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Kash Rules Everything Around Me · Politix

0:00
SPEAKER_00: And then the New York Times got a letter that his own mother had sent to him,
0:04
SPEAKER_00: basically saying that he was a person of low integrity and that she- Who abuses women.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: Who abuses women and that she's like praying for him to get the help he needs to become a better man.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
0:13
SPEAKER_01: any mother of a scumbag son is like,
0:16
SPEAKER_01: you know,
0:16
SPEAKER_01: a little cross pressured in this regard,
0:19
SPEAKER_01: but that's a tough look.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: I mean, do you think she would pardon Pete Hegseth if she were president?
0:23
SPEAKER_00: No.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: Hey everyone, you're listening to a free preview of the Politics Podcast.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: This week,
0:33
SPEAKER_00: Matt and I will discuss Donald Trump's weekend announcement that he intends to
0:38
SPEAKER_00: install a revenge-seeking loyalist to run the FBI,
0:42
SPEAKER_00: and the probably related decision Joe Biden made the next day to pardon his son
0:47
SPEAKER_00: Hunter in a blanket way that should insulate him from abuses of power in Trump's
0:54
SPEAKER_00: second term.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoy the conversation,
0:57
SPEAKER_00: and if you want to hear the whole thing,
0:58
SPEAKER_00: you can upgrade your subscription to paid at politics.fm.
1:01
SPEAKER_00: Hey, everyone.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the 50th episode of the Politics Podcast.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm Brian Boitler.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: I'm Matthew Iglesias.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh, Matt, how's your Thanksgiving?
1:14
SPEAKER_00: We've been, we've been away.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: Oh, it was delightful.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: Um,
1:17
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:18
SPEAKER_01: I,
1:18
SPEAKER_01: uh,
1:18
SPEAKER_01: saw my,
1:19
SPEAKER_01: uh,
1:19
SPEAKER_01: my family and,
1:20
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:21
SPEAKER_01: I,
1:21
SPEAKER_01: I,
1:21
SPEAKER_01: I used all my,
1:22
SPEAKER_01: uh,
1:22
SPEAKER_01: how to argue about politics,
1:24
SPEAKER_01: uh,
1:24
SPEAKER_01: with your,
1:25
SPEAKER_01: with your relatives take.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: No, there's an incredibly narrow range of, uh, political opinions, uh,
1:30
SPEAKER_01: prevalent in my family.
1:32
SPEAKER_01: We didn't really argue.
1:34
SPEAKER_01: I heard a lot from my uncle who lives in Massachusetts about why he doesn't like
1:37
SPEAKER_01: Elizabeth Warren,
1:38
SPEAKER_01: but thought Kamala Harris was good.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: There's a huge range of political opinions in my family,
1:43
SPEAKER_00: but the people on one extreme,
1:47
SPEAKER_00: at least,
1:48
SPEAKER_00: weren't at the Thanksgiving that I was at.
1:50
SPEAKER_01: No MAGA at Thanksgiving?
1:51
SPEAKER_00: No.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: Well, no.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: I believe that there's zero MAGA there, but the people who I did spend it with, there's been some
2:00
SPEAKER_00: political evolution in the last couple of years,
2:02
SPEAKER_00: but,
2:03
SPEAKER_00: but everyone really behaved themselves and it was delightful.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: For,
2:08
SPEAKER_00: for housekeeping,
2:08
SPEAKER_00: I just want to,
2:09
SPEAKER_00: I just want to note that for our 52nd episode,
2:13
SPEAKER_00: so not next week,
2:14
SPEAKER_00: but the week,
2:15
SPEAKER_00: week after December 18th,
2:16
SPEAKER_00: we're going to close out the year with a mailbag episode.
2:19
SPEAKER_00: So if you want me and,
2:21
SPEAKER_00: or Matt to answer any of your burning questions,
2:24
SPEAKER_00: you can send those to contact at politics.fm.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: Contact at politicswithanx.fm.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: So should I do the background on the Kash Patel, Coom, Hunter Biden pardon news?
2:39
SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah.
2:41
SPEAKER_01: I mean, who's Kash Patel?
2:42
SPEAKER_01: He's going to be the next FBI director.
2:44
SPEAKER_01: This is like a name that when he was announced,
2:47
SPEAKER_01: I feel like the real Trump news junkies were like,
2:51
SPEAKER_01: ooh,
2:51
SPEAKER_01: Kash Patel.
2:53
SPEAKER_01: But also, I think 98% of the public have never heard of this guy.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's do this in the manner of a professional news or journalism operation.
3:03
SPEAKER_01: Because I've actually found a lot of the coverage of this to be uninformed.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: Again, because super informed people absolutely do get this.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: If you were the kind of person who had a cork board with red string...
3:17
SPEAKER_00: During Trump's first term,
3:18
SPEAKER_00: trying to make the connections between the various corrupt power centers in the world.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: You know who Kash Patel is, and you know why this is a fucking problem.
3:27
SPEAKER_01: But he's the former chief of staff for the former acting director of national intelligence.
3:32
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
3:33
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: So who's Kash Patel?
3:34
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: So let's just say,
3:36
SPEAKER_00: on Saturday,
3:36
SPEAKER_00: Donald Trump,
3:38
SPEAKER_00: the disgraced former president,
3:39
SPEAKER_00: now president-elect,
3:41
SPEAKER_00: he announced that he would nominate this guy,
3:42
SPEAKER_00: Kash Patel,
3:44
SPEAKER_00: to the position of FBI director when he takes office.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: So it's important to note a couple things here.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: The main one is that that job isn't open,
3:52
SPEAKER_00: and it's not supposed to be open for another two and a half years.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: Has any president before ever just peremptorily fired the FBI director in the middle of his term?
4:03
SPEAKER_00: My understanding is yes.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: There are actually two that I know of.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: One is that Bill Clinton fired a genuinely corrupt FBI director at the beginning,
4:12
SPEAKER_00: I think the beginning,
4:13
SPEAKER_00: his first term.
4:14
SPEAKER_00: But it was such an extraordinary thing that he went basically to Congress,
4:19
SPEAKER_00: got bipartisan support to do it,
4:22
SPEAKER_00: understanding that if he just...
4:24
SPEAKER_00: fired the guy because he didn't like him and he wanted to install somebody more congenial.
4:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so there was a scandal and there was broad bipartisan support for removing the FBI director.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: Then there's another case.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
4:37
SPEAKER_00: in 2017,
4:38
SPEAKER_00: Trump fired then-FBI Director James Comey for the real reason that Comey was
4:44
SPEAKER_00: investigating the Trump campaign's ties to Russian intelligence who had interfered
4:50
SPEAKER_00: in the 2016 election.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: So it's a 10-year job,
4:56
SPEAKER_00: and if the president is going to fire the director in that 10-year term,
5:00
SPEAKER_00: there needs to be cause,
5:00
SPEAKER_00: which is what Bill Clinton found
5:03
SPEAKER_00: did the firing in an above board way, it was not a scandal.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: Trump needed a pretext to fire Comey,
5:09
SPEAKER_00: because if he said,
5:09
SPEAKER_00: I don't like that this guy's investigating me,
5:11
SPEAKER_00: that would have been impeachably corrupt,
5:14
SPEAKER_00: right?
5:15
SPEAKER_00: So he had his, the Deputy Attorney General at the time, Rod Rosenstein,
5:22
SPEAKER_00: Drop a memo justifying the firing by pointing to Comey's conduct during the 2016
5:28
SPEAKER_00: election where he- Yeah,
5:30
SPEAKER_01: so the official reason that Comey was fired is that James Comey broke FBI protocol
5:40
SPEAKER_01: by dumping on Hillary Clinton in advance of the election.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: So,
5:45
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
5:47
SPEAKER_00: it's so funny that like during the campaign,
5:49
SPEAKER_00: when Comey did that,
5:50
SPEAKER_00: Trump was basically like,
5:51
SPEAKER_00: congratulations,
5:52
SPEAKER_00: Jim Comey,
5:53
SPEAKER_00: you've got your reputation back.
5:54
SPEAKER_00: Well done.
5:55
SPEAKER_01: So I actually, because I think this is important, right?
5:57
SPEAKER_01: Because I mean,
5:58
SPEAKER_01: I think one thing we will be talking about over the next four to 12 years is,
6:03
SPEAKER_01: you know,
6:03
SPEAKER_01: norms of American governance.
6:06
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, an idea that Congress had probably 100 years ago
6:11
SPEAKER_01: was that you could set up executive agencies that were in some sense independent of the president.
6:20
SPEAKER_01: And so a lot of things that originate from the capital P progressive era have that quality.
6:26
SPEAKER_01: Many of them are these commissions that have, you know, three or five members.
6:31
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, so FTC, SEC all have this structure, multi-member commissions.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: The idea is that the president appoints members to them, but then they run independently.
6:42
SPEAKER_01: But there's also the Federal Reserve.
6:45
SPEAKER_01: There is...
6:47
SPEAKER_01: the FBI.
6:48
SPEAKER_01: And there was Elizabeth Warren,
6:50
SPEAKER_01: who I think in her politics is very much inspired by the capital P progressives of
6:55
SPEAKER_01: a century ago.
6:56
SPEAKER_01: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was set up to have an independent director who,
7:01
SPEAKER_01: like the FBI director and the Fed chair,
7:03
SPEAKER_01: would have a fixed term of office that did not overlap with presidential terms,
7:09
SPEAKER_01: right?
7:09
SPEAKER_01: So the idea is that these are supposed to be professionalized in a way that's
7:13
SPEAKER_01: distinct from,
7:14
SPEAKER_01: say,
7:14
SPEAKER_01: the agriculture secretaries.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: And it's like I have some real issues with Christopher Wray,
7:20
SPEAKER_00: the current FBI director,
7:22
SPEAKER_00: but he is a professional law enforcement.
7:25
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, and so, right.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, again.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: He's conducted himself in that way mostly.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: Trump did not, quote unquote, fire Tom Vilsack.
7:34
SPEAKER_01: right?
7:34
SPEAKER_01: Either time he became president.
7:37
SPEAKER_01: Tom Vilsack just ceased being agriculture secretary anymore and a Republican took in.
7:42
SPEAKER_01: The FBI does not work like that.
7:45
SPEAKER_01: And Biden attempted to,
7:48
SPEAKER_01: Trump had this fig leaf,
7:50
SPEAKER_01: right,
7:50
SPEAKER_01: of firing the FBI director for cause,
7:52
SPEAKER_01: but actually he just fired him because he wanted to install a loyalist.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: But he then faced significant pressure, I think, from Republicans at the time to replace Comey with a
8:04
SPEAKER_01: professional candidate, right?
8:06
SPEAKER_01: Like Chris Ray is somebody who, if Comey had just died of a heart attack,
8:12
SPEAKER_01: you know, you might have replaced him with Chris Ray.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: Mitt Romney might have appointed Chris Ray.
8:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he was a totally just logical candidate for the job.
8:21
SPEAKER_01: And then when Biden came in,
8:23
SPEAKER_01: he treated it like this was back to normal,
8:26
SPEAKER_01: that we had,
8:27
SPEAKER_01: among other things,
8:28
SPEAKER_01: repudiated Trump's effort to turn the FBI into an ordinary political office.
8:34
SPEAKER_01: And so he didn't fire Chris Ray.
8:36
SPEAKER_01: And like, why would he fire Chris Ray?
8:38
SPEAKER_01: I mean, by the standards of the whole past history...
8:42
SPEAKER_01: Chris Wray was some Republican law enforcement guy,
8:46
SPEAKER_01: but there was no reason to fire him,
8:48
SPEAKER_01: so he didn't get fired.
8:50
SPEAKER_01: His term would have expired sometime during Kamala Harris's presidency,
8:55
SPEAKER_01: were she to have won the election.
8:56
SPEAKER_01: And I was preparing takes about how she needed to find a Democrat to do the job.
9:01
SPEAKER_01: But then Trump comes in, and he doesn't even announce that he's firing Wray.
9:08
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's not president yet.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: He can't fire Ray.
9:10
SPEAKER_01: But I mean, he doesn't say that there's a plan, right?
9:14
SPEAKER_00: There's no Rosenstein memo for Ray, and they might come up with one.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: But Ray has kept his head down, unlike Comey, who did something that you could potentially use.
9:25
SPEAKER_01: And he's treated it just like the agriculture secretary,
9:28
SPEAKER_01: where Tom Vilsack hasn't resigned as agriculture secretary.
9:32
SPEAKER_01: Because Trump's not inaugurated until January 20th.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: We just understand that that's how cabinet offices work.
9:37
SPEAKER_01: And Trump just sort of assumed, right?
9:41
SPEAKER_01: He just put out the announcement about Patel,
9:44
SPEAKER_01: just kind of assuming that Ray should be gone,
9:46
SPEAKER_01: that the 10-year term is fake,
9:49
SPEAKER_01: that the cause requirement is fake.
9:52
SPEAKER_01: And then there's the question of who is the guy who he's putting in,
9:56
SPEAKER_01: who is not like some GOP-aligned law enforcement professional who might have come
10:04
SPEAKER_01: from anywhere.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: So that brings us to Patel, right?
10:09
SPEAKER_00: The plan is fire Chris Ray and install Patel or someone like Patel,
10:14
SPEAKER_00: given the reasonable chances that Patel won't
10:17
SPEAKER_00: his nomination won't go anywhere.
10:19
SPEAKER_00: Patel,
10:22
SPEAKER_00: like he wouldn't be qualified to run the FBI,
10:25
SPEAKER_00: even if he were like an ethical person with a law degree.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: He does have a law degree, but he's like comically not ethical.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: He's known even within Trump world as a pathological liar,
10:41
SPEAKER_00: somebody who has boasted openly about wanting to sick the feds on reporters.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: And he wrote a book in which he included an enemy's list of targets that a second
10:51
SPEAKER_00: Trump administration would...
10:53
SPEAKER_00: would go after.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: I believe his entree into Republican politics,
11:02
SPEAKER_00: or to MAGA at least,
11:04
SPEAKER_00: runs through his time working for Devin Nunes,
11:08
SPEAKER_00: who's a big Trump loyalist who was chair of the Intelligence Committee when Trump
11:13
SPEAKER_00: became president last time.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: And then move from there into the White House where he was just like a hatchet man
11:22
SPEAKER_00: for various MAGA schemes.
11:24
SPEAKER_01: Well, I think the biographical details here are sort of important, right?
11:27
SPEAKER_01: So he was an attorney at the Justice Department in the National Security Division,
11:33
SPEAKER_01: and he was sent to be legal liaison to JSOC.
11:38
SPEAKER_01: So it's a kind of random government lawyer job.
11:42
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, I mean, a job.
11:44
SPEAKER_01: And then from there,
11:45
SPEAKER_01: he was hired to work on the House Intelligence Committee as senior counsel on counterterrorism.
11:53
SPEAKER_01: So again, right, I mean, he...
11:54
SPEAKER_01: He was a prosecutor in the National Security Division.
11:56
SPEAKER_01: He was the liaison to JSOC.
12:00
SPEAKER_01: He goes to the Hill and he's a counterterrorism counsel on the committee.
12:04
SPEAKER_01: These are all kind of like boring, you know, like professional career civil servant type jobs.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:12
SPEAKER_01: But then in April 2017,
12:15
SPEAKER_01: soon after Trump became president,
12:17
SPEAKER_01: he becomes senior committee aide to Devin Nunes,
12:21
SPEAKER_01: right?
12:21
SPEAKER_01: Which is kind of stepping out of a civil servant type job into a political type job.
12:27
SPEAKER_01: And this was also spring of 2017 was a much more unsettled time in terms of Trump's
12:32
SPEAKER_01: relationship to the Republican Party,
12:34
SPEAKER_01: right?
12:34
SPEAKER_01: The whole reason the Mueller investigation started is that like most Republicans in Congress,
12:41
SPEAKER_01: like, had serious concerns about the Comey-Manafort situation.
12:47
SPEAKER_01: That's why he was pressured to put, you know... I mean, the firing of Comey.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: But I mean, it was not a fully MAGA congressional party.
12:59
SPEAKER_01: They were working on tax cuts, but it was also like, what's Trump doing, you know, with Comey, et cetera?
13:04
SPEAKER_01: And what Patel did is he became a strong Trump ally.
13:10
SPEAKER_01: Specifically on these issues at a time when Trump didn't have a lot of allies.
13:15
SPEAKER_01: He wrote a memo for Nunes saying that there was FBI misconduct in creating the
13:22
SPEAKER_01: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant on Carter Page.
13:27
SPEAKER_01: So the staff director said this was no good.
13:32
SPEAKER_01: There was tons.
13:34
SPEAKER_01: This memo was low-quality work that did not receive unanimous assent among
13:40
SPEAKER_01: Republicans or even other people on the committee,
13:44
SPEAKER_01: other people working for Nunes.
13:46
SPEAKER_01: But they made Nunes and Patel
13:49
SPEAKER_01: like into key Trump allies.
13:52
SPEAKER_01: So like this random guy in an obscure House committee job became like Trump's
13:56
SPEAKER_01: favorite person in the intelligence community.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: And so he went from there right into the White House where he started fucking
14:06
SPEAKER_01: around in all kinds of things.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: They created new jobs for him.
14:10
SPEAKER_01: They sent him on a secret mission to Damascus to get some hostages released.
14:15
SPEAKER_01: And eventually he was shifted over to the director of national intelligence's job
14:19
SPEAKER_01: So it's like his role is to like, I don't know, like a war on the deep state, I guess.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: Well,
14:27
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
14:27
SPEAKER_00: it's,
14:27
SPEAKER_00: it's a mix of how they would characterize it and like insurrecting against the government.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: Cause at the very end,
14:33
SPEAKER_00: you know,
14:34
SPEAKER_00: Trump is,
14:35
SPEAKER_00: uh,
14:35
SPEAKER_00: is defeated and he's still trying to get Patel installed at various places.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: Like,
14:41
SPEAKER_00: Gina Haspel, who's Trump's CIA director, threatened to resign if Trump installed Patel to be her deputy.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: So she's on his enemies list now.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: And Bill Barr was like,
14:51
SPEAKER_00: he's going to be the deputy director,
14:53
SPEAKER_00: acting deputy director of the FBI over my dead body.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: These are very Trumpy figures, and they're like, no.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: So I think he ends up at the Department of Defense in some subordinate position.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: But his job there seems to be
15:09
SPEAKER_00: Something in the neighborhood of maybe getting the Pentagon involved in Trump's
15:15
SPEAKER_00: efforts to overturn the election,
15:16
SPEAKER_00: like really,
15:17
SPEAKER_00: really bleak.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so people sort of forget.
15:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we've started to get so much focus on like January 6th and what didn't didn't happen on that day.
15:27
SPEAKER_01: But in November, after the election, right, Trump fires the Secretary of Defense and
15:33
SPEAKER_01: He puts Chris Miller in as acting secretary of defense, and Patel becomes Miller's chief of staff.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: And he's saying that Esper was disloyal to Trump because he refused to deploy military troops to D.C.
15:49
SPEAKER_01: to quash George Floyd protests.
15:53
SPEAKER_01: So-
15:55
SPEAKER_01: Trump obviously, like, did not end up staging a coup d'etat on January 6th, right?
16:00
SPEAKER_00: Well, he didn't complete the coup d'etat.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: Well,
16:02
SPEAKER_00: no,
16:02
SPEAKER_01: no,
16:02
SPEAKER_01: but I mean,
16:03
SPEAKER_01: particularly in a classical sense,
16:04
SPEAKER_01: like,
16:06
SPEAKER_01: the troops didn't come out of the barracks and storm the Capitol.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: No,
16:10
SPEAKER_00: if anything,
16:11
SPEAKER_00: like,
16:12
SPEAKER_00: the part of what should disqualify him from office is that he didn't deploy
16:18
SPEAKER_00: National Guard troops to stop the insurrection,
16:20
SPEAKER_00: you know.
16:21
SPEAKER_01: But Patel seemed to be,
16:22
SPEAKER_01: it was very odd for a lame duck president to be making dramatic personnel moves at
16:28
SPEAKER_01: the Pentagon,
16:29
SPEAKER_01: right?
16:30
SPEAKER_01: This was like the coup that didn't happen, but like Patel was like the guy who was going to do the coup.
16:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: Right?
16:38
SPEAKER_01: Should not be FBI director.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: Evidently, the Joint Chiefs were not on board for this.
16:42
SPEAKER_01: And it'll be interesting.
16:43
SPEAKER_01: In terms of people who have fixed terms of office,
16:49
SPEAKER_01: all the senior military commands are structured,
16:52
SPEAKER_01: just like the FBI director,
16:54
SPEAKER_01: except with usually four rather than 10-year terms.
16:57
SPEAKER_01: And we are waiting to see if Trump actually purges the senior military officers' corps, which would be a
17:04
SPEAKER_01: very hot move.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: But so that's Patel, right?
17:11
SPEAKER_00: We should actually,
17:11
SPEAKER_00: like,
17:12
SPEAKER_00: we should come back to Patel and what Republicans on the Hill or Democrats on the
17:16
SPEAKER_00: Hill ought to say or do about Patel on the other side.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: But, like, that news was...
17:22
SPEAKER_00: Very jarring.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: But it was then,
17:25
SPEAKER_00: at least in the Beltway Insider News realm,
17:28
SPEAKER_00: overtaken for at least a day or two by what happened on Sunday,
17:33
SPEAKER_00: which is that President Biden,
17:36
SPEAKER_00: he issued a statement announcing that he'd given his son,
17:39
SPEAKER_00: Hunter,
17:40
SPEAKER_00: a blanket pardon.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: So Hunter Biden has been convicted of two very minor federal crimes that
17:48
SPEAKER_00: Basically, anyone else probably would never have been charged with for reasons that we'll explain.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: But Biden didn't just say you're pardoned of those offenses.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: He said you're basically pardoned for anything Republicans have been harassing you
18:00
SPEAKER_00: about for the last decade.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: which brings the prosecutions to an end,
18:05
SPEAKER_00: brings any ongoing investigation to an end,
18:10
SPEAKER_00: and presumably offers Hunter Biden some real peace of mind as his father leaves
18:17
SPEAKER_00: office and Trump takes over with a plan seemingly to go after his political enemy.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: So...
18:27
SPEAKER_00: I wrote a piece about why I think Biden was wrong to do this.
18:34
SPEAKER_00: You wrote a good nuanced piece.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: I would recommend this.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: I do want to say, I'll put it in the show notes and everything like that.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: One thing that I would add to it a day later is that,
18:47
SPEAKER_00: like,
18:48
SPEAKER_00: just to give readers a clear sense of where my head is,
18:52
SPEAKER_00: I sympathize with Biden's decision for the obvious human reasons.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: And...
19:00
SPEAKER_00: The pearl clutching by the same mainstream political journalists who can't be
19:07
SPEAKER_00: bothered to express a modicum of shock about anything Trump does,
19:11
SPEAKER_00: it's way worse than this.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: It's negatively polarizing me into thinking, you know what, fuck my dignity as an ethical person.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: OK, so this is the main thing.
19:23
SPEAKER_01: So this is the main thing that's making me mad,
19:26
SPEAKER_01: honestly,
19:27
SPEAKER_01: is the like hyper partisan kind of like blue maga Josh Marshall type takes that are like,
19:34
SPEAKER_01: it's good that Biden is getting his son off on crimes because it's sticking it to
19:39
SPEAKER_01: the bad.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, I don't know.
19:41
SPEAKER_01: I just like I don't agree with that.
19:42
SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't.
19:45
SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't care.
19:46
SPEAKER_01: Like the reason that like.
19:51
SPEAKER_01: Joe Biden sought a brand as a high-minded person who cared about the rule of law a lot.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: And he is tarnishing that brand by doing this in a way that Donald Trump is not tarnishing that brand.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: In a way that has collateral damage for the party, for liberalism.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: And I also think, I mean, I saw this take.
20:11
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to call out Josh because I largely agree with him about stuff.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: We can call Josh a friend of this part.
20:16
SPEAKER_00: We used to both work for him.
20:18
SPEAKER_01: He had this thing about- He'd be a good sport about it.
20:20
SPEAKER_01: He had this view that like the election results proves that like nobody cares about all this norm stuff.
20:27
SPEAKER_01: And-
20:29
SPEAKER_01: I think people should interrogate that.
20:30
SPEAKER_01: Like clearly the median voter does not care as much about these things as I would
20:37
SPEAKER_01: like the median voter to care about those things.
20:40
SPEAKER_01: It's also true that like Bill Gates cut a very large check to Kamala Harris's super PAC.
20:46
SPEAKER_01: And they use that money to run ads about the importance of like taxing rich people
20:52
SPEAKER_01: and giving healthcare to the poor.
20:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
20:54
SPEAKER_01: And like,
20:55
SPEAKER_01: I don't think Bill Gates did that necessarily because he agreed with Kamala
20:59
SPEAKER_01: Harris's economic populist
21:01
SPEAKER_01: message.
21:03
SPEAKER_01: He agrees with the high-minded liberal analysis that Donald Trump is undermining
21:07
SPEAKER_01: the stability of liberal institutions and the rule of law.
21:11
SPEAKER_01: I think lots of the people who were canvassing in Pennsylvania with you believed in...
21:17
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
21:17
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure they agreed with tax fairness and whatever else.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: But as a guy who spent a lot of time criticizing Democrats for messaging too much...
21:27
SPEAKER_01: on the kind of values that Biden has now kind of backtracked on.
21:33
SPEAKER_01: That's always been because I didn't think the median voter cared that much about it.
21:37
SPEAKER_01: It's clearly the case that lots of people care about it, right?
21:41
SPEAKER_01: The resistance to Trump received a lot of support from people who maybe agreed with
21:49
SPEAKER_01: or maybe disagreed with,
21:50
SPEAKER_01: but were not super duper motivated by the Biden-Harris policy agenda because they
21:57
SPEAKER_01: thought Donald Trump was a huge threat to American democracy.
22:01
SPEAKER_01: I'm a father.
22:04
SPEAKER_01: I don't think you can ask somebody who has the ability to help their son out like this.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: And somebody who knows that,
22:14
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
22:14
SPEAKER_01: you can characterize the level of fairness or unfairness of the Hunter Biden
22:19
SPEAKER_01: prosecution in different ways.
22:21
SPEAKER_01: But however you calibrate that, it's clearly in some sense like Joe Biden's fault.
22:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
22:28
SPEAKER_01: That all this weight was coming on Hunter, right?
22:31
SPEAKER_01: Like the prosecutorial interest in Hunter Biden is about Joe Biden.
22:36
SPEAKER_01: Like Republicans who would say it's not bad faith would say they need to do it
22:40
SPEAKER_01: because they're like getting the crime boss.
22:42
SPEAKER_01: But right.
22:42
SPEAKER_01: So it's like, of course, Biden is going to pardon his son.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: I sympathize.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to get on my high horse about it.
22:50
SPEAKER_01: But I'm just like, I'm also not going to defend it.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: It was hypocritical.
22:55
SPEAKER_01: And this pardon power is bad.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: It puts people in this position.
22:59
SPEAKER_00: Let's get to the pardon power per se in a minute.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: But I actually think that your devil's advocate case is not strong enough.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: There is...
23:12
SPEAKER_00: a real sense in which the only,
23:16
SPEAKER_00: the only issue here is Biden's hopeless conflict as the only person in government
23:22
SPEAKER_00: with the power to do this.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: Because the situation with Hunter in the abstract is like Hunter Biden is not above
23:30
SPEAKER_00: the law,
23:30
SPEAKER_00: should not be above the law.
23:32
SPEAKER_00: And now in some sense is because he has his pardon, but he shouldn't be below it either.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: And, and like, how,
23:43
SPEAKER_00: Biden is correct,
23:45
SPEAKER_00: and he didn't really explain why,
23:47
SPEAKER_00: for reasons that I think stem from a lot of Democratic political failures.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: But what happened to Hunter,
23:54
SPEAKER_00: the beginnings of this investigation,
23:56
SPEAKER_00: the way it was conducted,
23:57
SPEAKER_00: the way it was prosecuted,
24:00
SPEAKER_00: were perverted.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: They were...
24:08
SPEAKER_00: the outgrowth of partisan retributory scheming by, by Republicans.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: Like the investigation began under Donald Trump.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: He essentially ordered it up.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: He,
24:20
SPEAKER_00: the,
24:20
SPEAKER_00: the,
24:20
SPEAKER_00: the justice department under him did this end run around normal process to funnel
24:24
SPEAKER_00: like shady.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: I agree.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: Right.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: Like,
24:27
SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, the U.S.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: attorney that was overseeing the case,
24:33
SPEAKER_00: the Trump appointee,
24:34
SPEAKER_00: Merrick Garland,
24:35
SPEAKER_00: instead of being like,
24:35
SPEAKER_00: hey,
24:36
SPEAKER_00: there was a lot of shady business in this prosecution,
24:38
SPEAKER_00: and so we're done with it,
24:40
SPEAKER_00: made that guy a special counsel.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: But he was basically a witness to all the ways that this prosecution should have been watched.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: So, okay, but- Right.
24:49
SPEAKER_00: So, like, if Ella Emhoff drove an ounce of marijuana across state lines-
24:55
SPEAKER_00: And like some Republican prosecutor got wind of it and charged her with a felony or what,
25:01
SPEAKER_00: and Joe Biden pardoned her.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: Like,
25:03
SPEAKER_00: no,
25:03
SPEAKER_00: they're just doing that to,
25:04
SPEAKER_00: you know,
25:05
SPEAKER_00: I don't,
25:05
SPEAKER_00: I feel like everyone would be like,
25:06
SPEAKER_00: okay,
25:08
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
25:08
SPEAKER_00: I get it.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's stupid.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: And they're clearly just, you know, they're trying to hurt the child of a prominent Democrat.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: Like the, you know, what Hunter did was obviously worse than that.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: His conduct in general was much worse than like,
25:22
SPEAKER_00: having a small amount of marijuana,
25:24
SPEAKER_00: but,
25:25
SPEAKER_00: but like the,
25:26
SPEAKER_00: the righteous,
25:28
SPEAKER_00: like if,
25:29
SPEAKER_00: if,
25:29
SPEAKER_00: if,
25:30
SPEAKER_00: if,
25:31
SPEAKER_00: if a council of former presidents were to evaluate this situation,
25:35
SPEAKER_00: I think that they might come to the conclusion that Hunter Biden deserved a pardon.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: It's just, well, okay.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: So the president is dead.
25:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:43
SPEAKER_01: But like, okay.
25:43
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
25:45
SPEAKER_01: Part of what like rubs me the wrong way about this is that,
25:49
SPEAKER_01: you know,
25:49
SPEAKER_01: Joe Biden was president for all these years.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: And he could have done what Trump would have done in this situation,
25:58
SPEAKER_01: which is just like squelch the prosecution.
26:02
SPEAKER_01: at the beginning, right?
26:04
SPEAKER_01: Like he could have said like,
26:05
SPEAKER_01: this is BS that was started by Trump who got impeached for this kind of related BS.
26:10
SPEAKER_01: Um,
26:10
SPEAKER_01: at the same time,
26:11
SPEAKER_01: like my son,
26:12
SPEAKER_01: uh,
26:13
SPEAKER_01: he broke this gun rule and like,
26:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm a Democrat who believes in strict gun law enforcement.
26:18
SPEAKER_01: So like, I'm firing the special counsel.
26:20
SPEAKER_01: We're getting somebody else in,
26:21
SPEAKER_01: we're pleading out time served,
26:24
SPEAKER_01: but also like,
26:25
SPEAKER_01: I'm like kicking Hunter to the curb because like this guy's
26:30
SPEAKER_01: into some shady shit whatever and he would have taken a lot of political shit for
26:34
SPEAKER_01: it but also people would have gotten over it like really fast right like you you
26:38
SPEAKER_01: could have done this in uh july of april 2021 sorry uh july or april of 2021 you
26:47
SPEAKER_01: know and it's like it's a story it's gone whatever but like biden wanted he
26:53
SPEAKER_01: cultivated it
26:55
SPEAKER_01: this particular reputation, right?
26:58
SPEAKER_01: This whole style, this Merrick Garland, all this stuff that you're kind of like critical of.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: And then after Trump wins the election, he's just like backsies.
27:09
SPEAKER_01: And to me,
27:10
SPEAKER_01: there's just something like,
27:12
SPEAKER_01: I get it all on a human level,
27:15
SPEAKER_01: but there's this level of like vanity.
27:19
SPEAKER_01: And personal insecurity that I think runs through so much of Binarya and like not
27:26
SPEAKER_01: wanting to take responsibility for stuff,
27:29
SPEAKER_01: including in this statement where like,
27:32
SPEAKER_01: you know,
27:33
SPEAKER_01: like the statement,
27:34
SPEAKER_01: I think honestly,
27:35
SPEAKER_01: everyone who's not a psycho like gets that a father in this position is going to
27:41
SPEAKER_01: help his son out.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: Like, because the power to do it exists, right?
27:47
SPEAKER_01: And the ability of Trump to persecute him exists.
27:51
SPEAKER_01: And because,
27:51
SPEAKER_01: you know,
27:52
SPEAKER_01: fucking Jimmy Carter,
27:53
SPEAKER_01: like actually ethical president,
27:56
SPEAKER_01: pardoned his brother-in-law or something.
27:59
SPEAKER_01: Trump has done all kinds of crazy shit with his pardons.
28:01
SPEAKER_01: The statement had just been like, listen, like, Hunter suffered enough putting an end to this.
28:08
SPEAKER_01: You can be mad at me if you want, whatever.
28:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:11
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't know.
28:12
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
28:14
SPEAKER_01: But it's like this is I think in your post,
28:17
SPEAKER_01: you drew a distinction between a pardon and clemency that I think is important here,
28:23
SPEAKER_01: because like at the end of the day.
28:27
SPEAKER_01: Like, Hunter Biden is actually guilty of these crimes, you know?
28:32
SPEAKER_01: Like, the special political circumstances around this are why it was investigated.
28:38
SPEAKER_01: It's why it didn't plead out.
28:41
SPEAKER_00: For listeners who don't know, like, there was this long-running investigation of Hunter Biden for—
28:46
SPEAKER_00: tax evasion and for foreign influence essentially and what they landed on to charge
28:53
SPEAKER_00: him with was it was purchasing a gun and lying on the form about his addiction and
29:01
SPEAKER_00: then also failure to pay taxes but then he once he got clean he paid all of his
29:08
SPEAKER_00: back taxes with penalty and he got convicted for both of those things which
29:15
SPEAKER_00: don't normally get charged at all.
29:17
SPEAKER_01: Right,
29:17
SPEAKER_01: but also,
29:17
SPEAKER_01: like,
29:18
SPEAKER_01: if Biden was a Republican,
29:21
SPEAKER_01: he could pardon Hunter for this gun thing and also say,
29:23
SPEAKER_01: like,
29:24
SPEAKER_01: and I think this law is bad,
29:26
SPEAKER_01: right?
29:27
SPEAKER_00: And also tax evasion.
29:28
SPEAKER_01: Republicans don't.
29:29
SPEAKER_01: Right, but I mean, this is what I mean.
29:30
SPEAKER_01: Like, two, like, specific, like, policy goals.
29:33
SPEAKER_01: The Biden administration last week, like...
29:36
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't think this is right.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: Like, there's what your policy preferences are, and then there's the rule of law.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: And, like, you're supposed to follow the law even if you think it reflects bad policy.
29:45
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, sure, sure.
29:46
SPEAKER_01: I just mean, like, the whole thing, whatever.
29:48
SPEAKER_01: It's like,
29:49
SPEAKER_01: I already feel like I've talked longer about this than I want to because,
29:54
SPEAKER_01: like,
29:54
SPEAKER_01: this is,
29:57
SPEAKER_01: like,
29:57
SPEAKER_01: ticky-tack,
29:58
SPEAKER_01: and I don't care.
29:59
SPEAKER_01: But, like...
30:00
SPEAKER_01: Everything about the handling of this and the mechanics from promising that they
30:07
SPEAKER_01: weren't going to pardon Hunter and so forth,
30:12
SPEAKER_01: it all does rub me the wrong way to the extent that I focus on it.
30:15
SPEAKER_01: They could have Bill Clinton this from the beginning and been like, this prosecution is BS.
30:20
SPEAKER_01: They could have just carried the weight and let him off the hook.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: So, okay, so I argued for blanket clemency.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: So if you read the pardon power clause of the Constitution,
30:33
SPEAKER_00: it's right there with the pardon power that presidents can offer,
30:37
SPEAKER_00: like clemency,
30:38
SPEAKER_00: can commute sentences.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: And...
30:42
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that there's a consensus on this because it hasn't been litigated really,
30:46
SPEAKER_00: but the language in the provision is equal as to the pardon power and as to the
30:52
SPEAKER_00: commutation power.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: And we know that pardons have held up for people who haven't even been charged with crimes.
30:59
SPEAKER_00: So you can pardon somebody for uncharged conduct.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: You can also, the theory goes, commute them for uncharged conduct.
31:07
SPEAKER_00: So you can say Hunter Biden will still have a record
31:11
SPEAKER_00: But they're not going to be able to imprison him for just like revenge purposes.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: And I think that that would have left Biden some space to say,
31:22
SPEAKER_00: and the reason I'm doing this is because I respect the rule of law and I
31:25
SPEAKER_00: acknowledge that my son did bad things.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: He used poor judgment.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: He committed crimes.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: But the incoming administration has plans for Hunter and for many other people that
31:36
SPEAKER_00: are not consistent with the rule of law.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: And that's important.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: It's something Americans should be concerned about.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: And this is one small step towards containing the damage that I think is to come.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: And he didn't offer any kind of
31:52
SPEAKER_00: explanation like that that would give us a better sense of the why.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: He alludes to the fact that he's worried about further efforts to break Hunter
32:03
SPEAKER_00: Biden as a means of breaking him,
32:05
SPEAKER_00: the
32:06
SPEAKER_00: President Biden.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: But it's not actually too late to do it.
32:12
SPEAKER_00: And I think the timing of this pardon probably had less to do with the Patel
32:16
SPEAKER_00: nomination and that Hunter Biden sentencing hearing was coming up.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: But if that really is what motivated Trump or what motivated Biden, like if it had been the case that
32:27
SPEAKER_00: Donald Trump died before the Republican primary was over and the president was
32:31
SPEAKER_00: going to be Nikki Haley,
32:32
SPEAKER_00: I think he would not have pardoned his son or he wouldn't have been so worried
32:36
SPEAKER_00: about what was to come.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: If that's actually true,
32:39
SPEAKER_00: and I believe it is,
32:41
SPEAKER_00: then,
32:41
SPEAKER_00: like,
32:42
SPEAKER_00: by not at least offer pardons to everyone on that list that Patel put out,
32:47
SPEAKER_00: right?
32:47
SPEAKER_00: Like...
32:50
SPEAKER_00: And be explicit about it.
32:52
SPEAKER_00: What the person who Donald Trump wants to lead the FBI has said is not compatible with the rule of law.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: If he carries through his plans, it will be like it'll be like essentially how a country dies, right?
33:03
SPEAKER_00: Like how democracy dies.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: And so one thing that I can do before I leave is to offer protection to those people.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: who didn't do anything wrong.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, there's still time.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he'll do that.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: But if he doesn't,
33:18
SPEAKER_00: then what he did in offering special leniency to his own son is going to look
33:25
SPEAKER_00: pretty bad.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: It already looks a bit bad.
33:27
SPEAKER_00: It's going to look much worse, I think.
33:29
SPEAKER_00: And I would even go a step further.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: And we can talk about the kinds of things I have in mind on the other side of the paywall.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: But that...
33:39
SPEAKER_00: If all Biden does that's in violation of the norms and institutions,
33:48
SPEAKER_00: if the only norm violation he commits on his way out the door is pardoning Hunter,
33:55
SPEAKER_00: given all that's in his power to help Americans understand what's
33:59
SPEAKER_00: most likely coming, that will also be really bad.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: If he's in,
34:03
SPEAKER_00: I don't give a fuck,
34:04
SPEAKER_00: YOLO mode on his way out the door,
34:08
SPEAKER_00: he should do more to protect the country than just ring fence his own son from retribution.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: There's much more.
34:14
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
34:15
SPEAKER_01: you know,
34:15
SPEAKER_01: I just think like,
34:19
SPEAKER_01: one thing that you see clearly with this pardon is that there was no...
34:26
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't seem like there was like a meeting with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries.
34:32
SPEAKER_01: to like plan this out.
34:33
SPEAKER_01: You know, there's like lots of different ways you can do these things.
34:37
SPEAKER_01: You can be like,
34:37
SPEAKER_01: Hey guys,
34:38
SPEAKER_01: like I'm going to let Hunter off the hook and you should tell all your front liners
34:41
SPEAKER_01: to just like beat me up on it.
34:44
SPEAKER_01: You know,
34:44
SPEAKER_01: if they need some distance or you could do like what you're suggesting and be like,
34:48
SPEAKER_01: I want to like get all the ducks in a row.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: Like here's a strategy.
34:51
SPEAKER_01: Here's what we're doing.
34:53
SPEAKER_01: This really did seem to be YOLO, like in a pretty literal way.
34:59
SPEAKER_00: Like Biden woke up one morning, I'm doing this, and he didn't try to build a coherent trend.
35:04
SPEAKER_01: The political team had been telling him for months or years or whatever,
35:09
SPEAKER_01: you got to just let this Hunter thing play out.
35:11
SPEAKER_01: I know it's tough for you.
35:12
SPEAKER_01: And probably Hunter had been like, dad, help me out.
35:15
SPEAKER_01: And then it was like, fuck it.
35:17
SPEAKER_01: The election's over.
35:18
SPEAKER_01: We just had family Thanksgiving.
35:20
SPEAKER_01: Here it goes.
35:22
SPEAKER_01: There's no Merrick Garland statement.
35:24
SPEAKER_01: There's no...
35:27
SPEAKER_01: There's no politics occurring.
35:30
SPEAKER_01: It's like the president of the United States is a human being.
35:33
SPEAKER_01: But this is just like how Democrats have been.
35:35
SPEAKER_01: Totally.
35:36
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to get sucked into like the giant thing that we argue about all the
35:39
SPEAKER_01: time because Joe Biden enacted a very substantive public policy agenda.
35:44
SPEAKER_01: That's what Democrats did.
35:46
SPEAKER_01: But that is over now, right?
35:48
SPEAKER_01: And it's like-
35:51
SPEAKER_01: you know, you can do things or you can, I sort of get it, right?
35:55
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if this was not the real world, if I was just like doing a movie,
36:00
SPEAKER_01: Right.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: About this like elderly,
36:03
SPEAKER_01: psychologically broken man who had all of his political allies turn on him in a
36:08
SPEAKER_01: moment of emergency saying that it would save the country.
36:12
SPEAKER_01: But then the savior, you know, failed and his good son died of brain cancer.
36:17
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, this is an incredible amount of pathos in the Joe Biden story.
36:22
SPEAKER_01: And I think I think 200 years from now, you know,
36:26
SPEAKER_01: Biden will be both like a weird trivia answer,
36:29
SPEAKER_01: right,
36:29
SPEAKER_01: along with Benjamin Harrison,
36:31
SPEAKER_01: but also this kind of fascinating human drama.
36:34
SPEAKER_01: But just in the short term,
36:36
SPEAKER_01: it's like this is clearly a president,
36:39
SPEAKER_01: not even a White House,
36:40
SPEAKER_01: like just a president who's like quitting with a couple weeks still left on the job.
36:48
SPEAKER_01: You know, and he's like not... There's no strategy.
36:53
SPEAKER_01: There's no coordination left.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: He's mad, right, at Obama and Pelosi and whoever else didn't help him out.
37:01
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, this just kind of sucks.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: There's a very petty element to all of it.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: I do think that like...
37:10
SPEAKER_00: You know,
37:11
SPEAKER_00: one thing that if he was going to try to get his ducks in a row,
37:14
SPEAKER_00: like,
37:14
SPEAKER_00: obviously I think that it should have been part of like a larger statement about
37:18
SPEAKER_00: the incoming abuses of power.
37:21
SPEAKER_00: But if he was just going to do this thing for Hunter and then wait on the,
37:25
SPEAKER_00: what he wants to do on January 19th or whatever,
37:27
SPEAKER_00: that...
37:29
SPEAKER_00: He could have said, don't just tell your frontliners to dump on me.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: Tell them to say,
37:35
SPEAKER_00: like,
37:36
SPEAKER_00: this is an occasion for bipartisan constitutional reform to the pardon power itself.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: Because we think this is an abuse of it.
37:44
SPEAKER_00: We think Donald Trump has abused it and likely will abuse it further in his second term.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: I guess Obama didn't really abuse it, but George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George H.W.
37:55
SPEAKER_00: Bush did, you know?
37:56
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
37:56
SPEAKER_01: And in crazy ways.
37:58
SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, I think the Bill Clinton example is sort of like most telling because he's the...
38:04
SPEAKER_01: as I guess like the most clever politician in my lifetime.
38:08
SPEAKER_01: You know,
38:08
SPEAKER_01: a lot of these other people either like helped out family members or like,
38:13
SPEAKER_01: you know,
38:14
SPEAKER_01: like participated in large scale political coverups.
38:17
SPEAKER_01: But like Bill Clinton,
38:19
SPEAKER_01: because he was trying to help Hillary get elected to the Senate in New York,
38:25
SPEAKER_01: like pardoned like Puerto Rican terrorists and like corrupt rabbis in Rockland County.
38:33
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's just like really like narrow political machinations.
38:38
SPEAKER_01: And then like also this guy, Mark Rich, who was a major donor.
38:41
SPEAKER_01: And this is like all just like insane stuff that had nothing to do with like any
38:47
SPEAKER_01: political objectives of anyone other than just like literally his wife.
38:52
SPEAKER_01: And, you know.
38:54
SPEAKER_01: It was a bad news cycle,
38:56
SPEAKER_01: but like everybody moved on eventually,
38:58
SPEAKER_01: just as everybody will move on from Hunter.
39:00
SPEAKER_01: But like, this is a bad rule.
39:03
SPEAKER_01: It's like a...
39:04
SPEAKER_01: quasi superstitious belief in the King's mercy.
39:08
SPEAKER_01: And like, it's not what people do with the pardon power.
39:11
SPEAKER_01: And like, you can't appoint like a U S trade representative without Senate concurrence.
39:17
SPEAKER_01: Right.
39:18
SPEAKER_01: And like,
39:18
SPEAKER_01: if you think about like what power should the president have untrammeled,
39:21
SPEAKER_01: maybe just like pick his own guy to be America's representative at trade negotiations.
39:27
SPEAKER_01: Like, why do you need checks and balances on that?
39:29
SPEAKER_01: But just like you can legalize crimes and
39:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:32
SPEAKER_01: Like, that's stupid.
39:33
SPEAKER_00: It's like,
39:34
SPEAKER_01: the fact that the Constitution is 200 plus years old and it's served us well,
39:37
SPEAKER_01: but like,
39:38
SPEAKER_01: this is a bad idea.
39:39
SPEAKER_00: Look, that's the thing.
39:40
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that the,
39:41
SPEAKER_00: you know,
39:42
SPEAKER_00: in the very hypothetical world where the pardon power was going to get a second look,
39:49
SPEAKER_00: that they should abolish it altogether because like,
39:52
SPEAKER_00: I think our justice system needs more mercy,
39:55
SPEAKER_00: more like tools of mercy in it.
39:57
SPEAKER_00: And in theory, a pardon power could be constructed
40:01
SPEAKER_00: In a way that is not subject,
40:03
SPEAKER_00: like you can't legalize crime with it,
40:05
SPEAKER_00: but you can use it to,
40:08
SPEAKER_00: you know,
40:09
SPEAKER_00: throw out or shorten old sentences that,
40:12
SPEAKER_00: you know,
40:13
SPEAKER_00: with,
40:13
SPEAKER_00: with the,
40:13
SPEAKER_00: with the wisdom of time,
40:14
SPEAKER_00: we've decided like those offenses probably never should have been charged or never
40:19
SPEAKER_00: should have been charged at that level.
40:20
SPEAKER_00: Like that kind of thing I think would be.
40:22
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, don't do it in the flame document.
40:25
SPEAKER_00: period.
40:26
SPEAKER_00: Anyway.
40:28
SPEAKER_00: The Mark Rich thing, I'm glad you said it because it reminds me.
40:31
SPEAKER_00: Then we should break because we're giving people way too much free shit here.
40:35
SPEAKER_00: I hadn't actually contemplated this until now, but Biden had poor advice on this.
40:42
SPEAKER_00: Here's the conceptual scoop for anyone listening who wants to report it out,
40:47
SPEAKER_00: is that the pardoning of Mark Rich got Clinton in heat.
40:54
SPEAKER_00: The US attorney who investigated Bill Clinton after he left office for issuing that
40:59
SPEAKER_00: pardon was James Comey.
41:02
SPEAKER_00: And just like when Comey was fired, there was a question about whether that was obstruction of justice.
41:08
SPEAKER_00: There was no question that the firing was valid.
41:10
SPEAKER_00: Once he was fired, he no longer was FBI director.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: Once Mark Rich was pardoned, he was pardoned.
41:15
SPEAKER_00: There was nothing that could be done to touch Mark Rich on those issues anymore.
41:20
SPEAKER_00: But there was still an open question of whether...
41:25
SPEAKER_00: Bill Clinton was guilty of a bribery or an obstruction offense by having pardoned him.
41:30
SPEAKER_00: Did he abuse the pardon power in a way that served as some other crime?
41:34
SPEAKER_00: And Comey ultimately found no, or like that he couldn't substantiate a charge or something.
41:40
SPEAKER_00: But the incoming Trump people,
41:42
SPEAKER_00: if they want to say,
41:43
SPEAKER_00: well,
41:44
SPEAKER_00: Hunter's off the hook,
41:45
SPEAKER_00: but now we're going to look into whether Biden pardoned his son to hide the shady bribery,
41:52
SPEAKER_00: they will launch that investigation.
41:54
SPEAKER_00: And while he may have gotten his son off the hook,
41:56
SPEAKER_00: all that conduct happened before Donald Trump was president.
42:00
SPEAKER_00: So he can't even use his new immunity from the Supreme Court as a shield.
42:04
SPEAKER_00: So they're just going to...
42:07
SPEAKER_00: They're going to harass Joe Biden,
42:09
SPEAKER_00: 82 years old,
42:10
SPEAKER_00: retired former president,
42:11
SPEAKER_00: one term,
42:13
SPEAKER_00: for like imaginary underhanded business arrangement,
42:19
SPEAKER_00: they allege,
42:20
SPEAKER_00: but don't actually believe he had with his son.
42:22
SPEAKER_00: And so like,
42:25
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I guess you could view that as him taking one for his son,
42:28
SPEAKER_00: but I'm guessing he hadn't thought it through to that level and that he's really
42:33
SPEAKER_00: exposed himself now to a lot of mischief from quite possibly Kash Patel.
42:40
SPEAKER_00: Let's discuss what might be done about that on the other side of the paywall.
42:44
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
42:45
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
42:45
SPEAKER_00: If you want to hear that part of the conversation,
42:47
SPEAKER_00: all you got to do is go to politics.fm and upgrade your subscription.