Speaker 1: last four years than the Washington Post. Reflective of the
Speaker 1: mood of the Washington the Washington, DC area and what happened.
Speaker 1: Nothing they did succeed it. Trump is at worst fifty
Speaker 1: to fifty chants going to get re elected president. If
Speaker 1: he loses, it's going to be by you know, a
Speaker 1: hair's breadth. So I think Bezos is looking at this
Speaker 1: and saying, well, clearly, we're not reflective of the country.
Speaker 1: If we think that this guy is Adolf Hitler and
Speaker 1: this guy is possibly about to win, and I think
Speaker 1: most of the betting money is on Trump winning at
Speaker 1: worst it's a fifty to fifty proposition, then I think
Speaker 1: Bezos is stepping back and saying, well, look, if we
Speaker 1: are if we posture ourselves in Washington, d c. At
Speaker 1: The Washington Post as this national newspaper, as one of
Speaker 1: the you know, two or three national newspaper brands that yes,
Speaker 1: we're a local paper, but also we have we are
Speaker 1: something that has an impact on the country as a whole,
Speaker 1: like the New York Times. That the list of nationwide
Speaker 1: newspapers that matter, it's basically the New York Times in
Speaker 1: the Washington Post.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: I don't know that there's any other newspaper that has
Speaker 1: that kind of national branding and national importance.
Speaker 2: It's the New York Times and the Washington Post. That's it.
Speaker 1: So if we're going to have these, you know, pretensions
Speaker 1: of being this nationally relevant thing, why is it that
Speaker 1: this guy that we said was completely unacceptable? How is
Speaker 1: he a fifty to fifty shot to be president? Are
Speaker 1: we just ignoring this whole half of the country. And
Speaker 1: now they are these rumblings that Bezos is wanting to
Speaker 1: hire actually conservative columnists, which the Post doesn't have very
Speaker 1: many of, even Jennifer Rubin, They're one former conservative columnist
Speaker 1: who completely got radicalized by Trump and has just become
Speaker 1: a very solid liberal. I think Bezos is just sort
Speaker 1: of realizing, like, we don't have credibility to half the country.
Speaker 1: We're just talking to one half of the country. How
Speaker 1: can we change that. We're losing to podcasts, we're losing
Speaker 1: to other forms of media. And I think he thinks
Speaker 1: the long term business direction of the Washington Post.
Speaker 2: Is south south, is in going down, not going well,
Speaker 2: not going up.
Speaker 1: So I thought this was fairly insightful when we return
Speaker 1: the stuff that I think Bezos is overlooking, which is
Speaker 1: that it's not just that people perceive the media to
Speaker 1: be untrustworthy, they genuinely are untrustworthy. That's next on the
Speaker 1: John Girardi Show. I'm reading this op ed by Jeff
Speaker 1: Bezos in the newspaper he owns the Washington Post, in
Speaker 1: which he's laying out his reason and why he was
Speaker 1: going to have the Washington Post not endorse somebody for president,
Speaker 1: which I thought was pretty insightful with one kind of glaring,
Speaker 1: non insightful bit. Basically, all he's talking about is that media,
Speaker 1: mainstream media outlests journalists are not trusted. And he makes
Speaker 1: his comparison with voting machines. He said, the two things
Speaker 1: that you need for a voting machine are one it
Speaker 1: needs to count votes accurately. To people need to think
Speaker 1: that it counts the votes accurately. People need to trust it.
Speaker 1: And he's sort of ascribing the media's problems. Why are
Speaker 1: journalists not trust The second thing is the only thing
Speaker 1: that's the problem.
Speaker 2: Eh, But that's the thing is.
Speaker 1: Media in the United States over the last ten years
Speaker 1: have done a lot of things that it's not just
Speaker 1: a question of people not trusting them.
Speaker 2: People have good reason not to trust them. They have
Speaker 2: been inaccurate, They have.
Speaker 1: Engaged in highly biased attitudes towards reporting, narratives that they drive,
Speaker 1: et cetera. I mean, you know, do we have you know,
Speaker 1: twenty hours for a you know, radio show about this
Speaker 1: topic where I could talk about all of the different
Speaker 1: ways in which media reports things in a slanted, biased way.
Speaker 1: How many things during COVID were reported as confident in
Speaker 1: fact it turned out not really to be true. How
Speaker 1: many things were called, you know, conspiracy theories during COVID
Speaker 1: or otherwise it turned out to be true. You know,
Speaker 1: all of the reporting around the Hunter Biden laptop, the
Speaker 1: reporting that was not done around the Hunter Biden laptop. Oh,
Speaker 1: we can't share that story because it's unverified information. They
Speaker 1: could have verified it very easily.
Speaker 2: They just absolutely did not want to verify it because
Speaker 2: they knew it would be harmful to Joe Biden in
Speaker 2: the middle of a presidential election, so they didn't. And
Speaker 2: then well after the presidential election, it was, oh, yeah, verified,
Speaker 2: this is very clearly Hunter Biden's laptop.
Speaker 1: But we will credulously rush to publish an opinion piece
Speaker 1: by all these members of the intelligence community saying that
Speaker 1: we think this is Russian disinformation. They had no earthly
Speaker 1: evidence whatsoever to think it was Russian disinformation. All of
Speaker 1: the millions and gazillions of Trump stories that turned out
Speaker 1: to be not true, That all of the reporting around
Speaker 1: Brett Kavanaugh that they were rush they were sprinting to
Speaker 1: report every single un verified Yahoo who wanted to claim
Speaker 1: that Brett Kavanaugh one time looked at that gave them
Speaker 1: the Google eyes at a bar in nineteen ninety two
Speaker 1: in a way that was inappropriate. Like all the reporting
Speaker 1: around Brett Kavanaugh was was complete and utter nonsense. We
Speaker 1: could go on and on and on and on and
Speaker 1: on and on and on all the ways in which
Speaker 1: even their coverage of January sixth, after the fact that
Speaker 1: were deceptive, the dishonest, The fact that nobody reported on
Speaker 1: Joe Biden being senile, that that very few people were
Speaker 1: willing to actually do the hard nos journalistic work to
Speaker 1: reveal that the president of the United.
Speaker 2: States has seen.
Speaker 1: Now, the fact that we still aren't getting a ton
Speaker 1: of that stuff. We had a window of stories about
Speaker 1: Biden being senile for about two months when Democrats realized
Speaker 1: that this guy would lose them the election, and we
Speaker 1: haven't heard anything since. What's Biden up to the these days?
Speaker 1: Has he had any cabinet meetings? What does the Vice
Speaker 1: President of the United States think about him?
Speaker 2: Does?
Speaker 1: Does she think he's still fit to do his job?
Speaker 1: She's been super dodgy about that question. And I think
Speaker 1: this is the limitation for Bezos, and maybe he just
Speaker 1: can't say it because you know, he's already got I mean,
Speaker 1: it sounds like the Washington Post, all of the little
Speaker 1: millennial snowflakes who work for the Washington Post are like
Speaker 1: ready to absolutely pitch a fit because they're so angry
Speaker 1: that Jeff Bezos decided to not have the paper endorse
Speaker 1: anybody for president, Like this is the worst thing that
Speaker 1: has ever happened to them, because you know, these are
Speaker 1: coddled millennial little snowflakes who have never had anything bad
Speaker 1: happen to them. I speaking as a codd old millennial,
Speaker 1: a codd old millennial snow myself, just not a coddled
Speaker 1: liberal millennial snowflake anyway. For these people like they they've
Speaker 1: never had anything bad happen to them. They're like up
Speaker 1: in arms, They're so angry, they're so upset that this
Speaker 1: man who owns this newspaper decided to step in and say, Hey,
Speaker 1: I don't like the direction we're going here, and I
Speaker 1: think us endorsing a president is actually counterproductive in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. Now, dear, oh, this interference by this
Speaker 1: man who invested, you know, for you know, tens of
Speaker 1: billions of dollars into this enterprise.
Speaker 2: And who signs all of our checks.
Speaker 1: So maybe he couldn't just come out and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: the media has been super inaccurate on a bunch of
Speaker 1: stories because of our liberal bias, and that's part of
Speaker 1: why people don't trust it. Maybe he just can't say that,
Speaker 1: otherwise he'd have literally everyone at the Washington Post quit.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's the case, but I do think that's the
Speaker 1: one problem with his analysis is, it's not like people
Speaker 1: don't try the media for no reason. People don't trust
Speaker 1: the media because they aren't trustworthy, because they are inaccurate,
Speaker 1: because they don't pursue stories that are harmful to Democrats,
Speaker 1: because they aggressively pursue stories in ways that are flimsy
Speaker 1: to say something bad about Republicans, because they have obvious
Speaker 1: ideologues who work for them, and then the minute they
Speaker 1: leave their mainstream media job, they go on to become
Speaker 1: the wild left wing ideologus we always thought they were,
Speaker 1: you know, so called journalists like Taylor Lawrence, who were
Speaker 1: obviously left wing activists. When we return commercials about wives
Speaker 1: voting differently from their husbands and drop boxes being lit
Speaker 1: on fire, more stuff about voting next on The John
Speaker 1: Girardi Show. All right, I've got a couple of stories
Speaker 1: about voting that piqued my interest. As we are all
Speaker 1: were one week out from election day, a bunch of
Speaker 1: you have started voting early. My wife went and voted
Speaker 1: on Saturday or Saturday Sunday, and I think I'll probably
Speaker 1: mosey on over to vote probably this weekend or something.
Speaker 1: And one of the So I've got these two things
Speaker 1: I want to talk about two things unpiqued my interest.
Speaker 1: One is this Kamala Harris ad that is following up
Speaker 1: with other Kamala Harris messaging. So in this ad, it's
Speaker 1: a bunch of a couple of women going into vote
Speaker 1: and everything around that it seems to be very coded
Speaker 1: that they are in Republican country.
Speaker 2: Everyone's wearing patriotic flags and stuff.
Speaker 1: Apparently that's the way that you know that you're around
Speaker 1: Republicans is if people look patriotic. And these two women
Speaker 1: are about to vote at their and let's note where
Speaker 1: they are voting in their secret ballot cubicles. They are
Speaker 1: voting in person in their little secret ballot cubicles. Okay,
Speaker 1: the small little, you know, little standing desk, you know,
Speaker 1: about two feet wide with the little plastic partitions on
Speaker 1: either side where you vote privately in secret. They look
Speaker 1: over the top of it at each other, they smile,
Speaker 1: and the messaging is basically, hey, women, Kamala Harris supports
Speaker 1: women's rights, meaning abortion.
Speaker 2: You don't have to do what your husband thinks. Vote
Speaker 2: for Kamala Harris. Nobody will know. It'll be our little secret.
Speaker 1: And it's basically encouraging women don't vote for who your
Speaker 1: husband wants to vote for. Vote for Kamala Harris, sista,
Speaker 1: you know, like like like there's this invisible liberal sisterhood
Speaker 1: that binds all women in America, and that it all
Speaker 1: surrounds abortion rights, the desire to have abortion.
Speaker 2: All right, let's talk about a number.
Speaker 1: Of ways in which this is silly, and it kind
Speaker 1: of ticks me off, and it takes my wife off
Speaker 1: as well, mostly because it's coming from different kinds of
Speaker 1: polling data. So, yes, there's a male female divide in
Speaker 1: the country. If only men voted, Donald Trump would win
Speaker 1: in a landslide. If only women voted, I almost said
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton, good lord, Kamala Harris would win in a landslide.
Speaker 1: And the one demographic of women, though that aren't as
Speaker 1: much in the tank for Kamala Harris is married women.
Speaker 1: That married women are still pro Haerris, but not nearly
Speaker 1: as much as single women. Single women are enormous majority
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris voters, and I think I think the same
Speaker 1: was true in twenty twenty with Biden, and you know,
Speaker 1: prior elections. The conclusion that liberals have drawn from this
Speaker 1: information that married women tend to vote more conservative than
Speaker 1: single women. This is the messed up way that liberals
Speaker 1: apparently view conservative conservatives, Red states, and marriage in general.
Speaker 1: They assume what must be happening is that liberal women
Speaker 1: get married and then become intimidated into voting Republican, pressured
Speaker 1: into voting Republican by their evil Republican spouses who don't
Speaker 1: care about women's rights, by which they only mean abortion,
Speaker 1: who don't care about women's health care, by which they
Speaker 1: only mean abortion, who don't care about victims of sexual harassment,
Speaker 1: by which they mean Trump being found liable for sexual
Speaker 1: harassment for a case I would never have been brought
Speaker 1: except the New York eliminated the statute limitations and the
Speaker 1: Egene Carol case I thought was an incredibly flimsy case
Speaker 1: against Trump for alleged sexual harassment. Anyway, Basically, the assumption
Speaker 1: that liberals have that married women vote more conservatively because
Speaker 1: of mean, evil pressure by their husbands, now I think
Speaker 1: that is ridiculous.
Speaker 2: I think it's ridiculous on so many fronts.
Speaker 1: First of all, do you think, like, first of all,
Speaker 1: this baseline assumption that conservative men all abuse their wives
Speaker 1: more than a little insulting, not backed up by any evidence,
Speaker 1: just completely seems ridiculous to me. Secondly, I think the
Speaker 1: dynamic in most no granted this is a bit anecdotal,
Speaker 1: but I think the dynamic in a lot of marriages
Speaker 1: that I've seen with conservative couples is that the wife
Speaker 1: is far more conservative than the husband, or that I
Speaker 1: think wives, especially in politics with elected politicians, I think
Speaker 1: the wives of politicians play a much bigger and with
Speaker 1: judges too, play a much bigger role than we care
Speaker 1: to assume. Why has no Republican president been really reliable
Speaker 1: when it comes to the abortion issue.
Speaker 2: Well, it may have something to do with the fact
Speaker 2: that all of their wives were pro choice.
Speaker 1: Missus Nixon, Missus Ford, Missus Reagan, Missus Bush, the other
Speaker 1: Missus Bush, Milania Trump.
Speaker 2: All of them are pro choice.
Speaker 1: Is it a shocker to you that their husbands weren't
Speaker 1: exactly the most reliable people when it came to the
Speaker 1: abortion question? And I just think like couples, I know,
Speaker 1: I think very often, especially especially with older I think,
Speaker 1: especially with older couples, I think the wife is often
Speaker 1: as politically active, in strident, if not more so.
Speaker 2: Than the husband. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I find it silly to think that there's a clear
Speaker 1: decisive national trend of husbands being more politically energized than
Speaker 1: their wives, and we're seeing pressuring whatever their wives and
Speaker 1: devoting the way they want.
Speaker 2: I just don't think that's true.
Speaker 1: I think I just don't think it's true. And there
Speaker 1: are plenty of examples of guys in politics where otherwise
Speaker 1: politically conservative, who the politicians judges whatever, otherwise politically conservative,
Speaker 1: who kind of seem to bend to what their wives.
Speaker 2: Prefer when it comes to issues like abortion, et cetera.
Speaker 2: So I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just don't find it credible at all, and frankly,
Speaker 1: more than a little insulting this baseline assumption of Republican
Speaker 1: men are all threatening to give their wives a black
Speaker 1: eye if they don't vote for Donald Trump. The other
Speaker 1: thing I thought was ridiculous about it was the context
Speaker 1: of that ad. So in that ad, it's two women
Speaker 1: going to vote who look up at each other knowingly
Speaker 1: kind of give each other a sly nod that our
Speaker 1: husbands want us to vote for Donald Trump, but we're
Speaker 1: going to vote for Kamala Harrison.
Speaker 2: He's not going to know about it.
Speaker 1: It only works like that in the context of the
Speaker 1: one kind of voting that Democrats don't seem to care
Speaker 1: for the secret ballot, in person in person voting with
Speaker 1: a secret ballot. If indeed there is an army of
Speaker 1: Republican men wanting to pressure and coerce their wives into
Speaker 1: voting for Donald Trump, and that's why married women vote.
Speaker 2: More conservatively, which I'll touch on that in a second.
Speaker 1: Here. How would they do it, Well, the only way
Speaker 1: they do it is by looking over their wives shoulder
Speaker 1: while she fills out her vote by mail ballot. Haven't
Speaker 1: we been lectured for the last six years that allegedly
Speaker 1: vote by mail. Oh, if you don't want people to
Speaker 1: vote by mail, then you.
Speaker 2: Are oppressing democracy. This is the problem with vote by mail.
Speaker 1: If you think that people are going to intimidate other people,
Speaker 1: if you think husbands are going to intimidate their wives
Speaker 1: into voting for someone, that would be the way it
Speaker 1: would happen through vote by mail. It'd be the husband
Speaker 1: and wife sitting around with their vote by mail ballots
Speaker 1: on the coffee at the coffee table or at the
Speaker 1: kitchen table, and husband, all right, well, how.
Speaker 2: Are you voting? Well, you're going to vote for Donald Trump? Right?
Speaker 1: I mean that that would be the way it would happen,
Speaker 1: and the way you avoid it is through a secret ballot,
Speaker 1: voting in person where your husband can't stand there next
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 2: So it runs so counter to all.
Speaker 1: The Democrat messaging about voting, where Democrats have wanted less and.
Speaker 2: Less secure ways of voting.
Speaker 1: Are they just admitting that vote by mail allows people
Speaker 1: to pressure you and how to vote, that ballot harvesters
Speaker 1: can pressure you as far as how you vote.
Speaker 2: Can influence you. I mean the whole thing.
Speaker 1: It runs totally counter to all the Democrat messaging about this.
Speaker 1: The only way that husbands could pressure their wives on
Speaker 1: voting is if they're not voting in person with a
Speaker 1: secret ballot.
Speaker 2: So if Democrats think it's such.
Speaker 1: A widespread problem that husbands are pressuring their wives how
Speaker 1: to vote, then why do they not want in person
Speaker 1: secret ballot.
Speaker 2: Voting to be the norm. Why do they want so
Speaker 2: much vote by.
Speaker 1: Mill Probably because they want to cheat in a bunch
Speaker 1: of places. Anyway, the last part of it that I
Speaker 1: thought was sort of you know, I'll save the last
Speaker 1: part of it to the next segment, But basically it's
Speaker 1: this the idea that marriage doesn't change anything about fundamentally
Speaker 1: who you are and what things you value are prioritized.
Speaker 1: That is next on the John Girardi Show, there's this
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris ad that is showing women who are in
Speaker 1: a Conserva five place who are looking at each other
Speaker 1: knowingly and voting for Kamala Harris even though their husbands
Speaker 1: would want them to vote for Donald Trump. And as
Speaker 1: I was saying, a lot of this is coming from
Speaker 1: polling data that indicates that while women in general, the
Speaker 1: majority of women in general support Harris, married women are
Speaker 1: far less likely to support her than single women. Single
Speaker 1: women are far more liberal than married women. The only
Speaker 1: conclusion liberals can draw because they cannot fathom a woman
Speaker 1: not wanting legal abortion. The only conclusion liberals can draw
Speaker 1: is that there must be a large number of husbands
Speaker 1: out there who pressure their wives to vote for Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: And this is maybe the thing that I find most
Speaker 1: insulting about this at Do they think that there is
Speaker 1: just nothing significant about marriage. Marriage is a transformative thing
Speaker 1: in someone's life.
Speaker 2: It realigns.
Speaker 1: Your priorities in a way nothing else does. I mean,
Speaker 1: having kids also realigns your priorities. I don't you know.
Speaker 1: Whatever's the opposite of the male equivalent of a feminist.
Speaker 1: I don't view the world in light of as a
Speaker 1: masculinist or something like that, because I have right now
Speaker 1: four women in my life who I care about so
Speaker 1: deeply that I would be willing to die for them.
Speaker 1: My wife and my three daughters. I love them very dearly.
Speaker 1: I care about things other than myself now in a
Speaker 1: way that I didn't before I was married. I think
Speaker 1: it's very similar to wives who, yeah, maybe they might
Speaker 1: say they're a feminist, as far as you know, I
Speaker 1: want equal pay for equal work, I want the ability
Speaker 1: to vote, I want you know, certain equality and public life.
Speaker 1: But my wife cares about you know, three men so
Speaker 1: much that she'd laid down her life for them, Me
Speaker 1: and our two sons, and beyond caring about the opposite sex,
Speaker 1: we care for the future of our family. There are
Speaker 1: certain kinds of priorities you have as a married household
Speaker 1: that you just don't have as a single person that
Speaker 1: probably make you tend to want to vote more conservatively
Speaker 1: when you're trying to buy, when you're dealing with you know,
Speaker 1: seven people's worth of inflation like our household is, you
Speaker 1: feel it more keenly when you see economic policies that
Speaker 1: harm you, You feel it keenly in a way. That's
Speaker 1: different when it's impacting a whole family, a whole household,
Speaker 1: rather than just you as a one single individual person,
Speaker 1: when you know other families. Yeah, women vote more conservatively
Speaker 1: when they're married because their priorities have changed, just like
Speaker 1: my priorities changed when I got married. To say it's
Speaker 1: because their husbands are threatening them with a black eye
Speaker 1: if they don't vote for Donald Trump is insulting both
Speaker 1: to women and to men that'll do it.
Speaker 2: John Parties Show see you next Time'm on Power Talk.