All That and a Bag of Mail

It’s Friday and I’m rushing through the mailbag this morning because I’m out in LA meeting with radio show advertisers today.

Speaking of advertisers, check out my friends at Magical Realty if you need an affordable place to stay near Disney World or anywhere else you might go on vacation. 

For those of you who missed me on radio this morning I’m going to be on live on The Herd with Jason Whitlock at 1:30 et today out here in LA. So set your watches for that.

Okay, we had two insanely popular questions this week, what happened with the Outkick catfish in Preds-Penguins last night and what are your thoughts on the James Comey testimony?

Really. God bless the range of regular Outkick readers. So we begin with the most important of those questions.

“What happened with the Preds at the Penguins and the Outkick catfish?”

Props to the new catfish guy, JJ Tomlin, here is his Twitter feed, for getting an Outkick catfish on the ice on the road in Pittsburgh, but, man, that was a crushing loss. Especially considering how well the Preds played in games three and four. I honestly have no idea why Pekka has been a stonewall in Nashville and fallen completely apart on the road in Pittsburgh. Particularly because he’s been very good on the road against Chicago, St. Louis and Anaheim.

It just makes no sense.

But the same thing happened to Ottawa in game five of their series against the Penguins too and they bounced back to win game six at home and then played a double OT game seven in Pittsburgh. So I think the Preds bounce back and win game six, but the chances of winning game seven on the road for the Stanley Cup seem low.

At least I didn’t tell everyone to bet the Preds on the moneyline and do it myself.

This is why I don’t ever bet hockey. I am a fucking idiot. https://t.co/spzXh30ARJ

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) June 9, 2017

Lots of you, what are your thoughts on former FBI director James Comey’s testimony yesterday and the investigation into Russia? Do you think Trump obstructed justice?

First, Russia would have had no ability to influence our election if the Democrats hadn’t been dumb enough to allow their emails to get hacked. If all these people hadn’t responded to phishing attempts their email security never would have been compromised.

Second, did Russia do anything that our own intelligence services aren’t doing too? Are you telling me that we’re not constantly trying to hack into foreign email inboxes? I’m confident that our NSA groups are constantly trying to hack emails of other countries too. So it’s hard for me to argue that what Russia did was incredibly nefarious if we’re doing the same things as them.

And, again, it was the Democrats own stupidity that allowed their emails to be hacked in the first place.

Third, is it really fair to say they compromised the election when all Russia did was release existing emails and allow Americans to view them? It’s not like Russia hacked our voting machines and changed the outcome of an election, they just published 100% true emails and allowed everyone to view the inner workings of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. And then all the American news media decided that information was newsworthy and distributed those stories nationwide. The American news media made more people aware of the results of Russian hacking than anyone in Russia.

The irony here is that the media is now covering the Russian hacking scandal like it’s a huge story, but they are the ones who made it a huge story. Couldn’t the media have all just agreed not to publish any stories about these emails because of the way they were obtained and their concern that Russia was trying to hack our election. The media had more to do with this story having legs than the Republicans ever did.

Furthermore, I’m kind of torn on whether this is even a bad thing. Obviously hacking isn’t legal and I believe hackers should be prosecuted under our laws, but if the result is hacking that gives us a more accurate version of real life Presidential politics and allows us to be more informed than we otherwise would have been about the candidate and who advises them, is this really a bad thing? Remember, Russia hacked our election and gave us more information about Hillary than we would have had before.

Fourth, I do not believe this is obstruction of justice. I think Trump believes that this entire Russia investigation is a manufactured controversy and just wants the cloud of the story gone and that was the impetus behind his conversation with Comey. Just hurry up and get this thing taken care of and announce there is nothing here.

Remember, if General Flynn behaved illegally, guess what, Trump could pardon him. Why does he need to obstruct justice when Trump has the power to pardon Flynn? I think Trump honestly believes this is a made up story and just wants it gone.

I’m most upset by the fact that the Trump White House is so incompetent that they thought firing Comey in the middle of this investigation wasn’t going to be incredibly controversial. Even if there is nothing here connecting to the President — and I don’t think there is — why would you not realize how bad this was going to look and the controversy it was going to create?

Finally, I believe Trump and his administration are, frankly, too incompetent to conduct a global conspiracy involving Russian meddling in our election and keep it a secret. Have you seen the way this administration leaks about every story? And how unable they are to execute the basic mechanics of government so far? They can’t control what Trump tweets from one moment to the next. And you think this group secretly colluded with Russia and has managed to keep it hidden? There’s just no way, it’s impossible.

This White House is too incompetent to have secretly colluded with Russia to influence the election.

Tim writes:

“Wondering if you saw the comments made by Mike Schmidt about Odubel Herrera and your thoughts on them. 

Schmidt was asked whether a player who used a translator could be a team leader His answer was:
My honest answer to that would be no,” Schmidt told WIP radio.

“First of all, it’s a language barrier. Because of that, I think he can’t be a guy that would sort of sit in a circle with four, five American players and talk about the game; or try and learn about the game or discuss the inner workings of the game; or come over to a guy and say, ‘Man, you gotta run that ball out.’ Just can’t be — because of the language barrier — that kind of a player.” ”

Evidently this was considered extremely controversial, which makes no sense to me.

Isn’t communication the single most important trait that any leader needs? How is it controversial to say that a guy who doesn’t speak English well is going to have a difficult time leading his team?

If I moved to Japan to play baseball and spoke no Japanese at all, wouldn’t it be hard for me to be a team leader of a Japanese baseball team based on the language barrier between me and my teammates? I think so. The same would be true if I played on any team where my teammates spoke a different language than me.

So how is what Schmidt said remotely inappropriate?

I just don’t get how this is controversial at all.

We’ve reached the point where if an old white guy in sports says anything other than he hates racism and Donald Trump he gets ripped for it.

Marcus writes:

“Can you think of any combination of a free agent signing, blockbuster trade, or draft pick that is realistic for someone to dethrone the Warriors next year?”

The only move I can see the Cavs making is trading Kevin Love for either Paul George or Carmelo Anthony. I think neither of those guys makes the Cavs better. At least not enough better to beat the Warriors.

LeBron — as GM — has really saddled the Cavs with several big contracts for players who aren’t providing much value.

LeBron, Love and Kyrie Irving all deserve their money and are the top three highest paid Cavs.

But check out the next four highest paid Cavs: Tristan Thompson, who has less rebounds in this entire series so far than Steph Curry had in game 3 alone! — makes $16.4 million next year, J.R. Smith makes $13.8 million, Iman Shumpert makes $10,3 million and Channing Frye makes $7.4 million.

All of these guys have been virtually useless in this series and all of them would be really difficult to trade. The Cavs are already paying a massive luxury tax this year so I just don’t see how you can reconcile all of these contracts and come up with a team that can compete with the Warriors, who will return all of their top players next year.

The only other team I can see making a decent move is the Spurs adding Chris Paul. That makes the Spurs the second best team in the NBA — if they weren’t already — and that team could give the Warriors a run in the Western Conference Finals.

But that’s the only possible move that alters the dynamics of the NBA in terms of creating a team that gives the Warriors a challenge at all.

Assuming they stay healthy I think the Warriors, with another full year to gel as a team, will be better next year. And there’s not anything anyone in the NBA can do to beat them.

Adam writes:

“You have discussed previously how much money you would need to accept a challenge that could impact your future earning potential. Since you make good money, it is typically a large sum that would cover you for years. Using that logic with Shaun King, what do you think his actual dollar figure is to take a DNA test? $50k that’s not going in his pocket, is not nearly enough to destroy the fake brand he has built for himself. The internet says his net worth is around $500k.”

The reason I offered $50k to charity if Shaun King would take a DNA test is because I believe he’s 100% white and has been using his fake blackness to make the social media world a worse place. He exists to create division, discord, and a victimization culture among a large cadre of his supporters online. He indisputably makes race relations worse than they would be without his existence and does nothing to make America a better country.

I don’t think he’ll accept my challenge because he knows it would prove him to be a male version of Rachel Dolezal, a fake black person. But if he is actually black then isn’t this the perfect opportunity for him to show his critics once and for all that he’s not a total fraud? All the while providing substantial money to Colin Kaepernick’s charity?

The fact that he won’t do it shows you that he knows deep down that he’s just a white dude.

…

Okay, I’m off to work all day here in LA. Take the Warriors -6 to get the sweep tonight.