HS 375 - How Trump Uses Fake News with John Ziegler

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It's my pleasure to welcome back a returning guest, and that is Mr. John Zigl. He is a conservative commentator, columnist and documentary filmmaker. He also does investigative reporting and I originally fell in love with his work when he was on the 50,000 watt KFI radio station in Los Angeles. And he's just got some great insights into things. John, welcome back. How are you?

I'm all right. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, it's good to have you. What is the latest and greatest with you nowadays? What have you been working on lately?

Well, I wrote a column several times a week at the Mediaite Dan Abrams website and I do a podcast every weekend via free speech broadcasting.com and I've been working on documentary films and been researching the so called Penn State scandal for the last several years for the purpose of a larger project that has yet to take its final form. But I stay busy and I'm also married with two small kids now, so it's been a strange, strange time.

Fantastic. Well, John, you know, the first time I ever heard the phrase fake news, and you've written and talked about this a bit, was the day after Trump was elected. Suddenly the news is all fake because he won the election. And and these big powerful omnipresent companies, Facebook and Google, have to do something about us to protect us from fake news. They have secret algorithms. You know, we don't know how they're sorting what we see and what we don't see. Maybe more importantly, what we don't see. Why is this fake news concept taken off in the age of Trump?

Because Trump needs it to. Trump has determined that anything that's negative about Trump is therefore fake news. Most of the time when Donald Trump claims something to be fake news, it is the furthest thing from fake news. It's something for which he has no other explanation. Therefore, he needs to convince his cult that, that it's fake news. And he has very effectively used the fake news mantra with his cult for them to disregard basic facts and to just pretend that stories that are quite real don't exist. The funniest part about this whole thing is the very same people who buy into the fake news canard are usually the people most easily fooled by actual fake news.

That's a real paradox, isn't it?

Now all that, that's the world we're living in right now. It's Alice in Wonderland. But I mean, it's the Trump supporters who bought into a bunch of whole lot of totally fake news about Hillary Clinton, including a pedophile ring through a pizza shop in Washington, D.C. or maybe it's outside of D.C. but I mean, it just, I mean, insane stuff, just crazy stuff. And we're seeing it now with the Uranium one. I mean, Uranium One is fake news. Just ask Shepard Smith who obliterated it on Fox News the other day. But, you know, Sean Hannity keeps peddling it and so does Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump because they need the distraction from what the real Russia story is. And it's, it's all very sad and, and it's quite understandable if you keep your eyes open and you're not blinded by partisanship. But there don't. That doesn't appear to be a very popular position in this day and age.

Yeah. You know, I love how when, you know, I used to hear you talk about how the just the whole world is upside down logic nowadays. You know, things that are really true and factual are viewed. This is before the term fake news, at least before my perception of it. If it was out there. It's just crazy how that is. But it seems as though Trump's use of fake news as an excuse and Trump. There's no shortage of weird stuff Trump does and weird things he says. Yeah, it's like a circus. But, you know, it seems that he just picked that up. I didn't hear him talk about that stuff. It was the mainstream media that I heard promulgating that term term or that phrase. Trump certainly uses it to defend his actions. But what scares me more than Trump is the Google and Facebook thing. These companies that have like, it's like they operate in secret. Nobody knows how they're sorting the news. I think the bigger threat to free speech and true information is the tech companies nowadays. They're just too powerful. They can influence elections and everything.

I hear what you're saying. Google, Twitter, And Facebook have enormous power and no accountability, no transparency at all. I mean, we have no idea how they do things. It's impossible to get a person on the phone, even speak to about issues related to them. And I've personally experienced this with both Twitter and Facebook, where I've had my Facebook account suspended for alleged misconduct, which didn't happen. I think it happened twice. That was purely as a result of political attacks where people targeted my account. There's no human being that's even involved in the decision making. You can't speak to a human being. You can't have any kind of, you know, legitimate, even appeal process. Twitter, this is bizarre. More bizarre because it's costing them money. Twitter banned me from advertising on my. My Twitter account recently without any explanation, for no possible reason. I had tried several times via email to appeal. Got absolutely nowhere. I kept getting automated responses. Could never speak to a human being, never got an explanation. And this type of thing is the way their companies work. I mean, it's like 1984 where this big behemoth where you're just, you know, we' we really don't have any options. We don't even know what's going on. And this is, you know, having far more serious consequences than me not being able to advertise on Twitter or being suspended from my Facebook account for a couple of days. It may have influenced the 2016 election because it's clear that the Russians fully took advantage of Facebook's algorithms and were able to disseminate a whole lot of fake news to people in a way that could have theoretically impacted who our president is part of. It's because I think, you know, they don't want to staff in order to staff properly. All the possible issues and complaints, especially with Twitter, you know, they'd go broke. I mean, Twitter's already losing lots of money. So it's just. It's not feasible, I guess, for them to, you know, man it like it's a newspaper or something like that. And these are creating all sorts of very dangerous situations. And I agree with you. I think they have way too much power and way too little transparency and accountability.

Yeah, yeah, it's really scary, John. You know, here's an interesting theory or, well, not a theory, but a, I guess a modest proposal that I have. You know, in the old days, we busted up these big industrialists. People called them robber barons because they had, you know, too much of the steel industry or too much of the railroad industry or whatever, right? But nowadays it's not really so much that say Facebook, Twitter and Google have too much business in terms of like the monetary control. It's the thought control they have that is, I think, a legitimate concept that should be applied to antitrust law. And, you know, I'm mostly a free market guy, but these companies don't operate in the free market. They have secret sauce that just influences way too much of the world's thought. When you control 65 ish percent of the world's Internet traffic and search results, that's scary. I mean, that is totally scary. And I think these companies either have to publish their algorithms so people know why they see what they see, or they have to be busted up under antitrust law. It's just crazy, you know?

Well, the antitrust thing is, is also dangerous though, because these are technically, I mean, these are media companies. You could certainly argue that they are. I, look, I'm a libertarian, I'm a free speech guy. I hate government control. But at a certain point though, I do wonder whether or not somehow making them public utilities might. As bad as it is. As bad as. No questions.

They're no good either. Right.

It might be the least bad outcome of where we're headed. And I don't have an answer for that, but I'm actually open to that idea because I do see it as potentially less bad than other scenarios.

I agree with you. I agree with you. It's too scary, though. These companies, I mean, they're just way too powerful. Tell us about the ESPN scandal and, and the liberalism. I mean, you know, it's kind of surprising to see that in the sports world. I never thought of it as an issue there, the, the left wing, you know, dominating the sports world and. But we, you know, we kind of saw this with ESPN recently.

Well, it's funny, I wrote a book in 2005 which no one read called the Death.

You're so funny.

No, it's true. I mean, no one read it. They called, called the death of free speech, which was very prescient. It was way ahead of its time, which is one of the worst ways to run a media career is to be ahead of your time. That's not good for business at all. And I've definitely experienced that on multiple occasions.

Well, John, you know what they say. No, no prophet has ever revered in his own times. So don't feel too bad.

I don't call myself a prophet, but I've definitely been ahead of the curve on numerous occasions. Not to my own benefit, but anyway, the point of this is that in that book I discuss this very issue that you just raised, which is just how liberal the sports media is, even more so than the news media. And as a sports guy who grew up in sportscasting, that was my first gig within the media business many years ago in television sportscasting. I always found this to be baffling because you don't think of the sports world as being liberal. I mean, most sports fans are, you know, a lot of the hardcore, very rather conservative. And if you think about sports and the values that it teaches and hard work and discipline and teamwork, and the score matters, and there's winners and losers and the strong defeat the weak. I mean, there's a lot of conservative elements to sports, and it's antithetical to liberals in a lot of ways. However, my theory on it is that one, there's something inherently liberal about people who want to get into the news media, regardless of which branch it is. And two, you have to remember that most professional sports are dominated by African Americans, and African Americans are much more liberal than the rest of the population. Plus, if you're covering African Americans and they're the stars, the last thing you're going to do is offend them because they have all the power, especially in a world where if you say or do anything that's even remotely perceived as racist, you're toast, you're fired, you're done, it's over. So I think that that has all created a gravitational pull that has created a very liberal bias. And there's no question that ESPN has become way more liberal, first of all, than the mainstream. And I think it's hurt them economically, although that's not the only reason why they've been hurt economically, but I think it's a part of it. And then there's the other element. I think that they're just afraid. I think there's a fear factor. Political correctness and liberalism are basically close cousins. And political correctness rules any media outlet, but especially one that delves in with the clientele that ESPN does. And I think that that all creates when it results in cowardly, politically correct liberal commentary, because that's the best way not to get fired. That's what people need to understand about the media. The number one goal of every elite media member every day is how do I keep my cushy gig, right? Because if I lose it, there's a chance I may never get another one. I mean, especially. Especially in a place where ESPN has a monopoly. See, because ESPN has a monop. You get fired from espn, it might be totally over for you. So you're gonna toe the line. And what's the line? Well, no one has ever gotten fired for being too politically correct in the history of media. You get fired for being politically incorrect. Well, what's political correctness? Political correctness is the liberal perspective. So that's how this happens in my view.

The amazing thing about the left that control. The left controls technology, it controls media, controls entertain. Shocking. I think the reason that is, John, is because wherever the money flows easily, you have the luxury of being a leftist. When you have to work in the real world and have like a blue collar job, you don't have the luxury of being a lefty. You know, you're living well.

And I think what you're saying, I'm not sure this is what you're saying, but this is, this gets me to an issue that I have always tried to educate people to, which is that on the left there's an embarrassment of riches. So you can do pretty much whatever you want within the left wing media. If you fail, there's always going to be a safety net. Someone will pick you up and you'll get another, a second, a third or fourth. I mean, look at Keith Olbermann, for goodness sake. I mean, I mean, you'll keep getting chance after chance after chance. On the conservative side, there is a scarcity of resources and there is an incredibly intense battle for every seat at the table. And no one wants to lose their seat at the table because you probably won't get it back and there's nowhere else to go. And Fox News Channel is very similar to ESPN in that Fox News Channel hasn't a monopoly over conservative careers in the media. So if you're out at Fox News Channel, you're basically toast, just like you're, you're toast at espn, which is why the Trump thing can happen. See, the Trump thing could only happen when everybody at Fox News Channel was scared of losing their gig. So they jumped on the bandwagon. If Fox News Channel hadn't made it clear where they were going to stand on this, then the whole Trump phenomenon never takes off and probably never takes hold. So that's how it works. There's a gravitational pull. People in the media are not, they're not brilliant, but they're not imbeciles. They know where their bread is buttered. They know what will help keep their gig or help them get promoted or, and what will not. And it's impacted even people that I really had a lot of respect for. I mean, my God, of all the people I'm most shocked by, the Trump thing, Brit Hume, who I had enormous respect for, who's not even a full time person at Fox News Channel anymore. So you would think he wouldn't really care at this point of his career, basically totally sold out on the whole Trump issue. And he's attacked anti Trump conservatives about as much, as much or more than anybody else at FOX News Channel. I think out of personal guilt because he didn't have the courage of his own convictions, because it's clear that Brit Hume knows that Donald Trump is a buffoon who doesn't belong as president. But even he is totally sold out and it's really depressing.

But you know, John, I mean, look, on balance, to use an overworn cliche, unfair and balance, we get these two crappy choices every time. You know, like I'm interviewing Ron Paul today. That's who I would have voted for. Right. He's going to be on the show. We always have two bad choices.

I mean, why would you have voted for Ron Paul?

Oh, no, I like Ron Paul. He's the. Okay, so nice guy.

Nice guy. I've interviewed him. But he's a complete nut job.

So who are you in favor of, just out of curiosity? Because, I mean, what I was going to ask you before you went off on the Ron Paul thing is I was going to say would you have preferred Hillary? I mean, come on. No.

To Trump?

Yeah.

In the end. Yeah. I mean, I think it would have been better in the long run for conservatism had Hillary won.

Well, okay, but that's a sort of a broad, big, big picture view, which is interesting.

Well, what's wrong, what's wrong with that?

Wait a minute.

That's not legitimate. The big picture is not legitimate.

It is, it is. I'm just saying that I guess I.

Get, I'm just shocked that people don't think beyond a year at a time now. I mean, I'm, I mean, I'm getting old and I'm still, you know, maybe it's because I have two young kids, but I care about more than just what happens in the next year. I care more than, than where, where the stock market is today. I happen to believe that we have dug our grave.

Oh, yeah.

And, and the grave that would have been dug by Hillary is something we could have gotten out of very easily because I don't think she could have dug very deep because the Republican Congress would have stopped her and I think been defeated in reelection if we'd gotten a decent candidate. So but now we're totally fractured. See, if Trump had lost, he would have gone away, the divisions would have healed, but now we're fractured forever.

Okay?

We don't know what the hell we believe. We have no credibility. Our brandish crap. And Democrats are gonna take over the Congress. Trump is gonna turn into a full on Democrat in the second two years of his term so he doesn't get impeached. We're going to end up having determining whether or not we want him as our nominee, which if he wants to be, he will be. Which means we're going to have a full on Democrat going against another Democrat in 2020. We basically sold our souls for a couple of magic beans. That's what happened here. We sold everything for a couple of magic beans and we didn't even get a wall out of the deal. Yeah, we got nothing.

So you were in favor of Trump's border wall though, or no?

No, I just never took it seriously. It was obviously a ruse to fool stupid people and it worked.

Okay, so talk to us a little bit about your thoughts on the economy. Where do you think we're going? I mean, you know, we have this massive debt. This has been decades and decades and decades in the making. Are we just in a huge mess here or, you know, is this boom just another bubble? What are your thoughts?

I'm not an expert on this. I am continually baffled by how well the economy appears to be doing. I don't get it. I don't understand it. I don't know what it's based on. The only thing that I can think of is that we are reaping the benefits of the technological advances that have made things so much more efficient, that maybe that has more of an impact, at least in the short run, than we realized, and that we are so much more efficient now. I mean, let's face it, we can get way more done in one day today than we ever could have dreamed of even 10, 20 years ago. It's amazing how much we can get done. So what I think's happening is that the percentage of people who are really participating and helping the economy is shrinking. But the impact of that smaller percentage is increasing, and that's what's keeping us afloat. But the problem is, from a logic standpoint, there's got to be a point of diminishing marginal returns on how much we can benefit from the increase of inefficiency at a certain point. You reach a dead end there. You know, you can't, you can only get so efficient. And I think at that point, things will start to get pretty hairy. I get nervous about the housing market. I mean, to me, I don't think we've changed anything after 2008, and yet we're right back at the same pricing. So. So why won't that collapse happen again? The stock market is at insane levels.

It's. It's time to short the S and P. Oh, my go. This is nuts. Yeah, it's crazy.

I mean, I keep waiting for some sort of, maybe not a collapse, but certainly at least we haven't even had a pullback, which is highly, highly. Forget about unusual. It's basically unprecedented. This is not even the way the market normally works in a bull situation. Usually it's two steps forward and one step back. Well, we haven't even taken a step back in quite a while. But on the other hand, and this sounds like a strange way to judge it, but my wife loves going to Disneyland here in Southern California. So we have these pass, you know, the year passes and we. So we. I go occasionally, and I am always stunned by the amount of people who are clearly, at best, middle class, who have apparently a lot of disposable income to be spending at Disneyland. I mean, you know, this is a very expensive enterprise and the place is always packed and it's not foreigners, you know, by and large. And so I keep wanting, well, who are these people? Where are they? They're getting their money from somewhere. And, you know, there's been all this talk and I, I've agreed with it that the middle class is greatly endangered, but I don't see it.

I, I know it's, it's hard to. I agree with you completely. It's really hard to figure this out. You know, there does seem to be a concentration of wealth. Like, like the rich are definitely getting richer. There's no question about that. And the middle class does seem to be shrinking. But, yeah, you know, just anecdotally, like you said, the Disneyland study, you just see these people out spending money everywhere. But the thing is that technology has created the massive efficiencies that you've mentioned, of course, but it's also, you know, it's a deflationary force. So we have this asset inflation, all these assets that we mentioned, that housing and stock market are going through the roof. But the one thing I didn't want to mention about what you said earlier is that the difference in the housing market this time and the famous last words of any investors, this time it's different. I completely understand that. But, you know, the Banks have been much more conservative this time around. I mean, these people aren't walking into, you know, fog mirror and get a loan, home loans anymore. Okay? And they haven't since the Great Recession. So they have some skin in the game nowadays. So I don't think they're going to walk so easily. And these loans are really being underwritten, so at least that side of it has to be better. But, yeah, you know, we have this asset inflation, but technology has created lots of efficiencies and deflation in other parts of life. I mean, certainly the power we have in our pocket with our smartphone is insane compared, you know, that. The massive convenience and efficiency that brings to everybody's life is incredible.

I just think at a certain point, though, we start to lose the benefits of that efficiency. And so, you know, I just, I'm just. But I'm a pessimist by nature, so I don't. I don't. I don't know what the future holds. I've been wrong about the stock market many times. I do think that Trump is playing with fire by taking credit for the stock market, because what happens when it goes in the other direction?

Well, you know, Trump's gonna take credit for everything. I mean, that's what he does. He's an egomaniac, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no question. Well, John, hey, give out your website. Tell people where they can find out more about what you're up to.

Well, the podcast is at free speech broadcasting.com and the columns are at Mediaite, and my Twitter handle is Sigmund Freud.

That's awesome. Check it out. John, just before you go, one quick comment. Maybe, since you mentioned the Free Speech podcast. That's a great thing. College campuses. I mean, this is just absolute insanity what's going on Nowadays, the places that are supposed to be the bastion of free speech are the complete opposite. Any thoughts just as you wrap up?

Well, it's as obvious as it could be. It can't even parody it. It's a literal joke. And not only is free speech banned, but political correctness reigns. I mean, I wrote a column last week about two new alleged racial hate crimes at the Air Force Academy in Kansas State that turned out to be total frauds, which, by the way, is not unusual. It's like the norm. It's the norm that whenever you hear about these things, and yet campus keeps buying into it, and it's all bull crap. And it's. It's really scary about where that's going to lead.

Yeah, it really is. It really is. Hopefully hopefully the word will get out, but I think a lot of it starts with the tech companies as we talked about earlier. So we shall see what happens. John Ziegler, thanks for joining us.

Thanks so much. Bye bye.

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