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