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The Biden Coverup (According to Tapper) · Bourbon & Rum

0:08
Welcome to another episode of Bourbon and Rum.
0:11
This is a podcast of two brothers from opposite ends of
0:15
the spectrum. My name's Kent, I'm a rum
0:22
drinker, and I'm from the left side of the aisle.
0:24
And I'm Kyle. I, like bourbon, tend to be a
0:26
little more conservative. Join us as we explore this
0:32
experiment. Can two brothers from different
0:35
sides of the political spectrum have a civil conversation and
0:39
celebrate our differences? What are you drinking?
0:54
I'm drinking an old Granddad 114.
0:59
Old granddad's not known to be the best whiskey in the world,
1:02
but the 114 had a lot of people say it's, you know, really a lot
1:06
of people say good things about it.
1:09
I like it. It's a Jim Beam product and
1:12
usually old Granddad's like at the low end of the spectrum, but
1:14
the 114 is pretty hot and it's pretty tasty.
1:17
But it's, I heard a guy describe it like, well, the the nose
1:22
isn't very good and the taste isn't that great, but it's
1:26
really smooth when it goes down. So I don't know what that's nice
1:28
to mean, but. Tastes like crap, but it's easy
1:31
to drink. Yeah, exactly.
1:35
Not bad. I mean, it's got a definite burn
1:37
to it. How about you?
1:38
What do you got going today? Well, the irony is that you're
1:42
drinking a nice inside sipper out on the the beach, and I'm in
1:48
my cold house in Iowa drinking canned margaritas.
1:54
So. I.
1:56
Had a Trader Joe's Margarita, but man, way too sweet.
2:00
I couldn't believe it. Like just off the charts.
2:04
So I mean, I, you know, I got it, I got it down, but.
2:09
So it's pretty cold there. It sounds like it's pretty cold
2:11
in Chicago. You were at this weekend.
2:12
Yeah, it's actually, it's actually colder in Chicago than
2:15
here. We were out doing some sailing
2:17
on the lake, but man, it never broke. 60 yesterday and we got a
2:21
got a good chill going so. Man, that's brutal.
2:24
That is really cold. It's a beautiful day, though,
2:27
and you know, Sundays often are really crazy there and we didn't
2:29
have too big a crowd, which was kind of nice and.
2:33
Great. Good winds and had a great time
2:35
so. Nice.
2:37
Well, I'm over here just sitting here in the beach of the Gulf of
2:41
America, and it's quite nice out here, Kent.
2:44
Is are there signs to the effect of Gulf of America in the
2:48
Redneck Riviera there? There's plenty of hats.
2:55
Well. I had some time in the car.
2:57
I listen to audio, but I don't read anything anymore.
3:00
I hate to admit that, but I used to be a book, a big book nerd,
3:04
and I hardly ever read books. Now everything's on audio.
3:07
That's crazy, you used to be able to digest a book in
3:10
minutes. Yeah, yeah.
3:13
I I haven't read a sat down and read a book cover to cover in
3:17
three years. Something like that.
3:19
Audible is awful handy though. I've been doing that too.
3:22
That is really good. Yeah, we love it and it's nice.
3:25
It's especially nice when we're together, we're on a trip or
3:28
something because we get to share the experience, which is
3:31
really nice. Yeah.
3:33
So I listened to the the Jake Tapper book about the Biden
3:40
cover up and it was a it was quite a story.
3:45
I don't think there was anything that they said that I didn't
3:48
like. Nothing was really shocking
3:50
about it. You know, it, it's kind of been
3:53
plain sight what had happened. But it was really interesting
3:59
how the inner circle, and I mean really inner circle, his wife
4:04
and like three other people basically controlled all of the
4:08
exposure that he had for the last, you know, honestly, most
4:12
of his administration. And so I, I, I don't want to
4:18
digest the book for people, but let me, let me just make a
4:20
couple statements and then maybe you can jump in on it.
4:24
The, the characters that I felt really sympathetic towards were
4:29
like other cabinet officers and stuff.
4:32
Because even people that think that he was in really bad shape
4:37
almost universally agreed that like he wasn't completely out of
4:41
it. He had, you know, I mean,
4:44
between 10:00 and 3:00 every day.
4:47
And he was really. But honestly, I mean, all joking
4:51
aside, that's different than like, he's out of it and parked
4:56
in the closet and not doing anything, you know what I mean?
5:00
And so a lot of the cabinet officers had had this.
5:03
Well, yeah. I mean, you know, he listens in
5:07
meetings. He makes decisions, he speaks.
5:09
Sometimes he gets a little off the rails, but you know, they
5:13
all had experiences where he was pretty good and.
5:16
And they weren't meeting that often.
5:18
I mean, I think I read somewhere he did like 9 cabinet meetings,
5:22
his old presidency or it was something like that, yeah.
5:25
And so, so I, I'm sympathetic, you know, maybe I make excuses
5:30
to myself. His decline was obvious and
5:34
couldn't be not noticed. I, I, I freely admit that I will
5:38
say, you know, he was never a great speaker, even when he was
5:44
at his prime and he tripped over words.
5:47
He had the stutter, you know, and so well, but.
5:51
It seemed really to me dramatic over who he was when he was
5:56
debating, even when he was debating the first round with
6:02
Kamala Harris or, you know, he sounded way better than.
6:06
But then especially you go back to when he was vice president.
6:09
I mean, he was very sharp, you know, it was like night and day
6:13
difference for sure. Yeah.
6:15
Well, and I think, you know, how sharp he was, I think is the,
6:20
you know, how much was he aware? I mean, I think there's a
6:22
narrative that, you know, he didn't make any decisions.
6:26
He wasn't in control. He was just, you know, they
6:28
wheeled him out and wheeled him back.
6:30
And that that was not the impression I got from the book.
6:34
His decline was profound and significant.
6:37
But, and, and I'll tell you where if you, if you want to
6:41
know, was he, did he have some of his faculties?
6:44
Again, I don't want to spoil the book for other people if they
6:46
want to read it. So, you know, and I think I was
6:51
clear when we talked about it when the debate happened, I was
6:53
like, OK, game over. You know, that there was just no
6:56
way when he had that debate with Trump that, that he could
6:59
continue. But it was like 3 weeks before
7:04
he dropped out of the race. And this was in some ways the
7:07
most interesting part of the. I mean, most of the book is kind
7:10
of like, yeah, he kept getting worse and people kept noticing
7:14
it. And, you know, people that
7:16
weren't on his inner circle were like, this is a problem.
7:19
We've got to do something. He can't go the distance of
7:22
another campaign. What are we going to do in all
7:25
of those kind of concerns that you would expect?
7:30
But it's that three weeks after the debate, and I mean his top
7:36
advisors, there's like 3 guys I don't remember the names on if
7:39
you know, if you'd know if I've said them who were like, well,
7:43
yeah, but we've still got, you know, the, we've got weeks and
7:47
then we've got the, the convention and we're going to
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have all, we're only down like 5 points.
7:52
And I'm just like you like that campaign was over like like 20
7:58
minutes into it. I said to my wife, yeah, yeah,
8:01
that's not that's not going to work.
8:05
You know it's just not and but these and.
8:09
We talked about, I mean, you know, he probably, you know, I
8:13
don't know that he's like out of it.
8:15
Like he may know what's going on.
8:16
He just can't communicate. And you know, that's kind of one
8:19
of those jobs. If you can't communicate, it's
8:22
not going to work, you know? Exactly.
8:24
I guess I didn't see anything that maybe leaped to the
8:27
conclusion. I I don't know that he was as
8:29
bad at the end as Ronald Reagan was for most of his second term.
8:34
You know, he really was gone. The thing I don't get is it's
8:38
like, oh, it was a cover up. Like was it?
8:41
I mean, if they if it was, they were pretty shitty cover up
8:45
artists. I mean, it was.
8:47
It was. Obvious to anybody that the guy
8:49
was downhill the last couple of years.
8:51
And I don't know, like, yeah, I saw some interview with Jake
8:54
Chopper about his book and he's like, you know, I forget it was
8:58
some media person. I might have been a a Trump
9:01
there. It was like Laura Trump,
9:02
somebody he got in in a argument with on TV.
9:05
And she's like, he's obviously not nearly, you know, I forget
9:09
what she was saying, but you know, he's obviously not with
9:12
it. And he's like, well, that's
9:13
totally unsubstantiated. Why would you say such thing?
9:15
You know, like, OK, yeah, maybe I don't know.
9:18
But like anybody looking at it objectively, I mean, my beef
9:23
with Jake Tapper is like, you know, that to me is the, I feel
9:28
like the, I feel less of a cover up and more like a covering for
9:34
people 'cause I felt like him. It's like, where is the critical
9:39
journalistic, you know, inquisitive like, well, that
9:42
doesn't sound right. I'm going to dig into it.
9:44
It's like, no, nothing to see here.
9:46
Everything's good. You know, like, that's what's
9:48
weird with the, you know, 'cause you, you expect the media to go
9:52
find every possible angle, you know, like not to just be like,
9:56
oh, they say he's fine, OK, he's fine.
9:59
Like really, I mean. Yeah, no, it was, it was
10:02
interesting. I think it's a really good
10:03
point. If there was a cover up, it
10:06
might have been at places like CNN and NBC where there's like a
10:11
kind of a public denial thing. And I think that was I, I, I
10:15
think you make a good point to differentiate between, you know,
10:20
was he cognizant of what's happening in the world and
10:23
actively making decisions? It was a very different thing
10:26
than you can string the sentences together on television
10:30
so people know what you're talking about.
10:33
And it sounded like that three-week pier.
10:36
So basically they've been BS in him the whole time.
10:39
They were like, Oh, yeah, you know, we're a little behind, but
10:43
we've got lots of time. And after the convention, you
10:47
get to spend all the DNC money and like, we're going to buy
10:51
media to fix this. And I was like, no, the more,
10:55
the more you show, the worse it gets, right?
10:59
Like, it was just baffling to me.
11:02
But he really pushed back. And you know it, it sounded like
11:07
he really like people tried to give him the bad news and he was
11:11
like not having it. For quite a while.
11:14
How much of that do you the do you think is him and how much of
11:17
it is Jill? She seemed like she was all in
11:21
on that whole train. Yeah, she does not look like
11:25
much of A hero in this book. Yeah.
11:29
And you wonder like, go ahead. Well, and I, but I'm thinking,
11:32
well, what's in it for her? I mean, OK, yeah, you're the
11:35
First Lady, but is it that great a deal?
11:37
I mean, you know, I don't know. I mean, I, I, you know, I guess
11:43
people have motivations for different things.
11:45
It's just like, you know, it does seem like she really wanted
11:48
it. I just questioned like, you
11:50
know, you just like, is this worth it for your husband to
11:53
look like an idiot? I mean, you know, you, I don't
11:56
know some I talked about with mom a lot and she's like, you
12:00
know what, what kind of woman would do that to her husband to
12:03
a degree? Like, you know, like, Hey, let
12:05
the guy retire. He's been in Congress for 50
12:09
years. I mean, let him be, you know,
12:11
almost like he's pushed into it somehow.
12:13
Yeah, one of the themes that comes up and, you know, it
12:18
sounds different from my side of the aisle because I think people
12:21
thought of it. And I, I get to say that I
12:23
thought about it. They kept hammering.
12:26
He's the only person that's ever beaten Trump in an election,
12:28
right? Like that, that Trump's an
12:31
existential threat to democracy and we think he's our only path
12:35
now. I, you know, there's a lot of
12:37
things to unback about that statement, but I think that was
12:40
part of what people were believing.
12:42
I don't know that that was Jill's motivation.
12:45
I think that was more. I can see the party people
12:49
saying that, but that that said, I think I don't know.
12:54
My view is the 2020 election was more of him defeating him than
13:04
Joe defeating him. Like, I don't know that Joe was
13:06
that strong a candidate. I just think Trump had not done
13:10
a good job of 1 getting people in the, you know, whether you
13:17
like what his cabinet's doing now or not, he's got a cabinet
13:20
that's loyal to him. First go round, he didn't know
13:22
what the hell he's doing. And he put a bunch of people in
13:24
there that totally swam afoul of him.
13:27
So he had, he couldn't, you know, he had issues with his
13:29
agenda. I think his Twitter, his, you
13:34
know, he tweets now on the Truth Social, but nobody reads it.
13:36
So nobody cares, you know, but when you're on Twitter and
13:39
you're in everybody's face all the time, there's just a lot of
13:42
in, in the way he acted in the debates.
13:44
I think he totally screwed himself in the debate.
13:46
So it's like to me, it was more, I mean, the people that voted
13:49
for Joe Biden, I mean, many of them weren't voting for Joe
13:53
Biden. They were voting against Trump.
13:55
Sure. And and to some degree, you know
13:59
what you wound up with now, a lot of the people that are
14:02
voting for him, the voted this time around didn't necessarily
14:05
vote for him. They voted against Biden.
14:07
It's almost kind of reversed course.
14:09
You know, you you almost would have been better off having
14:13
somebody hindsight's 2020, but having somebody else that might
14:18
not as been as strong a candidate, but could have been
14:21
one later, you know, I don't know.
14:23
Well, again, I, you know, this is what he said he was setting
14:26
out to do and the right thing would have been to to do.
14:30
The minute you take over in 2020, you say, look, here's the
14:34
deal. I'm.
14:35
I'm ready to retire. I'm I'm 81 years old or whatever
14:38
he was and and I'm not at the peak of my game.
14:44
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to stay close to home and
14:48
I am going to focus on the most important things and the most
14:52
important decisions. And I'm going to do that.
14:54
And this cabinet, did you see any one of these people could be
14:57
my successor? And I'm going to send them
15:00
around the world to advance our agenda.
15:02
I'm going to send them to your hometowns to help solve the
15:04
problems that you have. And you're going to see a lot of
15:07
them. And that's on purpose.
15:08
And here we go. I wonder though.
15:11
Because I got to believe we're not the I mean, we're smart
15:13
guys. Can't.
15:14
But you know, there's probably other smart guys in their
15:17
circle. I wonder if they didn't
15:20
recognize early on that Kamala Harris wasn't going to be strong
15:25
enough to take that mantle because I think they knew pretty
15:30
early on. I mean, she wasn't as crisp
15:33
probably as they wanted. So, you know, did they come up
15:37
one of these strategic decisions, like, OK, we can go
15:41
all in on her, but then if that's a sinking ship now we're
15:45
screwed. Maybe we got to go in.
15:47
You know, I could see some indecision.
15:49
I mean, if they were smart, they would have taken a guy like
15:51
Buttigieg and really propelled him forward.
15:54
But but the problem is she's the vice president.
15:57
If you skip over her now, you're skipping over a black female.
16:00
And you got all kinds of crap that goes with that, you know?
16:04
Apparently Jim Clyburn said so. So I, I think you're right, but
16:09
I think now you know, again, the book could be all BS, but it
16:14
felt to me watching it or listening to it, I felt less
16:19
like there was a smoke filled machine room somewhere that all
16:23
the decisions were made in, which is kind of what my thought
16:27
has been. I don't think there's that much
16:30
thought going on. So I think what happened was
16:33
that because he waited so long to bail, you just didn't have
16:39
time. And, you know, there during
16:42
those three weeks, everybody knew it was inevitable.
16:45
But like, you know, you know, he's the president of the United
16:48
States. I don't want to say you're done,
16:52
get out of there. You know, And but the individual
16:55
conversations between Schumer and Jeffries and, you know,
16:59
other people, leaders of the party who are like.
17:04
What are we doing here? They were all waiting.
17:05
They were like, we got to call Clooney, get George Clooney,
17:09
then it'll, you know, that'll do it.
17:11
Well, Clooney's actually a huge one of the most compelling parts
17:16
compelling. One of the big revelatory
17:19
stories in the book. When he met, he saw Biden at
17:24
this fundraiser and Biden didn't know him and his aide is like,
17:29
do you remember George? And Biden's like, yeah, George
17:34
Clooney. Wow.
17:38
And he he was like, and again, you know, it's just BSI don't
17:43
know, but they said he was doing the thing where he was walking
17:46
around. Thank you for being here.
17:48
Thank you for coming. Thank you for and he comes up to
17:50
Clooney, who who arranged the thing, like got all these a
17:54
listeners together, flew in from Tuscany for the day for the
17:58
thing and had to go back for a shoot.
18:00
And Biden's like, thank you for coming, thank you for coming.
18:03
And they're like, this is George Clooney who's running the whole
18:08
show. And then he wrote an op-ed that
18:11
I I hadn't remembered until they showed it where he was like you,
18:15
you got to, you got to get out. But yeah, the way it was delayed
18:21
really didn't you know, everybody's like, well, we
18:22
should have a primary. There was three weeks till the.
18:26
Yeah, right. What are you going to do you?
18:28
Know no way. You could have done, you know,
18:31
like American Idol slash Democratic National Convention.
18:37
You could have had, like, live polls on the three speakers.
18:41
And we're going to pick it up. We're going to announce it on
18:45
the fly. We're going to have the big
18:46
reveal now. What did you think?
18:50
Now, how does that square with because your thought was it was
18:55
a hit job after reading the book, do do you still think
18:58
that? There's no debate anyways, you
19:02
know. Yeah, there's no evidence to
19:04
that, although it did not address, unless I missed it, the
19:08
question of why did they schedule that debate so early.
19:12
I don't think that like, if it was a strategic move, it was not
19:18
by the the core group. He calls them the Politburo.
19:22
And I can't remember the names Donnellan and Roschetti or I
19:25
don't know. And it it wasn't them, right?
19:29
They were not doing that. But I think the party maybe was
19:33
like, I don't think this is going to go well and we need to
19:35
do it early enough that we've got a a ripcord to pull if we
19:39
need to. Yeah, it is interesting.
19:42
You know, they talked a little bit about the scramble and it
19:46
sounded to me like, again, you know, I don't know, is this book
19:51
true? I've always kind of figured that
19:53
there's like 8 people who are running the show with money and
19:57
they just decide. And it didn't really sound like
20:00
that. It sounded like he called her
20:03
when he was going to announce that he was dropping out and his
20:06
and sent his draft of his remarks and there was nothing
20:10
about her in there and she was like.
20:14
Boss, you might tack a sentence on to this that says my vice
20:20
president would do a great job behind me, right?
20:23
And they wound up doing a separate statement.
20:26
But you know, she was a little chapped about that, but she got
20:30
on the phone right away and her first calls were Pritzker and
20:36
Whitmer and Buttigieg and, you know, the people that and, and
20:40
she was like, I'm doing this. Are are we good?
20:44
And, and put them on the spot. Well, then they're not going to
20:48
say like, oh, well, wait, I, you know, if you, if you, if you
20:53
weren't on a private phone call with her, if you were on the
20:55
news media, you'd be like, well, we just need the discernment of
21:00
the American people on that. You know, I don't want to cut
21:03
debate off too soon, but she'd kind of already roped them.
21:08
And I don't think she's, you know, everybody talks about she
21:11
was a terrible candidate. I think that she'd made a couple
21:14
of key mistakes. She'd runway way, way left early
21:18
on and had kind of staked out some positions that were hard
21:22
for her to reel back in. She did not have a lot of
21:26
visibility. I I don't think she was the
21:29
worst candidate in the world. The problem with her is she
21:32
doesn't have the personality to run.
21:35
She's not. She does not come off remotely
21:38
authentic. She has a, she's not good, you
21:43
know, with these the infamous word salads all the time.
21:46
She's not good at just speaking off the cuff and people that are
21:49
in, you know, it makes sense. She's not really a career
21:52
politician. I mean, she's done it the last
21:54
few years. But you know, she grew up as a
21:56
lawyer. She's not like Joe Biden could
21:59
rattle off crap when he was in his prime.
22:03
Like he could make a speech anywhere and make it sound, you
22:06
know, if you're a congressman, you, you could say stuff.
22:08
She's always was uncomfortable it seemed like.
22:12
Yeah, I, I guess I'm saying, I don't know that it was the worst
22:16
possible thing, but there was a lot of fear too, like that Jim
22:22
Clyburn, I was going to go down that path.
22:23
He was not happy about it before.
22:27
He was like, they're going to, they're going to bail this,
22:30
they're going to they're going to goof this up and they're
22:32
going to hand it to her at the last minute with no prep.
22:36
And they're going to be like, see, the woman blew it.
22:39
The black woman blew it. Well, you know, you said
22:42
something a minute ago that made me think about I, you know,
22:45
everybody feels like there's so much conjecture that
22:49
everything's all orchestrated. And, you know, the Trilateral
22:52
Commission is deciding you're the next president of the
22:54
Bohemian Grove. And, you know, I was just
22:57
thinking about that, like how much of that is really because
23:02
it's more comforting to a degree to think there's really smart
23:07
people running everything and making all these decisions that
23:11
that's more comfortable than what I think is probably the
23:14
truth is it's just a bunch of Yahoo like us that regular
23:20
people making decisions and it's messy and ugly and not really
23:24
that organized, you know what I mean?
23:25
Like, like people want the conspiracy.
23:27
I feel like the conspiracy is more of like a comfort factor.
23:30
Like, Oh yeah, you know, the the trilateral is calling all the
23:33
shots. You know, there's somebody in
23:34
charge. No, it's just a bunch of idiots
23:36
like us, you know, figuring it out.
23:39
I think, yeah, you know, it's actually an interesting point.
23:42
And I, I agree it's a little different to think about it that
23:46
it really is happening live. Some of the most humanizing
23:50
moments were when Schumer finally decided he needed to go
23:56
and he they had a meeting of Senate Democrats and he was
24:01
like, I got to go talk to him. I don't think his people,
24:04
there's this big question of like, are his people telling him
24:08
that it's a disaster, that it's a bloodbath?
24:13
And you know, the, of course, the Senate and the Congress,
24:15
they're like, you're going to drag me down with you.
24:18
That's what they're thinking. And so Schumer gets on the train
24:23
and goes to Wilmington or to to Rehoboth Beach to the and it it
24:29
said, and you could, you could clearly, you know, they didn't
24:32
footnote it, but you could clearly hear like he had said
24:35
this to Tapper or the other guy. He's like, I'm riding on the
24:38
train. I'm going through in my head.
24:42
How do you erase that subject with the president of the United
24:46
States? Yeah.
24:48
And it sounded so human and so real, like.
24:51
Like taking the keys away from your 8 year old father.
24:54
Like multiple people said that exact thing.
24:57
Wow. And, and you picture Chuck
25:00
Schumer going to Delaware to tell the president of the United
25:04
States, you, you, you got to get out.
25:07
Like I, I don't know, in some ways I in, in some ways it was
25:12
to your point, like it's a little, a little frightening to
25:16
think about. Like this stuff really is in the
25:19
hands of human beings to me. It can work out, but kind of
25:24
nice that it's in the hands of human beings to work it out.
25:28
And I don't know it, it felt very human to me.
25:32
Yeah, Yeah, it sounds like it. Yeah.
25:34
Chuck Schumer, I'm, I'm not. There's probably little things
25:38
that come out of his mouth in the political realm I would
25:40
agree with. But he actually seems like a I'm
25:44
going to, you know, all the conservative people listening
25:48
are going to cringe when I say this, but he seems like an
25:51
actually a pretty nice guy. I read an article about him by
25:56
his staffers and his staffers were saying like he is a, you
26:00
know, all these staffers start working for him and he's like,
26:03
so when are you getting married? You like his big thing is
26:06
making, you know, creating families, like people creating
26:10
families and, and a life together.
26:12
And he talks about marriage all the time and about the benefit
26:16
of, you know, a family and everything.
26:19
I you know, it's like he sounds like a, he sounds like a nice
26:22
fella. I mean, and he, and he's one of
26:24
those guys too. I mean, he he even, you know, I
26:29
don't know, I've seen him interact with Trump a few times
26:32
where, you know, totally disagree with each other.
26:35
But he's one of those guys that seems like you could reach him.
26:38
You know what I mean? It's not like he's like, oh, you
26:42
disagree with me, I hate you. You know, kind of, it seems a
26:45
little more old school, I think. Well, you know, he's also, I
26:49
mean, he's good at his job. He, he knows that he know, you
26:53
know, there's the old thing. You know, those who know that
26:56
they know, those who don't know that they don't know, like he
26:59
knows that he knows. He's, he, he's good at his job.
27:03
And in fact, that was one of the things that he said to Biden.
27:08
He's like, look, we did not take a vote.
27:11
But based on what all of the Democrat senators said, he said
27:16
if we'd have taken a vote, I don't think you'd have had more
27:19
than five votes in your favor. And you know how good I am at
27:24
counting votes. It's like, and, but you know,
27:29
like he does. He's, he's good at for, for what
27:31
it's worth, I think probably someone who grates you a lot
27:34
more. I have never understood the
27:37
loathing and hatred for Nancy Pelosi, other than that she's
27:42
the leader of the Democratic Congress, who she was incredibly
27:47
effective. Incredibly effective.
27:50
Yeah, yeah, except she makes me want to vomit every time I hear
27:54
her up, get up and talk. I don't know, Just from a
27:57
personal standpoint, like Chuck, I could deal with Nancy, just
28:01
the personality or nails on a chalkboard.
28:05
But, you know, I'm sure not a lot of it has to do with her
28:09
political persuasion and. I just you, you, you, you don't
28:13
find very many people in the history of the Republic that
28:15
have led in the House of Representatives in and out of
28:19
power so effectively for so long.
28:22
I mean, she's a, she was a force.
28:25
Yeah. Yeah, it was.
28:27
It was an interesting book. I really would encourage people
28:30
to read it again. There was not.
28:32
I was kind of waiting for some like, Oh my gosh, mic drop
28:36
smoking gun moments and to your point, cover up.
28:40
I mean, it was a lot nature, the whole thing.
28:44
Then I'm thinking too like, is this why did he write this book?
28:49
Like, is this like a Maya culpa of like, you know, trying to
28:54
gain some credibility in some way of like, no, I, I, you know,
28:58
all the all my defenses of his of his sound mind.
29:04
I, you know, I mean, I was completely.
29:08
I was completely bamboozled. By the campaigns.
29:11
Cover up. This massive cover up, I thought
29:15
everything was fine, like OK. Yeah, you do wonder if it's kind
29:21
of like trying to claw your way out of the.
29:25
Trying to make sure he doesn't go down is the next day and
29:27
rather or something like that, yeah.
29:31
No, it's a good, it's a good point.
29:33
I do. I do wonder about that a little
29:35
bit. No, it was, it was a good, it
29:38
was a good book, but there were no, like I said, there's.
29:42
No dizzy narrated. Yeah, Yeah, he did.
29:45
But there's no moment where you're like, I had no idea.
29:50
No, you you had every idea of everything.
29:53
We all saw it, you know? And I will.
29:56
Does he? Say, is there anybody in the
29:57
book that is still a Die hard that thinks he should have
30:01
stayed in? Only those like 3 people around
30:04
him, they all think he should have stuck it out.
30:07
Yeah. In fact, they were like, well,
30:09
see, we gave her over Kamala and she lost it.
30:13
He'd have beat Trump. Well, no.
30:16
Well, Jill, Jill's got to be one of those because Jill despises
30:20
Kamala Harris. I mean you can tell every time.
30:22
They see each other, Yeah. Which, you know, again, it's
30:25
like, I don't know. I mean, but that's the thing.
30:27
If I guess if you think you're good enough to be the president
30:30
of the United States or be the wife of the president, you
30:32
probably have a different opinion of yourself in the world
30:35
than I do. But it's like, right, Isn't he
30:38
better off going to Hawaii when he's 80 and then enjoy a few
30:41
years before the guy dies? I'm like, you know, how is that?
30:44
I don't know. I just, I don't that state of
30:48
mind I don't get. But there's folks like that
30:50
that, you know, they could be doing that till the day they
30:52
died. They do it all day, every day.
30:54
But. One of the things that the book
30:57
traces the decline to, I mean, you know, obviously it was a
31:01
long time coming. We all saw it, but very, very
31:05
closely correlated with Hunter's decline and crash too.
31:11
Like that was, you know, they pointed that out a lot.
31:13
Like kids, Like look at the milestones when Hunter was
31:17
charged, when he was convicted. Like those were like big steps
31:23
down for him. Which?
31:25
Which I could see that. Yeah, Parent, you see your kid
31:30
go through something that adds years, takes years away for
31:32
sure, I'm sure. Go through something or some or
31:35
that they do something that you know, talk about a mess, man,
31:40
that whole thing just. What happened with him?
31:43
Did they ever charge him with anything?
31:45
Yeah, they charged him. They charged him and convicted
31:50
him of buying a gun while he was an active drug addict.
31:55
Because you got to answer on the form, no, I'm not using any
31:58
illegal drugs, by the way. That made me wonder.
32:01
Like. Is that law still on the books?
32:03
I think it is. And given the prevalence of
32:07
cannabis in this country, that's still federally illegal.
32:12
Like, is that a thing? I'm not really in the market for
32:15
handguns. That's interesting.
32:17
But like, because that was the crime that they charged him for
32:21
and for which he was convicted for falsely, you know, a false
32:27
affidavit when buying a gun was the crime that he was convicted
32:30
of, which I thought was, you know, like, there was a lot
32:34
there that convicted him on, but that was the one.
32:37
And the other one was a tax evasion thing.
32:40
So he was convicted, but it was before his sentencing that Biden
32:44
pardoned him. And so it all kind of went away.
32:47
Yeah, Well, you know, it's funny, a little off subject, but
32:52
I wouldn't mind. It'd be an interesting topic to
32:54
do. I haven't followed the Texas
32:57
Legislature at all. And I I do like the way they run
33:00
Texas. I mean, I love the economic
33:03
economy and you know that I think they do a lot of things
33:05
right. But it sounds like there's some,
33:09
I don't know. They're about to pass a bill.
33:10
I think they just passed a bill banning cannabis in Texas, like
33:15
banning all the delta 8 and all that stuff.
33:18
Which is really weird to me because it seems like it
33:22
certainly seems like the Trump agenda is a much more laissez
33:26
faire kind of almost what's the term I'm thinking of the what's
33:33
the political viewpoint of let people live their lives?
33:38
Libertarian. Kind of.
33:39
Libertarian. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
33:41
I mean, he seems to take a much more libertarian position.
33:44
And this is like an old school Republican conservative.
33:49
Like we're going to get rid of that.
33:50
So I don't know I I need to read up on it but.
33:53
Well, I think of course, and I, I think I've, I've said this, I,
33:56
I detest Trump personally, but I don't think his personal beliefs
34:04
are as much of like on the social issues.
34:07
I think he's pretty liberal on social issues, which is, you
34:11
know, kind of out of phase with his.
34:13
It's, it's the, it's the people that he empowers.
34:17
And that's what I would call what's happening.
34:19
If if that's what's going on in Texas and there's other places
34:22
in the country, it's not Trump who's the problem, but Trump and
34:27
the mag movement have empowered people that I think are out of
34:30
out of their minds. Well, but it's kind of like that
34:34
that I guess my point is that seems to be a position that's
34:38
out of step with the rest of the mega movement.
34:40
So then it becomes like, you know, well, I mean, that's a
34:43
whole other topic for another day.
34:45
But it's like, then it's like, what is a Republican, you know?
34:48
I, I think it's a huge issue, Kyle.
34:50
And, and you know, you mentioned about personality, you know, I,
34:55
I maintain this to this day. Trump has atrophied the
35:00
Democratic Party because all we do is hate Trump, right?
35:03
Like we just hate Trump. And I, I do.
35:06
And it's, it's easy for me to overlook things like my party's
35:12
candidate is senile because I hate Trump and this and that,
35:19
because I hate Trump. And but the, the equal and
35:24
opposite reaction to that in politics.
35:26
And, and I, I say this, I think that the Republicans have a lot
35:30
more to lose because just as the Democrats have slipped into this
35:34
easy thing, we hate Trump. And so we don't do anything.
35:37
We don't go much deeper than that.
35:40
I don't want this to sound confrontational.
35:42
But confrontational, No. I I think a lot of the stuff
35:48
that like Trump wanted to be president, he was not a Mitt
35:54
Romney Republican conservative and said I have this vision for
36:00
getting our nation back to a Bible belief.
36:03
No, that was never his thing. And I also don't think I mean
36:08
talk about economics and and fiscal policy.
36:12
Say what you want to about doge, this budget that the House of
36:17
Representative passed adds $3 trillion / 10 years to the
36:22
deficit. That that's not a fiscally
36:26
conservative position. If it's if it's what you think
36:29
is the right thing, the tax cuts, I mean, OK.
36:32
So it's a $300 billion deficit. The deficit in the last budget
36:36
was 2 trillion. In one year.
36:39
Yes. I believe you, but 3 trillion
36:43
seems like a lot of money to me too and so.
36:46
I mean, 20 trillion would be a lot in 10 years.
36:50
Right, But who? There's 1.1, there's 1.8
36:53
trillion in the last budget deficit, so now it's down to
36:57
three trillion, 300 billion. OK, yeah, 300 billion is a lot,
37:00
but it's a hell of a lot less than 1.8 trillion.
37:03
Yeah, fair. I just it, it seems like BS to
37:06
me is what it seems like. Oh, doge is going to cut 2
37:09
trillion, no 170 billion and we still maintain tax cut.
37:14
If, if, if you want to balance the budget, why are you giving
37:17
away $2 trillion a year in tax cuts?
37:21
You're but but I mean 300. Billion on a $5 billion budget,
37:26
you're that's closer to balance in the budget than we've been in
37:30
10 years. I mean, we haven't had a $300
37:32
billion deficit. Well, that Joe Biden hasn't.
37:35
Been president for 10 years either, but every but every
37:38
year, every year he is. President, it was trillion.
37:41
Oh well. Over a trillion in deficit
37:44
spending. What was what was Trump's?
37:46
Yeah, it wasn't that big. Look it.
37:48
Up. We'll look it up.
37:49
We'll look it up. Let's.
37:50
Have our math together the next time.
37:52
But but I yeah, I don't. Well, I don't want to sideland.
37:55
That I'm just saying that here's what Here's my hypothesis.
38:00
I think that, like, Trump didn't run because he wanted to lower
38:05
the deficit. You might think that's a good
38:07
thing. Trump wants us all to be working
38:09
in sneaker factories. He wants to bring manufacturing
38:13
back. He's got like, I think, I think
38:15
weird ideas, but it's a brilliant idea.
38:18
Not sneaker factories, but there's a lot of factories we've
38:20
talked about that. There's a lot, lot of
38:22
manufacturing that I think will be beneficial for this.
38:25
Anyway, here's my point that. A lot of the people that voted
38:28
for Trump voted for him because he's an asshole.
38:32
They voted for him because of the swagger.
38:34
They not, not you. I think that you had in mind a,
38:38
a theory of economic policy that you saw that he would deliver
38:42
for you, that he maybe has, maybe hasn't.
38:46
I think that there are that there are voters that got him
38:49
over the finish line who are not true believers in the
38:53
conservative movement and honestly that but that.
38:57
I guess that's my point though. He didn't run as a conservative.
39:00
He didn't run as a Romney Republican.
39:02
Romney Republican is the rhino. I agree with you.
39:06
This is what? I'm saying I agree with you
39:08
about that. And I'm telling you, though,
39:11
that those people that aren't anchored to any ideology or
39:16
philosophy or kind of the low information voter, they're not
39:21
going to stick with the Republican Party because now
39:24
that, oh, Trump got me to vote for Republicans and now I'm all
39:27
in on Republicans, you're going to have to win those.
39:30
And those people did not come to you.
39:33
I'm not talking about everybody, but but enough of a margin to
39:36
put him over the top are not people that were like, oh, I
39:40
really want tax cuts because because my state and local.
39:44
No, because they didn't, they didn't get any tax cuts out of
39:47
it. You're going to have to do
39:49
something to the the traditional Republican philosophy is not
39:54
going to keep those people anchored to your party.
39:57
You're going to have to replace the but personality what will
40:01
keep them anchored to our. Party is the batshit crazy
40:06
leftist policies that the Democrats want to run the other
40:10
direction. I agree with you.
40:11
I think if the Democrats were smart, they could make a run to
40:15
the center and they can pull back a bunch of those folks.
40:18
But they're not going to. They're going to go further left
40:21
and they're going to alienate all these people.
40:23
I don't know, I I hope. You're, I hope you're not right.
40:26
I, I definitely agree with that. You know, I like the noise.
40:30
I'm here and out of Chicago lately.
40:32
Oh, one of the best comments that I can't use on our podcast
40:36
because of the language rules that we have agreed to.
40:40
You know who Ari Emanuel is Rahm's brother.
40:43
I don't he, he runs like Hollywood period.
40:48
Like he's he's the head of, I don't even know what the company
40:52
is now Endeavor. I am like they like anything.
40:56
That's anybody. Ari Emanuel runs in the
40:59
entertainment business and he was ballistic about Biden
41:04
running. But his brother Rahm has been
41:07
making some noise. And Rahm is a very centrist
41:10
Democrat, I think. Look, I think obviously there's
41:15
elements in my party that are full speed ahead as far left as
41:19
they can go. I think a lot of, I think a lot
41:22
of us are having the kind of existential conversation where
41:26
we say, how did we lose young men vote?
41:30
And, and I would say voting against their own interest.
41:33
Again, if you're, if you're rich, fine.
41:35
If you're not rich, these tax cuts, you're you're going to
41:38
lose. You're going to lose Medicaid.
41:43
We got families in this country that are on Medicaid.
41:46
You're on that. Train now you're going to lose
41:47
Medicaid and Medicare, and we're cutting well, I said Medicaid,
41:51
not Medicare. Yet but you.
41:53
Know that that. You know, not Trump, maybe, but
41:56
you know, some of those kooks in Congress would love nothing
41:59
better than to get rid of Social Security and Medicare, but
42:02
they're not willing to say it out loud.
42:04
I think you're, I think you're delusional.
42:06
But OK, you you don't think you'd find.
42:09
Anybody in Congress who would say if they could get away with
42:12
it, they would do away with Social Security, Privatize
42:14
Social Security completely. Yeah, if you can get away with
42:17
it. And you?
42:17
Can't so they're not for it. They're all they all want to get
42:21
re elected. I mean nobody's touching Social
42:24
Security. I mean it's better.
42:26
Well, I'm just saying I. I don't, I don't think that.
42:30
I don't think that the priorities in this budget are
42:33
especially a good deal for low income people and get a lot of
42:39
low income people who don't pay any taxes.
42:43
Well, right. Right.
42:44
Yeah, yeah, I just the no tax on tips is a biggie.
42:50
That's a plus. A lot of service people that
42:52
impacts a ton of service people. Although they probably weren't
42:55
going to pay any taxes anyways. Exactly.
42:58
So it's a freebie. Part part of me though, it's
43:01
like, OK. I feel like Trump's party is a
43:05
broad tent and it's shifted probably much more to the
43:10
center. If the Democrats can come up
43:12
with a candidate that's closer to the center, it's not going to
43:15
change that much. And I think, and I, I'm probably
43:18
OK with it. I mean, if, if Bill Clinton came
43:20
in and if a Bill Clinton ran for office and won, Steph's not
43:25
going to change a hell of a lot. You know, it's going to be
43:28
similar. And I think if the Democrats are
43:31
smart, that's where they'll go. But if they go further left, I
43:34
think it's a loser. Well I agree.
43:36
I I'm just I. Guess I'm just saying that I
43:41
believe that there are Republicans in leadership who
43:44
think that they have a mandate for their plan and they don't.
43:48
They have a mandate for Trump. Trump has a mandate to be Trump.
43:53
That's why he got elected. And.
43:55
And somebody who thinks and and I think that Mike Johnson is
43:59
classic example. This is what I'm talking about
44:01
these, you know, some of that Freedom Caucus, I think they're
44:06
thinking, oh, we maybe we get him to run a third term or we'll
44:09
get Don Junior to be president next.
44:12
And then finally we'll be able to get rid of Social Security.
44:15
And I'm just like, no, why are they?
44:17
Why do you think they're I? I just.
44:21
Don't get that as the. The core belief that all these
44:24
people are wanting to get rid of Social Security, Why would they
44:27
want to get rid of Social Security?
44:28
Through the years, I've heard a lot of.
44:30
Conservatives talk about, well, we should just privatize Social
44:33
Security. I've, I've heard that and maybe
44:35
I'm wrong. They're, you know, they're not,
44:37
it's not. Well, wasn't that in?
44:39
I don't know. What was that part of Project
44:42
2025? Yeah, I don't know.
44:44
Is that in there? I mean, so, but let's pick this.
44:47
OK, so. Take my Social Security claim
44:49
out of the thing, Project 2025, Trump's, like I don't have
44:52
anything to do with that. Those people think that they had
44:55
a mandate for Project 2025. They didn't.
44:58
Trump has a mandate to be Trump. So you don't think Trump is?
45:02
Playing the 2025 rule book like you do.
45:04
He doesn't care about that stuff.
45:06
He doesn't care about that stuff at all.
45:08
That's what you thought before is that he was going to.
45:10
Enact Project 2025 now you're not worried about it.
45:13
Maybe I've misspoken? Kyle, I never thought that he
45:16
gave a half a damn about that stuff.
45:18
But the Freedom Caucus, all that crew, they do think that and
45:23
they do want to pass that. And because Trump won, they got
45:26
up, they got a majority and now they have both houses and Trump.
45:29
I never thought Trump wanted that stuff, but I think he
45:33
doesn't care about it. He doesn't care about it enough
45:35
to to veto it. He doesn't care about any of the
45:38
social issues, but he got those people elected and he's not
45:43
going to argue with him. He'll sign whatever they pass
45:46
and send up to him on that kind of stuff.
45:49
So, yeah, I think it's a very real danger, but not because
45:52
Trump cares about it. Yeah, I think I I disagree.
45:55
With you, I mean, I get where you would think of that, but I
45:59
don't think he's nearly as ideologically shallow as you
46:02
like to think he is. I don't, I don't know that he's,
46:06
you know, there's probably a lot of things he doesn't have long
46:09
thought out positions on. But the same time, I think he
46:12
has a lot of instincts about many of the things that he's
46:15
doing that are important to him. Yeah, I don't know.
46:18
I think I think a lot of what he's doing, he's thought about a
46:21
really long time. I don't know, but I can
46:24
certainly. I I obviously wouldn't expect
46:27
you to think that. I will give you props though,
46:30
just. As an aside, you used a Latin
46:31
phrase earlier in our conversation when you said Maya
46:34
culpa and and used it properly. I think that's commendable.
46:38
It's unfortunate the Secretary of Homeland Security apparently
46:43
was absent on the Constitution Day when they defined habeas
46:47
corpus. Did you catch that one?
46:50
I didn't. I missed that one.
46:51
Christy Gnome they were. She was.
46:53
In in case in case you didn't see.
46:55
What I'm looking at, I haven't been paying a lot of attention
46:58
to the news the last couple of days.
46:59
Well, you're smart for that. But one of the Congress people
47:03
was Grill and Christy Noeman. They're like, tell me what
47:06
habeas corpus means. And she's like, well, it's a
47:09
power that the president has. And it's just like, yeah, no,
47:14
remember when Republican congressman carried the little
47:18
pocket Constitution that they'd wave at you?
47:21
This chick doesn't even know what the words mean.
47:24
It was embarrassing. Hey, thanks for joining us on
47:31
this episode. Of Bourbon and Rum Podcast.
47:33
We hope you enjoyed it. Remember to subscribe on your
47:36
favorite platform and leave us a review.
47:38
Your feedback helps us keep the good spirits flowing, and we
47:42
invite you to join this conversation.
47:44
Follow us on our Facebook page. Let us know what you think, let
47:47
us know what you want to hear. And until next time, cheers.