Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
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smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for
your support. So now it can finally be told. The
New York Times with the story headlined how Biden's inner
circle protected a faltering president? How can they close me
up on what ground? I'm shocked, shocked to find that
gambering is going on in here. You're winning, So thank
you very much. Yes, the people closest to President Biden,
we're well aware that he had changed. He talked more
slowly than he had just a few years before, needed
to hoist himself out of his seat in the presidential limousine,
and walked with a halting gait. So I'm gonna stop
right here for a moment and just point out how
the things that The New York Times is identifying in
this piece by Katie Rogers, Adam and TuS, Maggie Haberman,
and Carl Hulsey. These are all physical things. These are
physical things. On mental He's totally fine mentally. He talked
more slowly, needed to hoist himself out of the seat
in the presidential limo, and walked with a halting gait,
which they explained was because when he took the fall
on one of those I mean, not crimes, no, no,
not like that.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: And he took the fall when he fell down at
some point. I think it was off of the bicycle. Remember,
I mean, he had several falls, so I don't remember
which one, but I think it was the bike that
he had injured his foot apparently in that fall. And
I know I thought the same thing, like, uh, thank goodness,
it wasn't a hit, because that's it'll come back from that.
But it was a foot. And then he refused to
wear the boot. He didn't want to wear a cast
or something like that while the foot healed because he
didn't want it to look like he was old, so like, yeah,
that would that would be the giveaway, right anyway, And
so the foot didn't heal correctly, and that's why he
was walking weirdly and yeah, okay, so whatever. So these
are all physical ailments, right, His age was showing through
in his lack of mobility. That's the thing, Like, I
don't look, I don't care. Joe Biden could have been
in a wheelchair. If he was mentally sharp, I would
not have any concerns about his ability to do the job.
I would not. But his brain being in a wheelchair,
that is a different story. Mister Biden acknowledged the concerns,
but the warnings only ignited his defiant competitive streak. Defiant
competitive streak, or as I have called it, being a jerk.
He has been a jerk for his entire career and
you don't just lose that. And when you turn you
know eighty, If anything, it becomes more pronounced. In April
of twenty twenty three, get this, without convening his family
or having long deliberations with AIDS, he announced he was
running again. So he apparently made this call, made this
decision without telling his family. Does that sound normal? When
have you ever heard any politician ever say that they
just made the decision on their own. No, they always
say that they consult with their family and any non
jerk running for an office. Would of course do that
because your family goes along for this ride. And I
have said this for years and a lot of people
may not even think about this, but it is always
harder on the family members, always because they have to
adhere to all of these you know, rules and strict
customs and stuff, and you you know, can't do this,
can't say that, can't go out there. You got security
details around you, your life changes, You get all of
all the downside and very little upside, very little upside.
Like think about like the kids that are growing up.
I mean, yes, you're in the White House and oh
that's cool, and you get weighted on and you have
all I'm not saying it's without privilege. I'm not saying that,
but there is so much that restraint ricks your life
for the rest of your life. That's why you have
to unless you're a jerk, you have to talk to
your family about this stuff. So apparently Joe did not, because,
like I said, he's been a jerk for a very
long time. So Biden decides I'm running again at eighty two.
He makes an extraordinary admission in an interview with USA
Today back on January fifth. Okay, so he's still president
at the time. Does an interview with USA Today and
he says he's not sure if he would have made
it through a second term. He said, quote, which means,
who knows what I'm going to be when I'm edey
six years old? And that's a perfectly natural thing to think, right,
You're eighty two, you slowed down a bit, you got injured,
and you know you're you're in the last year of
your life. You don't know how much longer you've got.
Nobody knows, right, So at that age, you know, like,
this is it. I'm on limited time here and the
last years I'm not going to be able to keep
doing this stuff. And so who knows what I'm going
to be like at eighty six? Yeah, I mean I
may not serve the whole term. So he was aware
of this. The president's acknowledgment. I love this line in
the New York Times. The president's acknowledgment has put a
new spotlight on his family and inner circle, all of
whom dismissed concerns from voters and Biden's own party that
he was too old for the job. First, the New
York Times saying this line about the resident's comments putting
a spotlight on his family, This is like our hands
are clean, as if you're not the ones operating the
dead gubbed spotlight. You guys are controlling the spotlight. You
literally are moving the spotlight around to highlight things and
show things and oh hey look at this, Look at
that person, here's an issue, here's a guy. Oh my gosh,
show that's a Nazi salute by Elon, Like you're the
ones controlling the spotlight. Whoever put the new spotlight on
the family members? Whatever those comments, If that's what it
took you think that's the comment, that comment on January fifth,
that puts a spotlight on the family members. Why you
didn't know they were on stage or something all this time?
You didn't realize that they were like close to Joe.
It's just ludicrous. This is them trying to absolve themselves
of any kind of responsibility for covering up the biggest
scandal in presidential history. That's what this is. I have
been saying this for years. It is the biggest scandal,
the fact that we have a president that should have
been removed with by the twenty fifth Amendment, by his
own cabinet members, his family, people that knew his condition,
and they didn't stop it. They just let him continue.
Why because they were running the government, they were pulling
the levers of power, and they enjoyed it, and so
they kept him there as this figurehead, as this puppet.
I am left with no other logical conclusion. Did he
have good days? Was he coherent in some sentences and
words throughout the course of the day. I'm sure he was.
I've seen enough of his interactions and media availabilities and
stuff over the last four years to know that sometimes
he had a good day. Some days he was okay,
but he was not every day. And the New York
Times says this in this article, that he had good
days and bad days, and the state knew it, and
the family knew it, and the legislators knew it. Chuck
Schumer knew it. Senate Democrats knew it. Senate Democrats were
getting ready to go public with all of this. And
it's only after Joe Biden is out that the New
York Times can finally tell us the story. Oh, yeah,
you know what, the Senate was actually gonna coop Joe Biden.
They were gonna throw a coup against him. They were
going to like demand neurological reports and stuff. They were gonna,
oh yeah, they were gonna call for him to step down.
They were, they were getting ready to do it, and
Schumer couldn't hold them back anymore. And so Schumer had
to go out and visit Joe Biden on the beach
at Rehobeth and have a heart to heart. And why
Chuck Schumer? Because Obama said, you need to go do
this because he won't listen to me. And why won't
Joe Biden listen to Barack Obama? Because Barack Obama didn't
endorse Joe Biden in twenty sixteen. He threw his he
threw his weight behind Hillary Clinton. Ew but he did.
He threw his Yeah, he was like, it's Hillary's time.
So Barack obop and that ticked off Joe. But it's
funny because Joe Biden gave an interview where she said
that Joe Biden forgives everybody and so she is the
keeper of the family grudges, which is quite the admission.
That is a thing to say, is it not? Even
if you are the keeper of the grudges, why do
you say that? Why would you say that? Ugh, this
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Email is Pete at thepetecleanershow dot com. John says, Pete,
did you just say that the president's kid being the
president's kid has very little upside? You mean like being
able to sell a childlike painting for hundreds of thousands
of dollars, being paid eighty grand month to sit on
an energy board. That's true, okay, outside of engaging in
criminal activity as part of a family crime syndicate. Outside
of that, no, I was mainly thinking of like being
a young child right going through your teen years, like
you're under this microscope, you know, and look, there is
some element that I can relate to about this is
that you know this, Okay, this may surprise you, but
there are people that say things about me that are
not very nice.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: I don't know why either. They just they say some
pretty mean stuff about me. And here's the thing, I
don't care. It doesn't matter to me. He said. Whatever
you want to say, good whatever. I don't care there
is anything you can say that will hurt me, because
whatever worst thing you can think of to say about me,
I have probably said it about myself before, worse things
than you can think of, because I know myself better
than you know me, and so like, it doesn't really
matter to me. People say this, but my family members,
like they want to defend me, just like you would
want to. And I would want to defend my family
members when somebody says something about them, right, so it's
much harder. And then but then you lay her on
this thing where you know, I mean, look what happened
with Governor Cooper's wife, right, remember Roy Cooper, my good
friend Ray, he was his wife. Rather was driving through Raleigh,
I guess, on her way back to the Governor's mansion,
and she saw some people out there protesting the mask
mandates and the COVID lockdowns and stuff. And I mean
they didn't know she was They didn't know she was,
who she was or what she was doing. But yeah,
but she was. She flipped off a kid, remember, gave
the middle finger to some like twelve year old kid
holding a sign. Okay, that may not be the greatest
example of what I was talking about. But it is
always harder on the family and not always, but like
many times, it's very difficult to be a family member
of an elected official, particularly if you know there's a
controversial issue or the politician rises to a level of
you know, prominence where people now know who they are
there are you know, there's there are security measures that
like I have that I've taken and you have to
take when you become public, you're in the public eye.
You know, there are things that you do when you're
out in public, Like whenever I go out in public,
I am quote on, have to be I cannot do
anything in public. If I'm out at a grocery store, restaurant,
or whatever, I always assume that somebody is going to
be videotaping me, recording me, or trying to pick a fight.
You have to think that way because if you don't
think that way and it happens, bad things will occur
after that. So if you are mentally prepared when you
go out, so you're always quote on, you're on the clock, basically,
then you are less likely not that it will never happen,
but you're less likely to get caught unawares, and there
are people that actually try to do this in order
to destroy you. Not I mean, I'm small beans, right,
nobody's doing like they're not going to that kind of effort,
although some have, right, some people have tried to cancel.
They've tried to well they have. They've threatened me, you know,
identified my house, docksed me, threatened to hurt me, my family,
that sort of stuff. So that is part of that.
That's part of what comes with all of this. And
people who are in politics, they they go into it
and the family needs to be on board because it's
very difficult. So I get that. I don't know how
I got onto this topic. I was talking about Joe
Biden being mentally incapacitated. All right, I hope you had
a happy holiday season. But tell me if something like
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get it around. Maybe y'all are in the living room,
you're laughing, swapping stories, reminiscing, and then somebody says, hey, Dad,
remember those old VHS tapes? Did you ever get them transferred?
And then the room gets all quiet. All eyes are
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the Pete Calendar show is the email Kevin says, I
listened to your show all the time. I really do
enjoy it. Also, I love discussions and a good debate.
But I don't know how you are able to keep
your mouth going for hours every day. I consider myself
a talker, but man again, I'm not sure how you
do it day in and day out. Thanks again for
all you do Pete Sign Kevin So. Number one exercises.
I exercise the mouth a lot. Two hours of prep
for one hour on air. That's my general rule. Some
days are you know, it's easier than others. Some days
I have to do way more prep. But and most
of the time, a lot of the prep I never
get to I never actually turn into content because I
just run out of time because I'm running my mouth
too much. The other thing is something that program director
told me a long time ago. I believe it was
Randall Bloomquist, Hurricane Randall, who said, everybody has a show
in them. Everybody can do one show, and most people
can do a week. You got enough material, you have
enough time to plan. Most people can do five Can
you do a month? Can you do a year? Can
you do five years? Can you do ten years? And
the thing is, you don't know. Nobody knows until they
do ten years that they can do ten years. Nobody knows.
Some people burn out and they're done, they don't have
anything else to say, or whatever like that. It happens.
So but you you just start running and at some
point you're like, that'll do, pig, that'll do all right.
Back to the new York Times piece here how Biden's
inner circle protected a faltering president. They would arrange meetings
to make sure Biden was in a better mood, right,
good days, bad days. These people quote cooperated to manage
his decline. This is according to more than two dozen AIDS, allies,
lawmakers and donors that The New York Times talked to.
Twenty four people plus right say that yeah, they cooperated
to manage the decline. They would delay sharing information with Biden.
They would surround him with people like remember when he
was walking to the helicopter, and they claimed it was,
you know, because he was constantly working, when in fact,
it was to shield him from video being captured of
him walking weirdly to the chopper. They had Biden used
a teleprompter even when he would go to these really
small fundraisers in private homes. They would set up a
teleprompter so he could read. Anybody that wanted to ask
him questions would have to provide the questions ahead of time,
so there were no impromptu Q and A. He couldn't
do it. That is not a physical infirmity, right. And
this concerned people that would go to these donor events.
Six people, key people protected the president Jill Biden's you
call her doctor Jill, Doctor Jill Biden. Goy named Mike Donollan,
Steve Richetti, lawyer Guy uh and Annie Thomasini deputy chief
of staff, and Anthony Bernal, who is Jill Biden's senior aide.
So Jill Biden's senior aide was part of the the cabal. Basically, right,
this guard that protected Joe, which tells you what Doctor
Jill is the one with the power. Right. The New
York Times goes on to say, all of them are
deeply devoted to mister Biden, all our adept and navigating
his quick temper. As I mentioned earlier, he's a jerk.
All enjoy proximity to the most powerful office in American politics. Gosh,
if only we could figure out a motive for why
they would do such a thing. Could it be that
they enjoy proximity to the most powerful office? Is it
the proximity to the most powerful office? Or is it
actually using the most powerful office that would keep them
doing this? Then there was Biden himself, whose pursuit of
the White House had been the family's project for nearly
forty years. Right, he finally gets it and he says
I'm gonna be a transition to president, right, and everybody's like, oh,
he's goingly gonna be around for one term. Okay, cool.
But then his pride and a string of legislative accomplishments
and a strong showing in the twenty twenty two mid
terms by Democrats makes him decide in April of twenty three,
I'm gonna run again. History will remember him as the
man who beat Trump and then paved the way for
Trump's return. In May of twenty twenty three, a month
after he announced he was running for reelection, Biden was
in the Fifth Avenue duplex of Hamilton James, the billionaire
former President Blackstone, who is not an oligarch. Okay, just
because he's a billionaire and just because he's got the
ear of the president, inviting him over to his house
and having a conversation with him about doing stuff whatever,
that doesn't make him an oligarch. Only oligarchs are oligarchs
when they are friends with Republicans, just in case you
were wondering what that makes somebody in oligarch. Anyway, he
makes his case for another term. But to these nervous
donors at this event, and the donors walk out and
they were like, we have the opposite effect now, like
we left with more worries about his age. Again, not
his age, it's his mental abilities. They then spend a
page going over all of the physical stumbles literally and
the falls that he had and the physical stuff blah
blah blah, and then at the end they start talking
about the grueling bad days. He had pursued a final
term at part because he felt his family was in
shape to withstand an exhausting campaign, but by the time
the race was underway, Hunter Biden's legal problems were mounting.
Federal prosecutors were investigating Joe for the classified documents handling. Right,
Robert Hurr came out and said, oh, you know, sympathetic
old man with a failing memory. He says, ah, dare
you And he goes out and does the news conference,
and everybody's like, oh, her was right. Biden was struggling
at the time to manage support for the stalemate in Ukraine,
growing feurer in the party over the Israel Gaza war,
and so they're chalking this up as the demands of
foreign policy took a toll on his energy levels as
he campaigned Oh, the poor guy, right, he's got all
of these things. It's just you know, Israel and Ukraine,
and that's me Johnson in this war. That's the reason. Like, no,
he can't do the job anymore. He doesn't have the
mental bandwidth to do the job. He was taking naps.
This story says they had to schedule him naps during
his debate prep because he had taken foreign trips weeks before,
weeks before, so weeks before the debate, he goes overseas,
he comes back, which is that's where maybe he was
like wandering around. Oh it's a parachute, you know, and like, oh,
look at that, and why are these foreign leaders having
to like guide Joe Biden to the buffet table. And
weeks later he's taking naps because he's just so wiped
out from all of his foreign travel. That's not that's
not good. But now we can be told now when
it doesn't matter any longer. The first lady, who was
married into the family in nineteen seventy seven, believes he
would have been fine with the second term. She says, quote,
I mean today, I think he has a full schedule.
You know, he started early with interviews and briefings and
it just keeps going. And Biden's ally say he remained
sharp in private situations. See, so it's like it's all physical,
it's not mental. So this is them giving a little
bit of ground. All right, we'll go okay, yeah, I mean,
I mean, he's eighty two. It's a mentally fine, mentally
sharp as attack. Except house speaker Mike Johnson had a
bit of a different experience. He'll tell you what that
was up next. All right, if you're listening to this show,
you know I try to keep up with all sorts
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Why well, because it's how you detect media bias, which
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an app and it's a website and it combines news
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Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it
also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape
more transparent. All right, So here's Mike Johnson talking with
Barry Weiss, founder of the Free Press.
Speaker 2: And I say this without any personal animus at all.
I mean, you know, in some ways actually kind of
feel sorry for Joe Biden. I mean, he's in the
twilight years of his life. He is not obviously has
not been in charge for some time. And I know
this by personal observation, and now the whole world knows it.
And it's been very, very concerning to me over the
last you know, year and a half since I've had
this story. When you say personal observation would well, this
is it's public now because the Wall Street Journal got
it and put it on the front page. But January
a year ago, almost exactly a year ago, I had
been asked. I became Speaker in October twenty twenty three,
and there were all sorts of big national security concerns
and everything going on, and I started requesting a meeting
with the president because you know, I'm kind of old school.
I'm a constitutional law guy. Speaker of the House should
be able to talk to the president, especially in times
of great national interest in calamity. But they wouldn't let
me meet with him, and his staff kept getting any excuses.
This went on for like eight or nine weeks. I'm sorry,
miss Speaker, he doesn't have time. What are you talking about.
I'm second line of the presidency.
Speaker 1: He has time.
Speaker 2: I need to talk to him. We had I can't
say the class fat parts, but we had some big,
big national concerns at the time that I was losing sleepover. Finally,
I just went to the whole press cort and I said,
the President is not being allowed to meet with a speaker.
There's a problem. So they started putting pressure on him.
Long story short, they finally relented. They invited me to
the White House. I show up, and I realized it's
actually an ambush because it's not just me and the president.
It's also Kamala, Harris, Chuck Schumer, Hakem you know, the whole,
the CIA director, everybody. And then so I walked in
the Oval and ah, I know what this is. This
is a they're going to hot box the speaker on
Ukraine funding. That's what it was. This is probably third
week of January. We sit down, we're in the midst
of it, and the cool conversation, and I'm going, we
don't need to have this conversation. The President reaches over
just like this, We're sitting in the right next to
the fireplace in the Oval, and he grabs my arm
and he says, the Speaker and I just need a
couple of minutes together. Will y'all just leave us alone?
And I looked up on the faces of some of
the staff standing around the wall and they're like, no,
he did it.
Speaker 1: So he called it.
Speaker 2: He's the commander in chiefs. Everybody leaves and he and
I are standing awkwardly in the middle of the Oval office,
right over the rug by that coffee table, and I said,
miss President, thanks for the moments. You know, this is
very important. I got some big national security things I
need to talk to you about that I've heard and
I think you know, and what do we do? But first,
real quickly, miss President, can I ask you a question
I cannot answer this from my constituents in Louisiana. Sir,
why did you pause LNG exports to Europe? Like I
don't understand. You know, liquefied natural gas is in great
demand by our allies. Why would you do that because
you understand we just talked about Ukraine. You understand your
fuel in Vladimir Putin's war machine because they got to
get their gas from him, you know. And he looks
at me, stunned with this, and he said I didn't
I didn't do that. And I said, Miss President, you, yes,
you did. It was an executive order like you know,
three weeks ago, and he goes, no, I didn't do that,
and he's arguing with me. I said, Miss President, respectfully,
can I could I go out here and ask your
secretary to print it out. We'll read it together. You
definitely did that, and he goes, oh, you talk about
natural gas? Yes, sir? He said, oh no, I did
you misunderstand?
Speaker 1: He said.
Speaker 2: What I did is I signed this thing to We're
gonna conduct a study on the effects of energy. I said, no,
you're not, sir, You paused it. I know I have
the terminal, the export terminals in my state. I talked
to those people this morning. This is doing massive damage
to our economy, national security. It occurred to me very
he was not lying to me. He genuinely did not
know what he had signed. And I walked out of
that meeting with fear and loathing because I thought we're
in serious trouble. Who was running the country, like, I
don't know who put the paper in front of him,
But he didn't know.
Speaker 1: So did he not know because he had forgotten? Right,
faulty memory, old man with the failing memory, is that
it he just didn't remember that he signed it. But
if that's the case, then why did he say the
part about oh no, that was a study. Well, who
told him it was a study? How did he come
to that? Is that maybe he's misremembering it, confusing it
with some other thing that he signed that was a study,
or maybe somebody put something in front of him and
said this is to study it, and in fact it wasn't.
It was to pause the exports. And who was that
person and why did they do that? And the people
that were in that Room, Harris Kamala, Harris Chuck Schumer,
Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, and the CIA director.
So who do you think was running the country? I
think it might be those folks that Johnson just named. Now,
why did it take until, oh what last week for
Johnson to tell this story publicly? That I don't know?
I have never heard the story. And maybe he has
told the story before and I didn't know it, and
maybe he leaked it somewhere and it was reported someplace else.
But that is terrifying because now it makes me wondering
question every single executive order that this president or the
former president signed, did he actually know what he was signed?
All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you
so much for listening. I could not do the show
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