In this episode, we delve into the multifaceted nature of political reactions and media narratives surrounding recent protests. Our hosts analyze disruptive events, exploring how actions during protests can lead to unexpected and often dangerous outcomes. They provide an in-depth look into how media representation can alter public perception and contribute to societal unrest. Listeners will gain insights into the complexities of media influence, particularly how it affects law enforcement’s image and public reactions. The conversation highlights the importance of objectivity and the challenges faced by journalists in maintaining impartiality amid heightened tensions. This episode is a must-listen for
00:10:26 The Political Climate and Its Implications
SPEAKER 02 :
Jacob Fry and Tim Walz, they probably want this outcome because this gives them an excuse. We get all that. We get all of that. Kristi Noem’s reaction has been very bad. No way around that. There’s reports now out of the White House that President Trump is not happy with Kristi Noem. That to go on TV and say the guy is a domestic terrorist who is planning to assassinate… Clearly intending to show up and attack… To show up and massacre scores. Come on. I mean, you know, and what’s emerging is an ICU nurse who is one of these social justice warriors who may or may not have been part of the signal chat to try to mobilize these protests. But we can’t pretend that something is happening. A, when it’s B, we can’t say up is down. There’s no if to this day, a lot of people are livid that an unarmed Ashley Babbitt was shot and killed at the Capitol. And rightfully so. This guy at the time of the shooting. And I know we all have the hindsight, the benefit of hindsight and analyzing video. They disarmed him. And apparently the gun went off accidentally, allegedly, after he was disarmed. And they started yelling, gun, gun, gun. Now, look, you don’t need to tell me or convince me that when you show up to a protest with a loaded weapon and you’re ready to scuffle with law enforcement, you’re asking for trouble.
SPEAKER 03 :
Asking for trouble. Not hoping to be killed, but asking for trouble. And that’s what this entire month. Go ahead. You finish your paragraph because you’re on a roll.
SPEAKER 02 :
So, no, that’s okay because, you know, two things can be true at the same time. The guy made some terrible decisions, but nonetheless, it was likely a bad shooting. And I’ve talked to law enforcement all weekend long who said, we talk about shootings in terms of good shootings, bad shootings. If a gun went off accidentally that they disarmed from him, And then somebody panicked and said, gun, gun, gun. I mean, Mark, it’s not a bad, it’s not a good look. Not a good look.
SPEAKER 03 :
When you say bad shooting, this is kind of what I’m talking about, but that’s okay. Let’s spin our wheels for a couple on this. When you say bad shooting, do you mean horribly unfortunate because it probably wasn’t necessary or time for charges to be filed against somebody?
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, I don’t know about charges. I think the way I analyze it, and based on a long conversation I had with a senior law enforcement, a federal law enforcement official, it was a series of very unfortunate events that led to this guy’s killing, and it shouldn’t have happened, but it did. And look, this happens all the time, day to day. I mean, I’ve spent hundreds of hours writing with officers. They have a split second to make a decision, and waiting might lead them to go home in a body bag. So, again, we’re all Monday morning quarterbacks. Ooh, let’s freeze frame this and let’s slow this. And on top of everything else, you got the nightmare of AI. You got AI versions of this incident that are not helpful. Oh, haven’t you seen those? Oh, yeah, they’ve actually added a gun.
SPEAKER 03 :
Animations and…
SPEAKER 02 :
They’ve added a gun to the guy’s right hand. He was holding a camera. He wasn’t holding a gun. He had the gun in the waistband. They got the gun off his body. And then after they got the gun off his body, you can clearly see the officer with his gun in the officer’s hand. And then somebody yelled gun and blam, they fired away. Do you feel like…
SPEAKER 03 :
Do you feel like since we know like we know our own names that the moment those shots were fired, that the mob, and sadly the mob includes the mayor and the governor, that the mob was going to go, look, more Nazis, more evil Trump, more evil ICE, more of you that since they’re going to crank it up to 11. Do you feel like there was a psychological human nature thing on the part of some in the administration that says we better ramp it up similarly on the other side? We better categorize this guy not just as an unfortunate fool, but as a willful domestic terrorist. Do you feel like they just said, we’ve got to match him on the battlefield, fire for fire? Because that’s what got him in trouble over the weekend, because it just was not a good look.
SPEAKER 02 :
It’s hard to understand what they were thinking. I suppose that could be an explanation that they feel like they’ve got to come up with some kind of a defense. I wish, and here I am, a big mouth talk show host from right off the bat said, how about we all wait until the investigation is complete? And yes, there better be a false, not going to do what?
SPEAKER 03 :
No, the crazy left will not wait, will not be patient. And that’s why it’s a lot of heavy lifting to tell somebody.
SPEAKER 01 :
But that’s on them.
SPEAKER 03 :
It is, but it also means that our fear is that they will then win the narrative, win the news cycle, because there they are going, Nazis, Nazis, Trump’s the Antichrist, while we’re being so thoughtful. Which, by the way, is the right thing to be thoughtful, restrained, patient. But anyway, go ahead.
SPEAKER 02 :
And that’s what I said off the off the get go. And within an hour of this thing, I said, let’s be thoughtful, restrained and patient. Let’s wait until the investigation plays out. I mean, yes. Here’s the thing that’s also intriguing to me. I was talking to my boss driving into work, as I often do, Phil Boyce. And Phil and I were both commiserating over the fact that. that it’s not like these Border Patrol officers and ICE officers aren’t aware that their every move is being scrutinized. They know they’ve got thousands of cameras trained at them at any given moment. Maliciously, not just scrutinized. Oh, it’s weaponized. Maliciously. Of course, but they’re not unaware of it. And that’s another problem. But look, that’s what an NYPD officer goes through every day of the week. When they make an arrest on Times Square or on the Upper East Side or wherever they may be, they know chances are there’ll be a half a dozen people whip out their cell phones. And they chronicle that arrest. And so they have to be incredibly careful. They have to be incredibly smart. And they have to go above and beyond what they would probably normally do. Look, there was a day you fought with a cop. You got the snot beat out of you, period.
SPEAKER 01 :
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SPEAKER 02 :
That’s the way that goes. Those days are largely gone. I want to ask you about not only the reaction from Jacob Fry and Tim Waltz, but also media. Have you ever heard of Brian Taft from ABC6 in Philadelphia? Can’t say. You ever heard that name? I have not. He’s a news anchor, okay? His name is Brian Taff, T-A-F-F. You ought to see his Twitter site. I don’t know how he wound up on my Twitter feed. This guy is absolutely a crazed, far-left, Trump-hating… Law enforcement hating guy, which he has every right to be. He’s the news anchor for the ABC affiliate in Philadelphia. Great. I mean, you know, Ari Fleischer.
SPEAKER 03 :
wrote uh posted something on on x that said essentially look you can’t show up at a protest armed you got it blah blah blah it was a very reasonable take i saw it was exactly the reasonable way to be if you’re walking into a situation like this know that it’s tense if you attract negative attention from law enforcement you know make it clear you pose no threat etc etc and he did the opposite of that
SPEAKER 02 :
And Ari Fleischer isn’t exactly Candace Owens, okay? So he’s a pretty moderate, restrained guy, right? So you saw his post. Here’s the ABC News anchor of Philadelphia’s response on Twitter. utterly reprehensible but that’s your thing is it not possible in your world to acknowledge when something is simply wrong rather than to spin it in such a way to benefit your perceived side not everything has two equal sides unless you see the world in two dimensions now Again, anybody has an absolute right to that opinion. But doesn’t it strike you as bizarre that he’s the nightly anchorman on the ABC6 newscast?
SPEAKER 03 :
Listeners might say, no, that’s media. No, no, no. Mike’s right. This is a whole, whole nother level of treachery. Usually, if this is an MSNBC anchor or some reporter slides in something snide or one of the hosts of the morning shows, which we saw plenty of that. John McCain back in the day on Channel 8.
SPEAKER 02 :
It’s like, what? I know. I mean, evidently, they’ve decided to drop any pretense of objectivity from their anchorman in one of America’s biggest markets, Mark. I mean, can you imagine what the news coverage is like every night coming from his anchor desk?
SPEAKER 03 :
I can now.
SPEAKER 02 :
Think about that.
SPEAKER 03 :
You mentioned, so what did I mean by the silver lining? You and I were texting over the weekend and you’re very safe. This is going to be bad. This is going to be messy. When I say silver lining, I don’t mean something to make everything light and sprightly and wonderful. But if indeed in the result of some bad messaging, Trump makes clear that the messaging needs to be better. And we have a situation maybe of a shooting that we’re not all going to rally behind and say, 100% justified. We know it’s 100% justified. We don’t know that it’s not, but we don’t know that it is. That might earn us some objectivity points that Lord knows the left will never earn.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, perhaps. I saw your comments. I watched you closely over the weekend on social media. This, to me, is way bigger than a messaging problem. I don’t think this is about messaging. Look, they’re not going to go anywhere in Minneapolis. They’re not going to back down. Nor should they.
SPEAKER 03 :
Nor should they.
SPEAKER 02 :
No, no, no. I’m talking about the protesters.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right, okay. So I’m going to side with this because this is sort of the conversation of the day. I’ve heard five, six, seven people I respect, and you touched on it a little as just kind of a talking point. There’s a narrative that says, okay, Minnesota, we’re going to give you what you asked for. We’re pulling all of them out. We’re going to let the illegals run wild. Let you just bathe in the juice of your own crime. Happy now? It’s so satisfying to say that. And it’s a horrible idea.
SPEAKER 02 :
It’s a terrible idea because it’s mob rule wins. That means the mob gets to chase law enforcement. However, however, President Trump has an uncanny ability to pivot. I mean, look at Greenland. I mean, one moment it seemed like we were about to go in there guns blazing with tanks. And they said, wait a minute, I’m not going to take over Greenland. You know, there was a pivot there, whether you agree with him or disagree with him. He he he’s never going to surrender. He’s never going to say, oh, yeah, you win, blah, blah, blah. But he does have an ability to make some changes. I don’t know if you trust Eric Erickson’s source. Eric Erickson claims that he’s got a senior White House official who is saying that Trump is very unhappy with Kristi Noem. That was late last night that he posted out.
SPEAKER 03 :
Trump also had five, six chances over the weekend to say, totally clean shooting, everything’s fine, nothing wrong here.
SPEAKER 02 :
No, he didn’t say that.
SPEAKER 03 :
And he did not do it.
SPEAKER 02 :
He was asked. He was asked by the Wall Street.
SPEAKER 03 :
Which may speak volumes.
SPEAKER 02 :
He was asked by the Wall Street Journal apparently late last night, and he would not commit one way or the other. He said, look, there has to be an investigation. And look, the feds and the locals have to be on the same page. Well, these locals hate the feds.
SPEAKER 03 :
There’s the stupid Minneapolis police chief saying, well, we arrested 400 people last year, and we didn’t shoot anybody. And people wonder, and Fry and Walz wonder, why local Barney Fife is not allowed into this investigation. It’s because he’s an impediment. Do you think it’s a coincidence? 30 seconds, take us out. Governor Abbott, 805, so take us out.
SPEAKER 02 :
Gotcha. You think it’s any coincidence that Minneapolis is the only city where this is all happening?
SPEAKER 03 :
I mentioned that to Philadelphia, Memphis, New Orleans. Texas. They hate Trump and I. Well, Texas, at least we have some semblance of sanity or something around here, I like to think.
SPEAKER 02 :
But it’s not happening anywhere else. It’s only happening in lunatic.
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s not happening in Detroit or New York, for crying out loud.
SPEAKER 02 :
It’s not happening in Chicago.
SPEAKER 03 :
No.
SPEAKER 02 :
I mean, even so, there’s a story there. All right, hang in there. By the way, I’m sick as a dog. I hope you haven’t noticed. I mean, I’ve got allergies. out the wazoo disney’s castaway key has this island with trees and it was breezy and windy and sure enough here so i just tried a neti pot oh my lord that was a that was a catastrophe oh my gosh i got water coming out my eyes and my nose and my ears it didn’t work was that your first neti Oh, my Lord. That’d be my last. Never doing that again. All right. So happy Monday.
SPEAKER 03 :
There’s a visual. Thank you, Mike. It’s 10 o’clock. He’s going to rock.
SPEAKER 01 :
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