The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Colin Cowherd Podcast - Berhalter Out From USMNT, TNT NEEDS To Keep The NBA, Presidential Debate Fallout

Episode Date: July 11, 2024

Colin’s back from vacation with plenty of fresh takes! He starts by reacting to the news that USMNT coach Greg Berhalter has been relieved of his duties following an early round exit of the Copa America despite a young roster that hasn’t entered its prime (5:00). He implores TNT to make an aggressive bid to keep the NBA in order to keep the “Inside the NBA” crew of Shaq, Charles, Kenny and Ernie together AND to keep him as a consumer (9:00). He pushes back on criticism of USC football and dives into the reasons why NIL will make it difficult for USC to compete with the top teams in college football (21:00), and why Major League Baseball should lower the mound in order to make the game more exciting (27:30). Finally, he weighs in on the post-debate media firestorm surrounding Joe Biden staying in the presidential race and why the Democrats’ problem isn’t the coverage… it’s the candidate (31:00). (Timestamps may vary based on advertisements.) Follow Colin and The Volume on Twitter for the latest content and updates!  #Volume #HerdSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.

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It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast point game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was harmed. You just understood. That's how personal it got. Wow. Then after that game seven, Mark keep coming to him.

He's like, you know, I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHeart Podcasts presents soccer moms. So I'm Leanne. Yeah.

This is my best friend, Janet. Hey. And we have been joined at the hips since high school. Absolutely. A redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips. This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey.

With all the snacks and drinks. Why did you get hard salsa? instead of beer. Oh, they hit a bogo. Well, then you got them. Listen to soccer moms on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Volume.

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$20 entry fee required. Reward expires at contest lock on 9.524. See terms at draftkings.com slash DFS. All right, welcome in. I'm going to do a solo podcast for about 15 or 20 minutes. As you know, I took a long break, for me a long break, longest break of my career while I was under contract 17 days. A lot of it was FS1 management came to me about six months ago and said, there's going to be, you're going to get knocked off the air because of the Euros and Copa. about 75% of your show. So go take 15 days off.

And I decided to have a place out in Rhode Island, hung out near the beach with my wife. Daughter was out there for a while. Good friends from Los Angeles stopped by. We have really good friends out in Rhode Island. And it's my favorite little hiding place in America is in a small little town in Rhode Island. And I go on these long walks on the beach every day by myself.

Sometimes I put in a podcast, the earbuds, and sometimes I just talk to myself in the fog in the morning dogs everywhere. So it gave me a lot of time to think about a lot of things. First of all, I want to talk about Greg Burhalter just got relieved of his duties as the coach of the United States men's national team. You know, I've come to the realization two things about soccer fans in America. Number one, they have been ignored, right, compared to football, basketball, baseball, for years. So they have a little bit of a chip on their shoulder. they're not really interested in you joining the club.

And for guys like me who are traditionalists with the main sports, you know, it's very hard to get the VIP pass code to be let in. You're always having to prove your worth. Baseball fans become a little like this since baseball over the last 20 years has lost so much of its social currency. It's just not talked about like it used to be at the water cooler. And so if you ever have an opinion about soccer, you're an outsider, unless you're going to the matches and, you know, you have to prove your worth constantly. Here's all I know about Greg Burrhalter. Sixty-nine percent winning percentage, which is the

highest winning percentage of any United States match national team coach that has coached at least 20, 20 games. And remember, this is a guy that got to draw in the last World Cup to the final field of 16 with none of his top players in their prime. None. He had players getting close to their prime. Poo Lysik now is just entering his prime, but people will say, well, he's got more talent than ever. If you look at every sport, including soccer in the world, you win championships when you have an overwhelming majority of your best players in their prime. Chris Jones, Mahomes, Tyreek Hill, Travis Kelsey was middle to late prime when they started this run. That's the way it goes, right? Like, that's not to say you can't have players like a Brady who is older, a gronk who is older.

They have playoff experience. But generally, sports all work the same way. I mean, the Boston Celtics, Tatum in his prime, Jalen Brown in his prime, Derek White in his prime, Porzingis actually in his prime, although he misses a lot of time, Drew Holiday out of his prime, Horford out of his prime. But their top three players are arguably all in their prime. You know, when Denver won their championship, Yokic Prime, Murray Prime, Porter Prime, Gordon Prime, KCP, a little out of his prime, a little older.

So the United States Men's National Team is the most skillful we've ever had. But this World Cup will be the First World Cup, where we have a majority of our best players at the beginning of their prime. It's still a really young team. So go ahead, get rid of Greg Burhalter, but one of the reasons I've been critical of of the United States men's national team fans is because they always blame the coach. It doesn't matter who it is.

Yergen Cleansman, Bruce Arena, it's always blame the coach. It's always the coach's fault. The reality is this country has played mostly defensive and safe soccer most of my life because we have to. If we're hyper-aggressive against Argentina or Germany,

the Netherlands, England, we'd get roasted. I think for the first time ever, in the next two years, this World Cup team will have the ability to play top teams, England, and be equally aggressive. I think our skill is that good. The COPA performance was disappointing. I think we're better than most of the teams in COPA. So I understand the disillusion fan base. I get it.

But just know, 69% of the matches with a mostly overwhelmingly young roster just entering their prime, just over the next year to two, entering their prime, I thought he was pretty good. I did think Copa was disappointing. Two things can be true. So Greg Burholter is gone. Something else I think about is the NBA has finalized their deal with ESPN, NBC, and Amazon to get 76 million over 11 years. and listen, it's like people that overreacted to Bronny James going to the Lakers. You don't like LeBron.

I get it. I'm not looking for you to be honest. TNT has five days to match. I think the most interesting part of the NBA deal isn't ESPN, NBC or Amazon. It's TNT, who has, again, about a week to match or their 40-year relationship is over. So let me tell you, let's say you run TNT. I'm a consumer, and I think I'm your. typical sports consumer. If you let the NBA go, I can just tell you I'll never watch TNT again.

It'll just be one of those things I scroll past. That's the only reason I watch TNT. And the Kenny Smith, Barkley, Shack, Ernie show, I watch an hour before the game start and all often stay 30 minutes after the games are over if I'm not doing a podcast. So no NBA, I'm not watching for the Western Conference finals of the NHL. Because the Stanley Cup, watch. ESPN's got that. I'm not watching for, you know, an occasional early round baseball playoff series. Fox has the World Series. I'm not watching TNT. So if you ran TNT, would you rather sign the deal, keep me as a consumer, though you lose money on the deal, but you keep me watching your shoulder programming, your pregame show, your postgame show, seeing all sorts of ads,

promotions for other shows during your NBA coverage, or lose. me completely as a consumer. That's the decision TNT has. They're not going to make money on this deal. But you sign the deal to be able to promote other shows, try to expand how often I as a consumer am watching. Because I don't, I'm not going to watch TNT. It's over. I'm not watching for Mountain West football and early round baseball playoff series. It's over. I'm done as a consumer. And so, you know, it's very easy to say, well, they're going to lose money. All these network's going to lose money on the NBA. ESPN, because they're a current rights holder, doesn't have to market and promote the NBA as a new rights holder. NBC and Amazon have to go out

and spend so much money on marketing, promotion, hiring remote crews to ramp up, like, overspend early to pull in new audience. ESPN's got me. I know where the NBA is. So they have the benefit of being a current rights holder, an incumbent, if you will, in the political business, they're an incumbent. So I know what to expect. Don't have to love their coverage all the time. Love Mike Green, don't love most of the coverage, but I know what to expect and I know where they're on my TV or my phone, right?

And so that's the decision. That's why it's difficult. So ESPN does it because it's tonnage. It fills space. They can promote other shows, other leagues, other whatever. And they can use NBA highlights and they can put it on Scott Van Pelt after the games. and it helps so many ancillary parts of the coverage. That's an easy one for ESPN.

But for TNT, you know, they don't have me for anything other than that. And if they don't sign it, they lose me completely as a consumer. So I think these decisions are much more difficult than people think. Are you willing to sign up for something that you know is not going to be profitable? I at least keep you as a consumer. And maybe over the course of time, I can move you into another show. I can move you into other platforms that I'm connected to. That's the trick in it.

Listen, the NBA has challenges. It's getting very European, okay? And when you're international and you don't introduce consumers to players until they reach the professional level, it's a disadvantage. And something I've been on for years, and you know this, if you're honest, I have been banging on Adam Silver for years, who considers college basketball the enemy. the NFL understands the value of college football is that if you're only introducing fans to players, new players, once they arrive to the NBA, it's a huge, huge disadvantage.

College football introduces you to an Ohio statewide receiver for three years minimum. Okay, so you have some sort of connection with the player, some emotional connection. By the time he's an NFL player, you're buying his jersey. I have never understood the dogma, the anti-college basketball vibe I get from the NBA. Those of us with a social life don't watch the G-League. We don't watch it. So the bottom line is, like next year, Cooper Flagg at Duke. I can't wait to watch him.

At Duke goes to the G-League, I don't watch him. Goes overseas. I don't watch him. Most of us have a life. We're not sitting going on YouTube to watch Euro video. or G-League video. So Cooper Flag is going to go to Duke, is going to get connected to one of these shoe companies, and is absolutely going to move the television needle when he comes into the NBA.

If he goes to a reasonable team, you know, like if, remember, the worst team in the NBA generally doesn't win the lottery. If he goes to a team with some promising stars, the one thing I like, really like about the NIL in college is that I think it'll help college basketball. It makes college football just more of a top-heavy bidding war. It used to be a facilities issue. Now it's an NIL issue for the top teams. Not that many changes in the last 20 years in college football. You notice the Ohio states and the Georgia's and the Texas and the big school. They have all the money to. LSU is going to outbid people for top players. But I do think the NIL and college basketball will keep the Kansas guy around, the Yukon guy around, some of them for another year. So I have a stronger emotional connection. going into the NBA. I think it's a real thing. I mean, that's why Villanova guys are really, may not be stars, but are really powerful in the NBA because I watched them for three years in

college. I know who McHale Bridges is and Jalen Brunson is and Dante DiVincenzo. I watched them in college, Josh Hart for years. So like I have a little bit of a relationship. They don't even have to be stars in the NBA. I'm familiar with them. So I do think, I do think that the NBA is going through a very challenging time with all the European escalation to just more great players globally. I mean, the draft now is virtually, you know, the WNDA draft has players that can immediately, Caitlin Clark immediately come in and be productive culture changers. NBA has none of those. It's just, it's crazy. I watched the NBA draft for 30 minutes. I'm like, I have no real opinion on any of these players outside of the Connecticut guys. So hopefully the NIL keep,

a few, a handful of five or six really high-end players. I mean, Zach Eady. I know who he is. I'm excited to watch him in the NBA. I don't know what he's going to be, but I'll watch him. Football has always understood that. Hopefully the NBA can figure it out. Preparing for your upcoming fantasy football draft,

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Forever. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast, Point Game is about defining the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before.

And he knows, without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reed. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nass would get that thing.

That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers while he got the ball. Like, after you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Edwin Castro, also known as Castro 1021. And I'm Kunky, his best friend, and business manager. And we've got a new show called The 1021 Podcast.

I'm taking you behind the scenes on how I became one of Twitch's most popular streamers. We also love sports. And with the World Cup right around the corner, we'll be breaking down the biggest storylines ahead of the big tournament here in the USA. Listen to the 1021 podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. American soccer is about to explode. The World Cup is coming.

Ramos sending on to Ernie Stewart at the chip. I'm Ty Bramos. I'm Tom Bo. On our podcast, inside American soccer, you'll get the real storylines. I'm not worried about Polisic. I'm not worried about Balagan. I'm not worried about McKinney. My only concern is what happens in the back.

The biggest decisions. If you're going to look at stats and numbers, he has no shot at making this World Cup team. And the truth about the U.S. national team. It wouldn't be a huge surprise if our team ends up in the quarterfinals or potentially a great run into the semifinals. The World Cup is almost here.

Experience it all with us. Listen, Inside American Soccer with Tom Bogart and Tab Ramos on the IHeart Radio app, podcast wherever you get your podcast. Something else I thought about on the sports side. So I recently got an email from a friend who said, what do you make of Paul Feinbaum? He's a radio broadcaster that covers mostly, well, the SEC,

a lot of Bama talk bashing Lincoln Riley and USC. He said he doesn't believe that Lincoln Riley, it's over. It's a sinking ship. Well, I think a lot of things about it. first of all, if I recall, Finebaum was anti-Jim Harbaugh until the very, very end. So what? I mean, if you really, really don't think Jim Harbaugh, who had a successful NFL career, Nick Saban and Steve Spurrier and the SEC did not. If you don't think Jim Harbaugh can coach, what do you want me to say? I mean, sorry, he can. He's great everywhere. San Diego, Niners, Stanford, Michigan. He's going to be great here.

I think people forget it took Harbaugh a long time because he inherited such a mess. He had to change the culture. Brady Hoke, I mean, I could remember watching games at Michigan. There were 30,000 empty seats. People forget how bad USC was when Lincoln Riley took it over. They were foreignate and Lincoln Riley told people, I mean, it was understood. 40 to 50 of the 80 players couldn't play. The roster was terrible.

Now, he has the benefit of the transfer portal, which has been energized, but you can't create chemistry in a year. So if they beat too lame and they led with about a minute to go, he would have gone from four and eight to 12 wins with a really bad defensive staff and a really bad defensive roster. Pretty impressive because his first two years in the PAC 12 have been the best the Pact 12's been in 20 years. And Caleb Williams and Lincoln Riley produced the number one offense in the country. Without outside of Caleb Williams and Jordan Addison, any NFL guys have

known, like college guys. That's it. That's pretty impressive. But I think this year's fascinating for USC. They get a bit of a break. UCLA and Michigan are in total rebuilds. They don't play the best two teams, Oregon and Ohio State. That's a huge break. LSU is probably a loss, but they have a capable defensive staff, upgrades in the secondary, won't be as good at quarterback, but it'll be a more Lincoln Riley driven team, less of a Caleb Williams driven team, which is not all bad. Caleb sort of his last year morphed in. It was a Caleb offense, not a Lincoln Riley offense. He'll kind of reclaim that. I think, much like Harbaugh, people didn't understand how big the rebuild was at Michigan. It took, people don't know how big the rebuild was for Brian Kelly.

It wasn't until the last two games he played against Georgia. It wasn't that first time he got to the national championship. That was Fool's Gold. It took him nine years, eight, nine years. It took Harbaugh, seven, eight years to really get the quality of upper class talent where Michigan could go toe to toe with Ohio State and in Georgia and in Alabama. This is the beginning for Lincoln. Riley. This is the beginning. We forget. Davo Sweeney at Football Center at Clemson. He needed like

three years to get it going. People forget. Go to Nick Saban at LSU. It wasn't, they didn't hit it out of the park. Go to his fourth year at LSU. There were a lot of losses. Sabin at Alabama, the number one football program in the country, made it look really easy. It's generally not. Even with the transfer portal, it takes a lot of time. And USC was a wreck. So I think Lincoln Riley's going to be fine. The other thing that doesn't get discussed a lot, and it's totally legal, is that Phil Knight has basically said, as he ages, what do you need? And Oregon buys any Southern California football player out of high school they really want. They get. They just buy him. And it's a little icky, but it's the reality of what Oregon does now.

I'm not criticizing them for it. But as Phil Knight has aged, it's become very clear. that he's going to spend whatever it takes in NIL. And USC's NIL program is not terrible. Their collective is about $12 million a year. But that's not what Oregon is spending or Texas or Georgia or Ohio State. I don't know if USC or UCLA, but USC is the bigger brand has the stomach for the NIL. This is not Norman, Oklahoma. It's not Auburn, Alabama.

It doesn't drive discussion. People have lives. Even if you're a USC fan, you probably like the Rams and the Lakers and the Dodgers. There's a lot of options here. This is not a one-horse town. So do you have the stomach? Do the boosters have the stomach to keep putting millions of dollars into a program that wins 10 games and not national championships? When Pete Carroll was winning Natty's USC, no NFL.

Now there's two teams. There was no SoFi Stadium. The Dodgers were good. They weren't this consistently good. The clippers were a mess. Now they're viable. MLS is in town. Silicon Valley economy.

People have more money, more options. They bail more quickly. So it's a different Los Angeles. Now you not only, until this year, pre-12 team playoff, you've got to win more games to get to the national championship. The Pac-12 is better now. So it's a much different game. I think Lincoln Riley is going to be okay. But this is not an elite NIL program right now.

They have the best athletic. director and the best guidance Jen Cohen they've ever had. I think Lincoln Riley's really smart, but Oregon's swooping in and buying the best players on the West Coast. Not to mention, Bama is still a big name, Ohio State Michigan now, seeping in, stealing top recruits. It's a big lift for USC. It's a really big lift. I think they'll be better than people think, but the idea that Lincoln was going to swoop in and they were going to win Natties, this program was a tire fire, four and eight, with really no. no great players. First year, the two best players, Caleb Williams, Jordan Addison, both transfers.

That just was not anything of note here. Battle lines, no interior, great defensive linemen. It was not USC. I will say this, I was, when I have time to not be on the treadmill of sports, it gives me more time to read, which I love. And it gave me, and there's something about baseball, where I like reading about baseball more than I generally like watching baseball, the exception being a great postseason matchup. But, you know, I'll go and get, I'll deep dive on baseball stats. And I think it's fascinating. And I used to be a, and my first job out of college was a baseball announcer. So, you know, you just, you kind of get into the statistical, the math of baseball. And I, you know, I always kind of find it interesting is that baseball, because of its rich history, tends to be a little

paralyzed by it and they're slow to make moves. It is remarkable now to watch how few baseball players can hit. Only 12 current baseball players last count hit over 300 in the whole sport. It's insane. It's Otani. It's Aaron Judge. It's Mookie Betts. You know, big names you'd expect. But I think there is a solve to the problem because the game's faster now. The attendance is up. The ratings are slightly up. And I think the solve is to lower the mound, which baseball did in the late 60s, and that was sort of the Bob Gibson era. You just couldn't hit Gibson. So they lowered the mound, like, I think, a half a foot. And I think baseball's always been so reluctant. You know, it took them forever on replay or the pitch clock. It just takes them a long time because they're

very much tied to their history. Lower the mound six inches. Give batters a shot. because I will tell you over the course of the 17 days I was gone and I flipped on the TV, the game moves very swiftly. I remember, and this happened when I lived in Connecticut, so my wife built a workout room downstairs, and that's where I would go every day, and that's where I would watch baseball, usually Nesson or the Yes Network, Red Sox, or Yankees. I got both on my cable service.

And there was a moment in time, I remember, it was the Red Sox playing the Blue Jays in Toronto. And it was like fifth or sixth inning. And I went down and I usually do about a 45 to a 50 minute lift. That's it. Then I'm gone. And I remember this day particular. It was like the fifth or sixth inning.

And the Blue Jays, I think, were at the plate. And I did my workout 45 minutes. And it was like the start of the fifth inning. And by the time I was done with my workout, it was just going to like the sixth. It'd been like an inning in one batter that it lasted like 45 minutes. And I wouldn't have watched the game had I not worked out. But I remember thinking at the time, God, this is agony. This is painful.

That you can't, and hockey knows this, it's really hard to have a business with only diehards watching. You need casuals. I mean, my wife knows a little about the NFL. She's very much a sports casual, but she understands the NFL. She can name many of the teams and the star players. is that baseball pre-pitch clock had no casuals, very few casuals. It's actually pretty fun to watch now if you get the right teams and the right matchups. But there are, I mean, the hitters are overwhelmed.

There are a lot of quick at bats. Now, for me, I don't have the patience with my iPhone to sit and watch four-hour games. But if the quality and the energy, if I'm getting action, I'll stick around. No matter how fast a sport is, there's got to. be action. You can go through three innings and see a hit, a single. It's not enough action. And the way to solve, it's pretty easy. Lower the mound, six, eight inches, give the batters a fighting chance, and it won't just be Shohei Otani and Aaron Judge that can hit. Something else that jumped out to me, and I don't talk a ton of politics, but I mean, Jesus,

when I was gone for 17 days, all anybody talked about was the debate. You know, one of the things that is really interesting to me, and I've been offered political shows before on radio, and it just, It's sort of a joy sapping experience. I like sports. I like the drama. I like, waking up every day. And there's a new game, a new drama, a new storyline, and you can build a new narrative. The idea of having to cover the same political story for six months on end, I just, I think is just the thief of joy. I think it would just, it'd be tedious. I don't want that life. But it was really interesting. I had this discussion with a friend. And I said, you know, politics and sports and business are all.

very similar. I mean, a political race, race, it's a business. It's the minute you're elected, you're raising funds. And in my business, sports has always been a little political and it's absolutely a business. That's why the NFL is pulled away from the other leagues. It just understands that. It was fascinating to watch the coverage. We know Joe Biden has struggled, especially the last couple of years with a lot of verbal gaffs, the staring, you know, the look we've seen from grandparents we love. But it's been fascinating to watch not only the coverage, which I think has been very fair and even-handed, but the outrage by Democrats with the coverage of CNN, Jonathan Stewart, and Brian Stettler, and Chuck Todd, and the New York Times. So my entire life,

I've been sort of an independent that leans right on business and left on social issues. But I've always understood that over 70% of people in the media are Democrats, and it absolutely bleeds into the coverage. I think on average Democrats get more favorable coverage than conservatives. Now, some of that's earned, like climate change denial on the right is doing you no favors. Like every week, there's a record in Palm Springs, Vegas, everywhere. the storms are getting nastier, the heat's getting more oppressive. So sometimes I do look at conservatives and roll my eyes when they come across often as anti-science. Be that as it may.

I do think Democrats get more favorable coverage. But you can't trust, you know, the White House doesn't have a lot of credibility right now anytime they talk about Biden. But what's fascinating has been to watch the Democrats, the liberal elites, react to the coverage. once you start complaining about the coverage and not the content of your politician, which conservatives do a lot of, you're cooked. And I'm telling you as an independent, I've appreciated CNN's coverage and Brian and Chuck Todd and Jonathan Stewart. I've actually appreciated it. I think it's been right down the middle.

it has been appropriately harsh on Joe Biden. Listen, when you come out and you cover the White House and you say you're surprised by his lack of mental acuity, I can't take you seriously. Do you not have an iPhone? I can't take you seriously. And so watching kind of the liberal elites criticize the coverage is something that is painful and fatiguing. I've watched the right do for years.

And it makes me think as somebody who I view myself as an independent. I don't like Trump at all. But I view myself mostly as a political independent. It makes me think when you get the favorable coverage, the favorable lean for years, you're overreacting. You're picking on the wrong people. The media is imperfect. We know that. Hasn't been a great year.

I don't think necessarily for the New York Times. it's not about the coverage. It's about the candidate and the problems. And listen, Joe Biden, if he refuses to step down, this is what you get. I don't think that's very promising. I don't think Donald Trump with more immunity from the Supreme Court is a great thing. But it's been fascinating to me to watch the attack of the coverage, which I view is incredibly fair given the current state of Joe Biden. It feels fair to me. Maybe I'm wrong. But I don't feel as somebody in the media and somebody who's mostly moderate, left-leanor social, right-leanor fiscal, I don't feel it's been outrageous. Jake Tapper's asked hard questions. I do think the media feeling they've been lied to has a little chip on their shoulder, but that's okay. I can deal with a little of that, right?

there's been a lot of chips on the shoulder of media for years. Sometimes they felt, in my opinion, a little dogmatic, a little unfair to the right. Now they're bringing the sledgehammer on Biden. It feels right to me. It feels appropriate. I think the simple explanation, what has happened to the Democrats, is that there is no more pressurized job in America than president. It ages you. And for an example, go look at President Barack Obama's inauguration and how youthful he looks and look eight years later. He has a head of gray hair and he was in his prime politically. Joe Biden was always, by any reasonable measure, a one-term president with some cognitive

decline apparent going in to that one term. And the Democrats got caught flat-footed. You didn't really start to notice it until about late year two of his presidency. But the last two years, it's ugly and it's sad. And we've all seen this before. And the Democrats come off as ill-prepared and not prepared and getting caught flat-footed. It's not about the coverage. It's not about CNN.

It's not about Bill Maher. It's about Joe Biden. It's a candidate issue, not a coverage issue. The volume. Thanks so much for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, take a moment, rate, and review. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends.

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