Mike Rowe: The OJ trial was the first time the media gaslit America

Mike Rowe, that's the best transition I got.

Thank you. Mike Rowe, from Mike Rowe, as far as I can tell, I'm going to listen to it back. Mike Rowe works Foundation as CEO.

He's host, narrator, executive producer of How America Works, as well as everything else. He controls his own destiny. For that I am jealous.

And you don't age. Well that's very kind of you. What was the book? The Picture of Dorian Gray. Remember? Did you ever have to read that one?

Not yet. Oh God. Great story about a guy who never gets older, but there's a portrait of him, a picture in the attic, and that gets older. So if you really want to see what he looks like, you have to look at this magical picture. He looks like hell. But in real life he's pretty good. That's me.

Hey Pete, can you find that picture or the book? Would you? And just don't give me excuses.

Alright? Josh is busy. But O.J. being dead, we do remember where we were when the verdict came out, right? Now I remember more watching, saying the Knicks were playing the Rockets. And for New York, for the Knicks, haven't had a championship since 1972. And they were in the finals against the Rockets. By the way, they were leading it at 3-2 in the series.

They have a chance to lock it up at Madison Square Garden. I wasn't there, but I was watching it. They evidently were going in the halls to watch the Bronco chase and leaving the finals against Hakeem Olajuwon against Patrick Ewing.

That's how crazy it was in America. I can't beat that, but in terms of weirdness, I was in Dyersville, Iowa, shooting a segment for a project about the original Field of Dreams. So I'm in the cornfield where the actual owner of the actual piece of property where Costner shot the movie, I'm doing standups with a farmer. Is that for Pia magazine? No, it was for something even more obscure.

It doesn't matter. I'm there in the cornfield doing my best to make a living, and then I walk into this tiny little bed and breakfast where I was staying, and they have a black and white TV in my room. I turn it on, and there's this slow motion SUV with people frantically describing what's happening. When you're in Dyersville trying to get your mind around the same image that's on every single channel, it sears in your retina. And you're not quite sure why, but over time, the next couple of years, the Lance Ito singers remember, and all the craziness and the t-shirts.

What a time, man. AJ Callings was the driver. Who would think that guy crunched in the backseat of a white Bronco with AJ Callings screaming that he would eventually be found innocent? Who would have thought the first time the word Kardashian got seared into our collective memory was all around that too. The dad?

Yeah. So the crazy thing was, and I never really discussed this, the first person that I knew involved with that case that actually knew that he got away with murder that showed it was him. Do you remember the exasperation on his face when they found him innocent because they invited him into the law team so no longer be a witness because he knew, he hid OJ's clothes, they were gone, we never found out. He knew everything, OJ probably confessed to him that he killed somebody, what do I do? So how do we stop him from being a witness?

He's part of the legal team. It was, looking back, man, you know what's interesting? A lot of people over the last three or four years have gone through this kind of Emperor's New Clothes phase where they see a thing and they know that it's true but they're being told something completely different. I don't care whether it's the withdrawal from Afghanistan or the security of the border or... Crime in New York City. Crime in New York City, the best collegiate female swimmer in the world who appears to have the full block and tackle, right?

To be a man. The things you see and the things you're told don't line up. That's the first time in my life on a national level I remember feeling that way. Unbelievable the way you have a way of putting things in perspective because now we're at the point where we don't believe anything.

That's right. Right, we don't believe anything, especially when people tell us, we had the mayor in New York City come out and go, crime is down, it's the safest big city in America. We know that's not crime down.

With people being thrown in front of trains, Venezuelan illegal immigrants beating up cops, a CVS being shoplifted when the cops come, they fight the guys and all five of them get out. Come on, are you crazy? I know. Look, you can even look at it with respect to the president. I think everybody agrees that he's older than he's ever been and maybe not as sharp as he's ever been. So rather than acknowledging any of that, any diminishment at all, what we're told is he is just a paragon of intellectual acuity and physical prowess. He's on fire.

We can't keep up with him. And it's like, well, wait, wait, wait, wait. Really? I mean, you're going to go there.

It's like you're buying a used car and you're haggling and it's got to go from $20,000, you start there, I'll start at $200 and I'll meet you somewhere around $12,500. All right. But it's happening with every single thing, every single thing. Look at him.

There he is on the TV, just as innocent as can be, except he's not. Right. And now we find out what happens in the afterlife. If he's in heaven, then we could have done anything, right?

I mean, there was there really are no rules, right? I mean, listen, he was beloved, probably top five most sought after endorser until he became the most vilified man in the world. So people have to remember that you want him on While I Roll the Sports, you want him on the sideline, you want him on your scoreboard show, you want him in Naked Gun, you want him in Towering Inferno.

You know, you wanted him in the Battle of the Network stars. Everywhere you go, this guy just embraced it. I remember the first time I knew that this guy was not who he was. I was hosting a show with Jim Brown, The Running Back, and he did not like O.J.

ever. And people just assumed because he moved on the Hollywood thing, Jim Brown was, in my view, the first athlete to break that barrier. I believe I'm right. And Jim's like, no, I don't I don't care what he does. It's just that he's not who he comes off as.

He's not that's not the O.J. we know behind the scenes. And he also told me how sloppy he was getting on the golf course, openly doing Coke in front of everybody, asking for fans to do, you know, give it to them if they had it. Back then, Coke was much more prevalent.

It would be much more of a story. He goes, he's getting sloppy. And that was before that was when I started stop toasting a show with him in 93. A year later, he's killing.

And I'm going, this guy was probably on a drug binge, doesn't even know what the hell he was doing. He's got the strength of 10 men. He is unbelievably devastating. Yeah, devastating. And he runs through airports.

As far as I know, that was good with bad knees, but he ended up with the 49ers and was not the same player. OK, can we talk about what we were going to talk about? Yeah, but it is worth dwelling on for a second, because we're these are moments, you know, you don't really know it when they happen. But it's part of what makes a society a society and what makes where you were when it happened. That's right. Yeah, that's right. I mean, whether it's 9-11 or Kennedy's assassination or this kind of thing or or maybe, you know, for me, most recently, March 13th, 2020.

You know, I did the last big public event in the country before the government shut down in California. And you don't you don't know it at the time. It's two weeks to flatten the curve and then it's two months later and then it's a year later. And then you're looking back going two years.

Yeah, man, what the hell is how did that what just happened? We haven't had we we've had time to think about O.J. and process it. We haven't had time, Brian, to think about the lockdowns fully. We were so glad to get out of them.

And now that we're out of them, we're so eager to move on. We haven't really unpacked it. Not really. I don't think you're 100 percent out of everything.

9-11 being on the air at that time. It's indelible. No doubt about it.

I don't want to diminish that. But the thing is, we hit it was boom. Reaction, war, war, war, recovery. What are we doing?

Election got it. But with the pandemic was all unscripted, making up as you go along. And we feel so let down by the people in charge because they had no humility to say we're not sure. But this is what we can say. They took discretion away from the American people, robbed us of our lives. Our occupation may be fractured. Families forever financially might never recover.

Businesses may never come back. And in the end, they were wronged by about 70 percent of it, including how it started and their reaction. And the anecdote was called a vaccine, which if you just said, listen, these are the plus and minuses. This is I think it's going to help people who are severely obese who have under.

But for all the other 19 year old baseball players, you probably don't need to do it, but you can make your own decision. They petted us on the head. They told us what to do and vilified us for not doing it. So I mean, look, in the last 60 seconds, furthering the divide in the country, all of that anger, all of that mistrust that you just articulated, times 330 million. To some degree, every single person is still wondering who moved their cheese and how that happened and what it's like falling down the steps in slow motion.

Right. It's like, when is this going to stop? How how how much crazier is this going to get? And you know something?

God bless the sense of humor. We're going to need one because the next eight months are going to be unlike any eight months I think we've ever lived. Because you factored in elections, it's polarizing to a degree. Although I do have some hope that people are beginning to break the Trump fever and just going to treat him like a candidate, which is so important.

Treat Biden like candidate, treat him like candidate like it's Bush, Gore, whatever it is, you want the other guy to win. I understand it. But when the other guy wins, he may disagree with you, but he's not an alien.

He's not. He should be treated just like somebody that maybe is a different party, not if not from a different planet. But we'll take a time out. You have a way of putting things in perspective. And we have to add into all that at least one major criminal case and maybe three more.

It just wouldn't be the same without it. Back in a moment, unless Mike storms out of here, because I say we're going to do one thing and then O.J. dies. Again, O.J. is screwing up our format. But not preempted. You were actually gone.

Back in a moment. This has got a great, great American franchise to play. It is it's a great franchise. The owner is a great man who is a member of one of my clubs and he's fantastic.

And yeah, they do very well. They're closed on Sunday. The Lord's chicken. That's the Lord's chicken.

You're right. It's good chicken, too. So, Mike Rowe, I this I love this about this is Trump at his best. He's driving. He said, I want to pull over. We're going to go to Chick-fil-A. And he walked in there.

It's a Atlanta. Normally people don't go in there. I don't even know who's going to be in there. How are you going to be received? You might you might get booed. No, let's go in. They love him behind the counter.

And if you've seen the video and then a woman comes out and goes, I don't care what they say about you, Mr. Trump, I'm going to vote for you because let me give you a hug. This is like old time. Yeah. This is old time politicking.

Well, you can't script it. And it does require a willingness to assume a level of risk that I think a lot of people are happy to pay for. They're happy to reward it because they're just not seeing it in other places.

You're just not seeing that level of spontaneity in any other elected official. The thing is this. And you probably I get this with you, too. You when you go to an airport, people feel they can approach you. And something about Trump, he likes people. You don't have to be rich. In fact, rich people don't really like them. They think he's too flamboyant to be rich.

So like the average person likes him. So he walks in there and they start going, wow, they're answering his questions. Let me do let me buy 50 shakes. Same thing, you know, so he does. He buys 30 shakes, a bunch of burgers, gives them to the guys and takes pictures with them. What did he just call it? The Lord's chicken. Yeah, the Lord's chicken. I mean, you imagine like you're running a KFC a block away and all of a sudden, you know, the most visible guy on the planet basically christens your competition as the Lord's chicken. Yeah.

Popeyes just shut its doors. So the one thing I do want to talk to you about and I was so enthused, Jenny's came up and said, Mike Rose, going to be in town. And he goes, do you want to stop?

I go, oh, my God, that'll be great when you're going to be on one nation this weekend. But I just saw this story come out and you have to feel to a degree happy. It seems like this generation is open to vocational schools. Yeah. More and more they're doing it. You've been talking about that.

John Ratzenberger, famously of of Cheers. Yeah. Talking about it. Do you feel like you're breaking through?

Look, it's too early for a victory lap. But it's funny you mentioned John. I met him in an airport probably 15 years ago. Cliff Clavin.

Yep. When I was just starting Micro Works and he he was a fan and very supportive and I was a fan of his initiative. But if you really ask John, like, what's the goal? Like, in a simple sentence, he would have said to get shop class back into high school. And I thought that was great. And I've been trying to do that myself now for the last decade and a half.

I don't know how to do it. I don't think the feds are going to do it. And I don't think we can wait for the states to do it. But something else is happening. A lot of companies are stepping up and creating a kind of shop class in their own perimeters. They're they're doing what the schools abandoned years ago when they took the art out of the vocational arts ever since then. Right.

Things have been a little loopy. Well, this article you're talking about in the Journal a week or so ago. Can I just give you the stats? Gen Z enrollment in trade jobs, 60 percent increase in vocational programs, 23 percent increase in construction jobs, 7 percent increase in HVAC vehicle repair.

Go ahead. Yeah. That follows the increase in trade school enrollments juxtaposed with the decrease of enrollments in four year schools. And that's new. Right. That's the that's the perception. Look, I've got nothing against a four year education in general. What I've always opposed is the idea that promoting that path at the expense of all the others is smart, decent, wise, kind or prudent. Right.

It's not. And so what we did was we put our thumb on the scale and for about 30 years triggered this skills gap, which is why we got 10 million open jobs. Yeah, I did. I went to Essex Community College and then I worked and then I went for a couple of years at Towson University, Baltimore. Got a B.S.

in communications. Cost me twelve thousand five hundred dollars for everything. Both schools, same piece of paper today, same course load, same schools. Ninety two thousand dollars. Tufts is ninety five. Wellesley is ninety two.

Brown is ninety one. Yale is 90 per year, per year. So you're you're you're getting close to half a million dollars for a credential, a degree, a diploma. Or, as I like to call them, a receipt, because those pieces of paper no longer confer the wisdom or the knowledge that you supposedly accumulated while you were there.

It might. But, you know, this inflation thing is really in the news in every way. But the the inflation no one's talking about is the credential inflation. Like in 1955, if you graduated from Harvard, the average GPA was two point five five.

Today, it's three point nine eight. So if you're an employer, you might get the best and the brightest. You might get a curious young man or woman who shows up early and stays late and wants to apply all that newfound wisdom in a way that's efficacious to all parties. Or you might get some legacy who just kind of coasted through and had a pretty good time in Belize. Or you might.

Who knows what you're going to get? Three point nine. Are they really that much smarter today? Mike, that is true.

Some desperate housewives, a kid who pretended to be a rower. That might be the person you hire. No pun intended. But also, even to get into school, they go, you don't worry about class rank. It hurts their feelings if you're low.

And don't worry about S.A.T. Well, how are you judging who the best student is? I don't know.

Are you kidding me? I don't know. I'm I'm currently in a bit of a little imbroglio on social media because, you know, Harvard. A couple of days ago talked about their affinity groups and the affinity celebrations. And I said, look, why are we celebrating? Why why are we celebrating things we can't control? Why aren't we celebrating work ethic? How about where we get your scholarship application?

Microworks.org. Million dollars standing by. Go get some. Same outfit for one nation. You're going to wear the same thing on Saturday night. It's the only shirt I have. It's good enough for me.

I'm not judging. We've got to get this guy a clothing deal. Come on, Pete. This is Jimmy Fala inviting you to join me for Fox Across America, where we'll discuss every single one of the Democrats dumb ideas.

Just kidding. It's only a three hour show. Listen live at noon Eastern or get the podcast at Fox Across America dot com. Listen to the show and free on Fox News podcast plus on Apple podcast, Amazon music with your prime membership or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.