A damning new report in the Detroit News shows Governor Whitmer and her administration knew that the nursing homes were a cesspool of covid infections. And yet they kept shipping the sick and elderly to the homes where healthy people lived.
They hid the proof for 3 years. But we already knew, didnt we?
More Whitmer scandal?
We reported accurately last week that Whitmer’s campaign — after a tilt-a-whirl of excuse making and money shifting — paid for her private jet trip to Florida at the height of the pandemic.
Whitmer’s pillow-fluffers are calling for a correction that they shall not receive. Produce evidence that the check was cashed, madam.
What kind of man wears a lab coat in his living room at ten o’clock at night?
A Whitmer campaign volunteer spewing talking points about a failed nursing home strategy- that’s who.
And Charlie’s profile in Hour Detroit Magazine. The big take-away: “a Whitmer aide told me later, they certainly weren’t going to risk her talking to LeDuff.”
If you’re afraid of little ‘ole LeDuff how will you talk to Putin?
Or will you dodge his calls too?
Transcript:
We now take you live to Tallahassee for this exclusive announcement from Chief Petronis. Sir, the floor is yours.
Dear Governor Whitmer, with recent media reports that you and your chief operations officer separately visited the great state of Florida, I want to take the liberty to provide you and your whole entire team materials from Visit Florida, our state’s official marketing brand for future visits. Included with this letter, I’ve attached a summary of a promotional materials to help plan your next visit as both you and your coo know from personal experience, Florida is safe for travel with over 8 million Floridians fully vaccinated. Unlike a lot of other states, Florida is safe and open for business. The fact that Florida has a lower mortality rate than other lockdown states like New York. Indeed, our governor successfully balance the coronavirus with keeping our small businesses open. No doubt, many of your fellow Michigans have traveled to the Sunshine State this year and we proudly welcome them. Moreover, like yourself, many of your constituents have loved ones in the state of Florida that they have not seen in some time. I know members of your team are telling you, downplay your recent trip to Florida. Don’t listen to them. Now that you and your COO have personally experienced what the Sunshine State has to offer, I encourage you to share your experiences, share them publicly. And moreover, however, come back frequently. Sincerely, Jimmy Petros, chief Financial Officer, state of Florida,
Hi downtown Detroit. It’s no
Assistant breaking this Dobo bullshit. Dobo bullshit.
That’s right. Look at that. Mark’s already killing the show. One little glitch and you’re already frowning. That’s what I do best.
What? Frown or create a glitch?
Turn that frown upside down Mark. We got a hell of it. Show. Hello, governor. I know what you did. I know what you did. Now everybody remembers last week we’re talking about the Attorney General Dana Nestle and her private Caribbean getaway with the prominent attorney, right, who paid the bills. Bills. Yep. Well, here’s what I come to find out. It’s not Nestle complaining to the publisher of the Detroit News, and it’s not Nestle complaining to the editorial page director of the Detroit News. It was Whitmers camp. Really? Whitmer. Wow. Whitmers Camp wanting a correction and wanted shit pulled out of the story. She basically wanted to do the old school shadow ban and it had to do it to airplane. One little paragraph at the end. I’m going to read it. Governor. We’ll, we’ll get this straight. Hey, bring that music out of there please.
Thank you. It reads, speaking of airplanes, it happens that Gretchen Whitmer was entitled to the free jet ride she took to Florida at the height of the pandemic. But even Whitmer knew the optics of mooching a free jet were, which she did were so bad that she opted to charge the freight to her campaign fund. The problem is the businessmen who owned the jet are not legally entitled to accept money because their airplane isn’t federally registered as a charter business. Right now, they’re complaining that I made it sound like she took a free jet ride,
But she did.
No, I wrote it. No, her campaign, if you go to the campaign filings, wrote a check
For
The
Airplane after you made brought attention to it.
Right? Okay. And they have an excuse for that, which is we had planned all along. In fact, before we even flew, we made an arrangement, but it took months and LeDuff finally out, not force to actually write the check,
But if the aircraft isn’t registered as a freight, is that able to be written officer
As a charter?
As a charter
Raise it. Well, now that’s what the story say. You’re not getting a correction. The story’s asking, and I’m just asking since you made it a public issue, did the businessmen cash the check? That’s that’s all. I mean, simple. Let’s, let’s finish the story. Did the businessmen cash the check? Show us the cash
Check. But even if they cashed the check and it’s not certified or authorized as a charter, then it can’t be applied for that trip. So
I just as I understand it,
Okay, that’s what I’m saying. As it was
Very good journalism by Paul ETT at the free press to figure out the FAA is like, wait a minute, your 5 0 1 [inaudible] [inaudible] your campaign fund, your charity. Right? Can’t do it. Can’t pay for it. So it stands to reason I would think. And with my talkings with the faa, I’m pretty sure, but the question’s still open. Can your campaign actually pay a non-charter jet for the flight? So it’s real simple, madam, since you brought it up and we’re all wondering now it’s a matter of public interest. Did they cash the check way to make the call? You know what I would do with these dummy millennials that she got around ’em doing tweeting and communications? I catch shit can ass. Yeah,
That’s, you guys are
Dopes.
Well, they don’t understand strategy. They don’t understand fact. They understand perception and presentation and that’s it. Because my thing, Charlie, and I know you may not agree, even if they cash the check, the money can’t be applied to that if they aren’t authorized to take it as a charter. Well, again, that’s my point. Well,
Right, and I’m saying I’m not I
Got you. I’m
Only asking, right? Oh, that what you’re saying? It’s a little confusing to me. Maybe they can, okay,
You’re asking. I got it.
Maybe. So show us us the check now why would you get all shitty and Ben, remember the story got posted at eight o’clock on a Tuesday and you don’t start calling till Friday morning. So why?
Somebody said something.
Yeah, I wonder from where because six weeks ago I compared you to Trump, right? Campaign filings and da da da da. You didn’t get Ben out of shape then during the election last year. You didn’t get bent out of shape when we were doing it. So what could be happening? Why are they seeing Gretchen Whitmer commercials at N B A playoff games up on the jumbotron? What could possibly be going on now after a few calls, particularly about a dozen, here’s the layout. Governor, are you being vetted for the cabinet for Joe Biden’s cabinet? And Washington gets a whiff of this and goes, holy shit, you got a Clarence Thomas thing going on. Could it be that? Could it be if sleepy Joe doesn’t make it through that you’re gearing up? Could it be that?
Oh yeah. Yeah, I would think so. I mean, remember she was chasing after him for the VP nomination, so everybody is setting up for their next position.
She’s always been concerned too more about her national image as opposed to her image here. And what I mean by that is look at all the national interviews she does and look how many local interviews she does in the state. Yeah, few and far between.
So let’s see if she go, it will make sense to be going to the cabin and getting vetted because she was vetted in 2019, but that was pre Covid, right? And her whole record and it’s not a good record. And we’re going to explain that to you, to the nursing home debacle. Her whole record is predicated on the covid response and it’s not going to fly once people really look at her and not just happy to be hanging around. It’s not going to stand. And the airplane’s a bad, bad look. It was really
Bad. It is. Especially when there’s so much conversation about gifts and reporting and ethics and perception and appearance of impropriety.
Now you’re right. Now if she’s making a run or I think more concretely something in the cabinet, so the B listers can come in, freshen up Washington for Biden, and once you’re a cabinet secretary, that’s basically free campaigning for the president a year and a half on our dime. Pretty much. So if she goes, who becomes governor?
Do we say it? Yeah. Yeah. Is
This rhetorical? No, no.
I know. I was like, is this a trick question?
Do the math. Who becomes governor?
Well, Charlie, as you know, Doug had already had a huge
Fundraiser. It’s a simple answer. Who becomes governor if
Who’s going to run for governor? No,
The lieutenant governor who
Becomes, oh, the lieutenant governor if she leaves pro early. Right.
Okay. And who is that?
That is Garland Gilchrist.
Yes. Garland bum mo bumbling Garland. He slides in there. The home renovator, right? The home renovator. He he’s young. He’s African American. That’s historic. Okay. So if he’s already the incumbent, let’s say, then that’s big. Fuck Rita, who
Dug? Yeah, but I’m telling you Charlie, there, there’s so many chess pieces in this whole political game with that. The stabile thing, the governor piece, the appointment, the mayor, they’re already polling calls going out asking about potential mayoral candidates. So it’s a lot of moving pieces. If only,
If only they
Spend as much time on governing. I know, but don’t everybody’s planning on their next position, their next elections. Yeah. Could
You like it’s Speaker McCarthy’s meeting with Biden, right? To talk about the ceiling, the IPAs, the budget, and the debt ceiling. And one of the things I think is smart is other Republicans are like a claw back and all of those billions of unspent covid dollars. If Doug Biden agrees to that, this state is fucked and this city is fucked because if you really look at what they’ve been doing, it was a whole lot of nothing. Duggan becomes a mayor. When the emergency man journals him 150 million slush fund, all the debts erased, right? Whitmer couldn’t get a budget together. You remember pre Covid that she couldn’t get a budget through. Then Covid happens, the receipts go down and he sends billions. They didn’t have to do any tough governing. Nope. That just watch it go. Is that why y’all pissed off? Because it’s not getting pulled and it’s correct. So give us the check. And if you do run, there’s all kinds of stuff like this one
Here in Michigan. We sacrifice and do the right thing for our fellow Michigans. When Governor Whitmer mandated we cancel vacations and weddings to help stop Covid 19. We did it when forced to visit our loved ones through glass windows. As hard as it was, we listened. If however, you are the governor and you really want to see your family in Florida because we all miss our families, then go ahead and if you get caught, just lie, if the governor says no spring break this year, then that goes for all of us. Except of course, if you are the person in the governor’s office who is in charge of vaccine distribution and needing a girl’s trip to Florida, then have a good time. Don’t worry about failing to fill out the state’s vaccine order, missing the deadline to get an additional 360,000 doses during a massive covid surge. Your tan will be on point this summer. And as much as we all want to get a condo in sunny Gulf Shores, Alabama, we should heed Witmer’s advice unless you are her public health director. Then voyage, remember Michigan, we are all in this together. We play by the rules unless you are Governor Whitmer or work for Whitmer. And in that case, play by your own rules. Pure hypocrisy, pure.
But Charlie and everybody knew about this and people were still just e E. Even if it’s somebody that you like. I mean they were just, oh, that was no big deal. That was wrong. You know that wasn’t wrong. How do you overlook? I mean, I believe in being objective and dealing with facts. If you do something wrong, I’m going to say, Charlie, that was wrong. Regardless, I would be a foolish of
I’m
Sorry you’d be fired. Yeah, I mean, but I’m saying it. Some things are just definitive, but yet still her supporters just were passive and overlooked it.
Go ahead, be supporters. I don’t forget. You know what I mean? I’ll do it later, but my daughter’s asking me what my political stance is and I, it’s all confused and we’ll do that a little bit later. First, I want to encourage you all, if you can’t get down to American Coney Island, go online and get a Coney kit, have ’em delivered to you. It’s barbecue season. And do not boil these hotdog. They have lamb casing tender. It’s sort of like, what’s the difference between a sausage
A
And a a kiba? The kobasa has cow intestine, right? It’s the casing because it’s very hard. These dogs have lamb. That’s why they’re flaky. So how do you flay on
Snap? So how do you prepare them?
You grill them, okay, yeah. Perfect for grilling. And then you get how many, what is that, a pound, how much? It’s chili, pound and a half of chili proprietary chili. The steamer buns, the vi Dahlia onion and the cute little hat. You just go to american coney island.com, right? And if you’re having trouble getting online to order it, you call XG service group because there’s something going wrong
With your
Wifi. With your wifi. They do wifi, V O I P, phone service security cameras hidden. All of it. Yep. Yep. Good guys. All of it. Yeah. They’re busy wiring up train tracks right now and maybe a golf course. They’re doing cameras. They do construction cam, everything. Everything. You structured cable, they redid Drew’s Drew’s
House, married to Drew’s. I know a person who could not get internet where they lived further up north in Oakland County and he managed to do it with no one else could. So
By a bing. That’s all you got to do is call Matt Yaz at (734) 245-4100. And of course, as always, ad R experience competent. Reduce your costs, increase your bottom line. I was going to have him on because now I can say it. Oh, we’re going to have him on. Hey Duggan, we’re going to have him on. Barry Ellen Tuck was in charge of the demolition for the state and he was doing a fantastic job till he noticed shit wasn’t being done legally. That’s true. Blew the whistle. And then he got charged. You know what? He jury came back two hours later and that included lunch. Get the fuck out of here. The guy is good. He’s competent. He has overseen more than a quarter billion dollar in private construction projects. We will have ’em on it’s time. Mike, we’re coming the truth. Shall I set you free, right?
That’s it. Hey, Whitmer, give us the check if only. Hey, Duggan, a couple million more dollars and fines are coming, don’t you Y all do. Hi John as truth, get ready for it. All right. Now, we were right about the airplane. We were right about the Turks and Ca os getaway for the attorney General. We were right about the demolition in the dirt. How many thousands of holes got poisoned? Shit in there? We’re going to find out. We’ll get there. And now, nursing homes. Nursing homes. I don’t know. I really encourage everybody if you care about this stuff and it’s not over for you, that you go to Craig Magar in the Detroit News last week, two part series about the nursing homes. This is a fuck. This is important.
Very extensive, very detailed, exhaustive report.
Yes. He asked for all the complaints against the nursing homes, right? The 450, so federally licensed that the state inspects for the feds, right? So he asked for the first three months of the pandemic, march through May, 2020 by state law, the Freedom of Information Act. The state has three weeks to fulfill that request. He got them three years. Three years. Wow. Later. Now we can all guess as the why, right? I know why. Yeah, they want to give it right period out of sight, out of mind. It’s over. Forget about, forget a think of a human being, somebody you love who caught covid and can’t breathe and is struggling to live and they’re locked away and you can’t even see them. We locked our kids away to protect the old people who we locked away by
Themselves
And they died in the darkness. Now, okay, so what did he find? Michigan nursing homes. This is at the beginning of the right, repeatedly failed early in the pandemic to isolate patients with covid 19. Even though we had hubs and they assured us they were isolating them, they failed to provide minimum levels of care, it’s minimum levels of care, and did not disclose infections of covid in the facilities when they occurred. Now, something particular, like in Ludington, a nursing home staff member was forced to work with 101 degree fever walking around, spreading this right in Detroit. One facility was so short staffed that patients were left to themselves just locked away, nobody looking after ’em. And at that same facility, only about half the staff had personal protection equipment while a worker complained they were continuing to bring in covid 19 people. This was the strategy.
So they were cross contaminating. But remember the guy that we talked to that worked in the nursing home that said that they were not separating, they were not doing none of the things that they were supposed to do. Poly the porter. Very simple stuff. Yeah.
Poly the porter or one of the engineers at tcf, and what a big fucking boondoggle that was. And nobody ever used it. Not one or the head nurses blowing the whistle at the hubs. They’re lying about the deaths. Yeah, right.
Or the body collector. When I went into the nursing homes with them, it was nothing but plastic sheets and we were getting this bullshit. This is fantastic. And what did, here, I pulled it up. I’m never, I’m going to fucking forget this. When the legislature finally got their power back and they voted to have infected old people in their own facility and not put ’em in the same building because a shower curtain is not going to stop, vetoed it and said the false, this legislation was based on the false premise that isolation units created within these facilities are somehow insufficient to protect seniors. Huh? They lied about it all,
You think?
Yeah. He lied about it all.
Yeah. And Charlie, you said if you have a loved one or whatever, this touch touches and should concern everybody whether you have a senior in your family. I mean, it’s just the overall handling that should braze a level of concern that should touch everybody. Yeah. Regardless.
Yeah. And here, Nestle’s not going to investigate. Did we get that?
No. She said she wasn’t. Yeah.
This is Dana Nessel one year ago, the keynote speaker, the morning breakfast speaker at the nursing home, lobbyists and CEO’s breakfast. This is Dana Nessel refusing to look into what the fuck we known all along and listen what she says to the nursing home,
And I’m just tired of hearing it regurgitated over and over and over again. That terrible things happen at your facilities. It’s not true.
Even
They didn’t want to clap. You’re
Like, oh shit. What?
Even they didn’t, Charlie, that’s the thing. The nursing homes were substandard prior to Covid o. I mean, anybody that’s ever gone anywhere, just unless you were paying in one of the higher end places where you’re paying five or $6,000 a week, any average nursing home was substandard. We talked to some people that indicated that inspections were few and far between, if ever at all. So everybody was just kind of there living on their own accord and self-policing.
Yeah. Self. We all know that numbers were fake and they knew these weren’t the real numbers and
Making money. Remember, even in Craig’s story, one of the facilities the year before posted, what, $3 million in revenue. I mean, so they’re making money, but they’re not providing the service that they’re being paid for.
And they were induced by money to take covid people in. Exactly. And they had no ability to stop the spread of infection. We also know, now here’s the governor. Well, I never follow through on that order requiring everybody to set up a covid hub. Well, yeah. Just for shorthand math. Yeah, you did. They were called the hubs. That was the one, the overflow, like you, of the 21 hubs, it was 10 or 11. It was about half got failing grades by the feds for infection protocols. They were like given one star or two out of five. They were fucking dumps, right? Yeah. Then this is online. I found it. They were inspecting in the summer when Craig’s writing about that. The May and the June. Right. Half of those places flunked, flunked the infections during Covid. I’m
Not surprised.
This is fucking outrageous.
I’m not surprised, Charlie. If you talk to anybody that has a friend, a parent, a loved one in a nursing facility in Detroit or in the surrounding areas, down river is full of them. They’re all dumps. They have been,
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that they’d probably still fail today. I’m
Sure. Yeah, I’m sure they were. I’m
Sure they’ve done a lot of work getting them up today.
And the in never happened. And incentivizing the taking the Covid patients is something nobody wants to talk about. And it is at every level. They were getting paid for that. Remember the guy, I don’t want to call ’em an undertaker, the guy, the picking body, collector body. No, that sounds right. But from the funeral homes, they were financially incentivized. I mean, the whole thing was financially in incentivized. Yeah. You
Got 5,000 for taking a patient, $200 a day for having ’em there.
Exactly.
Five. Right? That’s how that worked. Now, Nessel says she’s not going to investigate, right? Because she remember Cuomo went down and it was the New York State Attorney General that took ’em down. Right? She found out they were under counting the bodies. Turns out Michigan was under undercounting. The bodies worse than New York
Because Whitmer was following his plan. Remember? She was almost following it to the
Letter. Remember Cuomo stopped doing it in May of 2020. She didn’t know what to do. Right? Oh, shit. We’re doubling down. Yeah. So Nestle famously said, well, I talked to the ag of New York, and it’s different because in New York there was a whistleblower within Cuomo’s administration that said he’s faking the data, which is a lie. The way it happened was Cuomo himself told the Attorney General to open up a complaint hotline because what Cuomo wanted to do was get the pressure off himself and say, look, I wrote the executive order and they didn’t follow at these nursing homes I told you to have personal protection equipment, stuff like that. So she opens up the hotline and lo and behold, after the election, she drops a fucking brick on it. She fucked over her own political patron. Right? Leticia James. And then Cuomo goes down. So there was no whistleblower. And number two, because I know people in la Leticia James’ in inner chamber, they don’t remember you calling Madam. They don’t remember you calling. Can you provide the phone record, please? Because that would seem odd that the right hand people of the attorney General don’t remember you calling.
They’re so good at providing records. That phone record is with the cash check from the trip to Florida. Yeah.
We want an investigation. And you know what else we want? The nursing homes are like you said, they’re still garbage. Like they are. We got billions of dollars. But how many of ’em put in a new HVAC system to suck when the next one comes? Covid 25? Have we learned nothing? Do we have no new strategy?
Nobody cares to her there be someone else’s problem. Oops. Sorry. They don’t
Care. I’m sorry. My daughter said she’s looking online like, pop, she, are you a conservative? I go, I don’t know. I’m an old man. I, she goes, you like a libertarian? And I go, I say to her, I go, no, no, no, no. Listen, did you learn about the 1968 Democratic convention in school? And she goes, what are you talking about? And I go, I was barely alive. It was the Democrats, all the silk suits arguing over, is it going to be McCarthy? Is it Humphrey’s? Who’s it going to be? They C because Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. Right? And Richard Daley balding, sour face, cheap suited machine boss of Chicago, much like Mike Duggan here. I
Was going to say, wow, that sounds, they
Really do look remarkably alike. When you look at these old clips, they had the blue Helmeted police, the National Guard. They were point M sixteens at pro. Basically, the hippies were out there, right? Sort of the far left. The doves, the whiskers and the beads and stuff. At that time, the majority of Americans supported Vietnam. But as these people in the streets proved to be right, it was so wrong on so many levels. The government lied. And why you roll? Oh, I can’t hear the noise. We’re doing Zeig, hele to the police and the whole world is watching. This is Gustapo book, bringing in the buses in the snow plows and watch them start gassing them and beating.
Yeah, Martin,
Martin Luther King was assassinated there.
There’s, we’re such a violent
Country, Bobby Kennedy, we really are. Look at this. So I say to my daughter, I go, I’m not the ones in the blue helmet and I’m not the one in the silk suits. I go, they were journalists, clergy, everyday people, older people, black, white, they were all there getting the shit be. I said, I’m, I’m there. So you tell me what I am.
What did she say?
She went off and started watching it. I go, there’s a whole documentary called Vietnam by Ken Burns is brilliant. 10 part if you’re looking for something to watch. And I don’t know. I said, that was organized by students from Ann Arbor, Tom Hayden. And I said, I went to Ann Arbor for undergrad, and in the same year there were riots in Berkeley, California at University of California. And I went, and you went there. I went to Berkeley and I spent a dozen years working in Manhattan in Times Square at the New York Times. So if I’m a conservative, I sure spent a lot of time trying to figure out the liberal mind. I want my country back.
Good
Luck. You know what I mean? I, I’m for the peace.
Good luck.
The dove on the placard for old people. I’m for our kids.
But nobody else is these days, Charlie. That’s the thing. I mean, they, they’re talking points and they’re photo ops and there’s style and no substance.
The rich is controlling it. Yeah. Whitmer took 50 grand from the nursing home people last year. Nestle took 10 grand. It’s, and they’re throwing us crumbs and we’re just coming apart. And so something new. I don’t say what you want. What a label matter. What about the kids, how we fucked them so bad. They turned a pandemic into a political talking point. And you know what they did? They remember and they pushed all of their henchmen out there. You know what I mean? Like the doctors and just spinning us around. And one side, the other side, it was so ironic, Trump was pushing a vaccine that’s not as advertised. It’s not effective, as they said. It doesn’t stop transmission. That’s right. Doesn’t stop death.
But everything is also driven in fear. Fear of what we don’t know, fear of each other. Fear of the unknown. Just who’s
Causing the fear?
Your air quote, leaders are causing the fear
And, and
They’re making money off of
That. And the pukes in the media, they decided they’re going to pick a side. You got to be on our side. Thank you, Craig, for a brilliant series of articles. It
Was very in depth, very
Craig Mugger, the Detroit News. Look that up. Okay. You want to fuck. I don’t forget airplanes. And I don’t forget old people in the nursing homes. And I don’t forget when Whitmer people are sending out doctors to do Let it rip. But the doctor had actually worked on your campaign, Dr. Lab coat on, let it rip and let it rip. Doesn’t Fox two doesn’t know that this guy is a Whitmer associate and you’re going to, he’s sitting in his own fucking living room at 10 o’clock in a lab coat. Where’s the lab coat in your living room? So the person
That earns the long coat wants to wear to remind you they’re a doctor,
At least put the nurse’s outfit on.
That’s after it goes
Off. Yeah. Little pumps, you know, some, I love it. The sheer panty hose. What now? But no, this was back like 2021. Yeah, 2021. March, I believe. March when I’m, I got to sue the state for data that doesn’t exist about the nursing homes and these bozos, one psychologist, one doctor telling me I’m all wet. Turns out I was right. You did. This is the argument we had. We just clipped a little bit.
So everybody go home, read some stuff, Google it, and stop with the talking points. We want answers. Listen,
I got wait till you
Get the data. Wait till you get the data where, till you get the information from your lawsuit. And then
You’ll know Exactly. I’m, my
Lawsuit is for you. Dude,
I’m, I’m not giving you talking points. I’m giving you facts. There is a discernible difference between just stating simple facts. Okay? Inciting partisan talking points, which is what? No, wait a minute, is what Mr. Lucido is up to. Did this. Let finish, let me finish.
No, not the talking
Points. Give me a fact. Here’s a fact. There is nothing different between what the governor of Michigan did. Okay. Compared to many other states around the country. For example. For example, example, as it pertains to setting up separate facilities inside of nursing homes for covid patients. That’s not what they were doing.
Even Tori knew better than that. Yeah, I, and it wasn’t, but that guy was also included in the commercials from the, I guess it was from the CDC or the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services pushing the whole conversation and the whole fear mongering thing throughout. So yeah,
That’s you Dr. Talking points. Okay, wait till we get the data. I got the data. They were so undercounted in, what was the Whitmers administration’s response to that? To attack the auditor, the independent auditor who’s never donated to a campaign in his life. Call him political hack and basically a liar. Well, no, you threw ’em in there. This is slop. Everything in this state’s so fucked up. Our roads are fucked up. Our schools are fucked up. Our nursing homes are fucked up. Our hospitals in the city are fucked up.
Keep going,
Keep going. I go on our electric grid is fucked up. What else?
Just everything, Charlie.
I mean, get it together.
It is.
You got some explaining to do.
And it doesn’t have to be that way.
No,
It it’s not. The solution is very simple. Just do what you’re supposed to do, be honest, be upfront, apologize. You’re make a mistake and fix it. It can be fixed. We’ve got the money, we’ve got the resources. We can fix it.
Yeah. Well, the media needs to really start looking at itself. You got to get back to what the mission is, right? I was, it’s sad. I was busy Saturday, so I wasn’t looking at stuff. Mass shooting in Allen, Texas. Yep. Eight dead. So it’s Sunday and I’m going through the paper and I’m reading the New York Times. I was like, oh fuck. And it’s like five people wrote it. One of the guys covers the fbi, and in there it says, law enforcement, according to, he may have had white supremacy, sympathies, Nazi postings on his social media. And then a few hours later, the guy’s name is Maurizio Garcia. [inaudible].
Huh? Well,
So a white supremacist Nazi Latino, this country is nuts. But
That, that’s because we jumped to conclusions. We fuel our prejudicial opinions and perceptions, and we jumped the gun. We didn’t take the time to find the guy’s name and determine if in fact, any of those accusations or assumptions were true. Because it reads better. If he’s a white supremacist, it weeds better. If he has all these things on his social media, it fuels the conversation. And it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make, it doesn’t make for a good headline. If he’s a Latino and he’s crashed through this facility where there are other Latino migrants, it doesn’t have the same ugh to
It. Right? Exactly. Maybe we’re just all fucking nuts. Maybe we should go there. But this guy, Adam Goldman or Goldberg, I can’t remember. It doesn’t really matter. But he won the Pulitzer for the Trump collusion. Trump being a stooge of Putin. And we now know that shit was invented by the Clinton campaign and pushed out by the spy agencies and gobbled up by the media. You didn’t apologize. You haven’t fixed the stories. You haven’t returned the Pulitzer Prize. I’m hanging in Pulitzer Hall at the New York Times too, and this shit offends me.
But they’re onto the next thing though, Charlie. And that’s it. That’s it. We gravel. We gravel, we uplift, we complain, and then we go onto the next thing and forget all about it.
This is, and again, I’m the guy with the I, I’m just a realist. You know what I mean? I don’t do yard size. I don’t carry PLAs. I just love my people and I’m experienced in life. So I’m just going to tell you as I see it, and I think the liberal media has destabilized American democracy more than Russia was ever trying to do. They did it right. They’ve feeding false, left-leaning Americans a constant narrative that the president was a sleeper agent. So whatever your feelings about Donald Trump, this according to the New York Post editorial board, okay? I know it’s the post. It’s a Rupert Murdoch Fox property, but I know them too. They say, whatever your feelings about Donald Trump, it should disturb you. That political opponents and bureaucrats who hated him could so easily weaponize the press to undermine the government from within. And do you guys agree with that? Because that struck me. Well, yeah.
I don’t think that’s a surprise to anybody. Yeah. I
Don’t think that’s up for even really any extensive discussion
Because go back to all that local media, all the NPR shit, all the stuff they were talking about, about these nursing homes I did. You fuckers failed. And Kurt Maer is a rabid dog. That guy does his job, Craig. I say Kurt, it’s okay. Why do I do that? It’s
How you’ve done. Yeah.
It’s a slip because there’s, there’s Kurt Guyette. Yeah. Yeah. It’s all right. Yeah. Thank you for that.
I don’t even want to correct
You, but yeah, sorry Craig. Well, that’s true.
I’m sure he’s been called
Once and he does his job. No fear, no favor. The guy works well.
He takes his time too.
That story was very detailed. And like I said, I read it twice because it had a death to it that made you, it resonated with people. And he talked about the guy with his mother, and I mean, it substantiated with fact research data. I mean, it was a very exhaustive story. Everybody should read that.
And he tied everything together. Yeah,
He did.
About the orders, about the fact that
He did the timeline
That Whitmer extended, as did the legislature, a law that allowed the nursing homes to escape lawsuits for things like death and infection
Spread. And that should concern everybody, Charlotte. My
God,
It should really concern everybody, because as our time on earth extends some point, you may end up in a nursing home. So maybe you’re not there now. Maybe you don’t have a family member luck, but just how they navigate and manipulate things should also speak volumes. Because if they’re doing it there for nursing homes, they’re doing it for everything else.
That’s why I just want to say my daughter, baby doll, you’re good. Just think, you think, don’t got to look for a label because they’re just labeling so they can tear you up.
That’s true.
There’s not two sides of an issue. There’s 330 million people in this country. There are 330 million points of view. And God demands that we all live together. So a little bit of respect
Should be able to play in the sandbox together, even if we don’t always agree. If
You think about it, we’re all inhabiting Earth at the same time. I mean, the 21st century, this a hundred years is Unbeliev flight. Adam Bombs, computers, a all of the telephone
Electronic cars,
Transcontinental flight. Podcasts. Podcasts.
Imagine that.
Newspapers.
But the podcast thing has made everybody an expert. So
Radio, television, all of that, the telephones, what a time to be living. And so they’re going to remember us as one people,
Or will we be remembered at all?
Right?
And if so, for what?
Live your life the best you can, and don’t worry about it. You won’t be here. Just leave something for the kid. Be forthright and stand up. Right? You do it right. We’re going to give you this.
Always say, Charlie, we do this with, whether it’s a rental car, whether it’s a public restroom. You’ve got to think about the person that’s coming after you, because at some point, you’ll be the next person coming. Yeah.
Don’t be like, yeah,
But if everybody had that thought, then things would be better. You would not walk into a public restroom and it were dirty because the person before you said, Hey, let me think about the person coming after me, because the person A, you know what I’m saying? It just becomes a succession.
Yeah. When you rent a car, take the garbage out, right?
Yeah. Clean it up.
And don’t forget your driver’s license and your crack pipe hunter because somebody was nice and got ’em those things back to you. Yeah, but I
Mean, you are using something. I, there are commonalities that we all have to share. They’re common spaces. They’re common things. They’re issues that impact all of us. Those are the things that we should protect. Red
Zo, Hey, I just want y’all in politics to know. Red’s up there looking up your property taxes. That one’s come in. Who’s not paying? And how come? Right? I told you, I, we take a comedian got put out on his ass. He living in the Skid Row motel from the east side, and he going to be the crack reporter of Detroit. But
Red is smart. When you listen to his perspectives about things and his comments, red is Red’s intelligence. So don’t discount that.
The funny thing about Red is for a guy that works on stage when you talk, he doesn’t blather on. He makes, he’s really fun to talk with.
But that’s what you’re supposed to do. Make your point and shut up.
All right, let’s move along. Now. Did you guys read that profile of me in Hour Magazine? Yes, we did. You did? As I promise the guy. I go, I don’t read my own press, but I’m dying to know our magazine. How would we describe our magazine? What is that?
It’s, it’s
Big. It’s glossy.
Yeah. It’s expensive. It’s also packed with ads. So all those docs of the year and all that stuff, people pay to be in
That. Is it a society magazine? Like a
Little bit. Yeah.
It’s in the Dentist office society. It’s
Not high
Society. It’s like Birmingham gets in. Yeah.
Okay. But it’s a nice magazine. It has articles that are well written. And this was one of them, Steve
Free. He’s a very good writer. He
Worked at the time. But Mark and I said, we read it differently because we know you and because we’re here. And so maybe we had a few different perspectives. I did not like the opening of the article. How did it open? Well, comparing you to Howard Stern, I didn’t like that because
I don’t, don’t mind that, Robin.
Well, you may, and I told you, I told Charlie that when we first started, I said, I am not sorry.
Is it my it my nose?
No, I don’t, I don’t know. But he talked about some of the more lewd things that you’ve done on the show that I don’t agree with. But I mean, I thought overall it was good. He tied it all together. But from my perspective, there’s so much more to you than anybody be able to
Cram on. Didn’t, you’re not saying anything. You’re giving me what? What’d he say? What LT shit did I do?
I Mark?
You tell. Oh, he doesn’t like that you smoked. I’ll tell you that much, but whatever
Near northern, then the snowman with the,
I know my snowman. He didn’t like,
That was
Horrible. Oh,
Yeah. I didn’t like like that. But I mean, so it was fine. It’s a good snowman. Yeah.
Oh, oh, the, yeah. Why’d the snowman pull down his pants? Yeah. Cause he saw the snow blower coming. That one. Yeah.
I really,
Come on. That’s old. That’s
Such an old one. God, I appreciate Steve admitted that. Look, he had maybe not an agenda, but he had biases coming into this. I mean, he says that maybe in the fourth or fifth paragraph.
What’d he say? What do you mean?
Well,
He thought you were, I think he said he thought you were just shelvin doing stuff for not intact. What? I don’t know what, I don’t want to misquote him.
Mark. He says, I’m going to admit something that journalists rarely do. But if you’re pro, let’s see. If you’re profiling a rule breaking reporter, I guess that’s you. Okay. If you’re profiling a rule breaking reporter, it seems proper to break a few yourself. I came into this assignment eager to write about Charlie LeDuff as a clown and a weirdo not being a viewer of local TV news. And vaguely aware of the fact that we overlap for a while. The years I wrote regularly for the New York Times. And then he goes on and admits that he didn’t read your book, which is wrong. I mean, everybody should read Detroit. It’s a great book. There’s a plug.
But the photographs are amazing. Those pictures, were
They working Photograph, what was
That cat’s name? I said, escaping me. Really good. Dude, that photographer. Yeah.
Yeah. Like that picture. Those pictures were loved them.
See, he wanted to set up lights and stuff like they do for our magazine. And I’m like, oh, fuck no. It’s counter to what we’re doing, right? No bullshit. No, no posing. They’re
Both nice. They’re both very professional. Nice.
They were very good. Yeah, that one, that is an award. I the one with your hand on your forehead. I just made that your profile on your phone. Oh, I love it.
I It’s probably, I was talking to Red like, oh fuck.
Jeez. Wait, where we go? That one right there. Right here.
That one. Yep. I love that. That’s a great picture. Charlie LeDuff.
I will say a, this is the big thing I took out of it, which I thought was, it’s one of these things that I think we all knew and felt, and he’s talking about the ad with Tu Dixon, which we wanted to have murran. I mean, you said that even before you talked to Tutor Whitmer. Come on this show, it’ll be respectful, but you got to answer some questions. But then this little blurb is in the article here.
Oh, you pulled up a
Blurb. I did. Look at that blur.
Mark is, mark is thorough.
Mark is like the guy. He is.
Mark, I have to make up for ruining the show earlier on. You
See that? Look at that. Mark. Mark’s engineering it. He’s shitting over it. He’s coming up with content. He comments. He reads stuff. He posts it. He’s working with J Like the guy is super smart. The preeminent. Yeah, he is. Would you agree, Jeremiah? No. He’s the preeminent broadcast. Everything.
That’s very kind. But that wasn’t the
Point in, see, look
At him. He doesn’t, it’s like, I’ll just forget that.
It’s about the work.
Well, let’s talk about me some more anyway. Yeah.
So he writes here regarding getting you getting Whitmer on the show. It said it didn’t work. Whitmer sitting on a big polling league, gave precious few interviews in the final months of the campaign, and he admits that she even turned down him for Newsweek. And this is a quote from the article as a Whitmer aide told me later, they certainly weren’t going to risk her talking to
Lauff, which is what we’ve known all along.
But now it’s, it’s from an aid to a reporter, be it on and it’s
Published.
Yeah, whatever. Exactly. Yep. Risk her. She’s the governor. What’s the risk? It’s true though. It’s horseshit.
True. But we knew that all along.
Yeah. But now this is even more proof.
Think about that partisan people. Like, look, it’s, I respect who you vote for, why you do it. Did you hear that? If you can’t face me, how the fuck do you face g Putin Lopez? How me
And the people that put you there? That’s the other thing that is part of facing the people who put you there, Charlie. I mean, you are a journalist that demands answers to questions that have been just allowed to just dangle out there.
I’m a reporter, not a journalist,
Whatever, reporter, journalist. You’re Charlie Ladon.
Once I start wearing a lab coat around my house, you can call me a journalist.
Okay.
I’ll take it one step further too. Okay. You admit in the article that you voted for the first time, right?
What?
That you voted I
Didn’t read the article. Oh, it’s voted
For Who did you vote for? Whitmer for? Yeah. Yeah. And so he throws that in there. So now, not only is she dodging you because of the risk, but you voted for her. You’re constituent and you voted for her.
I want answers from my representative. There’s
Nothing wrong with that.
No,
But that, that’s happening at every level, Charlie. It is happening at every level. And they should not be allowed to get away with it.
Let me ask this the to, Hey, Steve, if you’re listening, I appreciate you coming around. He asked me to ask Cuomo if Cuomo would talk to him, right? And Cuomo texted me. He goes, he goes, oh, fuck. No. Fuck. Fuck the medium, man. I don’t think he’s going to fuck you, dude. And I’m like, well, what’s good for the goose is good for the Michigander. You’re going to fuck me. You’re going to fuck me. I mean, I know who I am.
I was a little surprised in the article too. There were quotes from people that tweeted underneath you just to add some color because he couldn’t find anybody
That wanted to talk. Yeah, they wouldn’t talk. Yeah.
Oh, you mean the trash trash me?
Well, anybody, any,
Anybody. Was anybody on the record? Did he quote you? Me?
He did quote Karen. Yeah.
Okay. I don’t even remember saying that to him, but it was
Fine. He quoted a former executive producer at Fox. Fox too, that you worked with. But it was nice. I don’t know. I have a problem with people quoting tweets in general. Yeah. But if you can’t,
Can’t find anybody else. I mean, too bad
Were they trash tweets like ripping on me. I don’t read ’em. To me, that’s why I don’t read my own
Press. They were trying to pose the other side of whatever the issue is. I get that. But I’d rather not hear that from a tweet because they’re not very,
Nobody wants to come on and present the other side of the story than he’s not left at any other choice to go to Twitter.
I get that. I just, I’m sick of Twitter kind of running a news agenda. You see that a lot. Stories, because there’s a Twitter response and it rubs me the wrong way.
Not
Everybody, I’d rather be rub the right way.
Yeah. Somebody step up, man, step up. A manhandle me. Come
Out. Okay, it’s time to go now. You know what I mean? It’s
Getting out of here. No, I mean, you know what I mean? What you mean? Go on the record and say it. Yeah, but what are you afraid I’m going to respond?
Yeah, that’s exactly what he wrote. No, there was a general fear of getting on your bad side. And I’m like, well, it’s different. I don’t
Even know if it’s different. I don’t even know if it’s bad side or just the fact that they can’t handle questions that they are either aren’t able or don’t want to answer. I think that’s more of what it
Is. They don’t like your controversial, not controversial, but your style, I guess kind of in your face. So they don’t want to be on the other end of that. Oh yeah. Confrontational.
Charlie’s like, oh, what
He put
Confrontational. This sounds like he ripped a shit out of me. No, no,
No. He didn’t. It wasn’t nice piece. No, he didn’t. I’m
Just looking for the bad stuff. No,
It wasn’t. It wasn’t, wasn’t a bad ar. It was. It was fine. Yeah. I think the article was fine. Well,
I knew, I look, I knew it would be because I know the man’s a professional and he’s actually, it wasn’t gifted Penn and nobody’s called me and go like, dude, you got to answer to this. You know what I mean? No one, one did that. So
Yeah, no, it wasn’t, wasn’t bad.
He did right there at the end too. He wrote where it is. He claims that your sensitive soul, I would agree with that. I think Charlie is far more sensitive than people would even imagine, even realize. Yeah. And you said, I won’t read it. He tells me the piece. If you want me to read it, I will. But it can be the most accurate, most clever, most well-written thing. And just like every other human being, when I read my Twitter feed, it’s the one asshole picking on me. So if you write a sentence I don’t like, then I’m pissed. And that’s why you don’t read your own press. It’s true. I know. It’s hard. It’s hard to, I mean, there could be 99 nice things written. It’s that one thing you’ll focus
On. But you know what though? I guess for me it’s like I don’t, it just, you read it and you keep moving. I don’t sure. This is like, no. Okay,
Whatever. But humans will focus on negative.
They do. They don’t know how to do anything else.
I do, man.
It was a good article. The picture was great.
All right, well there’s that. That’s an What month is it? May May’s edition, our magazine.
It’s got the top. What’s
The headline? What’s the title?
Let me go find it real
Quick. It’s what’s a red cover? It’s like top of the town or
I don’t care about the cover. They didn’t give you the cover though, man. I didn’t
Get the cover.
That’s coming next
In the Lauff is what it’s title. There it is. What does that mean on the screen? I don’t know.
It’s not revealed in the piece. What that means in the,
Well, it starts power part. Howard Stern, part Hunter s Thompson, the Pulitzer winning turn local TV news performance, performance artist no longer has corporate media overlords to please can he. And we handle that. It’s provocative.
What does with that can, what does he surmise? Can we handle it? Can we handle? Can we
Handle it? I think he mean he wrote that his biases were, he didn’t find what he thought he was going to find.
Oh,
Okay. And he was pleasantly, it seems like he was pleasantly surprised and impressed with what he walked away
With. And you had a quote in there that openly admitted that, yeah, if you’re going to deliver news, you got to be entertaining. You got to eat the facts. Right? I mean that, it’s one of Charlie’s mantras all the time. Got to rules, have it right. Yep. Got to have it
Right. Rule number one. Rule number one in modern journalism is the same rule as it was in old journalism. It’s got to be right? Yep. At best you can do. Sometimes you get it wrong. You admit it. It’s got to be right.
But Charlie, you
No rule. Rule number
Two, Charlie, there’s more than one. Okay.
There’s only two. Oh,
Okay.
You didn’t even hear me. I said, there’s two. I’ve heard the first one. You’re so disappointed, dude. Two, it’s not to listen. Rule number two, which may never supplant rule number one, but rule number two is don’t be boring. Yeah, that’s true. Everybody knows that it’s got to be right. Don’t fuck with people. Right. They’re investing time in what you’re saying.
I have a third rule. Go ahead. What’s it there? Always be yourself. I mean, always be yourself. Be your authentic self. And so, I mean, you can’t be Walter Cronkite. You can’t be Mort crim. You can’t be, and you shouldn’t want to be the next whomever you want to be. Charlie Lauff. And there are tons of people that try to emulate you. But I tell even kids this and all the time, you will always be your most successful when you are yourself. And that’s who you are. You’ve carved out your own very unique style and approach, and it works for you. And
We rolling. I want to thank everybody for being part of it. And you can, we, there’s a lot of you commenting we’re we’re looking at ’em. You know what I mean? Tell us what you think. Give us subscribe alike, all that bullshit. Help us out. Help us out. All right. Bullshit. Charlie. I got a piss now. Okay. I need to see the cash check, madam. I need to see that. So we’ll be around. Show me a check.
