Joe Biden and Donald Trump dominate this episode as hosts debate voting for Biden's ashes over Trump despite 72% fearing his cognitive decline. While Dr. Mark Siegel warns of silent strokes and Parkinson's, the Supreme Court's partial immunity ruling for Trump sparks outrage over fraying political orders. Guests criticize Democrats for ignoring viable alternatives like Gavin Newsom amidst foreign policy disputes regarding Putin's aggression versus the Abraham Accords. Ultimately, the discussion reveals a nation recoiling in horror from both candidates' trajectories and a legal system seemingly bending to executive power. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Biden's Stamina and Unity00:10:55
Destiny, you would vote for Joe Biden's urn with his ashes inside rather than Donald Trump.
Listen, they wheeled that dude out and he's got an IV driven him.
I'm still voting for him over Donald Trump.
President Joe Biden has achieved something that for many years seemed impossible.
He appears to have unified America, not behind a policy, an ideology or a dream, but behind the blunt truth that he's no longer fit to serve.
A massive 72% of voters now believe he does not have the mental or cognitive health to serve as president.
A 12-point rise since his debate night disaster.
The attempts to defend him look increasingly desperate.
None more so than this deflection from Nancy Pelosi.
This is an opportunity for Joe Biden to go out there and show he has the stamina and the rest.
And by the way, while the press, and for some reason they don't, there are healthcare professionals who think that Trump has dementia, that his connection, his thoughts do not go together.
Not only that he just lies, he doesn't even know the truth.
So if we're just talking about mental acuity, let's be fair about it.
Yes, let's be fair about it.
And to be perfectly fair about it, Nancy Pelosi probably isn't the one who should be adjudicating on mental acuity.
And the calls for Biden to stand down are in fact coming mostly now from his own supporters.
Thomas Friedman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and the president's longtime friend, wrote him in New York Times, Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election.
If he insists on running and loses to Trump, Biden and his family and his staff and party members who enabled him will not be able to show their faces.
That's a Biden fan, a Biden friend.
And that latter point, a crucial one.
Many Americans are now justifiably asking, well, who exactly is running the country?
Conservative commentators have long been dismissed as conspiracy theorists for arguing that the Democrats will swap out Biden at the last minute and that people like Jill Biden, the First Lady, are unduly influential.
But on those points, it turns out they were probably right all along.
Well, Dr. Jill's appearance on the cover of the new Vogue magazine is unfortunately time to say the very least.
Makes it look like maybe she's the one who's in charge here.
This weekend, the Biden family gathered at Camp David, where they reportedly encouraged the president to keep fighting.
This comes after footage emerged of the First Lady leading a seemingly stricken president off stage after debate, a scene that was grimly reminiscent of a nursing home.
President Biden shouldn't be listening to his advisors or his son or his wife.
The stakes are far too high.
But he should now listen to himself.
If I were to run, I think they're going to judge me on my vitality.
Can I still run up the steps of Air Force 2?
Am I still in good shape?
Am I energetic?
I think it's totally legitimate people to ask those questions.
This is for the voters to decide.
Take a look.
Look at me, see if I have the energy, see if I know what I'm talking about, and make their judgment.
I think it's a legitimate thing to be concerned about anyone's age, including mine.
I think that's totally legitimate.
But I think the best way to make the judgment is to, you know, watch me.
Yeah, well, we did.
The world watched and the judgment was clear.
In a 90-minute live debate in front of 100 million people around the world, there was nowhere for Joe Biden to hide anymore.
The few Democrats still defending him are guilty of the same blinkered cultism.
They accuse MAGA Republicans of peddling about Trump.
And the only voters who truly want Biden to remain the candidate in November's election are the ones who are voting for Donald Trump.
Well, joining me out of debate all this is the host of the Michael Knowles Show and reported fascist.
I think that's his jokey description.
Michael Knowles, host of the Habituation Room podcast, Francesca Fiorentini, host of Tommy Lehran is Fearless and now kick Tommy Lehron and the streamer and commentator, Destiny.
Right, Destiny, let me start with you.
Are you going to stare down the barrel of that camera and construct any convincing argument that Joe Biden should now remain as the Democrat nominee for this election?
I think the difficult reality is your incumbent advantage is strong.
And at this point, it's too late to replace him.
So you're kind of stuck with him at this point.
It's not too late, though.
There is a mechanism.
They can do it.
They can ratify it at the convention.
It's not too late.
And we're going to come to Tommy in a moment, who's been saying for ages is more likely to be Gavin Newsom.
I think she was right all along.
And actually, I said similar things myself.
It's not too late.
The question is, are the Democrats, after that absolute horror story of a debate, seriously going to let this guy be the one who allows Trump to get back to the White House?
That's the calculation, surely.
I mean, your strongest arguments are Biden's ran against Trump before and won, and Biden's your incumbent.
You can say that it's not too late to replace him, that somebody like Gavin Newsom can run for president and he can do just as good as Biden would.
But, I mean, people said the same thing that DeSantis would represent a strong challenge to Trump and he got absolutely obliterated.
It's easy to look at a candidate that hasn't gone through the ringer, that hasn't been tested in a national level election.
But who knows if Newsom comes out, there could be one or two little scandals lurking behind the curtains that now we see that gets infinite airtime over the next few months.
The reality is that Biden is probably the best shot the Democrats have right now to win.
But do you genuinely believe he should therefore continue and be the nominee?
I think that the Democrats should run the best candidate that they can to defeat Donald Trump.
You keep distancing yourself from this, Destiny.
Come on.
Put your head over the parapet.
What do you think?
Well, I think that Joe Biden is the best candidate right now, given that he's already beaten Donald Trump in one election.
I think that Joe Biden is the best candidate right now to run against Donald Trump.
You think beating Donald Trump is willing to...
Hang on.
Sorry, I don't want to be unfair to you, Destiny, but of all the Democrats in America, how many are there?
I mean, tens of millions, right?
Of all of them, you think Joe Biden right now, after that debate, is the best candidate the party can produce.
Seriously?
I'm sure there are better candidates, but it's not about who the best candidate is.
It's about who you know the best candidate is.
I'm sure that you could flip a coin and find somebody that might end up performing better.
But again, look at how many people have these huge reputations.
Look at Cuomo and how he was destroyed after a couple of scandals.
Like you have no idea if you take a candidate who looks strong.
And I admit, Newsom looks strong.
He's amazing on stage presentation and everything.
But who knows if you throw him up that there are just one or two accusations or one or two scandals or one or two things that the American public doesn't know about that now dominates the news cycle for the next few months.
And even though he was a strong candidate on paper, like DeSantis, he disappears.
Okay, Tommy Lowe, you've been waiting patiently, actually for several years, to say what I think you're about to say, which is that of course they should get rid of Biden and try and parachute in somebody like Newsom.
I mean, do you feel a bit vindicated by what's been going on?
I feel very vindicated, but I'll also say, Piers, I hope that they run Joe Biden.
That would be the easiest contest for Donald Trump to beat would be Joe Biden.
So as much as I do believe they're going to select another candidate, I hope that they maintain with Joe Biden.
I hope that that's their guy.
And if that is the strongest candidate you have in the Democrat Party, that says a lot about the Democrat Party.
Last week's debate performance was horrifying.
It was horrifying as an American to watch because like it or not, this guy still represents the United States of America.
And as an American, although I didn't vote for Joe Biden, I will never vote for Joe Biden.
That is still my president.
And our enemies and our allies watched that, and it was horrifying.
Not only the mumbles and the bumbles and the losing the train of thought.
At one point, Joe Biden said that people are getting raped by their in-laws and their sisters.
He had one opportunity to dunk on the issue of abortion, where he really could get the eyes and ears of the American public that's very divided on that issue.
And he chose to say that people are getting raped by their sisters.
So that was a horrible performance.
I think they've got to go with somebody else.
And what I think is so interesting here is that of all the names being floated, I'm not hearing Vice President Kamala Harris on the tip of the tongue of any leading Democrat.
I'm hearing Gavin Newsom.
I'm hearing Gretchen Whitmer.
I'm hearing a couple of other names being floated, but nobody's really saying Vice President Kamala Harris.
That's got a sting.
We have a little clip, which is a mashup.
There's a much longer version of about four minutes of her repeating the same line.
This is a little bit of it.
Watch this.
What could be unburdened by what had been?
What can be unburdened by what has been?
What can be unburdened by what has been?
What can be, unburdened by what has been.
What can be unburdened by what has been.
What we can see, what we believe can be, unburdened by what has been.
What can be unburdened by what has been.
I can imagine what can be and be unburdened by what has been.
You know?
I mean, Tommy, you posted that on X.
I mean, it is, this goes on for four minutes.
It's about all she ever says.
And there's an irony because the one thing she would be is burdened by what has gone on before.
Because if there's anyone in America or Democrat Party more unpopular than Joe Biden, it is Kamala Harris.
Yeah, Piers, and that's why they keep jacking up Joe to get him through each and every single day is because the thought of Kamala Harris terrifies them even more than Dementia Joe.
She also says things about the passage of time and how it passes.
I mean, she has no excuse.
She doesn't have cognitive decline or dementia to fall back on.
She is just that bad.
So I think that's why they've been maintaining Joe for so long.
It's because of Kamala.
But boy, they're going to have to face that reality sooner than later.
Yeah, Francesca, look, we've talked about this before, but it must be a painful moment right now for a lot of people who are Democrats, right?
Where your guy is just clearly has now been exposed as I would argue, as somebody who's not got a horse in the race, I'm British, that I just think has exposed himself as unfit for the highest office in the land.
But what do you do?
You know, there are five months left of the election.
You either allow him to limp on, and I believe if that's the case, get crushed by Trump, or you try and parachute somebody else in, which carries with it, as Destiny was saying, its own risks.
The Debate Backfire Risk00:06:22
Yeah.
Yeah, no, there's massive risks of replacing Joe Biden.
That being said, I do think he should be replaced.
And interestingly, Hunter Biden is the one family member that wants Joe Biden to not run.
Why would anyone listen to him?
I mean, I think it's more self- I'm just saying.
They're listening to Hunter Biden.
He just was a single day without the right on his dick, you know, because they love to spread photos of it and show it on congressional floors.
But look, politically, here's where I stand.
I wanted Bernie, not weekend at Bernie's.
I think we all need to just lay that out there.
I put this squarely at the feet of the Democratic Party.
They ran a piss poor candidate in 2016.
They ran in 2020, and yes, they did win.
There was a trifecta.
There was a COVID-19 pandemic going on at the time.
And Obama made that call and everybody fell in line.
But is Joe Biden the best candidate this time around?
Absolutely not.
And I think it is depressing and enraging to millions of Americans who the only person they hate more than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris maybe is Donald Trump, right?
Is the fact that you have everything going against Donald Trump, not just the fact that he will pass a national abortion ban, the fact that he wants to implement Project 2025 and abolish the Department of Education.
Let me finish.
Let me finish.
But that isn't true.
He's not said he wants to pass a national abortion ban.
So, see, when I hear Democrats do that, it reminds me of Trump's the new Hitler.
It's like, why exaggerate?
Why go too far?
He's never said he wants a national abortion.
Pay attention to the news that's happening right now.
The far-right takeover of the judicial system in this country is already underway.
And just today, they allowed a president to have immunity, total immunity, which means the Jack Smith case.
Actually, it wasn't total immunity.
It doesn't go.
Francesca, look, with respect, again, you're massively exaggerating.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled who's...
Let me calculate for viewers, right?
You said they've given him total immunity.
They haven't.
The Supreme Court ruled that Donald Trump is partially immune from prosecution for actions taken while he was in the White House.
They said that while the president's immune from criminal prosecution for official acts taken in office, he is not immune for unofficial acts.
Big difference to total immunity.
So again, why exaggerate?
There is nothing to exaggerate here.
What I'm saying is that about abortion and immunity.
Okay, so he's immune from stealing White House secrets after he leaves the office.
Is that what you're saying?
It's okay for him to do that.
You mean like Joe Biden did?
Yeah, Joe Biden, in which when he was told, he was like, oh, here you go.
Look, I'm not here to defend Joe Biden.
You're trying to get on me.
All I'm saying is Donald Trump represents a far worse threat to the American people.
And Joe Biden's a terrible messenger for his own damn campaign.
He can't even articulate the fact that unemployment was at its lowest rate last year.
In 1969, I agree.
The economy is actually doing quite well under Joe Biden.
But the guy can't put his mouth around the words.
And he had a perfectly good attack line on Trump about abortion if he could remember what it was supposed to be.
But he couldn't.
Michael Knowles, let me bring Michael.
He'd be waiting very patiently.
I mean, look, I think it was extraordinary.
65% of people who watched that debate thought Trump was a winner.
Trump hasn't seen approval like that as a politician, right?
So that showed you how bad it was.
And incredibly, 30% of people who watched it thought that Biden won, which just goes to show how deep partisan tribalism runs, right?
Because even Joe Biden knows, even Barack Obama said he had a bad night.
What happens here?
What do you think is going to happen?
Well, I have to correct my friend Francesca here, who says the only person that Americans hate more than Biden is Trump.
That isn't true.
That's why Biden proposed the debate in the first place, is because his numbers just were not strong enough against Trump and it completely backfired on him.
However, I'm with destiny.
I agree that Biden is the best nominee for the Democrats right now.
I still don't think he beats Trump, but who else are they going to pick?
As we've said, Kamala, no way.
Michelle Obama's not going to run and she's not nearly as popular as people say she is.
Gavin Newsom, I don't think that Patrick Bateman plays in Peoria.
Okay.
I don't think Gavin Newsom wins Michigan.
I don't think he wins Pennsylvania.
Who?
Mayor Pete?
Who are we going to get?
Are we going to dig up Al Gore?
Is he going to run?
There is no better candidate for them right now.
The problem is that Joe Biden also can no longer be the nominee because the entire liberal establishment has just admitted he's not fit for the job.
The biggest problem right now for Biden is he has admitted it.
You know, we heard in 2020 that his obvious slips and gaps and memory lapses were just the recurrence of a childhood stutter that had disappeared for the first 47 years of his political career.
But it came roaring back in 2019.
And now even Biden is admitting, he says, I don't talk as well as I used to.
I don't debate as well as I used to.
But doggone it, the one thing I can do is tell the truth, which rings hollow when even CNN had to go on a three-minute diatribe, a litany of all the lies that he told during that Thursday debate.
Not to forget that Joe Biden dropped out of the 1988 presidential race because of dishonesty.
So the question now is: if Destiny and I are correct, and he just is the nominee, then how does the New York Times, how does Politico, how does Washington Post, how does the entire liberal establishment campaign for this guy after admitting president?
When you and Destiny basically agree, that's when you know how bad this situation is, right?
I just want to bring in Fox News medical contributor, Dr. Mark Siegel, quickly.
Dr. Mark, great to see you.
And the reason I wanted to talk to you is because we've got a clip.
This is Biden debating before the 2020 election and Biden debating now.
I want you to watch this and just give an assessment of what we think may be happening here.
I'm not here to call out his lies.
Everybody knows he's a liar.
I just gave $28 billion to our farmers.
Taxpayers' money.
It's what?
Taxpayers' money.
You can see he is 6'5 and only 220 pounds or 2035 pounds.
Well, you said 6'4, 200.
Well, anyway, that's what you anyway.
Assessing Cognitive Decline00:04:43
Just take a look at what he says he is and take a look at what he is.
Look, I'd be happy to have a driving contest with him.
I got my handicap, which when I was vice president, down to a six.
I mean, I play golf off 16, and I've said this before, and I'll say it again.
I would bet $100,000 to a charity of President Biden's choice that I could give him a shot a hole rather than him giving me 10 shots, and I'd still beat him.
This idea he was ever a six Andy gamper is ludicrous.
But Dr. Mark, there are so many clips that people are comparing to four years ago, to eight years ago of Joe Biden in debates where he sounds previously whip smart, really on it, dynamic, and so on, eloquent, articulate.
That person no longer exists.
What is likely to be happening here?
I'm glad you used the word likely because obviously I haven't examined him, but Pierce, first of all, everyone out there needs to know that he's going to be the last to know.
Any neurologist will tell you he's going to be the last to admit it.
Those around him will see him faltering.
They'll see him having problems with speech, searching for words, not following a sentence from beginning to end, saying ridiculous things, saying offensive things, getting irritated when he's contended with.
That's a sign of growing cognitive impairment.
He's going to be the last to admit it.
And then his wife steps in and starts speaking for him, reminiscent of Woodrow Wilson, when he couldn't rule the country and his wife was taking instruction and running the country.
That was probably the scariest thing of all.
I think that there's a lot of risks he has here for dementia.
One, he has an irregular heartbeat, and that irregular heartbeat can lead to silent ischemia, silent strokes.
He walks with this gait that looks neurologic to a lot of neurologists, that there's a problem with his gait.
That goes back to what's going on up here.
Does he have fluid on his brain?
Some neurologists have said he could have an atypical Parkinson's.
He's got something going on.
And here's something that none of your expert panel yet said, and they're expert.
I love this panel you have.
Pierce, never mind whether he's going to run or not.
Can he be president now?
Right.
He doesn't have cognitive reserve.
What happens if we get to a phone call in the middle of the night?
That famous phone call in the middle of the night, there's a nuclear threat going on.
You want this fumbling idiot to actually address that?
And of course, you know, Tommy was right.
The world leaders are watching this, but how about our own national security?
Yeah, well, I was struck by the briefing that came out saying, you know what, he's pretty good between like nine and four o'clock, which is why all the clips of him out there speaking like the next day he was out and sounded pretty different.
And I was like, well, that's fine, right to the point that he has to apply his finger to the nuclear trigger at six o'clock or nine o'clock or midnight.
I mean, if we get the guy who was on that debate stage at the wrong moment, I wouldn't trust him to run a bath, let alone run a military order.
That's a great point.
You know, if he's sundowning, he can't run the country after 6 p.m.
And then the White House is saying he has a cold.
Well, excuse me, I've had colds and I still can carry a train of thought.
Folk medicine, I take day quells sometimes and I'm fine.
I can think clearly with Mucinex.
I mean, whatever they gave him, if it impairs him to the point where he can't speak clearly or think clearly, he can't run the country.
Is there a mechanism under if it turned out, for example, that he genuinely has got a deteriorating dementia that is quite aggressive, and this gets medically diagnosed now as a result of this debate?
Is there a mechanism for his removal that you're aware of from the office of president?
I mean, 25th Amendment, does that cover it?
Yes, the 25th Amendment covers it.
And to your point, I want to point out that his last physical that he had in February, I have been asking for years now, and Tommy, the same thing.
I've been asking for years now for a full assessment.
They didn't give it.
They danced around it.
No MRI scan was listed.
A lot of dementias would show up on an MRI and no formal cognitive testing has been done.
I think there could be a demand for that right now.
What does his MRI show?
If he's impaired, then there would be a case for removing him now.
Yeah, I completely agree.
Dr. Ma, always great to have your contribution.
Thank you very much indeed.
Destiny, you were chuckling there.
What were you chuckling about?
The idea that a Republican would demand a full physical assessment from a president when they wouldn't even demand Trump's taxes is hilarious to me.
Demanding a Full Physical00:15:11
The idea of not being able to answer the call in the middle of the night, I mean, it's already happened.
We've had it with Ukraine.
We've had it with Israel.
Like Donald, or not Donald Trump, Donald Trump did not show leadership when Iran attacked Saudi Arabia and he stood by and did nothing.
He didn't show leadership when he abandoned our Kurdish allies in Syria for absolutely no reason.
Biden has shown leadership, whether you like it or not, whether you like how he's dealt with it or not.
He has shown leadership and the ability to bring allies together for Ukraine.
He has shown leadership and the ability to force Israel to simultaneously show restraint while still remaining faithful as an ally.
So, I mean, like, we can make fun of a debate performance all you want, but we can compare the legislative records of both presidents and we can compare their actions in office.
Here's the problem.
But just to be here, you can, but here's the problem with that, is it's just not cutting through.
There's no doubt Biden's had a number of wins as president.
No doubt at all.
There's no doubt that comparative to most of the rest of the world, the U.S. economy is purring along quite nicely.
But his approval rating is at 37%.
And after that debate, this issue of his own ability to function physically and mentally is now the only thing anyone's going to talk about for the next five months.
He was incapable when it really mattered of articulating to the American people what his successes were, what his policy wins had been, what his attack lines against Trump were going to be and why he should be re-elected.
He could, I mean, honestly, I watched the whole thing at seven in the morning.
I didn't understand that, but hang on.
I watched the whole thing at seven in the morning in the UK until 8.30.
I had a lot of coffee.
I was about as alert as a human being could be.
I barely understood anything Biden said in the entire 90 minutes.
And by contrast, I've known Trump since 2006 very well.
I've watched him at close quarters when I did Celebrity Apprentice for three hours a night across the boardroom, night after night after night until, and modesty prevents me from going about this too much until I won.
But at the end of it, I had 100 hours of watching Trump.
He's pretty much the same guy.
You may hate him.
You may hate the trash that comes out of his mouth, all those things.
But in terms of his actual performance, Trump on that debate stage the other night, if anything, it was the most restrained I'd ever seen him.
Because even he could tell, the guy next to him was just melting down.
So Destiny, there's the problem.
Do you want to know what a black job is, Piers, after watching him?
Did you guys figure out what a black job is?
I'm going to come to you in a moment for your analysis of what we think a black job is.
But let me just get Destiny.
That's what I think the problem is, right?
The problem is that.
I understand what you're saying, okay?
As somebody who spent the last eight years cutting their teeth doing debate, that's what I do is political debate.
All I've heard every single time is debate doesn't matter.
It's not that important.
Now all of a sudden, that's the most important role.
It does when it's that bad.
What about the immunity for criminal actions that Donald Trump just secured in front of the Supreme Court?
American people.
Well, again, it's an insane thing that what we're talking about is Biden's debate performance over the legal requests that Donald Trump is making.
Yes, but destiny.
That's the problem.
That's what we're focusing on.
But that's the problem.
I agree.
But Destiny, right there is the problem, is that people are only talking about this.
Remember, before the debate, two-thirds of all Democrat voters wanted Biden to stand aside because they were worried he was too old.
What do you think they think now?
No one's changing their mind on that.
If anything, I'd be amazed if it's not 90%.
And that's the problem.
You've got so many things to attack Trump about, but nobody wants to hear it.
When has Trump ever been in a debate where the next day, the headlines weren't all about him?
It's never happened.
But now the only thing that anyone will look for with Biden in the next five months is him showing further evidence of mental and physical decline.
Let me bring in Tommy.
This is going to be the greatest period to be a Donald Trump in a presidential race ever because he just has to keep allowing his opponent to do stupid things and say dumb stuff and look exhausted and lose his train of thought.
That's all he has to do.
Right.
And I'd also like to make the point, and I know that the liberals on this panel are going to have a collective hemorrhoid when I say it, but even if former President Donald Trump wasn't standing next to a vegetable last Thursday, he still would have performed excellently, and he did.
He got his points across.
He was able to finesse some of the issues like abortion in a way that I've always been concerned about, but I think he did a great job.
So I also want to point that out.
But as I've said, I don't think they're going to keep with Joe Biden.
I know that all the Democrats say, well, they have to because of this and that.
Logistically, they have to keep with him.
You can't keep along with somebody who in the next several months is going to go downhill even more steeply.
This is not going to be a linear decline.
It is going to accelerate.
Anybody who's watched an elderly person decline this way knows it's going to get worse and worse and worse.
And I think there needs to be more of a discussion about just how evil First Lady Jill Biden is that she is standing by as her husband is going through this.
This is truly evil.
Why she's not pulling him aside and saying enough's enough just shows that she is so hungry for power, she's willing to embarrass and let her husband embarrass himself that way.
Shame on her.
Yeah, Francesca, I've got to say, I agree with that.
I think I've interviewed Dr. Biden about 10 years ago now, and I've watched him the last couple of days, and I'm seeing somebody who seems even more desperate not to give this up than Joe Biden is.
And surely any spouse in that position, forget politics for a moment, who sees their other half humiliated on a global stage like that in the way that it went down.
Surely the humane thing to do is to persuade that person it's over, isn't it?
Sure.
But also, Nancy Reagan apparently was running the show for the last few years of that administration.
So you never know.
Tommy might be right on this.
Look, here's the thing.
I'm just jealous of Republicans.
Like, you guys are just so loyal, you know?
I mean, MAGA is a cult of peaked-in high school conspiracy theorists who want tax breaks and a mass deportation of migrants, and they won't abandon Trump no matter what.
And you just got to admire that kind of loyalty.
Hang on.
Do you know who the biggest deporter of migrants was in U.S. presidential history?
That was the guy who was not running for president.
Did you know who it was?
It was Barack Obama.
Yes, it was.
A Democrat.
Yeah.
Three million.
I hate three million migrants he sent back.
He was the deporter in chief.
Donald Trump, by comparison to Obama, wasn't even at the races when it came to deportation.
I just wish Democrats had Republican conviction.
Do you know what I'm saying?
Like, you know, we have a wet noodle as a candidate.
And Republicans are like, yeah, he sexually abused Eugene Carroll and he tried to overturn an election that he rightfully lost.
And he's got two impeachments.
Well, we love this guy.
Let's effing go.
And I just wish we had that kind of commitment.
Did you like Bill Clinton as a president?
No, not really.
I did not believe in deregulation and like the nationality of the fact that he paid Paula Jones $850,000 to make a sexual harassment case go away.
Or what did you think of him having sex with a young person?
I mean, I don't know why you're again, Pierce.
Again, look, we all know you won't.
Pelemary Apprentice.
We all know that Trump calls you.
But like, how do you know?
Listen, I've had quite a frosty time with Trump in the last year and a half.
So I wouldn't overstate our.
But he still calls you.
But you always talk about how he calls you.
Like, I'm a liberal.
But I'm not a Republican.
I'm not a conservative.
Never have been.
I ran a left-wing newspaper in Britain for 10 years, right?
I would call myself a centrist, actually.
I'm a journalist who likes to go after both sides, hold both sides to account.
But right now, the problem that the Democrats have is no one cares about Trump.
And this is a guy with 91 criminal charges against him, right?
But no one's talking about it.
They're all talking about whether the guy currently in the White House can even know what day it is.
That's the problem.
A lot of people would vote for a corpse over Donald Trump.
That actually says more about Donald Trump than it does about Joe Biden.
Let's go.
All right.
Michael Knowles, apparently people will vote for a corpse over Donald Trump.
They will.
And please let them do it.
Let the partisan Democrats do it.
I'm now all in on the Democratic rhetoric.
The Democratic primary voters have made their decision.
They want Joe Biden as their nominee.
It would be an assault on the integrity of this country and on our sacred democracy if they replace him now.
I can't wait to see him in all 50 states.
You know, at this point, obviously, the man is not up to the job.
So someone else is running the country, whether that's Jill, whether it's Ron Clain, whether it's, I don't know, whether it's Barack Obama.
You know what's really interesting, Michael?
This is really interesting to me, this panel, because if we'd gone back, you know, three months, you'd have all been shouting at each other, arguing about Trump.
The two siding to the Democrat side here on the panel, you basically be muted by what's happened.
I can feel that the luster has gone.
The enthusiasm to beat up conservatives has just flown out of your body.
I'm not going to get the click that you want to get.
There's not been one argument.
You've all just sat there going, we agree.
He sucks.
Your own guy sucks.
He's not even, he's barely alive.
You've lost your fight, haven't you?
Biden has removed the fight from Democrats.
That's what I'm seeing here.
Actually, I agree with that.
You agree?
I totally disagree.
No, Donald Trump is taking insane.
Again, the Supreme Court ruling today is unbelievable.
The idea that instead on today's show, we're going to focus on whether or not Biden had a bad debate performance is just reflective of the, I don't want to say agenda in a negative way, but of what you want to talk about today on this program.
Like, I think that the decisions that are being made right now legislatively in the Supreme Court are more important or that are being made in the Supreme Court.
You know why that's happening?
Whether or not Biden has a bad question.
You know why it's happening?
Because Trump was able to put three judges on the court in one term.
You know why that was?
Because you put up a terrible candidate, Hillary Clinton.
It was incredibly polarizing, very arrogant, very superior.
And she got flatlined by Trump when no one saw it coming on the Democrat side.
And secondly, some of your Democrat judges who should have known better decided they weren't going to resign.
They weren't going to retire.
And because of that, Trump was able to pack that court.
So I'm afraid you reap what you sow.
Just very bad.
Bad politics.
One of those Supreme Court justices were literally lost by McConnell just robbing a president of the right to seat a judge.
Nobody remembers that Garland was supposed to be on the Supreme Court for almost a full year.
McConnell said, we're not going to have that hearing.
That is indefensible.
Let me bring you Michael.
Oh, my God.
Tommy has to leave in a moment.
So Michael, come to you, then come back to Tommy for a final rap from her.
But Michael.
Destiny, the principle that you're articulating that a president should be able to put a judge on the court in an election year, or rather, that you say Mitch McConnell violated, was a rule first articulated by Joe Biden in the 90s when he was trying to kill George Bush's judges.
So obviously, there was a decision today.
It said that the president has some immunity for criminal acts or acts committed in his official capacity as president.
And this is based on a 40-year precedent.
It really goes all the way back to the Marshall Court.
Really, nothing should be surprising about this.
And yes, the Democrats are upset that you're not true.
One second, Destiny.
They're inveighing because they say we should be talking about the immunity case.
Well, part of the articulation of it, I just was reading the decision, was that, look, this is the first time that you've got a president who's being prosecuted in this way.
And that's the problem, because the vast majority of Americans, right, left, and center, have been saying in survey after survey that they view the prosecutions of Trump as primarily politically motivated.
They view this as kind of corrupt.
And that's one of the reasons why Biden's poll numbers have been so bad for so long.
And so they throw this Hail Mary to do a debate in June before either party has settled on a nominee.
And it completely blew up in their face.
And so no wonder people want to talk about it.
You've got a political order that is fraying.
You've got a guy trying to put his opponent into an orange jumpsuit.
And it turns out the guy who's trying to do that has applesauce for brains.
No wonder that the American people, a bit like the British, I think would be the same in this position.
They can smell a political hit job.
And the fact that the first case that was used against Trump to try and convict him and put him in prison involved a payoff to a porn star 20 years ago for a supposed one-night stand or whether it happened or not.
That just smelt to them like a massive overreach.
Whether he did it or not, they didn't care.
As though the idea that the first American president in history to ever be convicted of a crime in a criminal court is convicted over something so pathetic and trivial, the American people, the right-minded, reasonable people who are not in the kind of mad tribal ends of their parties, all went, well, that's ridiculous.
And actually demeaning to the country.
Tommy, I know you got to go.
So final thoughts from you before we let you go, and then we'll carry on with the with Francesca as the rose between two thorns after.
But Tommy, your summary of where we are with this.
What do you think is going to happen?
Give me a roadmap to the election day.
Listen, I think they got to replace Joe.
I don't know if it happens at the convention.
I don't know if it happens after the convention.
If they use that mechanism and the DNC has to get together and pull some strings, I would remind folks that don't think it can be done.
Let's remember that the Democrats were able to overhaul our election system due to COVID in 2020 in a matter of months and nationalized mass mail-in voting.
So I never underestimate a Democrat, though I will say in sitting with this panel today, it's easy to see how sad the Democrats are, the liberals are.
It's easy to watch them crumble because their candidate quite literally is crumbling before our very eyes.
It's a great day to be a Republican.
It's not a great day to be a liberal, but I hope you guys stick with Joe and best of luck to you.
Tommy Lehron, always great to have you on On Sense.
So thank you very much indeed.
I appreciate it.
Destiny, I could see you thoroughly agreeing with everything Tommy was saying there.
It's just, I Francesca, I think is the name, I agree with her.
The thing that Democrats suck on that we're missing is this blind allegiance to a leader, literally no matter what he does.
It is the engine that powers Republicans.
It allows them to lie for their leader.
It allows them to excuse horrendous actions by their leader.
It allows them to look at a president and for after decades of saying, oh, we need to limit the power of government.
Oh, we need to live the president.
Say, well, maybe the president should actually be above most criminal prosecution.
Also, as a quick thing, you keep saying that, no, it's just partial immunity for official acts.
What is an official act of the president?
If you actually listen to the oral arguments that were presented before the Supreme Court, what that act even is and the ability to even probe for it is stuff right now that is not presumed to be immune.
For instance, just a real quick thing.
Prosecution vs Impeachment00:05:15
When Donald Trump is asking Pence, hey, can you throw out the election because I don't like the results, which is a real thing that happened, by the way, as much as I was like to say that's not true, that is counted as an official action because these are the roles of the president and vice president deciding how to count the electoral votes.
That is insanity to me.
If Biden were to do anything even remotely similar, Republicans would lose their minds.
Have you read the decision?
I know it just came out this morning, but have you gone through the decision yet?
I read up to page 25, and in part of it, I can read it out to you.
He explicitly calls out that whenever the president and vice president discuss their official responsibilities, they engage in official conduct, meaning that presiding over the January 6th certification proceeding at which members of Yes.
So that did count as official conduct.
So if you thought that he was trying to do a coup, try to steal the election by saying, hey, do you think you can throw those votes out?
Well, that's beyond prosecution.
You can dispute or object to any actions that Trump takes, but it is simply the case that when a president is carrying out his duties and is speaking to his subordinates in the White House, that is obviously official business.
If he were to bring in a bunch of, I don't know, drug dealers and hookers or something, that would probably be an unofficial crime, not related to his duties as president.
And the reason that this matters and why it's really a moderate decision is because it goes back about 40 years to a Nixon versus Fitzgerald, which found out that the president, yes, indeed has quite a lot of immunity from, at least from civil liability.
And then the reason that this is such a novel bombshell case is because until Joe Biden tried to throw his rival into the clink, we didn't prosecute presidents because that's the kind of behavior typical of banana republics and tinpot dictatorships.
But the argument, and I'm sure you've read this, even if you've just read the first 25 pages, goes all the way back to the Marshall Court.
It goes all the way back to the finding that the presidency does have certain privileges.
It's not totally beholden to the other two branches of government.
It's got executive privilege.
We have a separation of powers here.
It goes back to the Federalist Papers when the framers of the Constitution said that they need a vigorous presidency because the problem with the First American Republic, which was the Articles of Confederation, was that you didn't have any strong executive power.
So this is not something new.
This is Perfectly in keeping with the American legal tradition.
And now the Democrats are really upset about it, not because it's an upending of American jurisprudence, but because they're going to actually have to run on their guy.
They're not going to be able to cheat and throw the guy in jail or take him out of the banish him to St. Helena.
They're going to have to have a fair and square election, and they know they're going to lose it.
Can I just ask you a question?
I just want to hear just a quick question.
So you're saying that if a president were to order the assassination of a presidential opponent in an election, you're telling me that if he thinks it's for national security reasons, you defend that as being above any kind of review for criminal prosecution.
You would say, well, that was an official action for president, right?
I answered that question.
I really want to answer that.
Obviously, yes, I could answer you if you don't interrupt.
You're bringing up one of the important questions that was raised during the oral arguments.
And it's an argument against the case that Trump's team was making, but it doesn't really pertain to the actual judgment that came down because they didn't say that the president gets to do whatever he wants.
He doesn't get to go and assassinate his rivals.
He doesn't get to do this, that, or the other thing.
But he does have that in her dissent.
She said he could do that and it'd be beyond review.
She put that in her dissent.
I did read her dissenting opinion.
So how would it be not part of the official job as president?
They order drone strikes, don't they?
They order the military, don't they?
He's the commander-in-chief, isn't he?
Why wouldn't he be able to order the strike and say, you can impeach me if you want, but you can't hold me criminally liable.
This is my official act as president.
Sure.
Well, I mean, even the aspect of impeachment is kind of secondary to that because the Trump team was arguing that if you want to go after a president at all, you've got to do it through impeachment.
And the court said, no, you can actually prosecute former presidents for crimes that they committed in office.
So the fever dream that you and other Democrats are creating of what this decision implies is not actually what the court said.
The court gave a very moderate opinion that said that certain aspects that are conclusive and preclusive within the scope of the executive branch, you know, he has full immunity and he's got partial immunity around the peripheries.
And then he could be criminally liable outside of that.
And if you're asking why, you know, President Trump's standing on Fifth Avenue and shooting his rival in the face, how we could possibly prosecute him for that, I think you just don't have any faith in the American legal tradition.
And I think you're making an absurd argument to try to justify something that actually does upend over 200 years of American government.
Let me bring Francesca.
She'd be waiting patiently as the two guys have been juking it up.
I wanted to leave earlier, but no.
I just think it's, I think it's funny, though, that Michael brings up the Fifth Avenue shooting someone in the face because the quote is that people would still vote for me.
I mean, and this is kind of the sickness of the far right in this country again, is that Trump does fancy himself above the law.
And this incredible dishonest conversation about this immunity ruling is just wild to me.
Like the whole reason that the Supreme Court picked it up is because you've got three Trump-appointed justices who are all bought and sold by billionaires in this country, who have all been handpicked by the likes of Leonard Leo and Judicial Watch, right?
Skipping the VP Ticket00:06:49
And these far-right billionaires that know exactly what they're doing.
The Federalist Society knows exactly who they've been grooming to be appointed to the highest bench in the land.
And here they're delivering on it.
They didn't have to take up this case, but it was actually Trump's lawyer's defense against why he shouldn't be prosecuted over both documents cases as well as January 6th, inciting a riot.
It's just incredible to me.
You guys all think that, oh, Biden's criminal mastermind.
He's trying to lock up his opponents.
Piers, Michael, he did it to himself.
I'm sorry.
He did.
He didn't have to pay off the porn star by cooking his books, by falsifying business records.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
You know what happened?
He didn't ask himself.
Francesca, the problem is from the moment he got convicted of that crime, what happened?
He raised $150 million in one week.
Billionaires, but not from everyday people.
Ordinary people aren't giving to Donald Trump anything.
Honestly, I've not met any American since that conviction who doesn't just feel a bit embarrassed.
A bit embarrassed it ever happened.
It was embarrassing for America.
I'd also like to correct the record if you don't mind, Pierce, because Francesca said that I accused Joe Biden of being a mastermind.
I have never once in my life accused Joe Biden of being a mastermind or even possessing one.
Do you know what?
There's a clip on, I've said this before, but there's a clip on YouTube of him talking to a Senate congressional hearing about apartheid South Africa.
He must be in his early 40s, Biden.
He is fantastic.
He's passionate.
He's intelligent.
He's articulate.
He's eloquent.
He's brilliant.
That guy would be a fantastic president.
That guy has long ago left the building.
And it's actually, on a human level, it's very sad.
But at the same time, he is the president of the United States and he wants to run another four years.
I mean, Destiny, you know, with all the best will in the world, he'll be lucky to make it to election day.
Never mind, four more years.
Can you imagine what Biden will be like in four years?
Listen, if they wheel that dude out and he's got an IV drip in him, I'm still voting for him over Donald Trump.
I'm sorry.
I don't know.
Oh, you like Harris as much as I don't.
Yeah, absolutely.
What do you mean?
It's the idea of not accomplishing anything versus whatever direction Donald Trump is clarifying.
If they literally wheel him out, you would still vote for him.
Kamala Harris.
Jill could walk out on stage with an urn saying, this is the president.
Okay.
Joe Biden.
Okay.
Here he is.
And I say, yeah, this is really annoying.
He did.
Destiny.
You can't be serious.
Joe Biden said he wanted to be FDR.
So, you know, die in office, I guess.
Destiny, you would vote for Joe Biden's urn with his ashes inside rather than Donald Trump.
Absolutely.
Easiest decision of my life.
100%.
Poor Kamala.
Francesca, would you do that?
Kamala's just like, are you kidding me?
Francesca, would you do that?
Would they vote for an urn?
No.
The Democratic Party is doing their own base a massive disservice by keeping Joe Biden in this race.
They absolutely are.
They're not even creating a new lineup, a new roster of Democrats to come into the wake.
They can't even rely on their own vice president.
They haven't given her enough leash to actually say anything other than her one catchphrase that like makes my mind just boggled.
It's really pathetic.
And it's pathetic because actually the administration has done some good things.
Infrastructure plans.
The biological infrastructure.
Francesca, I like that.
The things that Donald Trump keeps on.
I don't disagree.
I think there's a on legislature.
There's a lot of good stuff to talk about.
He just can't talk about it because he's not able to articulate what he's done.
Let me ask you about Jesus.
You can see the handshake, though, the three-point handshake.
Yeah.
Francesca, if you were able, if you had the power to parachute anybody in from the Democrat side to replace Biden, who would it be?
It's difficult.
It's difficult to say.
You got to think of someone who's got name recognition and who could also win.
Give me a name.
Oh.
Oh, my cat.
Her name is Ramona.
No.
You know, I got to say, I think I'm going with Newsom because of name recognition, the ability to sort of go after someone like Ron DeSantis.
But you know what?
If we can switch octogenarians, let's go Bernie.
Bernie one more time without the Democratic Party.
Well, you know what?
Listen, you know what?
He would do an immeasurably better job of taking on Trump.
As I think Newsom would.
I watched Newsome on Sean Hannity for an hour on Fox News.
A, I commended him for going into the lion's den.
And B, he quitted himself extremely well.
I wouldn't underestimate Newsome at all.
And in relation to any scandals that may come out, he's been pretty well turned over for all of those while he's been governor.
So one of the advantages of being a governor for an extended period of time is a lot of the scandal stuff all gets dealt with.
Final words on you, Michael.
Michael, where are we heading with this, do you think?
Talk me through to election day.
What do you actually think is going to happen?
Even if what you'd like to see happens, you know, Francesca, even if it's Newsom or somebody, you still have to contend with the fact that the Democrats would then be skipping over the first black woman vice president with the whitest guy who has ever walked the face of the earth in the case of Kavanaugh.
Yeah, but hang on.
There's actually a little twist in that, which Bill Maher got on to, which is if Newsom is the guy, he can't have Carmela as his vice president because they're both from California.
So it would only apply if she actually wanted to run for president.
But if he was to become the nominee, he wouldn't have to have Carmela Harris because he wouldn't be allowed to because they're both from California, which is an interesting part of this equation.
So they could put him in.
I mean, they would look, they would be overlooking her for the top job, but he wouldn't have to worry about getting rid of her from the vice presidency because he wouldn't be allowed to have her.
So that's just an interesting little part of the subtext here.
Sure, sure.
You know, I still think the look is pretty bad, though.
She wants the top job.
She ran for it the first time.
And, you know, she also launched her campaign back in 2020, we now forget, on Joe Biden's alleged racism and on the issue of busing.
So she's, you know, there's no love lost here between Biden and Kamala.
I don't think he wants to pass it to her.
I don't think Biden cares all that much for anyone else in the Democratic Party.
And I think he's wanted to be president since he was in the womb.
So if, you know, in terms of how do we get to November, the only way that Joe Biden leaves the ticket is if he chooses to, or if one of his caretakers choose to.
And so to Destiny's point, I actually kind of understand why you would say, I'll vote for an urn over Donald Trump, because what you're saying is the president doesn't really matter.
It's run by a committee and the administrative state, and it'll just keep kind of chugging along, and that'll be fine.
The problem, though, with that argument for voters is that everything has gone to hell in a handbasket since Biden got elected.
A Nation in Civil War00:02:27
So, you know, you were mentioning earlier, Ukraine or Israel or this or that.
All I can remember, and Trump made a good point of this during the debate, is for the last 20 years, the only president on whose watch Vladimir Putin hasn't invaded more land is Trump.
He did it under Bush.
He did it under Obama.
He's done it under Biden.
He didn't do it under Trump.
During Trump, we had peace in the Middle East, believe it or not.
We had the Abraham Accords and Israel and Saudi Arabia becoming buddies.
There's a town in Israel named after Donald Trump.
I wouldn't have guessed it either, but it happened.
Now, of course, we have this major outbreak of war.
You don't need to take my word for it.
Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, said that the reason that the Russians invaded is because of American weakness, specifically Biden's, and the fact that Biden actually invited them and said if it was a minor incursion, he wouldn't do anything.
So you might dispute all these things and say, I'm missing the point or something, but the voters clearly agree with me on this.
This is why Biden's so low in the polls and why the majority of them don't think he should run again.
Okay.
I'm actually going to give the final, final word to you, Destiny, because you were reeling in horror through some of that from Michael.
I'm not quite sure why, because it made a lot of sense to me.
I might reel in horror from what Destiny says, and then we'll just never end this paper.
We're going to end it definitely with Destiny.
You've got a minute to summarize your horror.
If U.S. politics is anything today, it is everybody endlessly recoiling in horror.
So, you know, it would be an appropriate end.
Just, I mean, there was somebody that destroyed Donald Trump in debates.
I watched it happen over and over and over again.
It was Hillary Clinton.
It wasn't even close.
Donald Trump knows nothing about domestic or foreign policy compared to her.
And guess what?
None of those debates mattered whatsoever.
Just on the final point, it's easy to think that something is good because you look at only the surface level of things.
You go, oh, well, there were no new wars.
So it must have been great.
People say peace in the Middle East and forget that Iran attacked Saudi Arabia proper for the first time in all of history.
Donald Trump did nothing.
The entire Great March and Protestant riots raged on.
Yeah, that's great.
That's not peace of Middle East.
The entire border rights raged on 2018, 2019 in Palestine and Israel.
Donald Trump did absolutely nothing.
The idea that there was peace in the Middle East here when the region was about to boil over and it finally did on October 7th is just laughable.
It shows like a total misunderstanding of anything that's happened in the Middle East.
What was the peace?
Is it the ongoing civil war in Yemen?
Was it the ongoing civil war in Syria?
Was it the ongoing destabilization in Iraq?
Was it the ongoing protests in the Gaza Strip?
Like, it's just, it's a joke to me.
On that point of full agreement between all three of you, I'm going to leave it.