935 - It’s Joever feat. David J. Roth (5/19/25)

All I wanna be is ill jumped.

All I wanna be is ill jumped.

We need a bomb tail press.

All I wanna

Hello, everybody.

It's Monday, May 19th, and Chapo is back at it again.

Well, folks,

for today's episode, we've been planning this for a week or so now.

We wanted to do an episode about the

new spate of revelations about Joe Biden's senility, how it was hid from the public, and the sort of just general ass covering effort that's going on right now to convince you that people are on top of this or that they simply didn't know any better.

Well, the news cycle has gifted us.

We don't have to talk about that anymore.

We can just talk about his impending death.

And joining us to do that is our old pal, one of the Chapo all-times, David Roth, is back on the show.

David, welcome.

What's up?

How are you guys?

Doing good.

I guess just, like I said, by way of introduction to this show, I'd like to begin the show like this.

I've prepared a little monologue.

I've seen things.

Seen things you Max wouldn't believe.

Amtrak's on fire off the shoulder of the beltway.

Listen, listen, shut up.

I watched gold of my ear glitter in the darkness near Jerusalem Gate.

All those moments will be lost in time.

Like, dears in the rain.

Anyway, I'm sorry.

Time to die.

He thinks I'm kidding.

I'm not kidding.

Oh, man.

So, yeah,

that sturdy little Biden imitation you got there, man.

Well, I was just like, is it just a matter of raising your voice?

Is that the secret to having a voice?

Yeah, I just sort of like I try to copy Felix and Andrew Hudson's.

I mean, like, I'm sure they could do it better, but you know, I just wrote this one up.

It's about, so it's halting, it's stopping, and getting loud, and then we're then quiet, and then crucially at some point, you have to say, anyway, I'm sorry.

I think Andrew does the best one.

He said my favorite fake Biden-ism, which is like, everybody knows that when you want to be Santa, you got to work like an elf.

Which is, it's, I, yeah.

I mean, I know people say this about everything.

I think about this all the time.

I legitimately think about that every day because it's a perfect like 2019 Bidenism where it's like, on one hand, I'm thinking, we should send this guy out in a canoe in the Bering Strait.

But on the other hand, I do think that's true about being Santa Claus.

But the key to doing it really is the random yelling.

My sister has a like very good, one of the first people to do a Biden impression.

And she talked about how, you remember the first debate they did where Castro like got,

you know, they painted a big scarlet A on his chest and like put him on a dunking stool and killed him for saying that Biden seemed old.

His closing thing in that debate was like, I remember John McCain came up to me and said, you're a never man.

I'm a never man.

We'd be my Paul Barents.

I'd be an honor man.

This is what it's all about.

And not this vague, vague bullshit.

Like he's saying he gets, he remembers that he's senile and then he gets really mad.

And he's like, ah, I was supposed to do this when I was normal.

Well, I mean, we all must have saw it yesterday headline, former President Joe Biden diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer.

And, you know, apparently it's it spread to his bones.

But like I thought about this

in this context because I looked this up, and this is an article from NPR from February 28th, 2024.

The headline is, Biden just got a physical, but a cognitive test was not part of the assessment.

And, like, it goes on to say that, like, you know, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that his doctors determined he didn't need a cognitive exam, though Biden's longtime doctor did not address the matter directly in report.

So, I guess my question here is, did they give him any kind of exam?

Yeah, this is something that's emerged in the coverage of this, is that he seems to have like the opposite relationship with his doctor of every old person that I know.

Like my parents' social life at this point, they are, my dad is Biden's age, my mom a couple years younger.

Their social life is basically going to the doctor and talking to their doctor.

And that's, you know, I think it's fairly rewarding for them.

They certainly are right on top of their health outcomes.

But the idea of this, that there's the neurologist that kept visiting the White House that apparently has been like Biden's neurologist for many years.

It's unclear what he was ever doing there if he was never administering this test.

Like it seems like he was just kind of popping by to like talk about the Phillies for a little while and be like, well, all right.

It's 2.30 p.m.

We need to get you ready for bed, sir.

Like to let the staff handle it.

It's just like, so do you know anyone where it's like,

I would let them drive a car or dog sit me.

dog sit in my house.

They just have a neurologist that sees them once a week.

like having a neurologist that's always seeing you in the first place is kind of alarming, but like you, you bring up a great point.

Was it like literally that conservative meme where he gives him a puzzle with two pieces and he gets it most of the time?

And he's like, all right, pretty good.

I mean, the actual test, too, is basically, I mean, I think that the one that they're referring to is the one that Trump often brags about, like, acing, which is basically like,

yeah, it's like point to an elephant and he's like, right on top of it.

You know, like if you can't put the drawing of an elephant in front of the president of the United States because you don't know what he's going to point to, then like, I do feel like that's one of those deals where you got to let people know a little bit more that that's the case.

Like, he's right on the elephant 70% of the time during the middle part of the day.

That's news that you can use.

Do you think that, like, I mean, because it's also a great point about how, like, they didn't figure this out until like the

polyps in his prostate became sentient and were like hey what about us like

a faint voice talking about scrint and high school football outcomes coming in his pants and they're like that's probably for a lot of older people that just happens

hey we want to get back in the white house

you gonna get us in i think it's because like they're probably trying because it's just like they're like well sir you haven't your eye hasn't melted in the past week but you know it's still good to do a checkup because you look disgusting and you're ancient and you probably should have died by now.

Like, they want to give him a prostate exam or something, and he, but he bite it such an asshole that he's probably like, what are you talking about?

What do you mean?

You give the other guy a prostate exam?

You're like, okay.

I was talking with my dad in Scranton.

We saw two fellas giving each other a prostate exam.

I said, what's this?

He said

they're gay.

It's medical best practices, Joey.

It's a good idea for anyone your age.

Donald Trump could come out there smoking a cigarette and canning without the lotion.

They'd say, there's no cancer for him, but I'd do anything.

They could say I have to get cancer.

No, I'm not getting the test.

I've also learned that the test that needs, this is not like exclusively learned, I crack the case.

I did read a blog post about it.

The test that he would be getting.

doesn't involve his trusted neurologist and apparent best friend putting his finger in his asshole.

It's a blood test it's like a blood test that they would do when they took blood for the basic physical workup that you would get which again raises the question of like what yeah what kind of innovation were he

fitting yeah like you know like did they just like what they're like i'm looking at your results here right now mr president and it's a okay and it's just like the rebound of like a slot machine

yeah

jackpot it's all cherries sir congratulations but uh but but zeke emmanuel was on uh morning joe today today, and I believe he was involved in the Biden White House.

He was some like, you know, health official.

He's like a cancer doctor for many years.

He said Biden has had this cancer since like since he was elected the first time.

It is also.

He said there is no way that Biden developed this cancer in the last 200 days.

The one bit I'd add to that is that while I imagine that that's true, it is also extremely Emmanuel family values to go on Morning Joe and be like, I haven't examined Joe Biden.

I don't know the man, but I'm going to tell you a little bit about the disease that will almost certainly take his his life at some time.

I would estimate in the next nine weeks.

Yeah.

Popping off.

No caveats.

Okay.

So like, obviously, when I saw this news yesterday, all I could think about was like, it just made me regret so much that he didn't win this presidential election.

Oh, my God.

Just like Kamala could actually have been president.

Okay, I was just like reading from the news article here about it.

It says at the end, typically a patient is treated with hormone therapy that blocks the production of testosterone, which helps the cancer grow, He said, He could definitely live many years with this.

There's a wide range of how long people can live with metastatic prostate cancer.

In most aggressive cases, under a year, but there are reports of people living 15 or 20 years, too.

Let's get run again.

2028, yeah.

2028.

Let's go.

Will, I was, I really like that hypothetical.

If, like,

you know, because you can see it, like, he stays on, and then there's like, like, there's a weird J.D.

Vance thing.

It's like, okay,

we found JD Vance's drowning fetish YouTube channel.

Like a real black swan event,

to take a concept from Dr.

Taleb.

And Biden wins by a single digit amount of EVs,

instantly dies from the stress of having Billy Porter twirl around at his inauguration.

By

Billy Porter wearing Homer Simpson's obesity movement,

spinning so fast that it ruptures both his arms.

Bradley Whitford quips so pointed that Biden dies instantly.

On the spot, he evaporates like a Dark Pole's 3 Black Knight.

And Kamala becomes president.

That is maybe the worst scenario if you don't want Republicans to do well, because then it's just like they win every seat in every,

all the state legislatures.

legislatures.

It's completely, completely over.

Like that guy who gets his pictures taken, you know, wearing a Trump shirt,

he's probably like our ambassador to the U.S.

The Brick Suit Man is a junior senator from the state.

Yeah.

I love the brick suit guy.

Brick Suit Man's great.

at brick suit man on every uh social media platform if you want to see what he's up to

yeah like they would give the medal of honor to like i don't know they'll find they'll find like the pipe bomb guy from january 6th that thing they always talk about and be like oh no actually it did happen and we're giving him the medal of honor and also kamala as like a two-year two or three year if biden dies like midway through that would be the funniest presidency ever i i oh my god yeah so i mean see i i think i i see i think if that happened and biden died in office they would do something and like be like hey kamala how about we give you Secretary of State?

But we're getting Hillary Clinton in here.

We're getting someone else in there because I don't think they ever wanted her to be president.

That's like the point that people made about like the initial tariff thing, where it's like, if President Bernie Sanders was doing that, like Tim Cook would have been installed as the president of the United States within 48 hours of those being announced.

Like, certainly, like, the idea of like the apparatus swinging into effect in a constitutional crisis and being like, for the good of America, like, George Clooney is acting president.

Under Kamala, they would just, I mean, they would just cut up the middleman and make like Isaac Herzog the president.

Okay, so like, like all last week, we were like, you know, thinking about doing this episode because they're like, there's all this, there's, you know, the new Jake Tapper book.

There's all this media speculation.

Like, all the Democratic pundits are like, wow, how could I have got this so wrong?

Like, we need to.

It's a truly vile discourse cycle.

Just diseased at every level.

But like, all of this was about them covering up his obvious senility.

But like, now we're dealing with the fact that like there's a strong possibility that they also covered up his impending death from cancer.

It was very unclear from the initial, again, obnoxious tapper Axios Thompson news cycle what the game plan was like if they somehow carried him across the finish line, like just awake for like five and a half hours a day, generally no idea what's going on.

Like it wasn't clear what any of the five or six people on the inside were going to do to continue to run the country in that sort of scenario.

At this point, it makes it like the gamble seem psychotic.

Beyond, it like went from being like a normal political level of sociopathic, where it's just basically people being like, we'll figure it out, but we got the best and the brightest to being like, there's no reason why a dead guy can't be president.

I mean, I think you're seeing it.

You're seeing it now because

I don't know if you've seen what the Democratic line has been

since this broke, but it has been like, okay,

if you thought

the Thompson and Tapper

helping the Biden people cover their ass book was evil before for

revealing all the games of tic-tac-toe that he lost,

it's especially evil now because they're doing it about a dying man.

And it's just like not that long ago, you were saying this dying man should be, he should serve another four four years as president.

That there is nothing wrong with them.

The only way, like, they're saying this exonerates them because it's mean.

Yeah.

And by the way, Felix, you're 100% right.

Of all the people who are like, how, how dare you make fun of me,

just a simple, young, 81-year-old man who's been diagnosed with cancer.

Just trying to,

I mean, how dare you dream of hanging on to power until his last moments on earth?

He had so much life left.

Yeah, yeah.

And no, but Felix, you're exactly right.

Anyone who's saying that, who is of the male gender, who has a prostate and isn't already pulling it out of his asshole to give to Joe Biden, is a fraud and a liar and a betrayer.

Yeah.

You want to live your stupid life until you die of old age when this grand old man, probably the kindest, the most decent American president we've ever had, is on death's door?

I don't think so.

Yeah,

I'll go one step farther.

Okay, I wasn't supposed to reveal this, but my friend at DARPA took me on a tour of his job.

It was Bring Your Friend to Work Day.

And I'm sorry if you're listening, but I have to make a point.

I hope you understand.

We have the technology.

We have the N-gram technology from Cyberpunk.

You can put someone's soul on a little flash drive and you can transfer them between bodies.

The problem was no one wanted to sacrifice their body for Joe Biden's.

All these people who had amazing prostates that had no problems, prostates that you could eat a meal off of,

they said, I love Joe Biden.

I'll give him my prostate, maybe, but he can't.

I'm not letting his soul take over mine and my body.

And now look what happened.

Donald Trump is president.

Because people wouldn't allow Joe Biden's cybernetic version of himself to pilot their body to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware

for seven weeks per year.

Yeah, it's really, it's really fucked up.

The tenor of these, of the, of these like spurious revelations about how out of it he was and like ass covering from like all these anonymous sources, it seems to me like this is part and parcel of like a perpetual cycle in DC where like between the media and the government, where like the government and people in charge of it do something spectacularly evil and stupid.

And then like everybody is aware of it in real time, but then spend years lying about it and covering it up.

And then, like, it crescendos to a point where simply like it cannot be contained anymore.

And I'm thinking specifically about like the Iraq war and like the lie WMD lies and stuff like that.

And somewhere around 2007-ish, 2008, or like certainly after Obama was elected, everyone kind of had to give up the ghost and be like, well, yeah, like, yeah, the Iraq war was a mistake, but like, how were we to know about it?

You know, like, yeah, I was going to say, there's been way more like gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over this story than there ever was over that shit already.

That there's been so much more, especially from like you know, Jake Tapper grade

being like, they lied to us.

Yeah, like they lied to our faces.

Like the 100 people in American politics that would get recognized in a Chipotle by a normal person, like, which is if it's 100, all of those people have been talking about this of late, like, being like, we have a charge to keep with the American.

And today, this day, i saw a clip

i saw a clip the other day and it was a it was a it was like it was just a screenshot of cnn and it was jake tapper hosting van jones and david axelrod and the comments were we were lied to about this people like people need to be held accountable it's like are you telling me david axelrod didn't know about the joe biden's mental state until this week yeah like this is and also the fact that this is the thing that they are willing to be like, all right, this one's on me.

Like, I really should have asked tougher questions.

All the other fucking shit that you're wrong about, all the stuff that got us to this moment, which is like, again, this is the other bit that's deranging about this particular discourse and the way that it was going on is like, this is a real low ebb in American history, right?

Like we are winding the clock back 130 years.

The dumbest people our country has ever produced are in charge and just like pouring grapefruit juice into the USB C ports of the computers that keep our country running.

And the discourse that is happening at this moment at the highest levels, not in the like the side that is propagandizing for like how good grapefruit juice is for the inside of a computer, but the other side is basically like, do you remember the time that Joe Biden fell off his bike?

I should have probably gotten more upset.

Yeah, that's that's on me.

Yeah, and

it's like in the context too of like all the aftershocks of the Biden presidency, be it the

grapefruit juice regime or,

the ongoing fucking genocide that he went out of his way to enable and

basically forfeited the election for.

It's this

agonizing Bartlett in the church type thing.

I try to call out the bastards, but sometimes I can be a dumb son of a bitch.

God damn it.

I fucked up.

But it takes a real newsman to admit, blah, blah, blah.

Like, like, we didn't, in 2019 didn't see Joe Biden look at a fat guy and go, what's his name?

Oh, right, fat.

Or when his eye filled with blood on the stage of the front Democratic primary debate.

Any of it.

Any of it.

They do that.

They're like, okay, we've apologized for the one thing we ever fucked up.

Anyway,

40,000 children have been killed.

Were they all in Hamas?

Was there a we go live now to the command structure that is under this kindergarten?

It's like, like, does this give you pause about anything else if you're Jake Tapper?

No,

beloved children's entertainer Ms.

Rachel doubles down on her controversial statement, it's wrong to kill children.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is a moment of reckoning.

All of America's parents must ask themselves whether they want somebody who is anti-child death to be entertaining their kids on YouTube.

Yeah, I mean, that's the bit of this, to your point, Felix, too, that, like, so much of the story that, you know, like to the extent that there's anything there beyond the kind of like gossip and like theatrical monologuing that you were talking about, the idea is basically, as I understood it, that the White House was running on something like energy saver mode since like 2023.

Like it was just basically on, it knew that the battery was low, so it was shutting down non-vital apps.

Nobody, except like three guys ever got to see Joe Biden.

And basically the rule was like, if you wanted to get your message to him, you would brief somebody that had known Joe Biden for 66 years, and then that guy either would or wouldn't tell him what you said.

So the government is at this point, like more or less piloting itself.

And yet, as you said, one of the things that the government was capable of doing during that period, during a time when there was effectively the minimum viable amount of governance going on, they were still able to just like...

on a quarterly basis sell $10 billion worth of bunker bustard bombs to Israel to drop onto tents.

That that's like something that the government can do, even if nobody's driving.

Yeah, yeah.

All the automatic functions of empire continued.

So we thought everything was fine.

God damn it.

Like, David, David, to your point about sort of the media reactions to this,

I think the selection I have that's most indicative of this is

New York Times opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg from last week.

The headline is, how did so many elective Democrats miss Biden's infirmity?

Oh, yeah, they missed it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, you know, I'm so sick of this woman.

She's such a dum-dum, and I hate that she gets to have a column just because she's Bill Goldberg's daughter.

Oh, wow.

Your dad got slapped on the back a lot by other naked guys in detroit.

I guess we should all listen to you now.

But she writes here, in 2022, after I wrote a column arguing that Joe Biden was too old to run for re-election, I had a bunch of conversations and at least on one cable TV debate with Democrats who thought I was wrong.

I don't remember there being much difference between what these Democrats said publicly and privately.

I certainly wasn't hearing off-the-record whisperers about Biden's decline.

Instead, officials and pundits I spoke to seemed convinced that it would be crazy for the party to give up the advantages of incumbency that a primary risk creating nasty fissures among Democratic factions.

And most relevantly, that Biden's legislative successes proved he was still up to the job.

Some of them appeared so sure I was mistaken and that I wondered if they might be right.

These doubts are why, to my shame, I didn't write another column calling on him to step aside until next year.

So like, we're seeing like Michelle Goldberg is admitting to the fact that like she was actually correct

long ago enough that like, yes, of course he was too old to run for president.

But then she was like, well, then paid surrogates for the Democratic Party lied to me and I believe them.

It's also so perfectly the Democrats that you're writing a column that was basically like, two years before anybody else noticed this very obvious thing, I wrote a column about this very obvious thing.

I'm sorry.

about having done that.

You simply cannot stand up there and be like, I'm a little bit mad about this thing that happened, and here's what I want to have happen instead.

Instead of just like breaking down tape, like the way if, like, whatever, you're watching the all 22 of the last two years and just crying at every punt return touchdown that you've allowed.

Instead of like getting to work on drawing up any sort of plays that would prevent you from losing games by six punt return touchdowns every two years.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, like, that's the thing is like, like, because there is no greater sin than being right too early.

Yeah.

You know?

Well, that's like the thing.

I think that's a point that people have made too about my colleague, I think Albert Bernico wrote this at Defector, which basically, like, the idea of like being right about the Iraq war before the Iraq war started was not beneficial to the careers of the people that were.

I mean, like, some of those people were kooks or whatever, like Scott Ritters and stuff like that.

Like, we're well read of it.

But there is also this other aspect of it where it's like, that's rude like the the essence of this is you're it's a breach of decorum it's it's rude and it's uncivil yeah so you're not fitting within this like if you were on the wrong end of that argument but within the boundaries of the discourse you're allowed to continue to be a part of it if you were outside of it you are just outside of it and that's the end of the game which i think is bad sorry i don't know if i think it's making that clear yeah i want to i want to get into um the the jake tapper book because like i i i have some i have like the excerpt this in the new yorker but um

there's a couple of good ones.

Like, this is just the biggest revelations in the new book on Joe Biden's troubling decline.

This is for New York magazine.

First one, Biden AIDS looked into the possibility he would need to use a wheelchair.

So, I mean, I guess he really was the next FDR.

That story, too, was one of those things where it's like, that was where, especially before this took the turn that it did with like the news that he's very sick.

So many of those headlines were that kind of like cheesy, like just trying to like spin all of these stories out of a book that no one has read all of or ever will read all of.

Yeah.

And so it's just like finding this other, like, yeah, plenty of people like to get onto and off of different things.

He needs assistance or whatever.

Like, I don't, I mean, I guess like if you work at The Hill and you have to be like, Biden used Bannister exiting airplanes.

Like,

you've got to do it or whatever.

But it's, yeah, I mean, the idea of that being in the New Yorker, too, is kind of another reminder of just how stupid this shit was from the jump, from the very beginning.

It says, per Per Axios, Tapper and Thompson write that Biden's physical deterioration, most apparent in his halting walk, had become so severe there were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair, but they couldn't do so until after the election.

Per the book, Biden's physician, Kevin O'Connor, had warned that the president had had a bad fall in 23 or 2024.

He might have to use a wheelchair while he recovered.

Not surprisingly, Biden's aides thought that it was untenable politically for him to use a wheelchair during his re-election campaign.

And then Dr.

Kevin O'Connor had long privately expressed concern that the toll of the presidency was taking on Biden's health.

The doctor often argued with Biden's political officials to get him more rest time into the president's schedule.

O'Connor sometimes quipped that Biden's staff members were trying to kill him while he was trying to keep him alive.

I'm not so sure about that, doctor.

Are you sure?

You can think so, Doctor, you're really trying to keep him alive?

Are you going to really make me draw blood from this man?

He's like that the tolls of the presidency are killing him.

My job as a doctor is to make sure he's still allowed to be president right my job as a doctor is to go there and sit while he mumbles something about darren dalton and then and then falls asleep in front of me in the white house and then leave that is if if if this guy's goal was to torture joe biden then he like mission accomplished you are like you are the perfect doctor you know you saw this man coming in that he was crying blood like lashif

you were like, what's wrong?

And he said, I'm not going to be able to

take my girl to see Bombi Darren.

And you said, okay, well,

we're going to give you a vitamin.

It's called Opana.

And it's going to be laced with another vitamin that is called cocaine.

We're going to give it to you so you can go to the Home Depot, presents the American Education Town Hall, and

you can call a college student a slur that John Wayne used

in a movie that was filmed in 1949.

I mean, this guy may be,

he may have given Joe Biden prostate cancer.

We don't know what he was doing in there.

We know it's not conventional medical procedures because they, like, they're not, I doubt they're even like hitting his knee with a mallet.

That might kill him.

Like, it causes like literal cartoon birds to fly around his knee.

We don't like, that is not a good indicator.

I'm not going to follow up on that, but I don't think that's supposed to happen at all.

Patient shook his head around and went,

a large welt appeared on the top of his head, but the patient was able to push it back down, making his head a normal shape.

Putting it in the official press release that the Hanna-Barbera sound was loud and vigorous whenever he walked.

That's the next book.

I was Joe Biden's doctor.

I could tell something was wrong when I came to the Lincoln bedroom one day to do a checkup and he was on all fours covered in polka dots and he had a tail, but at the end of his tail was a flag that had a baseball and a large screw painted on it.

I tried to warn the press about it, but a huge eraser appeared, a pencil eraser, appearing my reality

and stopped me before I was able to make a call.

All right.

Enough is enough.

This is the final, the very, very last straw.

Who is responsible for this?

I demand that you show yourself.

Who are you?

Emius thinker.

This is another one from the New York Post.

Biden forgot the names of longtime aides Jake Sullivan, Kate Bedingfield, halfway through his term.

Whoops.

There's another one here.

It says Democratic National Committee Chairman Jamie Harrison later that fall met Biden in a congressional black caucus event, and the president kept

shaking his hand without appearing to recognize him.

Oh, well, okay.

To be fair, I would do that to Jamie Harrison.

I would be, yeah, that is an instantly forgettable guy.

I mean, for people who don't remember, they made this guy the head of the DNC because he raised $7 trillion to lose to Lindsey Graham by like 50 points.

And

he had my favorite bio of all time on Twitter.

My friend said that it was like he Googled things to be a fan of.

It said, fan, Costco, Marvel, Bojangolds.

Oh, boy.

And it's like,

man, you do not have a lot going going on up there, do you, pal?

Like, well, I think it's the one thing I like more than going to Costco and getting six pounds of hummus at a time is watching a movie where Paul Rudd stands in an airplane hangar and goes, so that happened while wearing the motion.

Did you guys happen to see the wonderful discourse that occurred last week on this subject?

It was like

some white guy with glasses was just like, is disrespecting elders a thing in the white community?

And it was just like,

it was just like, because I have, like, I have never seen black people disrespect their elders the way white people do in the context of being like,

it's like, I'm not talking about my fucking grandparents.

God rest their souls.

I'm talking about the president of the United States, the guy who ran for president, I don't know, five or six months ago.

Yeah, like, okay, if the president shits, isn't Donald Trump an elder?

He's a white elder.

Yeah.

He deserves a respect.

I mean, second, like, I just, even the premise alone pisses me off.

Oh, yeah.

It's like, it's like, I'm sorry.

Have you not seen the incredible barbs and slander and jokes aimed at unks from the black community?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I'm not calling it out.

It's their business.

And I've retweeted a lot of the jokes.

Why does the president not deserve the respect of these?

Miscellaneous uncs are shooting poison everywhere and they're laughing at it.

Yeah, like, oh, the premise is flawed.

I don't believe, like, I mean, this is just one of those implicitly racist assumptions that, like,

a black guy would see like an old guy who's like a guy who's trying to fly a plane in this analogy, like the pilot on your flight.

And he's wearing a diaper and he's sucking a big lollipop.

And the only thing that he's wearing besides the diaper is like a sailor, like the top to a sailor outfit.

And he's, they're constantly like circulating new blood into him.

And he's like, well, I guess I, I would say something, but that's an elder.

Ghosts will kill me if I insult an elder.

The idea of like owing deference to these impossibly self-interested and in many cases, extremely old and cynical elected officials is, I mean, it's a, it's a pretty hotly contested race.

I think that is maybe the most deranging Democrat style tick that we've got.

The idea that like sort of that like Jim Clyburn, like, he deserves your respect.

You don't have to agree with him on everything.

And it's like, you know, look,

he's going to get elected until he dies.

That is what he wants, whatever.

I don't have, what do I have to respect about that?

Yeah, no, it's the same thing as the MAGA people, where it's not enough to win.

In this case, like, you know, snuffing out and nullifying any insurgent, any insurgent movement in the party.

Everyone has to like it too.

And like Jim Clyburn, we're going to trust that you won't look him up.

We're going to trust that since he's old, you're going to assume he was a civil rights hero and not what he actually is, which is black Mayor Quimby.

And you have to respect this incredibly cynical piece of shit.

Yeah.

There's also the other like Democrat element of this, which is that like Democrats love policing Democrat shit in public, which is maybe the most like obvious loser of a rhetorical tick that you could possibly have.

Like the idea that like everybody needs to get on TV and like just get some shit off their chest about how they feel about this story.

Like, how much did you know about how old the president was?

Like, did you know that that condition was worsening literally every day without saying anything?

And that all of that is like beyond the fact that it's stupid and that it's like insulting to people with real problems to hear, which is to say, any other problem but that you hear these people go on and on and on about this.

There's also the fact that it's like, why are you fucking washing your laundry in public like that?

If you guys need to get together at a really fancy golf resort and sit in a room and be mean to each other for a while, that's fine.

I might even read about it in Politico when all of the things that you guys said to each other come out a week later.

But I don't like that is not the stand-in for what is actually happening.

I mean, and this is a media tick too, but the idea that like this would be the sort of thing that Democrats are expected to like throw themselves into.

Elected public officials with actual power are supposed to speak on this instead of other shit is perverse.

David, that's a great point.

And, like, one of one of the things that, like, I always, if I could have changed anything about the DSA during the Trump one years, it would be that there, you know, PSL had a rule like this.

I always thought it was brilliant.

You cannot adjudicate intra-organizational issues online.

Because it just, like, if someone's on the fence they're like i don't know it seemed like i i talked to a guy who wears a lot of buttons he seemed annoying is everyone annoying and then you go online and it just these arguments about these things that you have

you could not possibly give a shit about not policy not anything like that just like aesthetics yeah it is it is like listening to someone you don't know complain about their job yes you know i i'm not saying don't argue about those things any organization that is trying to do anything is going to have internal disputes but keep them fucking internal.

Yeah.

Not even just for the reasons of like message discipline or like winning campaign.

Obviously, it helps for that too, but just also because like if you sit down next to me on the train and you're like, so this is what I told Dennis, because he's been on my ass all week.

I need to know who Dennis is or else this isn't going to work for me at all.

You know, it's elementary.

But the other thing, though, is this isn't like, oh, we think there's one way of doing things.

They think there's another.

This is the court disagreement.

It's like they're going, all these established Democrats, Democrats, like this Bakari Sellers asshole, who has been a paid surrogate of the Israeli lobby since he was like a college freshman.

They're basically going on TV and being like, I am such a good Democrat that I ignored all the warnings, the obvious warning signs of Joe Biden's senility.

I just, I will never criticize the equally ancient and even more cynical James Clyde

because I, I, like, I know how things work.

It's like if a bunch bunch of mafia guys went on TV and said, I would never snitch.

I would never talk about how my boss ordered me to kill this guy.

I would never talk about all the stuff I stole.

And it's like people can see you.

People can hear you.

People can see that you were on TV and bragging about how much of a soldier you were that you lied to them for the previous five years before this.

Well, Felix, I think we see like a very similar phenomenon going on in like a lot of the shit I've seen this week from from people who worked on Kamala's campaign, who are just like, I hope the uncommitted voters feel remorse, but like they show a shocking lack of guilt over what they did to the country.

It's just like, you were working for the campaign.

Like, who had more power in this equation?

And what they all say is like,

Kamala made all kinds of concessions to the Palestinian movement.

And the thing is, like, I don't think we should credit them with just lying about this.

I think for them and their like DC

ambitious, like social climbing way, I think that like in their moral universe, what Kamala did was a huge concession by saying like taking a phone call basically, like hopping on a Zoom with someone from Michigan.

Yeah, exactly.

Like, and I think

that's why they can't understand

why

people who are activists or like anti-war activists were not, did not get on board.

Because they were like, well, Kamala said the word ceasefire and said too many people have died, but like also made very clear that the arms shipments would continue and there'd be no daylight between her and Biden on this particular issue.

So I think like they feel this sense of betrayal and like that's why these same people now that like, you know, some of their like more weak-kneed cohorts are sort of coming out of the woodwork to be like, hey, yeah, we got this wrong.

Sorry, we lied to everyone about

his physical and mental fitness to run for re-election in the most important election of our lifetimes.

It was literally the stakes of democracy or fascism.

Yeah, we kind of screwed that up.

Like I think in their moral universe, they're like, they're continuing to help lose the election by telling the truth about what happened, belatedly, for self-serving, cowardly means.

that's the it's the self-serving thing i think is really important in terms of like trying to find a way to read this story like obviously the smart thing to do is just like you know the baseball season's going on the nba playoffs are happening don't pay attention to this particular shit like

know the basics of what's going on but like have you watched the timberwolves like that is a really interesting basketball team you should try that instead but i think if you are going to follow this the thing that I think is instructive to I mean to your point Will in terms of like the way that Kamala campaign people have like who they've chosen to blame and the theatrical way in which they've done it.

I certainly think that the way that this has been framed by, not just like by elite media people, but by people inside of the Democratic Party power structure that have positions that they don't want to relinquish, despite the fact that all they do is fucking lose in ways that make everybody's life worse.

That look at who they are.

saying is responsible for this and like standing up and being like, I believed it when Joe Biden's 71-year-old chief aide who will never work in politics again told me this thing that was very obviously untrue.

That is a very easy thing to say because winding up on the wrong side of Dr.

Jill Biden is like not going to hurt you if you want to stay working in democratic politics.

Like there, I mean, not anymore anyway.

I mean, it was clear that there was in that Biden family this fanatical keeping of score.

I mean, this is, I guess, pretty common politics shit, but like keeping of score of like, who was ever rude to you?

So like you said, if like, I don't remember which castro it was julian castro is like rude to you on a stage like that guy will you know never be able to get into a party that you're hosting ever again that's fine that's your business but in this case it's like if you if you're blaming activists or you're blaming this the inside circle of a guy who would never be present whose family members were actively being killed by american bombs right that like so in that case i mean it is definitely telling that that is like somehow putting yourself on the side of being like i bet you whatever, like just saying the most depraved possible shit about Palestinian Americans with real skin in the game and what's going on over there, because that is somehow safer than being like, I think that we should have put a person on stage at the convention.

Like the simplest little bit of pandering that they can't even, in retrospect, admit would have been the right move.

I wonder to what extent, I mean, because I, this guy who said this, he's awesome, by the way.

A friend on a locked account showed me something that I had never seen before because this was from the week.

Felix, I have the quote right in front of me.

Yeah,

just read the quote because you're not going to be able to guess this.

Amar Musa, a spokesman for Biden's campaign, criticized the news media for making note of the president's stumbles.

And I just said the context here is this is a New York Times article from July 4th of last year, headlined, Biden stumbles over his words as he tries to steady re-election campaign.

So Amar Musa, a spokesman for Mr.

Biden's campaign, criticized the news media for making note of the president's stumbles.

Quote: It was clear what President Biden meant when he was talking about his historic record, including a record number of appointments to the federal bench, he said, referring to the president's comments about being a black woman.

By the way, I'm proud to be, as I said, the first vice president, first black woman to serve with a black president.

I'm proud to have the first black woman in the Supreme Court.

There's just so much.

This is not news and the media has passed the point of absurdity here.

You got that right, Amra.

You got that right, Mr.

America.

When Joe Biden got on stage, experienced medical death, and then said, we've defeated Medicare, real American voters knew what he was talking about.

When Biden got up there and said, when I was on Soul Train,

and then we saw an outline of Joe Biden walking out of the room and then Joe Biden's physical body walking over to it and saying, Hey, get back here, pal.

That's a quick idea.

Everyone knew what was going on.

Just shows how out of touch you are that you think that doesn't happen every day in America.

So, like, this guy is awesome.

Um, you know, we used to exaggerate that, like, Simone Sanders' job was to go on all the morning shows and go, you know what he meant.

But it is literally the job.

But I wonder with a guy like him, you know, it's the same thing as that Federman guy, Trey Easton, who takes anything that will reveal that he works for Fetterman out of his Twitter file.

These people know, at the very least, that

most other people they encounter find the genocide, Israel's genocide, America's complicity in it, not complicity, America's facilitation of it, and specifically their employers'

singular roles

in whitewashing it and keeping it going and everything, they know that most people find that repulsive.

They might even, on some level, maybe think it's kind of bad.

So they know enough to like obscure things.

This Musa guy knows that,

well, most people don't approve of this, so I need to lay the blame on someone else.

I wonder if it's just, this is just like a mental barrier, so he never has to think, hey, what was I doing during that time?

Or does it go that far?

I don't know.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm inclined to read it through that basically, like, what are the things that you know that you can't say?

Not in some sort of like conspiratorial being like, beware of like, who can you criticize?

Like, you can criticize Joe Biden now.

Like, he is, he's not running for office again.

Although, you know, obviously I hope he has the 15-year life.

outcome that we were talking about earlier.

I just think that would be, I'd really love to see what he's like at 97.

but I think there's a little bit.

No, I mean, a lot of people are like, I, you know, a couple weeks ago, I said the most honorable thing he could do is just die at this point, but like, I really want to make sure Joe Biden lives as long as possible.

Well, he still loves to go on TV and say shit.

I mean, maybe this will be the end of that, but it was like weeks ago.

He went to the view like last week and was like, I would have won too.

Like, you should have seen the shit I had planned for the second debate.

I was going to do coin magic.

Well, I want to read a little bit from the actual Jake Tapper book.

This is what was excerpted in the New Yorker last week.

I just want to read a few things from it.

It says, it begins, President Joe Biden got out of bed the day after the 2024 election convinced that he had been wronged.

The elites, the Democratic officials, the media, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, they shouldn't have pushed him out of the race.

If he had stayed in, he would have beaten Donald Trump.

That's what the polls suggested, he would say again and again.

His pollsters told us that no such polls existed.

There was no credible data, they said, to support the notion that he would have won.

All unspun information suggested that it would have been a loss, likely a spectacular one, far worse than that suffered by his replacement as a Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.

And it says here, what was going on in private was worse.

While Biden, on a day-in, day-out basis, could certainly make decisions and assert wisdom and act as president, there were several significant issues that complicated his presidency.

A limit to the hours in which he could be reliably function,

and an increasing number of moments when he seemed to freeze up, lose his train of thought, forget the names of top aides, or momentarily not remember friends he'd known for decades, not to mention impairments to his ability to communicate, ones unrelated to his lifelong stutter.

And, you know, I just like, I love seeing everything that I've,

we've been talking this way about Joe Biden for at least six or seven years.

I mean,

it's just in, now it's in the New Yorker.

Now everyone, now everyone can talk about it.

That like, no, he doesn't have a stutter.

His brain is on the fritz.

It was an abomination, one prominent Democratic strategist who publicly defended Biden told us.

He stole an election from the Democratic Party, he stole it from the American people.

Well, I mean, in your role as publicly praising him while this is going on, you also helped do that.

Yeah, I mean, of course, Tapper and Dobson let everyone go anonymous here.

Why wouldn't they?

Which is, I mean, if this is what you're saying, that he fooled everyone, shouldn't you, I mean, Richard Clark went on TV, he did an apology tour going, I'm sorry, I let 9-11 happen.

You can't be like, hey, I,

you know, state legislator from wherever the fuck, you can't do that.

And Tapper and Thompson will let you.

They won't go, no, you can't be in this unless you are named and attributed.

Yeah.

I mean, that's the other bit of it, too, where it feels kind of like, we used to talk about this a lot at the old site.

I mean, to a certain, it's the way that ESPN will like sort of car wash a story in a way where you come up with the thing, you come up with the two sides on it, you have people sort of debate it.

And in that process of debating, you make it a story, but at no point is anybody involved actually like committed in any way to any of it.

Like these are basically by letting this person say something that like kind of exonerates themselves, kind of implicates themselves also at the same time, but in a way that does not tell you who that person is or what their actual role was or any of the things that they actually did.

You're doing them an incredible favor.

Anonymous source, close to Tyrese Halliburton, defends his father coming on the court.

Mistakes were made.

I should never have given his dad a sword.

Okay, well, another thing I really like about

this excerpt of this story, and this whole story in general, is that a great deal of it, and in fact, like a hinge point in American history, is George Clooney, which is very appropriate.

I mean,

it says, this is comments Biden made.

Mentors.

He mentors these, those historic kids from Parkland on their march and their lives against gun violence, Biden said, stumbling a bit.

I met with every one of those kids, and they really appreciate what you did, George.

Not a joke.

This is him talking to Clooney before the Clooney was talking about.

What kind of joke would that be?

Interesting.

Hey, hey, nice job with those Parkland kids.

Wink, wink.

Yep.

If you say it in a Bill Maher voice, it comes off as a Bill Maher joke, but it's not still not funny.

On Thursday, June 13th, Clooney landed at a private airfield in the Los Angeles area.

On Saturday, he rolled to the Peacock Theater.

He rolled to the Peacock Theater, capacity

7,100, roughly four hours before the event was set to begin.

He and Roberts had hundreds of photographs to take with thousands of attendees whose perks depended on their contributions, from $250 to $5,000.

The event would once again set a record as the biggest fundraiser for a a Democrat in American political history, raising more than $30 million.

Clooney looked to the side and saw Obama walking in.

Grayer, but still spry and electric.

A few minutes later, a Secret Service agents entered the room and announced that President Biden had arrived.

Biden hobbled out from around the corner.

Clooney knew that the president had just arrived from the G7 leaders summit in Italy that morning and might be tired.

But holy shit, he wasn't expecting this.

The president appeared severely diminished, as if he'd aged a decade since Clooney last saw him in December 2022.

He was taking tiny steps.

An aide seemed to be guiding him by the arm.

It was like watching someone who was not alive, a Hollywood VIP recalled.

It was startling, and we all looked at each other.

It was so awful.

You know, George, the assisting aide told the president, gently reminding him who was in front of him.

Yeah, yeah, the president said to one of the most recognizable men in the world, the host of this lucrative fundraiser.

Thank you for being here.

George Clooney, the aide clarified for the president.

Oh, yeah, Biden said.

Hi, George.

I love the idea.

There's a lot of stories in this where it's just Biden greeting everybody by saying, hey, Bub, and people are like really taken aback by it or weirded out by it.

But I do like the idea that that's just like the stage, like the season of his life that Joe Biden is in right now.

It's just like anybody that he sees, he like pats them on the back and is like, great job.

Thanks so much.

Just sends them on their way.

I saw people defending this.

One line of attack was like, oh, so George Clooney ruined America because

Biden didn't recognize what a big deal he was.

And it's like Clooney had known him for decades.

He was hosting the fundraiser.

He was hosting the fucking fundraiser.

I'll go further than that.

If you are an American above the age of generously 10 and you don't recognize George Clooney,

it's because your brain is not working.

Right.

I mean,

George Clooney has been incredibly famous for like

40 fucking, 45, like almost as long as Joe Biden's career.

But someone defended this by posting the picture of George Clooney with like dyed hair.

And he really, really looks like,

you know, like a Lebanese construction magnate with dyed hair.

It's awesome.

I think you should do that all the time.

But they were like, well, that's what these scumbags won't tell you is that his hair was dyed.

And that's why Biden didn't recognize him.

And it's like, okay, if your mom was wearing a hat, would you recognize her?

Like, just the idea that he's like...

Biden knew he was a dapper dan man, but he was using a different pomade that game.

He's the goddamn Potter familiarist.

Yes.

Well, I don't want FO, goddammit.

I'm a Dapper Dan man.

Watch your language, young fella.

This is a public market.

Now, if you want Dapper Dan, I can order it for you.

You have it in a couple of weeks.

Well, ain't this place a geographical odd?

Two weeks from everywhere.

Going ahead earlier, they were talking about the Pod Johns.

The second encounter came a a year and a half later on Friday night, April 26, 2024, the evening before the White House Correspondents Association dinner.

Favreau was among the influencers invited to visit with the president at the White House, as were two of his co-hosts, Dan Pfeiffer and John Lovett.

That night, to Favreau, Biden seemed to have aged 50 years and 16 months.

He was incoherent.

His stories were meandering and confusing.

Something about Iraq?

What exactly was the point of this?

He's told one story twice.

After the president left the group, Favreau asked the staffer about his demeanor.

Oh, no big deal, the staffer said.

The president just must must have been tired.

It was nighttime at the end of a long week.

No big deal.

Oh, he's tired.

So

he sounds like Abe Simpson.

What the fuck?

I see why they're calling you an influencer, Dan.

Jesus, fuck.

Yeah, this is, I don't want to step on this if you were going to quote.

I haven't read this particular excerpt, Will, but one of the bits that gets pointed out in this is how insane it was that the Biden campaign was like, we want to do the debate at 9 p.m.

The later, the better.

Joe likes it late.

When they knew that this was the case.

Coming to like do the walkthrough at the studio like basically at like 840, like more or less the way that like I arrived to a podcast, like three minutes later than I should be and like slightly sweaty.

That's how he showed up for a presidential debate like long after his actual bedtime.

One more.

When the event ended, the three men stood.

Obama began to walk offstage, but Biden walked to the edge, after waving and giving a thumbs up, stopped and stared blankly at the crowd.

Obama turned back and grabbed Biden's arm, then guided him backstage.

He later explained he just wanted to get the hell out of there, but he didn't want to leave Biden alone up on the stage.

Biden folks insisted that the president was just basking in the glow of a supportive audience.

And they called that clips of the moment cheap fakes, a term for video content that had been deceptively edited and or taken out of context.

But even some supporters present in the arena wondered what was going on.

I love how they have a term for

videos that are true, but it looks bad.

So it's not fair.

It is also one of those things where like there's going to be a lot of fake videos in our future.

You know, like I don't think you have to have like a great deal of foresight to see that like a bunch of fucked up AI generated shit is going to be in our discourse for the foreseeable future.

Lying about something that you know is real and saying that it's one of those is not the most irresponsible thing that we're discussing here, but extremely fucking irresponsible.

Like just not, it's not worth it.

Like that's the whole point with all of this that I keep coming back to is like, even though, I mean, this is the whole thing, whatever it is that Biden thought about whether he could have won, he dropped out because somebody convinced him in that moment that there was no way that he could win.

That is also part of the story.

Like, that's real.

He did believe it, and then he stopped believing it, which, you know, is

a topic for another day.

What kind of brain does something like that?

But in all of this, it's just like risking all of this shit, like telling all of these lies in some way that is like likely to diminish trust in your party and the institution and everything that you're supposedly running to uphold.

Doing all that for this reason and this guy is,

I mean, it is disqualifying.

I could see why none of these people would want to put their name on the shit.

David, that is

something that I kind of,

we talked about it, I think, around the time Trump was inaugurated, that there was one last bit of magic left in the deep state, right?

Yeah.

One last round of like,

we will fucking zap your account if you post this article.

We will,

you know, we will use all our remaining favors in, you know, big tech or wherever.

We will do a full court media press that makes it sound like you are a Russian agent if you do this.

The last bit of magic.

They use that to just get another year out of this hobbling old piece of shit.

The most spiteful and selfish fucking idiot of

the latter Cold War to post-Cold War era in Joe Biden.

Not for any goal, not for any, you know, hey, we have to keep Trump out so we can keep this whole thing going.

He's going to fuck it all up.

Just because not doing it would make Joe Biden sad.

And now,

Trump is president.

No more intramural deep state softball.

I mean, you could just see the way in which all of that just melted away to the other.

I mean, this is just this idea that because Trump, who again, like we're talking a lot about Joe Biden, Donald Trump, extremely fucking bad, right?

Like is

a dangerous, awful, stupid dude, gets 49.8% of the vote.

And everybody decides at that moment that they're just like going to slam open the ghost containment tank from Ghostbusters and let all the fucking slimers out.

Kevin Spacey is getting a lifetime achievement award at Condo.

So they were like willing to do a little bit of that fuck shit to defer that for four years, but not for on principle or whatever.

Like as soon as they like told them like

they ran out of juice.

I mean, like, a big thing, a big thing I'm thinking about, like, in terms of like the timing now, we're like, it seems like en mess, like, all the pundits who promoted him are like, how could we got this so wrong?

I mean, like, I'll talk about the last one in a second, but like,

like, why is a guy like Jake Tapper, like, why, why is he making this crusade now to be like the Democratic Party lied to you and doomed this country to a second Donald Trump term?

I mean, I think, if anything, this is an indication of the overall and total weakness of the left in this country.

If they thought that there was any viable movement in the Democratic Party that could replace all of these people who did this to the country, they wouldn't be doing this.

They would still be defending Joe Biden.

Because

he was brain dead back in 2020, and we all remember they moved heaven and earth to make sure that he won that primary.

So the fact that they feel safe and like it's safe to announce the truth of this now and like, you know, make and then like leave Joe Biden's legacy in tatters because they know for certain there is nothing, there is no alternative that's going to replace them, other people who did this or their jobs.

They can they can accept it and basically like live it out as an intermural dispute.

Like where it's basically people talking about whether they were early or late, whether you were too loyal or not loyal enough, whatever.

But the idea that any of this somehow like is a sufficiently damning indictment that's like, here's the thing.

Those anonymous sources shouldn't be allowed to say this shit about the world.

There were polls for years that said that Biden's biggest vulnerability going into reelection is that Americans thought he was too old to be president.

And then like that only just got confirmed over and over again every time he opened his mouth or was seen on television or in public.

We all know now that everyone around him and everyone in the media lied about this for years.

And now that these same people are going to be like, we were wrong, but like, we shouldn't lose our jobs.

And, like, also, please heed our advice about what the Democratic Party should do and not do in the coming years leading up to the next election.

Yeah.

If there was any, if they were afraid of AOC, or for that matter, Bernie, who spent the last two years of Biden utterly fucking disgracing themselves, Bernie, especially, if they were afraid of any of that at all, they would be making AI videos of Joe Biden like breakdancing

and be like, look, don't you feel like assholes now?

He won the 2021 NBA Slam Dunk contest, and this video is

he leapt over a key.

He jumped over a Lamborghini.

Yeah,

oh, what's this?

It's just Joe Biden at the X games.

Well, I mean, like,

the last thing I want to read, like the media reactions to this, is just a brief selection from Maureen Dowd.

And the headline here is the tragedy of Joe Biden.

And I'm going to talk just a a little bit about why I think this is so obscene.

She says here, the denouement of Joe Biden is unbearably sad.

The Irishman who could spend 45 minutes answering one question lost his gift of gab.

No, he can still do that.

Yeah.

He's better at that than he's ever been.

I was going to say, like, he's like, the 45 minutes thing is non-negotiable.

That is, that is.

In perpetuity.

By the way.

Yeah, it doesn't matter if you ask him about like earned income tax credit or whatever.

You are are getting a really weird story about how he gave Sammy Davis Jr.

a board skin concept.

By the way, speaking of that.

He was actually at Jim Bunning's perfect game, you know.

Like, all right, that's cool, dude.

I appreciate that.

Speaking of that, like, the perfect example of that is also this week, Axios released

the audio recordings of his session with the special prosecutor over the classified information shit.

Remember that?

Like, it was a special prosecutor who heard Robert Hurr, who declined to prosecute him because he literally concluded that he was an old man who

that he would like seem like he just like he seems like a kindly grandpa who doesn't often know what's going on.

Maybe maybe Chris can edit this into this, but there's a, there's a, there's a clip from that where when he's like, you know, being deposed, he gives a five-minute answer where he talks about doing archery with the president of Mongolia.

Masterful.

Honestly, like if that's, if he was choosing to do the kind of like junior soprano thing, where you're kind of like trying to get out of being prosecuted by like putting on a bathrobe and walking to Patterson, New Jersey.

It's not an unstrategic play, but I'm sure that Maureen Dowd is going to lean into the sort of like tragic clannish Irish-ry aspect.

Which I find to be like a pretty offensive gambit at a couple of levels, but nobody does it like her.

So I don't want to, I don't want to get in the way.

Yeah, I mean, the many, many people don't know this, but Joe Biden's brother was a changeling.

And, you know, he had to grow up knowing that his brother was taken by fairy people.

Joe Biden, who knew a Selkie.

Listen, Jack, I used to ride a selkie.

He thinks I'm kidding.

It's not a joke, man.

It's not a joke.

Like this mawkish bullshit that they do with Biden, where it's like the man who used to send a postcard to a little boy who had a stutter is now pooping his pants.

And it's the saddest, nothing sadder from 2023

to the present day has happened at all.

There's nothing close to this sad.

Well, yeah, I I mean, she loves it.

She says, yeah, the Irishman who could spend 45 minutes answering one question lost his gift of gab.

The father who saw two of his children die and two spin into addiction wilted under the ongoing stress, especially when Hunter Biden, my only living son, as Joe called him, got tangled in the legal system.

The gregarious Pohl, who loved chatting up lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, ended up barricaded in his Rehoboth, Delaware house with COVID, furious at everyone, proclaiming his oldest friends disloyal naysayers.

He was fuming at nearly everyone except Jill, Hunter, and the Cordon Senetiere of aides who had fueled his delusions that he could be re-elected despite his feeble and often incoherent state at 81.

And saddest of all, the man known for his decency, empathy, humility, and patriotic spirit was poisoned by power, losing the ability to see that and clinging to office, he was hurting the party and country he had served for over half a century and hurting himself, ensuring a shellacking in the history books.

It's the oldest story and tragedy, hubris.

And like, this is what I find so obscene about this because like you can like in describing what she did, you can ascribe a lot of, I don't know, dramatic terms to what's going on, but I will not accept anything that talks about this in the terms of tragedy.

Because tragedy offers like a dignity and a certain kind of

a faded dignity.

to it, like that has a sort of a poetic gloss to it, where you're like, you're on, like your greatest strengths are what you're ultimately your undoing.

Or like in attempting to do the right thing, you end up causing the worst possible outcome.

Like,

this is what the Greeks meant by hubris.

But, like, none of this was hubris on Joe Biden's part.

This is like, this would be like describing Donald Trump, if he ever gets sent to prison, as a tragic story, because a man who dedicated his whole life to doing crimes

who had thought that he would end up in prison alone and shackled and

masses

into sing-sing.

But no, it's like the outcome that Joe Biden authored and people around him is

not the result of tragic tragic hubris or destiny or anything like that.

It is only the product of the person he's been his entire life, which is a remarkably venal and cruel human being.

Yeah, I think that this is, I know that that's part of the gig and this is what Maureen Dowd gets paid the big bucks to do, but this is another one of those things that sort of is crazy making, not just in how over-the-top the like particulars of the writing and all that.

is,

but there's also this other element of it where it's like, I know what this is actually about.

Like I lived through it and I watched it happen.

It's not fucking king Lear.

Like this is,

it's not like it's broad slapstick comedy with like terrible, terrible downstream human consequences at the other end of it.

But the idea of trying to make it, I mean, this is, you know, obviously part of what the political media does.

I don't think that like certainly goes back to John F.

Kennedy.

I think it goes back a good deal further than that.

But the Kennedy stuff is the first bit.

And again, this is sort of doing Biden a favor by association, where like like the fucked up things that happen to a fucked up guy are later sort of retconned into the grandeur of the office and the country and the ambitions of that person.

When, like, I think that when you can see, and you can see it in a way that you couldn't see it if you were consuming political media during John F.

Kennedy's term, that like you can see how like grubby and venal, like you said, all of this actually was.

And so, trying to put a coat of shellac on it and like put it on the mantle as like more proof of how important this office is is like it's it reads as a taunt to me.

Like it's like telling me that this thing that I saw is something much bigger and more significant and less obviously preposterous than it was.

Yeah.

On my birthday, I told my daughters, says, tell me how much you love me.

And Cordelia, she wouldn't say, she wouldn't say it.

She said,

you're doing fine, Dad.

I was going to give you the king of France.

Get out there on the heath.

Well, that is a great point about

how dignified and full circle tragedy is.

No, this is, I mean, this is, it is a perfect tale.

It is full circle.

It is emblematic of everything in his life.

It is a complete farce, which is what his entire fucking career and life was.

The guy who was on the wrong side of every fucking major decision since before Jimmy goddamn Carter, he finally gets the thing that he ran over everything, everyone, that he did all of this for.

All those handshakes with all the guys who deregulated the financial sector, who fucked everything up, all those windbreakers he got from AIG, he finally had it.

And the fucking

court justice that he like installed, like or basically oversaw the installation of, despite the fact that he was a known sex creep at that time, is just undoing the few laws that he's able to pass moment after moment of his future.

Yeah.

and yeah no it ends with him not even like most of the days waking up and being like oh man I got to get back to Delaware so I can file my taxes because I'm still the senator oh fuck no no it's farts it is the perfect American farce for the most farcical figure in modern American politics

the man who I no single man did this, but

one of the people you can point to when you ask, why are we here?

Why is Donald Trump in there?

Why is there like this whole contingent of tens of millions of Americans who are like, medicine's fucking gay?

I hate it.

Why are things like this?

Well, there's several people you can point to, but one of them was just president.

And his life,

his career, it ended just as farcically

as the rest of it.

Also had an opportunity to rewrite his ending.

I mean, if there's anything tragic about it, he talked about being a bridge president.

He could have like gotten elected, like overseen the prosecution of Donald Trump, handed things off to his vice president and like probably honestly have had a decent enough legacy if he got out of there before 2023.

The hagiography about him, if he did that, oh my God, because yeah, Kamala would be like literally you would get fired if you admitted you voted for her by 2029.

Like you would like, she would be.

the most detested president ever, but he would have like the Obama shine and also like, you know, the one humble man in politics.

Right.

I wish he ran again.

Somehow that's not, that's like of all the dumb archetypes that we have, that's not a thing that it used to be the idea of being like he'd served and now he was going to go back to the farm.

We don't have any, we need to like build a healthy respect for people that like fuck off and retire at some point.

Like that is just culturally a massive failing.

Like the few senators that actually left, I remember like there was a story a couple years ago that was like basically like a sort of almost a photo essay.

It was like they retired from the United States Senate and are still alive.

And they found like the six people that had done that.

And it was like Barbara Boxer looking great on a patio.

They're like, I ride my bike all the time.

It's awesome.

It's just like, yeah, that's cool.

More people should do that.

That's great.

David, that is one of my theories about why everyone is so insane now.

There's, again, a lot of reasons, and you chiefly can blame phones.

But one of the sort of like side factors for the insanification of the the american stupid no one goes away anymore yeah nothing ever ends no one ever fucking goes away nothing happens to anybody this is the big i this i find especially challenging the idea that like rudy giuliani america's most convicted man i could i know a bar that i could go to tonight and see him there Like, it's not even fucking hard.

He's there all the damn time.

I could walk to it.

And that, like, seeing all of these people get convicted i mean trump certainly being like the single weinstein is the only one who's ever gone away in the right 23 or 30 years of imperialism i wondered about because i do feel like there's a way in which like everything that's happening is like a long backlash to six months of 2020 when there were consequences for uh powerful people doing fuck shit in power and i wonder sometimes about how i mean we know that like uh what is like harvey and like matt lauer are like basically the only guys that have ever lost their jobs about it.

I'm like, Harvey Weinstein's mad because he's in jail.

Matt Lauer presumably has like hundreds of millions of dollars and is just like trying to get, like, he's willing to like sit behind a news desk in a movie and be like, I'm willing to play a newscaster.

I have done.

Oh my God.

Matt, yeah, Matt Lauer is like.

Imagine the indignities he's going through.

He's like going to Uzbekistan and he's like, I read your script.

I know you didn't send it to me, but there's, but I saw that, I saw there was a character named evil jew3

i think i would be good for no you don't have to pay me i'll pay you i have a lot of camera experience um yeah i would like an office that has some sort of crazy dr evil locking my remote contraption that is in my contract that is important to me he's going to azerbaijan and he's like i'm interested in starring in your production the lies of the armenian i can play armenian i can play a turk i can play whatever just i need to get back in the game someone get back in he's got a publicist planting a story that's like he actually gets uh kicked through a window by steven segal in a movie

it's not gonna it's not gonna be released in all of russia but he it did happen to him

that is his that's his route back he's gonna be like steven segal is gonna try to capitalize off of sound of freedom uh and like make an anti-human trafficking movie despite um being a fan of human trafficking

matt lauer will play like the pedophile that like someone's selling a kid to.

My people, they say you could tell a whole man's life by how he takes his last breath.

We don't live with honor, we die with honor.

Matt's, please give me an honorable death.

Oh, my, oh, Will.

Everyone now is like Steven Seagal at the end of the perfect weapon.

Absolutely.

You think you're getting rid of them.

You're like, I saw the knife go through his big fat gut.

Then another Steven Seagal pops up and says, You did well for me, brother.

You handled everything great, brother.

So I'm sorry to see you you like this, Joe.

That is America, infinite Stevenson Gauls popping back up.

All right.

Let's leave it there for today's show.

But before we go,

I do want to, David, I want to ask you one thing in your capacity as one of America's premier sports analysts.

Sure, I'm a little worried about this one.

Go ahead.

Knicks, Pacers, Easterns Conference conference finals.

Who you got?

I am cautiously picking the Knicks in this one.

I have gone back and forth on them.

I am not a Knicks fan.

I'm a lapsed New Jersey Nets fan, but New York City is so much more fun when the Knicks are good.

Not just in terms of like the bing-bong community climbing onto moving buses.

Like that's honestly, like, they can knock themselves out.

That's fine.

I'm not like hanging out outside the garden for that.

But I was very impressed with like, this is my coworker Giddy Nathan has pointed out that Jalen Brunson has mastered both all of the coolest and all of the whackest things about basketball.

And he was doing just the cool shit in the last series, like just like finding weird spaces and making weird shots.

If he decides to get back into the like falling down and whapping his head around a lot stuff, I think this could go wrong.

But I think everybody is.

We'll tell in game one, like the tenor of the series, if Jalen Brunson is on the is literally on the floor for like X amount of minutes per game, like I don't know, like i think they're going to face face troubles but no i david i just got to say i was in high school the last time the knicks were in the eastern conference finals i i i and the rest of the people of uh the number one city in the world are riding the crest of a great wave right now and we're experiencing something that we have not felt in a long time the pacers are a very difficult team they're like the celtics but they make three-point shots yes

like so like they're like a they're like a better version of the team we just beat in some ways.

Not as good at defense, but all I got to say is I really hope Amber Frost and I's friendship will emerge from this series unscathed.

We've built a lot of good friendships that way, for sure.

I will say that even if I don't care about the Knicks, I have disliked the Indiana Pacers for longer than I think any other pro sports franchise with the possible exception of the St.

Louis Cardinals.

And I have to trust my instincts on that one.

But like, I feel like I've been right about that long enough that I have a rooting interest, even if I'm not a card-carrying member of the Bing Bong.

Well, I think it's going to be, I'm rooting for a Knicks Timberwolves finals so we can have the team that swapped players face off against each other.

And then anything

of him from his younger days when he had like kind of like longish permed hair and was coaching the Timberwolves.

I definitely recommend looking up young Tibbs picks.

All right.

Just

a little bit of sports chat to end the show.

But, you know, hey, it's my show.

And this is what's the only thing that's on my mind right this week is I appreciate you throwing me circumference finals.

Hey, you're probably out there and you're and you're saying this barrel that I affix to my body every day, I'm starting to get splinters in my cock.

I wish there was something else I could wear.

Well, we have something that might suit your needs.

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I don't know.

I haven't seen it.

But it's at least going to cover like half your body, and you can figure the rest out.

That's what my mom always told me.

Just, you know, keep going until you find something that will cover the lower half of your body and your genitalia.

So go to chopouttraphouse.com/slash store.

If you want the absolute best shirts that will allude to the

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No, yeah.

These are, you know, it doesn't matter if you are, you're, you're, you're going to your weekly Catan game with other losers and freaks who listen to this show, or you're, you're approaching normals.

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You can wear this to both, both, and you're going to get high fives and handshakes.

So, yeah, check it out.

What's the name of that website one more time?

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Oh, I fucked it up.

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Amazing to be able to.

What did Will and Chris know was

Felix already declining in 2025?

All right.

That does it for today's show, everybody.

Until next time, we'll talk to you again soon.

Thanks again to David Roth.

Please, everyone, check out and subscribe to Defector if you'd like more David Roth in real life.

Thanks, guys.

All right, cheers, everybody.

Appreciate it.

Talk to you soon.

Went to Mongolia and

great pictures.

I unfortunately embarrassed the hell out of a leader of Mongolia in our show.

They were doing

what they would do at the time

of the invasion of the Mongols into Europe in the 14th and the 800s.

And so we're out in the middle of nowhere, and they're looking up in the hill and they see this tiny line.

You know, it's a 20-mile horse race with all these kids under the age of 16 on a bareback racing to come down.

And, you know, they're sumo wrestlers and doing everything they do.

And so they walked over and they had a target bales of hay 100 yards away.

And gorillas were, you know, taking shots.

And I think, I don't know if it embarrassed me or to make a point, but I

handed the bow and arrow.

I'm not a bad archer.

But only found that word I can pull it back.

So I

and pure luck I hit the goddamn target.

No, I really did.

Bales of hay that were like 20 bales of hay with a with a big target in the middle of the bale.

And so I didn't mean anything by it.

I turned to the prime minister's hand at the hand before somebody's clean pulled back.