Welcome back, every one, turn new episode that You're wrong with Molly Hemmingway
and David Harsani. We've got plenty to talk about this week. Molly,
I think we should start right off the bat with the four count, forty
five page indictment dropped by Jack Smith on the former president and leading Republican presidential
candidate Donald Trump. Not shocking, right, well, yes and no,
it actually everything feels very surreal and shocking. And then also we expected this,
but to see just how poorly written the indictment is is very surprising to
me. It's basically like a like even worse version of the J six Committee
report, and it's as if they never spoke to a single person outside of
an MSNBC audience or host, Like it actually reads like if a particularly uninformed
MSNBC viewer were to be given the powers of a special prosecutor or what do
you think? Did you? Did you find it to be No? I
don't know how to frame I guess I should frame it this way. I
think that people have a lot of trouble disconnecting Donald Trump from their thinking,
so when they're talking about this these indictments, for instance, they're like,
oh my God, look how terrible Trump was, And honestly I agree with
that, But there's these indictments are an attack on the First Amendment as I
see them. I mean, everything is linked to speech and the ability of
the government to bore into the soul of Donald Trump and discern whether he believed
what he was saying or didn't believe what he was saying, and that is
not the job of the state. This is a polite Clearly, to me,
everything in this indictment that I read, I'm not a lawyer, but
everything seems to be a political issue. These are issues that you can impeach
someone over, or a voter cannot vote for a person again or ever.
But it is not It is not the kind of thing that should be transposed
into the legal realm. Yeah, I think it's I think it's worse than
that. I mean, it definitely attacks on the speech. One of the
things that's so interesting to me about how the left has responded to all sorts
of things in the last ten years is to work to take away constitutional rights
and protections, whether it's speech or association, or the right to protest government,
or the right to legal counsel. These are all things that are attacked
in this and other indictments. But because I did write a book on this
and I know a lot about some of the issues that are discussed in the
indictment, it's even worse. Like, for instance, it uses this claim
of fake electors, keeps on saying that there was a scheme to have fake
electors. That is not true, and I feel like you should have true
things in same time. Now, it is true that like radical Democrats and
Liz Cheney use that language, but that's not appropriate legal language for what was
going on. So when you have an election and you have litigation after an
election, that litigation usually takes months or years to resolve. And it's one
of the big problems with not having safe and secure elections is that it's very
hard to deal with after the fact. But the fact is that there were
legal cases moving in various states. So for instance, in Georgia, there
was a lawsuit to contest that election based on all sorts of questions that the
Trump legal team had about the veracity of the vote, and it was in
a ton of different categories, So they had different reports coming in in the
chaos after the election of just how bad the election was. By the way
one of those reports turned out to be outcome determinative, by which I mean
not that it would have changed the election to Trump, but they did establish
that there were enough illegal votes, and I can go into this in detail,
that they should have had another election. And they actually could have probably
done this pretty quickly if they'd gotten compliance with the Secretary of State's office.
They were not getting that compliance. This leads to part of what's mentioned in
the indictment about a phone call where Trump is like, I just need you
to agree with me that there are at least eleven thousand bad votes out of
the one hundred and fifty thousand or however many it was that they had identified.
And while some of the categories that they had identified they did overestimate in
other categories, they did show that there were enough illegal votes that they should
have had another election. And the particular issue in play for that they have
been borne out on is that in the state of Georgia, you are not
allowed to vote in a different county than the one you live in. So
there were more people who had moved and then returned to their old county to
vote than was allowed. That it's not allowed, and people who followed the
law were disenfranchised relative to that group of people. So it's a really important
issue. We've written about it at length at the Federalist. And I'm just
pointing out if that lawsuit had been allowed to proceed instead of fought at every
level in the state of Georgia, and if they had won, they would
have need they would have needed a separate set of electors had the outcome been
different eventually, And so having an alternate slate of electors is a totally legitimate
thing to do in the case that you succeed in your legal efforts. And
Jack Smith says that that is unconstitutional and illegal, when in fact, the
whole idea of having an alternate slate of electors is an attempt to abide by
the constitution that was complicated. But yeah, no, listen, I know
you're saying, they're a lot of underlying issues that were brought into the legal
system that work. Where is which is the place these things need to be
adjudicated, etc. And but this lawsuit essentially says that Donald Trump committed fraud
by doing so, or by listening to his lawyers, or by believing things
that he that the law that Jack Smith says aren't true, that we don't
you know, which it's not for him to decide what's true or not.
In Actually, my favorite thing is that he goes after Trump for believing things
from some people, but also for not believing things from other people. Right,
So they're like he should have known because the people who had been telling
him, you know, false things for the four years of his administration said
this other thing and he didn't believe them. Well, in fact, that's
not a crime to not believe what someone who works for you. News flash
to everyone at the Federal is it's not a crime to not believe what someone
who works for you says. That's not a crime by any stretch of the
imagination. And the fact that like he gets he gets mad at him for
believing certain things and not others is just insane. But I'm just gonna saying
other people sorry now going well. He also has a reference, a bunch
of references to something that's another thing I happen to know about, which is
this videotape of people counting ballots in Fulton County at the processing center without oversight.
And it is required in Georgia that you have oversight for counting. And
there's really no dispute about what happened there in Georgia, which is that the
people who were observing, which included media and election observers with the Republican Party,
were told that they were done counting for the night, but they weren't
done counting. They kept counting after everyone left, and there should have been
like the Department of Justice itself had a consent to career whatever you call it,
with Fulton County because they do elections so poorly, they should have had
an observer there. The State of Georgia should have had an observer there.
The Republican Party did have a servers there who were basically told that counting was
done for the night, and then they brought out more ballots to count them.
And the way that Jack Smith writes about this is clear he does not
either know or he's lying about what happened there. And I actually interviewed tons
of people in Fulton County, and these are people who range from like pro
Trump to not pro Trump, and meaning they were Republicans, but they're not
all Trump fans, and they all talked about just basically how poorly things are
done in Fulton County. And you can read the New York Times and Politico
and Washington Post for details on how poorly Fulton County runs elections because they were
livid at how they ran the primary election that year. So the idea that
you're allowed if you're the New York Times to condemn Fulton County, but if
you're Donald Trump you're not just seems wrong. Well, and I'm not diminishing
that all those specific things are talking about are important, but I think that
the larger issue is that if we implement this theory retroactively, then you know,
if a president or a candidate takes on bad legal advice or false legal
advice, or believes that aliens have taken over the election, that's their right
to do it. You prosecuting someone and claiming that they're defrauding the United States
because they're implementing or accepting legal theories that you don't like is an assault on
the First Amendment. Let me just say this, and speaking of defrauding the
United States government, we just went through four years well not just but we
went through four years of let's just say, Adam Shift completely defrauding the United
States government and American people using illegally obtained leaks, curating them to lie and
lying blatantly to Congress. I mean Al Gore could be could be indicted under
these rules. Adam Shift could be indicted under these rules. Wasn't there a
lawyer or there were numerous lawyers in twenty sixteen who wanted, if less,
electors to go against the will of the people or whatever. I mean,
it's just an incredibly dangerous precedent that there that's being set here. I think
that's just a size from thinking about Trump or or or anything else. Yes,
and no, I would say it was a So you were right that
Adam Schiff spread false information about Russia collusion, and I think we can reasonably
say he knew it to be false when he was spreading it. You know,
he falsely claimed he had he had evidence of Russia collusion that would come
to light some day, and then when it never came, he was like,
I was just talking about like the stuff that the New York Times was
writing. You know, Well, surely he knew that almost surely he knew
was a dis info. It was a partisan document that started. Yeah,
oh hold on, And yes, you are right that there was a massive
celebrity led and Democrat Party led campaign to encourage people who had pledged their vote
for Donald Trump to become faithless electors and vote for someone else. And if
that were illegal like this, if all the stuff in the Jack Smith indictment
were real, then then you would wonder why they hadn't gone after them.
But I do want to say that some I've heard some people say, well,
like if this were if this were true, Hillary Clinton should have been
prosecuted for the Russia collusion hoax. And I actually think those two things are
very different, by which I mean everything that Jack Smith alleges falsely about the
Republican campaign to win the twenty twenty election actually did happen from Hillary Clinton.
She did knowingly spread misinformation and false information that undermined the country for years and
risked literally like global conflagration, you know. And she did it knowingly.
She hired the attorneys, she spread the work that they like secretly came up
with. She did it publicly, she did it on her Twitter account,
she did it in interviews, and she knew it to be false. She
knew it was a campaign operation. So all the things that are claimed falsely
I think about Trump here actually do apply to Hillary Clinton, and maybe if
she had been prosecuted for trying to destroy the country through false claims of Russia
collusion to steal the election, maybe like none of this would have happened,
you know what I'm saying. But I still think those that her role in
it, from what we know, is still also within the political realm,
not the legal realm. Whereas people in the DOJ or the FBI or you
know, lawyers who signed Faiza documents that were lies, those people broke the
law and should have been prosecuted. Has anyone been prosecuted for anything that happened
in the Russia collusion hoax? I mean maybe a yeah, three people,
yeah, yeah, But it's not you know, obviously nothing like this now
and certainly not suppressively in the Department of Justice itself. The entity that is
going after their primary political opponent, Donald Trump, was involved at a very
high level with spreading the republic threatening lie that Donald Trump stole the election in
twenty sixteen. The idea that they're in any position to say anything at all
about twenty twenty is laughable on its face. And I would say that the
documents case against Trump is based iffy, but based on some existing case law
right For me, The problem there is just the arbitrary use of power where
some people can get away with it and other people can't. But this case,
I don't know. I guess it just happened, so I don't I
need to read more. But I don't think there's any precedent for it.
I think these legal theories are a brand new I don't think they've ever been
used. Maybe I'm wrong, And that's a lot of the center right people
I see defending this would never have defended this kind of abuse if it had
been anyone but Donald Trump, which again is the Trump addled brain, which
happens on both sides. But you know that people just can't get over the
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on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. I do think
that some of these novel legal theories, like the novel legal theory issue,
is very important because one of the virtues that we should be striving for is
prudence, and it's one that you know, you could very legitimately say that
Donald Trump did not exhibit prudence in how he handled the post election bite.
And by the way, I wrote very honestly in an in detailed fashion about
that in the book Rigged, my best seller on the twenty twenty election,
which continues to be continues to be Newsy available at all find online and brick
and mortar bookstores. But they're using novel legal theories in their fight against Trump
in literally every single case. So it's not just this one. One of
the big critiques that people have about the Documents case is how it employs novel
legal theories. Novel in part because the person in question has certain rights and
responsibilities that other people don't have, you know, just all sorts of things.
But this the idea that it would test out novel legal theories of the
Department of Justice criminalizing legal representation and First Amendment free speech rights on this case,
like of all the times to go crazy with, like I have a
crazy idea, what if people don't have First Amendment rights? Or what if
we were to kind of criminalize legal representation. That you would do it against
your primary political opponent who's running for president is so imprudent, even in addition
to all the other reasons why you wouldn't do it. I also think that
there's a broader issue about how the left, and I think the left has
taken a hard, hard left turn, and historically speaking, it's true too.
They don't see institutions as rule of law or anything like that. They
see them as you know, they only work if they're achieving certain political ends.
If they're not achieving those political ends, they're worthless and should be eliminated
or changed. And if they are, they're doing a good job. So
I think that's what we see that, you know, that's what's going on
now with DJ and Justice, you know, the Justice Department. So I
just think the repercussions of this will be will be deep. I mean,
they will you know. I just can't see the Supreme Court allowing this,
even if there's a conviction or whatever to proceed. I don't know for sure,
because again they're you know, I'm not a lawyer, but it seems
unlikely to me. Yeah, I can even see it not. I mean,
I don't know. I'm surprised somewhat that you don't have more people on
the left saying listen, I too am rabid with insanity over my hatred of
Donald Trump, but this is a stupid idea, and the fact that there
are so few of them doing it, and that Joe Biden. It's one
of the things that bothered me. Do you remember how Donald Trump, who
has never had an unexpressed thought, would say something about how there was a
witch hunt going after him in this what we all now know was a witch
hunt, this false Russia collusion hoaxed thing. And they would say, he's
obstructing justice by talking about how we are unlawfully going after him by complaining about
it. That's an obstruction of justice, because we are justice. You had
the New York Times last year published for Peace where it was like, hey,
I think the headline was almost like Joe Biden's getting a little impatient with
Merritt Garland not putting his primary political opponent in prison. And it didn't,
of course, it didn't quote Joe Biden, but he had if it weren't
true in any way, he would have had a year to be like,
that's not only not true, that's dangerous. And I want to make it
clear like, not only do I not think these things, I think it
would be very dangerous. As I said before before I won the presidency,
it would be very dangerous to try to investigate and prosecute the Republican opposition.
He didn't do any of that. He just sort of was like, oh,
interesting New York Times article here in which I'm pressuring Merritt Garland to put
my biggest political threat in prison, and nobody said anything about him being improperly
directing the Department of Justice. It's pretty sick, you know how. You
know how a lot of conservatives will I don't think it's a conspiracy theory,
but they'll say, like, Joe Biden doesn't actually do anything. Other people
are running the country, Barack Obama's running the country, and so forth.
I think that in this case, I mean, I think Biden is sort
of hapless midwit like, I don't think he's directing anyone. I think people
know what to do on their own, do you know what I'm saying.
I think they're work in concert without speaking. I think Jack Smith knows exactly
what his job is here and what he's doing, and I don't think that
Joe Biden's directing him. I totally agree that when you have a permanent DC
class that all shares the same hive mind, you actually don't need to have
like memo from Joe Biden to Merritt Garland, have you done the crimes yet
of putting my opponent in prison? You just sort of like all read off
the same talking points. But it is also true that they did publish this
in the New York Times, and it was sort of like a way to
legitimize this idea that it's okay to politically prosecute Republicans and that they don't have
legal rights and that they don't have speech rights and they don't have assembly rights,
And it was intentional, I think, to sort of make everybody see
like, Okay, we're all going to change our viewpoint on whether it's good
to lock someone up, and we're all going to do it through this like
house newsletter of the New York Times. And he's not going to jail.
So he's not going to jail. He's not going to go to jail.
I think, David I have already. You should prepare yourself that not only
is he going to prison, but like he'll get epsteined there Epstein. No,
I'm just saying there's like no limit to what they'll do. So I'm
not saying it he will, but you should prepare yourself. I think that
here's my I'm a I'm I'm a hopeless optimist, obviously hopeless optimist. So
I think that this is more about making sure that j six is again the
center of attention. They think this wins them elections. They think this won
them in the mid term, and they want it to be the center of
discussion during the twenty twenty four presidential race. I mean, that's what I
feel like. I don't know that that I don't know that putting him in
jail actually helps them in any real way, right, So anyway, that's
just my favorite risk. The risk to this one is too that you're basically
asking people, I mean, the reason why this is so republic threatening,
is it turns the entire election into a referendum on whether you want to be
a Banana Republic or not. And because of the Democrat ballot harvesting machine,
which is very effective, we could actually, you know, have an election
where again eighty one million people vote that they want to become Venezuela or whatever
Soviet Union. This is a very difficult time for me, I have to
say, because as it has been since twenty sixteen, is that I do
not like Donald Trump at all, to say the least, and yet they're
constantly forcing me to defend the norms that they're breaking to try to get rid
of him, because he's like this godzilla monster keeps marching forward and nothing they
do can actually stop him. Nothing they can do can convince forty whatever and
forty nine percent of people or whatever that he's you know, hitler. So
they keep moving forward with more and more norm breaking ventures that are just undermining
the Republic, but undermining not only the rule of law but there how can
I say it's creating more dogmatic reactions because you're like, you know, what's
screw these people? I'm going to now I love Trump just because you hate
him, Like there's no other debate, you know what I mean. And
it's just such a tragic way for our political system to operate. Yeah,
it makes me very sad. I have so many thoughts on this one is
I was talking to this highly placed Republican type person definitely not originally a Trump
fan, worked very hard to keep him from getting the nomination, but he's
not someone who liked pick sides now either. But he was saying that he
has never had a candidate whose personal interests so closely aligned with the interests of
the country as Donald Trump twenty twenty four. Meaning if you believe, as
this man does, that the Department of Justice, that their attack on everything
rule of law at their attempt to destroy the country, if you think that's
a really bad thing, the only candidate who's like personally embodying that and has
like a personal interest in fighting as much as you care about it is Donald
Trump. And unfortunately, for every other Republican candidate out there, the Department
of Justice and the weaponization of the rule of law is like the number one
unifying issue of the Republican Party. So it's like a huge strategic advantage for
Donald Trump. The problem is he didn't really do anything about it last time,
and what happens is they're going to cook up some other Oh my gosh,
that's sure. I mean, I'm not saying that he was. He
had the I don't even know if the president can dislodge the bureaucracy in DC.
And I'm not just talking about the DOJ, the Pentagon. Every agency
acts on its own. Like I've said a million times, they're managing Americans.
They're not a representative of the American people in any real way. And
I don't know how you dislodge that whole thing. I don't think he can
do it. I hear this talking point from people, it's like, well,
we elected Donald Trump in twenty sixteen, and he didn't make everything in
the universe better, so we have to nominate someone else. I don't think
I sound like that at all. Oh my gosh. And it's like you
didn't actually use those words, Like just the fact that, unlike every other
Republican that has had operations against him, that he bought it and won,
you know, at the Russia collusion hoax. I don't think there's another Republican
candidate out there that would have withstood that or even come close to it.
And that was just one of the operations they put against him and showing the
corruption of the Department of Justice through their false claim all done through leaks and
other machinations that Donald Trump had stole in the twenty sixteen election. That alone
did more to move the country in a better direction than I think, you
know anything else. Did every political appointee turn out great? No? In
fact, almost none of them. But like when you look at actual conservative
victories, even in our adult lifetime, they're kind of all under Trump,
right, No, what is a conservative? Oh? My god? Everything
a million things that we had. I've had this argument a million times.
Everything that the millions of things we didn't do our victories also, And I
think that conservatives, though obviously I was, I'm not a Bush fan.
I don't think he did. You know, he did a lot. He
grew government in ways I didn't like. But there were plenty of victories in
the Cordine elsewhere. But don't I don't think that that's a topic for today
that we want to argue about. I want to say this though, it
isn't it funny that the Russia hoax, which everyone believed in the world.
I see you clenching your fists in anger. We can do that in another
episode. That they never appeached him for the Russian hoax, and this indictment
does not indict him for inciting the January sixth ride either. Those are the
two big talking points. Jack Smith yesterday had that press conference and he basically
claimed that Donald Trump had had incited those riots, even though that's not anywhere
anywhere in his indictments. It was a completely political statement that he made,
because you know, people have others have pointed out, and it's a very
political document. I think that's important to remember. But let's switch subjects for
a second. I let me set this up this way. I go to
sites that you probably don't go to to check it out. I want to
give everyone a chance. So I go to Semaphore, I go to Axios
places like that. Wait, why do you think I don't I read everything
everywhere? Okay, you mocked me whenever I say I've read this in the
Washington Post or something. But I have to go somewhere to read read stuff.
So anyway, not a single story. First of all, this is
now everywhere, but even before these indictments, there wasn't a single story on
the front of the two sites have just mentioned about the president of the United
States being accused essentially of influence trading and making money off the American government's power,
or call it briber if you want not one story. So it doesn't
surprise me that these indictments came down exactly when attention was almost because some sites
did start to report on it almost Joe Bidens, what I think now is
just clearly and obviously we have so much evidence that there was some corruption there.
Actually, I'll give you a few more. Oh darn it. I
just had it and I lost it. Okay. On June seventh, the
FBI released documents to Congress alleging that the Bidens took a ten million dollar bribe
from Barisma. The next day, Jack Smith issued the indictments on the Marlago
Classified document this case. On July twenty sixth, Hunter Biden went to court
and rejected the sweetheart plea deal after it was revealed that the dj had tried
to give him blanket immunity from future prosecutions. The next day, Jack Smith
added additional charges for that Marlago classified documents case. On July thirty first,
Hunter Biden's former business partner testified to Congress that Joe Biden was on over twenty
calls with his son's business on more than twenty calls. So I'm reading grig
prices tweets here more than twenty calls with his son's business partners, and that
Bresma executives pressured them to get the prosecutor investigating them fired. The next day,
Jack Smith indicted Trump again for January sixth, Like the man actually relishes
this idea, Like you think you're coming after my guy. I got more
and more and more, and I mean I expect it'll be hundreds of indictments.
I mean hundreds of charges, multiple indictments by the time we're done with
this. The whole thing looks like a protection racket for Joe Biden. And
it's not just Joe Biden, Like it's definitely the Biden family that was involved
in this pay for play scheme. But it's really about how all of Washington,
DC is involved in pay for play schemes. And they's view rightly Donald
Trump and his supporters as a major threat to their operation. And they just
want you to know, like they have all the power. You don't matter,
your vote doesn't matter, your enthusiasm doesn't matter, like they will crush
you. And that's what they're trying to do. Now, whether they succeed
or not is up to everybody else. That is kind of amazing those dates.
I had not known that. Well. Listen, you know, even
if everything about Donald Trump were true, everything about Joe Biden still remains true.
Right, It's still a massive story. Let's see, Let's say Trump
is everything they say is. It doesn't change the fact that Joe Biden was
a vice president, was on calls with execcent in Eastern Europe at the same
time he was the point person for the promised administration making millions of dollars first
family. And by the way, I don't know if people know this from
their economics class, but dollars are fungible. I don't care whose bank account
and the Biden family goes to. It's going to the Biden family fund.
Right. Just because you're spreading it out all over the place doesn't mean anything.
But I want to quickly just say I had such a laugh listening to
their excuses. We're a piece on this, but my favorite line was so
one of the excuses is they were just talking about the weather, which no
sentient human being believes is true. Right, I mean only no one believes
that, not even the people saying it. But the one I loved was
this from Eugene Robinson and m MSNBC. We know how this is why he
says, Joe Biden took a hunter calls as they were talking. We know
how important family is to the president. So what do you do? Hang
up on your son? Yeah, yeah, hang up on your crack addicted
son when he has people from Barisma on the phone with you, when you're
supposed to be the point person in rooting a corruption in that country. Yeah,
you hang up and call him back, Hugh. As I mentioned,
he had thirteen burner phones, He's not hard to reach. You imagine that
he is little Navy London, who you have successfully ignored for five years of
her life, and you just do it, you know, do what you
do, what you've done to your granddaughter, but do it to him.
But yeah, I love the idea about whether for two reasons. One,
the idea that, oh, by the way, your opening line in that
piece that you wrote about the excuses was so funny that I almost want you
to pull it up and read it. But Yeah, the idea that the
Biden, that Joe Biden has a secret passion for meteorology that he only shares
with people who happen to be business associates of his son, Hunter Biden,
is just funny times, but also, like when you're doing bribery operations or
pay for play schemes or things like that, the whole point is you want
to show that you can get the powerful person on the phone that he answers
your calls. So even if it were true, miraculously for Dan Goldman that
this was weather chit chat, what the weather was like in Dubai while you're
in Washington, DC, that itself would be evidence of how the Biden family
business operates. You show that you can get this guy on the phone at
a moment's notice, and that you can take their concerns directly to him,
and it doesn't matter what you're talking about. Just answering the phone is the
important thing there. Let me piggyback that point and say that the idea that
he was just creating the illusion of access tries to frame the entire thing as
Joe being this hapless, goodhearted dad who was roped into something that was a
bit shady, But no, that's not how it works. If he's allowing
himself to create the illusion of access, he is part of the scheme.
Just illusion of access is just as bad. It's not as bad as outright
access, but it's bad enough. It's bad enough, and it obviously speaks
to the corrupt nature of those calls. He's vice president, by the ways,
and he's firing the prosecutor who's looking into Burdhisma. Now, whether he
did it for the right reasons or the wrong reasons, that's kind of irrelevant.
If he knew that at the same time, that's what this company that
his son was working for wanted to happen. It's corrupts and that's the best
case scenario for him, right, and that is already corrupt, you know.
But I will say this one. Let all right go on good time,
just because you says something about money being fungible. And I do want
to remind people that we have emails or texts from Hunter Biden in which he
asserts that he pays the bills for the family and that his dad makes him
pay the bills for the family. Now, who knows if that is one
hundred percent true or fifty percent true or not true at all, but he
has asserted he himself has claimed he pays the bills for the family. And
I'm also reminded of something that Avida Duffy Alonso wrote for us about how Jack
Smith, the man who's got these novel legal theories that Republicans don't have free
speech rights or right to legal counsel, he also was the guy in charge
of investigating and rooting out public corruption at the time the Bari Smith scheme was
happening. He was the head of the Office of Public Corruption. And he's
conflicted here basically, you know what I mean, Like, he also looks
bad for allowing all this to go on when there were bright, blaring loud
flares going up about Biden being the Ukraine point man. At the same time,
his son was taking loads of cash that was actually public and that should
have been, you know, acknowledged by Jack Smith, a who also has
a track record of derailing Republican presidential candidates. You know, he's the guy
that used a novel legal theory to oust Bob McDonnell I think was his name,
the Virginia governor from from like his future political career and was overturned at
the Supreme Court after the damage was done. Nine to zero. That's how
radical Jack Smith is. He gets overturned by the Supreme Court, which is
not known for having no people friendly to Democrat political Shenanigan's nine to zero.
And this is years ago before the three Trump nominees. I believe we're in
there, right, But yeah, now I forgot I was gonna say,
but I think that I want to talk about the media coverage again for just
a second. It is to me. I know I shouldn't be surprised,
but I just can't. I don't understand how you cannot even talk about this
massive issue when you're talking about the President of the United States who was now
clearly I mean there was just tons of evidence, circumstantial but still evidence that
he took these calls. So I don't how can we move forward? Yeah,
they're not denying it, Like now Dan Goldman, who's like the Russia
hoax or impeachment one guy was like out there like yeah, yeah, he
did talk to the business associates The New York Times was like we have always
been at right with you know, like they're all like yeah, So I
guess he did speak to his son's business associates after lying to the American people
on a national debate stat that's all I wanted to say. Yeah, so
he So, if these were innocuous phone calls about the weather, why did
he feel a need to lie about it explicitly over and over again for almost
a decade. Why would he lie about it? And if it was innocuous,
why can't he sit down and explain what kind of services his family gave
to the Romanians, Chai Coms and Ukrainians that was worth seventeen million dollars.
It should be a very easy explanation for that. And literally, other than
maybe two people in the White House press corps, no one even asks him
any questions about this. No one asks any questions. And what's her name?
Karean John Pierre. I don't know if we spoke about this last week,
but she made a like semantic, a little semantic change, and how
she answers this question, it's no longer. Oh, he never spoke to
them, He never was in business with his son, which I agree,
he probably did not sign the corporate documents making himself CEO of that company.
I would like to remind people of just how poorly. The news side of
the Wall Street Journal handled this in the twenty twenty election. So the Wall
Street Journal was given information and access to the emails which are true about how
the Biden family business worked, and also to a person who's willing to speak
with personal knowledge like Devin Archer someone like that Tony Bobolynski about how Biden was
sort of like the chairman of the business. And the Wall Street Journal given
all of this explosive, unbelievable like information about this paper play business, was
like, we looked at the paperwork and Joe Biden's name wasn't actually on the
paperwork, So yes, he was referenced as the big guy who got ten
percent, but we didn't see any actual ten percent payoffs. So actually,
this is pretty great for Joe Biden, and it took the editorial page,
which at the Wall Street Journal, the editorial page is very interesting in that
they're like the only editorial page of a major newspaper in the States that believes
that they also should report, not just be pundits. And so they did
their own investigation and revealed just how like shady this was, but really really
bad work by the Wall Street Journal. News page there, and it's like
a big reason why you can't really trust them on their new side. Unfortunately,
it's kind of amazing. When there is some bubbling controversy. Let's say
in twenty eighteen and Donald Trump, let's say it's Russia hoax stuff. No
one says, hey, there's no smoking gun here. They're like, this
is happening, we need to investigate more. Or this could mean this,
this could mean that. They didn't even say that like that. Of course
they believe oh my gosh, yeah, but like there's no smoking gun.
The story doesn't make sense. Nobody's on the record. There's perfectly innocent explanations.
There's nothing here at all. And you have like texts of Hunter Biden
being like, I'm the bagman for the family business. I pay the bills.
My dad is the guy I get on the phone to make sure people
know that he's accessible, and people are like, I just don't see anything.
I don't really what are you guys even talking about. We've got videotape
of Joe Biden saying that he accomplished. What we now have from you know,
testimony from Devin Archer is what the people paying Hunter Biden wanted the firing
of Shoko, Joe Biden was like, by the way, I did that
single handedly on my own, by threatening to withhold money unless I got what
I wanted. He's on videotape saying that less than a year after he did
it right, And people are like, I just don't see anything. There
are Treasury Department documents of suspicious activity reports about all the money flowing into shell
organizations run by the Biden family, and Democrats are like, when are you
going to have any evidence of anything here? It's just like insane they have
I always wonder why would all these people who have said that Joe Biden is
involved in the family business, who had nothing to do with each other,
who made these claims years apart from each other, sometimes years before anyone knew
he would even run for president. Why would they all make up the same
lie about a guy who most of them don't really have any personal or political
problem with. It doesn't make any sense. But the thing about the evidence
is that whenever a reporter sees a real reporter, which we have very few
of left, sees something happening that could be a potential, uh you know,
scandal, you get excited, you're like, let's keep digging till we
find evidence. Now with this, there always like there is no evidence that
Joe Biden did this. There is no evidence, Like because you're not looking,
you're never going to find any evidence. The House has had to do
it in a smaller places, like the federalists have had to do it.
No major news organization does anything. We're piecing together a puzzle. And it's
not that there weren't indications, Like there was this piece by Adam Enos,
who was one of the Russia coclusion hoaxeres at the Washington Post, but then
he was at it was at the New Yorker, and it was early on
in the twenty twenty presidential campaign. He was like, so, hunter Biden
took a lot of bribes from corrupt communist Chinese officials, but it was kind
of buried in this like gauzy, five thousand word thing, and it was
clearly done. More like, let's get this negative stuff out here so that
we can say we covered it and moved on. Now. In a sane
world, journalists would look at that and go, holy schmule, let's dig
over here. This sounds like it's going to be right, first off,
and instead they were like, I suspect you know that if we keep digging
around Trump, even though we have like analyzed everything from the cost of a
hamburger at Trump Tower to all the global financial arrangements, like we're gonna we're
gonna get pay out there versus the Biden family business, which was clearly about
changing US policy in response for payments to Biden family members, you know,
of actual voter interest. You know, here's a theory of mine. When
when find first announced, I think a lot of the press wasn't sure that
he would win or didn't want him to win. They wanted someone more progressive,
someone you know, more dynamic. So in those in those in that
like six month period, they were like, we should bring him down a
little bit, you know, and they would have like stories about how he
was closied up to segregation and so they would have a story about how he
took bris you know, even though it was kind of buried and they tried
to think um week in his candidacy in some way, and then they realize,
oh man, he's gonna be He's gonna be the non like we got
to stop doing this, and they pulled back, you know. So there
already even stories out there, yeah even now yeah, yeah, yeah,
we could pretend to be journalists for the problem is they really there is no
good alternative right now. You know, he's an incumbent. Frankly, Trump
is incumbent too, and that's part of the problem. I think anyone running
against him has um. So, I don't know, it's it's a message.
Do you want to you mentioning Biden and how he ran? I want.
I was thinking about some campaign stuff and I always like to just share
it while I'm thinking it. So um. When Biden ran in twenty twenty,
he presented himself as if he were a very moderate and reasonable candidate,
someone who would stop the drama and who would not have the far left policies
of the other people that were running, you know, like the Bernie Sanders,
Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris times. And once he won, he's like
just as crazy, like there's not really a disunity. Would be different,
would be different? Yeah, Okay. Donald Trump has really frustrated me with
how he attacks Ron de Santis for doing conservative things, and you know what
I mean, Like he'll be like, um, he went after Disney.
It's like, well, I'm actually, I'm sure you agree with Donald Trump
on that, but I actually like that intersecting opinions. Yes, but it
occurred to me he's running a Democrat style campaign. Democrats always pretend to be
more moderate than they actually end up governing. Republicans pretend to be more conservative
than they claim to be during the primary, but then they actually governed like
they or they governed that way or even worse once they're in office. They're
like I said, I was pro life, but I'm not really going to
do anything on it. But I think I could be wrong, but Trump
is running a Democrat style campaign where he's attacking all these other people, mostly
Runda Santis, as being too far to the right, when if he were
to be reelected, he would totally run a Runda Santis style operation nationally.
Like, I think he learned a lot from his first term, and it's
it's just weird to me to see that in action. Now. It's possible
that, you know, he'll start, if he were to win, start
nominating different types of justice judges or justices, But I don't think so does
that make sense what I'm saying there? Yeah, you see, I see
it, maybe just slightly differently. I think Donald Trump is running his general
presidential campaign right now, which he can because he's so far up, so
he can take the most moderate position. Well, DeSantis still has to try
to win the primary, so he's got to appeal to people who are conservative,
and he does it. He tries to do it both in his record.
And here's the thing, I don't know that it's going to matter what
Desanta says or what he does or who he hires. He's running against the
incumbent who is massively famous and a lot of people have a lot of loyalty
too, and it doesn't matter what a good job he did. It doesn't
matter what the memes are aren't. I just I don't know how he wins
that race right now. I mean, it could change. I think it's
o no. I told some of my friends who are super super Ronda Scantis
fans that like a year ago that I didn't really see how he could do
it without dividing the Republican Party. And they made so much fun of me
for like six months, and I almost texted one of them recently to be
like, let's revisit what I thought would happen here. I know it's like
going basically how I thought it would happen. But I do want to say
one thing about Ronda Santis. I watched this interview the other night. He
was on special report for like the Bulk of the Hour in this long,
wide ranging interview with Brett bare and first off, I just want to say
I tweeted out that I thought he was answering the questions very well and substantively.
And one of those like super annoying Ronda Santis spots that are on Twitter.
They get mad at you if you say anything critical about Ronda Santists,
but they also get mad at you if you say something positive. Because I
was like, I thought he was doing a great job, and it goes
like this person he must be doing a horrible job because this person says he's
doing a good job and we know that she doesn't argue in good faith or
whatever. I was like, oh my gosh, when you're angry when people
are saying nice things about your candidate, it is time to step away from
Twitter. But all of the questions I thought he answered so well, like
they were complicated and like different topics except for one category, So like he'd
be asked about foreign policy, or why he was doing some of his pushback
against corporate attacks on the people of Florida, you know, all this kind
of stuff. And he was great, He knew his stuff. There was
not anything he could be caught on. His foreign policy answers were just truly
great. But when he talked about Trump, it enraged me, Like,
not just because I think he was saying some false things about it, but
I was like, I just it annoyed me to hear him going after him,
and I'm like, well, this is just this is I think I
think a lot of voters feel that way, obviously, given how much he
struggled in the polls. But it was just weird to observe how good he
was on policy stuff and then like how he didn't seem to think through how
awful it comes off when he attacks Trump. And I know it's unfair because
Trump has done literally almost nothing, sorry not literally, He's done very little
other than attack Ronda Santis for the last nine months. But that's just the
way it is. Unfortunately for him. It is amazing to deal with both
sides of that issue. And obviously, I'm would be far more predisposed to
vote for Ronda Santis and Donald Trump, but anything you say, they have
to like put it into that framing and that puzzle somehow. So the other
day I'd back to back tweets to upset people, and the first one was
about how I would, you know, my shtick about how I'd vote for
a robot if they did what I wanted, Like, charisma doesn't matter to
me. It's very hard for me to understand why it matters to anyone else.
So right away everyone took that as a pro de Santis there, because
he's obviously the robot in this equation. But then I also tweeted something about
this, I don't want to get into it, but he was you know
who I think is an anti Semite who worked for Ron De Santis, and
just pointed that out, and everyone like immediately is like, how can you
you know you're just falling into the trap of helping Trump in this and that
It's like people can't have a position on anything without it somehow either being about
De Santas or Trump or Trump and everyone else. It's a really stupid way
to look at the world. And I just don't understand it. But you
can't really fight it online, and you shouldn't really try, because it's just
these people. In fact, probably most Republican type people like both Trump and
Desantists, or the idea that you're not allowed to like both of them or
have like thoughtful criticism of both of them. It's just insane. Okay.
I do want to say another thing about I ask you one quick questions about
Sis. Do you think there's any chance on earth that Trump would name him
as a VP? Yes? I do. It's funny. I think Trump
is so he can say whatever he wants and just back out of He doesn't
care. It's about winning. For him. It's a game to win,
and I think he would actually I don't know if the Santis would take it,
but I think he would. He would definitely dominate it. So this
is what I think is funny. People always say about Trump that he's like
too petty and personal, like it takes things personally or whatever. I'm like,
Oh, that is the example I would use. He absolutely would be
willing to name ron De Santis as his VP, but I don't think Ronda
Santist could take it because a lot of politicians do take things personally, and
I think you've got to bend the knee, right you got to bend the
knee to Trump to get that. Well, I mean, their whole job
as politicians is to kind of know how to be diplomatic about stuff like this.
But okay, on the Ronda Santis being a robot front, I also
I think maybe I actually prefer semi autistic folks, you know, like I
Actually it's how I like to be communicated with. It's how I communicate.
You know. We always joke at the Federalists that you're not allowed to have
you're not allowed to take offense. You know, a lot of us work
remotely means we're emailing things and you're not just you're not allowed to be like
upset that the tone was off or anything that I especially can't get upset because
I especially am the target of your jibe and everyone else is for being a
cock. Doesn't want to remind everybody that you shared the pictures of your dog
when you were getting mocked by your colleagues. I love that anyway, your
husband literally asked me about my dog who was sick. So okay, I
thought that Rohn de Santis was like a million times better in this Brett Bear
interview than he had been in like say, a year ago. He is
robotic, but he's like the terminator and how he improves, like he just
keeps on becoming more and more human. And I thought that he was more
nuanced, that he was able. There are things he has to learn,
like how to communicate, how to communicate complex policy things in a way that
average voters connect with. He's improving on that. He answered the foreign policy
questions in a way that I think matches with most Republican voters but definitely not
the DC crowd. And he did it in a really careful way to avoid
traps. And think, you know, I just he's getting better, That's
all I'm saying. Yeah, I think what is somewhat a maybe counterintuitive or
maybe contrarian position on what he should be doing, and that is I think
actually he should lean in on attacking Trump, but not in the way he
has been doing it, but just in a way that he should be talking
about policies and failures of effectiveness of Trump, but not even attacking Trump personally,
but just saying I'm going to do these things better. I just he
has to distinguish himself in some sense policy wise. It's his only chance.
No nobody listens to me or asks me for my advice on these things.
But what I would have done consistently and without fail from the beginning is put
myself next to Trump, just like Rondis Santis did in twenty eighteen, which
which really worked for him, and never criticize, but just emphasize that you
could do it better, you know, almost like in a you say,
I love this man. I love what he's done, I love the movement,
I love how he brought us in a new direction as in the Republican
Party. And I hate what the deep state is doing to him, and
I hate what the permanent DC bureaucracy is doing to him. And I will
do everything in my power to make that go away. But because of all
that, like I think I can actually take that legacy and make it stronger
so that you're not in Florida, etc. Yeah. Yeah, and you
it's a very it's a very difficult argument to make. I mean, it's
kind of like gets down to whether you should be running at all in the
first place. But I think he could have done it, but he didn't.
He did not ask my opinion or care what it is. Again,
I just want to quickly say it is really like early. I know it's
it's it's a weird primary and it's gonna be very hard to overcome for him.
But I think, you know, to see them in a couple of
debates. I don't even know if Donald Trump's going to debate him, but
if you do see them in some debates, you know, you know,
it might help him. I just don't think normal people are thinking about the
presidential election yet. Anyway. Do you want to get off politics and talk
about culture? Yeah? I do, because last week you said something about
have I seen the Family episode of The Bear And I did, and it
was one of the worst things I've ever seen. Thank you me. I
agree. I stopped watching the show. Okay, you should not have,
though, because the very next episode is one of the best things I've ever
seen on television. Okay. I am obsessed with the Ritchie character, the
Cousin character. Yeah, yeah, I think I don't know who that actor
is. I've never seen him before. I know this person in real life.
He is in the Wars. Yeah, he is in the Star Wars
series and or Okay, and I'm the same character. I love the actor's
portrayal of the character. I love the character and and the very next episode
was one of the best paced, best composed episodes of television I've seen.
But back to that seven Fishes disaster, which I was actually looking on Twitter
to see what people said about it and was appalled to see people praising it
because it was like, to me, it was like a good episode if
you're stupid, if you don't understand how to be subtle. I actually know
people who have families like this, and it was so over the top as
to be absurd, and everyone was chewing up the scenery so much like give
me my emmy. Well, listen. I did not like it because it
hit a little close to home, and I'm not saying it was anything like
that, but there's a lot of tensions sometimes during family time. There used
to be so but I thought the acting, yeah, was over the top.
I didn't enjoy, Like, listen, let me put it this way.
A lot of times people will say you want to go see this movie
and I'm like, what's the movie about it? And they're like, well,
you know, kids are being trapped and someone I'm like, I'm out,
no, like I don't want to see anything, and there's like a
sad movie. Someone dies, like Uh, you know, I forgot what
movie someone wanted me to see, and I'm like, no, I have
no interest in that. I went to see Mission Impossible ten or whatever.
That's what I want. Empty calories, lock going on story is absolutely they're
literally chasing for a key in the twenty first century. It is incredibly dumb,
and you're just like, I love it. One scene after the next
is just a lot of fun. I supposed to learn that movie didn't do
very well in the box office because I thought it was pretty yeah, underperformed.
I loved Mission Impossible. I think I said this to you earlier that
I turned to Mark at one point, who I'm now calling Mark and not
Mark Hemingway because with Raiders complaint. But I turned to him and I was
like, this is unrealistic, and he's like, oh, did you come
to Mission Impossible for a super realistic depiction of you know? But every time
I'm on a train now I'm right back at the end of the movie and
the train scene, and I just loved how stupid and great it was.
Um. I did watch another movie, though, okay, which was the
first time I've seen it. Sixth cents the first time you've seen it,
Huh. I knew joined as much because you knew the twist, right.
Yeah, but I loved it, and in a way it didn't ruin it
for me at all to watch it that way. I also think that Haley
Joel Osmond guy is really good, good good actor, was a good job
thirty years ago, Bruce Willis and everything. I really thought it was well
done. My favorite joke about that movie comes from Nate Bargatsy, who says
that they literally what, they literally killed the guy in the first scene.
I'm sorry spoiler if you haven't seen it. It's too bad they kill the
guy in the first scene. But yeah, we believe that his wife didn't
talk to him and was mad at him, instead of believing that he was
killed, and we fall for it every time. It's more believable that his
wife simply didn't have a single word with him, yea, rather than the
guy who saw it get shot in the gut first scene, first scene.
Yeah, I thought that was a good movie. It's a shame that what's
that director's name never could repeat kind of the magic of that movie. It's
you know, m Night Shamalan. Shamalan. Yeah, I saw a few
movies have a list somewhere great I watched I got so I'm in a rut.
There's nothing for me. I'm watching Justified. It's terrible, the new
series. So I've been looking for something else. I can't find anything,
So I decided to go and watch some older movies. First one I watched
was The Getaway with Steve McQueen, which i've seen seen before. The Getaway
with Steve, Steve McQueen and Ally mcgron. Great movie. People should watch
it. And then I got on a Kubrick kick, Stanley Kubrick kick,
So I went back and watched his old movies. The first one's called The
Killing. It's a heist movie. Excellent. You know, you got to
get over the fifties, you know, dialogue kind of like, you know,
way they filmed things. But then I don't know if you've ever seen
this movie. I think you would really enjoy it if you did. It's
one of the I think great anti war movies ever made. It's called Paths
of Glory Douglass. It's a it's sort of reminds me a little bit of
my favorite movie, Breaker Morant. It's a trial movie set in World War
One French soldier. Soldiers are accused of cowardice, and it is fantastic.
It's an early Kubrick movie. You know, you can already tell that.
You know he was. He was a great filmmaker. So those are the
three movies I watched, and that's it for me. Okay, anything else.
We didn't even mention any kind of music. I don't know what I'm
going to use too as the outro. Have you been listening to anything interesting
lately? I'll just say on that note that I have found them. I've
not liked the Bear season two as much as I liked The Bear season one,
but I have found them music to be interesting, both because because it
seems very gen X for a for a show that's really about younger people,
but also because they keep playing that one Rim song over and over throughout the
season. I forget the name of that. My husband's super into Rim.
You know. I had the same exact thought, because I was like,
I feel like gen X people wrote this show because or maybe scorted or whatever,
because they played like the Replacements and they have other very gen XE type
music. So okay, you gave me a good idea. I'm gonna I
got the Outra music. Yeah, all right, Okay, I wonder what's
going to happen next week, what we can be talking about. Maybe we
have more indictment. Yeah, I hopefully have a republic to talk about that.
Okay, until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fact