Well, it's pretty obvious that Republicans launching an impeachment inquiry are going to end this process with an impeachment.
There is no purpose for an impeachment inquiry if it does not end in an impeachment.
That would just be a giant pratfall by the Republican Party to launch an inquiry that does not actually end with an impeachment, which means we are steadily moving toward that.
And so the question becomes, what exactly must be proved in order for an impeachment to be pursued with vigor and alacrity?
And the answer is Pretty much whatever Democrats did in the last few years of the Trump administration.
So apparently, that means you don't have to watch a crime.
It means that you don't actually have to provide evidence that a crime was full-on committed.
All you have to show is that there was corruption or abuse of power enough for your own party.
That's basically all you need.
And to this point, we've already shown that when it comes to Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and the DOJ.
All that material is already public.
One of the biggest gaslighting episodes I've ever seen is happening right now in real time.
As the media determined that actually there's no evidence whatsoever that anything is wrong with Joe Biden or Hunter Biden, that effectively these people are just as clean as the driven snow.
For example, entire media montage last night of the media claiming there is no evidence of Joe's connection with Hunter Biden's corruption, which is a lie.
It is an absolute overt lie.
Not only do we have two separate business partners of Hunter Biden's saying that Joe was involved in the business, that'd be Devin Archer and Tony Bobulinski, We have them both testifying that Joe Biden would stop by meetings or call into meetings having to do with his son's business.
We have direct texts from Hunter Biden to his own daughter suggesting that he paid daddy's bills.
We have WhatsApps from Hunter Biden's computer to foreign...
So yeah, I mean there's a little bit of evidence.
When I say a little, I mean a lot of evidence.
to him and will wield his outsized political power in order to punish said companies.
We have tens of millions of dollars moving around from foreign forces sources into a
variety of shell companies and then into companies and people connected with Hunter Biden.
And we have Hunter Biden living in Joe Biden's house.
Well, a lot of this stuff is happening.
So yeah, I mean, there's a little bit of evidence.
When I say a little, I mean, a lot of evidence.
The only thing that is missing is like an actual transaction wire showing money moving
directly from Hunter Biden to Joe Biden.
But let me just make something pretty clear.
When it comes to parents and kids, that sort of stuff doesn't have to happen in order for the bill to get paid.
I'm just pointing this out.
It's pretty obvious.
Have you ever gone out to dinner with your parents and then you pick up the tab?
You picked up the tab, right?
Well, does that mean that your parents did not benefit from you picking up the tab?
Or do you have to actually transfer the money to your parents' accounts and then they pick up the tab in order for it to be considered a benefit for your parents?
Idiocy.
Anyway, here are the media denying, denying, denying.
Again, remember, these are the people who for four long years, every single day on CNN, remember, I'd be at the gym, which is the only place that CNN has ever appeared in my life, and CNN would unfortunately be on the wall.
And every single day, Wolf Blitzer would be talking about how a new bombshell was emerging and the Russia investigation is going to blow this thing wide open.
It was going to destroy the Trump presidency.
For four long years, we heard all of that.
And it never emerged.
Adam Schiff is still sitting in the House, an honored member of the Democratic caucus.
The media went crazy over things like the Steele dossier for years on end.
But here, there is no evidence, none, not a whit, not a scintilla, not an iota of evidence that Joe Biden is corrupt in any way.
Just listen to our vaunted media.
Having months and months of conversation and hearings and news coverage of, well, what exactly did go on with Joe Biden and Hunter Biden's business dealings.
And as we've all said, no evidence yet has been presented that the Bidens have made a lot of money, so on and so forth.
Again, no evidence that we have seen.
Even some House Republicans say they're not convinced evidence exists.
Plus, Republicans insinuated they might not back the move.
They might not vote for it, given the lack of evidence to support such a drastic action.
But House Republicans have so far not provided evidence that Biden directly profited off his son's business deals or made any decisions as vice president because of them.
Okay, so here's the thing.
The media are relying on a very, very broad definition of evidence here in order to escape the reality.
So they're saying, well, there's only circumstantial evidence.
So let me first point out that circumstantial evidence includes things in court, like, for example, fingerprints on a weapon.
That is circumstantial.
The definition of circumstantial evidence is evidence that indirectly points to an outcome but doesn't directly attest to the outcome.
So direct evidence is I, a witness, saw O.J.
Simpson murder his ex-wife.
That would be direct evidence.
Indirect evidence would include things like blood all over O.J.
Simpson's bronco, blood all over the crime scene, all of that matching.
Right, that would all be indirect evidence.
That would be circumstantial evidence.
When you hear people say, well, there's only circumstantial evidence that Joe and Hunter were involved together.
Circumstantial evidence like Joe Biden directly saying that he threatened the Ukrainians with a billion dollars and removed withdrawn aid if they didn't fire the prosecutor overseeing the prosecution of his son's company.
Well, yes, that is circumstantial.
Also, it's pretty indicative.
It's pretty indicative.
I mean, again, if the standard now on impeachment is effectively that if a party doesn't like another member of another party, they just get to impeach him.
They don't have to allege a crime.
And you don't even have to define the crime.
I just got to tell you, if what I have stacked up here is Donald Trump impeached in 2019 for the great crime of calling up Vladimir Zelensky and allegedly threatening to withdraw military aid if Vladimir Zelensky did not dig up dirt on the Bidens.
And then on the other hand, I have Joe Biden being impeached for an ongoing scheme with his son to clear tens of millions of dollars By essentially using his influence as vice president of the United States.
Or by the way, even allowing his son to purport to use his influence as vice president of the United States.
And clearing, like, actual money that way.
And shaping U.S.
policy that way.
Because, I mean, why else does Joe Biden care about Viktor Shokin?
Why is he in charge of Ukraine policy in the first place?
Why is he squiring his son around to China on Air Force Two?
Well, I mean, those seem like those stack up at least fairly evenly, at the very least.
And yet we're told there's no evidence whatsoever.
None.
No evidence.
That's a lie.
There is, in fact, evidence.
But the media are going to continue along these lines.
Caitlin Collins, for example, over at CNN, directly asked Republican Congressman Mike Wall to Florida, have you seen any direct evidence?
Well, I mean, no, he didn't actually see, like, the heads of Burisma handing Joe Biden a sack of cash.
But, like, these people don't know the definition of direct versus indirect evidence.
We have tons of indirect evidence.
For you yourself, when you're talking about the evidence that you say you've seen, and for those listening at home, have you seen anything that directly ties President Biden and shows that he profited from his son's foreign business dealings?
We have his son complaining to his relatives about how many of his father's bills he's having to pay with these illicit gains.
Have you seen direct evidence that President Biden profited?
Well, I mean, but Caitlin, the point of the inquiry is to give us greater standing to get the full evidence.
If we get full cooperation, if they say we have nothing to hide and give it to us and we don't see anything, then that's where the facts lead us.
So you're saying it may not lead to an actual impeachment if you don't get more evidence.
We need to.
We need to.
We're going to follow the facts.
We're going to do this responsibly.
But again, I'm amazed at the standard.
I'm amazed at the standard here.
I mean, the standard, which is Hunter Biden says to his own daughter, I pay dad's bills.
And Caitlin Collins, have you seen any evidence that Hunter Biden paid dad's bills?
Well, I mean, he said he did.
That seems like some evidence that he paid his dad's bills and the fact that his dad has like millions of dollars of unexplained wealth.
I mean, that seems pretty suggestive.
So I guess the new standard is that Republicans have to show that Hunter Biden directly signed a check to Joe Biden and has to have Joe Biden's name on the back of the check handed to the bank in order for any of this to be good.
I don't think so.
That's not how any of this is going to work.
And by the way, the American people don't believe that either.
The reality is that impeached or not is almost irrelevant because we know that Joe Biden is not going to be removed by the Senate of the United States.
It's dominated by Democrats.
What we do know, however, is that the American people, by and large, believe the allegations that Joe Biden is involved in corruption because he very clearly is.
We'll get to Joe Biden's response to this momentarily.
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Okay, so.
The Joe Biden response to all of this is basically to pretend that it's a big nothing.
So he's at a campaign reception in McLean, Virginia, and he reportedly said, I don't know quite why, they just knew they wanted to impeach me.
And now, the best I can tell, they want to impeach me because they want to shut down the government.
Look, look, I got a job to do.
Everybody always asks about impeachment.
I get up every day.
Not a joke.
Not a joke.
He always says, not a joke.
And it's like, dude, no one thought you were joking.
I'm so confused.
I agree.
Not a joke.
Not focused on impeachment.
I've got a job to do.
I got to deal with the issues that affect the American people.
Every single.
Solidary.
So, his theory is that Republicans are pursuing impeachment so they can also pursue a government shutdown.
Which, by the way, is actually the opposite of the truth.
Even if you are cynical about politics, what you think is that McCarthy is pursuing the impeachment inquiry in order to get his own side off his back so he can cut a deal with regard to the continuing resolution.
Not the opposite.
But again, I love when Joe Biden pretends that he doesn't know what the hell is going on with regard to his son, when he very clearly does.
So the goalposts continue to move.
The White House is using the same line as the media.
Karina Jean-Pierre says there's no evidence that Joe Biden did anything wrong.
You suggested that there's no evidence to back up the Republicans.
Which is true.
I'm not suggesting it.
That's actually a fact.
Oh, well, she says, yeah, there's no evidence.
But my favorite is they went from Joe knew nothing about Hunter's businesses to, yeah, he knew something about
Hunter's businesses, but he wasn't involved, too.
Well, yeah, he was involved, but he didn't actually clear the
money. And now they're moving to, well, you don't have any direct evidence that he cleared the money.
And from there, they're going to move to, well, how could you
expect him not to clear?
How could you expect him not to benefit?
After all, this wasn't really for him.
It was for Hunter.
He just loves his son too much.
He just loves his son too much.
And that's going to be the final repository of this argument.
It was trotted out yesterday by the White House's Ian Sams, saying that the reason that Joe stopped by Hunter's business meetings was out of love.
It was just out of love.
Just like, you know, in the Corleone family, members of the family would stop by meetings held by other members of the family just out of familial love.
Now, I love my family.
I do.
I'm also not a public servant.
I'm not somebody who works for the American taxpayer.
And it turns out that if your love for your family requires you to engage in corruption at the expense of the American taxpayer, that is impeachable and quasi-criminal behavior.
I love this defense.
He just loved Hunter too much.
He loved him too much.
Ah, a tragic love story.
Why was the president at those meetings on those phone calls?
Well, again, I think this is part of the right wing's misinformation machine to try to confuse people about what the truth is.
The truth is that the president, as he has said publicly for years, calls his family every day to check in.
He calls his son every day to check in.
He calls his other family members to check in to see how they're doing.
He loves them.
They're a tight-knit family.
They're so tight-knit.
He was just checking in to see how he was doing, which is why his son would call him in the middle of business meetings, and Dad would get on the phone and he'd say, how's the weather in Ukraine, in Kiev, son?
And then he'd say, that's fine, Dad, and click the phone.
That's the end of the call.
And he'd say, see, I can get my dad on the phone anytime I want.
According to the New York Times, the strategy here is to battle it out in the court of public opinion, says Ian Sams to the New York Times.
Well, good luck with that because, again, it's pretty obvious the level of corruption that Joe Biden has been involved in his entire career.
This is nothing new for Joe Biden.
This is the part that's totally astonishing.
I'm not sure how many Democratic scandals get ignored by the media on the basis that they're utterly unthinkable.
They totally cannot be true.
And then it's pretty obvious that they could totally be true.
So, I've mentioned before, in a completely different context, scandals involving, for example, allegations about Barack Obama's drug and sexual behavior in the late 1990s.
You're like, that's unthinkable!
That's totally crazy!
That's terrible.
Now, maybe those rumors are untrue.
Maybe they are.
The media didn't bother to look them up for five seconds.
Why?
Because they were unthinkable.
And then it turns out that, you know, Barack Obama admits in his memoirs that he was doing cocaine.
And he also wrote letters to his girlfriend talking about fantasies of having sex with men.
And the media, when those rumors arrived, they're like, that's unthinkable.
We cannot talk about this.
And then later, they're like, well, it's too late.
There's nothing really to talk about here.
Okay, here's the thing.
As scoreless as those rumors may be, were they the most implausible rumors?
I mean, not the most implausible rumors.
But put even that aside, here we're not even talking about rumors.
Here we are talking about actual documented relationships between Hunter and Joe, testified to by Hunter's business partners.
We have documentation from Hunter's computer backing us.
And we have decades, decades of records of Joe Biden engaged in corrupt bargains on behalf of his family with a variety of sources ranging from MBNA in Delaware.
He was known as the Senator from MBNA.
He was known as this because his son, Hunter, right out of law school, already being a derelict, got hired over at MBNA.
And MBNA was a huge Biden donor.
And meanwhile, Biden was giving sweetheart legislative deals to MBNA, which was growing by leaps and bounds in the state of Delaware.
That sort of stuff has been going on with the Bidens.
He was cutting sweetheart real estate deals with the heads of MBNA, going all the way back to the 1970s, cutting sweetheart deals with unions in order to get himself elected.
There's nothing new about the corruption here.
He's cutting sweetheart deals with banks.
In order to get those banks to give loans to his brother Jimmy, so his brother Jimmy could start a rock bar in Wilmington, Delaware.
So, like, him using his power in order to benefit his family financially has been the entire Joe Biden story for as long as Joe Biden has been in public office.
That's been the entire shtick.
Why is this impl- There's no evidence.
There's no evidence.
Well, actually, there's a lot of evidence, guys.
There's a lot of evidence.
Meanwhile, there's another scandal that's piled on top of the actual corruption, and that is the cover-up of the corruption, the obstruction of the corruption.
We'll get to that in just one second first.
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Okay, so.
Scandal number one is obviously Joe and Hunter corruption.
But scandal number two is that Joe is currently the president and the DOJ was attempting to cut a very obvious sweetheart deal.
A sweetheart deal with Hunter.
So obvious that the judge in the case uncovered it and blew it up and the DOJ was forced to pretend that it hadn't cut the sweetheart deal in the first place.
Meanwhile, the White House is maintaining, guys, Joe didn't talk to anybody about the Hunter case.
Here's Ian Sams of the White House saying just that.
Yeah, I mean, the president's been very clear about this since before he even took office, that the Justice Department and his administration is independent.
He has not been involved in that case.
He has not talked to anybody about that case.
But don't take his word for it.
Take the words of the GOP's own witnesses in the House who testified in an open hearing that neither Attorney General Garland nor President Biden interfered in this case.
Okay, well, I mean, what they did testify to is that the attorney in this case, David Weiss, had asked for special counsel status from the DOJ and was not given it.
Or at the very least, that he was not given special counsel status even if he didn't ask for it.
And then Merrick Garland was like, well, you didn't even ask for it.
Well, it's not up to him to ask for it.
You just give it to him if you wish for him to be truly independent.
Well, now Politico is reporting an FBI agent involved in the Hunter Biden probe said the prosecutor leading it sought but was denied help from a key fellow US attorney.
The lack of cooperation did not prevent charges from being brought against the President's son, but it did make the prosecutor's job harder.
The testimony, delivered behind closed doors, is consistent in part with an IRS whistleblower's description of the probe and comes at a critical juncture in the investigations into the Biden family.
Republicans have pointed to that whistleblower description when making the case for opening an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
The agent said she did not recall another key part of the whistleblower allegation Republicans have focused on, that David Weiss said he didn't have final authority to charge the President's son.
Apparently, the agent said, quote, I remember learning at some point in the investigation that Mr. Weiss would have to go through his other processes because the U.S.
Attorney's Office had, I guess, in that sense, using that terminology, wasn't going to partner.
Asked if she recalled learning that Martin Estrada, the U.S.
Attorney for the Central District of California, specifically decided not to bring tax charges against Hunter Biden, the agent said, I understand that, yes, a decision had been made that the Central District of California wasn't going to, I guess.
My understanding is they weren't going to bring the case on their own.
So here is the problem with all of this.
And again, this is the problem inherently with issues involving the DOJ.
Joe Biden doesn't have to say anything to Merrick Garland for all of this to get done.
There are widespread reports in the public media, in the New York Times, about how upset Joe Biden is about all of these charges with Hunter, how much he loves his son, how upset he is with all of this stuff happening.
You think Merrick Garland doesn't know that?
You think Merrick Garland isn't interested at all?
He has no political stake in making sure that a sweetheart deal gets cut with Hunter?
A sweetheart deal that he attempts to bury in a gun deal?
You think that that's... Joe Biden doesn't have to, like, pick up the phone and say to Merrick Garland, Merrick, I want you to quash this investigation.
He doesn't have to sign him letters saying, Merrick, I love my son, and make it go away.
He doesn't have to do that.
All he has to do is make it clear that he would like that to happen, and Merrick Garland knows how to make that happen, so he makes it happen.
And one of the ways he makes that happen is he says to David Weiss, I'm not giving you special counsel status.
You work for me, so if things go wrong here, I get blamed anyway.
Now, like, let's make this thing go away.
That's all.
Democrats, for the record, are beginning to turn on Hunter.
House Democrats are beginning to realize that maybe Hunter has to go under the bus in order to save Joe here, which is a pretty dirty pool.
We'll get to that momentarily.
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Okay, so meanwhile, Democrats, while they protest that there is nothing here, House Democrats are preparing to throw Hunter directly under the bus, according to Politico, quote, As the House barrels closer to an impeachment vote, Democrats are vowing to defend Biden to the end.
Joe Biden, that is, not Hunter.
Top Democrats are coalescing around a strategy to oppose the GOP's impeachment inquiry, cleaving off the son's conduct from his father's.
They think they have the facts to back them up, since the probe has yet to find any evidence directly linking Hunter Biden's business dealings to Joe.
Again, they keep saying this over and over.
I don't understand.
You do have evidence.
Hunter talked about it.
Tony Bobulinski talked about it.
Devin Archer talked about it.
What are you talking about?
But I guess they're going to pretend.
Delegate Stacey Plaskett of the Virgin Islands says our job, or my job, will be to remind the American people of that over and over again.
Hunter Biden is not the administration.
Jamie Raskin said you can't impeach Hunter Biden, but he will be prosecuted.
Democrats don't even plan to try to defend Hunter Biden's conduct during his time serving on the board of the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma.
That arrangement, Republicans say, allowed him to trade on his father's influence at the time as vice president.
By the way, that's not just what Republicans say.
Hunter himself said it!
He said, if my last name were not Biden, I wouldn't have been on the board of a natural gas company in Ukraine.
He knows nothing about natural gas.
He knows nothing about Ukraine.
But his last name is Biden.
Instead, the president's party is keen to keep Joe as far away as possible from the drip-drip of damaging information coming out about his son.
Jerry Nadler of New York, he says Hunter Biden may have very well done some improper things.
He's a disturbed man.
Almost every president has had problematic family members.
Yes, but is the president in business with them?
Question, we understand that Roger Clinton, Bill Clinton's brother, was a really screwed up dude.
Was Bill clearing checks?
Was Bill like actively using his influence to get Roger Clinton jobs outside the administration?
I'm just, I'm so confused.
But this is what Democrats think they're going to do.
They're going to throw Hunter under the bus.
So it'll be fascinating to see, it's almost Shakespearean, whether Joe is eventually just going to throw Hunter under the bus as well.
If the mask of, he's a caring father, goes by the wayside when his presidency is at stake.
If he says, yeah, Hunter does a lot of corrupt, terrible things, and he's got problems, obviously, and, you know, well, I wasn't involved in those, but Hunter, man, he's gonna have to go to jail and pay his, like, you think Joey's gonna do that?
It'll be interesting to find out.
Meanwhile, Democrats have come up with a secondary angle here, and that is, the person behind all of this is the nefarious Trump.
Oh, Trump, Trump is manipulating, he's pulling all the strings here.
No, I'm just gonna say no.
There are a lot of Republicans who think that Joe Biden has done corrupt and terrible things here.
Nothing to do with Donald Trump.
But again, everything has to be Trump's fault.
That dog is not going to hunt.
That is not a dog that is going to hunt.
That is Trump from behind the scenes manipulating genius like all of this.
Donald Trump can barely manipulate his own hands.
Are you kidding me?
That's not a thing.
Donald Trump manipulating the Republican Party into impeaching Joe Biden.
Give me a break.
But according to Yahoo News, on a sweeping patio overlooking the golf course at his private club in Bedminster, New Jersey, former President Donald Trump dined Sunday night with a close political ally, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
It was a chance for the former president to catch up with the hard-right Georgia congresswoman, but over halibut and diet cokes, Greene brought up an issue of considerable interest to Trump, the push by House Republicans to impeach his likely opponent in next year's election.
I did brief him on the strategy I want to see laid out with impeachment, Greene said in a brief phone interview.
Trump's dinner with Greene came just two nights before House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced his decision on Tuesday to over-order the opening of an impeachment inquiry.
Ah, so just to get this straight, the theory here from the press is that Trump talked to MTG, who then dictated terms to Kevin McCarthy.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
Nailed it.
That's probably what's going on here.
But of course, this is what Jamie Raskin, who again was involved in the impeachment of Trump twice, now is claiming that the impeachment is coming from Trump.
This is so tiresome.
You know where it's coming from?
It's coming from the fact that Joe Biden is a lifelong corrupt politician for decades.
You know what he wouldn't have to worry about?
Impeachment.
If he had not been a lifelong corrupt politician for decades, deploying his drug-addicted, booze-addled, prostitute-abusing son to go pick up money for the family.
I mean, I don't understand why this is so tough to understand.
It's amazing.
Here's Jimmy Raskin.
Do you think the White House should have, could have handled the Hunter Biden saga better?
You know, I'm not closely watching the White House.
What I'm doing is engaged in the work of the Oversight Committee.
So for seven months, we have watched the Republicans on the Oversight Committee and Chairman Comer get all of the witnesses they want, all of the documents they want, more than 12,000 pages of documents, and there is no evidence of any criminality or wrongdoing by Joe Biden.
There's 91 criminal charges against Donald Trump right now, 13 criminal charges against Congressman Santos, who was just on the show a few moments ago.
They have nothing to say about that.
There are no charges against Joe Biden, and they want to impeach the guy.
That's obviously coming from Donald Trump.
That's obviously coming from Donald Trump.
Or maybe it's coming from Republicans who look at the fact that you impeached Donald Trump twice without actually alleging crimes.
And they're like, turnabout is fair play and your president is corrupt.
Anderson Cooper is doing the same thing.
Trump is behind it.
Oh, it's the nefarious Trump.
I do enjoy the spectacle of Donald Trump is simultaneously a bumbling fool, but also he's a Machiavellian genius manipulating all the strings from behind the scenes.
CNN is reporting that the former President Trump spoke today with House GOP conference chair Elise Stefanik about the impeachment strategy.
Is he, I mean, is he really the one driving this?
I don't know whether he's driving it directly or indirectly.
Certainly as he participates in social media and talks about this on social media, he is driving the activists to call members of Congress and get involved.
So whether he called Kevin McCarthy directly or whether he is just sort of getting the troops riled up, I'm not sure which way it happened, but certainly members of Congress are hearing about it.
Oh, you mean, wow, shocker.
Donald Trump's been saying publicly he wants Joe Biden impeached from like the very first day.
So what else is new?
One of the reasons the Democrats are in a state of outsized panic about something that is not going to come to fruition, by the way.
Again, let me remind you, Democrats control the Senate.
Joe Biden is not going to be removed from office.
The reason Democrats are fighting mad about this is because by announcing an impeachment inquiry, McCarthy and the Republicans have successfully put this at the top of the news.
And that's what they don't want.
They want to talk about Trump.
They want to talk about the old news of Trump's indictments and all the rest of this kind of stuff.
They don't want to talk about Joe Biden being absolutely corrupt.
It's not something they wish to speak about.
Why?
Well, because they're fighting.
I mean, they are afraid beyond all reason.
And all measure about Kamala Harris.
That's really one of the things that's happening here.
It's hysterical.
Every column that tells Joe Biden not to run always includes an addendum from these Democratic kind of advisors that Kamala also shouldn't run.
David Ignatius, as we talked about yesterday on the program, David Ignatius wrote a column in the Washington Post saying Joe should not run and also Kamala Harris.
Which is kind of amazing, right?
Because she's supposed to be this wunderkind, this political genius.
She's supposed to be amazing at this, and we just all misunderstand her.
But the problem is, nobody likes Kamala Harris.
So the reason they're panicking about Biden is because they got nobody to back him up.
Who's the person waiting in the wings?
You can say it's Gavin Newsom, but let me tell you, running on the record of California is not likely to win you the presidency, or at the very least, it ain't gonna go amazing.
California's been bleeding population, including my entire family, for years under Gavin Newsom.
It's truly an amazing spectacle to watch as the Democratic Party recognizes, I mean they really do, that they must...
Send this Madame Tussauds wax figure of a human into battle, and he's melting.
But you better get him back in the presidency before that dude completely melts, because backing him up is Kamala Harris.
And you can hear the Democratic unease.
Nancy Pelosi was asked yesterday about whether Kamala Harris was the best pick for vice president for Joe Biden.
She refused three separate times to say yes.
She's like, well, you know, Joe did pick him, but she's like... Is Vice President Kamala Harris the best running mate for this president?
He thinks so, and that's what matters.
People shouldn't underestimate what Kamala Harris brings to the table.
Do you think she is the best running mate, though?
She's the Vice President of the United States.
So when people say to me, well, why isn't she doing this or that?
I say, because she's the Vice President.
That's the job description.
You don't do that much.
You know, you're a source of strength, inspiration, intellectual resource, and the rest.
Again, she's not saying that she should be the running mate.
She's just saying, well, you know, she is great and Joe, nobody's comfortable with Kamala Harris.
Why?
Well, because she's terrible at this.
For example, she was asked about her limits on abortion.
So remember, the talking point from the Democrats, including from people like Jen Psaki, former spokesperson for the President of the United States, the talking point is that they're not for abortion on demand.
The problem is when asked, name a situation in which you would outlaw abortion, they cannot name any.
Here's Kamala Harris on Face the Nation botching it once again.
So what is it that you believe?
I mean, what week of pregnancy should abortion access be cut off?
We need to restore the protections of Roe versus Wade.
We're not trying to do something new.
But does it need to be specific in terms of defining And where that guarantee goes up to?
And where it does not?
At which week of pregnancy?
We need to put back in place the protections of Roe vs. Wade.
You know why I'm asking you this question though?
Because... We're not trying to do anything that did not exist before June of last year.
That would be abortion on demand, by the way.
Just recognize, the question was, where would you limit abortion?
And the answer is, I'm not going to answer your question.
Because they don't have any limits on abortion.
She's terrible at this.
Everybody knows she's terrible at this.
And meanwhile, it's a two-front war for Joe Biden in this election.
On the one hand, you've got his corruption and his unpopularity.
And on the other hand, you have a bad economic situation that is manifesting itself right now.
According to the Wall Street Journal, consumer prices rose in August at the fastest pace in more than a year due to a jump in energy costs, illustrating the potential obstacles to wringing inflation out of the economy without a sharper slowdown.
The Consumer Price Index, a closely watched inflation gauge, rose 0.6% in August from the prior month, according to the Labor Department.
More than half of that increase was due to higher gasoline prices, but that doesn't matter because, I mean, you're still paying for it.
The monthly core reading likely keeps Federal Reserve officials on course to hold interest rates steady at their meeting next week.
However, on an annualized basis, prices were up 3.7% overall in August versus 3.2% in July.
Annual core inflation is still 4.3% in August.
So these are not good numbers.
It's supposed to be, again, at 2%.
Remember, every time they say that inflation is slowing, recognize that all of the inflation that already happened is not being undone.
So, if you say that a good costs 10% more this year than last, and then you say next month it costs only 5% more, and the month after that 3% more, and the month after that 2% more, you have to aggregate all of those for the final price.
Right now, people are paying a boatload more than they were paying for their goods and services just a couple of years ago.
And that is thanks to Joe Biden, which is why his economic numbers are in the toilet.
Every single poll shows a plurality of Americans trust Trump over Biden to handle the economy, without a doubt.
But meanwhile, Democrats keep saying, they keep trying to make Fetch happen.
It's not going to happen.
Keep saying Bidenomics over and over and over.
I mean, you're just cutting campaign commercials for Republicans at this point.
Here's Karine Jean-Pierre suggesting that Bidenomics turned the economy around, which is quite a shock considering the economy was already turning around by Q4 of 2020.
Why is he going to Maryland, the blue state, instead of maybe a red state, to talk about these economic policies?
So, I'm not going to get, you heard Jared, the chair of CEA, talk specifically about the economy, speak specifically about a major speech, a major speech that the President is going to do tomorrow on binomics.
You've heard us talk about binomics.
It's all sloganeering.
believe has turned the economy around and just not from us but from the data
that we certainly have seen and this is a president has been very clear he wants
to see an economy that come that build that's built from the bottom up middle
out and not the trickle-down economy that we saw them up middle out Republicans
want to continue to do it's all sloganeering by the way that's also the
title of the next Megan thee Stallion Cardi B song bottom up middle out it's
gonna it's gonna be fantastic Jared Bernstein, who you just referenced there, he's blaming congressional Republicans for quote-unquote allowing child poverty to double.
I love the way they play this game.
So the game is, what if we just infuse trillions of dollars into the economy on the basis of emergency measures, and it creates massive inflation, and then that expires.
And then you blame people for allowing it to expire.
That's the game here.
So we create a false perception of child poverty being relieved by blowing money into a pandemic-era economy and a post-pandemic-era economy, and then when it expires because, you know, inflation is through the roof, then it's the fault of everybody else.
It's your fault, guys.
Costs and benefits accrue to every policy.
It turns out the long-term cost of what you guys have created here is a stagflating economy.
That is what we have right now.
That's not okay in an economic context where congressional Republicans have allowed child poverty to double by refusing to extend this child tax credit.
They're so tiresome.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden is facing some serious problems on the union front.
We'll get to that momentarily.
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Well, meanwhile, Joe Biden is having some union troubles.
So Joe Biden has always been a union guy.
And the reason he's been a union guy is because there's fairly good evidence that the unions were actually heavily involved in Joe Biden's first Senate election campaign.
Ben Schreckinger writes about this in his book, The Bidens, that basically the day before
Joe Biden's original senatorial election campaign back in like 1970, effectively,
there was a mailer that was supposed to go out in all of the newspapers that day,
and the unions picketed the newspaper to stop the mailer from going out
at the behest of people connected with Joe.
So he's always been bought and paid for by the unions.
Well, now he's running into a problem because the UAW is seeking another big payout
from the car companies, despite the fact that the UAW did enormous work
in the 50s, 60s, and 70s to completely undermine America's car advantage,
which is why by the time of the 80s, everybody was driving a Toyota.
The White House is closely monitoring as Detroit's big automakers and the UAW engage in acrimonious negotiations with the laborers threatening to strike if agreement is not reached before their current contract expires at 11.59 p.m.
on Thursday.
A full or partial strike could send shockwaves through the economy while also calling into question Biden's pledge to create a win-win transition to a clean energy future.
He's not directly involved, but he certainly has a strong interest in seeing a settlement both sides can live with, said Harley Shakin, a labor professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
With the deadline approaching, UAW's fiery new president, Sean Fain, has not echoed Biden's optimism.
He says the union's roughly 150,000 automotive members are ready to walk off the job if their demands are not met in the next couple of days, which could completely destabilize the industry.
The workers are calling for a 36% pay hike over four years and the restoration of defined benefit pension plans, which means the utter bankruptcy of these car companies again.
You remember that Barack Obama bailed out the car companies.
So, we'll get that again.
Joe Biden presumably will come down on the side of the unions because Joe Biden doesn't care about the economy, he doesn't care about the car companies.
He cares about pleasing his union cronies, who will then presumably spend a billion dollars in the upcoming election to get him re-elected.
Okay, all of this bodes ill for Joe Biden's re-elect chances.
The good news for the Democrats is they always have the Republicans to fall back on, which is exciting, exciting stuff.
So, Republicans are about to have a circular firing squad with regard to a possible shutdown According to Axios, House Republicans have fallen into a state of paralyzed chaos on their second day back from recess with no obvious exit ramp and a government spending fight of their own creation.
On the first night of the House Speaker election, we published a piece headlining the ungovernable House GOP.
Eight months later, the sentiment has never rung more true.
The House was forced to cancel the vote on Wednesday, advancing funding for the Pentagon after the Freedom Caucus rebelled over spending levels.
Another typically uncontroversial appropriations bill funding agriculture has been scrapped entirely over an internal GOP debate about abortion policy.
McCarthy's announcement of an impeachment inquiry appears to have backfired, with some Republicans trashing it as a distraction.
GOP leadership is now advocating for a short-term continuing resolution to avert a government shutdown.
But if McCarthy puts a bill on the floor, Matt Gaetz is vowing to trigger daily votes to oust him as Speaker.
I just have a question.
What is the point of this?
Like, what is seeking to be achieved here?
I said this with regard to the first threats to not hand McCarthy the speakership unless he handed some concessions to the House Conservatives.
I'm fine with that.
But can we name the points that you actually are advocating for so McCarthy can either, you know, do them or not?
Instead, what we're getting, it seems, is another fight over McCarthy with nobody waiting in the wings to pick up the pieces because 190 Republicans say they're committed to McCarthy no matter what.
And meanwhile, Democrats are just sitting on the side, chortling.
Because why do they care?
Now, behind all of this is a real sort of bizarre ideological battle, and it's an ideological battle over the value of tactics at all.
There's part of the Republican Party that just thinks that tactics don't matter at all, that the best way to strategize in situations in which you don't control all the power is to run directly at a wall at full speed with your head down.
And if you do it over and over enough, the wall will crumble.
I've yet to see that strategy.
Achieve any sort of real success, lasting success.
It seems more likely that what you should do is you should make moves that eventually guarantee you full power across all the branches of government.
Then you can really make harsh moves.
But instead, we're just going to get internal squabbling.
Matt Gaetz goes on MSNBC to bitch about Kevin McCarthy.
It's always a dead giveaway when Republicans are appearing on MSNBC to do this sort of stuff.
This is about term limits, a balanced budget amendment, and single-subject spending bills, just like I've been saying for an entire year.
I am the most investigated man in the entire Congress, and right there, you saw Kevin McCarthy lying like a dead dog, because I have never asked him to interfere in any ethics matter.
I had the FBI and DOJ, who hate me, investigate me for three years.
You covered it nearly nightly, and even you acknowledged at the end that my denials held up consistently, and the people Yeah, I don't know what the hell that has to do with Kevin McCarthy, but suddenly, I guess the idea is that if, what, you yell at Kevin McCarthy that he will be replaced by whom?
Who's waiting in the wings?
Steve Scalise doesn't want it.
Jim Jordan ain't gonna take it.
Like, what are you talking about right now?
Meanwhile, McCarthy is accusing Gates of teaming up with Eric Swallow to attack his speakership.
So this is all going great, guys.
working with Eric Swalwell.
But let me be very clear.
Matt is upset about an ethics complaint.
I don't care what they threaten against me.
I am not going to interject into an independent committee like ethics.
And I'm not going to put Swalwell back on the Intel Committee.
So again, these sorts of firefights are completely useless, but leave it to Republicans to shoot themselves directly in
the foot when facing down the possibility of Democrats doing the
same.
I swear, watching the Democrats and the Republicans do battle with one another
is like watching a gunfight in which both gunfighters are pointing
their own guns at their own heads and threatening to commit suicide.
It's like, it's an amazing thing.
They're standing 10 paces apart and the Democrats are like, if you don't give me what we want, man, I'm going to shoot myself right now in the head.
And Republicans are like, don't do it.
I'll shoot myself in the head.
And all of us are standing here like, I don't understand, why don't neither of you do that?
That seems stupid.
I've been saying for years at this point, first party to sanity wins.
But it seems like we're not going in that direction anytime in the near future.
Meanwhile, other big political story of the day is that Mitt Romney is now announcing his retirement from the Senate of the United States.
And Mitt Romney is one of the more peculiar figures in the history of American politics.
He was a very, very moderate Massachusetts Republican governor.
He ran as the conservative in 2008, you'll recall, against John McCain.
He came in second to John McCain in that nominating battle, and he was considered the more conservative candidate against John McCain, largely because of immigration.
Then he ran again in 2012, and he won the nomination, and then he lost the presidency to Barack Obama.
In an election that I think actually broke the country.
Because you had an incredibly milquetoast moderate Republican running against a radical Democrat, and the radical Democrat wins by cobbling together a coalition of the supposedly oppressed against the demographically elderly white majority and all this nonsense.
And he breaks politics permanently, does Barack Obama, in the United States.
So then, Mitt Romney goes to the Senate in Utah.
He moves to Utah because he's a Mormon, he's elected to Senate overwhelmingly, and he proceeds to work with Democrats on a wide variety of issues.
His voting record overall is pretty conservative, but on some key issues, on certain bills like, for example, the Infrastructure Act, he ends up working with Democrats.
The widespread perception from Republicans about Mitt Romney Is almost a circle.
It starts from he's a moderate Republican, not sure how conservative he is, but I guess he's got an R by his name, too.
He's very, he's a harsh conservative.
He's a harsh conservative in 2008, too.
He's a harsh conservative, but he didn't really stand up to Barack Obama the way that he should.
Probably that's why he lost.
If he had been only a little bit harsher, too.
He's kind of a moderate Republican.
He kind of has an R by his name, but not all that conservative.
Here's Mitt Romney announcing he's not going to run for reelection.
At the end of another term, I'd be in my mid-80s.
Frankly, it's time for a new generation of leaders.
They're the ones that need to make the decisions that will shape the world they will be living in.
Now, we face critical challenges – mounting national debt, climate change, and the ambitious authoritarians of Russia and China.
Neither President Biden nor former President Trump are leading their party to confront those issues.
Political motivations too often impede the solutions that these challenges demand.
The next generation of leaders must take America to the next stage of global leadership.
While I'm not running for re-election, I'm not retiring from the fight.
I'll be your United States Senator until January of 2025.
Okay, so he then shared in an interview with McKay Coppins his hatred for all the rest of the Republican Party.
And here is the thing about this kind of stuff.
We have a peculiar standard inside the Republican Party for what counts as loyalty and what counts as disloyalty.
So Mitt Romney's attacking all the other Republicans.
He shared a unique disgust for Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, who he said, quote, put politics above the interests of liberal democracy and the Constitution.
He also went after Senator J.D.
Vance, and I don't know that I can disrespect someone more than J.D.
Vance.
And, you know, so that is considered disloyal by a lot of Republicans.
I hear it.
I hear it.
Like, why are you directing your fire inside the House?
Also, I tend to hold that rule about Donald Trump attacking fellow Republicans inside the House, but it's very strange to me that certain types of attacks are considered completely verboten, and certain types of attacks, depending on who is doing them, are considered totally appropriate.
So when Donald Trump suggests that, in some way, Ron DeSantis is a rhino, his fans are like, yeah, that's true.
And you're like, wait, that's not true at all.
And then when people attack Mitt Romney as a rhino, then the same people will be like, well, that's appropriate or inappropriate.
How about one standard for whether you attack people inside the caucus or not?
When they violate actual conservative principles, then you attack them.
Donald Trump spent the day celebrating the ouster of Mitt Romney.
Which is, again, like Donald Trump spends more time celebrating the ouster of Republican senators than any Democrat that I know.
He put out a statement saying, Fantastic news for America.
The great state of Utah and the Republican Party.
Mitt Romney sometimes referred to as Pierre Delecto.
I will say, the guy's really funny.
That was his peculiar screen name on like an alternative Twitter account.
Now, again, I'm fine with Mitt Romney stepping down, and I'm fine with a lot of people thinking that he wasn't conservative enough in Utah.
I agree with some of those criticisms.
A lot of those criticisms.
I'll just point out that Donald Trump has now celebrated the ouster of people ranging from Jeff Flake to John McCain to Mitt Romney I mean, like, he does this kind of stuff all the time.
So when you're talking about, like, it's bad for Romney to attack other Republicans in the Senate, it's not great to attack other Republicans in the Senate, you might think.
Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
So, things that I like today.
I have to say that the pagan mentality that's taken over corporate America is truly an astonishing thing.
So there's an ad that was released yesterday by Apple.
In which they effectively call for worship of Mother Nature.
I mean, this is just pure pagan Gaia worship nonsense.
So this commercial is Tim Cook and supposedly the rest of the Apple board meeting with Mother Nature, who of course is a black woman.
And she shows up to express her unease at the progress that corporate America has made in protecting her, the environment.
And here's how this commercial goes.
Mother Nature, welcome to Apple.
How was the weather getting in?
The weather was however I wanted it to be.
Let's cut to the chase.
In 2020, you promised to bring Apple's entire carbon footprint to zero by 2030.
Henry David Thoreau over here said we have a profound opportunity to build a more sustainable future for the planet we share.
I think our ten o'clock's at the same time.
They all do.
Alright.
This is my third corporate responsibility gig today, so who wants to disappoint me first?
Well, we've got some updates we're excited to share with you.
Materials?
Status?
Is there a materials person here?
Yes.
We are in the process of eliminating all plastic from our packaging by the end- Let me guess.
Fifty years from now when someone else is left holding the bag?
By the end of next year, actually.
Okay, so can I just point out how stupid this is?
So there are a few things that are incredibly stupid about this.
So this entire commercial, which apparently was unveiled at the Apple product launch to demonstrate just how environmentally friendly they are.
First of all, It begins with Mother Nature arriving.
And then they say, how's the weather?
And it gets real dark.
And Mother Nature says, whatever I want it to be.
So what are we worried about you for?
I'm confused.
If Mother Nature is all that powerful, then why is it that we are not seeking to protect ourselves from you and not the other way around?
Which, by the way, was the story of virtually all of human history until the last five minutes.
Mother Nature trying to kill people and people trying to figure out a way not to die.
It's pretty much the story of all of human survival and civilization.
Still kind of the story of all of human survival and civilization.
Okay, but immediately, it's an immediate contradiction.
Then it turns into, how can we worship at the altar of Mother Nature?
Well, we won't, what if we recycle all of our plastic?
We don't even use plastic.
What if we recycle all the aluminum that we use in our phones?
And this is what we're, we're proving to you what good people we are.
What amazing, amazing people we are.
Don't worry about values.
Don't worry about, like, whether what you're doing is good or evil in terms of the product that you produce, what kind of protections it has for, say, children, how content actually reaches people via the phones and computers you put out.
Don't worry about any of that stuff.
What you really ought to worry about is mother nature.
So first of all, the substitution, I mean, this is, it is paganism.
Worshipping nature is a form of paganism.
Because the reality is, nature don't care about you.
And if you are making pagan sacrifices to the gods, but what you're offering up is not, you know, grain and meat.
What you're offering up is instead like recycled aluminum.
I'm not sure what the difference is.
Maybe my favorite part about all of this is the apple board.
The supposed apple board meeting with Mother Nature here.
It's super diverse.
You got a black lady, you got an Asian woman, you got an Indian woman.
Here's what the actual apple board looks like right now.
That is the whitest group of people in human history.
That is a very white group of people.
There is maybe one person on this entire list who is not white.
So, yeah.
They wouldn't want to put that in the commercial because then it would just be a bunch of white people meeting with a black lady.
And that wouldn't look, you know, nearly as good or quite as diverse.
What I like about this is it's good when the mask comes off.
When corporate America basically says, when people like Tim Cook are like, well, you know, my chief goal is to worship Mother Nature and to use my giant company to do so.
Meanwhile, I'll produce all of our product in communist China, where they completely abuse the environment and don't care about anything.
Yeah, I don't believe you.
But I appreciate the sentiment.
Alrighty guys, the rest of the show continues right now.
You're not going to want to miss it.
We'll be joined online by Yasha Monk, author of The Identity Trap.
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