We're back with another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Jasinski,
culture editor here at The Federalist, joined today by Christopher Bedford, Executive editor
at the Common Sense Society. Chris, Welcome, great to be back.
I was so excited that I actually skipped the rest of the intro, where
I say, as always, you can email the show at radio at the
Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr LST, make sure to
subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and to the premium version of our website
as well, all good things. But I just skipped right over it because
because you pushed me too. You know. It's that, and also it's
that my mind is now preoccupied by all the breaking news. In fact,
some of this breaking news bumped you from Fox News just now, and this
is why you're heating breaking news for another breaking Yes, there are two stories
breaking simultaneously. One is, I would argue, well, let's not play
favorites here. One is that tragically they just found debris in the case of
the submersible, the submersible Titan that was en route on a tourist expedition to
the Titanic. And at the same time. We are learning more and more
information by the minute, as people comb through documents that the House Ways and
Means Committee just made public whistleblower testimony showing that the IRS obstructed investigations into Hunter
Biden, or that the FBI obstructed Yeah, the FBI DJ obstructed IRS investigations
into all kinds of crime that it seems to have been committed by Hunter Biden.
They have text messages, they have really detailed testimonies. So we're going
to do a little of both of these stories. And Chris, you actually
made remember this. Chris likes to talk about Titanic. He's somewhat interested in
the Titanicic just a purely historical level, not as interested as he is in
the Thirty Years War. But he is interested in the Titanic because I think
you see it, as you see in the story of the Titanic and in
the tragedy of the Titanic, some important lessons about modernity. And I actually
think the titan tragedy combined as a sort of coda to the Titanic tragedy on
a small scale coda to the Titanic tragedy, has some really important lessons in
it too. What's your reaction as they're now finding debris. Well, I
wouldn't get too excited about finding a debris field near the wreckage of the Titanic.
It seems like that this because could be a false positive. Well said,
yeah, the whole thing. Actually, I hadn't really thought about that.
I was getting angry about some aspects of this story. Is kind of
fascinating and grizzly and terrifying story. I mean, there's not really my wife's
afraid of flying, and I've occasionally pointed out. Usually it's like I'm helpful.
I'm like, I'll get you another drink, let's do a rosary.
But sometimes I'm not. Like one time when I pointed out that we were
basically right above where the Titanic went down. That's just even though we were
miles above and the Titanic is over a mile below, just that association could
cause a complete and total panic in ours. I really shouldn't have done it.
Wait, did you guys go to the Bermuda triangle? But yeah,
well, christopher'st a beimuter triangle kick right now? Right when that kicks in
our seven or eight, Like, what is this place? But I think
there's something the stories over the news because it's so totally gripping. It's an
absolute nightmare scenario. I mean, I'm not invited on these kind of submarine
missions. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars passenger but dying. Whether the Titanic
went down in the darkness of the freezing ocean, it's just a terrifying thing.
But in a incredibly confined space. I don't know if folks have seen
footage from other people who have gone inside of it. It's about the size
of a minivan as twenty one feet and if you look when you've got five
people packed into it, everybody is together in this very contained space. As
of now, the oxygen would have run out by the estimates, so debris
aside. Unless oxygen power, they die of hypothermia. Right did the deep
dark ocean you're just crammed in counting down your final hours. Or if they
founded the briefield, there might have been very little counted though, and they
might not have been crammed in at all. And it sounds like it's hard
to know what happened. Yeah, so at least right now, but I
can tell you that from reading about this company and watching interviews with the owner
who and the founder who was on it that it's a stupid cost cunning,
fashionable company. It's a company that uses cheap video game controllers. It's a
company that replaced expertise with youth, and a company that uses all these different
kind of buzzwords like we're inspirational as opposed to expert and it's company that really
fits into our modern world. Are like late Empire stage vibes at this country
is giving off where you've got. I mean, I was listening to one
speech which I think has it's probably gotten around a little bit on the internet,
where the founder is saying, listen, we don't want to be one
another one of these submersible companies. We really think ourselves more of as a
space company. No one's sitting there being like, well, you're not in
space, you're in the ocean. There's similar levels of inability to survive,
for sure. I mean, when I go scuba dive, you have to
keep in mind that there's no oxygen. But he says, all these other
companies have a bunch of fifty something year old white guys. You know,
they're not inspirational. So really you mean hiring veterans who've worked on submarines.
That doesn't inspire. Yeah, I think it ought to inspire. He said,
we'd like to hire. You know, you walk at our place,
you're gonna see a bunch of twenty five year olds, a bunch of young,
cool hit folks. Women, and I've seen them sort of touting their
female leadership. Yeah, the female leadership. Women should lead obviously, not
I mean, unless they're a Saint Johan of Bark that's allowed. See.
But he also says at the end of this, like, really, I
mean, it's not that difficult, need to be like a submersible expert.
You drive these things with the video game controller, and it's just it's such
an encapsulation of how stupid yet at the same time arrogant we are nowadays.
I mean that Titanic had a lot of arrogance. Western civilization up to for
the last one hundred years really hadn't had any serious wars. A thousand years
of infighting. I finally slowed down. Everyone was related. Technology was exploding,
New cures for cures were being found for diseases that had haunted us forever.
Our streets of our cities were lit. Populations weren't starving, there was
no bubonic plague like Europe was feeling awesome. Now the most famous people in
the world because sports hadn't really really weren't a thing at that time, were
movies didn't exist or very very limited. Most fames were going in the world
were rich people, folks who built business empires. That's what everyone followed.
You had newspaper delivery. It's like a whole new world. And Western Steve
was just opening up. And then it turned and they got arrogant and they
said we're going to create the unsinkable ship. And obviously turns out that wasn't
unsinkable, and just a short while later, World War One kind of put
an end to all of that unending optimism and march or Western stuff. But
you fast forward, you've got these this clown CEO. It's like, yeah,
we're more of a space company. We're an underwater space company. We
don't really believe in expertise. We like to wing it. The whole thing
about our company, the whole thing about our industry is it's just completely overregulated
with safety guidelines. Yeah, no kidding. If you go scuba diving in
fifty feet of water, there's a lot of specific guidelines you have to follow
because well, it's fun and warm, it's extremely dangerous. It's not.
It's really it's a it's a safe sport, I think, but that's only
if you follow the guidelines. If you don't, it becomes extremely deadly,
extremely quickly. And this guy was doing significantly more than that. It was
an eight hour I think journey down at the Titanic tweet, complete and total
darkness except for the lights to have And he's like, I got video game
controller. It was a staff of twenty five. It's like, listen,
I like that business model. I used to govern it at the Daily Caller.
We weren't doing submaries. Run with a video game controller, basically run
with the video games for Joel Hart a bunch of twenty five year olds paid
with beer and occasional cigarettes that they had to share amongst them. But the
we're beginning to see a lot more of this. We're going to see more
of it. The you're seeing it in aerospace with problems with the FAA,
you're seeing it, and you see it start to see in tech when you've
got you see it in firefighting, you see it in police, in medicine.
I mean, yeah, it's extremely important, for example, that we
have diverse sexes and hirefighting and like, unless you're Rhonda Rousa, you probably
aren't gonna be able to pick my two hundred and thirty pounds up and put
it over your shoulder and pull me out of a building. So I don't
think you're gonna be a firefighter. Yeah, and that stuff is stupid.
The cult of diversity and the anti x at the expense of expertise is something
that has been really annoying for years in the humanities, just something that bugs
us, bugs me. That's you know these you see these different doctors and
professors get up in front of the Senate and tell people there's fifty five genders
or whatever. And there's obviously it's annoying in those places, but it's deadly
when that expertise is building airplanes, piloting submarines, doing things like that.
And we know because we see it at that our society, at NASA and
our military and aerospace and in the Navy, that they're putting diversity conclusion quotas
above expertise and we're just beginning to reap the whirlwind on that. And it's
going to continue to get worse until some of the weeks up and says,
hey, I don't care what you look like. I need you to be
able to do this math. I need you to be able to inspect this
airplane. That is what's more important than anything, and people's lives are other
escue for it. Well, yeah, the word is decadence, and before
you love that word, but this is very fitting. I mean, you
could hardly find a better illustration of modern decadence than this where you have I
would totally have done it. By the way, you would have a billionaire
and money didn't matter anything to me. I would love to see that type,
you know. I actually think this is a pretty interesting point. And
one thing I've been reflecting on is Molly Hemingway road a great piece back in
twenty fourteen entitled we need to get more comfortable with people dying in space,
And there's something so profoundly eerie about the sort of symbol of Gilded age hubris
that sunk and people actually now with no real practical reason, but just sort
of out of that that morbid curiosity of seeing something like the Titanic underwater,
so that people now are actually paying two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I
looked it up. Inflation adjusted, that is more than double the cost of
the most expensive ticket on the Titanic. But just about every estimate if you're
adjusting for inflation. So I would much rather take the ticket of the Titanic
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Most estimates say that, like the most
expensive on the ticket on the Titanic adjusted for inflations, around one hundred thousand
dollars. So people in twenty about that ticket. You probably survived. Actually,
some of the richest men in the world died in the Titanic, so
maybe not right right, So in twenty twenty three, people are paying more
than double what it costs actually to take a trip across the ocean on the
most advanced large vessel of its kind, just to go see the graveyard of
that vessel for a day. I mean, it's it's pretty bizarre when you
when you think about it that way, Like, I actually understand very much
the desire to towards see the Titanic, but for the price of two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars, I think even as a billionaire, that's for eight
hours a very very strange use of your money, especially given the risks involved.
There are much more. This is the point Molly makes in her piece
from twenty fourteen. There are very sort of admirable, patriotic, courageous risks
that we are averse from taking now as a society, that we need to
be more comfortable with. This is not one of them. No expiation although
they're not really adding anything to the exploration on this nothing whatsoever. I mean,
there's nothing new that is going to be gleaned. There is. They
call themselves. This is actually another interesting part of it Operation specialists. So
the people who pay the tickets are sort of looped into the science. If
you watch their advertis for it, they're like, you just won't be you
won't just be passive, You're like actively Operation specialists are actively involved in the
scientific process babble. They're like giving you monitors to like watch and be like,
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but these are the money ments a little of these guys, why didn't they
just buy two seats? I'd be like, how about half a million dollars
so I can move my legs in the submarine or maybe the rest of my
possibly very short life. Yeah, I'm going to be on the submarine.
I would like a little more legroup. I just wrote a piece for the
Common Sense Society stuff. Yes, yes, it was very good. Thank
you. On the last one of the last members of the last probably interwar
polar explorer to die. He was the youngest member of Admiral Bird, then
not yet Admiral Bird's Antarctic expeditions. The name was Robert Johnson. He was
a Navy sailor who had sailed on He had a sailing experience when he was
a sea scout younger in his life that caught Bird's eye and he said,
why don't you come down with me to the Antarctic. He just passed away
to one hundred and two. But it was just I was reading back because
I've I've fallen down a rabbit hole of reading about these polar explorers. Because
somebody sent a Shackleton book to the Federalist. Yes, a British explorer who
had written a book called Shackleton Sentence to Us, And I mean he's a
story of absolute perseverance. He's someone who got but he's another person who's run
around the Titanic time. It's the it's the heroic age of polar exploration.
The whole world was riveted by these men who are going out there. There's
extreme tragedy that's marking some of these expeditions, with the whole whole expeditions being
wiped out. Shackleton sets sail on the day or his ship leaves England and
the day the Germany and Russia to clare war on each other for World War
One. By the time they're about to go out of radio contact with the
world, England is at war. They offer their support and they say,
no, don't worry about it, we got it. And these guys leave
just kind of assuming it's going to be another European dust up. It'll be
over in a few short weeks and some new maybe France and Germany will swap
back a couple of territories. That's kind of their tradition between those two countries
for a thousand years prior one hundred years prior, and then they got back
and like holy smokes, they had heard these stories. One the war is
still raging, they're hearing about trenches for the first time, and they're hearing
about or at least at trench warfare on this level. They're hearing about these
tanks from one across the battlefield, the skies filled with gas, and whole
cities and towns and region it's just wiped off the map. And they're completely
and totally shocked. And when Shackleton gets back to London, there's no one
waiting there to greet him, like no one cares. Everyone's moved on.
But at that kind of kicked off. That was the end really of the
of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration, and then became the mechanical age where
people started to through like well I got in roal bird, Well maybe I
can fly to the North Pole. I can fly to the South Pole,
which she reportedly did on both, although there's some some controversy, or we're
gonna take We're gonna do this with snowmobiles, as Rynold Fiends does. The
British explorer who just wrote the book Shackleton, We're gonna bring this new technology
supposed to simply dogs and ponies and things like that, and Robert Johnson was
a member of this They there's some levels fhew brisks. They brought down a
much valley hood uh Antarctic Explorer, this giant wheeled encapsulated lab that was able
to withstand anything and it could go all across, but they never tested it
on snow. The tires were around and ended up being used by the marines
on deck, just as a barracks like to hang out in. So there
were some total great embarrassments. But you're right, it is a far cry
from these folks who went down with the Titanic. A lot of my friends
have shaden freud for these billionaires who went down there. I don't. I
just I just maybe it's because I'm obsessed with the Titanic, but I think
I think that'd be so cool. I see the impulse to want to want
to go down there, but I don't see the not doing the research on
this company and getting getting in there and being like, who is this dude?
I want. I want the guy who's not who's very much by the
book. I want the guy who hires the ex sub mariners in their fifties
to come on and do everything. I want the guy who will call off
the mission if he looks around and says, you know what, the conditions
aren't perfect, because it's a deadly, deadly mission. Yeah. Someone mentioned
to me that William F. Buckley was one of the first people to tour
the wreckage of the Titanic. You would probably know this better than idea,
And um, I think that's you know he was. He was very interested
in Robert Ballard, and that's obviously an easy subject and an easy person to
be very interested in and oppressed Ballard took Buckley. I don't know. If
it was with Ballard, that'd be cool. Yeah, that would be cool.
I would love to have been in that little submarine. No, absolutely,
and and still had that assuming that happened. I don't know if it
actually have. Somebody who told me that was true, and what we do
here at the Federals is just recycled claims as a fact. Kidding. I'll
look it up when Chris starts talking us next because I have nothing better to
do anyway. But um, that would still be on the cutting edge of
Titanic exploration, just by whenever time. That must have been. It still
would have been when when that was of some use, right, and Robert
Ballard did that for obvious scientatic woods all Massachusetts. It's short bike ride from
my parents house. Oh yeah, yeah. They for Ballard, he discovered
the mark, he discovered the Titanic. I was saying something, they're going
to find this. Sarah said, are they going to find the submarine?
I said, I don't know. Took them fifty years to find the Titanic.
I really doubt they're going to find the submarine. But maybe it's twenty
one feet long compared to the Titanic. Now, say Robert Ballard in a
Boston accent Robert Ballad, Okay, so I'm going to do my best to
build a bridge from this topic to another. Actually, I think it's easy.
I think it can work. Yeah, I got booted from Fox to
talk about this next topic. Well, so, I actually I remember talking
about the Titanic a couple of years ago, and one of the takeaways you
had from it is that despite the kind of class divisions, despite the sex
divisions, there were men on the Titanic who really did abide by women and
children first. And that's somewhat of an unthinkable ethic in cities like Washington,
d C. In here in twenty twenty three, and there are lessons from
the Titanic. I think about the sort of respectability incentives of a when there's
no doubt that you know, Carnegie had some really unfortunate business practices, but
the incentives for at least publicly your behavior were very different, and people people
had standards that whether or not they're they're obviously different from what we have now,
but in some ways different for the best, our billionaires use slave labor
and foreign countries. Yeah, these guys mistreated the American workers, but at
least they built in America. Well, they also had. The best example
that I can think of is the Carnegie Library in Mount Vernon Square here in
Washington, DC. That Tim now an Apple store. Tim Apple. Yeah,
Tim Cook restored. He didn't build his own. He restored this one
and then turned it into a freaking Apple store. He restored it not for
charitable purposes to bring the community together and bring them give them a place where
actually they can go look at books and stuff. He built it into an
Apple store. I mean, it's like the perfect embodiment. But on that
note, I guess the neighborhood. He deserves anything. The average person hanging
out in Chinatown for more than half an hour can read a book. I
watched protesters burn a car outside of that Apple store while it was being looted,
burn a cop car, and they're still on the block that you actually
can still see the markings of it. And it's twenty twenty three. You
can still see that there. Anyway. Another thing Molly talks about a lot
is there are sort of lack of statesman, magnanimous leaders who can shepherd us,
midwife us through this like incredibly difficult moment as a country. And I
think what we're sort of seeing unfold right now as the whistleblower testimony is being
picked through literally as we speak, like it was released a couple hours ago,
so we're still going through it here at the Federalist, and then everyone,
you know, kind of a media is taking a look at it.
As long as you're not in legacy media, you're not going to be very
interested in what they find. But the way that Hunter Biden is talking to
a Chinese businessman or Chinese official saying, I'm sitting right next to my dad,
you better send this now or my dad, or the person sitting next
to me, who, by the way, is my dad, is going
to be extremely upset. The way the FBI, you can see how they
were leaking these thinly these thinly sourced claims throughout twenty sixteen about Trump in Russia
and in twenty twenty. Part of the whistleblower testimony is that the FBI verified
Hunter Biden's laptop and November of twenty nineteen, November of twenty nineteen, and
they were sitting on evidence of pretty clear corruption throughout twenty twenty and instead of
leaking, which I don't think you know, they should be doing anyway,
but instead of leaking, they're actually obstructing investigations into it. I mean,
it is just like it is. We are led by idiots, and we
are led by corrupt idiots. They're making millions and millions and millions of dollars.
I mean, this, this whole thing, this whole Hunter Biden.
Eventual prosecution's not even a prosecution, a plea deal is unreal. I guess
we got today from some of the whistle blowers that the IRS was told that
the evidence would not be They weren't allowed to get the evidence because the evidence
resolved in the guest room and Joe Biden's house, and they weren't ever going
to go raid Joe Biden's house at the president's house to find evidence of a
crime because that would be a bugas that would be breaking a serious norm in
America. Yeah, by the way, I actually kind of agree with that.
I wouldn't say raid the sitting president's or former president's house. Over two
million dollars in late taxes to the IRS, I got to be insane.
But we're past that point. We've already crossed that river. We raid president's
houses now, at least former presidents, so that doesn't wash. And now
we have we have the I R S whistle blowers saying the IRS was slow
walking it. Now we have more people coming forward in the IRS saying we
wanted felony charges and the DJ refused. You got Marek Garland going up there
under oath saying the US attorney who was a pointed it has been allowed to
have full rain. I am not interfering at all in this case. And
now we have whistle blow is coming forward to say no, actually he is.
He's he's turning down the US Attorney's attempts to get a special counsel turning
down the attempts to prosecute these things. I mean, it's it's all kind
of expected. Well, once you have like a kind of a basic understanding.
Sometimes I'm like a really bad guest on Fox because they compat these things
like who's going to be held accountable? And I'm supposed to say something like
yas, but the answer is no one. It's like always no one.
It doesn't really matter who what the scandal is, it doesn't matter what information
comes out. It doesn't even matter if there's a Republican president unless that Republican
president is a kind of person like a Rhndo Sanus type. It's like I'm
gonna shut down Disney like because you cannot work within the system. The system
works against the right. The system works very much with those who are in
power. And even when as a Republican administration, it's going to be like
that, they're gonna tell you a million and one reasons why they can't do
this, so they can do that, So no one's gonna be held accountable.
It's gonna be ignored by half of the news media, and it will
continue. I actually really like my Gates as kind of line of questioning at
the Durham hearing yesterday, saying well, why why is no one who why
are these people still working here? Why why have you not gone further?
Why have you not gone after everyone who's involved here? Why have it disappinion
of them? I mean, cool, you've you've laid out a really interesting
spy thriller which were basically now it's kind of provable, and historians will look
back in a hundred years if we're still a country, and we're like,
oh wow, that was a really bad period, but no one's held accountable.
It's true that even the dry as can be Durham Report, in terms
of like how it's written in the tone of it does really read unintentionally like
a spy thriller. It's actually pretty you know, it's actually pretty intriguing stuff,
just the content of it alone. It's not some better presentation than Mullard
too, Like everyone was like, oh, this guy's a real superhero.
Not at the Trump this guy's the toughest copy. You only saw still shots
of him because like he avoided the press, like him believing in church,
just looking like the American hero. And then we got in front of Congress,
and it turned out that he was like suffering from late sage dementia.
So, yes, that was I'm pleased to report. And I'm actually shocked
you didn't know this that Buckley did for the records of the Titanic in nineteen
eighty seven. I was using a reliable source, my boyfriend. So reliable
source turned out to be absolutely correct nineteen eighty seven Buckley towards the records of
the Tantannic. It's it's very surprising to me that you, as a I
don't think so, I don't know, but you, as such a fan
of both the Titanic and William F. Buckley, did not know this.
I think Buckley did some good stuff, some not great stuff too, Okay,
well the Titanic. I mean, I guess he and I are on
the same page on that, Like I would absolutely that invitation. Well,
so I wanted to read this hun to buy and text message because it's just
one second, yes please, Well we're talking about fake news and repeating stories.
Yes, So I realized I had a tour guide the first time it
came to DC who was taking us around in this bus, and he has
told us the Smithsonian castle was brought over here by Smithson from his castle in
Scotland that he had taken apart brick by brick, shipped over here and rebuilt
in the National Malt And I was like, that's insane. And I repeated
that story when taking people around DC for like fifteen years, and I would
give someone a tour. We're actually in the Smithson Castle and I'm reading it
and as I'm telling them the story, get to the parts like and it
was constructed here and designed by this architect and it was not remotely true.
It was And then I look back at it's like, it's obviously not true.
But it made me realize that if I was a tour guide, I
would do that. Yeah. If I was my job to survive a round
of the bus with a bunch of tourists and kids all day, yeah,
I would just slip in like one or two absurd trivia and just and this.
I know that they would spread, like my friend would do this as
the party. He'd tell people, tonight's lie is going to be I survived
a helicopter crash. I f felt of a helicopter at one thousand feet and
survived. And I'm like, yeah, right, and by the end of
the party, girls would be telling me, did you see that guy?
You fell out of an airplane or a helicopter, And I was like,
wow, it worked. It's just kind of fun that Again, women are
gullible. This is why they shouldn't leave children. I tell lies to children
all the time. It's great, it's fun. Yeah, someone's gonna take
that van away from you. Like I told sure the day that there is
one actual remaining dinosaur. It's the rhinosaurus, and a female rhinosaurus was a
hippopotamus. And most kids are like, yeah, yeah, I know,
I know, and like they'll get into a fighting squirard about it. But
Christopher actually called me right away. He's at that sun. Yeah that could
love. Yeah. The Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with the Chris Markovski.
Every day Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the economy and how it
affects your wallet. Is the Trump indictment a game of three d chess by
Democrats and the leftist media? With all the attention on this trial, will
any be left for real problems? Moving to twenty twenty four, how about
the kitchen table issues that affect you and your family? Make sure you're paying
attention. Whether it's happening in DC or down on Wall Street, it's affecting
you financially. Be informed. Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with
Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Well
back to Hunter Biden, who may also love dinosaurs, we don't know,
also lies to children, so oh oh, including his own. This is
from the whistleblower. For example, we obtained a July thirtieth, twenty seventeen
what'sapp message from Hunter Biden to Henry Zao, where Hunter Biden wrote, quote,
I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why
the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like
to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and means tonight and
Zee. If I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other
than you, Zang or the chairman, I will make certain that between the
man sitting next to me and every person he knows, and my ability to
forever hold the grudge, that you will regret not following my direction. I
am sitting here waiting for the call with my father, but he's sitting next
to his father. By the way, I don't know if he picked up
on that is next to his father. I'm gonna tell my dad what an
absolute loser. I mean the way that so this is again like if the
reason that Hunter Biden and he I think he even said this on sixty minutes,
Like obviously people are throwing money at him during the Obama administration and even
shortly thereafter because his name is Biden. He's making all kinds of money from
Barisma and other places cfc. Because his last name is Biden. And somebody
who is successfully corrupt is going to do exactly what he just did over and
over again and say things in these these sort of cage ways where he's invoking
the name of the person that they are trying to buy access to by just
saying, by the way, I'm sitting here next to my father, do
you not know my father the vice president and the former vice president of the
United States is twenty seventeen and the other courses in our prosecution. I mean,
we have an email from two or three years ago with the chairman of
Barisma emailing Hunter. I mean, like listen, I know, but we
want to get down some deliverables. He says, the core deliverable is making
sure that there are no prosecutions of the president of this company. It's like
it's explicit, it's in there. And we know that the prosecutor who was
going after him was fired, and we know that Joe Biden was behind it
because Joe Biden's on camera bragging about it, and we know that's been debunked.
And that's just a bunch of circumstances everything. But now we find out
from these whistleblowers in the last two weeks that the president of had an insurance
policy against these guys because he didn't trust them. He didn't trust Hunter,
who knows why. And he apparently has fifteen recorded phone calls with Hunter and
whoa too with the big guy? Yeah, two with Biden, the big
guys with the Chinese called Biden. That's what Hunter calls Biden. It's what
the reasons Biden. I love that that Trump line who's the big guy there
in the debates. But so now they have the audio recordings, so I
get that there's this whole thing like, well, maybe they're just prosecuting,
or maybe they're just trying to figure out the tax stuff and the gun stuff
first, and the wheels of justice moved slowly. But the only reason I
just don't trust it at all because an order for us to even get anything
anywhere this far, the Kevin McCarthy had to threaten to hold ray and contempt
and then move forward. To do it, they had to have multiple whistleblowers
from the IRS and the FBI come forward, and a paid informant FBI informant
come forward with the goods, give them to the Senate the FBI, and
that it that they existed until told that, It's like, do you have
the candy? No, I could see it the candy. I've actually already
compiscated the candy. It's in my hand. And they're like, okay,
well you can look at the candy at the skiff and we're going to redact
it. It's not even classified. And then they redacted from it that they
had the recordings that since I guess that's supposedly to protect the source because there's
only so many people, so I guess the source as the president of the
Breezesmar someone else who had access to his phone. But the uh, they've
got everything. This is old. We've talked about this and I've told this
story before, but during the Whittaker Chambers alder hiss Uh trials, discovering Communists
agents at the highest levels of the US Department, Communist age, I'm looking
debunked. Um. Nixon was able was the one who got the chambers with
the testimony. He went to this like weird X communists house and drove up
there and sat down with the tape recorder and interviewed the guy for hours.
He's the one who got those tapes. It's um. The FBI was like,
we'll take it from here. He was like, absolutely not. He
wrote this in his memoirs. And Nixon does everything politically, like like he
worts in his memoirs about his wife getting spit on by a mob in South
America, and he's like, I had to realize that we stood there representing
Americas. Like everything he's even his wife getting spit on, is political in
his mind. So he's a true character, doesn't just get lose his temper.
And he's like, there's absolutely zero shot I am giving this smoking gun
evidence of Communism of the highest level of the saverment to the FBI. And
if I was in his infancy at this point, because he knew that the
FBI would sit on it, bury it, nothing would happen, There'd be
no embarrassment, no scandal, and everything would go on as usual. The
only way for him to do it was to expose it in public. And
back then at least there was enough shame that this that he was able to
be successful. But this is, this is, this is since the founding
of the FBI is they've been an arm of political of certain political forces,
the ones that the elites seem to like. They bugged very Goldwater's plane for
Lyndon Johnson. They sent actual human moles onto his campaign. UM friend of
ours, Ley Edwards had to make campaign business phone calls from a pay phone
in front of the campaign headquarters because their phones were bugged, and as one
of the secretaries was a spy and the plane was bugged. They've been doing
this the whole time and really nothing has changed. Yeah, if you are
opposed to their power or to Brown broader power, then you will be targeted
by them. Truck Schumer made that very plan to Donald Trump. What did
he say, like, mess with these guys and you're gonna find out.
Basically, it was like f around and find out back in twenty sixteen.
Yeah, remember, and he said that, well, I mean not everyone,
not everyone gets taken down. There have there have been three sitting US
presidents who've gone after American intelligence services. And there's Donald Trump and Richard Nixon
and John F. Kennedy. Maybe maybe they do always get their way.
Yeah, yeah, yep, well yeah that an examine are a quick examiner
hit that we were like in the middle of cooking dinner and during steak and
everything, and it was breaking news something in the Durham Reporter or something,
and we suddenly had to sit down and talk about it. And they asked,
can your husband's like drinking to Martini over there? Can he join us?
And I started going to Kennedy and Nixon and she's just racking my left.
I didn't say it, I just you know, pointed out that there
are some similaris you're just going like full tinfoil hat got a lot of years,
but people, hey, I mean it's not wrong. But so yeah,
the Hunter Biden thing, I guess just as we wrap up to zoom
out, people might say like, well, okay, so why is conservative
media like chewing on the Hunter Biden scandal like a dog with a bone um.
When you know it's true, you can look at Jared Kushner, you
can go back in history, you go back even you know right now and
look at people like Bernie May and off Like, we all know corruption is
baked into our system at this point, and we all know that both political
parties benefit from it. When you look at what happened with the actually with
Ukraine and Yanakovich in twenty sixteen, you had both Paul Manafort and Tony Podesta
wrapped up into into that influenced pedaling scandal, which I still think is one
of the best symbols of bipartisan corruption Washington, DC. Ever, So what
is why why is it completely appropriate with a Hunter Biden scandal to kind of
zoom out and say this is absolutely worth our time, this is absolutely worth
thinking about it because they're getting somewhere. What's the importance of it? They're
getting somewhere here. I mean, I was supposed to go out with Richard
Fowler. Were just chatting in the green room and his last headline grabbing thing
with Republicans have been on this Hunter Biden scandal for years now. It's time
to put up or shut up, Like, where is the story, And
just in the last two weeks alone, Chuck Rassley has has produced multiple whistleblowers
from inside of our government who are shielding him, who are saying, at
this this investigation is being shield at the highest levels, produced potential, the
existence of actual recordings of corruption at the highest levels, the kind of things
that for Hunter, he should get at least the prison sentence the Paul manafor
It got, which I think was five years. I mean, this entire
laptop, which they've verified in twenty nineteen, is full of fair violations,
evidence of fair violations. We know that we've seen what's on the laptop since
twenty twenty. They had that in twenty nineteen. They're saying right now that
the investigation is still open. Interestingly, this whistleblower testimony. I looked at
the date on it was late May. So when you have that late May
date and the way that the charges were dropped just this week, I think
that's really interesting because they knew. When we say, like, well he
hasn't been charged with farrah blah blah blah, I mean they've at least had
they've known that this whistleblower testimony is out there. They have known that,
Like they validated that laptop back in November twenty nineteen. So a, why
does it take five years for the chargers to be brought? Great question,
four years for the chargers to be brought and then in some of these cads
and then why are they now saying that the investigation remains open? Well actually
seemingly behind the scenes of obstructing this stuff. I mean that is like,
that's why this matters. This is this matters because this affects the life of
the average everyday American because their law enforcement at the highest level is utterly corrupt.
People seem to have their eyes open to that. People need to get
off the whole well the pendel will swing back thing or the or that you
know, there are a lot of good guys out there. I saw silence
of the lambs. Like you need to understand guys and girls because you saw
silence of the lambs. Yeah, just how in trouble we are, and
make your politicians actually hold us accountable. Like understand that when a hearing is
held and a bunch of people get out there and bang on their gabble and
they go on foxtioners afterwards and say we held people accountable. I understand they
didn't understand that no one's getting arrested, and you have to demand more of
your politicians and just hearings you need. We can't just keep on giving these
guys money and be like, all right, yeah, everything's good. You
need to demand actual action from these guys because we're in a lot of trouble.
I mean, we're in late stage empire stuff. This whole kind of
podcast has been on that. Whether it's the billionaire who just died at the
bottom of the sea and the fact that his son was out at Blink twin
eighty two and using his dad missing to try and take shots at internet porn
stars, to this corruption at our federal government. These kind of things just
sound like end of Rome stuff, and people need to wake up to how
dire it is. Right, Yeah, there's some measure of end of Rome
stuff even when Rome isn't ending, But it feels like it's piling up to
end of room stuff constantly, at like the actual end of room scale,
right, Like there's weird things that happen all the time. But yeah,
and of course there's also the quaint matter that our president could be compromised by
blackmail it could be compromised by foreign entanglements, and I'd prefer to not find
about that after find out about that after the fact. But who cares?
Right, at least we can take hope somebody what's his name, Will Will
Hurds running for president. Oh right, we'll heard h u r D heard.
Yes, So everyone, this is a game changer. Will heard.
And now I also have heard from New York Times that Rick Scott is mulling
a presidential run. So we're about to have another redo of twenty sixteen.
So maybe it is actually big news that Will hurt Us entered the race,
because we could be looking at another absurd debate stage that gets moves the ball
forward in no productive way whatsoever. I'm just here to announce to the American
people. No, he is wearing a blue blazer. No I am running
to b to Santus's director of HUD. When was the last time you ran,
Sarah? So I do I have to do my cardio not running?
But Sarah made me go on a run other day and I saw the Dominicus
on my run. Very embarrassing to see me on a run or on a
bike. A bike I could cruise cardio apply a metrics. Great, but
no, it's too easy to make fun of you with the bike because you
you wear the you wear the outfit only a long ride. Okay, only
on long ride. A memoir Only on long rides, A memoir by Christopher
Bedford. Big B, big B. All right, well, big b,
thank you so much for joining us. Chris Bedford, executive editor at
the Common Sense Society. Always appreciate it. Great, we're here. All
right. Well, you've been listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
I'm Emily Trashinsky, culture editor here at the Federalist. We'll be back
soon with more. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray