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Dec. 17, 2024 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:34:50

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1065

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	Hello everyone, welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Seaters.
	Today is Tuesday the 17th of December and I'm joined by Josh and Bo.
	And this is episode 1065. Blimey.
	Yeah, that's a lot.
	Getting on.
	Right, so we are going to discuss how Trump might save Canada from its governor, I suppose.
	The Wisconsin school shooting, what we know of it, and Biden's pardons.
	And without further ado, should we start?
	We have some announcements.
	Where are they?
	Christmas cards.
	Thank you to people sending in Christmas cards.
	We do appreciate it.
	We've started receiving a few.
	We're putting them up in the office.
	And thank you very much.
	Festive ones.
	They look festive.
	Some very nice messages in there.
	I've been reading them out to people in the office.
	And very wholesome.
	We're just blessed with fans like you.
	We are indeed.
	Thank you.
	Very wholesome indeed.
	Right.
	Shall we pop these away somewhere safe and then we'll put them up in a bit.
	Some news.
	So, a curious thing has happened.
	Donald Trump is going to be the next US president, and it seems the world is healing.
	And one of the closest places to the United States, Canada, seems to already be undergoing this healing process before he's even assumed office.
	And it all starts with this.
	And this is a news story from the 30th of November.
	Trump praises very productive Mar-a-Lago meeting with Trudeau.
	And of course this was prompted, this meeting, because Trump had threatened to impose a 25% tariff on Canadian goods.
	And of course Canada sends about 75% of its total exports to the US and this would absolutely devastate the Canadian economy.
	And so it was significant enough that Prime Minister Trudeau We're good to go.
	Part of the reason that Trump was putting forward this 25% tariff on Canada is the sort of porousness of the border.
	And as this article from recently admits, Canada admits people can simply hop over US border as Trump demands crackdown.
	There's no use Trump cracking down on the southern border if your northern border is equivalently porous and people can just come in and hop the border.
	Even if he solved the Mexican border issue, which I think is a big ask in and of itself...
	If Canada is still a viable route to the United States, it will simply be the case that people will switch to go there.
	Because, of course, people like George Soros are flying in people to Mexico so they can cross the southern border.
	What was interesting, a few weeks after Trump was elected, was that Justin Trudeau made an announcement that he is going to do a temporary halt on immigration and he is going to revise his immigration policy.
	So this is yet another...
	Yeah, I don't think he's necessarily had an ideological change of heart.
	It's just a pragmatic move to try and cling on to power by trying to appeal to people's concerns.
	But I think it's too little too late.
	Too late for him, yeah.
	I would say so.
	So what Trump is doing with this 25% tariff is that he's using the threat of the tariff as a bargaining chip.
	I'd be surprised if it got to the point where they actually implement this 25% tariff.
	Although it is very effective as a bargaining chip because you either get what you want in the bargaining Or you can justify it by saying you're protecting American industries and Trump's in a unique position to capitalize on that because he's sort of the candidate most associated with this notion of America first and protecting American businesses first, American jobs.
	He's been trying to hammer this rhetoric home and therefore it helps him galvanize his support and build support further and although of course he's not running for election again It's still useful for him to have national support because it makes his life easier.
	And also, of course, Trump has introduced protectionist policies for things like American Steel before, and so it's not even a baseless threat because he's not unheard of using these protectionist moves to benefit America.
	And so he's sort of got it both ways here, and Canada's in a bit of a bind about it.
	I don't want to use a sort of a lefty, commie, traitor talking point, but...
	Uh-oh.
	That border is ridiculously massive and through insanely rugged country sometimes, because it's like essentially a straight line.
	It just cuts across mountain ranges and ravines and rivers and everything.
	So just physically, logistically, it'd be quite difficult to actually do that.
	I think what's probably going to happen is that the United States is going to try and leverage its dominant position as world hegemon, basically.
	Questionable, perhaps.
	But they're going to try and get Canada to adopt a similar immigration approach as the United States will adopt under Trump.
	That's what's probably going to happen, because that way...
	Canada will be in a comparable situation to the United States in that they're not necessarily letting in hundreds of thousands of Indians like they're doing, although they're not necessarily the ones crossing the southern border because they can go the legal route.
	But if they're preventing, say, massive processing of asylum seekers, which Canada has a massive problem with, as well as the massive legal migration as well, then that's probably going to curb the problem.
	And America, just by merit of sharing a large border with Canada, is probably going to pressure them to reduce immigration by that route, rather than actually just building a massive wall.
	Because that's the easier way of doing it, isn't it?
	I know that there are a specific few bridges where nearly all people come across from Canada to America and back somewhere, but if you really wanted to, if you wanted to go out to the Pacific Northwest and hike across the border, there will be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles where there's nothing there.
	It's just wilderness, really.
	This is not immigration advice.
	No, no.
	Don't do that.
	Although it's good hiking, I imagine.
	If you ever saw the Trailer Park Boys episode with the Swayze train and stuff, you can walk across the border.
	I didn't think the Trailer Park Boys would be coming up this soon.
	Talk about Canada, I mean, come on.
	Yeah, of course.
	It's past you already, referencing them.
	So anyway, I wish Trump and the Americans all the best, of course.
	And the Canadians.
	They've suffered through it quite a bit, haven't they, really?
	Of course I do, of course I do, yeah.
	Normal Canadian people were.
	Had the absolute mickey taken out of them by Trudeau.
	It's nearly ten years now, I think, and very few people have good things to say about him.
	I've got a decent amount of family out in Canada as well.
	But one thing Trump did say, and this is sort of old news, but it ties into current news, is the fact that Trump suggested Canada could become the 51st state after the tariff would kill the economy.
	Which, obviously, he's joking, and lots of media outlets have pointed out that he's joking.
	Which I found interesting as well, because normally people just take him at his word.
	But everyone's sort of like, okay, we know he's having a laugh here.
	It's actually going to annex Canada.
	Do a false flag, claim they bombed the Baldwins.
	And he has been running with it, but just from a rhetorical sense.
	So you can see here, this is a post that he made.
	It was a pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor.
	Notice he says Governor, Justin Trudeau, rather than Prime Minister.
	And he's trying to play off of the 51st state thing.
	And then he also said it again.
	I think this is the BBC picking up on it.
	And here it is again.
	The great state of Canada is stunned as the finance minister resigns or was fired.
	This is foreshadowing to what I'm going to talk about in a minute.
	And by Governor Justin Trudeau is the important thing.
	So he's really going on about this.
	And the funny thing is that there has been polling and 13% of Canadians think that Canada should become the 51st American state.
	Which I'm surprised it's that high, really.
	Yeah, it is surprising, but also one thing that I saw is that most Canadians have a much favourable view of Trump than Canadians.
	Or let me rephrase it, there is a larger number of Canadians who view Trump positively and Trudeau negatively than the opposite.
	Okay, so they actually prefer Trump over Trudeau.
	Yeah.
	Well, fair enough.
	Also, one thing I'd say is that there are...
	In Canada, there's sort of the English types and then the French-speaking types, aren't there?
	Mm-hmm.
	Like the French-speaking types.
	Is it Quebec where there's...
	That's it, yeah.
	They don't want to be part of the Commonwealth or have...
	Well, of course not, no.
	...have the king as part of...
	Well, there's separatism, isn't there, in Quebec?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Which is interesting.
	Would they want to go from having the King in Buck House as their Head of State to the Prez in the White House?
	Probably not.
	They'd want to be their own thing entirely, I would have thought, those people.
	No, you're probably right.
	But apparently in this poll, where was it?
	It said, people in the Atlantic provinces, women and Canadians over the age of 55 were least likely to support it, which I thought was interesting.
	So men and young men in particular were most likely, seemingly, as that's the inverse of those figures.
	So...
	It's also worth mentioning as well that the day before they were meant to release a budget or propose a budget, the Deputy Prime Minister resigned, who was also in charge of releasing the budget.
	And so then the position went to the Industry Minister, who then resigned on the spot.
	What a coincidence.
	Why would they be resigning?
	Well, it might be something to do with this.
	Canada overshoots deficit target by 20 billion Canadian dollars as the finance minister resigns.
	That could have something to do with it, I imagine.
	No way to explain this on a CV afterwards.
	Exactly.
	That's pretty bad.
	In the scheme of things, in the scheme of sort of cabinet government...
	To have your deputy and then your head of finance, or whatever it was, the finance minister, who's the second person to resign?
	Well, she was deputy and the head of finance.
	Alright, but then the next person down the line, they also resigned, you said?
	Yep.
	So that's pretty bad.
	It is.
	That's really, really quite bad.
	Decades ago, certainly a generation or two ago, you would just resign out of embarrassment, out of shame.
	That just shows your government is imploding.
	I doubt Trudeau will, because he's the type that, until the WEF tell him he's allowed to resign, he would never resign.
	Well, we'll get to Trudeau's situation in a bit, because it might be a case of just a bit of foreshadowing here, where he might not have a choice.
	But with these things, there's always potential for alternatives, so we'll have to see about that.
	So it's worth mentioning as well.
	You shouldn't feel bad for this woman because she was the one who smiled about bank accounts being frozen with the trucker protests.
	And then let's just listen to what she says about vaccine mandates.
	There are people in the country who just...
	You know, haven't gotten around to getting vaccinated.
	Maybe they have some worries, sort of inchoate, amorphous concerns.
	And for whom having a practical reason why you need to get vaccinated is enough of a nudge to have them take this action.
	And actually, just last week when the Prime Minister and I were at a vaccination...
	You get the idea.
	Obviously we can't talk about this in detail because this is going on YouTube, but from a policy standpoint this is a very authoritarian approach to this issue.
	That's what I think I can get away with saying.
	But we've got to be careful on that one.
	I don't think anyone feels bad for this woman.
	No, no, no.
	I think we should be grateful that she's gone.
	Yeah, I disagree with her.
	I don't see the point.
	I think they're being a bit sarcastic there, to be honest.
	I don't think anyone feels particularly bad.
	It's more that people are happy that Trudeau shows that he can't run the government.
	Also, here she is, smiling about freezing people exercising their right to protest.
	So you're confirming that accounts have been frozen, both personal and corporate, but you're not releasing the information.
	And the actual follow-up is, I'm just wondering whether the bank accounts will be targeted of individuals who donated to the Give, Send, Go and the GoFundMe campaigns.
	Are they considered designated people under the Emergencies Act, meaning that their credit cards could be...
	You get the idea, right?
	I'm not going to linger on this for a long time.
	She's a bad person.
	I think that's fair to say, certainly from our perspective.
	She's abandoning ship, but it was a ship that she really liked.
	That's a very roundabout way of putting it, yes.
	And Donald Trump also...
	Yes, you can see the meme below as well.
	The great state of Canada is stunned as the finance minister resigns or was fired from her position by Governor Justin Trudeau.
	Here he goes again.
	Her behaviour was totally toxic and not at all.
	Conducive to making deals which are good for the very unhappy citizens of Canada.
	She will not be missed.
	Which I thought was quite funny.
	So yes, it seems like...
	Can I see the meme?
	Can you scroll down a bit?
	Go on then.
	Go on then.
	Oh.
	That's, of course, Trudeau's infamous blackface incident.
	The deficit is like sand.
	It gets everywhere and annoys you.
	I appreciate that, Stelios.
	So...
	Finally, they got someone to actually agree to the job of the finance minister, and it's this guy who is already the Minister of Public Safety and Intergovernmental Affairs and also has other obligations as well.
	And he's one of the few Trudeau loyalists left.
	And it's worth pointing out that Five of Trudeau's cabinet ministers have stepped down in 2024, so it's pretty embarrassing for him.
	It's also worth mentioning as well, many of the current ministers have had to adopt two or even three different roles because there's such a shortage of people that want to be in it, in the cabinet.
	I wonder why that is.
	Is it because they're so unpopular?
	I think it might be.
	I don't know how he won the last election.
	We can leave that question there, I think.
	Was there fortification going on?
	Maybe.
	I didn't know that.
	But it's also worth mentioning as well, there's a by-election going on in British Columbia, and this could potentially be something that spells the end.
	I know lots of people speculate and say, oh, Trudeau's going to be resigning, and they've been saying that for the past year, and you see it ad infinitum, and this could be something that shows that they're really, really unpopular if they do particularly poorly.
	But we'll have to see.
	There has also been a little bit of pushback, and this is Ontario's Premier Doug Ford saying, We'll go to the extent of cutting off their energy, going down to Michigan, going down to New York State, and over to Wisconsin.
	Americans are going to feel the pain as well, and isn't that sad?
	And that's in response to the threat of the tariffs.
	America sends in the Marines for less than that.
	It does.
	It is asking for trouble.
	Hmm.
	Stay safe, Doug.
	That's what I would say.
	Not that I'm genuinely saying America is going to send in the Marines against Canada, but...
	No.
	Those are tough fighting words and they ring hollow to me, as if...
	Doug Ford is going to take on the United States single-handedly.
	It's not that he's going to do this, but I think that there is something that is possibly good about it, that when you have people like Trump, you have to speak their language because they may respect you more.
	Fair point.
	Trump's playing brinkmanship with rhetoric and he's doing the same back.
	Fair enough.
	Just an idea, just throwing it out.
	I don't think it will necessarily come to this.
	A lot of the time, diplomacy between the US and Canada, there are strong words but actually they get along pretty well and it's pretty amicable a lot of the time.
	And normally conclusions can be met.
	There's also a pancake and maple syrup.
	You're making me hungry, Stelios.
	I am hungry.
	I love pancakes and maple syrup.
	Last time the Americans did try to invade Canada and it didn't work out too well for them.
	That's true, actually, yeah.
	In 1812. Had a bit of help from us lot, didn't they?
	I don't think we're going to get involved this time.
	I think they've got a better military nowadays as well.
	I would say so.
	So, obviously, the head of the Conservative Party, Pierre Poliver, has called for a no-confidence vote against Trudeau because of all of this.
	That is to be expected.
	The opportunity is now to call for these sorts of things, and he is doing it.
	And also...
	He'll be their next leader probably, right?
	Yeah.
	I have my reservations about him.
	I don't know much.
	I've seen a few clips of him and he seems alright, but I don't actually know much detail.
	Yeah.
	Fake-based?
	Sort of centre-right.
	A little bit of milquetoast, perhaps a bit of a continuity, but slightly less bad than Trudeau.
	That sort of thing, right?
	We know the type in Britain, don't we?
	Ten a penny.
	I like how you always have your reservations, and frequently you're right.
	Thank you.
	I appreciate it.
	I mean, we have to say it.
	My cynicism is my defence mechanism against disappointment against the world, and I'm quite often disappointed.
	Also, the leader of Canada's New Democratic Party, Jagmeet Singh, was also calling on Trudeau to resign.
	He's going to be the sort of new favourite of the left, I imagine, because, of course, he's trying to flank them from the left, as far as I'm aware, at least.
	Is he saying that Trudeau is far right?
	I don't think it's got quite to that point yet.
	But outlets like Visigrad were saying Justin Trudeau will likely be forced to resign.
	Announcement could come within a few hours.
	And this was more than a few hours ago.
	And lots of people say this sort of thing.
	I'll believe it when I see him handing in his resignation and addressing the nation.
	Until then, I think it is difficult to say.
	However, things aren't necessarily looking that good for him because you can have a look at other outlets like the BBC, for example.
	Trudeau in peril after Trump's bat sparks political crisis.
	That's pretty strong terms for...
	An outlet that would be sympathetic towards him.
	Even CNN, Justin Trudeau is facing a political crisis made worse by Donald Trump.
	Can he survive as Canada's leader?
	And even the fact that these mainstream outlets are asking these sorts of questions puts it on the agenda, doesn't it?
	And makes people lose confidence in him as leader.
	If everyone's asking, so when are you resigning?
	It makes the possibility of someone resigning more, even if they were not inclined to do so in the first place.
	My feeling is, you know, in recent times we've had someone like that Ardern woman in New Zealand.
	Jacinda Ardern, yeah.
	Or Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
	These people resign without too much pressure.
	Everything I know about Trudeau is he's not like that.
	He's more like a Gordon Brown person.
	Will never resign, I've said it before, will never give up on the game until it gives up on him.
	The last limpet on a sinking ship, right?
	Will hold on tooth and nail to the last possible moment.
	That's my feeling about Trudeau.
	Unless he's removed...
	By legitimate means, by parliamentary means.
	He won't just resign because there's loads of headlines about it.
	That's my feeling.
	I could be wrong.
	That could be resigning right now, for all I know, but I suspect he won't.
	I agree with what you're saying.
	I think your read of his character is correct.
	However, with his inability to fill cabinet positions, if enough of his cabinet turns on him, it's pretty much over, right?
	Because he won't be able to run a functional government.
	And then you've got to hold your hands up and say, okay, well, there's nothing I can do now.
	I'm going to have to resign because I'm forced to.
	And I think that would be the means in which Trudeau will leave, I think.
	That would be a bit more honest on his part and also it would be better for his party because he is someone who has governed for nine years.
	People aren't happy with him.
	It doesn't seem that he has a lot on his CV to show positive.
	Maybe he should just resign as a leader and give it to someone else fast.
	It's also worth mentioning one of the most prominent Canadians in the world has recently announced that they're going to leave Canada because of the tyranny of the Canadian government.
	And of course, Jordan Peterson is actually, even in Britain, a household name these days.
	Everyone sort of knows who he is.
	And if someone this prominent...
	It says that they're leaving and he says, and this is a direct quote, the new legislation that the Liberals are attempting to push through, Bill C-63, I'd just be living in a totalitarian hellhole if that legislation passes and it could well pass.
	And this is talking about the Online Harms Act, which is similar to what we have in Britain.
	And this is a quote from the federal government.
	It contains a variety of measures to address a range of harmful content online, as well as hate speech and hate crimes both online and offline.
	And we know that this doesn't work, obviously.
	We're not in favour of any of this sort of thing.
	And it's enough to put people off, because there are plenty of prominent examples in Britain of this having a backfire effect.
	And it could be the death knell for...
	Trudeau's Liberal Party, I think.
	And so it's positive news for once about Canada.
	Well done, Canada.
	Things are going well for you.
	And it is thanks to an American election.
	I don't know whether that makes it better or worse.
	But I hope you have a nice Christmas and you can feel a little bit better about your future.
	Right.
	Do we have any Rumble chat comments?
	We canny see them, can we?
	We'll do them after the second segment, he said.
	Okay.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I think Samson's got to pull him up.
	I don't have control of that.
	Samson, you've got to pull up the segment.
	Yep.
	Okay.
	It's alright.
	It's a little pause.
	It's good.
	Makes you amped up.
	Are you excited for a school shooting?
	Oh, I can't say that.
	I mean talking about the events.
	Right.
	Digging a hole here.
	Right.
	So our next topic is a very sad topic.
	We're going to talk about the school shootings at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin.
	Digging a hole here.
	Right.
	Is that a new one?
	I haven't even heard about this.
	Yeah, it happened yesterday.
	Yes, it happened yesterday.
	I think around 11 a.m.
	local time.
	Right, so I have to say that there's a lot of fake news about the story and everything we're going to say should be taken with a pinch of salt and we are going to tell you a lot of the fake news around the event.
	At least we're going to mention them.
	And we are going to talk a bit about what we know.
	So basically what happened is that a teacher and a student have been shot by a student.
	That student has been identified as 15-year-old Natalie Samantha Rupnow.
	And that teen girl just went into the school.
	She started firing and she killed a student and...
	And a teacher.
	Someone went and called the police.
	The police arrived at around 3 minutes to 12 and they found, I think, the girl dead.
	There are some reports that say that she was found dead.
	Some other reports are saying that she died when she was transported to the hospital.
	Also, I've seen articles in major outlets that are saying both in the same entry.
	It may suggest that these are written by ChadGBT, which is something that is a bit worrying and it shouldn't be handled this way.
	Right, so what we know is that the teenage student and teacher were pronounced dead at the scene while another teacher and five more students were wounded.
	Two of the students are in critical condition with life-threatening surgeries and Rapnow sustained a self-inflicted gunshot wound and was pronounced dead on the way to the hospital according to Barnes, who is the chief of the police.
	Right, so there were lots of reports about what happened.
	Everyone just started, rushed on X to say it's this or that.
	I saw a ton of things that turned out to be fake news and this is one of those things where it's such a hot-button issue that everyone's rushing to get a scoop and not verifying things and you see all sorts of strange stuff circulating, don't you?
	But sorry, do carry on.
	No, no, just finish your sentence.
	I agree with what you're saying and it's very difficult and dangerous because there are lots of people who just do it for clicks.
	They are just circulating any kind of narrative that they want to push forward that has nothing to do with the facts.
	It's kind of...
	Gross to me, really, that people can basically jump on a tragedy and then try and shift the narrative to whatever their pet topic is rather than approaching it honestly.
	And I think that with something as sort of sad as this, where innocent people die and, you know, a 15-year-old girl was driven to this or, you know, had mental problems that went unaddressed, we don't know yet.
	But either way, I think my overwhelming emotion towards this whole thing is just sadness that the world is like this and that people are so willing to do harm to each other when they've clearly not done anything wrong.
	And the fact that people jump on that and try and basically push their own agenda to make money is sickening.
	I think our feeds must be very different.
	I've not even heard about this.
	I didn't see anything on my feed or anything.
	Well, I think that's a blessing.
	But there were many people who rushed to say all sorts of things.
	I have some of them at the end.
	We'll go reviewing them, but let's see what happens.
	It's rare that it's a girl though, right?
	Really rare that these things are done by girls.
	Very, very rare.
	Almost, not never.
	Like, there's that one from the 70s, isn't there?
	They said she didn't like Mondays.
	There's also Audrey Hale as well, the Nashville, Tennessee shooter.
	That was relatively recent.
	It was in the past year or so, I think, off the top of my head.
	Was that the transgender one?
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah.
	She was born a girl?
	Yes, biologically female.
	Right, so her family home was visited by the SWAT team and they raided it and they interrogated her parents and her father and the reports say that her father is cooperating.
	Now there is a lot of discourse about an alleged manifesto that is Hers.
	Or is supposedly hers.
	And it indicates several very worrying parts.
	And we are going to talk about it.
	I don't know if it is hers, but I will say, the way I see it, it does seem to me to represent a sort of sentimentality that would do something like this.
	A lot of people are saying, no, don't rush to say that the manifesto is hers and that it describes her behavior.
	But on the other hand, no one who doesn't have any issues just wakes up one day and does something like this.
	But again, we don't know if it is actually hers.
	What, there's some sort of document out there?
	Yes, there is some sort of document.
	The document, whether it's true or not, was implying that she's some sort of radical feminist, which is possible.
	But we just don't know yet.
	Really severely man-hating.
	But also, according to what I saw from the pages of the alleged manifesto, it was also misanthropic.
	It seemed a bit antinatalist.
	So on the one hand, it's presented a bit, you know, radical feminist and anti-man.
	On the other hand, it's a bit antinatalist, saying that, you know, Not being born is a good thing.
	I mean, if it is legitimate, it would have been written by a 15-year-old girl, so we're not exactly expecting a particularly coherent string of claims to be made.
	It's important to say though that the police hasn't confirmed that it is hers, actually.
	Isn't it worth mentioning as well that we don't necessarily know the sex of the victims either, and so that bit of information might be important in confirming or denying the authenticity?
	Absolutely, because what we have looked, what we see when we read the main entries of the outlets, they say a student and a teacher.
	They don't say a man or a woman.
	Or a girl.
	They just say a student and a teacher.
	So that could possibly indicate that the manifesto rumors are false.
	But on the other hand, it may be the case that if the manifesto is correct, there is also hatred towards women that have, within quotation marks, internalized the patriarchy.
	So it comes from feminism.
	You become so feminist that you start hating women.
	That's an interesting angle, but it certainly is possible.
	And it's also worth mentioning as well that people quite often criticise others for speculating about the motives of people who do this sort of thing.
	And I think that that, if anything...
	Should be the main focus of public discourse because the motives help best address how you prevent this happening in the future, don't they?
	Because then you can predict what kinds of people are most likely to do this and how best to mitigate against that.
	Exactly.
	And there is the issue of, I would say, stochastic terrorism, because if young children, but also not necessarily young children, also young adults, are exposed into a narrative that is essentially hating people, and it's, you know, men are bad, women are bad, or white women are bad, white men are bad.
	All this seems to me to create a polarization in culture, That spreads a kind of hatred and communicates the message that you can't reason with those people.
	You should just hate them and you should just, you know, there's no way you can ever live with them.
	Well, political rhetoric now has been so totalising, and as I said with such certainty, that I think older people are, generally speaking, intelligent enough to at least take it with a pinch of salt and see that it represents something that could resemble the truth but is stated a lot more strongly than otherwise be.
	I think that you speak to your average person, and that's probably what they would say.
	Whereas when someone is younger, they can't necessarily understand that you're not meant to take it at face value, or at least that's how most people would interpret it.
	And so they take things at face value as said, and I think that's what makes them...
	More susceptible to more extreme actions as well as the fact that generally speaking you know people under the age of about 25 the cutoff when the brain sort of on average stops developing tend to be the most prone to doing these sorts of violent acts in the first place.
	Exactly.
	And it's good to mention that civilization requires a sort of self-restraint when it comes to passions, and young people are, on average, less self-restraint than older people.
	And this narrative of victimhood that is pushed forward by wokeness, where it splits the population into oppressed and oppressors, and it sort of legitimizes violence within that framework.
	Because it says, these are the oppressors, and they are oppressing you, so you need to do something about it.
	Well, it's sort of left empty to be implied, isn't it?
	It sort of operates in the confines of the law, but it leaves a blank space that you're meant to fill in.
	It says that self-defense is somehow justified.
	Because you are a victim.
	In some people's minds, if you're 15, it's a qualitatively short jump from punch a Nazi to shoot a Nazi.
	You were actively encouraged to punch a Nazi not too long ago, wherever you find them.
	But it strikes me that 15 is remarkably young.
	I mean, it's not that there's no precedent for child killers.
	Of course, there are lots, even much younger than that even.
	But 15, I mean, no disrespect to anyone who's 15 or younger out there, but you don't know your ass from your elbow.
	You was a little kid yesterday.
	In fact, you are still a child.
	You're a child.
	So it's terrible that her mind has been warped, or perhaps she had a chemical imbalance and was actually clinically insane or something.
	I don't know.
	This is the first I'm hearing about it.
	But 15 is remarkably young to be so...
	Sure of your views that you're going to go and do something like this.
	My experience from knowing all about different school shootings is sometimes, often they're just completely indiscriminate.
	What springs to mind is the Virginia Tech dude who just hated the world, things like that.
	Sometimes they're very specific, like they go there and they murder a teacher that they've got a beef with and then go on a bit of a spree or whatever.
	So sometimes it's targeted, sometimes not at all.
	I don't know if we know any of those details yet, probably not exactly yet, but just 15 is so remarkably young.
	Like when I was 15, I look back on the things I thought when I was 15 and it's mad.
	It's a weird madness you're in when you're in your teens like that.
	The most important thing to me at 15 was dating girls.
	That's pretty much it.
	Maybe my exams as well, secondarily to that.
	I still did well in my exams.
	Right, so Andino did some good work here and he published this and he talked about the identity of the shooter.
	Again, this is his version.
	Nice one, Josh.
	Nice.
	I'm dribbling, sorry.
	He is disconfirming that she identified as trans, because a lot of people started saying that the shooter was a trans shooter.
	And he says some things about her online presence that are particularly worrying.
	He says that she used the name Sam online and the username Crossixir, and she had extensive presence in several, I'd say, just sick places.
	Places like, you know, watch people die.
	There are some segments of the dark web, apparently, where, you know, people see things like that.
	We see here photos of the shooter.
	We are told that this is one of the last things she posted on X before she did what she did.
	This is 10.45 a.m.
	Interesting choice of footwear there.
	A bit of sort of commentary here.
	Those sorts of boots are either worn by punks, hipsters or Austrian painter enthusiasts.
	Well, we'll talk a bit about that right now.
	Here, a photograph with a dog.
	There are some people who say that the photos are a bit changed in some cases to make her look like worse or something.
	I don't know.
	And what happened is that allegedly, again, these are allegations, some people have been in contact with her boyfriend, who allegedly knew nothing about it, but also some of her friends on Discord.
	And they're saying that this was her manifesto and they took a snapshot, a screenshot picture of it.
	And they say this is a part of it.
	Now, again, we don't know if that's her manifesto, but it says things like women are the only hope for this wretched world.
	But even women have been brainwashed by, I think that's moids.
	What's that mean?
	No idea.
	I've seen that word before.
	Hang on, I'll find out.
	For too long they've internalized the patriarchy and turned on each other, always begging for male approval and validation.
	And she says that men can be reformed or redeemed.
	They are an F.A. It's a derogatory word for men used by female incels.
	Okay, yeah.
	Well, as many people pointed out in the office, you were one of them, it's a bit weird to talk about a 15-year-old as a femcel, but she definitely seems to have had presence in areas of discourse where these terms were using.
	And she's using a language that you would expect from the enthusiast you mentioned before about men as being effing Parasites, and what is written there, every single male must be wiped out, from babies to the elderly.
	I find these incredibly sick statements.
	And here we have allegedly that she had a handle crossics here, and they say that that's what Andino says.
	That we can see her commenting on several videos that involve people harming themselves and allegedly she was an enthusiast.
	And she was, you know, a sexy Indian dude.
	She's commenting on a sexy Indian dude hanging himself.
	That seems to me to be sick.
	That is very weird.
	Yeah.
	But also, they have been saying that she was also enthusiastic about school shooters, that she was obsessed with them, that she was also obsessed with all sorts of killers, and sometimes, you know, what goes around comes around.
	When people are...
	Sorry.
	No, I interrupted you, carry on.
	Sorry.
	I just feel so struck, but I guess maybe I lived a very, very sheltered life.
	But when I was 15, I guess because it was like the 1990s and you didn't have the internet really.
	I mean, the internet was about, but there wasn't just endless amounts of gore and real suicide footage or whatever.
	Maybe there was, I just never saw any of it.
	When I was 15 I was still like a kid, basically a little kid at 15. I really really cared about football.
	You were a 15 year old?
	Yeah.
	All I cared about was watching and playing football.
	That means you were normal then really for a teenager in Britain.
	I had to be obsessed with suicide and gender politics.
	What?
	At 15?
	Jesus.
	I find this to be incredibly disturbing because it seems to me that things like that happened frequently, but not in that form.
	They have happened before.
	As you said, there have been shooters.
	Kids who are shooters.
	But it seems to me that all this is just incredibly sick.
	Incredibly sick.
	And I completely agree with your sentiment that 15 year olds right now are exposed to a world that we weren't exposed.
	And I don't think it harmed us.
	I don't think it harmed us.
	I think the responsibility lies on the shoulders of their family members and to a certain extent I suppose their friends as well in that quite often you know these bad sorts of things that teenagers can get into Are either the influence of friends or it's an absence of supervision from parental figures or family members.
	And I think the antidote to a lot of these problems is just responsible parenting and making sure that people are aware of the impact of what they're doing.
	Yeah, so there have been some allegations that she also wrote on that manifesto that her parents were scum.
	That's how she wrote.
	But on the other hand, I don't know if that's actually the case.
	And we don't know.
	But let me say one thing.
	That it could be the case that her parents were incredibly abusive.
	It doesn't seem to me that just one day you wake up, you're a 15-year-old, and you do something like this.
	But also it could be the case of radicalization by social media, not by the house, because a lot of these narratives that we're constantly criticizing are essentially harming the family and are trying to infiltrate the family and essentially reduce parental rights by constantly telling...
	And communicating to children that unless your parents, for instance, agree with everything you want to say, they're bad parents and maybe the state should take away from you.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	It's just that it's so complex and so messed up that we have to mention all of the angles.
	Well, I think you can certainly say she was disturbed, whether it's an actual chemical imbalance, actually sort of clinically insane, or merely disturbed for whatever reason.
	I think you can certainly say...
	Well, just by merit of what she did, yeah.
	Just by the world.
	Like, the internet disturbed her to the point of...
	Doing something like that.
	I don't know whether it's her parents, whether it's the internet or what.
	Who knows?
	But, yeah, it's terrible.
	Right, so we had President Biden releasing a statement calling for gun control after Wisconsin school shooting, as he said.
	A bitter irony here is that he pardoned his own son for gun crime, a bit of foreshadowing to Bo's segment following this.
	And a lot of people are saying that statements like that didn't take place after the murder of the CEO. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?
	Also didn't happen after the Tennessee shooting either, did it?
	No discussion of bump stocks?
	No.
	Anyway, he says Congress must pass common-sense gun safety laws, universal background checks, a national red flag law, a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
	And as he says, we can never accept senseless violence that traumatizes children, the families, and tears entire communities apart.
	Shall not be infringed.
	That's all I've got to say on that.
	I think we should finish the segment here.
	It's an incredibly tragic story.
	Do you have to add something?
	Yeah, I think that rather than addressing the weapon, addressing the person behind it is how you solve this problem.
	Because there are plenty of nations that don't really have school shootings that have a high presence of guns.
	The Swiss, you know, the Falklands Islands has, I think, more guns than people, and they've never had a school shooting.
	Obviously, it's only like 100 people, but still...
	There are lots of places in the world that are not like this.
	I think some Scandinavian countries have got a big culture of hunting, so lots of people have guns.
	They don't suffer from loads of school shootings all the time.
	Yeah, Ireland, I think, is the hunting capital of Europe per capita.
	The Republic of Ireland?
	Yeah.
	Really?
	I didn't know that.
	And I can't recall any school shootings.
	It doesn't mean they haven't happened necessarily, but I don't think they have.
	Like Sweden, I think loads of people own guns in Sweden, again, for hunting.
	Or places like Finland and stuff, some of the Baltic countries.
	Well, the Swedes are more into explosives these days.
	Native Swedes?
	No.
	Hand grenades?
	Right, okay.
	I think we should go to the...
	Yeah, read the things.
	To the comments.
	Okay.
	That's a random name, says Josh is correct.
	Pierre Poliver is 100% astroturfed.
	He did nothing against the COVID restrictions.
	Maxime Bernier, the PPC leader, was the only one speaking against it.
	Yeah, they seem...
	I don't know too much about them, but they seem to be a bit more on the money with their rhetoric.
	Ryan Hennigan says the opinions of the Serupians and their Cuban...
	I'm going to say dictator.
	I know how you spell it.
	Very good pun, but I'm not going to read that.
	Just farting at a hurricane to reverse the direction of the wind.
	We will be welcomed as liberators come the day of the rake.
	This was a mean comment, yeah.
	It was a trap.
	So DogBreathThe3rd says to Bo, the Nashville shooter was female, although identifying as male.
	Yeah, we got to that in the end, so you'll be very happy to know that.
	And DragonLadyChris says, White pill, awesome sweater, Josh.
	Oh, well, thank you.
	It's a Christmas jumper, but it's got England flags on it, you see.
	And it's got the English lion as well.
	So it's got patriotism and Christmas together, which is a blend I didn't know I needed.
	Bald Eagle 1787 says the parents of the victims should sue all mainstream media, Democrats and social media personalities for brainwashing that kid into thinking there's no hope.
	Yep.
	Dog breath the third.
	Chaps, the term is not femso, but inspin, involuntary spinster.
	They really hate the word spinster, okay?
	It feels very 19th century, doesn't it?
	It's what I imagine critics of the suffragette movement would say, all these spinsters.
	I like it, that's a good word.
	And Ryan Hinnigan says she dropped her manifest on a Google Doc.
	She neglected to make the document public before posting the link.
	Woman moment till the end.
	I do that all the time, so I can't judge.
	Right.
	Just what a tragic story.
	Pass the mal stelios.
	The sacred ritual.
	Okay, so let's talk a little bit about Creepy Joe's pardons.
	So, in the headlines in the last few days, over the weekend, it was that he pardoned 1,500 people.
	Which is an insane amount, isn't it?
	Well, yes and no.
	I'll get to that.
	Put it into perspective.
	So, largely, the White House was at pains to say, they're all non-violent people.
	They're all non-violent offenders.
	If that's the best thing you can say about the people you're pardoning, then it's a pretty big list of deplorables to quote a certain female Hillary Clinton.
	You can still do pretty despicable crimes that are non-violent.
	In my opinion.
	Well, you certainly can.
	You certainly can.
	Yeah, the White House said that...
	Well, even Bernie said...
	Bernie Sanders said that it sets a dangerous precedent, particularly pardoning his son.
	So first up then, Hunter Biden, of course.
	So one thing I want to say straight off the bat is there's two things.
	There's a presidential pardon, and then there's the commuting of a sentence.
	And they're two completely different things, completely in the president's power.
	So a presidential pardon...
	Is quite an extraordinary thing, really.
	We haven't got any equivalent of it in Britain.
	It really is sort of plenipotentiary.
	It's sort of absolute.
	I think, I might be wrong about this, and if anyone knows better out there, let us know in the comments.
	I think even the Supreme Court can't meddle with it.
	It's sort of an absolute thing, if the President pardons you.
	It's really quite an extraordinary power.
	Many turkeys have felt that power.
	Yeah, they pardon a turkey, don't they, at Thanksgiving every year.
	Well, that was one of the things the White House said, was that it was, in Biden's statement, he said, I mean, fair enough, but when we look at some of the details of some of these people...
	Yeah, also, you have a prison system, and for some offences you go to prison on your first chance, so you're kind of not embodying that.
	And also, I don't believe in second chances.
	I mean, it depends what it is.
	I was going to say, surely it depends a bit.
	If someone forgets to give me back a pencil, I'll let it slide, alright?
	What if you are genuinely the victim of an injustice, though?
	Well, in which case, I think it never should have transpired in the first place.
	But we don't live in a perfect way.
	There's no such thing as a perfect judicial system, is there?
	Far from it, yeah.
	I think the logic has to do with preventing civil war from a classical republican perspective.
	Because the idea is to prevent another Caesar or prevent pushing people towards the idea, towards thinking that unless they hit first, they're going to be hit.
	Right.
	Because republics are very vulnerable to this.
	And maybe it is a way of trying to diffuse that tension.
	Because republics seem to be a bit more friction, containing a bit more inner friction than other political systems.
	You're talking broadly about just the concept of a presidential party.
	Yeah, I'm just trying to think about it.
	Why would I do it?
	Why would I want to be pardoned or something?
	I mean, it was written in from the very get-go.
	Even George Washington pardoned a few people.
	Yes, it's been there since the very beginning.
	And towards the end of the segment, I want to look at historical precedent and see how Biden, how Creepy Joe stacks up against it.
	The big guy.
	Sort of sports team score sheet here.
	Yeah.
	How does Big Joe, Big Joe, I can't get my words out.
	Shut up, Josh.
	He's quite big, actually.
	He's quite tall, isn't he?
	He is quite tall, yeah.
	He's like 6'4 or something, isn't he?
	Yeah, people forget.
	Because Trump's really tall as well.
	You see them together and you think they're sort of normal size, but they're not.
	They're pretty tall.
	But also you see some photographs with Millet and they're sort of the...
	They aren't that...
	There isn't such a high discrepancy.
	So I'm going to take those numbers with a pinch of salt.
	Well, Joe's a bit more stooped now, isn't he?
	Like an old man.
	LAUGHTER His elevens are up.
	So, yeah, he said that all the people had been successfully rehabilitated.
	Not true.
	And that they were deserving of a second chance.
	I mean, some.
	So, out of these, the ones that caught the headline, it's 1,500 people or 1,499 people.
	Largely sort of marijuana charges.
	I wonder what Kamala thinks about that because obviously she's prosecuted lots of people.
	One thing to mention is that most people think and it is usually the case that presidents do their presidential pardons and commuting of sentences.
	Right at the very end of their tenure.
	But it's not always the case.
	You can, as president, can do it whenever he wants.
	And Biden's been doing it all along.
	So at some point, I think in 2022, he pardoned like another six and a half thousand people one day.
	I think mainly for drug...
	Morning.
	Yeah.
	Mainly for marijuana charges or minor drug charges.
	I mean, when it's legal in multiple different states, it's perhaps easier to sell that I didn't know that.
	That sounds ridiculous now that you mention it.
	Because I would say that it's a power that shouldn't be abused and should be used with discretion in very few cases just to prevent society from collapsing.
	But it doesn't seem to me that if these junkies were put in jail, society would collapse.
	Sounds like I got it completely wrong.
	Well, no, no, that was the original idea.
	That was the original 18th century idea, which it should be very, very rare.
	A president sees that there's been a true injustice and they reverse it, rather than they don't agree with a whole law and just...
	Well, in fact, I was going to leave it to the end to do the historical look, but let's just do that now.
	So, George Washington did only 16, and you can see in the early presidents, there's relatively small numbers, although...
	Kicking up to quite a few quite quickly as well though.
	So most presidents have done a few hundred and there's a couple of anomalies.
	So for example, Jimmy Carter pardoned sweepingly about 200,000 people in one go.
	One of the only things he did while in office, wasn't it?
	He didn't do very much otherwise.
	Well, well...
	I've seen a few things.
	I don't want to get into Jimmy Carter.
	That was for the Vietnam draft.
	People that refused to answer the draft when he got in.
	Fair enough, actually, yeah.
	So that's an anomaly.
	If it was on a chart, it would be a giant spike for him, but there's a reason for that.
	I mean, also, a couple of other anomalies...
	Andrew Jackson, after the Civil War, pardoned thousands and thousands of ex-Confederates.
	Because that was the policy at the time, was that you need a reconciliation.
	Let's all come together and be one country again.
	Let's not hang Jefferson Davis.
	Let's not hang Robert E. Lee.
	Let's not prosecute the entire officer class of the Confederacy.
	So he gave them pardons, even though they were technically, well, traitors to the Union for having seceded.
	So Andrew Jackson did that.
	Harry Truman pardoned, I think, a few thousand people again for World War II draft stuff.
	It's not quite as simple as that in his case, but there was a thing called the Selective Training and Service Act.
	It's very different than a few thousand potheads, though, isn't it?
	Right.
	Yeah.
	People in war and things like that, right?
	It seems a bit more noble, if you will.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, right, right, yeah.
	So that's actually sort of a point of principle and a special circumstance, right?
	Vietnam, World War II, Civil War.
	So they're anomalies.
	So if we don't count those ones for having very, very high numbers, okay?
	Can they pardon everyone?
	Well, again, if anyone out there knows better, do let us know.
	But yeah, it's just like a complete blanket power.
	They can, it's sort of, well, Alastair Clarke, the great, late great journalist and historian, Alastair Cooke.
	Did I say Clarke?
	Alastair Cooke.
	Alastair Cooke.
	The same name as the England, former England cricket captain.
	Yeah, also a cricketer called that, but no, not him.
	A much, much older journalist and historian.
	He did Letters from America.
	He's one of my favourites.
	A big, big fan of the late Alistair Cooke.
	He talked in one of his, one time, about the presidential pardon and the ability to commute sentences.
	And he just describes it as this sort of plenipotentiary, completely extraordinary, completely absolute arbitrary power.
	So it does sort of fly in the face of the Constitution and the concept of justice.
	But as long as it's not abused, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.
	Well, I think the example of Trump pardoning the Jan 6th prisoners is a good example of it working somewhat...
	The Jan 6th hostages.
	That's true, yeah.
	I mean, I've spoke to some of them.
	That's a great example of it working as intended, as I imagine it was intended, in that they're people who are politically persecuted and then you can basically wipe the slate clean when a new person assumes office.
	And I think that that has a good stabilising effect, as Stelios pointed out.
	One thing I'll say about a pardon is that your slate is wiped entirely clean.
	Entirely clean.
	But whereas if you just commute the sentence you still have a criminal record and your conviction still stands but you don't have to actually do the sentence.
	Often people are already in jail for the thing and you commute the sentence so they just let go but the criminal record still stands.
	So they're two very very different things.
	Of course, you would want the pardon, wouldn't you?
	If you could choose.
	I have a parking ticket.
	Yeah.
	Well, Bill Clinton pardoned...
	Was it a pardon?
	I think it was a pardon.
	He pardoned his half-brother.
	So, you know, there is precedent for this.
	Well, actually, let's just, well, there's so many ways to go with this, I don't know what to talk about next, but let's carry on with this list.
	So you can see, even by the mid-19th century, sometimes the numbers are quite big.
	For various things.
	So they are, yeah.
	Woodrow Wilson did a whole bunch.
	Most Americans hate Woodrow Wilson, don't they?
	With a passion.
	I don't particularly blame them.
	Speaking of people we hate.
	I've asked before who's the worst president on Twitter and a lot of people say, what a silly question.
	Obviously the correct answer to that is Woodrow Wilson.
	Roosevelt's in the running.
	Yeah, Roosevelt is quite big, but remember he served three and a bit terms.
	He's sort of also a little, well he's definitely an outlier in some level.
	But also he was during the World War II. Yeah, yeah.
	But he did various things.
	He was very light on socialists, basically.
	Again, Harry Truman sort of is an outlier.
	Not that he doesn't count, but there's reasons why his number was so high.
	Nixon might be an interesting one because he always said, and we know he did, we've got a record of it on the Nixon tapes, that he would pardon his closest confidants, his right-hand men, people like Haldeman and Ehrlichman.
	He promised them multiple times he would pardon them for their For their crimes.
	Or for perjury.
	They were going to purge themselves on his behalf.
	And he would pardon them.
	And they did purge themselves.
	Then he didn't pardon them.
	And then he gets pardoned himself.
	But he did pardon nearly a thousand people himself.
	Yeah, and then Jerry Ford comes in and pardons him immediately.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, the Jimmy Carter Vietnam draft, 200,000.
	George Bush Senior...
	Not very forgiving, is he?
	You've got to go all the way back to Zachary Taylor before you get someone as low as that.
	All the way back to the 19th century.
	James Garfield.
	And even George Bush Jr., relatively speaking, didn't really take part.
	He did pardon Scooter Libby, I believe.
	Who?
	One of his guys.
	Scooter Libby was in George Bush Jr.'s inner sanctum.
	Trump pardoned Lil Wayne.
	LAUGHTER And Kodak Black, a bunch of rappers.
	So, but there are some examples of when people, right at the beginning of the American Republic, it was sort of not used to just pardon, it wasn't all that political.
	They saw an injustice and might do something about it.
	Whereas the closer we get to now, the more it's been used to just pardon your friends and things.
	Yeah.
	And now it's up to the point where they're pardoning people where it is questionable, like people that have done definitely pretty bad crimes.
	And it's like, why are you pardoning them?
	How is that fair?
	They're convicted legitimately of a proper crime.
	Why are you pardoning them?
	Wasn't there a case whereby it was a radical left-wing terrorist, basically, that got pardoned?
	I can't remember who it was.
	I want to say it was Bill Clinton, but I can't remember.
	Yeah, Bill Clinton pardoned quite a few questionable people.
	Yeah, quite a few.
	Roger Clinton Jr., his half-brother...
	Cocaine possession.
	So it's just like, I'll let you out.
	Look, Bill Clinton's Director of Central Intelligence, pardoned him.
	Yeah, quite often they're sort of, in recent times, it seems that they're sort of spies, intelligence services assets, where they were caught out doing a crime, but it was a crime they were sort of supposed to do, sort of part of their job or whatever.
	It's a grey area, isn't it?
	Always a murky area, this.
	You did something that is illegal, but it was part of your patriotic duty or you were ordered to, whether that argument stands.
	I was just following orders or not, but the President will pardon you.
	Susan Rosenberg, Bill Clinton pardoned.
	Domestic terrorist.
	George W. Bush pardoned Scooter Libby.
	So I think I was thinking about Susan Rosenberg.
	Yeah, that's what I just mentioned there.
	Rosenberg, yeah.
	Pardoned by Bill Clinton, there we go, that's it.
	That's what I was thinking of.
	Associated with the May 19th Communist Organisation.
	Right.
	So there you go.
	Barry Obama pardoned Bradley Manning.
	Barack Hussein Obama.
	Private first class Bradley Manning.
	What happened there?
	The whistleblower, wasn't he?
	Blowing too many whistles.
	You know, it got sent to 35 years.
	To be fair, the leaks were important there.
	I did agree with what they did.
	Yeah, no, broadly speaking, and it is difficult, we could do a whole long-form bit of content about Snowden and Manning, and whistleblowers in general, and it's not easy, it's not a cut-and-dry thing, but by and large, I'm for it.
	I'm on board with them, yeah.
	I don't think PFC, Bradley Manning should have been sentenced to 35 years, no.
	Yeah, Donald Trump, another scoot a little bit again for something else, I believe.
	Dinesh D'Souza.
	Why?
	Campaign finance violations.
	Conrad Black.
	Bit odd.
	I think he was just his mate.
	I think he's literally like his mate.
	Roger Stone.
	Right, he sees like an actual injustice.
	Michael Flynn.
	Susan B. Anthony, I saw.
	Some of them you can do posthumously, like in the 70s I think, people like Nixon or Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan, they posthumously pardon Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee.
	Who were stripped of their citizenship and stuff.
	They said, no, we'll wipe that away.
	So you can do...
	In fact, one of the things I think is most odd is that some people are reporting whether this will actually happen or not.
	It's something else.
	But Biden might pardon people ahead of time.
	I'm not sure if that's possible.
	I would have thought that that would be a bit difficult to justify, wouldn't it?
	I've never heard of that before.
	I'm not entirely sure that's possible.
	Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say.
	I'm not sure if that's possible.
	Again, if there's anyone out there that really knows this inside out, I've not heard of that before.
	How can that work?
	How would that work?
	Just that you can never ever be prosecuted for anything ever?
	In most law in the Western world you can't legislate for future events necessarily, right?
	That really would fly in the face of justice, wouldn't it?
	Is it for 10 years that they're being pardoned?
	Or for life?
	Forever.
	For life, yeah.
	Completely slate wiped forever.
	Yeah.
	That applies retroactively.
	It's not if they go out and commit crime after being pardoned.
	Yeah, then it's, you know, justice is normal, so to speak.
	It's just been revoked.
	Yeah.
	Lethal weapon.
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's been revoked.
	So let's talk about some of the ones Biden has done, like a few thousand, up to 8,000 now.
	So...
	Nephews of Maduro of Venezuela, yeah.
	That's interesting.
	So it does seem that Biden is up to it.
	He's doing more than is usual in recent times.
	Remember, George Bush Jr. did 200-odd.
	George Bush Sr. did less than 80. You know, most presidents do a few hundred, right, in the scheme of things.
	The average is a few hundred.
	And he's like, or maybe a couple of thousand at most, right?
	At most.
	He's up to 8,000.
	People expect that in his last weeks he'll do more.
	He'll do a lot more.
	So that's interesting.
	He pardoned people convicted of federal offences of possession of marijuana, excluding non-US citizens and those who were considered illegal immigrants at the time of their arrest.
	That's an interesting clause to add on.
	So that's 6.5k out of the close to 8000k.
	Well no, most of that 8000k is just this drug, marijuana.
	Yeah, yeah, that's right.
	Oh, sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So I did six and a half thousand, then another 1500 the other day.
	But some of them are...
	Like, let me find...
	Look at this guy.
	I don't know how...
	I won't even try to pronounce that correctly.
	For conspiracy to unlawfully export technology to Iran.
	Don't worry about what technology is.
	To fraud the United States.
	To fraud the United States.
	Unlawful export technology to Iran.
	Like, what?
	I don't think there's any circumstance where that should be excusable.
	And the next one down.
	Reza somebody or other.
	Basically the same sort of thing.
	Exporting goods to Iran via UAE to defraud the United States.
	Because one of these things, it was in the news, incorrectly, that he'd pardoned Joe Biden recently and pardoned a Chinese person called Shanlin Jin.
	He didn't pardon them.
	It was part of a prisoner swap.
	This Shanlin Jin is essentially, I think it's a matter of record, let's say allegedly, just to cover my ass, was just a Chinese intelligence asset, a spy.
	Oh, and had tens and tens of thousands of explicit child pornography images.
	So, a spy and a wrong one.
	And at first people thought he'd pardoned him.
	He didn't.
	It was part of a prisoner swap.
	However, the Chinese might even punish him for that as well, right?
	Probably more harshly than in the US. And prisoner swaps are a delicate thing.
	I won't just say they're bad, because they're not necessarily always bad, but basically letting this person go.
	I mean, who knows what the actual swap was and who America got back in return?
	I don't know, so...
	What I would like to know in these cases, what would be good to know eventually, was what the exchange was.
	In some cases, for instance, the people you are saying who tried to unlawfully export technology to Iran.
	Maybe...
	He pardoned them for something, not just for free.
	Maybe.
	Maybe that was good or bad, we don't know.
	So who are some of the key people that Biden's pardoned?
	Obviously he's got all the potheads covered and his son, which is a crackhead, so he's got the drug users.
	Some of the worst, most egregious ones that people are, in my opinion, rightly up in arms about, ones are ex-compt controller Rita Chundwell, who lived in Dixon, Illinois, and embezzled something in the order of $53-54 million out of that town.
	And just spent it on herself.
	Essentially.
	And Bezleman is a real crime though.
	It's not something that should be pardoned.
	And also why would...
	Why would you pardon this person?
	Yeah.
	She just bought like loads of things, homes and loads of holidays and loads of actual things, commodities, hundreds of horses.
	She bought loads of horses and things.
	50 million bucks.
	And she got sentenced.
	She got quite a few years.
	And I think she was serving a lot of that under home arrest anyway.
	And Biden just pardoned her.
	Screw the people of Dixon, Illinois, then, apparently.
	That town won't recover fiscally for ages and ages because of her.
	It's not all about money.
	I pardon you.
	Why are you doing that, Joe?
	It could be a broad network of favours for favours sort of thing.
	Hypothetically speaking, if you were to be the head of a crime family, this sort of thing might happen.
	Hypothetically.
	Another one, Paul Dugerdas, probably not pronouncing that right, NBC has said that a former law partner from Illinois, Paul Dugerdas, was convicted of overseeing fraudulent tax shelters at a cost to the government of more than $1.63 billion.
	The scheme generated over $7 billion of fraudulent deductions, according to prosecutors.
	His law firm agreed to pay a $76 million penalty.
	Prosecutors called Dugerdas, quote, Why on earth?
	Why?
	There are two things to say here.
	First of all, taxation is theft.
	Second of all, I'm not even an American taxpayer and I'm annoyed at this.
	This is just winding me up purely on the basis of the injustice of it.
	It doesn't seem to be a justification for it.
	No.
	It's like this person's done a legit crime, been found guilty for it through due process and should serve their sentence.
	This is the worst one for me, because I've got loads more I could say about it, but we're running on for time.
	I'll probably leave it in and around here.
	This one, I actually found myself getting proper annoyed about when I read this one.
	Judge Jim Carlson.
	The Star Tribune said, Jim Carlson, a head shop owner found guilty in 2013 on dozens of felony charges after experts said he sold enough synthetic drugs to cause a head shop owner found guilty in 2013 on dozens of felony charges after experts said Had his sentence commuted Thursday on one of nearly 1,500 convicted criminals granted clemency by Joe Biden.
	Carlson received a 17 and a half year sentence after a jury found him guilty on 51 of 55 felony counts for selling synthetic drugs from his store in downtown Duluth.
	Prosecutors called Coulson Alleged Carlson sold synthetic drugs that were misbranded as incense, potpourri, bath salts and glass cleaner while using employees as guinea pigs to test how the unregulated drugs worked on customers.
	And these synthetic drugs, I know a little bit about this.
	Some of the most dangerous stuff you can possibly get.
	Like lots of the drugs that are most damaging on the streets these days started off their life as these sort of experimental synthetic drugs.
	That guy's a full-blown, amoral psycho.
	Shouldn't really be on the streets, I think.
	That's a terrible crime.
	Okay, this last one is the one that really got my goat.
	Just to throw it on the pile of crimes that Joe Biden has committed while in office.
	This.
	This is terrible that he's commuted this guy's sentence.
	Judge Michael Conahan.
	So he's a judge.
	And there was a scandal called Kids for Cash Scandal.
	That's never a good scandal name, is it?
	No matter what the story is.
	Doesn't bode well, does it?
	I mean, Ghislaine Maxwell probably had a similar moniker, didn't she?
	So there's a thing, yeah.
	So there's a thing, there's like for-profit detention centres, right, when you get the inmates to manufacture things, whether it's sort of, you know, making number plates, license plates, or, you know, stamping out rivets, or whatever it is, digging drainage ditches for the local community, whatever.
	It's some sort of for-profit organisation, right?
	So he had over 4,000 juvenile convictions, so young people as well, overturned on the strength of his conviction because he'd taken, and this is not my words, he'd taken millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks, that's a quote, in exchange for millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks for sending...
	Unfairly, over 4,000 juvenile people to detention centres for profit.
	Basically ruining young people's lives.
	He probably did something relatively minor if it was being disputed.
	They might not even be guilty.
	Their convictions were overturned.
	Okay.
	So he's just ruined their lives for no reason except for money.
	This feels like among the more evil things you can do without actually personally being violent to someone in a one-on-one exchange.
	That strikes me as truly evil.
	Yeah.
	What a thing to do.
	Ruining thousands of juveniles' lives for the sake of money.
	Yeah.
	And obviously spitting in the face of justice again whilst being a judge.
	Creepy Joe commuted his sentence.
	I believe it served most of his sentence, but there's still a few years left to run or something like that.
	Creepy Joe says, you can go, you're free.
	Why on earth?
	What justification is there for that?
	I thought Joe Biden liked kids.
	Like a complete abuse of the pardoning power.
	And the last thing to say is just, yeah, that Trump, just to end it on this note, Trump has said that, quote, within hours of becoming president, he'll pardon or commute the sentences of the quote-unquote J6 hostages.
	So let's see if he does that.
	Don't know why he didn't do it before.
	All right.
	Right, so we have some comments.
	Johnny Logo says it's Christmas soon, so here's a tip for all the hard work, guys.
	It's good to see Josh wrapping the Christmas spirit.
	Well, thank you.
	They engaged few.
	People who think that Hunter has been trapped into incriminating his father have forgotten that time are not answered to any uncomfortable questions.
	I have no recollection of that, Senator.
	I don't recall.
	I can believe it with him.
	Hunter Biden, you had the best excuse ever and you blew it.
	Yeah, I don't recall, and that's not me being Saki.
	I was high as a kite.
	I genuinely don't recall.
	Do you know how much crack I've smoked, Senator?
	Ryan Hennigan.
	Presidents only pardon federal crimes.
	Governors pardon state crimes.
	You cannot be tried after, but lose 5A right not to self-incriminate.
	Meaning Hunter can be compelled to testify or face contempt.
	That's true.
	Okay.
	Again, the engaged few.
	There's good reason to hate Wilson and FDR. Wilson was functionally the first fascist leader of any country, and FDR used fascist socio-economic policies as Wilson's head of the Department of the Navy.
	No, let's be clear.
	I get why Americans, or anyone really, would hate Woodrow Wilson or FDR. You don't even have to be American.
	I'm not trying to play interference on behalf of their memory.
	Bold Eagle, 1787. These pardons should be challenged in court since many of these pardons are for things that haven't been charged yet and pardons are only for crimes that one has committed and charged with.
	It's like an admission.
	I wonder if they are though.
	I'm not sure if that's true.
	I hope that's true.
	I'm not 100% sure that is true though.
	We'll check.
	We'll see.
	Yeah, we'll see.
	Dragon Lady Chris says, um, Bo, did you say Andrew Jackson gave pardons after the Civil War?
	He died in 1845. Did you say about Andrew Jackson or later the Ulysses Grant?
	It's Andrew Johnson.
	There's an Andrew Johnson, there's an Andrew Jackson.
	She's quite right, the Andrew Jackson is later.
	It's Andrew Johnson who came directly after Lincoln.
	So did I say Jackson?
	Apologies.
	You're already done.
	When that goes out on YouTube, if I've said Jackson, they're going to be like, you don't even know the difference between Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johnson.
	They're like 50 years apart or whatever.
	Much fedora tipping will be done.
	Yeah, there will be some fedora tipping.
	Joe Biden, when asked about the pardon of infamous murderer Hannibal Lecter, said, hey man, just because he took some elephants over, you know, the thing, he shouldn't be in jail.
	Having some friends for dinner.
	Ryleion, has your monarchy any pardon power these days?
	Nope.
	Sorry, what was the question?
	Does our monarchy have any pardoning power?
	They don't have any power.
	I think they've only got the power to cut ribbons these days.
	They've certainly not got any real pardoning power.
	They've got some things, it's complicated.
	On paper they have, but by convention not.
	I'm sure that's ironic.
	Threadnought says Hitler, Stalin and Mao were all non-violent.
	I'm guessing Dr. F... Yeah.
	Fuki.
	Yeah.
	Really, you cowards.
	I'm not a coward.
	Got off on engineering and releasing a bioweapon.
	Do we have video comments?
	Oh, we've got another one.
	Oh, okay.
	We do have video comments.
	Wesley1924.
	Trump likely didn't pardon the January 6ers before because they were prosecuted after he left office.
	Nobody knew at the time the other side would do what they did.
	That's a fair point, actually.
	Yeah, thank you for that.
	Let's go to the video comments.
	This is from the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York.
	My daughter is making an icicle out of glass rods.
	It's very impressive, though.
	In an icicle?
	What's going on?
	They're making an icicle out of glass.
	Hell is freezing over.
	I find glassblowing amazing.
	I've seen people do it in real life and the ability to shape it and you've got to do it so quickly before there's sort of a perfect temperature that you have to do it.
	I don't know.
	It's just such a fiddly process that I could imagine myself getting very fed up with it.
	Let's go to the next one.
	I've noticed the corporate legacy media have been going after one of their own poster boys, Stephen Bartlett, for daring to have alternative health professionals on his show and not challenging them.
	It just highlights the envy of the left and how as someone becomes more successful, they end up becoming more based.
	But he's still not as based as Dan, who's a bit more based than basic based.
	He was not happy with that D tier or whatever it was.
	Remember California Refugee, I'm your top guy.
	Oh, speak of the devil.
	California Refugee.
	Base tier list two for one.
	We'll do Callum.
	I thought he died in the Nevada desert going to Fallout, Nerd, and Mecca, but thankfully he posted videos again.
	If you aren't a member of the Callum fate, what are you doing with your life?
	Callum goes in C tier.
	And we'll do Daisy, who mods the Rumble chat zealously and humorously.
	As a real woman, she once said, quote, my ego is perego, which I think for a woman these days is burse.
	Daisy goes in D tier.
	Still winning.
	He wouldn't have an A and S tier if he didn't intend on putting someone there.
	Right.
	People think Harry's really based.
	Well, he is very based, but I suspect the S tier is...
	I'm on the up and up these days, you see, Bo.
	It's just a silly thing to try and out-base each other.
	Our beliefs are just malleable.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Let's go to the next one.
	Okay.
	Comments.
	Eric Nickerson.
	Gentlemen of the Lotus Seaters, it is with great pleasure to inform you that today my wife and I are welcoming our first son.
	Cheers, boys.
	Congratulations.
	Yeah, well done.
	And best of luck.
	Best of luck.
	Wendy Gold, my favourite Lotus Seaters trio.
	Thank you very much, Wendy.
	Oh yeah, it's my comments now.
	Chase Ball says, despite all the repeated terminal abysmal failures of his administration, Trudeau refuses to resign.
	His clinical narcissism knows no bounds and his pride will drive the Liberal ship to the bottom of the ocean.
	Well, that's a positive spin on it.
	Good riddance to him.
	May we have a larger zero seats result with the Liberals than you guys had with the Tories.
	Andrew Tull says, what made Canada different from the US is that we were a British country and our culture reflected that.
	The older generations still have memory of this time.
	The younger generations only knows modern Canada living in the US's shadow and achieving nothing, all while people from outside the country get support and our government proudly declares Canada has no culture.
	We truly are an English culture because you're basically mirroring what we've done here.
	And, uh, Yeah, Canada, I feel much more sort of cultural similarity with Canadians in that they have a more British way about them, generally speaking, which makes perfect sense, doesn't it, of course?
	Alex Ogle says, What astonishes me about the government and the media reaction to Trump-threatening tariffs on Canada is those who say, excuse me, Oh, tariffs don't work.
	They only end up impoverishing those the tariffs are intended to protect.
	Are the same people now decrying these tariffs will ruin Canada?
	What can we do to stop them?
	Then everyone talks about how horrible Trump is and completely ignores the immigration problem that is causing the threat in the first place.
	Just get control on the immigration.
	I entirely agree.
	And although I'm quite free market, I do think that tariffs are important, and they're good to use, as Trump is using them, as a bargaining chip.
	And, of course, if you're dealing with a country whose industry you don't want to support, say you're trading with someone but you're not necessarily on amicable terms, it might be good to have some tariffs, just so it doesn't unintentionally help them disproportionately.
	Sorry, I've read too many comments.
	Please carry on.
	Okay.
	Right, so North FC Zuma.
	Yammer with Bo.
	I can barely remember being 15 and what I can remember is mostly about Warhammer or video games.
	I had quite literally zero political awareness.
	I probably would have had to guess if you asked me who the Prime Minister was.
	Bleach Demon says the last few school shootings outside of gang activity in the US have been focused on attacking Christian schools.
	That's true.
	It's a new trend, isn't it?
	Eloise, I was given an Emma Goldman anarchist sign with gender politics in it by an older girl secretively when I was 11 because feminism, who was friends with my eldest brother when he was going through a heavy punk phase.
	I feel it messed me up for a while.
	It's always the same story.
	Liberal ideologues want to infiltrate on childhood and think autonomy exists where it doesn't.
	We do need some level of censorship for our youngest.
	I think a couple of things that kept me on the straight and narrow as a teenager was friendly bullying from my mates and a reflexive disgust of anything effeminate.
	I think having conventional masculinity and also people willing to enforce it is good.
	And there's equivalence for women as well, although it tends to be Rather than being directly aggressive, more passive-aggressive.
	And I know that's a bit of a stereotype, but it's very true.
	Someone online schools, especially Jewish and Christian schools, need armed guards.
	All they have currently are gun-free zone signs, which tells the monsters, vulnerable children here.
	And Bleach Demon, it's time to push the term gun person, since females and males in dresses are increasingly the perpetrators.
	Right, let's go to comments on the pardons.
	Do you want to read or do you want me to read?
	Well, I'll do it.
	Scott Gray says, part of the pardon power is to correct the injustices in the justice system.
	There are some people that are convicted and lose their appeals, but later have found out to be innocent.
	Sometimes a pardon is the only way to correct it.
	Right, so that would be all well and good.
	In fact, I was reading there was one way back in the early 19th century where a president pardoned them and the guy refused to accept the pardon.
	I think he was like a train robber and one of the early presidents pardoned him.
	He was like, no, I deserve to be.
	I did it.
	I deserve to be in jail.
	I don't accept it.
	He robbed a train, got away with it and handed himself in and said, you know what, I'll do 20 years hard labour.
	I feel really guilty.
	It was something like that.
	And then the next president pardoned him and he did accept that.
	So maybe it was just...
	I need a time to think.
	I imagine him like the highwayman in Barry Lyndon where he's just incredibly polite.
	Yeah.
	Half a second.
	Samson, we can have two minutes extra to...
	So Bo can...
	Yeah, agreed.
	Alright, the proletariat says, I'm no expert on pardons, but I'm pretty sure we got it from the English system, like most of the rest of our laws.
	In the controversy following the Hunter Biden pardon, people were commenting that it might be too broad to be valid.
	Yeah, I think the Hunter Biden one particularly was as broad as it could possibly be.
	Where do you start?
	Yeah.
	It's just like, anything and everything he did, he cannot be ever prosecuted for.
	Also, you wouldn't want to be very specific and have a laundry list of things, because then you're basically listing his crimes, aren't you?
	That concept comes from an act of parliament which had detailed the powers of the king to issue pardons.
	I'm no expert on the subject.
	Perhaps it's worthy of an investigation in an epoch on English common law.
	Yeah, maybe.
	Well, it makes sense because the president is meant to take the place of the king in our system, aren't they?
	It's the Chief Magistrate, in fact, that's what George Washington preferred to be called.
	Like in the Roman Republic, the Consul was still a magistrate, the highest magistrate, the highest judge.
	That's how the Chief comes from, that the President is supposed to be the Chief Magistrate.
	So yeah, it's an interesting note.
	The name?
	Yeah, Coal's masterful minimal use of null oil.
	Non-oil.
	That's for Warhammer painting, isn't it?
	If only Biden would use presidential pardons for good, I would particularly like to see Roger Roderick, I think this is a Monty Python thing, and perhaps even Brian released.
	Any wrongly convicted wobbers and wapists, really?
	Near life of Brian, isn't it?
	And the proletariat again says, false labour of convicts is the one form of legalised slavery left in the US. That judge is a literal slaver and should be punished accordingly.
	I couldn't agree more.
	I agree, yeah.
	Dr. David Ferugia says, fun fact, judicial punishment is the exception to the 13th Amendment.
	What is the 13th Amendment?
	I don't remember off the top of my head.
	Can you look that up?
	Someone online, meanwhile, someone online says, they're pardoning the criminals to punish the people.
	Yeah, seems like it.
	Abolition of slavery.
	Oh, right, okay.
	And involuntary servitude.
	Right, right, right.
	Henry Asselin says, The future pardons are actually for Joe because the kids he wants to sniff haven't been born yet.
	Silent Nicholas was a Turk.
	Silent Nicholas.
	St. Nicholas was a Turk, says, Woodrow Wilson no doubt pardon a lot of World War One draft dodgers or should I say Edith Wilson?
	I wonder if that's a relative.
	Colin P said, yet again, I'm reminded of the West Wing.
	That was a great show.
	It's really lefty, but I still kind of liked it from the 90s.
	Fictional president and West Wing.
	Where one of the story beats involved the president issuing pardons as he left office.
	Yeah, yeah, that was near the end.
	Dr. David Faguer again Farugia Farugia Farugia Farugia Says They probably swapped the Chinese non-spire For some heroin addict Who hates America Yeah probably Didn't they do a prisoner swap with Russia Where they got that Weed smoking basketball player Yeah.
	And they released some proper bad spiders.
	They did, yeah.
	It's like, what a terrible exchange.
	America, you know, she might have been able to throw a basketball about, but they got shot of her.
	It should have been a blessing.
	And finally, Derek Power says to Josh, if it's any consolation, we ganks are pissed off whenever we hear about injustices happening in either Britain or in Europe.
	Mutual empathy.
	Thank you very much.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Right.
	And on that note, we have come to the conclusion of this podcast.
	Check our podcast tomorrow at 1pm.

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