The Old Man and the Clemency

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Speaker 3 Hey, weirdos, I'm Elena, and I'm Ash, and we are the hosts of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 4 Each week, we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 10 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 6 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 10 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

Speaker 16 Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 12 Yay! Woo!

Speaker 17 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.
I'm John Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor.

Speaker 17 On today's show, Donald Trump says he's going to replace FBI Director Chris Ray with Cash Patel, who said he wants to prosecute journalists and Trump critics. Fun.

Speaker 17 Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth faces newly reported allegations about what a shitty person he is, including from his mom.

Speaker 17 And Bernie Sanders finally finds common cause with the billionaire. Even crazier, it's Elon Musk.

Speaker 18 Here's the question I had after reading the news today: is who had a rougher Thanksgiving with the family?

Speaker 18 Joe Biden being buttonholed about pardoning his son or Pete Hagseth dealing with his mother's letter in the New York Times?

Speaker 17 Well, the letter is from like 2018.

Speaker 18 I know, but it sort of came up this year.

Speaker 17 And the pardon was after Thanksgiving. Well, yeah, of course it was.

Speaker 17 You spent a weekend being fucking hammered by your whole family for a pardon.

Speaker 18 You'd do it Sunday night, too. Just get off my goddamn back.

Speaker 17 Anyway, so Bernie found common cause with billionaire billionaire Elon Musk. We'll talk about that.
We'll get into all the do's and dojes of collaborating with oligarchs to cut defense spending.

Speaker 17 I want you guys to know that Reed told me he wrote that line as a personal challenge to my dignity. That was nice.
Oh, really? And

Speaker 17 who won't be able to do that? Challenge

Speaker 17 accepted.

Speaker 17 All right. That's for you, Reed.
But first, I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving.

Speaker 17 Why are you laughing?

Speaker 17 Just funny the news. Donald Trump commemorated the holiday by sending wishes to all of us radical left lunatics who worked so so hard to destroy this country.
Looks like we failed.

Speaker 17 He also posted an homage to National Hampoon's Christmas Vacation, which we had mentioned is one of our favorite Christmas movies, certainly mine, where he pops out of a deep fake Joe Biden's turkey and dances to YMCA.

Speaker 17 I think it's some of his best work. It was very funny.
I don't think he makes them. I think they steal them from the United States.
No, you don't think they're mad.

Speaker 17 I don't think his campaign makes them either. I think they just rip them off of Reddit.
Yeah, I think that's probably right. I found Trump's staff announcements less compelling.

Speaker 17 He said he'll appoint the fathers of two of his son-in-laws to big positions.

Speaker 17 Masad Boulos, the Lebanese-born father of Tiffany Trump's husband, Michael, will be senior advisor to the president on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs. He got a lot of expertise there, Tommy?

Speaker 17 Not that I can tell. I think he did run for parliament in Lebanon.
He was a man in Lebanon, yeah. He lost.
And Charles Kushner.

Speaker 17 The former real estate developer and convicted felon who's Jared's father, will be ambassador to France.

Speaker 17 Yeah, a reminder that Charles Kushner is the guy who retaliated against his own sister for cooperating with federal investigators looking into his business practices by soliciting a prostitute to sleep with her husband, filming it, and mailing her the tape.

Speaker 18 Honestly,

Speaker 18 yes, terrible, but also, I don't know, something you can kind of see Benjamin Franklin doing.

Speaker 17 Some straight-up guy. He's creative.

Speaker 18 If he had the technology.

Speaker 17 I think they didn't want the brother-in-law to testify in a financial fraud case against him, too. So there's a lot of in depth to this.

Speaker 17 Trump pardoned him in 2020 and now he, if confirmed, is off to France.

Speaker 17 Not to be outdone in the special favors for family members category, Joe Biden made the biggest nepotism news of the weekend when he announced a pardon for his son Hunter, something he repeatedly said during the campaign he would not do.

Speaker 17 Earlier this year, Hunter pled guilty to federal tax charges in Los Angeles and was found guilty in a federal court in Delaware for lying about his drug addiction on his application to buy buy a gun.

Speaker 17 The president released a long statement saying he'd come to the conclusion that Hunter's prosecution had been political the whole time and that, quote, there has been an effort to break Hunter, who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution.

Speaker 17 In trying to break Hunter, they've tried to break me. And there's no reason to believe it will stop here.
Enough is enough.

Speaker 17 I hope Americans will understand why a father and a president would come to this decision. All right.
I got two Americans right here. Do you guys understand? What do you think?

Speaker 17 On a human level, obviously, I get it. It's not just a father pardoning his son.
It's a dad who lost a baby girl as an infant. Bo Biden passed away recently.

Speaker 17 It's also probably true on the merits that Hunter got harsher treatment because of his last name. But

Speaker 17 it's also the fact that President Biden lied and repeatedly lied and said he wouldn't pardon Hunter or commute a sentence. He had his press secretary lie on his behalf.

Speaker 17 Biden's supporters held up Joe Biden's refusal to pardon Hunter as an example of his commitment to the rule of law in contrast with Trump.

Speaker 17 But NBC News reported that when they decided to put this out there and say that Biden wasn't going to pardon his son, actually Biden and his top aides knew that it was still an open question.

Speaker 17 And so now everyone looks stupid. Everyone looks like they're full of shit.

Speaker 17 And Republicans are going to use this to argue that it was politics as usual when Democrats warned about Trump's corruption or threat to the rule of law or the threat to democracy.

Speaker 17 And I think that's the piece of this I am most frustrated with, which is Joe Biden looking like a typical lying politician.

Speaker 17 And I think that leads to a cynical feeling that all politicians are bad and they're all the same and that this is just par for the course.

Speaker 17 And so I'm not really worried that this is going to make it easier for Trump to be corrupt or to ignore the rule of law himself. He was already going to do it.

Speaker 17 He'd already named Matt Gates to lead the Department of Justice. He campaigned on it.

Speaker 18 Already hinted at using the pardon power for January 6th.

Speaker 17 More than a hint, yeah. Right, right.

Speaker 17 Literally a campaign promise. Yeah, but also, I mean, Hunter's pardon is expansive here.
It covers, goes back a decade.

Speaker 17 So the right-wingers, I listened to Ben Shapiro this morning, like they're all saying, what this shows is that

Speaker 17 Joe Biden was in on the take the whole time. that he was getting money from Hunter's business dealings because he pardoned this decade's worth of time.

Speaker 17 And now I think Joe Biden damaged his own reputation in service of doing something understandable on a human level for his son. And he also part, you know, damaged the Democratic Party's reputation.

Speaker 17 And the question I have is, is Hunter the only one getting saved here? What about like Dr. Fauci? What about Liz Cheney, who's getting told that she should be tried for treason?

Speaker 17 Can I make a point about that? Because this is the main thing that I've been thinking of. And I was been thinking about it even before the Hunter.
pardon was announced.

Speaker 17 If Joe Biden had come out either over the weekend or in several weeks, or maybe he'll do this before he leaves and says, like, look, I take it seriously that Donald Trump campaigned on prosecuting people he doesn't agree with and throwing them in jail.

Speaker 17 And Cash Patel and Matt Gates and all these people show that he's going to carry through.

Speaker 17 And so I am issuing a full blanket pardon for all of these people who have been targets and who have been on Trump's enemies list.

Speaker 17 Like, first of all, I think if he does do that, it makes the Hunter pardon seem more acceptable to me.

Speaker 17 And if he doesn't do that, then I think think it's even more infuriating that he saved his son and not a whole bunch of other people who were just government servants doing their job. Right.

Speaker 18 Yeah, that's my, that's my, because look, we've, we joked about it in the past.

Speaker 18 And I, I, look, whether or not Biden actually in his mind believed he was going to try to not do this, or on some level, he always knew he would do it. I don't know.

Speaker 18 But I thought he was going to do this.

Speaker 17 Like, I felt like this was something that was coming.

Speaker 17 I don't know.

Speaker 17 Yeah, well, I'm, I feel like a fucking fool. You know, that's what makes me mad about it.

Speaker 18 Well, like, I, but, you know, there's sort of to me, I was just thinking about this specific pardon.

Speaker 18 Like, and there have been like, I don't know, there, there are the presidential pardon is power is expansive and presidents have used it in different ways, some more corrupt than others, some just outright corrupt, right?

Speaker 17 We've seen that.

Speaker 18 And sometimes presidents use it, like President Obama used it, like President Biden used it, right, for clemency and pardons for people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses, for people that were kicked out of the military for being gay.

Speaker 18 Then you have pardons that are kind of like, I don't know, they're not,

Speaker 18 they are in service of an abuse of power. You have Trump's pardons of a bunch of people that were involved in crimes around him.
You have George H.W. Bush's pardons around Iran-Contra.

Speaker 18 Then you have these kind of like corrupt hand of God pardons that are just like, I'm just doing a favor. I'm saying fuck it on my way out the door.

Speaker 17 You ever read the Jimmy Carter ones?

Speaker 18 One of the Jimmy, they're incredible.

Speaker 17 Keep going. I'll tell you later.
But like,

Speaker 18 there's the Mark Rich pardon. There's the Roger Clinton pardon.
Uh, and then I put this pardon in that list just like it's a fuck it last out the door pardon.

Speaker 18 Actually, the Charles Kushner one is like that. For sure.
Two, what's strange about this is A, it comes now.

Speaker 18 B, there's no acknowledgement in the statement that part of the rationale should be that Donald Trump is about to become president, right? The statement is very kind of like,

Speaker 18 I don't know, like kind of

Speaker 17 imperious. Or sympathy inducing.

Speaker 18 And it's like, oh,

Speaker 18 like he's been sober for a long time. There's a lot of people on whom like the gears of justice have turned while they were trying desperately to maintain their sobriety.
And no pardons for them.

Speaker 17 Can I just point out, too, on that point,

Speaker 17 when Joe Biden decided to run in 2019, Hunter had already gone through a lot of these challenges.

Speaker 17 And so the time you could make a decision that would protect Hunter Biden from the kind of political glare and from Republican attacks was then. I mean, I'm sorry to say that.

Speaker 17 I think that Joe Biden is a tragic figure. Like, and I think that there are many good parts of it.
I mean, Love, you talked about this back in the whole post-debate.

Speaker 17 Is he going to drop out thing, the two Joe Bidens kind of thing? But I do think like he has shown incredible decency at times.

Speaker 17 And I really feel for what he's gone through and what his family has gone through. They've gone through hell.
Like none of us can imagine what they've gone through.

Speaker 17 But like his ego. again and again has like gotten in the way.

Speaker 17 And when push comes to shove, it's like, well, I'm going to do what's good for, I'm going to run for president again, even though it's fucking crazy to do that. And like, I shouldn't do it.

Speaker 17 And blah, blah, blah. I'm just going to do it, you know? And now we're all here.
And like this, to me is like in that category. Yeah.

Speaker 18 And it's also the timing. I do think the timing matters.
Like if this did come on Christmas Eve or it did come in a couple weeks after he'd done some kind of

Speaker 18 pardons or something around being afraid of Donald Trump abusing his office, it might have been different.

Speaker 17 Do you guys have a guess on the timing or have you read anything? I thought it was because of the sentencing. One of the sentencings is December 12th for the gun charges.

Speaker 17 The other is December 16th for tax evasion. So I figured he just didn't want him to go to jail.
He just wanted to sort it out now. I know.

Speaker 17 I saw that too, but then I thought, this is what's confusing about this, the full and unconditional pardon, because you could have imagined a scenario where Hunter gets sentenced and then Biden.

Speaker 17 commutes the sentence or, you know, says that it's going to serve less or whatever else and waits for it.

Speaker 17 But if you're going to do the full 10 years, full and unconditional, a pardon we haven't really seen in this country since Ford pardoned Nixon,

Speaker 17 I was reading that even Trump's pardons were like pardoning all of his cronies and pals and family members for like specific crimes. And this was everything.

Speaker 17 It does make the argument that this was about Trump coming, returning to power and going after Hunter like more salient.

Speaker 17 In which case you'd think, why don't a whole bunch of other people Trump's going to go after get the same thing?

Speaker 18 Exactly.

Speaker 18 And by the way, it also, like Hunter pleaded guilty and was convicted on crimes that are ancillary to the kind of core conservative critique, the core sleaziness of Hunter Biden, which is the Barisma stuff and some of the trading of influence, right?

Speaker 18 Which were not part of these charges. And now that slate is wiped clean.
So, of course, conservatives are going to say, see, Joe Biden is just protecting himself.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I think they assumed that it was just going to be law fair. But yeah, I agree.
I mean, Joe Biden made it worse for himself, for his own reputation.

Speaker 17 I do not believe, I've never seen any evidence that suggests that Joe Biden was getting money from Hunter Biden's business dealings.

Speaker 17 The save sum for the big guy email, none of it makes any sense. None of it has been squared with like financial records or other information that I think would have made, would have proved this case.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 18 So that's why it's just like, so now he's done this. Okay.
If in the next couple of weeks Joe Biden uses the pardon power again, it will always be in the context of this Hunter Biden.

Speaker 18 pardon the sort of strange decision to put this out on a Sunday night. And

Speaker 18 will also, by the way, also comes at a moment when we're about to have a debate about Cash Patel and about abuse of the Justice Party and abuse of the FBI.

Speaker 17 Now,

Speaker 18 if anybody uses the Hunter Biden pardon as a justification for approving these fucking bozos, they always wanted that permission. And like, I don't care.

Speaker 17 They don't need it. They don't need

Speaker 18 it. So I'm not like, they're like, oh, you've just given them ammunition.

Speaker 17 I don't care about that. I don't care about that.
I care about the internal credibility of the Democratic Party and people who fought for Joe Biden to be president. Can I ask you guys, because

Speaker 17 it obviously bothers all three of us. I've had like friends, family members be like, who cares about this?

Speaker 17 Like, if I was Biden, i'd do it too and look if like i would pardon my sons probably if i was in that position it's still wrong like i mean i don't i hope i wouldn't i hope i wouldn't be in that position but like i don't know i do you think the political effect i mean tommy you you raised the point that you're worried about the credibility of the democratic party we just went through an election where people decided yeah don't really care much about norms and institutions and democracy as much as they care about inflation other things and other issues that affect their lives directly.

Speaker 17 Do you think conversely that this would actually piss people off? Yes, very much. I think they care about people being full of shit.
They care about corruption. They care about hypocrisy.

Speaker 17 My guess is that like if you pull people right now,

Speaker 17 it would be the majority of people would understand it on a human level, but that support for this decision would kind of track Joe Biden's approval, but then you'd lose a bunch of Democrats, right?

Speaker 17 Because we, I think, believe in good government. And so I don't know.
I just do not think this is going to wear well over time. I don't know that this will be

Speaker 17 one of the top five things that we talk about, but I do think it's a tough way to go out. Yeah, when you're, it's hard.
It's hard to, when you're at the bottom there, it's

Speaker 17 absolutely. Do you know his approval rating right now? So Trump's approval rating when he left office after inciting an insurrection and trying to overturn the election was 38%.

Speaker 17 Joe Biden right now is sitting at 37%.

Speaker 18 I guess for me, like, I do think that what happens in the next couple of weeks matters for what this pardon looks like in hindsight.

Speaker 18 If he doesn't, like, we have a short window for Joe Biden to use his presidential authority to do everything he can to protect the country against abuses of power by Donald Trump and his cronies.

Speaker 18 And if he doesn't use the pardon power in the next couple of weeks, and what we're left with is Hunter Biden doesn't get to be subjected to kind of capricious

Speaker 18 right-wingers in the Department of Justice, but all these other people do, as you said, Liz Cheney, Fauci, Mark Milley, journalists, whoever it may be,

Speaker 18 that will be, I think, quite an indictment of this pardon. I am right now mostly frustrated by the timing of it and the kind of, I don't know,

Speaker 18 the kind of falseness of the statement, which doesn't acknowledge that this is, like, I don't know what Joe Biden would have done if Kamala Harris won.

Speaker 18 Maybe he would have done this anyway, but I would have liked some acknowledgement that this is because he's worried about future abuses of power.

Speaker 18 And I would have wanted this to be in the context of all these other people that Donald Trump has threatened.

Speaker 17 You know what I was thinking? Should have done it during the campaign.

Speaker 17 boy would it have given kamala an opportunity to finally uh denounce a break from biden that's a good call kamala the cop could have come down hard on that one now i will walk this back that's right that's right turn a bug into a featuring class one more thing before we like the pardon power is crazy yeah by the way yeah and like i think first of all i think upheld recently one supreme court right we have learned over the last eight years now if something is a norm and it's important maybe make it a law right because the norms are the norms are gone gone.

Speaker 17 Trump doesn't go abide by norms. No one seemed to care.
He campaigned on not abiding by norms. No one seemed to care.

Speaker 17 No one seemed to care that he promised to pardon people who assaulted police officers on their way to overturn an election. That was fine.
That didn't ruin Trump's.

Speaker 18 Well, this is what I mean by hinting, though, right?

Speaker 18 He never said, he would basically not exactly describe who would get the pardon. He would say the worst people wouldn't.

Speaker 17 One reporter at the National Association of Black Journalists said even the ones who assault the police department. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I guess that's true.

Speaker 17 but anyway, I do think Steve, Representative Steve Cohen, a Democrat, tweeted that he has had a constitutional amendment to reform pardon power so that it bans pardons for the president's family, staff, crimes committed for their benefit.

Speaker 17 It's a constitutional amendment. We can't barely keep the government open.
So whatever.

Speaker 17 But it did make me think, I'm like, yeah, if, and he's like, I've also had no Republican co-sponsors in eight years on this proposal. He's like, if anyone wants to join.

Speaker 17 But I do think, like, I think the pardon power is like so ripe for abuse. And yeah, I'd be for a constitutional amendment that would maybe rein it in a bit.

Speaker 18 If you go back and look, I mean, it's not just ripe for, it's been abused.

Speaker 17 It's often, often abused.

Speaker 18 If you go back and, so I was just reading about pardons and just for the fun of it and just reading what Nixon was saying about why he was pardoning Jimmy Hoffa.

Speaker 18 And by the way, it sort of, you know, probably ultimately was not to Jimmy Hoffa's benefit because where'd he go? But, you know, it's like, you know, careful what you wish for.

Speaker 18 But he's just basically saying, like, come, come, we got to do this because we, uh, because it's basically helping us in the 72 election.

Speaker 17 Wait, Tammy, before we move on, can you give us the Jimmy Carter ones? Well, I hope these are right because I just got them off of Twitter. But G.

Speaker 17 Gordon Whitty, Peter Yarrow from Peter, Paul, and Mary, who did something I don't know the details of with a 14-year-old,

Speaker 17 the Vietnam War draft resistors, all of them blanket, Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy

Speaker 18 wouldn't have gotten my part.

Speaker 17 Yeah, so a wild set there.

Speaker 18 I mean, look, yeah, big picture.

Speaker 17 I just, it's look,

Speaker 17 we had this fight over norms, institutions, and trust in government. We lost.

Speaker 17 But I do think this erodes people's faith in the justice system. It erodes people's faith in

Speaker 17 my belief that the prosecutions of Donald Trump were fair.

Speaker 17 Joe Biden has been championing the rules-based international order and norms and institutions, and then he jettisons them when his son needs a party, a pardon, or when VR party

Speaker 18 for him tonight. Or when Bibi Netanyahu is

Speaker 17 the one getting prosecuted for war crimes and not Vladimir Putin, right? I mean, just like it's very situational. Yeah.

Speaker 17 I mean, yeah, he could have come out and pardoned Trump and Hunter at the same time on political processes. That would have been actually hilarious.
You could have because

Speaker 17 this gets to your problem, Tommy, that like if

Speaker 17 you're going to argue that the Justice Department, by the way, Biden's Justice Department, unfairly targeted Hunter Biden and that Hunter Biden would never have been targeted were he not the president's son, then you can look at Alvin Bragg's case

Speaker 17 and think that like, yes, what Trump did was illegal and it's good that he got convicted because he broke the law, but would he really, would someone like Trump have gotten targeted if he was not President Trump?

Speaker 17 Yeah. I mean,

Speaker 17 I'm not arguing against you. I'm just saying.
That's why, like, again,

Speaker 17 it's why, like, you don't have to, you don't have to think like it has a political effect or it gives the Republicans ammunition or anything else.

Speaker 17 You just think, like, sometimes things are just wrong. If we believe in, if we believe in laws and everything else, it's just wrong.

Speaker 18 This is why, again, like, as I said, like weeks ago,

Speaker 18 I think Joe Biden gets one. Pardon your son.
Fuck it.

Speaker 17 It's your fucking pardon you've win you know you're you're everybody will understand but the statement is what's fucking killing me and just to knowingly lie about it yeah and to into string a bunch of people along and make your staff lie about it like like his press secretary

Speaker 18 she lied about it all the time so just say like i i originally had not planned to do this donald trump winning has made me nervous that that they will try to use my son to get at me and score political points it's a dangerous time i'm going to pardon my son hunter i'm also issuing pardons for anyone that donald trump or those who he's planning to put in positions of authority have been threatened with political prosecutions We do not do political prosecutions.

Speaker 17 With the major exception of Pod Save America. Yeah.
All right. Yeah.

Speaker 18 God, man, what a listener.

Speaker 17 No one's going to say that.

Speaker 18 Let me actually say, I want to revise my opinion, which is to say, I would like Joe Biden to issue some pardons in advance, but not so many that they go down the list far enough to get to us.

Speaker 18 Leave some big targets on there.

Speaker 18 Leave some big fish above us.

Speaker 2 Hey weirdos!

Speaker 3 I'm Elena and I'm Ash and we are the host of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 4 Each week we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 10 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

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Speaker 10 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

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Speaker 17 Speaking of people that I have a strange new admiration and respect for, let's talk about Cash Patel, the next FBI director.

Speaker 17 Handsome guy. I've always loved Cash Patel.
Handsome guy. No, absolutely.

Speaker 17 Down with the deep state. This has long been rumored that Cash Patel was going to get this.
Now it's apparently coming true, even though Chris Wray nominally has three years left in his 10-year term.

Speaker 17 If you haven't made it past the headlines, Patel is a former prosecutor who became a staffer on the House Intel Committee under Devin Nunes. Woof, Devin Nunes.

Speaker 17 That's talking about someone from season one.

Speaker 17 Where he became a critic of the Russia investigation and became a Trump world rising star.

Speaker 17 Patel worked at various jobs in the White House and the executive branch and hung around with Trump after he left office.

Speaker 17 You may remember him getting wrapped up in the classified documents investigation.

Speaker 17 But Patel's biggest claim to fame is for being the purest and most outspoken warrior against the so-called deep state and its allies in the woke media.

Speaker 17 Here he is in conversation with Steve Bannon a year ago.

Speaker 23 The deep state, the administrative state, the fourth branch of government never mentioned in the Constitution, is going to be taken apart brick by brick.

Speaker 23 And the people that did these evil deeds will be held accountable and prosecuted. Criminal prosecutions.

Speaker 23 Do you believe that you can deliver the goods on this in a pretty short, in a pretty short order, the first couple of months, so we can get rolling on prosecutions?

Speaker 24 We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media.

Speaker 24 Yes, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're going to come after you.

Speaker 24 Whether it's criminally or civilly, we'll figure that out. But yeah, we're putting you all on notice.
And Steve, this is why they hate us. This is why we're tyrannical.
This is why we're dictators.

Speaker 17 Well, got that part right.

Speaker 17 Oh, boy.

Speaker 17 There's a very season one story. You dig an inch into this and you're getting back to Nellie Orr and Fusion G Pierce, the Christopher Steele.
Lovers. It's tough.
It's terrible.

Speaker 17 So there was some chatter in the crooked slack about whether Cash Patel is the new worst nominee now that Matt Gates withdrew. What do you guys think? How worried should we be about Cash Patel?

Speaker 18 I think very worried. I think this is now the worst one.
I think if Matt Gates were still in the contention, you might have a debate, but it's now intellectual exercise.

Speaker 18 So Patel gets to be the worst one. There was a great profile on The Atlantic of Cash Patel that people should read.

Speaker 18 But there was one line that jumped out at me from

Speaker 18 an advisor to Trump who said that cash is the one you say to, hey, I'm not telling you to go break into the DNC, but

Speaker 18 dot, dot, dot. And that to me is what makes this so

Speaker 17 nerve-wracking.

Speaker 18 You look at, like,

Speaker 18 he doesn't seem to have a very strong ideology, but, but then you, nothing is more disconcerting.

Speaker 17 But he was a DOJ under Obama.

Speaker 18 Right. And nothing is more, I think, disconcerting than anyone who has become a rising star in Trump world.
And

Speaker 18 why is he a rising Trump in Trump world? Because he is a lackey. He will say anything.
You mentioned the classified documents investigation.

Speaker 18 When he was interviewed by Breitbart, and he said, oh, actually, Trump declassified all that stuff. Why is there no record of it? I don't know.
He just said it to me, though. He said it.

Speaker 18 He declassified all that stuff with me.

Speaker 18 He is the guy that says what Trump needs him to say, who does what Trump needs him to do, which is why he wants him to be in charge of the FBI and what makes him so dangerous.

Speaker 17 Yeah. I mean, look, me and Rhodes have been on the, on the cash patel watch for a very long time.
This guy is not remotely qualified to lead the FBI. He's never worked at the FBI.

Speaker 17 He barely worked in law enforcement. He's a limited experience.
He was a public defender, which is a great job. Not one that, you know, qualifies you to lead the FBI.

Speaker 17 He's a congressional aide, and then he's kind of bounced around the Trump administration.

Speaker 17 He says he was chief of staff at the Pentagon, but he was the chief of staff there for two months to the acting Secretary of Defense.

Speaker 17 So his boss during the Trump administration, a guy named Charles Cooperman, said, quote, he's absolutely unqualified for this job. He's untrustworthy.

Speaker 17 It's an absolute disgrace to American citizens to even consider an individual of this nature. A former Trump official.
That's a new

Speaker 17 thing. The Trump administration.
Yeah. So like, basically, what I'd love to hear him at the confirmation hearing.

Speaker 17 I hope they call him. So Lovett's summary of him is correct, which is he just tells Trump what he wants to hear.
He feeds his paranoia about the deep state.

Speaker 17 There's no evidence that this guy's a a reformer who has big ideas for how the FBI could be better. What there is a lot of evidence of is that Cash Patel is someone who keeps an enemies list.

Speaker 17 In fact, he published it in his book. It includes people like Bill Barr and John Bolton, who worked for Trump, to John Brennan and Loretta Lynch, who were Obama aides, to Hillary Clinton.

Speaker 17 Tim Miller tweeted out this full list. It includes Cassidy Hutchinson, who was an assistant to Mark Meadows.
This is apparently like the leading lights of the deep state.

Speaker 17 It's just like random people who are mean to Donald Trump.

Speaker 18 Or he just didn't like personally personally and had banned personal interactions.

Speaker 17 Right. Or was mean to cash personally.
But one of the most sort of disturbing allegations about Cash Mattell is from his time working at the Pentagon.

Speaker 17 Long story short, Navy SEALs were preparing a rescue operation in Western Africa and Nigeria. They needed to get permission from the Nigerian government to fly a U.S.

Speaker 17 military plane into their airspace. According to Mark Esper, the Secretary of Defense, Cash Battelle just told everybody that they'd gotten this permission.

Speaker 17 He said he'd gotten the word from Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, and no one realized that he had just made it up.

Speaker 17 They were about to land, or about to go into Nigerian airspace, and figured out, wait, Cash Patel just made up that we had permission. So these guys circled and circled and circled.

Speaker 17 They almost had to call off a rescue operation. And luckily, they got permission.
They landed. They rescued this guy and everything was okay.

Speaker 17 But the worst case scenario is you've got a plane full of Navy SEALs getting shot at by the Nigerian military. Or the hostage gets shot at because they had to abandon the mission.
Yeah.

Speaker 17 because so it, you know, you could have had a bunch of people killed. So it's a very, it's a bizarre selection.
It's someone who's just a Trump ass kisser acolyte

Speaker 17 and not ready for this. But

Speaker 17 could I interest you in some cash wine?

Speaker 17 He sells it for $233.99 for six bottles. Six, yeah.
Yeah, he's a real

Speaker 17 I didn't understand until I got into the Atlantic piece what a grifter he is. I mean, I'm not surprised by that, but he really goes after it a lot.

Speaker 18 some, so when you dig into this guy, there's all the ways in which he is just sort of a Trump crony who will abuse his power.

Speaker 18 But the story Tommy is telling, it's really just strange because even Republicans

Speaker 18 that were like kind of baffled.

Speaker 18 Otherwise defenders of Trump are like, why would you do this? Like why? Like it's not like a.

Speaker 17 There wasn't an ideological partisan.

Speaker 17 Well, the reason some people speculate that he just wanted it to happen, wanted the operation to happen because it was almost the election. Right.
Right. And they wanted to win.

Speaker 18 Right. So that he was willing to not, willing to lie, but like in such a kind of dangerous and unhinged way.

Speaker 18 In that, in that Atlantic piece, there is an anecdote about basically this sort of shitty judge in Texas sort of upbraiding him for not wearing a tie.

Speaker 18 It's like a very like specific story, but he's so agitated by it. He keeps coming back to his bosses over and over again.
Grievance. Looking for someone to kind of take his side.

Speaker 18 He's like, what do you want us to do, man? Like, we're not going to make a, we're not going to like, like, there's just this sort of like

Speaker 17 strange. This is someone you want in charge of the surveillance state and law enforcement.
He's also an author.

Speaker 18 And I just want, this was

Speaker 17 a kid's book.

Speaker 18 This is the description of the book. Hillary Queenton and her shifty knight, Adam Schiff, have spread lies that King Donald had cheated to become king.

Speaker 18 They claimed he was working with the Russionians. But how could that be? Joint cash to distinguished discoverer as he uncovers the plot against the king.
And who was really behind all the lies?

Speaker 17 Weirdest thing about that is he just didn't, why didn't he just use Russians?

Speaker 18 Because it's a magical world filled with Russionians.

Speaker 17 You've got to have a dual meaning for the parents and the kids.

Speaker 18 And why would you make it Hillary Queenton?

Speaker 17 I do.

Speaker 17 What's chilling back to what's scary and not what's absurd, the line that you mentioned, Lovett, from the Trump advisor, that he's the guy that says, you know, Trump says, hey, I'm not telling you to go break into the DNC.

Speaker 17 He's the kind of person that would not necessarily just take orders from Trump to do things that are horrible and illegal, but just do them thinking that it would impress Trump. That's it, right?

Speaker 17 And also not seemingly be that competent about doing it as the Africa story suggests.

Speaker 17 And also a guy who would run an organization that has all the authorities it needs to surveil, otherwise harass American citizens.

Speaker 18 Yeah, that's going to be a trend today, too.

Speaker 18 These are not people who have engendered esteem from even right-wingers around them, which hopefully will damn their nominations, but would also, I think, ultimately

Speaker 18 damn them if they were to attain these jobs.

Speaker 17 Chris Hayes said on his show once that Cash Patel at the FBI is what would happen if you you crossed J. Edgar Hoover with Alex Jones.
Okay, I like that. Yeah.

Speaker 18 It's chilling. Yeah.

Speaker 17 That's right. One thing's for sure, Pete Hegseth is trying to give Cash Patel a run for his money.

Speaker 17 Trump's nominee to oversee the Defense Department's nearly 3 million employees and $840 billion budget is the subject of a new Jane Mayer investigation over at the New Yorker about Hegseth's tenure at two veterans organizations that he ran.

Speaker 17 He apparently was forced out of concerned Veterans for America for being drunk in the office and even drunker at official events, preying on female staffers, and allegedly chanting kill all Muslims at a bar while on work travel.

Speaker 17 Before that, he ran a group called Vets for Freedom, where he reportedly racked up huge debt and once again instilled a culture permissive of sexual misconduct. Apparently,

Speaker 17 he's such a shitbag that the New York Times got a hold of an email from his own mother in 2018 where she took the side of his estranged wife during a legal battle.

Speaker 17 She wrote to her son, you are an abuser of women. That is the ugly truth, and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego.

Speaker 17 You are that man and have been for years and as your mother. It pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.

Speaker 17 Tough. The Times reporter says that Heg Seth told her that she immediately sent her son a follow-up email apologizing and taking it back.
Yeah, that's a tough one to take back.

Speaker 17 She said the things she wrote are not true and have never been true.

Speaker 17 We've all gone through that with our moms.

Speaker 17 You meant the first one. You know what I mean? The walkback is what it is.
You probably felt bad about the first one, but you meant the first one. Yeah.
It was not true what I wrote

Speaker 17 in excruciating detail.

Speaker 18 So the Times posted the email in full and then an article about the email. And the article says that basically she regretted it, wrote another email after, which I did not see.

Speaker 18 When I read the email first, all I had seen, I was like, holy fucking shit.

Speaker 18 Like my mom got in a, and I got in a little argument because my fridge broke and the question was whether or not we could cook the turkey, you know, and it got heated, but not like this.

Speaker 17 No, yeah, I didn't see that. I didn't see her react Fran's reaction in the New York Times.
How did the fridge prevent the cooking of the turkey?

Speaker 18 The fridge broke. And so the turkey had been at about 50 degrees overnight.

Speaker 17 Too warm.

Speaker 18 And it had, well, we didn't know when it became 50 degrees. I was a bit stubborn.

Speaker 17 That was after it had been spatchcocked.

Speaker 18 It had, and I had to go run out and spatchcock a second fucking turkey. And spatchcock two turkeys.

Speaker 17 Ooh, look at you.

Speaker 18 Yeah. What a weekend.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 17 RFK over there.

Speaker 17 Anyway, Pete Hegseth.

Speaker 17 I don't know. Does this change what we know about Hegseth in any meaningful ways? Certainly on the sexual abuser misconduct category, I think it just strengthens the case there.
Yes. But the

Speaker 17 mismanagement of an organization or two organizations. Multiple organizations.
It feels like that's notable. The U.S.

Speaker 17 military has a huge problem with sexual assault and both preventing it and holding those accountable.

Speaker 17 Part of that problem was that the decisions being made about who to prosecute, whether or not to prosecute these guys was being made within the chain of command and not by independent prosecutors.

Speaker 17 Pete Hexeth would be at the top of that chain of command. Right.
So I think that this is actually a uniquely serious problem in the U.S. military if he were to be the leader of it.

Speaker 17 Joni Ernst, Republican senator from Iowa, did a lot of work trying to reform the system. I would love to hear what she thinks about Pete Hexeth leading this organization.

Speaker 17 Who, by the way, was also rumored to be on the short list for Defense Secretary. Right.
And then was spotted last week at Mar-a-Lago with Trump. So maybe he's already having second thoughts who knows?

Speaker 17 No, let's say that other allegation. Let's say it's not true.
Okay. What is not disputed is that Pete Hexeth is a serial adulterer, which in the U.S.

Speaker 17 military can get you a year in prison or dishonorable discharge, right? I'm not like,

Speaker 17 I'm not here to scold people for personal failings or whatever, but I'm just saying if you go by the UCMJ, these are big deals.

Speaker 17 Also true for public intoxication and drunkenness. Clearly, reading all these articles, Pete Hexeth has a pretty serious drinking problem, or at least did pretty pretty recently.

Speaker 17 And so the last part that you were getting edge on was the New Yorker story talks about his mismanagement of an organization that has between five and 10 people and a five and $10 million budget.

Speaker 17 So now we're going to take this dude who can't run that organization, put him in charge of the Department of Defense, which employs nearly 3 million people and has a yearly budget of over $800 billion.

Speaker 18 And also, like, again, similar to the people that have been behind the scenes saying they're worried about Cash Patel, like this is Concerned Veterans for America is not like the

Speaker 17 W. They got pretty concerned.

Speaker 18 These are some concerned, concerned veterans, but this is an Americans for Prosperity group. This is a Koch brothers group.
These are conservatives inside of this organization.

Speaker 18 And one person said, I've seen him dragged away not a few times, but multiple times. To have him at the Pentagon would be scary.

Speaker 18 When those of us who worked at CVA heard he was being considered for sec death, it wasn't no. It was hell no.
Like the people that have worked with him are like, are you out of your fucking minds?

Speaker 17 You guys remember when uh trump's former defense secretary jim mattis said that he used to sleep in his clothes because he was so worried that in the middle of the night he'd get a call that trump might start a nuclear war with north korea i mean pete hegseth just be drunk

Speaker 18 the good news is he wouldn't be wouldn't wake up to get that's what i'm saying

Speaker 17 we would have to worry about the war till the morning

Speaker 17 there's a present could you just give me till morning yeah we got we got we got donald trump Kim Jong-un, autocrats around the world, nuclear weapons, and Pete Hegseth just hammered, just walking around the Pentagon.

Speaker 17 But again, I mean, you wouldn't be able to get a security clearance or pass a background check with this rap sheet. And now this guy is going to be in the nuclear chain of command.
Seems bad.

Speaker 18 There was another passage from the Jane Mayer piece that I just thought was striking. It included the phrase, close down the bar at the Sheraton Suites Hotel.
I thought that was a bad side.

Speaker 18 This is all around the kill all Muslims part is what is all taking place during this section.

Speaker 18 The Stafford letter cited a second incident in which Hegset passed out in the back of a party bus, then urinated in front of a hotel where CVA's team was staying.

Speaker 18 I'll tell you this because it's the truth, and I sincerely care about the mission of CVA.

Speaker 18 Now, just to give you a sense of like, these are conservatives, when that person, when Jane Mayer reached out for that person, that person said, if you print that, I will deny I wrote it.

Speaker 18 When he was reminded by Jane Mayer that it had been sent from the same personal email account that he still used, he said, I don't care. I'll just say it never happened.

Speaker 17 Like, these are sounds like

Speaker 17 he might have peed at a Sheridan a few times, too. Listen, we've all, listen, we've all peed outside of Sheridan's sleep.
All right. Listen, party bus, you know, whoever.

Speaker 17 This guy's a top-notch liar, though.

Speaker 17 To be like, listen, on the record, if you print my thing, I'm going to say it to lie. That's just an incredible strategy.
So good.

Speaker 17 And you know what? His name wasn't printed. So win for that guy.
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Speaker 17 All right, so we now have several all-time, most awful nominees lined up to run some of the most powerful agencies in government.

Speaker 17 We've got Hegseth at Defense, Patel at the FBI, Tulsi Gabbard in charge of the intelligence agencies, and don't forget RFK Jr. in charge of public health.

Speaker 17 Defeating any of these nominations would require four Republican senators to oppose them.

Speaker 17 So far, a few Republicans have made mildly critical or at least not fully supportive comments about Hegseth, Gabbard, and RFK Jr. No real vocal opposition to Patel just yet.

Speaker 17 Democrats are obviously playing defense against a lot of horrible nominees. How do you guys think they should be thinking about the strategy here?

Speaker 17 Like, should Democrats be fighting back against every unqualified, dangerous nominee? Do we need to pick and choose? Does there need to be an overall strategy to deal with all of them?

Speaker 17 What do you think?

Speaker 18 Well, first of all, we've already picked and choose because Linda McMahon is also

Speaker 18 on deck to be Secretary of Education. These are just the four worst ones.

Speaker 18 They'll also run through four different committees if we still live in a world where there are cabinet confirmation hearings, but they'd be through judiciary, intelligence,

Speaker 18 armed services, and the health committee, right? Those are four groups of senators who will all have the ability to decide how they want to mount this argument with their fellow senators.

Speaker 18 So to me, it's just like we're sort of still waiting for what a group of Republicans who have their own specific issues and concerns, where they're going to have backbone, where they're going to be trying to back channel to have these nominations withdrawn so they don't have to go out and go up against Trump, where they're going to be willing to draw the line.

Speaker 18 Like we just have no idea. And we were talking about this before, Tommy, but like Democrats aren't even really shotgun in this fight.

Speaker 18 We're just riding along. And so it's just like, none of these people should be in positions of authority, and some might get through.
We don't know, but we should fight as if they can all be defeated.

Speaker 18 I don't know what else we would do.

Speaker 17 It's a question of emphasis, right? I mean, because we don't have the power to block anybody.

Speaker 17 All we can do is get information into the public domain and make it politically damaging for Trump or the Republicans who vote for these nominees.

Speaker 17 And so, I mean, I guess Republicans could try to sort of collapse the timeframe of the hearings, do them all at once, do certain things that make it harder to tell a story about all of these nominees or anyone individually.

Speaker 17 But I do think it's more about the framing because we just can't be like the norms and institutions party and the ones who are opposed to change. Except for pardon.

Speaker 17 Whereas Trump's people are all like radical disruptors coming in to change the government that everyone just voted against because they hate it, right? I mean, that's where I'm concerned.

Speaker 17 It's just I worry about the Democrats in the U.S.

Speaker 17 Senate coming at like a bunch of traditionalists coming at these arguments in the most traditional kind of institution defending ways and not being remotely compelling.

Speaker 17 I think it's these are a bunch of grifting kooks who will put our health and lives in danger and our security. Right.
Right. It's got to be about how it would affect people.

Speaker 17 Or if Cash Matel is spending all his time going after Trump's enemies, who is focused on combating ISIS or foreign espionage or human trafficking or all those fucking LA rich kids that said they were on the rowing team that got into great schools.

Speaker 17 That's what we need the FBI doing.

Speaker 18 Justice should be served.

Speaker 17 I don't mind. How was it called? Varsity Blues?

Speaker 17 Varsity Blues.

Speaker 18 That's the name of the operation. It was Varsity Blues.

Speaker 17 That's the operation.

Speaker 18 It's also a fantastic film that probably doesn't hold up if we saw it again from when we saw it as kids.

Speaker 17 It didn't for a while. Now it's back.

Speaker 18 Chuck won. It's now good again.

Speaker 17 You didn't do the whipped cream bikini.

Speaker 17 Yeah, but

Speaker 17 it's got to be about how this would affect people. So that's just that to me is always the number one like quality.

Speaker 17 And to the extent that people aren't qualified, it's that their lack of qualifications is not something that's going to help them reform an agency to improve people's lives, but it's actually going to hurt you by having them there.

Speaker 18 I guess that's right.

Speaker 18 That's the broader argument we need to be making, I suppose, to the country.

Speaker 18 Whether these people get confirmed or not, what is the story we're starting to tell about the Trump era? What is the argument that's going to persuade four Republicans on each of these people?

Speaker 18 No, but it is. But that's important too, right?

Speaker 18 Because these are hearings for the country, but they are also hearings for Murkowski, for Collins, for Curtis, the guy that replaced Bitt Romney that seems to have suddenly discovered.

Speaker 17 Curtis, I don't even remember his name.

Speaker 18 Romney has some Romney vibes to him. Cassidy, these kinds of people.

Speaker 17 Well, that's what I do think making national security arguments is one way to potentially do that because

Speaker 17 you do have a couple of Republican senators who are a little more old-school Republican, genuinely concerned about these institutions, too, and like defending our country. Also, I think Robert F.

Speaker 17 Kennedy Jr. could have a unique set of problems in that he is pro-choice and there's a bunch of pro-life Republicans who have expressed concern about the pick.
I wonder if that could take him down.

Speaker 17 We'll see. Yeah.

Speaker 17 Speaking of Democrats deciding whether to fight back, there have been a couple of notable instances lately of Democrats expressing modest support for some of Trump's nominees and initiatives.

Speaker 17 Colorado Governor Jared Polis tweeted a few weeks ago that he was, quote, excited by RFK Jr.'s appointment because of his stance against big pharma and corporate agriculture, even though he said he doesn't personally agree with his stance on vaccines.

Speaker 17 And on Sunday, Bernie Sanders tweeted, quote, Elon Musk is right when it comes to criticizing Pentagon spending and waste, prompting favorable replies from Trump allies like Elon and Matt Gates, and less favorable replies from several angry liberals on Twitter.

Speaker 17 Favorite kind. What do you guys think about how and whether Democrats should collaborate with the Trump administration on initiatives where they agree? Yo, RFK, let's collab.
Let's look up.

Speaker 17 I think Jared Pollow screwed up by just sounding too credulous. And

Speaker 17 I just, yes, healthier food sounds great.

Speaker 17 Do we think that RFK is going to succeed at that when he's up against the broader Project 2025 deregulatory agenda where they're gutting environmental protections? I don't think so.

Speaker 17 I also think RFK Jr. cares mostly about keeping vaccines out of our arms.
So I think that's going to be the issue there. I think the criticism of Bernie, in my opinion, is very stupid.

Speaker 17 I think that Democrats have long wanted to cut the Pentagon budget, as they should.

Speaker 17 I think we all should want to cut waste and fraud and abuse, and we should be in support of the goal and then hold their feet to the fire based on whether they're successful or not.

Speaker 17 Can I just say Bernie was doing something there that is substantively and politically smart? Yes. And good.
Per usual. Right? Like,

Speaker 17 I actually think that Democrats on this Doge thing should beat Trump and Elon and all the rest of them to the punch on a reform agenda.

Speaker 17 And we should put forward a list of waste, fraud, and abuse in government.

Speaker 17 It should include corporate subsidies, corporate tax breaks, no-bid contracts, any other kind of waste that we can find in government. And then, you know, present it to all them, see if they do it.

Speaker 17 And if they don't do it, oh, I thought you were a reformer. Why aren't you reforming the system? And then criticize Elon and Trump's moves based on who they'd hurt and who they'd rip off.

Speaker 17 Elon Musk said that we should delete the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has saved consumers tens of millions of dollars over the last several years.

Speaker 17 They're very mad at the CFPB because Mark Andreessen, a crypto billionaire who's invested much, much more in crypto, has decided it's bad because I think some of the people he worked with were quote-unquote debanked.

Speaker 17 I'm not sure if that's even true because I don't know. They were selling fraudulent or risky assets.
I'm not sure what's going on there.

Speaker 18 Yeah,

Speaker 18 they've always hated the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Speaker 18 The reason it's called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and not the Consumer Financial Protection Agency is because Republicans prevented it from becoming an agency.

Speaker 18 It was originally supposed to be led by Elizabeth Warren, whose idea it was, but Republicans prevented her from leading the agency.

Speaker 18 She then ran for the Senate, so jokes on them because she stuck around. But they've always hated it.
They've always lied about what it does.

Speaker 18 And what it does is protect consumers at the expense of big banks, credit card companies, airlines, etc. And so they've always hated it.

Speaker 18 But yes, they like, we cannot defend things just because Elon Musk or any of these people say that they're bad. We just can't.
That just can't be what our politics are.

Speaker 18 Politics are not going to be defined. We have to have our own politics.
And sometimes the fucking Doge people are going to be right.

Speaker 18 Now, the Polis thing bothers me because this idea that you should look past what RFK Jr.

Speaker 18 says on vaccines because you have a problem with high fructose corn syrup or whatever is to like, I think, misunderstand the job.

Speaker 18 And like even, and Pola's walked it back a bit, but even in his statement, he's like, I hope RFK Jr. doesn't withdraw vaccines.

Speaker 18 It's like, well, if you're already at the place where you're hoping he doesn't do something that would be deadly and devastating, you've given away the game.

Speaker 17 There's like an easy edit to Polis's statement that would have been fine if he said, like, I don't like vaccine mandates, but RFK Jr.'s views on vaccines are dangerous.

Speaker 17 And I would not have picked him. If he is confirmed, I hope he'll follow through on his commitment to take on big pharma and corporate agriculture.
Right.

Speaker 17 Like that would have been, that would not have ruffled a bunch of feathers. Like he was bad pick.
He shouldn't have picked. Start with that.
Bad pick. I don't like him.
His vaccine views are crazy.

Speaker 17 He does have some views on other things that, you know, if we can't stop him, then great.

Speaker 18 Right. Well, he, right.
And also

Speaker 18 back in August, Polis had said that RFK Jr.'s views on vaccines are dangerous and he would be dangerous if he was in charge of health and human services. So it was just strange.

Speaker 17 I think he's dealing with some libertarian state politics and was opposed to vaccine mandates at some point. So anyway.

Speaker 17 But I think the challenge for the Doge folks is just that the majority of federal spending is mandatory. It's Social Security, it's Medicare, it's Medicaid.

Speaker 17 We pay about $1 trillion worth of interest on our own debt.

Speaker 17 Flashback to 2011 here. Yeah.
Then there's $850 billion in defense spending. So finding huge cuts, like Elon Musk says, I think you wanted to cut $2 trillion

Speaker 17 a year. It's going to be incredibly difficult.
Now, good luck trying. But

Speaker 17 when you're talking about those levels of cuts, you're going to start really, really hurting people in service of extending the Trump tax cuts for the richest people in in the country.

Speaker 17 And that's the story we have to tell.

Speaker 17 This is also like a very old game that Republicans have played for a long time, which is you find some ridiculous sounding spending in the federal government, of which there is a lot and a line item somewhere that sounds fucking nuts, or you point to employees who seem like they shouldn't be there.

Speaker 17 Elon Musk is like putting federal employees on blast, tweeting about them to try to fire them.

Speaker 17 But, you know, even if you eliminated every federal employee in the entire government, that's like a tiny percentage of the overall budget. It's not spent on staffers.

Speaker 17 It's spent on payments to people. It's a tiny portion of discretionary spending.

Speaker 18 Yes.

Speaker 18 There was the Republican Study Group, which is 170 members of the House and all the Republican leadership, they put out a budget earlier this year, and it called for raising the Social Security retirement age, which is just a giant cut to Social Security because the age is really just a means of deciding how much money you get.

Speaker 18 There was a story just the other day that like if they're going to want to pay for all of these Trump tax cuts, what are they going to do to pay for it?

Speaker 18 Well, they want to, they want to means test food stamps.

Speaker 17 Joe Biden, who we're obviously in a bad mood with this week,

Speaker 18 he personally increased

Speaker 18 this weekend for many months, but like he didn't get a lot of credit for this, didn't get a lot of attention. But he basically,

Speaker 18 there was a bipartisan bill that gave the president the authority to increase food stamps. And so he issued the largest increase in food stamps that any president has ever done permanently.

Speaker 18 And he increased them by $36 per month. It amounts to about $400 a year, not a lot of money.

Speaker 18 Republicans have already started talking about that in order to pay for the extension of the Trump tax cuts, they want to revoke the president's authority to increase food stamps by a few hundred dollars so that they can cut a person making $5 million a year, cut their taxes by 200 grand, right?

Speaker 18 That's what they want to do.

Speaker 18 And you'll have Vivek and you'll have Elon running around the country talking about expensive office chairs and silly sounding science projects, but but that's where the real cuts are going to be.

Speaker 18 They're going to start by going after food stamps and Medicaid because they start by going after poor people and the working poor and slowly work their way up to Social Security.

Speaker 17 This is John McCain's whole shtick, the bridge to nowhere, pork barrel spending. This isn't new.

Speaker 18 Yeah, and then that guy died in a plane crash for all the money.

Speaker 17 Not John McCain. No, I know, I know.
It's Ted Stevens. Ted Stevens.
Yeah, Stevens. They're just calling it Doge because it, oh, some crypto joke.
Very funny. We're back at Simpson Bowles now.
So.

Speaker 17 All right, before we go, remember Cheryl Hines? Yes. The first lady of HHS.

Speaker 17 Yep. So over the weekend, the wife of RFK Jr.

Speaker 17 posted this Instagram reel.

Speaker 17 Let's take a look. No, but

Speaker 17 you can't take a shower. I'm doing a video.

Speaker 25 No, no.

Speaker 16 No, I'm doing.

Speaker 25 You've got to give me a second. I'm doing a video for Heinz and Young.

Speaker 21 Honey, the 60% off.

Speaker 17 Okay,

Speaker 17 for those of you who are just listening,

Speaker 17 go check this out on the YouTube version. This is a video of Cheryl Hines in her bathroom.

Speaker 17 She's holding up some of the lifestyle products she sells while Bobby showers behind her, fully naked, but thank God mostly obstructed by Heinz's head.

Speaker 17 Among the wares, she's selling a $20 clean, eco-conscious soy wax maha candle.

Speaker 18 What is just...

Speaker 18 Make sure. So she's getting in on the Make America Healthy Again Drift.
Horny again. Well, I'm horny.

Speaker 17 I'm horny watching that video, of course. Also, just, it's.
just getting her beak wet. It's not, everyone's getting the thing.

Speaker 18 It's like, wow, Cheryl Hines, all those. Oh, wow.
I wonder what Cheryl Hines thinks about all this. Turns out she's in.

Speaker 17 It's just like everybody loves a winner. It's like the Melania stuff.
Oh, maybe. Oh, you know, there's no verbatim this.

Speaker 17 Like, every time there is a horrible married guy in public life, there's this weird coping conversation. Like, oh, maybe, maybe Melania was secretly hates it.

Speaker 18 Maybe it's a cry for help.

Speaker 17 Maybe she's a place where the body's double.

Speaker 18 Like, no, she's a horrible person. She's married to Donald Trump.

Speaker 17 America's like scammy capitalist id is just unleashed in the second Trump administration here. It's like they're selling this.
Cash Patel's selling is wine.

Speaker 17 They're all making money. They're all getting rich.
Well, the real piece of it,

Speaker 17 look, Jared Kushner already got his $2 billion kickback from the Saudis once he left government after the first Trump term. Now we've got Tiffany's Trump's father-in-law being the like kind of

Speaker 17 envoy for Middle Eastern affairs.

Speaker 17 There was a report in the Wall Street Journal that one of the ways that business like CEO types are trying to figure out how to suck up to Trump, one of the things they're doing is buying the Trump cryptocurrency

Speaker 17 to try to grease their way in.

Speaker 17 The avenues into this administration for corruption this time are so unbelievable. We haven't even talked about one of the biggest, which is tariffs.
Tariffs. Tariffs.
Right?

Speaker 17 Because all these companies can apply to get exceptions on the tariffs, which they did in the first Trump administration. And how are they going to do that? Gee, I wonder.

Speaker 17 What are they going to do?

Speaker 17 Susie Wiles, chief of staff.

Speaker 18 And one of the arguments that was made during the immunity

Speaker 18 debate in which the Supreme Court decided that the presidents have this incredible immunity was: how can you punish corruption if

Speaker 18 what bribery is, is bribing someone to use their

Speaker 18 official powers. If you can't be held accountable for your use of official powers, how do you prove bribery?

Speaker 17 I think that will become

Speaker 17 maybe we can get our pardon from Joe Biden if we just

Speaker 17 don't think. But the

Speaker 17 I just it's not a problem. We're going to cut a check.
That's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, whatever it takes.

Speaker 18 It's not the most important part of that video, but just like, I really hate the

Speaker 18 RFK Jr., why are you showering behind me? You're in full hair and makeup. I know.
When did he get such bullshit? He had to get. Did he get into it?

Speaker 18 How did he get into the fucking shower? We can see the full shower in the shower. His whole body's wet, too.

Speaker 17 His whole body's wet.

Speaker 18 He's been in there. You're the problem.
You started shooting the video after he started fucking showering. What are you talking about?

Speaker 17 Thank God there's not another season of curb because I don't know. Done.
Bump, bump, bad, but I will watch back episodes. Oh, for sure.
Because I have a locked-in sort of. okay, it's okay.
It's okay.

Speaker 17 Yeah, that's fine. We're not going to get into a debate about it.
Do you think Cash Matel was selling a supplement that promised to detoxify the COVID vaccine in your body?

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 17 It was like D-vax and relax or something and mRNA, and you'll be better in no time. It's so bad.
You take a pill and it'll suck the COVID vaccine right out of you.

Speaker 18 I don't know. How much worse could it be than all the half-the-Charlotte Tilbury shit I put on my face and all of its promises?

Speaker 17 What's that? Nothing.

Speaker 17 The one thing when you listen to enough

Speaker 17 right-wing media, you realize how symbiotic their content and their products are. Like, it's a lot of stuff about how the economy is about to collapse.

Speaker 17 Therefore, you should flip your IRA and put it all in gold. It's absolutely horrible advice, constantly, all the time.
That's apocalyptic. Yeah.

Speaker 17 Well, it's a lot more successful than our Jack Smith bobblehead business. Yeah.

Speaker 18 And by the way, there's a black, there's a Cyber Monday sale in the Crooked store. If you go to crooked.com/slash store, we've got incredible offerings there.
Not joking.

Speaker 17 Probably a fire sale in 2024 merch.

Speaker 17 Do you think this is the pitch the marketing team wanted to do?

Speaker 18 No, I think it's fine. There's a Christmas ornament that says hope on it you might like.

Speaker 18 Those are marked down.

Speaker 17 Check those guys out.

Speaker 17 I dropped the vote saved America ornament for our tree on the ground.

Speaker 17 And I said to someone, and they said, that story sounds a little Ruth Conda. I don't know.

Speaker 17 I don't think you really did that. I was like, I know it.
It doesn't sound real, but it happened. It was Julia Wick who made that joke.
That's our show for today. We did it.
We did it, guys.

Speaker 17 We got through. We'll be back with a new show on Wednesday.
Bye, everyone.

Speaker 17 If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free or get access to our subscriber Discord and exclusive podcasts, consider joining our Friends of the Pod community at crooked.com slash friends or subscribe on Apple Podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed.

Speaker 17 Also, be sure to follow Pod Save America on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for full episodes, bonus content, and and more.

Speaker 17 And before you hit that next button, you can help boost this episode by leaving us a review and by sharing it with friends and family. Pod Save America is a crooked media production.

Speaker 17 Our producers are David Toledo and Saul Rubin. Our associate producer is Faris Safari.
Reed Cherlin is our executive editor and Adrian Hill is our executive producer.

Speaker 17 The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglund and Charlotte Landis.
Writing support by Hallie Kiefer.

Speaker 17 Madeleine Herringer is our head of news and programming. Matt DeGroote is our head of production.
Andy Taft is our executive assistant.

Speaker 17 Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Phoebe Bradford, Joseph Dutra, Ben Hefcote, Mia Kelman, Molly Lobel, Kirill Pelavieve, and David Toles.

Speaker 3 Hey weirdos, I'm Elena and I'm Ash and we are the hosts of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 4 Each week we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 10 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 6 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 10 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

Speaker 16 Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 12 Yay! Woo!